[CAUT] FW: Concert hall pianos

[Laurence Libin]

Let's be grateful that the students want to practice, and do everything 
possible to encourage them. They could instead be doing lots more 
destructive things.
Laurence

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Busby" <jim_busby at byu.edu>
To: <caut at ptg.org>
Sent: Friday, December 04, 2009 11:22 AM
Subject: Re: [CAUT] FW: Concert hall pianos


> Fred,
>
> Yet another gripe of mine; students wearing out faculty studio Bs... They 
> are in there 17 hours per day. As it is, we can barely keep up with 
> tunings and broken strings there. I guess I should just grin and think of 
> this as "job security".
>
> One faculty member made this comment, "This would be a great job 
> (teaching) if it wasn't for those darn students".
>
> Regards,
> Jim
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Fred 
> Sturm
> Sent: Friday, December 04, 2009 7:58 AM
> To: caut at ptg.org
> Subject: Re: [CAUT] FW: Concert hall pianos
>
> On Dec 4, 2009, at 6:22 AM, Jim Busby wrote:
>
>> I would think that perhaps a reasonable compromise can be met -
>> perhaps with allowing only the serious performance majors controlled
>> access to the instruments. A criteria could be developed that would
>> qualify the students that would have access to the pianos. Sign-in
>> sheets could be used but these sheets would need to be approved by a
>> person that would have the authority and ownership of the schedule
>> and this person would be responsible for ensuring the system is not
>> misused.
>
>
> This is an excerpt from Kent Webb's very reasonable post. I'd say
> that if a select group of piano students is given some access, it
> should be made very, very plain that the purpose is highly restricted.
> They are not to be doing their warmup, their scales and arpeggios and
> exercises, or learning notes on this instrument. It is for working on
> interpretation _only_!!! And I would think that a maximum of one two
> hour session per week for the very top students would be a reasonable
> limit.
> I'd also suggest alternatives: what about the piano faculty studios
> in those early and late hours, when they are unlikely to be there?
> Lots of faculty in lots of institutions give students access. And, of
> course, there is the question of the condition of practice room
> grands. While they can't be kept up to concert condition, they should
> be kept as close as possible, well prepped and regulated, reasonably
> well voiced, tuning not allowed to get too horrible. Maybe there could
> be a special practice room where the piano is kept up to a higher
> standard, and practice times are allocated specifically to that room
> on a limited basis per student (not 2-3 hours a day for a given
> student, but maybe a couple 2 hour sessions a week max per student).
> The concert instrument is important to the whole department, and to
> the institution. It is the public face of the department. It must be
> as good as it can be.
> Regards,
> Fred Sturm
> University of New Mexico
> fssturm at unm.edu
>
>
>
>
>