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THE
MUJIC TIRADE
VOL.
LXV. No. 5
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill, Inc., at 373 4th Ave., New York.
Aug. 4, 1917
Single Copies 10 Cents
$3.00 Per Year
The Importance of Technical Education
W
E cannot devote all our time during the next few months to brooding over the war. Perhaps
indeed we don't think enough about it! But if the time we spend in not thinking about the war
was spent in thinking constructively about our trade problems, how many of them we could solve!
Have you ever stopped to think that a new order of things is coming into existence in the
piano trade?
The last survivors of the old generations of piano workers are passing on, leaving behind them no
successors. The last survivors of the older generations of piano tuners are passing on; and they are leaving
behind them no successors.
Perhaps the seriousness of the situation suggested in these words is not realized. In fact, it is not at
all realized.
The piano factory has been much changed during the last twenty years, and has been standardized in
such a way that technical skill on the part of the individual is giving way to individual mechanical dexterity
easily taught on one detail.
Therefore, the need for individual skill in the factory becomes a need for something quite different from
the individual skill of the old-time artistic piano mechanic.
Outside of tuning and tone-regulating, the mechanical processes of manufacture are more and more
broken up into small detail jobs, easily understandable by young and superficially trained workers.
This may be all right for the factory; but what about the technical direction of piano manufacturing?
Still more, what about the maintenance of the piano in the home? What about the future of the piano
tuner?
The future of the piano business is inextricably bound up with that of the piano tuner. The piano
depends on the tuner quite as much as the tuner depends on the piano.
Every piano manufacturer, every piano merchant, every man who makes or sells player-pianos in any
shape or form, is essentially interested in the future of the piano tuner. Now, what are the facts?
They are simple, but serious. The supply of skilled tuners is falling off; at least it becomes harder to
get them. The younger men are not going into the art as they used to, and those who do go in are not in
general of the most desirable class.
The outside tuner needs peculiar qualities. He should possess the manner and appearance of a gentle-
man, the temperament of an artist, the skill of a diplomat and the technical knowledge of a thorough piano
maker. Incidentally, he should know how to tune.
To make such a man needs more than mere haphazard. To make such men, or men in the least
approaching them, in such quantities as the situation demands, needs system. No system exists to-day.
Schools for teaching tuning do exist. They do their best, and on the whole it is a very good best. But
they have no support from the trade and no organized system exists to bring the trade, the schools and the
prospective tuners together. Here is the weakness!
Again, the very system which bids fair to abolish the old-time conception of the skilled piano-maker
renders impossible any thought of training tuners through the factories. The modern factory has no place
for students.
The long and short of it is that the dearth of good tuners must be studied seriously; and studied to
good effect with the idea of finding a solution for it.
The American Guild of Piano Tuners must possess data bearing on this question. No doubt the officers
of that body will gladly place their knowledge at the disposal "of the trade.
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(Continued on page 5)