Jim, After starting my studies with Steve Brady, he strongly advised
joining the Guild which I did. However, even after 14 years in "the
field", once thrown into the den of CAUT, I have found myself brought to a
new set of learning situations that nobody in the private tuning world can
even comprehend. PTG or no, the CAUT world is a world unto itself
bringing many more experiences than I even imagined in my own private
business. I love it, however, although I can be somewhat of a
massichist!!!
I do love the people....PTG Rocks!
Paul
Jim Busby <jim_busby at byu.edu>
Sent by: caut-bounces at ptg.org
10/12/2007 05:38 PM
Please respond to
College and University Technicians <caut at ptg.org>
To
College and University Technicians <caut at ptg.org>
cc
Subject
Re: [CAUT] CAUT Endorsement (was Re: Job Opening, U. of Michigan, Ann
Arbor)
David,
I’ve asked several (good) non PTG techs in “high” places of learning and
they gave me the same response that some “Steinway” techs have; “Why
should I?” Odd that that’s the same given by some “not so good” techs I
know. (In their case maybe ignorance IS bliss)
I hate to admit this but I tuned for about 20 years before joining PTG.
Didn’t really see a need. After joining my forehead probably sank in an
inch from my slapping it and saying “What was I thinking? This is a great
organization and great people in it!”
Jim Busby BYU
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of
Porritt, David
Sent: Friday, October 12, 2007 7:49 AM
To: College and University Technicians
Subject: Re: [CAUT] CAUT Endorsement (was Re: Job Opening, U. of
Michigan,Ann Arbor)
Has anyone ever tried to ascertain why technicians from some of the
leading music schools are not in PTG? The last I knew the technician at
Eastman was not a member, what about Julliard or Curtis?
dp
David M. Porritt, RPT
dporritt at smu.edu
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Fred
Sturm
Sent: Friday, October 12, 2007 8:19 AM
To: College and University Technicians
Subject: [CAUT] CAUT Endorsement (was Re: Job Opening, U. of Michigan,Ann
Arbor)
On Oct 9, 2007, at 7:40 PM, David Ilvedson wrote:
Most of the school listings I see, would prefer PTG membership and RPT
status. Would new listings start including RPT and CAUT status preferred
or possibly you think the RPT status can be eliminated as it has no
meaning? I don't see the need for another "credential". Would the CAUT
credential we much harder to achieve? i.e. a "real" test. Would
existing College techs be grandfathered in? Besides, it's easy to talk
about it...I know all the stuff concerned with RPT status was years in the
making and a huge amount of work...and the politics...YIKES...who's going
to take that job on? Are you guys crazy?
David Ilvedson, RPT
Pacifica, CA 94044
Are we crazy? Yep, you got that right. I guess we can pretend
to be "crazy like a fox," but your assessment of how difficult this will
be is spot on.
So the first question to answer is "Why?" I guess it would be
accurate to say that this notion grew out of a desire to market
"something" to the higher education community. [BTW, this is perhaps the
most easily targeted market PTG has to go after, with 1500 - 2000 easily
identified individual music departments]. We all know that most music
departments are under-staffed, under-served, generally in a mess when it
comes to piano condition and maintenance. We, followers of Don Quixote
that we are (at least this is true of me personally), want to do something
about this, for all sorts of idealistic reasons, and perhaps from some
self-serving motives as well.
What to do? Well, we want to tell music departments how to
take care of their piano situations, which is an awfully complex thing to
try to do. The Guidelines was a first step. One possible second step is to
try to tell them who they should hire. Hmm, tell them to hire RPTs? Would
that work? We came to the conclusion it wouldn't. Obviously a caut needs a
lot beyond RPT. I think we all remember starting work as a caut and
feeling simply overwhelmed, confused, and out of our league - well, true
for me, anyway, and a lot of others have said the same. So we really don't
feel comfortable recommending they hire a green RPT, or even a
well-seasoned one. 25 years of home service really don't prepare you for
caut-dom much better than 2 or 3 years.
So if we want to market members of PTG to music departments,
we need to have some way of identifying people who have something like the
chops and knowledge needed. (At the same time, we need to begin to provide
the training needed; hence our development of caut classes at national and
occasionally regional conventions). And we've been chewing over where to
go with that for a few years now. It happens that the current PTG board
is, led by President Dale Probst, is strongly in favor of us getting to
work and making something happen. In fact, we have been instructed to have
something concrete for the mid-year board meeting this winter, and to have
it include skills testing, written testing, and something curricular. Talk
about ambitious! The general notion is that this will be called a "CAUT
Endorsement" on top of RPT, with the possibility that other "Endorsements"
might follow, as, for instance, in rebuilding.
To give a concrete example of where this may be heading, the
skills testing sub-committee, consisting for now of Don McKechnie, Ken
Eschete and myself, has developed the concept of a caut tuning test. I'll
quote here from our working document:
"Our consensus is that we should test for the skill level appropriate for
a concert tuner. What does this mean? In simplest terms:
1) Concert tuners stretch octaves quite a bit (even to the extreme), doing
so in a very consistent way, demonstrating complete control.
2) They can tune extremely stable unisons that are absolutely pure with
all three strings sounding.
3) They can produce a concert tuning efficiently and rapidly, generally in
less than an hour (assuming a reasonable starting point).
"In addition, we believe that we should focus on the concrete
ability of being able to produce a full, quality tuning in conditions as
close to real life as possible. Does the candidate actually have the chops
to complete a full tuning and meet these criteria? That is the question we
want to answer before we can tell academia that this person is capable."
With that as the premise for a tuning test, our initial design
is as follows:
"The candidate will tune a concert piano (7' to 9'),
complete, with a time limit of 90 minutes at a maximum. The piano will
then be checked for adequate and consistent stretch, stability, and
unisons."
The stretch component is a little complex to describe here,
but it involves measuring enough partials of enough notes to examine 4:1
and 8:1 matches over the top and bottom octave or so of the piano,
flagging inconsistencies, and aurally verifying them. (It involves Excel
spreadsheet, and if anyone with knowledge and experience in Excel would
like to volunteer to help, we'd love to have some assistance). The
unisons/stability component involves pounding/slamming the piano (all
notes) in some way, and then checking unisons. Samples of "suspect" (or
obvious) unison deficiencies would be flagged aurally, and then measured.
The working notion is that the spread of pitch within notes of a unison
should be within 0.5 cents, though that would have to be beta-tested.
So there you have at least a taste of what we are up to. Hey,
it keeps us busy and out of other trouble <G>.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm at unm.edu
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