Mike, congratulations on your committment to take the RPT tuning exam. Call the PTG Home Office and ask for a free Pre-Screening Manual. In conjunction with an experienced RPT, it can help you assess your exam readiness. If you discover you're not quite ready (or if you want to improve your skills even more), ask HO for the "Tuning Exam Source Book" ($28 plus s&h), a collection of Journal articles designed to help you acquire the skills to pass the tuning exam. There's also a companion volume for the Tech exam and a free brochure on the written exam. I applaud your determination to take the aural tuning exam. It's a choice that makes a lot of sense, and one I support. If you choose to take the electronic tuning exam, whatever machine you may use, you will *first* tune pitch, temperament, and midrange aurally-only, which will be scored before you proceed. The piano will be detuned again, and then you will electronically tune 85 notes and be scored on pitch, temperament, midrange, bass, treble, high treble, stabilty. Finally you will tune 2 middle octaves of unisons aurally-only. My friends Dean Reyburn and Jim Bryant gave you good advice about preparing for your tuning exam. I might add that statistics reveal that examinees taking the electronic tuning exam almost never have problems passing electronically, but have a relatively high error rate in the aural portion (even compared to examinees taking the exam aurally-only). My point? Aural skills are of primary importance and should be mastered no matter what form of the tuning exam you take. The RPT exam is a great opportunity to measure your ability against a PTG standard, so it makes sense to use the tuning method you will use on the job. Are you planning to use the SOT on the job? If so, consider Dean's advice and think again. If not, why use it for the exam? Good luck and practice hard, Mitch Kiel, RPT, chair of the Examination and Test Standards Committee
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