Hi, I happened to see your message. My husband gets on here a lot more than I do, so he will probably respond, too. We are a husband and wife team. I tune and do some minor repairs, and pitch-raising, but he does all tuning, repairing, regulating, estimates, etc. And he runs our piano store. He does the entire gamut of "technician's" duties, whereas I only learned to tune. I was never good at the mechanical parts of the job. I enjoy doing it this way - the only bad part is, if I run into a tech. problem I have to call Wim to come to the house (school, church, bar) and fix it for me. This costs him some extra time. However, not every tuning has repairs involved, and he tries to screen them for me. So in the big picture, my tunings do save him time - and of course add some income to our family. We generally do not have enough tunings for both of us to stay busy full time, so I also teach piano lessons to beginners. This I can safely do, because I have a Master's degre in Voice and Piano Performance and Pedagogy with a strong knowledge of Theory. You do not need a degree in music, or any performance background. You can learn to tune pianos if you have a decent ear and a lot of patience. The patience is the hardest part, I found! You will probably be better at the mechanical/technical stuff than I. Most people are! It was never my thing. Is that enough "sharing" to bore you? Hope you get a lot of encouraging responses. Oh - one of the nicest perks is that you work for (or with?) the sweetest boss, who will understand if you need a day off for your children's activities or illnesses. Also a "grand and upright" perk is that you can take the same vacations (if your boss is your spouse, he is not going to deny you the right to take a vacation with him!) And you meet the nicest people, have coffee with them (they usually offer it) and get to see how they decorate their houses. Also I always make friends with the cat(s) or dog(s) because I am an incurable animal lover. These are all interesting and fun side benefits for me. Best of everything to you. Keep us posted as to how it goes! Tunefully yours, Jan Blees.
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