[CAUT] CAUT Testing Model

[Israel Stein]

At 06:54 AM 10/27/2007, caut-request at ptg.org wrote:
>Fred,
>
>Good sounding, solid unisons are of the utmost importance.  However, 
>I question the implications of testing people under severe time 
>constraints and poor working conditions.   Sure, if one is going to 
>do the concert tuning thing out in the big bad world, these WILL be 
>the conditions at times.  But as CAUT-erizers, doesn't it send the 
>wrong message to suggest that these conditions are acceptable on an 
>ongoing basis?  I think that  runs the risk of casting ourselves as 
>people willing to be insufficiently supported in the pursuit of our 
>professional goals. How do we expect to be better compensated if we 
>are willing to accept not-good-enough working conditions as an 
>acceptable standard?   Raise your hand if your goal is to become the 
>piano technician equivalent of the American Tourister suitcase being 
>thrashed by a gorilla in commercials from days gone by.
>
>Alan Eder

Alan,

There are few fussier or more meticulous technicians than Bill 
Garlick - the former Director of the North Bennet School in Boston 
(he actually built up its reputation for quality training) and 
formerly Director of Technical services at Steinway. Yet in his time 
at the school he used to teach the students how to do a 
"quick-and-dirty" regulation - in situations where there simply isn't 
time to do a regulation the way it ought to be done ideally. Those 
situations occur, and will occur in all kinds of contexts - and not 
only at educational institutions. A well-trained technician has to be 
able to operate in many modes - the no-effort-spared-for-quality mode 
when the conditions allow, and the 
do-the-best-job-you-can-under-the-circumstances mode when the 
conditions require. They are not mutually exclusive. A good CAUT tech 
has to have the skill and the judgment to jump into situations that 
require triage and do what can be done - without damaging the 
instrument or compromising the possibility of future improvements.

While understaffing is often the cause of stressful work conditions, 
it is not the only cause. In my experience, a more prevalent cause of 
having to do hurry-up rush work is the overbooking of facilities and 
the lack of access to instruments that require attention. Often you 
cannot take an instrument out of service for a really thorough job - 
yet a faculty member demands that something be done. So you do the 
work on a catch-as-catch can basis. And you need to know where and 
when to compromise - and when never to do so.

I believe that in his message Fred Sturm has expressed this last 
concept (that some things must never be compromised) with regard to 
tuning  by insisting that unisons must be tested at the tightest 
possible tolerance - with which I wholeheartedly agree. And I would 
add tuning stability to that. The same concept applies to repairs and 
regulation. Some things you can skip if you must, some things you can 
postpone and some things you must get done no matter what. The 
ability to make those judgements and work in that mode is what at 
least part of any CAUT exam must deal with.  And your methodology has 
to be able to get to the core of the most pressing problems - and not 
be stuck on a given sequence of steps whether or not they are 
productive or make much difference (at least in the case of 
regulation). And yes, some of the CAUT exam must deal with 
higher-order skills. And the whole thing should not take a week to 
administer. It is a difficult, complicated task to create such a 
test, and there has been a lot of very good feedback on this list as 
to how to go about it - from all sides.

You never know when a hall will get overscheduled, a rehearsal run 
overtime, a professor preempt a classroom for whatever reason or 
demand that something be taken care of yesterday. Or when a new 
nincompoop administrator will create conditions when all of the above 
is done on a regular basis.  We will always have situations when you 
have to tune with a brass quintet rehearsing way too close for 
comfort - and the job has to get done now. And even if you do manage 
to develop some sort of safeguards and guarantees as to working 
conditions - they are ephemeral. My predecessors at SFSU developed 
all kinds of very good policies about scheduling and work practices - 
and a new Director just swept them all away last year. Now we are 
back to where things are saner again through a lot of hard work by me 
and the other tech here - and this new guy has one foot out the door. 
Who knows what the future will bring...  We are not a union, we never 
will be, and staffing levels and working conditions will never be 
guaranteed by binding contract. Hell, if nurses can't get adequate 
staffing levels through legislation and union contracts - how are we 
going to? All we can do is get into colleges and universities, 
develop some respect for ourselves by doing the job that needs to be 
done under whatever conditions we have to deal with, and influence 
the powers-that-be to improve what can be improved once we gain their 
respect. We can't do it by publishing guidelines and complaining to 
each other about why the faculties and the administrations "out 
there" are so stupid as to not rush out and adopt them...

The point I am trying to make is that even though we work in 
Academia, we cannot shut ourselves in the ivory tower of 
perfectionism and aim our credentials at what amounts to ideal 
conditions. If we are going to issue credentials to people who cannot 
operate under real-world conditions, don't expect our credentials to 
gain much weight or our recommendations to have much clout. We work 
in the trenches of the performing arts, we will always work in the 
trenches (in the performing arts there are a few prima-donnas at the 
top and the rest of the supporting cast - including us - cannot 
afford to be seen as prima-donnas) and our credential for such work 
should acknowledge this reality. At least a part of the exam should 
deal with operating under stress and doing the sort of triage that we 
will inevitably be called upon to do in our work.

Israel Stein