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My bane is a vacuum cleaner. A dishwasher is almost as bad.

New Years Eve: Balloon pumps! I still manage.

Yes, yes, and weed eater even in the distance. Movement of people through the room was a problem too. Bends the pitch. But I could never think of a good way to tell a client to sit down. So, as they'd pass through I'd turn my head opposite to put a "counter bend" in it

Often the first tuning is during the get-in. Extra risers are being constructed out of scaffolding, heavy stuff being dragged along the floor. Sometimes a partial pitch adjustment, mostly not. The midday tuning is sometimes done with the tuner wearing a hard hat because the lights are being installed overhead but this is usually quieter. The last tuning may be only twenty minutes during last minute volume settings for the voice- overs and the studio audience coming in.

Makes me glad I developed my phlegmatic attitude during those summer afternoon four o'clock rural American tunings while the neighbourhood formation law mowing team was rehearsing outside.

I really love the hurly burly fully alive atmosphere of it all. It doesn't happen often but it doesn't happen often enough for me.

Back when I worked for the school district, there were two occasions where I tuned a piano in an elementary school cafeteria; once during picture day with the room full of chatty kids, and once during lunchtime, where the kids had to scream at each other over the noise of the over-door squirrel cage blowers. Both were aural tunings.

They came out just fine...

My favorite tuning challenge was early in my career. I was called to tune a piano that was in a gymnasium at the local college. They were having an event and realized at the last minute that the piano was out of tune. It so happened that the event was a state hand bell choir conference! With handbell choirs practicing in the background, I can only imagine that my tuning was somewhat of an approximation.

Ugh! Apparently approximations work in some cases. I tuned for a Loggins and Messina concert where the place was a bedlam of set-up noise. When I gave up and called it done, the stage manager clapped his hands and let out a piercing whistle. He shouted for silence, then walked over and checked the piano. I heard a wobbly unison, but he pronounced it "Perfect" and wrote out a check. I wanted to correct the unison, but someone was already playing heavy left-hand piano, so I left.

I am working on an electronic unit that uses a clip on accelerometer microphone with canal phones. Accelerometers do not pick up as much ambient noise. Option to cover the phones with those ear muff type hearing protectors. You cannot hear anything through those babies. The unit will also be a tunable band pass filter. Of course the motivation to design and build one is...I WANT ONE!