Provident Living Tip #1

If your low-end piano needs a tuning, but it's so old that no professional piano tuner will do it for you (at least not without trying to sell you an expensive piano humidifying system that costs more than you paid for the piano), consider learning to tune your own piano. I read many books and websites on the subject first. Then, for the cost of a professional piano tuning job, I was able to buy a few mutes, a good tuning hammer, and a Korg chromatic tuner over the internet. Now I carefully give my little craigslist-obtained spinet a periodic tuning and feel quite pleased to be able to do it all by myself! I don't do a perfect job, but it's good enough for all practical purposes at this stage in our family's musical progress.

Bonus: My four-year-old just started learning to play her first piece on the piano. She was intrigued by me tuning the piano and is now making the connection between the piano keys and the written notes in her First Journeys in Music Land book.