Piano Training Question (Long)

[Michael Magness]

Can somone help me out? My posts get thru when I answer but not when I
originate and send anyone know why?

On 8/5/07, Geoff Sykes <thetuner at ivories52.com> wrote:
>
> Thank you Israel!
>
> <- Insert hearty round of applause here ->
>
> It wasn't until I was well into the Potter course that I realized that
> there
> even were legit schools for piano technology. But even if I had, age, time
> and resources would have prevented me from attending one of them. Potter's
> course, in retrospect, was a great primer on piano technology. If nothing
> else it provided me with enough of a foundation in the craft that I could
> attend chapter meetings and conferences, hold reasonably intelligent
> conversations and actually understand and absorb what was being discussed.
> I
> have had the extreme good fortune to receive much hands on training from
> several notable members of the Los Angeles and South Bay chapters. And
> now,
> three years after completing the Potter course, and getting ready to take
> my
> second stab at the tuning exam, I am more and more realizing just how much
> I
> have learned and mastered since I began. I'm also realizing that as good
> as
> I think I know I am now, even once I pass all three RPT exams I'm still
> going to be just a novice. There is no replacing good mentoring, practice
> and years of experience in mastering our craft. And I am looking forward
> to
> years of continuing this learning process. I echo what Alan Barnard said:
> "...it has been the PTG that made most of the difference. I would not
> trade
> my membership in this great organization and the association of my dear
> friends and colleagues for anything!"
>
> -- Geoff Sykes
> -- Los Angeles
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On
> Behalf
> Of Israel Stein
> Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2007 8:55 AM
> To: pianotech at ptg.org
> Subject: Piano Training Question (Long)
>
>
> To the list,
>
> I have been watching this discussion with a great deal of interest,
> because I have been involved in aspects of technician training
> through my work with the PTG in various capacities for many years now
> - first on the chapter level, then on the national - and perhaps
> international - scene. For years now I have been observing technical
> skills attained through various learning paths as demonstrated on PTG
> exams and working on developing methodologies to fill the voids left
> by the typical trial-and-error or correspondence school training that
> most practitioners in our field bring to the profession. So to the
> extent that I can, I'll share my observations.
>
> My own background is an echo of what others have posted. After a
> career in commercial photography fizzled out, I got interested in
> piano technology (after having built a kit harpsichord -  but that's
> a different story.)  First I tried to tech myself using the Reblitz
> book - after all, how difficult could it be? I found that book quite
> flawed - there were a bunch of processes and procedures described,
> but no overall understanding of why one was supposed to do things
> this way or that way and no good understanding of how to judge the
> results (most obviously of a regulation, but in other contexts too).
> It was sort of flying blind - you follow the recipe and trust that
> the result is correct, because Arthur says so... I then signed up for
> a correspondence course - not Randy Potter's - and found the same
> problem. I was doing assignments, learning nomenclature and
> processes, but the piano I was working on didn't seem to be improving
> much... And I had no idea what my tuning sounded like, objectively
> speaking - even though I counted beats until I couldn't hear them any
> more... Then life intervened...
>
> Some years later I got an opportunity to move to Boston and attend
> the North Bennet Street School for 2 years, and I found out that my
> initial judgements about the Reblitz and the correspondence course
> were basically correct. The processes and procedures being taught in
> those media were hit-or-miss at best and plain incorrect in some
> cases. I did have a leg up on the other students in terms of
> nomenclature - quite a bit of money spent on something I would have
> learned anyway... I did come away from the correspondence course with
> a nice three-ring binder which still holds some of my NBSS notes...
>
> At NBSS I got a good background on which to build a comprehensive
> approach to piano technology - both the tuning and technical end of
> it. And passed the RPT exams on the first try without a hitch before
> completing my first year at school. And after a bit of struggling (I
> am not very good at promoting myself) I have been able to make a
> decent living at it, build two businesses - one in Boston and after
> moving another one in California - worked  Steinway C & A in Boston a
> couple years after finishing school, and now also hold a half-time
> University job which gets me health insurance and retirement benefits
> - besides running a very busy practice.
>
> I will concentrate on the technical end - because that's where my
> testing and educational efforts have been concentrated.
>
> Without a good conceptual grasp of the nature of the technology on
> which the piano is based, the properties of the materials from which
> it is built or which are used to service it, the goals of the
> procedures one undertakes and the various possible pitfalls of
> various approaches one is a very incomplete practitioner. To be fair,
> some self-trained or correspondence-school trained technicians
> develop this knowledge on their own after years of experience. Many
> do not. And most don't have nearly enough of it in the first years of
> their practice - resulting in misdiagnosed conditions, misapplied
> remedies, misregulated instruments and much wasted time. And clients
> being charged for - what?
>
> In a school environment one gets to internalize all of that
> theoretical and intellectual underpinning as one is learning the
> tools and the procedures. And in a school environment one gets
> immediate feedback on the quality of one's learning. But more on how
> important that can be later.
