At 09:15 AM 10/20/2007,Cy Shuster wrote: >At North Bennet Street School, we had three instructors rotate >through the first-year class. This allowed us to learn a variety of >techniques to do the same job: key leveling with the stack off, or >with it on, using split punchings from the bottom, and so on. We >also got to hear explanations of concepts from different >people. And yet the goals we were set to were the same and >well-established, pretty much in line with the RPT exams. > >There were twice as many practice pianos as students, and we rotated >through them, tuning every day on spinets, consoles, studios, >uprights, small and large grands. We sure didn't do four a day; we >had to have class time! :-) But when we got a solid tuning in under >three hours (c'mon, remember your first tuning?), we could go out to >Boston U., Harvard, and the local Steinway dealer, to get a larger >variety of experience. It was quite an experience to deal with the >huge amount of wear on rehearsal room pianos (as well as the random >assortment of items dropped inside them)! We tuned those pianos for >free, and it was a good partnership between the universities and >NBSS. We both benefited. Ah, yes, Cy. You have introduced a very important principle into this discussion. "Uniform" does not mean "one-dimensional". It is the height of folly to think that in order to get to a uniform educational standard one needs to teach "a uniform way of tuning: how to sit, hold the hammer, even setting a temperament" as somebody here seems to be advocating. That's nonsense. I remember my experience at North Bennet School twenty-some years ago, when the current Director David Betts was introducing his philosophy into the program - which has proven highly successful over the years. He made sure that students were exposed to as many different approaches to each issue, process, problem or procedure as possible. He thoroughly discussed the advantages and disadvantages of each approach or the appropriateness of each in various situations, and he urged the students to try as many as they felt comfortable with. I remember on several occasions students tried to pin him down on what would be "the best" approach to a particular repair or rebuilding procedure. Or what's "the best" temperament", or "the best" tool, etc. etc. He would simply repeat his litany of the advantages and disadvantages of each. When people really pressed him in terms of what he does in his own practice he would say something akin to the following: "Look, I am not you and you are not I. We all have different physical structures, different abilities and degrees of coordination, different size hands and degrees of strength. We all see differently, hear differenty and think differently. What works for me may not work for you, and what works for you may not work for me. All I can say is get familiar with the methods that make sense to you, get really good at one of two of them - and keep the others in reserve for situations where the ones you are comfortable with don't work". In my opinion, one of the bigger problem with much of the instruction offered by the PTG - in classes, chapter meetings, some of the publications - is precisely this "one size fits all" mentality. How many times I hear people argue over whether this or that is "best" or "correct" or whatever - when essentially they are both right (depending on the specifics of a given situation. I have seen students bat their heads against a wall trying to do things "the way they have been taught" - unsuccessfully, and then being introduced to another method - and picking it up in a flash. Not that the second method is "better" than the first - they are both used successfully by many people. Just that for some reason the student can relate better to method B than to method A. Trying to force a unitary way down students' throats is a sure way to retard learning for many people. The technician who pursues his or her training through opportunities presented by the PTG probably has access to most of the knowledge that one can get in a formal course or in an apprenticeship. Some of the problems in such an approach, however, are: 1. Guidance as to what knowledge to pursue when. Learning is incremental. You can't learn how to write essays if you don't know how to form words. Think of how this principle applies to tuning, repairs or regulation. The simplest example - students being taught how to tune a temperament before they have developed the ability to distinguish beat rates, the manual dexterity to manipulate tuning pins in a precise manner, the aural stamina to listen intently for extended periods of time without their ears "shutting down" or the understanding of acoustics on which aural tuning is based. (Hint: at NBSS we spend weeks tuning unisons and octaves on a daily basis - starting with short periods of tuning practice and gradually lengthening them - to build stamina - until we developed the aural and manual skills to attempt temperament tuning and some understanding of the acoustical principles involved. It was boring as hell - but it worked.) A printed curriculum could help in this area. It could help instructors to structure classes and training sessions more effectively - and it could guide students in choosing their classes. A good mentor is even better... 2. Information overload. Many classes and instructors throw way too much information at students all at once. They walk out of there thinking that they "learned a lot" - but it is only surface learning. The information or skills have not been assimilated. Ask them to repeat what they "learned" or actually do it - and you find out that it is really very little. Yes, some exceptional folks can learn effectively in such conditions - but most can't. 3. Lack of follow-up. To be retained, learning must be reinforced, repeatedly and at short intervals. This is what a school or an apprenticeship will do for you. But unless someone has the facilities, the equipment and the self-discipline to practice what they learned after coming home from a convention or a chapter meeting - very soon and at a great frequency - much of the learning is lost or garbled. Another aspect of follow up is the availability of someone to correct the misunderstandings that inevitably happen in a one-time class situation or than can result from the misreading of a self-study text. You get that at a school or in an apprenticeship situation - but the free-lance student has to seek it out. Not all do. That's how poor methodology gets entrenched... There are many more issues that I will not vex you with at this point. A printed curriculum can go a long way in at least offering the possibility of correcting such problems as the above. The rest is up to the individual - and there is no way to make sure that any given individual will make good use of whatever tools are made available. I have two illustrations for you. One happened, I believe, on this list and illustrates points 2 and 3 above - surface learning and lack of follow up. In a discussion of regulation, letoff and aftertouch, someone quoted a well-known instructor to the effect that "Letoff affects nothing". This is what they remembered from a rather complex regulation class. Of course to one with a good understanding of regulation it is obvious that the statement is not true - letoff affects aftertouch. What the instructor really said was "nothing affects letoff" - which is true. The letoff control is mounted on a rigid rail, and the only way to change it is move the control explicitly - (turn the button or move the rail) - nothing else you do in the course of a regulation will change letoff. I wonder how many students in that class misunderstood how many of the principles that were taught, how many had their misunderstanding corrected and how long they labored under their misconceptions before that happened... This is not an isolated instance - I come across stuff like this on post-exam interviews all the time. The other happened at a technical exam at a recent PTG Annual convention. I examined a candidate who seemed to be an expert. He completed each task with plenty time to spare, earned a very high score on each and seemed to be a lot calmer than the average examinee. To be honest, I rarely see anyone perform on such a level at an exam. I asked him how long he had been doing piano technology. He said, two years. asked him if he had any formal training. He said, no, he learned on his own. I asked him - how. He said that he learned from the available texts, worked on procedures on a daily basis, one step at a time, making sure that he had thoroughly assimilated and practiced each step before going on to the next and found someone to consult any time he had trouble with anything. I can think of two mentors located on two opposite sides of the US (whose names I will not mention) several of whose students I have examined. All of them seem to have been able to operate in the same manner as the examinee described above. I watched one of them accidentally break a part during the exam - and without missing a beat repair it, complete the task within the allotted time and earn a perfect score! And all of them were quite young - which suggests that they didn't take years and years to learn the trade. Apparently there are people in the PTG who can teach and learn effectively - without taking forever to do it... Just a few things to think about in the context of the current discussion... Israel Stein
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