List, This past summer I had a long meeting with my dean. We covered everything from what I like and don't like about working here (all matters large and small) to additional funding for the piano shop and the prospects for enhanced compensation for yours truly. He responded well to many of my suggestions along these lines. One was that the piano shop start being reimbursed for any unusual tunings. Until now, this has meant alternative, modern tunings (anywhere on the spectrum from simply tuning one piano down 50 cents for quarter tone music to realizing original tuning systems). This service had been freely provided as an indulgence to the students and faculty, creating more of a burden for me without any extra compensation--the bad scenario articulated by Jeff Tanner. My dean has since agreed to compensation for the piano shop in exchange for any unusual tuning work. Here is how we have structured the procedure: Someone requests a non-ET/440 tuning; I make a binding estimate for how much time it should take; we multiply that times a wholesale private rate (i. e., less than I would charge someone privately, but more than what my salaried rate at the school comes out to per hour); they determine if/how it will be paid for, and we go from there. It turns out that the composition department, for example, has funds for "programming" which can be used for paying for alternate tunings. This has been a positive development in that it is a source20of income for the shop while also serving as a, er, "consciousness raiser" for those who dabble in alternate tunings as part of their work. I am considering trying to include historical tunings under this same umbrella. I have yet to put one on a piano here (harpsichords only, so far). The current plan is this: Set up a work station that would enable pianists to play their pieces on an 88 note weighted keyboard controller hooked up to a computer that can provide piano samples in any number of historical tunings. Ideally, the pianist would be able to change from one tuning system to another at the push of a button. In addition to the educational value such an opportunity would potentially have in and of itself, it could serve as the "menu" for ordering up a particular tuning (compensation provided!) for performance on an actual piano. Am I trying to reinvent the wheel here, or does someone already have something like this up and running? Cheers, Alan Eder -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20090202/0c24586e/attachment.html>
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