[CAUT] CAUT testing model

[Israel Stein]

At 08:01 AM 10/24/2007, Ed Sutton wrote:
>Just for fun, here's a college interview I was told about:
>
>The candidate was given a choice of a half-dozen weary studio grand pianos
>and told "Pick a piano and show us how much you can improve it in 3 hours."
>
>I think that was a pretty clever idea!  I wish more school administrators
>were that clever.

The more I think about it, the more it seems that this is the model 
on which at least a part of a CAUT tuning exam could be based. Why is 
this such a clever idea? Because it realistically simulates the 
conditions under which a CAUT technician typically operates. There is 
never enough time to do any job, one always has to make choices, do 
triage, set priorities, make the best possible assessment of what one 
can "get away" with. This interview is clever because it addresses 
the candidate's ability to function under those conditions.

I am wondering if a test could be structured along the same lines. 
Give the candidate a tuning assignment and a time frame way too short 
to do the job "perfectly". Devise a scoring system rating the results 
in terms of priorities and score the candidate in terms of how well 
he or she met those priorities. That might be a better assessment of 
a candidate's chops than a "concert tuning" in 90 minutes. Yes, this 
would be very complicated and involve a lot of trial and error 
real-time experimenting. But it might lead to some sort of realistic 
test of "chops".

Hell, I can't remember the last time I had 90 minutes to do a concert 
tuning during concert season - I'm always struggling to do what I can 
in the time I can scrounge with the three concert hall pianos and 
sometimes the results have to be good enough to last over several 
performances and rehearsals...  And sometimes, when the heating 
system is screwy (which is quite often) the work includes a pitch 
raise or drop. And the voicing always requires attention. And I hear 
the same thing from other CAUTs. A "concert tuning in 90 minutes" 
doesn't begin to test the chops - or the judgment abilities - 
required to deal with this. Something like the above might...

A CAUT requires some very specialized abilities and skills - not just 
"higher order tuning skills". This is one reason why I feel that the 
CAUT credential should be an endorsement on top of the RPT - and not 
a stand alone "supertuner" credential. For this reason (and several 
others which are political and organizational in nature) the RPT 
status should be a prerequisite for the CAUT exam and the CAUT exam 
should narrowly focused on skills and abilities required of the CAUT 
- and not deal with broad overall assessments of general skills that 
in many ways would duplicate what has already been assessed on the 
RPT exam (albeit on the basic level). Thus the CAUT test should focus 
on specific areas - the ability to tune specific types of octaves, 
the ability to tune across a scale break, the ability to achieve a 
stable tuning in pitch raise situations, the ability to tune 
adequately under "pressure" conditions. This can be done more 
effectively by the use of "sample" testing techniques focusing on 
specific areas through specific assignments on parts of the piano 
rather than through a generalized test that simply requires tuning a piano.

Israel Stein



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