About Us

So here is a little about myself. My name is Eben Goresko. You might say that I am a piano junkie. Both my parents, who were artists, introduced my brother and me to the arts at an early age. I attended Fleisher Art Memorial as a child for six years and went to Settlement Music School on Saturdays during the school year.

My parents had the idea that it might be useful for me to acquire skill in a craft like Piano Tuning so that I could work my way through college. So they sent me to a place no longer in existence called “Trefz Piano Factory” in north Philadelphia. What I learned 38 years ago, aside from the minimal basics, was that it takes a fair bit more than a beginning tuning and repair course to know what you are doing to the point that you are doing for your clients a service rather than a disservice.

I simultaneously attended Temple University in pursuit of a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance. By 1979, I decided that I had had enough of half measures towards being competent as a Piano Technician and so I joined the Piano Technicians Guild, attended conventions, seminars, consulted with experienced technicians, passed the tuning test, passed, the Certified Tuning Examiners qualifications test so that I could test other tuners and became a die hard qualified Aural Tuner.

I then decided that wasn’t enough and started tearing apart and rebuilding pianos in order to improve my technical skills. Looking back at the little intro-tuning course I took early on, I learned that to be competent, qualified at Piano Service was much like being competent, and qualified at anything. It is a skill and craft that is as deep as it is wide.

Over the years, I made changes to the way I worked for various reasons. In1991, I started to make the change over from being an uptight, righteous “Aural Tuner” to being a “Hybrid Tuner.” I will write more about this in upcoming posts. Despite my change over to this “easier” way of tuning by 1995, I had developed severe arm problems, which turned my occupational world up side down. I could not tune any more with my right arm without excruciating pain. It was bad.

After “my right arm” being diagnosed with everything under the sun including, Carpel Tunnel, Lateral Epicondylitis, Cubital Tunnel Syndrome, I was facing the end of my career as a piano technician. Either I had to change what I did for a living or change how I did it.

I re-taught myself and relearned how to tune pianos with my left arm – hand and created a simple tool and a not so simple method that enabled me to continue tuning. The changes resulted in my taking about 50% longer to accomplish my tunings, but it kept me in the game.

In 2001, I left my established business of 20 plus years in Philadelphia and moved with my wife to Boulder, Colorado, had babies and things have never been the same ever since. I have reestablished myself here in Boulder and believe or not, after years of changing the way I tuned to accommodate my arm problem, I have been back to tuning with my right arm over the past few years. I will write more about how to survive repetition stress disorders.

For questions, comment on “Questions” or very sparingly email me at info at coloradopianotuning dot com.