Tuning Test

[Todd L Mapes]

List,

If I may, I'd like to insert some perspective from another industry into
this conversation.  If you'd rather not hear about it, it's probably time
to hit the delete key.  

I am a former CPA.  As you know, the Uniform CPA exam is one of the
hardest, if not THE hardest, exam to pass as a professional competency
exam.  The exam covers many topics from taxation, governmental
accounting, industry accounting, business law, auditing, etc.  The
examinees are not allowed to bring in reference manuals, notes, law
books, FASB's (Financial Accounting Standards Board statements) or
anything of the sort.  It must all be in your head.  You're only allowed
to bring pencils, erasers, a snack and an I.D.  When I took the exam back
in 1991, we weren't even allowed to bring calculators!  Now the exam site
provides calculators, but not so back then.  My point is that in
practice, naturally, I had access to hundreds of volumes of reference
material as well as telephone support from the IRS, support from other
colleagues, and now even online support.  No one would ever walk into a
CPA's office and expect him to have memorized all the tax codes and
accounting standards and auditing standards, but they would expect them
to have a very good knowledge of how it all works.  I believe the same
goes for the tuning exam.  To allow someone to walk in with an ETD and
take the tuning exam from start to finish would be to allow people to
become RPT's without having any basic knowledge of tuning theory.  I
would think that most people could be trained to take an FAC reading and
run a SAT, especially in this day of technological advances.  Hammer
technique may take awhile to develop, but they could in theory tune a
piano without any knowledge of beats or partials or aural checks, etc. 
To allow that would be to discount the credibility of the exam among the
industry as well as among the general public.

Todd L. Mapes
PTG Associate Member
Fort Smith, AR


On Tue, 12 Dec 2000 22:13:35 -0700 Chris Gregg <cgregg@cadvision.com>
writes:
> Paul,
>         I would have a tendency to go the other way and restrict the 
> exam to a
> totally aural test.  
> 
> Chris Gregg.
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