Hi Dennis, I took a home study course from the Empire School of Piano Tuning. I think I found it advertised in the back of a magazine (Mother Earth News, maybe?) back in the early 1980s. Pretty much totally worthless except for a tuning hammer and a few mutes that I still have that came with it, and they weren't much. If you have access to books at a library, you probably have 10 times what that horrible course tried to teach me, some of which was just plain wrong. (FWIW, the recent thread about Bill Bremmer's temperament is not all that far from what I finally figured out for myself. I adapted a temperament from "A guide to Restringing" by John W. Travis... you may have it in your library... and experimented with that for a while before I really got comfortable being able to tune a decent temperament by ear.) I've heard good reports about Randy Potter but have no experience there. One possibility for you to get some experience at piano work is to find a piano store. They most always need floor tunings. Granted, most won't pay what private tunings bring, but they'll get you a lot of experience tuning. If they have a busy shop, you might also be able to get involved with repairing, rebuilding and/or refinishing. Even just to be around it while someone else is doing it might give you some practical insights. Much of it isn't all that difficult, only unfamiliar. You tend to learn the most when you're around the people who know the most. Conventions and the classes there are wonderful. Plus, the people you meet may end up not only teaching you many things, they may also become lifelong friends. There'll be a few "sour puss" types. There are those no matter where you go. But I've even seen a few of them warm up over the years as I've learned and grown. Lots and lots of really great people, though. I'm sure you already figured that out if you've been reading on this list for a while. ;-) Best of luck, Brian Hello Everyone, I’d like to get some advice on the best way to get into the field of piano tuning/maintenance/repair (including PTG membership), and Mr. Foote’s recent post seemed to indicate a good time to ask in this forum. I’ve played the piano for most of my life and earned a BM in Music History a few years ago. I went on to complete an MS in Library Science, and now I work full-time as a cataloger for a public library, but I’m considering the idea of a part-time side job as a freelance piano technician. I have great deal of respect for the work of RPTs, and I’d really like to be able to help pianists and piano enthusiasts keep theirs in proper working order. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to pursue a full-time training institute such as those listed on the PTG website. Would a correspondence course suffice? Are any of them more highly recommended than others? What about apprenticeship? Also, Please feel free to reply off-list if you wish. Thanks, Dennis Quinn Dallas/Forth Worth, TX _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail has tools for the New Busy. Search, chat and e-mail from your inbox. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100708/5a789d59/attachment.htm>
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