[CAUT] CAUT Endorsement (was Re: Job Opening, U. of Michigan, Ann Arbor)

[Fred Sturm]

On Oct 9, 2007, at 7:40 PM, David Ilvedson wrote:

> Most of the school listings I see, would prefer PTG membership and  
> RPT status.   Would new listings start including RPT and CAUT  
> status preferred or possibly you think the RPT status can be  
> eliminated as it has no meaning?   I don't see the need for another  
> "credential".   Would the CAUT credential we much harder to  
> achieve?   i.e. a "real" test.  Would existing College techs be  
> grandfathered in?  Besides, it's easy to talk about it...I know all  
> the stuff concerned with RPT status was years in the making and a  
> huge amount of work...and the politics...YIKES...who's going to  
> take that job on?   Are you guys crazy?
>
> David Ilvedson, RPT
> Pacifica, CA  94044

	Are we crazy? Yep, you got that right. I guess we can pretend to be  
"crazy like a fox," but your assessment of how difficult this will be  
is spot on.
	So the first question to answer is "Why?" I guess it would be  
accurate to say that this notion grew out of a desire to market  
"something" to the higher education community. [BTW, this is perhaps  
the most easily targeted market PTG has to go after, with 1500 - 2000  
easily identified individual music departments]. We all know that  
most music departments are under-staffed, under-served, generally in  
a mess when it comes to piano condition and maintenance. We,  
followers of Don Quixote that we are (at least this is true of me  
personally), want to do something about this, for all sorts of  
idealistic reasons, and perhaps from some self-serving motives as well.
	What to do? Well, we want to tell music departments how to take care  
of their piano situations, which is an awfully complex thing to try  
to do. The Guidelines was a first step. One possible second step is  
to try to tell them who they should hire. Hmm, tell them to hire  
RPTs? Would that work? We came to the conclusion it wouldn't.  
Obviously a caut needs a lot beyond RPT. I think we all remember  
starting work as a caut and feeling simply overwhelmed, confused, and  
out of our league - well, true for me, anyway, and a lot of others  
have said the same. So we really don't feel comfortable recommending  
they hire a green RPT, or even a well-seasoned one. 25 years of home  
service really don't prepare you for caut-dom much better than 2 or 3  
years.
	So if we want to market members of PTG to music departments, we need  
to have some way of identifying people who have something like the  
chops and knowledge needed. (At the same time, we need to begin to  
provide the training needed; hence our development of caut classes at  
national and occasionally regional conventions). And we've been  
chewing over where to go with that for a few years now. It happens  
that the current PTG board is, led by President Dale Probst, is  
strongly in favor of us getting to work and making something happen.  
In fact, we have been instructed to have something concrete for the  
mid-year board meeting this winter, and to have it include skills  
testing, written testing, and something curricular. Talk about  
ambitious! The general notion is that this will be called a "CAUT  
Endorsement" on top of RPT, with the possibility that other  
"Endorsements" might follow, as, for instance, in rebuilding.
	To give a concrete example of where this may be heading, the skills  
testing sub-committee, consisting for now of Don McKechnie, Ken  
Eschete and myself, has developed the concept of a caut tuning test.  
I'll quote here from our working document:
"Our consensus is that we should test for the skill level appropriate  
for a concert tuner. What does this mean? In simplest terms:

1) Concert tuners stretch octaves quite a bit (even to the extreme),  
doing so in a very consistent way, demonstrating complete control.

2) They can tune extremely stable unisons that are absolutely pure  
with all three strings sounding.

3) They can produce a concert tuning efficiently and rapidly,  
generally in less than an hour (assuming a reasonable starting point).

             "In addition, we believe that we should focus on the  
concrete ability of being able to produce a full, quality tuning in  
conditions as close to real life as possible. Does the candidate  
actually have the chops to complete a full tuning and meet these  
criteria? That is the question we want to answer before we can tell  
academia that this person is capable."

	With that as the premise for a tuning test, our initial design is as  
follows:

             "The candidate will tune a concert piano (7' to 9'),  
complete, with a time limit of 90 minutes at a maximum. The piano  
will then be checked for adequate and consistent stretch, stability,  
and unisons."

	The stretch component is a little complex to describe here, but it  
involves measuring enough partials of enough notes to examine 4:1 and  
8:1 matches over the top and bottom octave or so of the piano,  
flagging inconsistencies, and aurally verifying them. (It involves  
Excel spreadsheet, and if anyone with knowledge and experience in  
Excel would like to volunteer to help, we'd love to have some  
assistance). The unisons/stability component involves pounding/ 
slamming the piano (all notes) in some way, and then checking  
unisons. Samples of "suspect" (or obvious) unison deficiencies would  
be flagged aurally, and then measured. The working notion is that the  
spread of pitch within notes of a unison should be within 0.5 cents,  
though that would have to be beta-tested.

	So there you have at least a taste of what we are up to. Hey, it  
keeps us busy and out of other trouble <G>.


Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm at unm.edu



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