Coleman vs Coleman Tuneoff

[Ron Nossaman]

>Hi Ron,
>           A standard would be hard to devise, but any old junker could be
>used to have a candidate prove some level of skill and understanding. The
>quality and integrity of examiners that I have met in recent years is such
>that I think that a low percentage of marking could be left to their judgment.
>Roger


This could get to be a worse can of worms than tuning. (BTW, I have some
idea what's wrong with tuning, but what's wrong with canned worms?)

I would imagine that the tuning test is intended to indicate the ability of
an applicant to produce a decent tuning on the piano at hand. Knowing what's
wrong with the soundboard, bridges, front string termination, duplex
scaling, hammer voicing, regulation and general action condition, pedal
adjustment, sonic effects of the overhead paddle fan, and being able to get
the housekeeper to hold off on the vacuuming until later are all valuable
skills and bits of information. Unfortunately they don't have much to do
with the problem of tuning the piano as best you can within a given time
limitation. My personal reality is that, in normal field work, I don't often
have the time to dink with incremental improvements (nearly ALWAYS needed)
unless the customer has a specific complaint. Any work done beyond tuning is
billed accordingly. What they *know* about the requirements for passing the
tuning test, can be quantified by grading the result against established
criteria. Voicing and false beat elimination are, though related, entirely
different concerns. Also, you really can't leave it up to the judgement of
the examiners because that's contrary to the intent of the established
testing standards.  A good start would be to establish some sort of
rational, quantifiable criteria by which we can all agree on what
constitutes good voicing, what causes false beats in the first place, and
what to do about either. Lots-o-luck. 

 Ron