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<DIV><STRONG><FONT face=Arial>Check that the address in your address book, is
correct.</FONT></STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT face=Arial>Also sometimes there is a delay, between posting
your message, and seeing it on the list.</FONT></STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT face=Arial></FONT></STRONG> </DIV>
<DIV>John M. Ross<BR>Windsor, Nova Scotia, Canada<BR><A
href="mailto:jrpiano@win.eastlink.ca">jrpiano@win.eastlink.ca</A></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=ifixpiano@gmail.com href="mailto:ifixpiano@gmail.com">Michael
Magness</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=pianotech@ptg.org
href="mailto:pianotech@ptg.org">Pianotech List</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, August 05, 2007 5:57
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: Piano Training Question
(Long)</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Can somone help me out? My posts get thru when I answer but not
when I originate and send anyone know why?<BR><BR>
<DIV><SPAN class=gmail_quote>On 8/5/07, <B class=gmail_sendername>Geoff
Sykes</B> <<A
href="mailto:thetuner@ivories52.com">thetuner@ivories52.com</A>>
wrote:</SPAN>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Thank
you Israel!<BR><BR><- Insert hearty round of applause here
-><BR><BR>It wasn't until I was well into the Potter course that I
realized that there <BR>even were legit schools for piano technology. But
even if I had, age, time<BR>and resources would have prevented me from
attending one of them. Potter's<BR>course, in retrospect, was a great primer
on piano technology. If nothing <BR>else it provided me with enough of a
foundation in the craft that I could<BR>attend chapter meetings and
conferences, hold reasonably intelligent<BR>conversations and actually
understand and absorb what was being discussed. I <BR>have had the extreme
good fortune to receive much hands on training from<BR>several notable
members of the Los Angeles and South Bay chapters. And now,<BR>three years
after completing the Potter course, and getting ready to take my <BR>second
stab at the tuning exam, I am more and more realizing just how much
I<BR>have learned and mastered since I began. I'm also realizing that as
good as<BR>I think I know I am now, even once I pass all three RPT exams I'm
still <BR>going to be just a novice. There is no replacing good mentoring,
practice<BR>and years of experience in mastering our craft. And I am looking
forward to<BR>years of continuing this learning process. I echo what Alan
Barnard said: <BR>"...it has been the PTG that made most of the difference.
I would not trade<BR>my membership in this great organization and the
association of my dear<BR>friends and colleagues for anything!"<BR><BR>--
Geoff Sykes <BR>-- Los Angeles<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>-----Original
Message-----<BR>From: <A
href="mailto:pianotech-bounces@ptg.org">pianotech-bounces@ptg.org</A>
[mailto:<A href="mailto:pianotech-bounces@ptg.org">pianotech-bounces@ptg.org
</A>] On Behalf<BR>Of Israel Stein<BR>Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2007 8:55
AM<BR>To: <A
href="mailto:pianotech@ptg.org">pianotech@ptg.org</A><BR>Subject: Piano
Training Question (Long)<BR><BR><BR>To the list,<BR><BR>I have been watching
this discussion with a great deal of interest, <BR>because I have been
involved in aspects of technician training<BR>through my work with the PTG
in various capacities for many years now<BR>- first on the chapter level,
then on the national - and perhaps<BR>international - scene. For years now I
have been observing technical <BR>skills attained through various learning
paths as demonstrated on PTG<BR>exams and working on developing
methodologies to fill the voids left<BR>by the typical trial-and-error or
correspondence school training that<BR>most practitioners in our field bring
to the profession. So to the<BR>extent that I can, I'll share my
observations.<BR><BR>My own background is an echo of what others have
posted. After a<BR>career in commercial photography fizzled out, I got
interested in <BR>piano technology (after having built a kit harpsichord
- but that's<BR>a different story.) First I tried to
tech myself using the Reblitz<BR>book - after all, how difficult could it
be? I found that book quite<BR>flawed - there were a bunch of processes and
procedures described,<BR>but no overall understanding of why one was
supposed to do things<BR>this way or that way and no good understanding of
how to judge the<BR>results (most obviously of a regulation, but in other
