Jeff, I think you should have left it where it was...what about the Symphony, Opera, Ballet companies we all tune for? None, I believe, have anything to do with universities, but surely they are the cream of the music world? You should get out more...there is more to music than the university by a long shot... David Ilvedson, RPT Pacifica, CA 94044 Original message From: "Jeff Tanner" To: "College and University Technicians" Received: 10/15/2007 1:16:10 PM Subject: Re: [CAUT] CAUT pay, was Job Opening... On Oct 12, 2007, at 10:34 AM, Michael Magness wrote: We have such people making very good money in the private sector, where the work isn't nearly as necessary. Without mine and my brethren's "unnecessary" work where would you get the students that support the music programs that require your skills? I believe instead of denigrating or decrying what we do or where we do it you owe us a debt of gratitude! The kind of work and or piano snobbery that you exhibit with your letter is the very thing I swore I would never allow myself to become when I entered this business 38 years ago. Hi Mike, others, Wow. It is very clear the language of my post has been terribly misunderstood. I do not see how one can read my post and interpret snobbery, when snobbery is exactly what I think of myself as lobbying against. Heck, I'm an old farm boy from the bowels of south Georgia where Beethoven is as scarce as cream of wheat and unsweetened tea. I couldn't go home if I had a lick of snobbery about me. We all have private sector work that we do. I was absolutely not trying to denegrate private sector work. I don't see how what I have been saying has been misinterpreted this way. But I probably should explain the train of thought that produced the statement that apparently has upset several of you: 297 channels for the 64 inch plasma tv, and the highest speed internet and video games will be paid for before the piano gets tuned. Having a tuned piano in the home is indeed a luxury, something that is budgeted for long after the expensive cars, eating out, and homeowner's association dues are paid. Golf clubs and country club fees, hunting clubs, guns and ammunition, bass boats and $200 fishing reels, gym memberships, civics clubs and season tickets to Gamecock football will all be budgeted with a higher priority. When the economy falls off, so does the frequency of piano tunings, or it always has for me. I tune for churches that went out and bought a nice grand piano, but if you try to get them to budget tuning once a year, their first reaction is, "oh we can't afford that." And I've been in some of their services and the piano can sound just fine for their purposes years after a tuning. As a general rule, private sector pianos, in my 23 years of experience, will stay in much better condition and tuning for a lot longer time than they will in the institution. If you have not experienced this, you simply cannot comprehend the difference from the private sector to the CAUT world. It simply is not necessary to tend to each family's piano 8 to 12 times per year or each teacher's piano a minimum of 10 to 12 times per year, or to each performance piano 100 or more times per year with annual hammer filings and reregulation. It is the business of music schools to provide a music education. The absence of climate control and the relentless usage of instruments in the institutional setting absolutely requires an exponentially greater volume of work per instrument. In the private sector, chances are that if the piano tuning gets put off a couple years this time, it probably won't stray so far we can't bring it back into good shape without a lot of extra work. But in a school of music, if you put off a piano tuning for two years, I guarantee you there will be repercussions. Heck, you put off practice room tunings more than a couple months and you get petitions. If faculty pianos are not tended to within a couple weeks the dean will hear about it. If a performance instrument is left more than a few days and unisons start to go squirrelly, you hear about it. The recordings of student recitals are used for auditions for grad school and job interviews. I carefully chose the words "...the work is not as necessary". Notice I did not say, "...the quality of work is not as necessary" as some of you have seemed to interpret. Neither did I say "...the work is not necessary." Perhaps a better choice of words would have been "the average volume of work required in the institution is higher per instrument than in the private sector." Obviously, I did not expect to be so grossly misunderstood. Yes, as institutional technicians, we have to have the skills to be able to handle higher expectations of the faculty, students, and guest artists. But aside from that, the majority of the actual work done here isn't much different from what you run into in the private sector. That isn't snobbery. It is reality. I live both lives. I wear both hats. I well know both worlds. Truth is, at this point in life, if I could I'd rather just be in the private sector, where the amount of work I am expected to do is actually limited to how much time I have in a day. Jeff Tanner, RPT University of South Carolina -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/caut.php/attachments/20071015/930fab4d/attachment.html
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