[CAUT] CAUT Endorsement (was Re: Job Opening, U. of Michigan, Ann Arbor)

[Richard Brekne]

Not to mention administrative skills, rebuilding skills, highly refined 
action regulation and renovation skills, voicing skills, and leadership 
skills.  Seems to me we are shooting for a set of qualifications for a 
person who is to head up a department.  Under such a person could work 
others... either with similar skills or as apprentices.  Then you'd have 
something fairly tight up to the old German Meister system.  Since we 
don't have factories to train piano techs as in the old days... I cant 
think of a better place to take up the slack then a university with a 
thus qualified head of department to oversee your journeymans education.

Just a thought on the tuning test idea.  The present RPT test is to my 
mind of thinking absurdly time consuming to set up and execute.  Nor do 
I believe it should be necessary to have it such.  A tuning standard can 
be easily defined in terms of what decided upon sets of coincident 
partials behave like when tuned.  As a banal example, one could simple 
ask the examinee to execute a bass tuning from say D3 downwards in terms 
of exact 6:3 types. This is extremely easy to measure afterwards and 
requires no prior set up... outside of a reasonably detuned instrument.  
It doesn't take much imagination to see how this principle could be 
applied to encompass a real tuning that is quite acceptable in real life 
terms.  One added benefit of this approach would be that the examinee 
would know ahead of time exactly what is expected of him/her.  This is 
far from always the case in the present system.  I would think it would 
be nonproblematic to extend this approach to a very demanding test.

Cheers
RicB


    Hi-

    Since we're just talking and having some fun imaging the
    possibilities-   I think it's appropriate to make at least one addition
    to that list.  One would be hard pressed to think of any profession
    where a member might be consider a "master"- and yet have experience
    with only one way of doing things.  So it is with piano tuning.  In
    addition to other skills as mentioned, a qualified CAUT not only should
    have adequate knowledge and of tuning theory, history and various
    styles- but also have the presentation skills to present these
    topics as
    requested, occasionally, to interested students or even faculty.  This
    small duty is actually listed in my job description. There were another
    2 students who came in yesterday asking about it.  That's all.......

    thanks,

    Dennis Johnson
    St. Olaf College