Any correspondence course, is only as good as what you put into it. After joining PTG, I learned that the course I had completed, was the worst course available. They are still in business, and I did the course in 1975. It did however give me a course outline to work with. I have been to approaching 20 conventions, where I filled in the blanks, in my knowledge. But had I not started with the correspondence course, even the inferior one I took, I would not be making a living from it today. You can have the best course in the world, but if you don¹t apply yourself, or just read the answers from the course material, you will fail as a piano tuner. You must satisfy, the customer, or your business will fail. John Ross Windsor, Nova Scotia On 22/02/10 10:10 AM, "Brian Trout" <brian_trout at hotmail.com> wrote: > Don't ya just love carefully crafted ad copy? > > By reading the part that says, "...tuners who earn an average of $75.00 to > $95.00 per-hour tuning pianos", many people would assume that piano tuners > average $75 to $95 per hour by tuning pianos. Nope. > > Most people would very likely misinterpret the part before it that says, "the > small and exclusive list" and reason that to mean an average of all piano > tuners. Wrong again. Yes, there are some who have developed their tuning > skills to be able to tune their average piano in about an hour and live in > areas where a tuning runs around $100(+/-). That would be a "small and > exclusive list", in a manner of speaking, but would not be an accurate > representation of any kind of average of all tuners in North America. > > Don't ya just love how they change referrence sources so craftily? They start > out with a blanket statement from the US Dept of Labor Statistics that says, > "piano tuners can earn very good incomes." Doesn't mean ALL piano tuners WILL > earn very good incomes. But some CAN. Not much different than many other > fields. I also notice a specific absense of monetary figures from official > sources. > > And then, they immediately go on to quote "a recently published almanac". > Huh??? What the heck is that? It could be a term paper from a fourth grader. > It could be a post on a blog somewhere that these same people put out just to > satisfy this statement. It's a "nothing" statement, and a "published almanac" > can pretty much say anything, BS included, and all they're doing is saying > that it's been published recently. Duh. (I could publish my story of > oceanfront property in AZ, too, and even put a referrence to it in ad copy > somewhere. Doesn't put an ocean there.) > > Here's just hoping that people looking to learn about piano tuning will do > enough searching on the internet to find some reputable people to talk to. > Lots of tuner/techs have real websites now and if I were looking, I'd probably > try to find some of these and talk to some real techs for their take on > "schools" like this. And hopefully, some real techs would point would-be > people in more reasonable directions of education. > > If I had to start over again, I'd probably join the PTG and look for a place > to start working on pianos. A mentor would be great. If not possible, a > large piano store with a substantial shop would be a place to do some serious > learning. Even just finding access to a decade or so of the PTG journals > would hold a wealth of info for someone willing to do some reading. > > These "home study courses", at least of this nature, are totally worthless. I > took one in the early 1980's. Totally worthless. Well, except for the tuning > hammer they sent with it. I still have that, and even use it on occasion for > a tuning pin in a tight location. I may even have a rubber mute or two, but > that's about all I have to show for it. The actual tuning part of it tried to > teach a temperament that was so bad I don't think I ever got it to work well. > I even tried it after learning to tune a good one years later, still couldn't > make it work. (The temperament that finally "clicked" with me was an > adaptation and expansion of the one in a book I managed to find, "A Guide to > Restringing". For me, it never was an issue hearing the beats, it was just > knowing how to organize them.) > > I don't know if there are some legitimate home study applications these days. > (Is Randy Potter still doing one?) But this ain't one!! > > FWIW... just an opinion... > > Brian > > >> > Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:51:53 -0600 >> > From: dahechler at att.net >> > To: pianotech at ptg.org >> > Subject: Re: [pianotech] Ron Falcone piano tuning course >> > >> > WHERE, in California and New York - most definitely NOT in the midwest - >> > like St. Louis, MO >> > >> > "According to the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics, piano tuners can >> > earn very good incomes. In fact, in a recently published almanac on >> > career opportunities, piano tuners were listed in the/ *top twenty* /* >> > professions* out of a total of/ two hundred/. Probably the best kept >> > secret in the world is that now you can join the small and exclusive >> > list of tuners who earn an average of *$75.00 to $95.00 *per-hour tuning >> > pianos! " >> > >> > The person that wrote this MUST be on DRUGS .............. >> > >> > I just LOVE these general statements. (Like the government is trying to >> > tell us that the housing market is rebounding - again, NOT in St. Louis, >> MO) >> > >> > DH >> > > > > Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft¹s powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now. > <http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469226/direct/01/> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100222/46735707/attachment-0001.htm>
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