Matthew The post cards are sent the ALL the schools and churches in August, (I just did a mailing), at the end of November, just before Easter and again in May. It's to remind them that I'm here, ready and available to work. There are over about 300 schools, both public and private, and about 250 churches on Oahu.?Most probably don't have a piano, but since I don't know which ones don't, all of them get a post card, anyway. I usually get enough phone calls to pay for the post cards. As I said, I just did my August mailing, mostly because public schools are starting next week. So far I've I gotten one call from a private high school with 4 pianos, and one call from a church. I also got a call from the music director of?a church that doesn't have a piano, but has one in her house. (a 20 year old grand that no one has ever serviced other than tuning, so there is a potential action regulation job there).? Wim -----Original Message----- From: Matthew Todd <toddpianoworks at att.net> To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Sat, Aug 1, 2009 2:35 am Subject: Re: [pianotech] Why bother to tune a Piano? Wim, ? On your postcards to school and churches, do you find yourself having to call them anyway to remind them of their tunings? TODD PIANO WORKS Matthew Todd, Piano Technician (979) 248-9578 http://www.toddpianoworks.com --- On Sat, 8/1/09, wimblees at aol.com <wimblees at aol.com> wrote: From: wimblees at aol.com <wimblees at aol.com> Subject: Re: [pianotech] Why bother to tune a Piano? To: fg at floydgadd.com, pianotech at ptg.org Date: Saturday, August 1, 2009, 6:31 AM On my postcards to churches I write: The piano provides great inspiration for your church service. Having the pianos serviced twice a year assures that they will be in tune, maintain their value and give many years of service On my post cards to schools I write: Children learn by listening and reading. Listening to an out of tune piano is like reading a text book with spelling mistakes.??Having the pianos serviced twice a year assures that they will be in tune, maintain their value and give many years of service Willem (Wim) Blees, RPT Piano Tuner/Technician Mililani, Oahu, HI 808-349-2943 Author of: The Business of Piano Tuning available from Potter Press www.pianotuning.com -----Original Message----- From: Floyd Gadd <fg at floydgadd.com> To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Fri, Jul 31, 2009 5:24 pm Subject: [pianotech] Why bother to tune a Piano? List, I am sending out a newsletter from time to time to a mailing list of schools, churches and piano teachers. (Archive is at http://tuning.floydgadd.com/html/newsletters.html) I've just finished composing my August edition. In my next issue I would like to delve into the question of why it is desirable and important to tune a piano. In this case, I'm not exploring reasons that benefit the longevity of the piano itself. I'm looking for particularly apt statements that speak to such things as the capacity of the human spirit for beauty, the benefits of having a well trained ear, and so forth. Maybe the core question I'm really after is this: Why bother to attune ourselves to beauty? I think we live in an age where we have largely lost the capacity to talk about beauty. So much of the music and entertainment industry is driven by a pragmatic approach to success, where success is defined in terms of money, fame, power (political and otherwise) and self actualization. And much current thinking is driven by a cultural relativism the essentially pushes to deny any real possibility that beauty actually exists. I find that at times I need to deliberately read and think in this area just to keep my courage up. Some particularly helpful books for me (even if they don't tackle the topic head-on) have been: C. S. Lewis - An Experiment in Criticism - The Abolition of Man Ken Meyers - All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes Jason Harms - The Affections of the Heart in Art Abraham Kaplan - The Aesthetics of the Popular Arts (in The journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Spring 1966) What have you read that has particularly nourished your courage to pursue and promote beauty in a world where so many parents of piano students (and even some teachers) seem to have the attitude of "why bother?" (In our case, why bother to tune a piano?) Or maybe you've got some things just burning in your soul and you're ready for a soapbox. Here's your chance. Some of us are listening. Floyd Gadd Manitoba Chapter -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090801/1e303a02/attachment-0001.htm>
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