[CAUT] CAUT Endorsement

[Ed Sutton]

Richard-

Yes.  Good exams establish relationships, and those relationships make professional standards live and breathe.

Ed Sutton


----- Original Message ----- 
  From: rwest1 at unl.edu 
  To: College and University Technicians 
  Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 10:00 AM
  Subject: Re: [CAUT] CAUT Endorsement


  Jim, Fred and others,


  I think we have to be careful when we evaluate "people."  There's a dark side to any evaluative process, and it's something that needs to be figured into any testing or curriculum development.  That dark side is making judgments without taking into account the subjective side of the person or persons making the judgments.  I think there's a tendency to ratchet up expectations to higher and higher levels, not to raise standards but to somehow prove no one is really worthy of the high standards that I/we believe are the "real" standards.  We've all seen this in many emails that deal with RPT standards.  So I raise this issue with the hope that it will be taken as constructive criticism.  Food for thought, as it were.  Or just a friendly reminder with the hope to be reassured that, yes, we're on the same page on this. 


  The fact is there will always be people who do not live up to standards.  Our problem, then, is not to be overly judgmental, but assume the best in people and build a program that is based on the belief that if "we build it, they will come."  We need to try to find ways to not only encourage people to get better, but to somehow open their eyes.  I remember when I was first out of school I went to some PTG tuning classes and thought the teachers were using too many checks and were obsessing with minutia that really didn't make much difference in getting a decent tuning.  I was deluding myself that a decent tuning didn't require more than what I was doing at the time.  After all, I had just graduated from a real tuning school (Western Iowa Tech).  I knew better.


  How do we get people to see the light without either appearing to be or actually being too obsessive?  I don't know how big a problem this is in PTG, but I have a feeling that it is behind much of our failure to reach Associates and get them to upgrade.  


  Richard West


    

  On Oct 22, 2007, at 7:32 PM, Jim Busby wrote:


    Fred, Jeff, others,



    98% of my job hinges on how well I do on that 2%.



    Personally, I think only about 2% of technicians I know are capable of true “concert work”, but 98% think they are (See attached article).



    Just my 2% worth.





    Jim Busby BYU



    (I used to work as a prison guard, which was about 98% pure boredom and 2% sheer terror!)








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    From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Fred Sturm
    Sent: Monday, October 22, 2007 5:50 PM
    To: College and University Technicians
    Subject: Re: [CAUT] CAUT Endorsement



    On Oct 20, 2007, at 6:18 PM, Wolfley, Eric ((wolfleel)) wrote:





    the CAUT task force - and everyone else who posted on this subject - 
    create the impression that the CAUT's position starts and ends with 
    the quality of the concert tuning.


                Let me add a bit about this notion of "concert tuning" versus "whatever other kind of tuning" there may be. We (the skills test subcommittee) discussed a number of ideas about tuning. We thought a caut needed to be able to do an efficient bang-up job of pitch change, and come up with a good solid tuning in the end in a pretty short period of time. Ken Eschete expressed another side to what kind of chops a caut needs to have, saying we should check the seventh tuning of the day and see how that measured up, and then the same after a week, a month. . . Maybe a bit exaggerated, but the idea is one of focus, efficiency, chops to get it done, and the professional attitude that says every single one is a quality tuning, with a focus on solid.

                And we also discussed, for very good reason, on ability to produce a "concert tuning." That is where we contribute to the end purpose of the department: the actual public performance of music. That's what we're all there for (the whole music department), training students for that and contributing our bit to the process. 

                What is a concert tuning? Well, I would say it is a tuning done with extra care, one that is able to stand up to public scrutiny. Obviously every single tuning we do should meet that standard, ideally. So we are really just talking about taking a little extra time and trouble to make sure we got it as good as possible. In the same sense, playing a piece of music in public performance isn't essentially different from practicing or playing for a lesson, except that it is more focused on making sure the final result is as good as possible. Concert prep of a piano is a very similar thing: nothing essentially different from any other prep and regulation and voicing, except that the standards and expectations are higher. 

                Is "concert tuning and prep" a significant part of the workload? It sure is where I work. I'd put it at over 20% of my load. Even if it were only the 2% Jeff Tanner claims, it would be by far the most important 2%. It is where the department shows itself to the world. It is where the students and faculty show what they can do. It is extraordinarily important. If you don't believe that, you have no business working for a music department.

                Now when it came to developing a draft notion of how to structure a caut tuning test, it was pretty obvious that major pitch change would present considerable practical obstacles, as would having someone tune seven pianos in a day <G>. So we decided to focus on "concert tuning" but bring along as many of the other abilities we had identified as we could. Efficiency and ability to produce within a real life time frame was one. Another was solidity. There are plenty of possible ways to go about evaluating "concert level tuning." Many people I have heard in discussions on the topic say that we should just use "CTE level" tuning as the standard (meaning the current test passed at 90% or above in all segments, done aurally). That is certainly one route we could have taken. We chose a completely different route. We chose to look at the real life chops to get a complete piano done and end up with solid and clean unisons. And we added a bit about stretch as well, but I think I'll leave that for another discussion.

                The point I am trying to make here is that this is not some kind of rarified standard we are proposing. It is very much an "in the trenches" standard, one that applies not just to the concert grand, but to the practice piano and every single other piano we face. If you have the chops to do an efficient and solid concert grand tuning to a solid standard, you can do the rest as well. That is the ability we are aiming to assess.



    Regards,

    Fred Sturm

    University of New Mexico

    fssturm at unm.edu







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