contexts too). <BR>It was sort of flying blind - you follow the recipe and
trust that<BR>the result is correct, because Arthur says so... I then signed
up for<BR>a correspondence course - not Randy Potter's - and found the
same<BR>problem. I was doing assignments, learning nomenclature and
<BR>processes, but the piano I was working on didn't seem to be
improving<BR>much... And I had no idea what my tuning sounded like,
objectively<BR>speaking - even though I counted beats until I couldn't hear
them any <BR>more... Then life intervened...<BR><BR>Some years later I got
an opportunity to move to Boston and attend<BR>the North Bennet Street
School for 2 years, and I found out that my<BR>initial judgements about the
Reblitz and the correspondence course <BR>were basically correct. The
processes and procedures being taught in<BR>those media were hit-or-miss at
best and plain incorrect in some<BR>cases. I did have a leg up on the other
students in terms of<BR>nomenclature - quite a bit of money spent on
something I would have <BR>learned anyway... I did come away from the
correspondence course with<BR>a nice three-ring binder which still holds
some of my NBSS notes...<BR><BR>At NBSS I got a good background on which to
build a comprehensive<BR>approach to piano technology - both the tuning and
technical end of<BR>it. And passed the RPT exams on the first try without a
hitch before<BR>completing my first year at school. And after a bit of
struggling (I<BR>am not very good at promoting myself) I have been able to
make a <BR>decent living at it, build two businesses - one in Boston and
after<BR>moving another one in California - worked Steinway C
& A in Boston a<BR>couple years after finishing school, and now also
hold a half-time<BR>University job which gets me health insurance and
retirement benefits<BR>- besides running a very busy practice.<BR><BR>I will
concentrate on the technical end - because that's where my<BR>testing and
educational efforts have been concentrated. <BR><BR>Without a good
conceptual grasp of the nature of the technology on<BR>which the piano is
based, the properties of the materials from which<BR>it is built or which
are used to service it, the goals of the<BR>procedures one undertakes and
the various possible pitfalls of <BR>various approaches one is a very
incomplete practitioner. To be fair,<BR>some self-trained or
correspondence-school trained technicians<BR>develop this knowledge on their
own after years of experience. Many<BR>do not. And most don't have nearly
enough of it in the first years of <BR>their practice - resulting in
misdiagnosed conditions, misapplied<BR>remedies, misregulated instruments
and much wasted time. And clients<BR>being charged for - what?<BR><BR>In a
school environment one gets to internalize all of that <BR>theoretical and
intellectual underpinning as one is learning the<BR>tools and the
procedures. And in a school environment one gets<BR>immediate feedback on
the quality of one's learning. But more on how<BR>important that can be
later. <BR><BR>Soon after graduating from NBSS I got involved in PTG
technical<BR>testing - a lot more heavily than I intended to. It was a
funny<BR>story. This was the time the PTG was introducing the
current<BR>Technical Exam (late 80s) and our committee chair couldn't make
heads <BR>or tails of it - since it is based on an empirical approach
to<BR>regulation rather than just plugging in specs from a book.
Apparently<BR>a novel concept for this grandfathered RTT. So he dumped the
whole<BR>thing in my lap. I went to a convention and learned how to run the
<BR>exam from an experienced examiner...<BR><BR>Boston was (still is) a very
busy testing venue - so I got a good<BR>overview of the skills that
technicians of various backgrounds bring<BR>to the trade. Later on I went on
to head the Technical Testing <BR>program in the San Francisco Bay area (we
have an Exam Board that<BR>test all comers - but basically covers the
territory of 4 chapters),<BR>and for the past several years the technical
testing at the PTG<BR>Annual Conventions. In addition, I have organized and
taught various <BR>Exam Preparatory classes (that's actually a major con I
have been<BR>perpetrating on the students - they are actually "basic
skills"<BR>classes, but nobody would sign up if I called them that -
pride...) <BR>So after a good 100+ exams administered and some dozens of
classes<BR>taught I can say without equivocation that many, many candidates
and<BR>students with a correspondence school, self-taught or
mentoring<BR>backgrounds are still quite deficient in basic skills.
