Oooops! pretty funny Richard,
Paul
"rwest1 at unl.edu" <rwest1 at unl.edu>
Sent by: caut-bounces at ptg.org
10/19/2007 10:21 AM
Please respond to
College and University Technicians <caut at ptg.org>
To
College and University Technicians <caut at ptg.org>
cc
Subject
Re: [CAUT] CAUT Endorsement (was Re: Job Opening, U. of Michigan, Ann
Arbor)
Make that the school of hard "knocks." What a place for spell check to
fail me. Hope it was good for a laugh.
Richard
On Oct 19, 2007, at 9:29 AM, rwest1 at unl.edu wrote:
Hi, Jim,
After I got out of Western Iowa Tech, I thought I knew quite a bit about
pianos. I quickly learned that I still had a lot to learn. I barely knew
enough to pass my RPT exam. In the 35 years since, then, I would have to
say that the expansion of my knowledge was based on experience, i.e. a
problem occurrs that I haven't encountered before and I have to deal with
it. Hopefully I fix the problem. In a nutshell that's what I mean by
"experience based."
A little book that was particularly helpful early in my career was a book
titled The Piano Tuners Pocket Companion by Oliver Faust. On one side of
the page there was a symptom and on the other was the solution. Early on
that got me through a lot of repairs, but as I expanded my knowledge, I
realized that repairs aren't always a simple symptom/solution question.
Dampers are a good example of what I mean. You have a ringing damper, but
a plethora of possible solutions including ones that don't even have
anything to do with the actual damper you're working on (sympathetic
vibrations or a duplex length of string). But with perseverance you
figure out where the problem lies and learn what to look for. This
becomes an experienced based repair that you add to your mental data bank.
Experience gives you a bag of "tricks" to draw from to help diagnose
problems, but these tricks of the trade aren't compiled and written down
and so it's hard for beginners to get what they need to know, without
going through the school of hard kocks.
The problem in developing materials is multifaceted. First there's
figuring out how to deal with the multilayered nature of our work. Second
there's the problem of who's going to be using the materials. Let's face
it, we aren't all equally gifted in the mechanical arts. Some people
hardly need an explanation and others need detailed explanations and even
then may screw up.
So when I pose the question: What does a university tech need to know and
how does he/she acquire that knowledge, I relate first to my own
experience. I learned to be less compromising and more exacting in my
work. If I wasn't, I'd hear about it. I went to PTG meetings and picked
up ideas there. I scratched my head a lot and just spent the time it took
to learn how to work on things like harpsichords, an inventory, reports,
etc. etc. I persevered. But it would have been helpful if I'd had a book
like Oliver Faust's that gave straightforward solutions to common
problems. Also I realized that learning multiple ways of doing something,
forced me to think about what works best for me. Key bushing is an
example. I've tried a whole host of different ways to bush keys. I'm
still looking for the perfect system. I've settled on a system that isn't
particularly fast and efficient, but it gives me fairly predictable
results.
The first priority in concert work in getting it right. Speed and
efficiency should also be there, but not necessarily. Especially for the
mechanically challenged. Sometimes doing a job slowly but predictably is
the only way.
I don't know if my longwinded explanation helps, but there it is. I'm
glad you asked, because it helped me try to try to get a better grasp of
how we learn this profession. We don't write or teach in a vacuum.
Perhaps the greatest challenge is getting through to people. That means
we need to know how people learn so that our materials reach them. I
don't know that PTG has been particularly good at addressing this aspect
of learning.
Sorry I took so long to reply. I've had lots on my plate this week.
Retirement isn't about just sitting around and getting bored or watching a
screen all day.
Richard West
On Oct 16, 2007, at 6:58 PM, Jim Busby wrote:
Richard,
I’m helping develop the curriculum and agree with all your points below,
but could you explain/elaborate on #2 below “CAUT classes/materials need
to be experience based”?
Thanks.
