In a message dated 7/24/2000 10:45:26 PM, prescottpiano@juno.com writes: << "Help, I may be totally crazy, but my 21 year old son has expressed a desire to work in my store/shop and become a piano technician. (And I am seriously considering it!)">> Larry; This has been described as one of the greatest experiences and one of the worst! :-) I suppose you both will get out of it what you are willing to invest. If you decide to go ahead with it just keep reminding yourself that your son will need to have patience with YOU, as well as you with him. <<"My thought is to have him spend 3 months tuning nothing but unisons before advancing on to the simpler intervals.">> Nah, go ahead and teach him how to set a temperament, a simple 4/5 will do fine. Of course he won't be able to do it right away but in the process he will learn about beats, where they come from and where they go. Unisions will kinda take care of themselves since he will already be listening to 'beats' rather than 'dead' spots. Then when, and if, he gets discouraged over not being able to set a temperament have him do unision work, it will be easier for him. I think that Kent has a good idea in enrolling him in Randy's course at the same time he's working in your shop. You can reinforce his lessons and answer his questions in an already preprogrammed way allowing you to spend more hands on time with him rather than trying to determine where his training should go next. <<"My goal is to get him to become an RPT within 1 year.">> This would be fine for YOUR goal., don't make it his. The real goal should be to make him a competent technician without regard to the RPT tests. We have enough marginally competent RPTs already :-) My view. Jim Bryant (FL) p.s. No you ain't crazy.
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