[CAUT] CAUT Endorsement

[Wolfley, Eric (wolfleel)]

Israel,

Sorry to jump in here in the middle of this conversation but I've been
out of town for a couple of days...

I don't know how the impression that the CAUT committee's position
"starts and ends with the quality of a concert tuning" but I just want
to set the record straight here.

We have been very busy in sub-committees in identifying a "knowledge
base" to be included in both our curriculum and assessment proposals.
This knowledge base includes everything you have listed below and much
more. Our proposal to the board is not complete yet nor (obviously) is
any information which has filtered into this list. The posting Fred
Sturm made was a draft for (guess what?) the tuning portion of what will
be our skills assessment set. There will be much, much more!

We are well aware of the complexities involved in the development and
administration of any kind of testing PTG does, and we are especially
aware of the hurdles which we will be facing in developing a CAUT
endorsement. We will be working with the PTG testing committee for
guidance in this realm as soon as we have arrived at a place in our
development of what we want to have included in the tests. I'm sure we
will be relying on the expertise and experience of the members of the
testing committee in this regard. I am encouraged by the positive
feedback we have received by people like yourself and ask that everyone
who is interested be patient as we work on developing what we feel will
be a very valuable tool for technicians interested in doing
institutional work and being compensated at a level commensurate with
their skill level.

Our curriculum sub-committee is working in parallel with the skills
assessment sub-committees to help ensure that there will be a ready
conduit for gaining the skills and knowledge necessary to achieve a CAUT
endorsement. We have interfaced with next year's Institute Director,
Melanie Brooks in this regard and will have a nice lineup of CAUT
offerings as well as a "CAUT Track" of recommended classes offered
during the institute at large which will correspond to the knowledge
base we have developed. If it all works out as planned, it will be a
fertile arena for people to upgrade their knowledge and skills in a
direction which will point to a CAUT endorsement.

More will follow as we make further progress. It's a huge job!

Eric

Eric Wolfley, RPT
Director of Piano Services
College-Conservatory of Music
University of Cincinnati
-----Original Message-----
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of
Israel Stein
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2007 8:40 PM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: [CAUT] CAUT Endorsement

At 10:59 AM 10/19/2007, Mike Magness wrote:

>Another area addressed by a few people was the seat of the pants 
>repairs, finding that elusive rattle or getting that damper to stop 
>creating that overtone. I came late to the Guild, I am now very 
>ashamed to say, I spent the first 30 years of my 38 years in this 
>craft outside the PTG. I had a mentor who was a member and invited 
>me from time to time but I never felt the need for some unknown 
>reason. So I came up, remember this was before the internet and cell 
>phones, figuring out a lot of things for myself and what I couldn't, 
>I discussed with Paul my mentor and he usually had an answer or idea 
>for me to try. Consequently I became very good at coming up with 
>plan A repairs and while I was performing plan A, formulating plan B 
>just in case, I never got beyond plan D without one of them 
>working!<g>My point is a tech can go to the best school, read all of 
>the books but if he/she doesn't have that seat of the pants spirit 
>of,"OK, I've never seen this before but I'm here, alone so I HAVE to 
>figure it out"! She/He will not make the best tech and perhaps that 
>should be a consideration on a CAUT test. Throw some "out of left 
>field" problems at them and see what they come up with. My mentor 
>used to be one of the testors for the RPT test, back when they used 
>to lay out a table full of objects and the testee would have to name 
>them for the nomenclature test. Paul liked to put a non-piano item 
>on the table, something fairly obscure, usually an antique tool from 
>his collection just see what the person would say, for fun but I 
>think it was also to see if they exhibited something that is lacking 
>more and more these days, common sense. Having the ability to deal 
>with an unexpected problem that develops in an instrument that you 
>are preparing for a concert without going into a panic strikes me as 
>the epitomy of a good concert tech and CAUT.

Mike,

You beat me to the punch. I have just finished catching up with all 
the posts on this subject, and what struck me as incongruous is that 
the CAUT task force - and everyone else who posted on this subject - 
create the impression that the CAUT's position starts and ends with 
the quality of the concert tuning. You correctly noted that skills in 
repairs and troubleshooting are perhaps even more important than the 
ability to produce the perfect tuning.

I have been doing CAUT work off and on for some 17 years now - first 
as a contractor, then as a half-time employee at a university for the 
past 3 years or so. I managed to put in a couple years in between all 
that as the primary Steinway C & A tuner in Boston. I have tuned for 
some big name performers along the way - and I just do not understand 
this obsession with "the highest quality concert tuning" as the 
primary qualification for the CAUT. Not that it isn't important - it 
is. But try and survive in this profession if you can't keep those 
teaching studio pianos in good repair, do the rebuilding work when 
necessary, quickly spot problems - and fix them - on all kinds of 
pianos (not only the ones in the concert hall), get a stable tuning 
on a piano in a pitch raise situation, need I keep going? Then there 
is inventory control, organizational and recordkeeping skills, 
knowledge of current industry conditions and resources...

A CAUT endorsement (and I favor this concept for reasons that I will 
outline later)  in order to be meaningful to a hiring manager has to 
represent a variety of skills - and an exam that results in this 
endorsement must sample a good representation of such skills. But to 
be practical, it also has to be capable of being administered in a 
reasonable amount of time - or you will find no willing takers and no 
willing examiners. Then there are some legal requirements of 
objectivity that must be met in order to avoid anti-trust issues. And 
in the anti-trust area since the CAUT marketplace is theoretically 
national in scope, the problem is even more complex than in the RPT 
area. Perhaps these issues need to be studied a bit more carefully 
before a commitment is made to some of the test guidelines I have 
seen propounded here...

Israel Stein