>
> Soon after graduating from NBSS I got involved in PTG technical
> testing - a lot more heavily than I intended to. It was a funny
> story. This was the time the PTG was introducing the current
> Technical Exam (late 80s) and our committee chair couldn't make heads
> or tails of it - since it is based on an empirical approach to
> regulation rather than just plugging in specs from a book. Apparently
> a novel concept for this grandfathered RTT. So he dumped the whole
> thing in my lap. I went to a convention and learned how to run the
> exam from an experienced examiner...
>
> Boston was (still is) a very busy testing venue - so I got a good
> overview of the skills that technicians of various backgrounds bring
> to the trade. Later on I went on to head the Technical Testing
> program in the San Francisco Bay area (we have an Exam Board that
> test all comers - but basically covers the territory of 4 chapters),
> and for the past several years the technical testing at the PTG
> Annual Conventions. In addition, I have organized and taught various
> Exam Preparatory classes (that's actually a major con I have been
> perpetrating on the students - they are actually "basic skills"
> classes, but nobody would sign up if I called them that - pride...)
> So after a good 100+ exams administered and some dozens of classes
> taught I can say without equivocation that many, many candidates and
> students with a correspondence school, self-taught or mentoring
> backgrounds are still quite deficient in basic skills.
>
> To be perfectly fair, this is not entirely the fault of the
> correspondence courses, or the learning materials. Where there is no
> supervised practice and immediate feedback on technique and
> methodology, the opportunities for misunderstanding and
> miscomprehension are endless. I have seen this in classes I have
> taught and in some post-exam interviews - where I am pretty darn sure
> that what the candidate or student is doing is not what the author or
> instructor meant to convey. And sometimes it is a matter of a poor
> grip on a tool, or an unclear sequence of actions, or a misapplied
> technique due to poor understanding of the conceptual framework on
> which the technique is based, or any one of dozens of misconceptions
> and misapplications that  are easily corrected in the course of
> continuous face-to-face instruction at a residential program that are
> simply not addressed or not even noticed in correspondence courses or
> self-teaching. And all materials with which I am familiar - and that
> includes those published by the PTG (which I have been for the past 3
> years attempting to revise) contain ineffective techniques and flawed
> approaches. They are all based on learning recipes for procedures -
> and not on understanding the underlying concepts, without which
> practitioners have no way of assessing their own work or dealing with
> unexpected issues. To be fair, some of the PTG materials do mention
> the importance of learning the conceptual framework - but then expect
> the student to extrapolate that from the procedures. Not effective...
> I hope to do something about it fairly soon - if I can find the time.
>
> With mentoring the problem is different. All depends on the quality
> of the mentors. In the past couple of years I tested several
> candidates from a specific location all of whom were taught by a
> mentor who appears to be superb. They displayed superior skills.
> Other mentors seem to produce poorer results - and in some cases even
> mislead their students with poor advice. How a beginner in the field
> is supposed to judge the quality of a prospective mentor is an
> insoluble problem...
>
> Over the years I have tested and taught candidates from NBSS, from
> the Western Ontario program, from Israel, South Africa, Japan, China,
> Spain, Norway. And many US-trained candidates who have not had formal
> residential training. Two patterns jump right out:
>
> 1. Foreign trained technicians do a whole lot better than US trained
> technicians.
> 2. NBSS and Western Ontario graduates in general do better than those
> without formal residential training.
>
> I don't know how those foreign technicians were trained, but the
> results speak for themselves. And the graduates of the formal
> training programs in general display a much more confident and
> methodical approach to the exam tasks than many (not all) of the
> others. I have on occasion come across students and candidates
> without formal training who displayed superior skills after a fairly
> short period of self-teaching. My conversations with them usually
> reveal that they have undertaken a very disciplined and methodical
> approach to training themselves - with substantial daily practice
> sessions, not going on to the next task until having mastered the
> previous one, a relationship with several mentors who could serve as
> a check on their progress, etc. In other words, they invested the
> time and effort in themselves to learn the craft properly - often at
> the sacrifice of some income. My conclusion is that a great many
> people who try to teach themselves - whether through correspondence
> courses or other literature - simply do not spend enough time or
> spend the time effectively enough to master the skills. And some who
> do learn a number of skills never develop the underlying conceptual
> framework on which effective practice must necessarily be based.
>
> Disclaimer: Before Paul Revenko-Jones starts squawking, I must say
> that - to my knowledge - I never tested a graduate of the Chicago
> School of Piano Technology, so I can't speak to the quality of their
> graduates' skills.
>
> OK, now to speak of some attempts at remediation. The PTG and some of
> its chapters do offer a great many classes by various superb
> instructors at conventions and special events, some sponsored by
> manufacturers and suppliers - others non-sponsored. Eric Schandall,
> Don Mannino, Rick Baldassin, Richard Davenport, David Betts, Roger
> Jolly are just some of the names that come to mind - people who try
> to provide that conceptual framework which is so often missing. The
> problem here is two-fold - information overload and lack of
> follow-up. It is just very difficult for the average student to
> completely understand and assimilate all that information in the
> course of a continuous two-period session. Or whatever time frame is
> devoted to it at a single event.  And by the time people get home and
> actually get to try it out for real - some of it has already gotten
> fuzzy. This is where a residential program would provide some
> corrective feedback, follow-up, reinforcement - whatever. And the
> information would be presented - to begin with - in more manageable
> portions, with opportunities for follow up in between  - not thrown
> at you all at once, because of the limited time-span of the
> convention or event. Again, some people are able to come away from
> some of those convention classes with that lightbulb lit up and thing
> falling into place - but many do not. As a result I have heard a lot
> of misconceptions and bowdlerized ideas based on what was taught in
> those classes - sometimes even misquoting the source.