Jim Busby
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of
rwest1 at unl.edu
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 7:44 AM
To: College and University Technicians
Subject: Re: [CAUT] CAUT Endorsement (was Re: Job Opening, U. of
Michigan,Ann Arbor)
I would like to weight in with a few thoughts.
1. Education--CAUT has been doing well in recent years to develop classes
and I believe that should be the highest priority, not only classes at the
convention, but classes at every regional seminar and at local
institutions. The classes should become more or less standardized and
repeated annually. What CAUT should be asking is: What core knowledge
can be taught across the country, not just at the annual convention.
Nationwide distribution/availabiltiy should be paramount since many
technicians will not be able to attend the convention annually or even
regularly.
2. Experience--How does anyone get the experience to do advanced work?
Unfortunately most of that comes from seat-of-the-pants, in-the-field
work. When I started at the University of Nebraska, I had been a piano
technician for only 3 years with practically no experience in voicing, and
no knowledge of harpsichords or other historical keyboards. I learned on
the job. That first 5 years was hell. The 25 years after that were
great. CAUT classes/materials need to be experience based. We already
have books that provide general knowledge.
3. The Guidelines--One goal of the Guidelines was to inform
administrators about what the job includes so that they would appreciate
the intricacies of the job and the pay scale would rise. This hasn't
really happened; our document is seen as self serving. Therefore the main
value of the document is to inform technicians about what they're getting
into when they apply for university jobs. CAUT education needs to
continue to inform all technicians about the nature of university work so
that when the interview comes around, they'll be able to differentiate
what we do from what all other staff people do. You can't expect a higher
pay scale when your immediate supervisor may be a staff person that isn't
making as much as what you're asking. Administrators don't see us as any
different than a stage manager, administrative assistant, or, yes, a
specialized custodian. Until that perception changes, or until applicants
refuse jobs that don't pay wages that are competitive with private
concert work, then university techs will continue to be underpaid.
4. Testing--Until RPT is an accepted nationwide standard, I would put
testing at a low priority. If testing is the current priority, the cart
is being put in front of the horse. The problems we have with RPT testing
are IMHO greater for a CAUT standard. The test would have to provide a
better way to address testing problems like nationwide availability,
qualified and experience examiners, testing that is fair and objective
(using ETD's when ETD's can be problematic as repeatably accurate), length
of time to give the test, using volunteers vs developing paid examiners,
etc. A complete tuning, for example, sounds good as a goal for a testing
standard, but implementing that seems to hark back to the good ole boy
days.
Richard West, retired (more or less)
On Oct 12, 2007, at 5:46 PM, Fred Sturm wrote:
On Oct 12, 2007, at 1:07 PM, Richard Brekne wrote:
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 Ric,
This is, in fact, very close to the current concept for a caut
tuning test. We analyze a sequence of coincident partials for consistency.
It could, of course, be 6:3 octaves as you mention. And there are many
other possibilities as well. Our initial plan is to look at double and
triple octaves, the 4:1 and 8:1 partial matches, and see how evenly they
progress. If something is out of kilter, it should show up pretty clearly.
But we don't, in this early draft version, plan to ask the
examinee to do anything but tune "your best concert tuning," explaining
that we will look particularly for crystal clear and rock solid unisons,
and for evenness of stretch in the outer octaves. IOW, no artificial
constraints, just do what you normally do in that circumstance.
I think the requirement that all unisons be within 0.5 cents
tolerance after pounding is pretty demanding, though well within what I
hope most of us are producing on a day to day basis. Beta testing will
reveal whether or not this is so, and whether we might need to fudge a
little to, say, 0.6 or something, and possibly more in high treble where
ETD resolution can be a problem.
How the analysis of partial matches will work: well, it is at
least an intriguing concept, and seems worth exploring. On the face of it,
it seems like it should work like a charm, but proof is in the pudding.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm at unm.edu
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