First of all, greetings, it's good to be back. My old UUCP gateway was having problems with the listserv for some reason. Recently, an old PS/2 30-286 had become available due to the retirement of a professor, so they gave it to me. It's just good enough to serve as a terminal for the VAX server here. Please bear with me while I learn this arcane mail server and editor. On the topic of educating artists and promoters: My experience has been similar. I would rather work for an artist that was either totally ignorant of technical matters, or one that was very well informed. As an example - the last time I worked for George Winston (don't laugh), I was forwarded a ten or twelve page suppliment to the technical rider of the contract that was written specifically for the Piano Tech. It went into great (though slighly muddled) detail on how to tune a piano (I guess they were afraid they would have to use a stagehand to tune somewhere ;), and _very_ specific instruction on not only how, but precisely _which_ notes he wanted voiced (so much for the myth of spontanious improvisation). When I digested this dissertation, I realized that all he really wanted was a decent tuning and voicing. The effect was, that because the house management interpreted the rider as calling for modifications to the piano, they refused to allow the house Steinway to be used. So, the promoter had to pay to have the local CD moved in. I had a little talk with George's manager and pointed out how there were better ways of insuring quality prep work. He asked if I wanted to tour with them (har). I politely declined andoffered instead to give them some names in their tour cities. In short, I don't think we'll ever be rid of this problem - but will continue tobe one of the challenges, along with ambient noise and environmental changes andinsufficient time, that concert techs will have to learn to deal with.
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC