<HTML>In a message dated 6/12/02 8:19:47 AM Central Daylight Time, hoffsoco@martin.luther.edu (Conrad Hoffsommer) writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">There's an expression which comes to mind: PUT UP OR SHUT UP! If things are soooooo boring, why don't you do some research and teach an interesting course or two of your own? Some time ago, I offered you a chance to do an HVLP tuning demo at the recent regional seminar. (I arranged for many of the instructors/classes, and thus was qualified to give that as a serious offer) - I'm sure the attendence at the seminar would have been WAY up just to see both of us on the same stage... ;-} Silence. Tim Farley gave well attended and interesting classes there - I didn't see you... I even prepared an HT concert given on a harpsichord AND a fortepiano - two different temperaments - I suppose that would have been too boring, too? >I'm not going because I'm just plain NOT INTERESTED! I'll miss you. </BLOCKQUOTE> If you sent me an E-mail inviting me to give a presentation, I never saw it.  The reason probably was that I deleted it without reading as I often do to your posts.  Most often, there is no content in them I consider worthwhile, just consumption of bandwidth for the sake of filling space, nothing more. The weekend of the Central West Regional Seminar, I was already engaged to perform as a musician in Minneapolis, which I did.  I'll be in Chicago the weekend of the Convention but will be performing downtown.  I considered that opportunity more worthwhile than the PTG Convention.  Why?  Yes, I guess Keith is right.  I'd rather be making music among people who appreciate and want what I have to offer rather than seeing the scowling faces of people who have predetermined that what I do is of no value and do not even want to see anything like it on the schedule. Your performances in HT's at the seminar are all well and good but our organization happens to be the *Piano* Technicians Guild, not the Harpsichord or Fortepiano society whose interest is keeping alive period instruments and their tunings.  What the PTG Convention (and that seminar) will *not* have is an opportunity for interested people to compare the difference in the way a modern grand piano sounds when tuned in a way other than the usual. The HT class will be given by someone who takes care of *antique* instruments at a museum.  All well and good, of course.  The only other HT offering will be in a Fortepiano class, another *antique* piano class.  The Institute Committees which plan the Convention schedule have always permitted any HT presence with great reluctance and always find a way to put it off in a corner, clearly downplaying its importance and make every effort to see that as few people as possible will attend and make conditions as difficult as possible for anyone to prepare for the event. What interests me the most is not even an HT at all but an entirely new way to tune the modern piano based upon historical precedents combined with entirely new ideas about octave tuning.  I have researched this area fully and could teach it at any time.  Two years ago, I was offered 45 minutes which I turned down because there would have been no opportunity to really hear music on a piano tuned this way.  I also sustained an injury which would have forced me to cancel so either way, I could not have done it that year. My idea was presented at the Temperament Festival in 1998.  The Institute Committee put the event at the very *end* of the Convention when many people were sure to have already gone, made things difficult for the organizer, claimed it was too *stressful* and one of the members, Wally Brooks sought out several opportunities to harass and cajole me while I was trying to prepare the piano for the event. Nevertheless, the tuning I did won overwhelming acclamation as I fully expected it would.  I would expect that it would at or in any event.  What I think is that the people who organize these kinds of events know this and don't want that to happen for personal reasons, mainly, that if such an idea were to become popular, *they* may find it necessary to learn how to do it and that is the very last thing that *they* want to do. So, I'll stick with what I said, I am not going to the Convention because there will be nothing offered which interests me and plenty which rubs me the wrong way. Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin <A HREF="http://www.billbremmer.com/">Click here: -=w w w . b i l l b r e m m e r . c o m =-</A> </HTML>