ONE in a million is a phase often used in the context of hyperbole, however, this isn’t the case for Shaun Pragt whose profession may be better described as a rare craft due to the speciality of his forte.

Shaun is trained in the art of piano tuning.

Originally hailing from Mildura, Shaun is now a Warrnambool-based piano tuner servicing the four corners of the western districts.

Early on in his career, Shaun travelled from Hamilton to Cape Jaffa, finishing in Bordertown - totalling 403 kilometres to service the pianos of his clients in one day.

Since then, he has learnt to manage his trips in more structured and logistical fashion.

“It’s a job that takes you all over, I have visited some really cool places and get to see all walks of life,” Shaun said.

The piano has always been a point of interest for Shaun, and as a child, his parents enrolled him into piano lessons.

He continued music throughout senior school, and afterwards went to Melbourne to undertake 12 months of intensive piano tuning training at the Australasian School of Piano Technology under master technician, Brent Ottley, graduating in 2015.

Shaun was one of approximately 20-30 students who completed the class in 2015 but it has since been shut down, adding to the inaccessibility of training in the field, and therefore to the gap of trained professionals.

Shaun commented that unless you are able to get an apprenticeship, options to pursue the career are quite limited.

In one year, Shaun learned the art of his craft and continued learning while working with technician, Derek Walters from Warrnambool, who has serviced the pianos of the western districts for over 30 years.

Seven years later, Shaun has a busy schedule, being one of the only professionals in his field in the area.

With pianos being extraordinarily different instruments that are each unique to the next - Shaun often finds himself walking into a tuning service having no idea what kind piano he will encounter.

Perfecting his craft has been 50 per cent by learning from the expert knowledge of his mentors - “Derek has passed down a lot of his knowledge about repairing older pianos, the other 50 per cent is just doing it.”

“[Pianos] are all fundamentally the same, but if you find a weird problem, you just have to nut it out sometimes,” he said.

Having tuned quite an extraordinary number of pianos in his seven years of servicing this area, he has found that “concert grands are always really nice to tune” but one piano over the years has stuck out in his mind.

“There was [a grand] up Horsham way from memory … I remember playing it, I think it was a late 1800s (piano) and it was still fine!” he said.

“Normally pianos don’t get better with age, they deteriorate over time, but this one was like, time has been paused.”

Shaun recommends tuning pianos around once every year, “bare minimum once every three (years) because once they drop in pitch, to bring them back up is a process that is not good for the piano”.

Brining pianos back up in pitch entails having to re-stretch the strings, which is an intricate process as there is around 90 kilograms of tension in each string.

“Every time I’m doing a pitch raise on an older piano, I am wearing safety glasses,” Shaun said.

“In training, we were working on a grand and had a big base string let go and it flew across the room.

“There is a lot of mass in there, and a lot of tension, and when they let go, they fly. It’s a very loud sudden snap and it comes out of nowhere - you don’t need a coffee after that, you are awake!”

Shaun has good relative pitch and uses this in conjunction with technology to tune pianos, which takes about one to two hours, depending on the condition of the instrument.

Shaun encourages everyone to keep playing their pianos to help maintain their conditions and to create music.

“Play them! Keep playing pianos, it’s a great instrument and the fundamentals of music can be found in the piano,” he said.

“If you understand how pianos work, you understand melodies, chords, rhythm - you can branch out to any instrument from there, it’s a great springboard.”

For Shaun, music is such an important part of general life.

“Even though I am around pianos day in and day out, I still find time to play my own piano at home and make my own music on the computer, it is hugely important,” he said.

Shaun’s future plans are to go with the flow.

“There aren’t many people doing (piano tuning) and there is a huge demand, and I am still young enough to travel around and it not be a big problem and we got to keep these pianos going as long as we can,” he said.