Don't ya just love carefully crafted ad copy? By reading the part that says, "...tuners who earn an average of $75.00 to $95.00 per-hour tuning pianos", many people would assume that piano tuners average $75 to $95 per hour by tuning pianos. Nope. Most people would very likely misinterpret the part before it that says, "the small and exclusive list" and reason that to mean an average of all piano tuners. Wrong again. Yes, there are some who have developed their tuning skills to be able to tune their average piano in about an hour and live in areas where a tuning runs around $100(+/-). That would be a "small and exclusive list", in a manner of speaking, but would not be an accurate representation of any kind of average of all tuners in North America. Don't ya just love how they change referrence sources so craftily? They start out with a blanket statement from the US Dept of Labor Statistics that says, "piano tuners can earn very good incomes." Doesn't mean ALL piano tuners WILL earn very good incomes. But some CAN. Not much different than many other fields. I also notice a specific absense of monetary figures from official sources. And then, they immediately go on to quote "a recently published almanac". Huh??? What the heck is that? It could be a term paper from a fourth grader. It could be a post on a blog somewhere that these same people put out just to satisfy this statement. It's a "nothing" statement, and a "published almanac" can pretty much say anything, BS included, and all they're doing is saying that it's been published recently. Duh. (I could publish my story of oceanfront property in AZ, too, and even put a referrence to it in ad copy somewhere. Doesn't put an ocean there.) Here's just hoping that people looking to learn about piano tuning will do enough searching on the internet to find some reputable people to talk to. Lots of tuner/techs have real websites now and if I were looking, I'd probably try to find some of these and talk to some real techs for their take on "schools" like this. And hopefully, some real techs would point would-be people in more reasonable directions of education. If I had to start over again, I'd probably join the PTG and look for a place to start working on pianos. A mentor would be great. If not possible, a large piano store with a substantial shop would be a place to do some serious learning. Even just finding access to a decade or so of the PTG journals would hold a wealth of info for someone willing to do some reading. These "home study courses", at least of this nature, are totally worthless. I took one in the early 1980's. Totally worthless. Well, except for the tuning hammer they sent with it. I still have that, and even use it on occasion for a tuning pin in a tight location. I may even have a rubber mute or two, but that's about all I have to show for it. The actual tuning part of it tried to teach a temperament that was so bad I don't think I ever got it to work well. I even tried it after learning to tune a good one years later, still couldn't make it work. (The temperament that finally "clicked" with me was an adaptation and expansion of the one in a book I managed to find, "A Guide to Restringing". For me, it never was an issue hearing the beats, it was just knowing how to organize them.) I don't know if there are some legitimate home study applications these days. (Is Randy Potter still doing one?) But this ain't one!! FWIW... just an opinion... Brian > Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:51:53 -0600 > From: dahechler at att.net > To: pianotech at ptg.org > Subject: Re: [pianotech] Ron Falcone piano tuning course > > WHERE, in California and New York - most definitely NOT in the midwest - > like St. Louis, MO > > "According to the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics, piano tuners can > earn very good incomes. In fact, in a recently published almanac on > career opportunities, piano tuners were listed in the/ *top twenty* /* > professions* out of a total of/ two hundred/. Probably the best kept > secret in the world is that now you can join the small and exclusive > list of tuners who earn an average of *$75.00 to $95.00 *per-hour tuning > pianos! " > > The person that wrote this MUST be on DRUGS .............. > > I just LOVE these general statements. (Like the government is trying to > tell us that the housing market is rebounding - again, NOT in St. Louis, MO) > > DH > _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft’s powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469226/direct/01/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100222/e570c0cc/attachment.htm>
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