100 Year Old Piano in Rwanda

Aaaand, back to pianos.

Had a lovely time at Kigali Music School with my new friend Chris from Musicians Without Borders. They've got a 1924 Canadian Heintzman - almost 100 years old. It's got a few problems including missing (quite likely ivory) key tops, couple of stray damper heads and a lot of dust, but hopefully we can restore it. I've got a guy coming later who knows about 3D printing. Going to see if it's a better bet to try to print new key tops. A full set of whites is fairly cheap, but these seem a little slimmer than modern keys and each of the 52 would need filing down. 3D printing could potentially replicate them to the exact size.

Had my first string breakage whilst tuning at the Korean church a couple of weeks back. Thankfully it was a treble string with a treble unison, so one string remained - still playable until the new string arrives. Managed the entire tuning in under four hours. 

One of the former human rights participants from GYC 2015 came to visit when he heard about the project. He bought a keyboard and taught himself to play in his room. This was his first time playing a proper piano and his smile was fabulous. Like many of my friends, he asked where you plug it in, and was intrigued when I explained it doesn't need electricity.

Also took Chris to visit Alex's forge. This is where we'll be melting down the metal to build the string frame.

Alex Explaining How it Works

Don't forget, you can help us to build the first pianos in Rwanda via our Indiegogo campaign. There's also a blog here, Facebook and Twitter to help you keep up to date.