---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment In a message dated 2/28/05 3:31:57 P.M. Central Standard Time, jtanner@mozart.sc.edu writes: Others haven't been tuned since last semester (hey, I'm not saying they're in tune - I'm saying the profs ain't fussing. One professor came back after the Christmas break and said, "what did you do to my pianos? they're sounding great after the break!" I smiled broadly and just thought to myself, "Nothing. That's just how bad your ears are.") I am teaching a class, "The care and feeding of pianos", and one of my students, a clarinet player, had to tell her professor his piano was out of tune. He couldn't hear it. I've only tuned the oboe teacher's piano once since I've been here. A couple of weeks ago, one of the theory professors asked me to check his piano, because it sounded funny. It was 25 cents flat at the break. Your professors should understand that different buildings have different climate control capability, and not to mention, different climates will have varying levels of change. If they don't understand this, make them all a copy of Walter Deptula's article from the January 2000 Journal on "Deep Cycling of Humidity". That article alone can answer LOTS of questions and support your position. Add in a copy of that Steinway article on climate control, get you a couple of those Dampp-Chaser digital hygro units and record and reset the high/low every week inside a couple of their pianos and you should have some pretty convincing support. Everything you give them, give a copy to your supervising administrator. One of the things I want to be careful of is that I don't want to sound too superior to my profs. I want to make sure they don't feel like they are wrong. The last thing I want to do is make them feel I know more than they do. Although your idea is great, (someone else mentioned the digital hydro units), if I put them in there, they will realize it is not my fault. Somehow I need to have them think of the idea. One of the pianos is going out of tune because the professor has a space heater sitting 3 feet in front of the piano, next to his bench. (He comes in at 6 AM, before the heating system is up and running). When I asked him about it on Sunday, and he said he uses it only under his desk. When I got there this morning, it was sitting next to the bench. Now he has to know he didn't tell me the truth. But he is so determined to prove that the piano going out of tune is my fault, that initially he didn't want to admit maybe it was his fault. I hope that when he sees the thing sitting there tomorrow morning, (he doesn't come in on Mondays), maybe he'll think about what he said. The basic problem here is lack of communication. These professors don't want to talk to me. They have taken the attitude that the pianos are my responsibility, and anything that goes wrong with them is my fault. Not only that, but they don't think it is their responsibility to tell me when something goes wrong. On Saturday I spent 6 hours tuning and voicing one of the other professors' two B's. I wrote her a note asking if she likes the tunings. I have not heard from her yet. In case you haven't guessed, the honeymoon here at UA is over. Now have to work for a living. Wim ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/caut.php/attachments/5c/57/af/91/attachment.htm ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC