In two months, Ducinskas has tuned over 20 pianos and has developed his skills.
“I started quite recently, but I’ve learned so much,” Ducinskas said. “I’ve done it for a lot of people for free and practiced a lot.”
The average piano has about 240 strings, he explained. With knowledge and some specific tools, he has reduced the time it takes him to perform a job.
“I started by tuning each of the strings, one by one. At first it took a while, but then I got it down to two hours to tune them all in the standard pitch,” Ducinskas said.
Lithuania is located northeast of Poland and its neighbors Poland and Belarus.
When he came to Canada, Ducinska found more intimacy than he had expected.
“What is surprising is that so many Ukrainians live in the province of Saskatchewan, especially in Prince Albert,” he said. “We share much of the same cuisine, Lithuanians and Ukrainians.
“It felt like home, finding perogies and cabbage rolls and sour cream,” he said.
Canada has 1.4 million people of Ukrainian descent, and there are establishments such as a Ukrainian museum in Saskatoon and a heritage village northeast of Edmonton.
At some point, Duzinskas wants to resume live performance of his music or an updated alternative form of it and has been looking to find venues in Saskatoon and locally.
He moved to Prince Albert to be with his girlfriend, a city dweller for the past decade. They met streaming music on Twitch.
During the pandemic, they both streamed instead because live shows were not possible.
He can be found by searching for his name on Facebook or under his artist name Old Taima on Spotify or YouTube or by searching for OT Piano Tuning on Google.
He credits some of his education to Dale Bassingthwaighte, a now retired piano voice from Prince Albert.
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On Twitter: @princealbertnow