Piano technology class

[A440A@aol.com]

Greetings,  I apologize for the lengthy delay in this discourse, but I got 
detoured around here for a while: 

Bob writes: 
<< I've
been asked to give a introductory piano tuning/technology class at one
of the local state uni. music depts. here in New Jersey. 
I wonder if you might be willing to share some of your curriculum with
me or can you suggest other sources for such material. I don't relish
the thought of starting from scratch. >>

This is a good career move, it will change the way people regard you.  The 
Vanderbilt course was originally conceived as a pure technology course, but 
the committee required it to be broadened beyond where I was comfortable 
teaching.  They wanted it to be a "physics of sound" course, too.  Which is 
important, but forces a fourteen class couse to move everything else into the 
"survey" mode.  
    These classes tried to cover, each week, the physical instrument and the 
resulting sound it produced.  I believe my next course will be a little more 
focussed on one or the other, with the tuning and sound portion first.  With 
no background, learning the instrument and its tuning  presents massive 
amounts of new info, and I think I swamped the first course with too much.  
      Another course would be needed to really do what I want.  That is to 
see if students couldn't learn to regulate their piano, themselves.  It would 
be an interesting, but soon forgotten bit of education for most, but for 
those that spend the rest of their lives around a piano, it would be their 
own personal toolkit, and perhaps when one of them finds a poorly regulated 
instrument supplied for a performance, they can discuss its shortcomings with 
more than "that note doesn't feel right". 
      Also, remember that you will lose one of these days to something,and 
once you begin it becomes almost as important to follow the classes 
direction,(which they steer by the questions they ask), as it is to follow 
your preconceived plan of action.  Teaching a class cannot completely obey 
preset rules and still produce that magic of investigation.  The desire to 
learn is more important than the information itself, and I believe the real 
art of teaching is to create that desire in the students.  

These are the classes in our program,(currently on hold while we record 
stuff). I also have a deeper outline of the individual classes, but will save 
the bandwidth until someone needs it.   The serious digressions began around 
class 6 when we got to intervals, and we sorta wandered our way through the 
rest of the material.  
Good luck, 
Ed Foote 
Vanderbilt

 Piano Technology 101
14 classes

Text: White,William Braid.  Piano Tuning and the Allied Arts. Tuners Supply, 
(Chicago, 1942)
Instructor: Edward Foote

1.    Course introduction, nomenclature, action removal, cautions  
2.    Soundboard and case construction, grands and uprights
       {read chapt. VI}
3.    Pinblock,  plates, pins and strings  {read pg. 130-149}
4.    String behavior, tuning hammer introduction, unison tuning {chapt II,  
       tuning drill in ear training lab}
5.    Action theory & construction,  The harmonic series {pg-150-163}
6.    Action theory & construction,  intervals    {pg. 163-183}
7.   Action regulation, listening to intervals       {chapt V}
8.    Action regulation, action response  MID TERM TEST  (written & lab)
9.    Tempering, ear recognition training, hammer technique {chapt IV}
10.  The equal temperament, explanation and analysis  {pg. 74-86}
11.  Testing the tuning of a piano    {practise room unison tuning}
12.  The history of temperaments    { Jorgenson, Owen.  Tuning .  Michigan
       State University Press, (Ann Arbor 1987), reserve?)
13.  History of the pianos development, review of tuning skills
14  General care and maintainance,  review of action regulation