I don't really think there should be a question of ethics here. Efficacy is another matter. It is true that most all of us start as part-time tuners, but there is something to think about and discuss here. Some of you have read the book "This is Your Brain on Music" by Daniel Levitan. It is a good book, if a poor title. The book is mainly about how listening and playing music affects the brain. One part of this book looks at the "10,000 Hour Rule." Simply put, a person achieves the master level of a skill after 10,000 hours of practice. If you Google 10,000 hour rule you will find numerous citings by scientists and authors. Mozart put in enough hours as a kid to become an expert keyboard performer, and later a composer. 20 hours a week for 10 years will do it. How many part-timers will achieve this level and how soon? Part-time for some may be 20 or more hours each week, for others it may be 4 hours per week. All of us have corrected problems we caused, repaired improperly, or just misdiagnosed when we were beginners at piano service. If we don't put in the time, will we achieve a level of expertise soon enough to keep a piano in proper shape? At a meeting of the International Association of Piano Builders and Technicians almost twenty years ago, there was a question asked by the Americans of the Korean technicians. The translator had to repeat or rephrase the question several times because it did not make sense to the Koreans. The question put to them was, "How many part-time piano tuners are there in Korea?" Their eventual response was, "None. Using a part-time piano technician makes no more sense than using a part time brain surgeon." Bruce Dornfeld, RPT bdornfeld at earthlink.net North Shore Chapter -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090330/47e95ced/attachment.html>
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