[CAUT] teaching piano tuning

[Ed Sutton]

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Well done, Dorothy!

I think all of us extremist piano folks on this list can design such a program; in fact your program hardly seems like more than a start.  What about historic keyboard instruments, history of piano manufacture, principles of conservation, piano performance and physiology, and the psycho-physics of perception, psychology of human relations,etc.!!!!

In practice, most of us are life-long learners in this field, and it would take many years and thousands of dollars to create a curriculum that equals our self-training.

Which leads me to think that what is most needed is not a program that finishes people, but rather one that gets folks off to a good start.

For example, the PTG Field Repairs Guide, PACE Programs and RPT Exam Guides would present a very good beginning curruculum, and the act of learning this material and passing the RPT exams is a good introduction to the skill of learning technical material.  It would be possible to turn this material into a long distance learning course with summer residency sessions, if one could find an institution willing invest in it.  If it were heavily promoted through schools of music as a career option for piano majors, the needed 12 or 15 students nationwide might sign up for it.  A major problem would be that the teacher instituting the program would be creating an amazing curriculum, and I'm not sure any school would be willing to pay the start up costs.  (I am talking about something much more intensive than a correspondence course.)

Comments?

Ed Sutton


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Dorothy Bell 
To: College and University Technicians
Sent: 11/6/2004 5:40:22 PM 
Subject: RE: [CAUT] teaching piano tuning


Dear Friends,

I don't know a lot about technical colleges or community colleges, but I do know a lot about 4-year colleges and universities. Yesterday I spend some time starting to design a Bachelor of Sci/Arts program that I thought I could get through a faculty committee.

Here it is:
    Joint program between Physics Department and Music Department (requiring a vigorous liaison faculty member from each department) 
        Of the sixteen semester courses required for graduation,
             the following five courses and one practicum are required:
                Physics, Introduction for Majors (with lab)
                Physics, Mechanics (with lab)
                Physics, Acoustics (with lab)
                Music, Elementary Theory
                Music, Literature of the Keyboard Instrument (two semesters)
                Piano Technician Program , practicum, (five semesters)
            in addition, three courses chosen from the following:
                Music, Orchestral Literature
                Music, Chamber Literature
                Physics, Advanced Mechanics
                Chemistry, Introduction for General Science Majors
                Applied Mathematics
                Business, Introduction for Non-Majors
            In addition, eight courses to meet college distribution requirements and desired electives.

So I finished with this and thought, I don't know all this stuff, I don't think I need it in my piano buriness, but it would make a great major for the two or three people in the US (world) who are interested. It would be hard to push through the college because it would be tremendously expensive (small courses, specialized instructors, lots of space requirements), but I think that it is a viable academic program.

But to get real, I don't think that the college level is the place for piano tech as we now do it. We don't say things like, "In a study of four different voicing techniques carried out on pianos otherwise identical, it was found that . . . " unless we are Jim Ellis or some other thinker of that ilk. We often say, "I tried such and so and it worked pretty well." That's not the sort of experimental level that would fly for a four-year major, in my opinion.
    
But the tech college or community college might be a place for a more applied program. My own piano training was at a trade school, so I'd be curious to know what people from the community colleges think. (This same argument has been going on for years concerning nursing programs: theory or practical? Two-year or four-year or trade? It's a continual discussion with, unfortunately, a lot of potential for hurt feelings.)

So there you have it, pie in the sky from

Dorrie Bell
Boston, MA
            

 
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