An interesting post from Richard West which echos many a familiar theme.
I keep going back to a point I find central and at the very core of the
whole issue. There is no real uniform formal education for pianotechs
in the States, and many other places. Certainly nothing that is uniform
despite a few piano technology schools around the country. And there is
absolutely no form of accountability required of anyone to in some
fashion or another demonstrate they have even the slightest idea of what
they are doing in order to start working as a <<paid piano tech>>.
I look back at my own career and think time and time again... if I'd
only had even a reasonably decent starting point where would I be now.
At the age of 55 I am a fair ways down the road... but I did nigh on 20
years before I walked through that RPT door (or something similar) and
found out how much more there was to learn. That very door is the one
we should be walking through after 3 years of journeyman training. That
was what was at the core of the old German system which actually forbid
by law the journeyman to have his/her own workshop. You had to reach
for and attain Meister level. And you could not even start on that
until you had at least 5 years experience after Journeyman certification
was achieved. Something on these lines at least.
Ok... so its kind of impossible to do exactly the same thing in the US.
But what should the PTG do ? Instead of trying to put together
essentially yet another school with its own ideas of what a piano tech
should do... perhaps it should take initiative to start forming a
uniform curriculum for piano technology for the schools that already do
exist, and promote the establishment of a few more university levels
that offer it. Establishing degree requirements for what a CAUT head
technician should be able to do or not might be a bit easier that way.
RPT and Masters memberships requirements could be simply a matter of
completing the required courses at universities offering them.
What should a CAUT head tech be able to do ? Well, he/she should have
a fair amount of physics and math under the belt... relevant to piano
design issues. A thorough knowledge of general woodworking skills, a
fair degree of administration skills, enough rebuilding skills to either
do a complete rebuild even tho such jobs may be contracted out, and a
fair amount of pedagogic skills in as much as furthering the education
of fresh journeymen is a necessity in any large institution. At least an
associates degree in music with piano as the central instrument should
also be in the picture. A CAUT head technician is in the end
responsible for all these things, and more...even tho some of these
things may be delegated or contracted to others.
Of course such a person requires several years of experience after a
base education to get there. My point is that that journey is all to all
to often made wayyyy to long simply because there is no requirement and
nearly in practice no existance of a reasonble starting point from which
to begin that journey.
The PTG does an admirable job of making the best out of a loosing
proposition IMV. The dedication to improving ones skills and helping
others relies in the end so much on idealistic principles that the
problems we face in reaching both techs, administrations, pianists, and
the general public is the most predictable of results possible... and at
some point we will IMHO reach a wall we will not get through.
Only when those that hire and use us truly have a sense of what our work
is about and how much learning, skill, and experience it takes to get
good at it will we break through that wall. I fear we simply will not
much farther in that effort by staying on our present course.
Cheers
RicB
Hi, Jim,
After I got out of Western Iowa Tech, I thought I knew quite a bit
about pianos. I quickly learned that I still had a lot to learn. I
barely knew enough to pass my RPT exam. In the 35 years since, then,
I would have to say that the expansion of my knowledge was based on
experience, i.e. a problem occurrs that I haven't encountered before
and I have to deal with it. Hopefully I fix the problem. In a
nutshell that's what I mean by "experience based."
A little book that was particularly helpful early in my career was a
book titled The Piano Tuners Pocket Companion by Oliver Faust. On
one side of the page there was a symptom and on the other was the
solution. Early on that got me through a lot of repairs, but as I
expanded my knowledge, I realized that repairs aren't always a simple
symptom/solution question. Dampers are a good example of what I
mean. You have a ringing damper, but a plethora of possible
solutions including ones that don't even have anything to do with the
actual damper you're working on (sympathetic vibrations or a duplex
length of string). But with perseverance you figure out where the
problem lies and learn what to look for. This becomes an
experienced based repair that you add to your mental data bank.
Experience gives you a bag of "tricks" to draw from to help diagnose
problems, but these tricks of the trade aren't compiled and written
down and so it's hard for beginners to get what they need to know,
without going through the school of hard kocks.
The problem in developing materials is multifaceted. First there's
figuring out how to deal with the multilayered nature of our work.
Second there's the problem of who's going to be using the materials.
Let's face it, we aren't all equally gifted in the mechanical arts.
Some people hardly need an explanation and others need detailed
explanations and even then may screw up.
So when I pose the question: What does a university tech need to
know and how does he/she acquire that knowledge, I relate first to my
own experience. I learned to be less compromising and more exacting
in my work. If I wasn't, I'd hear about it. I went to PTG meetings
and picked up ideas there. I scratched my head a lot and just spent
the time it took to learn how to work on things like harpsichords, an
inventory, reports, etc. etc. I persevered. But it would have been
helpful if I'd had a book like Oliver Faust's that gave
straightforward solutions to common problems. Also I realized that
learning multiple ways of doing something, forced me to think about
what works best for me. Key bushing is an example. I've tried a
whole host of different ways to bush keys. I'm still looking for the
perfect system. I've settled on a system that isn't particularly
fast and efficient, but it gives me fairly predictable results.
The first priority in concert work in getting it right. Speed and
efficiency should also be there, but not necessarily. Especially for
the mechanically challenged. Sometimes doing a job slowly but
predictably is the only way.
I don't know if my longwinded explanation helps, but there it is.
I'm glad you asked, because it helped me try to try to get a better
grasp of how we learn this profession. We don't write or teach in a
vacuum. Perhaps the greatest challenge is getting through to
people. That means we need to know how people learn so that our
materials reach them. I don't know that PTG has been particularly
good at addressing this aspect of learning.
Sorry I took so long to reply. I've had lots on my plate this week.
Retirement isn't about just sitting around and getting bored or
watching a screen all day.
Richard West
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