[CAUT] Uniform Formal Education

[Willem Blees]

Carl


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When you were in first grade, you were taught how to write, The teacher was taught how to teach you to write. Once you got the basic concept down, you were allowed to develop your own handwriting. But you wouldn't have been able to create your own penmanship without first learning the basic concept of writing. 


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That is what a curriculum will do. The instructors will first be taught a uniform way of tuning: how to sit, hold the hammer, even setting a temperament.?They will then teach that method to the "students". Once the students have learned the basic concept, they can experiment with other methods. 


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Working as an apprentice is a very good way of learning how to do piano work. But there are very few piano technicians who want to take the time to take on an apprentice. Piano technicians also use to learn by working in one of a hundred piano factories scattered around the country. But we're now down to four plants. There also used to be a dozen or so schools,?but now there are four or five and a couple of correspondence school. This is where the PTG? can fill that void, by offering a "course" taught by qualified instructors, teaching a set curriculum. 


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Willem (Wim) Blees, RPT

Piano Tuner/Technician

Honolulu, HI

Author of 

The Business of Piano Tuning

available from Potter Press

www.pianotuning.com





-----Original Message-----

From: Carl Root 

To: College and University Technicians 

Sent: Sat, Oct 20 8:54 AM

Subject: [CAUT] Uniform Formal Education





It's hard for me to imagine how a piano technician's formal educational curriculum would be determined. In 1972, I learned on the job, doing dealer prep. Some things I was taught were truly bizarre - turn the capstans a quarter turn on all the new Acrosonics (no kidding). Other things sort of worked but were grossly inefficient - F-F temperament: circle of fourths from A. There were two things, however, that had positive long term benefits: the hammer technique I was taught, and the opportunity (make that a requirement) to tune four pianos a day almost from day one. I've seen technicians use a variety of grips and push/pull techniques that I can't imagine working efficiently for me. Which one would we teach? Doing four a day teaches speed first, assuming that accuracy will come with daily practice, worked for me, but can you set up a formal teaching environment that provides that kind of time and number of pianos for all students??

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We've all been to classes where the instructor constantly tells us that "this technique works for me." Are we hoping to get every technician to conform to one way of doing things, or is there a way to design this curriculum that allows each of us to try ten ways to approach a given task before we find the one that works best for us? The latter seems grossly inefficient, but most of us learned that way, I suspect, and wouldn't have wanted it to be any different. After all, this profession seems to attract a lot of independent lone wolves.?

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Carl D. Root, RPT?

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contract CAUT at a 35-piano school.?


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