(LEX 18) — A traveling piano tuner is bringing his skills to underserved communities as the number of piano tuners in the United States continues to shrink.
Tim Arbisi calls himself the piano doctor. He is self-taught and travels the country tuning pianos in areas where finding a tuner has become increasingly difficult.
"I am the piano doctor," Arbisi said.
The field of piano tuning has seen a dramatic decline. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, there were roughly 12,000 piano tuners working across the country. That number has since dropped to fewer than 7,000.
"We had about 12,000 piano tuners in the United States, which is, it's not a lot, but it's enough. Now on this side of COVID, we have less than 7,000," Arbisi said.
That shortage has left many pianists struggling to find someone to service their instruments. Glen, a pianist at Mount Gilead Baptist Church in Lexington, said the church's concert piano had gone more than a decade without being tuned.
"It has been a while since we've had our concert piano tuned. Um, so it's probably been over 10 years or so, and it was time for that," Glen said.
Glen said finding a tuner locally has not been easy.
"We would have to go all the way to Ohio to, to grab someone, and then they would put you on a schedule. So what I've noticed is that you would have to wait," Glen said.
Arbisi said the piano presents a unique challenge among musical instruments because players have no way to tune it themselves.
"Every musician wants their instrument to sound the best that they can, and piano is the one instrument that musicians play that they, they don't know how to tune. Think about that. If you play a guitar or any other instrument, you know how to tune it, but with piano, piano players don't tune pianos, they just sit down and play them," Arbisi said.
That gap is what drives Arbisi to keep moving. He said traveling to underserved areas allows him to help a large number of musicians in a single trip.
"I realized, you know what, if I get to some of these areas that are completely underserved, well, there's so many to do that I can walk in and, and it would be a huge, a huge windfall, and I would help so many people," Arbisi said.
This week, Arbisi made six stops in Lexington and seven in Bowling Green before heading to his next destination.
