Interesting Days

[Avery Todd]

Hi List,

    Well, I just spent the last three days prepping 4 Baldwin grands for a big
sale here in Houston. It was held at the Astrohall, part of the Astrodome
complex. It's a very large room with app. 200-300 instruments there,
including Baldwin, Kawai, Wurlitzer, Weber, Chickering, Roland, and
the Baldwin and Kawai keyboards, plus misc. others, including used
instruments.
    The first day, starting in the afternoon before I knew what it was 
going to
be like (I've never done this before), I did all the regulation stuff and 
then by
the time I started to try and tune, there were also 3 other tuners in the room
tuning! Boy, was I glad I had an SAT!!!!!!! :-) I just wished I'd had the 
earphone
stuff.
    Interestingly, there was only one tuner there at the time who was tuning
aurally. He was from Japan that Kawai had sent in to prep the new Shigeru
Kawai's. I'd never heard of them before the other day. Supposedly, they're
only importing 250 of them into the US, all hand-made (whatever that means)
and probably very expensive.
    The second day, I'd learned my lesson and I got there a little after 7 
AM to
tune the other three before all the cacophony started. A little later, 
besides all
the usual tuning, demo, etc. type of noise, there were also guys uncrating all
the Kawai's using power tools. Wonderful!! :-)
    The Kawai people asked me to stay and do some tuning for them today, but
by the time I'd finished the 4 grands, I'd had enough!
    What amazed me even more is that this dealer could actually find tuners to
tune for what he pays. Ready for the this????? $15.00!!!!!!!!!! Thankfully, 
I was
working for Baldwin, not the dealer!!!!!
    I ran across something the other day, supposedly from Picasso, that is kind
of applicable, so I'll close this rambling post with that. Most of us could 
learn
from this, including me! :-)

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The $10,000 Napkin (Pablo Picasso)

In his later years, world-renowned Spanish artist Pablo Picasso was
approached by a woman while seated alone in a café. Initially, she requested
an autograph, then impulsively asked him to draw a sketch on a napkin,
offering to pay a fair price.

Picasso scribbled briefly on a napkin, and said, "Here you go. That will be
$10,000." Shocked, the woman asked him how that could be, since it had taken
less than a minute to draw. Picasso responded, "Madam, this took me forty
years to draw."

Effective people think in terms of results, not just invested time. If you
can provide 40 years of value, why only charge for sixty seconds?

ALSO:

When I was a child I could draw like Raphael, but it's taken me a lifetime to
draw like a child.
- Picasso

Regards,
Avery