1975
Greg graduates from Western Iowa Tech Piano Technology Program.
1977
First concert tuning was for Elvis Presley on Greg’s 22nd birthday.
2012
Greg founded Denver Piano Service, offering piano tuning, repair, rebuilding and restoration.
She rests in the corner but stands with intention. Monumentally magnificent, with a patina that diminishes your senses to everything but her, she calls your name. You gingerly approach, hands behind back.
Closer inspection reveals her heavy heart—a majestic mass of steel strings—robustly rugged, yet so intricately beautiful in their appointment. She invites your touch. Your application of middle C begets the purest, truest tone. Her sublime sound is a gift from a man who loves her.
She is a 1979 Yamaha C3 Parlor Grand Piano. He is Greg Shaffer, owner of Denver Piano Service.
Profoundly professional and even more gracious, this stately but unassuming gentleman harbors a grand knowledge not readily conveyed to many upon random acquaintance. A 44-year expert in tuning, repairing, rebuilding and restoring the grandest of instruments, this piano highbrow owns the treasure of tuning for scores of world-renowned musicians, including Diana Krall, Henry Mancini and even Elvis eight weeks before his untimely death.
A veteran of the vintage, Greg dismisses digital tuning and cleaves to the age-old tradition of tuning pianos by ear with a calibrated fork. This distinctive decision by a man who has tuned around 35,000 pianos—5,000 of them concert tunings—relegates him to a dying breed of custom-tuner who espouses character over convenience.
Because no two pianos tune the same, common sense mandates that a custom tuning is nothing less than optimal. Greg custom tunes each piano by ear, or aurally, striking a tuning fork (purchased in 1976) and putting it between his teeth to set the pitch at A440. His methods transcend digital tuning, comparing the pitch of each note to several other notes on the piano—not just theoretical pitch.
To be a successful aural tuner, one must have the ability to hear frequencies far above the highest range of normal speech (8,000 Hz) to detect the subtle harmonics of intervals. Recently tested, Greg is spectacularly able to hear a 20-decibel tone—the volume of a whisper—at 18,000 Hz. His phenomenally honed abilities allow him to target specific harmonics while disregarding others.
His aural, mechanical and mathematical grasp of the sound and inner workings of the piano is sensationally stunning. Beyond tuning, he rebuilds and restores pianos enfeebled by time and circumstance. He is currently servicing an 1865 Steinway Concert Grand, one of possibly six in the world.
Greg has seen great accomplishment in his career, including owning a piano/music shop for more than 20 years and caring for more than 100 pianos over 10 years as a faculty member at Western Illinois University. He has held significant positions in other fields when piano sales and interest dipped but always returned to his love of the piano.
While technology’s distractions have dampened the pursuit of the acoustic piano over time, there now exists an increase in sales and lessons. There will always be those who crave the touch and sound of the piano.
She will endure.