<BR><BR>To be perfectly fair, this is not entirely the fault of
the<BR>correspondence courses, or the learning materials. Where there is
no<BR>supervised practice and immediate feedback on technique
and<BR>methodology, the opportunities for misunderstanding and
<BR>miscomprehension are endless. I have seen this in classes I
have<BR>taught and in some post-exam interviews - where I am pretty darn
sure<BR>that what the candidate or student is doing is not what the author
or<BR>instructor meant to convey. And sometimes it is a matter of a poor
<BR>grip on a tool, or an unclear sequence of actions, or a
misapplied<BR>technique due to poor understanding of the conceptual
framework on<BR>which the technique is based, or any one of dozens of
misconceptions<BR>and misapplications that are easily corrected
in the course of <BR>continuous face-to-face instruction at a residential
program that are<BR>simply not addressed or not even noticed in
correspondence courses or<BR>self-teaching. And all materials with which I
am familiar - and that<BR>includes those published by the PTG (which I have
been for the past 3<BR>years attempting to revise) contain ineffective
techniques and flawed<BR>approaches. They are all based on learning recipes
for procedures -<BR>and not on understanding the underlying concepts,
without which <BR>practitioners have no way of assessing their own work or
dealing with<BR>unexpected issues. To be fair, some of the PTG materials do
mention<BR>the importance of learning the conceptual framework - but then
expect<BR>the student to extrapolate that from the procedures. Not
effective...<BR>I hope to do something about it fairly soon - if I can find
the time.<BR><BR>With mentoring the problem is different. All depends on the
quality<BR>of the mentors. In the past couple of years I tested
several<BR>candidates from a specific location all of whom were taught by
a<BR>mentor who appears to be superb. They displayed superior
skills.<BR>Other mentors seem to produce poorer results - and in some cases
even <BR>mislead their students with poor advice. How a beginner in the
field<BR>is supposed to judge the quality of a prospective mentor is
an<BR>insoluble problem...<BR><BR>Over the years I have tested and taught
candidates from NBSS, from <BR>the Western Ontario program, from Israel,
South Africa, Japan, China,<BR>Spain, Norway. And many US-trained candidates
who have not had formal<BR>residential training. Two patterns jump right
out:<BR><BR>1. Foreign trained technicians do a whole lot better than US
trained <BR>technicians.<BR>2. NBSS and Western Ontario graduates in general
do better than those<BR>without formal residential training.<BR><BR>I don't
know how those foreign technicians were trained, but the<BR>results speak
for themselves. And the graduates of the formal <BR>training programs in
general display a much more confident and<BR>methodical approach to the exam
tasks than many (not all) of the<BR>others. I have on occasion come across
students and candidates<BR>without formal training who displayed superior
skills after a fairly <BR>short period of self-teaching. My conversations
with them usually<BR>reveal that they have undertaken a very disciplined and
methodical<BR>approach to training themselves - with substantial daily
practice<BR>sessions, not going on to the next task until having mastered
the <BR>previous one, a relationship with several mentors who could serve
as<BR>a check on their progress, etc. In other words, they invested
the<BR>time and effort in themselves to learn the craft properly - often
at<BR>the sacrifice of some income. My conclusion is that a great many
<BR>people who try to teach themselves - whether through
correspondence<BR>courses or other literature - simply do not spend enough
time or<BR>spend the time effectively enough to master the skills. And some
who<BR>do learn a number of skills never develop the underlying conceptual
<BR>framework on which effective practice must necessarily be
based.<BR><BR>Disclaimer: Before Paul Revenko-Jones starts squawking, I must
say<BR>that - to my knowledge - I never tested a graduate of the
Chicago<BR>School of Piano Technology, so I can't speak to the quality of
their <BR>graduates' skills.<BR><BR>OK, now to speak of some attempts at
remediation. The PTG and some of<BR>its chapters do offer a great many
classes by various superb<BR>instructors at conventions and special events,
some sponsored by <BR>manufacturers and suppliers - others non-sponsored.
Eric Schandall,<BR>Don Mannino, Rick Baldassin, Richard Davenport, David
Betts, Roger<BR>Jolly are just some of the names that come to mind - people
who try<BR>to provide that conceptual framework which is so often missing.
The <BR>problem here is two-fold - information overload and lack
of<BR>follow-up. It is just very difficult for the average student
to<BR>completely understand and assimilate all that information in
the<BR>course of a continuous two-period session. Or whatever time frame is
<BR>devoted to it at a single event. And by the time people get
home and<BR>actually get to try it out for real - some of it has already
gotten<BR>fuzzy. This is where a residential program would provide
some<BR>corrective feedback, follow-up, reinforcement - whatever. And the
<BR>information would be presented - to begin with - in more
manageable<BR>portions, with opportunities for follow up in
between - not thrown<BR>at you all at once, because of the
limited time-span of the<BR>convention or event. Again, some people are able
to come away from <BR>some of those convention classes with that lightbulb
lit up and thing<BR>falling into place - but many do not. As a result I have
heard a lot<BR>of misconceptions and bowdlerized ideas based on what was
taught in<BR>those classes - sometimes even misquoting the source.