>
> Just a simple example. Not too long ago someone vehemently disagreed
> with something I tried to teach, stating that "So-and-so in such and
> such a class said that letoff affects nothing, so how can you say
> that aftertouch can be changed by altering letoff" (let me say that I
> don't recommend this - I just used it as an example of relationships
> within the action) . Of course, "so-and-so" did not say that "letoff
> affects nothing". What he said was "nothing affects letoff" (which is
> true - letoff control is mounted on a rigid rail that never moves
> with relation to the string no matter what else you do to the action
> in the course of regulation short of altering action geometry) Which
> tells me that the person in question misremembered what "so-and-so"
> taught, and did not truly assimilate the basic relationships within
> the action that "so-and-so" was trying to convey - just came away
> with a surface meaning of the words. And I run across stuff like that
> all the time - in classes and in post-exam interviews.
>
> For the past few years several of us in the PTG have been trying to
> develop a methodology to convey this knowledge in a more effective
> manner.  We break the instruction up into more manageable chunks that
> can be more easily assimilated by students and combine it either with
> exercises on jigs and models (for the less experienced students) or
> with actual performance of the procedures - under the supervision of
> experienced instructors. Some of these classes have been offered at
> PTG Annual, State and Regional Conventions, some at chapter-sponsored
> events. I am in the middle of a series of all-day Sunday classes (one
> per month, three months) for the San Francisco Chapter. They do work,
> if the students go home and practice what they learn at the classes.
> Because we do spend a lot of time with each student on an individual
> basis - making sure that they understand and follow what they have
> been taught by correcting any observed technical flaws and missteps
> on the spot. So these classes require a continuous commitment - and
> we do have people who keep coming back and eventually
> develop good skills. And they are very resource and labor-intensive,
> and reach a minuscule number of people - compared to the need. And
> the nominal fees which we charge for these are typically supplemented
> by PTG or Chapter subsidies. In effect, the many pay to teach the
> few. At some point aspirants to this profession are going to have to
> realize that effective instruction requires time and resources - and
> it can't all be provided by experienced technicians at their own
> expense...
>
> I do have to say that some of the discussions on the PTG lists
> (Pianotech, CAUT, ExamPrep) cover some topics quite comprehensively.
> And provide some of that conceptual framework that I keep mentioning.
> And often debunk some misconceptions rife in the trade. But again,
> this is short of personal instruction, where one look, a few words
> and a simple demonstration can correct many errors and increase speed
> or effectiveness. And reaches relatively few people. And is episodic
> in nature. But every little bit helps.
>
> Before someone starts yelping that the PTG Exams
> are  "unrealistically difficult" and "do not reflect real conditions"
> so how can I judge effectiveness of instruction base on them - that's
> nonsense. A well trained, confident technician can cope with any
> situation, as long as he or she understands the basic principles of
> the instrument and the craft,  has a good grasp of tools and
> techniques and has developed fluency through repetition. I have seen
> this again and again. Most recently, a candidate who admitted to me
> beforehand that he never works on vertical pianos and has never in
> his life replaced a vertical shank did quite well on the exam, just
> using his conceptual grasp of the issues involved and overall
> technical skills. (He did have a brief demonstration of vertical
> shank replacement the day before the exam). And I have seen similar
> occurrences before. And the time allowances on the exams are quite
> generous - again judging by the performance of well-trained
> technicians (no matter how they were trained) who usually complete
> the task - and quite well - with about 10-20% of the time still left
> on the clock. I have seen technicians who accidentally broke a part,
> repaired it and still completed the task with a good score within the
> time allowed. If one is fluent in one's craft and has a good
> understanding of underlying issues, one can operate under all kinds
> of pressure and unfamiliar circumstances.  If one's training is too
> narrowly focused merely on following a series of "steps" in specific
> situations, that is not professional-level training, and people whose
> training does not go beyond that do have trouble under pressure. And
> pressure on specific jobs or from specific clients is just as much a
> part of the profession as anything else...
>
> OK, sorry for some of the rambling here, but I hope some of this
> stuff gives a somewhat realistic picture of the pitfalls of trying to
> teach yourself a profession. And they are not insurmountable - all it
> takes is time and commitment and some good contacts... And if you can
> see your way to going to school - do it. It will be worth every
> minute and every penny.
>
> Israel Stein
>
>
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
Michael Magness
Magness Piano Service
608-786-4404
www.IFixPianos.com
email mike at ifixpianos.com
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