teaching and testing

[Wimblees@AOL.COM]

In the discussion of teaching, I mentioned that having a basic understanding 
of music theory should be a prerequisite for learning how to tune. Knowing, 
understanding, and recognizing what a scale is, what intervals are, and even 
to some degree, how a unisons is supposed to sound like, are the essentials 
in tuning a piano. 

Relating this to the earlier discussion we had about using only an ETD to 
pass the tuning exam, one of the arguments against this is that someone could 
tune a piano using an ETD and get a whole section one note off because the 
note didn't switch. I don't want to delve too much into the political side of 
this subject on this list, but I just wanted to throw out this comment 
regarding the written portion of the PTG exams. Perhaps in addition to the 
written test, we should have a "playing" test, where an examinee has to play 
a major scale, play a third, forth, fifth, or octave, from any note on the 
scale, and identify a correct unison.

Willem