[pianotech] RPT exam?

[Floyd Gadd]

I have yet to take the tuning exam, and am at a fairly early point in my
preparation for it.

I can sympathize with anyone who has difficulty hearing the beats.  I find
my exercises in
listening to be more encouraging on larger instruments, but the one I have
most available to
me right now is a console, and I am experiencing some frustration.

I do not expect to hear everything I need to hear right away.  Let me draw
an analogy to another
field of listening and making aural distinctions.

I am a teacher of singing.  When my study of pedagogy was fairly well
underway, I decided to make use
of a recorded resource that was designed to heighten a singer's awareness of
the distinction between various
vowels.  English is my first language, and I picked up right away that
mastering some of the vowels that are used
in German and French, but not in English, was going to be challenging.

When I first began using this audio training course, I could not for the
life of me pick up some of the
distinctions that I was supposed to hear and reproduce.  One pair of vowels
in particular baffled me--they sounded
exactly the same to me.  At first.

If I had been exposed to this material in a one or two day seminar, and came
at it with the expectation that by the end
a couple of days I would have a handle on the essentials, I would probably
come to the conclusion that the task was impossible.  But because I had an
audio training course on tape, and was curious enough to stick with it, I
gradually
not only became aware of the distinctions, but was able to make considerable
progress toward mastery.

I now encourage my students, even after they have completed a language unit
in their "diction for singers" class, to listen repeatedly over a period of
time to recordings of a native speaker reading the poetry they are learning
to sing.  When they are dealing with an unfamiliar language, two or three
weeks of listening to a poem is not enough.  It takes a longer period
of persistence to pick up the subtle details.

This experience gives me courage as I seek to hear what I cannot yet hear.
I keep on hearing people say, "If you can tune a unison, you can learn to
tune a temperament."  If that is true, and I believe it is, I am going to
learn to hear what I cannot yet hear.  A little of it is coming, but it is
going to take a LOT of hours of what feels like failure--but isn't--to be
able to gain momentum toward the exam.

To draw another analogy that relates to my son, who rides a unicyle, I have
heard it said (and I believe it) that the key to leaning to ride the thing
is a willingness to fall down the requisite number of times.  And the number
is not small.

All that to say:  Take heart.  Persistence pays off!  This endeavor is not a
quick study for most of us.  Often when we're
investing effort and feeling no progress, the progress is actually
powerfully underway.  The long haul brings success.

All the best!
Floyd Gadd   www.floydgadd.com