Late Night Resonance

There’s an interesting shift that sometimes happens after a full day of tuning pianos. Spending hours listening to intervals, beats, harmonics, tension, and resonance changes the way sound feels afterward. The ears seem to settle into a different mode of attention.

By the time I get home, I sometimes notice that I’m listening differently. A single piano note can feel larger. The decay of a drum stroke becomes more noticeable. Sympathetic resonance between strings or instruments begins to stand out in ways that might otherwise pass by unnoticed.

Working as a piano technician has gradually influenced my relationship with music beyond the technical side of tuning. Spending so much time focused on touch, tone, and the physical behavior of instruments creates a deeper awareness of sound itself. It becomes less about isolated notes and more about interaction — the way sounds affect one another and occupy space.

Some evenings I end up opening Ableton and recording small ideas that come from those listening sessions. Sometimes it’s a piano resonance, a percussion texture, or a short improvisation that appears unexpectedly. Many of those moments never become finished pieces, but they often become the beginning of something.

Sometimes the most interesting discoveries happen after the workday is over, when the listening continues.