I think.... that the existing RPT tuning exam is far to cumbersom to administer and set up for the level of skill it wants to confirm. The technical and written exams are ok... but this need to set up a piano in advance with three RPTs (one of them a CTE), with all the hours of pretuning and detuning... frankly... its ridiculous.... especially so given the degree of expertise it requires to pass and the fact that the test does not really require you to tune the piano per se. The whole thing shouldnt be much more complicated then the very first part of the exam that deals with setting pitch. That being said... this discussion more or less arose from the discussion on caut about the new guidelines... and one of the spinoffs there was the idea of a special CAUT classification of tuner and how to go about setting qualifications standards. I would like to echo a suggestion from our freind Woger (newly weleased) from up the yonder in Nannook Land... A new and very highly qualified technician classification could be contrived by first defining what skills and levels need to be obtained, and then by offering classes in conjuction with regional conventions, or other appropriate locations and times. An example could be a course on bridge recapping, where succesfull completion of the class would include the student actually producing a recapped bridge fully drilled and pinned in a real or mock up piano situation. Each succesfully completed class would bear its own tag so that RPT's could add to their list of qualifications any areas of specialties they have demonstrated special expertise in. Some combination of all classes could result in a new designation(s) for the technician that reflects their area of specialization. RicB -- Richard Brekne RPT, N.P.T.F. UiB, Bergen, Norway mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no http://home.broadpark.no/~rbrekne/ricmain.html http://www.hf.uib.no/grieg/personer/cv_RB.html
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