[CAUT] The Piano Technician Makes More Moral Decisions...

[Ed Sutton]

John,

Ben was refering back to a statement by Kelly Ward, past president of PTG, 
which I quoted sometime back, and has been a topic of discussion on the 
list. You must not have seen those posts.

Everything is o.k. now, I hope. In the future I will be cautious about 
quoting PTG presidents.

Ed Sutton


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Ross" <jrpiano at win.eastlink.ca>
To: <caut at ptg.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 9:39 AM
Subject: Re: [CAUT] The Piano Technician Makes More Moral Decisions...


>I almost erased your post without reading it, when I saw the words moral,
> and preacher.
> The main message was informative, but please leave off your personal
> beliefs.
> Who knows, how many might have deleted it, without reading.
> John Ross
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Sloane, Benjamin (sloaneba)" <sloaneba at ucmail.uc.edu>
> To: <caut at ptg.org>
> Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 9:15 AM
> Subject: [CAUT] The Piano Technician Makes More Moral Decisions...
>
>
>
>   Getting back to the original aphorism, conceptualizing this would bring
> clarity to a host of topics recently being discussed. If we are to 
> determine
> whether or not the piano technician makes more moral decisions than a
> preacher, we need to determine exactly what moral decisions a piano
> technician makes. We have plenty to work with where preachers are 
> concerned,
> but not a whole lot with the piano technician.
>    Before proceeding, however moral this particular observation, Dad
> (Kenneth Sloane, RPT) never saw a whole lot of reason to fight over 
> pianos.
> It never was worth it to him. It was so disarming. No matter how much he
> frustrated you, when you got in the same room with him, it was so tough 
> not
> to like him. I’ve seen this happen. I’ve seen people who don’t like him 
> sit
> down at a table with him, and they have a great time together. And all 
> dads
> do upset sons at times. At the end of the day, people and friendship
> mattered more to him. I honestly don’t think enough piano technicians I 
> meet
> get this, to their own detriment. A hunk of wood, iron, and steel; you 
> want
> to disown flesh and blood over that? Get a life. Of all the people in the
> world, why do piano technicians take themselves so seriously? When piano
> technicians are laughing at you, not with you, I just laugh with them at
> myself. Who the heck am I?
>   Many are familiar with an oft remembered article in the PTG published in
> the popular press, in the 90’s, I believe, about how piano technology is a
> great job because it is a low stress job. I can’t remember where or when,
> just that it was remarked about a lot. I think when we begin considering 
> the
> idea of getting better at working with pianos through education, we get
> fearful, because when considering another perspective on things, we get
> uncomfortable about the way we do things, and the risk of forfeiting the 
> low
> stress aspect of what we do because of considering another perspective 
> looks
> so daunting, that we stick our heads in the sand, cover our ears, squeeze
> our eyes shut, and start screaming, “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you, I
> can’t hear you” over and over so by avoiding being challenged, and doing
> things the way they always worked before for us, we retain the low stress
> aspect of working on pianos. There are loads of successful piano 
> technicians
> doing things this way. How can we make continuing education and testing 
> less
> stressful? I think one way is to realize there is more than one way to 
> skin
> a cat.
>   I would like to take a by no means exhaustive look at a couple of the
> technically specific moral dilemmas of working on piano in and out of the
> University milieu.
> 1. As salaried CAUT technicians, there are loads of moral dilemmas. These
> have to do with the most efficient use of time. Two good examples are 
> tuning
> and Stanwood. Am I gaining enough from the time investment?
>   So many pianos need action jobs. We can come up with all sort of
> curriculum about juggling inventory. How many schools can afford to be 
> well
> staffed enough to Stanwoodize every action or only the ones that we think
> are good enough for us to work on that don’t even need action jobs (D’s in
> concert halls, B’s in studios, or the fledgling L in the practice room 
> with
> square hammers). We do not get paid by the hour. Why do we devote 
> ourselves
> to Stanwood so much so that only Stanwoodized pianos are worth regulating?
> Is there a part of the inventory that is below us?
>   Splitting hairs over tuning also is a time efficiency question. I’ve
> tried both aural and electronic. Mostly, aural. Both could potentially 
> have
> time advantages. Some people don’t think in an educational institution it 
> is
> their responsibility to explore the possibilities of both. I disagree,
> though lean somewhat heavily toward aural tuning. I just had dinner with a
> flight attendant who learned piano technology at a vo-tech school who
> finally just stopped working on pianos altogether because the moral 
> dilemma
> of how much stretch is too much stretch became so stressful that she 
> couldn’t
> take it anymore, and just started taking flights full time and give up the
> struggle.  She is not the first person I’ve met who attended a vo-tech
> school for piano technology only never to actually enter the profession.
>   I never could think about tuning the same after taking the RPT exam.
> Education and testing permanently changes the way you look at things. It
> leads to decision making based on alternative considerations. The Tuning
> Examination; A Source Book forced me to struggle with questions I had
> avoided for years as a successful aural technician, and I am still
> struggling with them. If I want something approaching a 2:1 octaves in the
> top octave, how do I accomplish this without the piano sounding flat in 
> the
> high treble? The Source book forced me to ask that question. Do I cater to
> popular opinion, and use narrow octaves in the mid-range, only to run out 
> of
> stretch too soon to make the octaves in the top octave sound sharp enough
> when not over-stretched? Or do I make the octaves in the mid-range wide
> enough to the objection of both piano technicians and musicians to
> accommodate the idea of 2:1 octaves in the top octave without sounding 
> flat?
> Morality is not popular. I know I am doing the right thing with 8:4 
> octaves
> in the mid-range, but some people won’t like it, or realize they like it
> until they try it for a while. What do I do? None of these questions
> occurred to me before dealing with education and testing in piano tuning,
> not to mention the cost and time these things take.
> 2. Fees
>  As a contract and floor tuner, I always had to compare what I charged the
> dealer and institution with what I charged my personal clients. Why do I
> charge my clients more? These are more devoted to me than both the dealer
> and the institution. They provide me with the substantial part of my 
> income.
> Is this fair? I know piano technicians will curse me, accuse my work of
> being inferior, accuse me of catering to the price shoppers, and generally 
> I
> will be unpopular if I charge my clients something that is comparable to
> what I charge the dealer and institution, but is it fair for me to charge 
> my
> clients more to compensate for the relative paucity of the wages the
> institution or dealer generates for me?
>   I still ask this question as a salaried employee of a College. This
> parasite I am host to, when viewing the public record of salaries, why do
> they deserve such special treatment? How do I deal with the lopsidedness 
> of
> what I can charge my clients now that I do not need them? How much do I 
> need
> to pace myself to punish the institution for not recognizing the validity 
> of
> my work as a piano technician? How loyal am I to the skill of being a 
> piano
> technician when I go the extra mile for this parasitic school?
>   There are loads of moral dilemmas we are faced with on a daily basis as
> piano technicians. These are just a couple examples.
>