You brought back some memories, John. Believe it or not, my very first piano tuning was when I was in high school. It was a boarding academy where part of the ciriculum was work. My job was as a helper in the music department. One day, my boss, the music director (they only had one), came to work with a little box under his arm and a few tools in a pouch. He said, "You're going to tune a piano today." I did. Sort of. He had a Peterson StroboTuner, one of the old ones with a spinning wheel that you had to stop the strobe pattern on for each note. (I'm trying to remember, but I think it had 12 strobe wheels.) I got to tune the unisons by ear but the individual notes of the keyboard were set by the StroboTuner. I'm sure most everyone knows what that sounded like as there was no stretch. The home study course from the Empire School of Piano Tuning came shortly thereafter, I think at one of my summer breaks. They taught a very basic fourths & fifths temperament that I never mastered well enough to have a satisfactory outcome but it served me poorly until John W. Travis (A Guide To Restringing) taught me a method of mostly 3rds & 6ths that clicked with me. Octaves and unisons improved nicely along the way as they were always pretty easy for me to hear what pleased my ear. I have to wonder whether there are some courses that start out, "I Grog, (dink, dink, dink), do hearby bequeath (dink, dink, dink) this student tuning lever (dink, dink, dink, dink)"... written on a slate tablet. LOL! Everybody started somewhere... Thanks for the trip down memory lane, John. :-) Brian From: jrpiano at win.eastlink.ca To: pianotech at ptg.org Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:35:23 -0300 Subject: Re: [pianotech] TuneLab as an IPhone App When I started out, I took the correspondence course, that was from what I have learned, the worst one there was. Initially, I was only intending to do my own piano. My Daughter's music teacher talked me into doing his, then some students, then a music store. It was part time at first, but blossomed into a full time career. I have been to approaching 20 conventions, and learned a lot from PTG. When I dropped the university, I had tuned for 19 years. I took a year off from that, and was encouraged to apply again, so this is my 20th year, and I am looking forward to next year. I think you will find that there are quite a few, who started out not thinking it would turn into a career. Oh yes, after I had done quite a few by ear, I was not satisfied with the end result, so I bought a SOT. It allowed me to give a tuning that the customers liked, and I from the beginning, have never called anyone, to say it is time to have your piano tuned. They call me. Tooners, will drop by the wayside, but the serious ones will become tuners. I have nothing against anyone, who starts out tuning his own piano, no matter how. It doesn't take them long to find out there is more to it than they thought. In some cases it will be more business for you, broken strings, mistakes etc. Just as a matter of interest, how did you first become involved in piano tuning? Was it a school like North Bennett street in Boston, or a good correspondence course etc. John Ross Windsor, Nova Scotia. _________________________________________________________________ The New Busy is not the old busy. Search, chat and e-mail from your inbox. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?ocid=PID27925::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:032010_3 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100315/a0d8a9ec/attachment.htm>
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