Laurence, The lines I wrote below are somewhat in jest. I do go out of my way to accommodate students. But where do we draw the line? We have 5 nice practice rooms which are reserved for piano majors with a B, an nice 7' Schimmel, Two Ms, and a Mason A. These are tuned twice as much as the other practice rooms and we try to monitor them to keep them in good condition. Our plea to students was "Please use these pianos instead of your teacher's studio piano to help take pressure off the teaching studio pianos". Many students ignore this altogether. The end result is that the studios (all Bs) all too soon end up needing new hammers and strings. When students were prohibited from this, the pianos really stayed quite nice, with very little string breakage, tuning issues and hammer/voicing problems. Teachers never complained and had nice pianos to teach on. Now it seems like every week to ten days we have to do some substantial voicing, along with string breakage, tuning, etc. But think about it; 17 hours of HARD playing by some of the most talented players. That's around 100 hours per week! In the words of "Scotty" - "She can't take much more captain..." Do you have any suggestions? We can't hire another technician, but we cannot keep these studios "up" under these conditions, along with the other 425 pianos we have. We do have 2 fulltime technicians, 4 students, and one part time fellow, but it's really disheartening to have a teacher call and say their piano is out of tune, etc. after you tuned it 2 weeks ago! Well now, after 200 hours of REALLY hard playing? Of course the tuning will go south, along with the hammers, strings, regulation, etc. My point is that while I agree that students "could be doing worse things" the situation is not good either. I certainly wish the teaching studios could have less pressure. That's all. Jim Busby -----Original Message----- From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Laurence Libin Sent: Friday, December 04, 2009 10:18 AM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] FW: Concert hall pianos 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 > > > > >
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