<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV><DIV>On Oct 9, 2007, at 7:40 PM, David Ilvedson wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Most of the school listings I see, would prefer PTG membership and RPT status. <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>Would new listings start including RPT and CAUT status preferred or possibly you think the RPT status can be eliminated as it has no meaning? <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>I don't see the need for another "credential". <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>Would the CAUT credential we much harder to achieve? <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>i.e. a "real" test.<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>Would existing College techs be grandfathered in?<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>Besides, it's easy to talk about it...I know all the stuff concerned with RPT status was years in the making and a huge amount of work...and the politics...YIKES...who's going to take that job on? <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>Are you guys crazy?</FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">David Ilvedson, RPT</FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Pacifica, CA<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>94044</FONT></DIV> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </SPAN>Are we crazy? Yep, you got that right. I guess we can pretend to be "crazy like a fox," but your assessment of how difficult this will be is spot on. </DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </SPAN>So the first question to answer is "Why?" I guess it would be accurate to say that this notion grew out of a desire to market "something" to the higher education community. [BTW, this is perhaps the most easily targeted market PTG has to go after, with 1500 - 2000 easily identified individual music departments]. We all know that most music departments are under-staffed, under-served, generally in a mess when it comes to piano condition and maintenance. We, followers of Don Quixote that we are (at least this is true of me personally), want to do something about this, for all sorts of idealistic reasons, and perhaps from some self-serving motives as well. </DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </SPAN>What to do? Well, we want to tell music departments how to take care of their piano situations, which is an awfully complex thing to try to do. The Guidelines was a first step. One possible second step is to try to tell them who they should hire. Hmm, tell them to hire RPTs? Would that work? We came to the conclusion it wouldn't. Obviously a caut needs a lot beyond RPT. I think we all remember starting work as a caut and feeling simply overwhelmed, confused, and out of our league - well, true for me, anyway, and a lot of others have said the same. So we really don't feel comfortable recommending they hire a green RPT, or even a well-seasoned one. 25 years of home service really don't prepare you for caut-dom much better than 2 or 3 years.</DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </SPAN>So if we want to market members of PTG to music departments, we need to have some way of identifying people who have something like the chops and knowledge needed. (At the same time, we need to begin to provide the training needed; hence our development of caut classes at national and occasionally regional conventions). And we've been chewing over where to go with that for a few years now. It happens that the current PTG board is, led by President Dale Probst, is strongly in favor of us getting to work and making something happen. In fact, we have been instructed to have something concrete for the mid-year board meeting this winter, and to have it include skills testing, written testing, and something curricular. Talk about ambitious! The general notion is that this will be called a "CAUT Endorsement" on top of RPT, with the possibility that other "Endorsements" might follow, as, for instance, in rebuilding.</DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </SPAN>To give a concrete example of where this may be heading, the skills testing sub-committee, consisting for now of Don McKechnie, Ken Eschete and myself, has developed the concept of a caut tuning test. I'll quote here from our working document:</DIV><P class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><SPAN style="">"Our consensus is that we should test for the skill level appropriate for a concert tuner. What does this mean? In simplest terms:<O:P></O:P></SPAN></P><P class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><SPAN style="">1) Concert tuners stretch octaves quite a bit (even to the extreme), doing so in a very consistent way, demonstrating complete control. <O:P></O:P></SPAN></P><P class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><SPAN style="">2) They can tune extremely stable unisons that are absolutely pure with all three strings sounding. <O:P></O:P></SPAN></P><P class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><SPAN style="">3) They can produce a concert tuning efficiently and rapidly, generally in less than an hour (assuming a reasonable starting point).<O:P></O:P></SPAN></P><P class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><SPAN style=""><SPAN style="mso-tab-count:1"> "</SPAN>In addition, we believe that we should focus on the concrete ability of being able to produce a full, quality tuning in conditions as close to real life as possible. Does the candidate actually have the chops to complete a full tuning and meet these criteria? That is the question we want to answer before we can tell academia that this person is capable."<O:P></O:P></SPAN></P><P class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><SPAN class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </SPAN>With that as the premise for a tuning test, our initial design is as follows: </P><P class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><SPAN style=""><SPAN style="mso-tab-count: 1"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"> </SPAN><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"> "</SPAN></FONT></FONT></SPAN>The candidate will tune a concert piano (7' to 9'), complete, with a time limit of 90 minutes at a maximum. The piano will then be checked for adequate and consistent stretch, stability, and unisons." </SPAN> </P><P class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><SPAN class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </SPAN>The stretch component is a little complex to describe here, but it involves measuring enough partials of enough notes to examine 4:1 and 8:1 matches over the top and bottom octave or so of the piano, flagging inconsistencies, and aurally verifying them. (It involves Excel spreadsheet, and if anyone with knowledge and experience in Excel would like to volunteer to help, we'd love to have some assistance). The unisons/stability component involves pounding/slamming the piano (all notes) in some way, and then checking unisons. Samples of "suspect" (or obvious) unison deficiencies would be flagged aurally, and then measured. The working notion is that the spread of pitch within notes of a unison should be within 0.5 cents, though that would have to be beta-tested.</P><P class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><SPAN class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </SPAN>So there you have at least a taste of what we are up to. Hey, it keeps us busy and out of other trouble <G>.</P><DIV><BR><DIV><DIV>Regards,</DIV><DIV>Fred Sturm</DIV><DIV>University of New Mexico</DIV><DIV><A href="mailto:fssturm@unm.edu">fssturm@unm.edu</A></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV></DIV><BR></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV></BODY></HTML>