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About The Book

The first edition of this book (Metamorphous Press, 1986) was called by some reviewers “the zen of piano tuning.” It won the Western States Book Award for creative nonfiction in 1986, has sold more than 15,000 copies, and has been translated into Japanese. This second edition has up-to-date information from new scholarship about early piano history.

"To write about temperament so that ordinary non-technical readers can understand it, is the most difficult writing challenge there is, and you accomplished this in a masterful fashion. . . .This is a great book."
Owen Jorgensen
keyboard temperament scholar and historian

The “Seventh Dragon” in Japanese folklore is an invisible creature known for his power of hearing. This is a book about the way a piano is tuned. Becoming a piano tuner is somewhat like joining a secret society: you discover that you are learning a craft in the ancient Socratic sense, not merely a mechanical process. The book leads the reader through the history and musical theory behind Equal Temperament, the tuning system generally used on pianos for the past 150 years.

Excerpts from The Seventh Dragon: The Riddle of Equal Temperament
by Anita T. Sullivan, Unlimited Publishing

“It may come as a surprise to you, as it did to me, to learn that tuning a piano is not at all the same as tuning a violin or a guitar. Not only is it physically more difficult (and time consuming) because every piano has at least 250 strings, and they are “tied down” very firmly by their tuning pins --- not only that: a piano is tuned by a wholly different philosophy.” (from ‘Author’s Preface’)

“A piano is born into the world in a state of high tension, much more so than a wheelbarrow or a lamp. The piano is sent into the world with this tension arrested. It is the task of the tuner to re-arrest.” (from ‘Second Interval’)

“IN THE BEGINNING – Like a fish, a piano forgets easily. It does not matter whether this piano and I have met before. I address it, even before I open the lid. The listening begins with my eyes, then my hands. I am hushed before it, waiting. . . .” (‘Tuner’s Monologue #4’)