<BR><BR>Just a simple example. Not too long ago someone vehemently
disagreed<BR>with something I tried to teach, stating that "So-and-so in
such and<BR>such a class said that letoff affects nothing, so how can you
say <BR>that aftertouch can be changed by altering letoff" (let me say that
I<BR>don't recommend this - I just used it as an example of
relationships<BR>within the action) . Of course, "so-and-so" did not say
that "letoff <BR>affects nothing". What he said was "nothing affects letoff"
(which is<BR>true - letoff control is mounted on a rigid rail that never
moves<BR>with relation to the string no matter what else you do to the
action <BR>in the course of regulation short of altering action geometry)
Which<BR>tells me that the person in question misremembered what
"so-and-so"<BR>taught, and did not truly assimilate the basic relationships
within <BR>the action that "so-and-so" was trying to convey - just came
away<BR>with a surface meaning of the words. And I run across stuff like
that<BR>all the time - in classes and in post-exam interviews.<BR><BR>For
the past few years several of us in the PTG have been trying to <BR>develop
a methodology to convey this knowledge in a more
effective<BR>manner. We break the instruction up into more
manageable chunks that<BR>can be more easily assimilated by students and
combine it either with<BR>exercises on jigs and models (for the less
experienced students) or <BR>with actual performance of the procedures -
under the supervision of<BR>experienced instructors. Some of these classes
have been offered at<BR>PTG Annual, State and Regional Conventions, some at
chapter-sponsored<BR>events. I am in the middle of a series of all-day
Sunday classes (one <BR>per month, three months) for the San Francisco
Chapter. They do work,<BR>if the students go home and practice what they
learn at the classes.<BR>Because we do spend a lot of time with each student
on an individual<BR>basis - making sure that they understand and follow what
they have<BR>been taught by correcting any observed technical flaws and
missteps<BR>on the spot. So these classes require a continuous commitment -
and<BR>we do have people who keep coming back and eventually <BR>develop
good skills. And they are very resource and labor-intensive,<BR>and reach a
minuscule number of people - compared to the need. And<BR>the nominal fees
which we charge for these are typically supplemented<BR>by PTG or Chapter
subsidies. In effect, the many pay to teach the <BR>few. At some point
aspirants to this profession are going to have to<BR>realize that effective
instruction requires time and resources - and<BR>it can't all be provided by
experienced technicians at their own expense... <BR><BR>I do have to say
that some of the discussions on the PTG lists<BR>(Pianotech, CAUT, ExamPrep)
cover some topics quite comprehensively.<BR>And provide some of that
conceptual framework that I keep mentioning.<BR>And often debunk some
misconceptions rife in the trade. But again, <BR>this is short of personal
instruction, where one look, a few words<BR>and a simple demonstration can
correct many errors and increase speed<BR>or effectiveness. And reaches
relatively few people. And is episodic<BR>in nature. But every little bit
helps. <BR><BR>Before someone starts yelping that the PTG
Exams<BR>are "unrealistically difficult" and "do not reflect real
conditions"<BR>so how can I judge effectiveness of instruction base on them
- that's <BR>nonsense. A well trained, confident technician can cope with
any<BR>situation, as long as he or she understands the basic principles
of<BR>the instrument and the craft, has a good grasp of tools
and<BR>techniques and has developed fluency through repetition. I have seen
<BR>this again and again. Most recently, a candidate who admitted to
me<BR>beforehand that he never works on vertical pianos and has never
in<BR>his life replaced a vertical shank did quite well on the exam,
just<BR>using his conceptual grasp of the issues involved and overall
<BR>technical skills. (He did have a brief demonstration of
vertical<BR>shank replacement the day before the exam). And I have seen
similar<BR>occurrences before. And the time allowances on the exams are
quite<BR>generous - again judging by the performance of well-trained
<BR>technicians (no matter how they were trained) who usually
complete<BR>the task - and quite well - with about 10-20% of the time still
left<BR>on the clock. I have seen technicians who accidentally broke a
part,<BR>repaired it and still completed the task with a good score within
the <BR>time allowed. If one is fluent in one's craft and has a
good<BR>understanding of underlying issues, one can operate under all
kinds<BR>of pressure and unfamiliar circumstances. If one's
training is too<BR>narrowly focused merely on following a series of "steps"
in specific <BR>situations, that is not professional-level training, and
people whose<BR>training does not go beyond that do have trouble under
pressure. And<BR>pressure on specific jobs or from specific clients is just
as much a<BR>part of the profession as anything else...<BR><BR>OK, sorry for
some of the rambling here, but I hope some of this<BR>stuff gives a somewhat
realistic picture of the pitfalls of trying to<BR>teach yourself a
profession. And they are not insurmountable - all it <BR>takes is time and
commitment and some good contacts... And if you can<BR>see your way to going
to school - do it. It will be worth every<BR>minute and every
penny.<BR><BR>Israel
Stein<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><BR clear=all><BR>--
<BR>Michael Magness<BR>Magness Piano Service<BR>608-786-4404<BR><A
href="http://www.IFixPianos.com">www.IFixPianos.com</A><BR>email <A
href="mailto:mike@ifixpianos.com">mike@ifixpianos.com
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