Music Trade Review

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WmBtaid White
Technical Editor
Comments on the Tuners' Convention
and the Future of the Profession
T F the recent convention of the tuners at
Toledo showed anything at all, it showed
that the fight is to the fighter. No one, of
course, could have expected this year, in the
circumstances, the great crowds that filled the
hotels at Chicago and New York in 1926 and
1927; but it would have been by no means
foolish, on the other hand, to have expected
that 1930 would witness a condition of affairs
like unto that which so unhappily characterized
the meeting of the M. I. C. C. at New York
this summer. In actual and happy fact, the
Tuners' Association is living on; and one may
properly ask, after tendering due congratula-
tions to the men whose devotion and courage
have thus been vindicated, what its members
are likely to accomplish during the next year
or so.
The Way of the Counselor
More than once I have been very sharply
citicized for venturing to utter warnings and
to tender advice in this field; but the way of
the counselor is proverbially as hard as that
of the transgressor, unless indeed it turns out
that his counsel comes to be both adopted and
successful. Usually he who ventures to warn
or to advise has to be satisfied with seeing his
warnings ignored and his advice spurned. Since,
however, I have been in the position of un-
official and altogether not suppressible adviser
to this interesting body, of which the fortunes
have always been so much a matter of interest
to me, its sire, I shall venture again a few-
words, promising to avoid, with such dexterity
as I possess, whatever missiles may be hurled
at me by indignant gentlemen in the way of
reprisal.
Any body of men who meet to consider grave
questions affecting their professional prospects
and even their immediate status as earners of
money are, necessarily, .as it were, caught
between two fires. On the one hand they havt
to think of the immediate and pressing need,
which is, of course, how to get more business
now, without delay. The- temptation is, there-
fore, great to sacrifice everything else to th<_
snlution of this ( >ne problem. So we hear oi
Badger Brand Plates
are far more than
merely good plates.
They are built cor-
rectly of the best
material and finish.
and are specified by builders of quality
pianos.
American Piano Plate Co.
Manufacturer! BADGER BRAND Grand and
Upright Piano Plates
Racine, Wisconsin
tuners going into other lines of work and com-
pletely dropping their tuning work. Others
again propose to cut their prices and thereby
to attract custom which they have been unable
to obtain in any other way. The temptation to
gain immediate results and to leave the future
to take care of itself is thus always very great;
nor must we be astonished if we find that there
is always a large number of even the best
tuners looking at their problems from this
point of view.
Nb one can afford to sneer at the conduct of
men who are facing a state of affairs like this;
yet every thinking man will agree that nothing
was ever gained yet by offering to perform
services at prices too low. Nothing can pos-
sibly be plainer than that what ails the tuning
business is neither a surplus of tuners nor a
lack of pianos. Everybody who has ever thought
twice about the matter knows that even in the
so-called palmy days of the piano business most
pianos went untuned from one year's end to
the other. It was always a very small minor-
ity which supported the tuners, even in the few
big cities which have boasted, and continue to
boast, a musical coterie. Certainly, if my own
experiences, backed up by years of contact with
the best masters of the craft, counts for any-
thing at all, the truth is that tuners have never
been able to make a good living out of the
masses from piano tuning and piano regulating
alone. The employed tuner has been in a some-
what different position, but even he has al-
ways had to work at low wages, simply be-
cause he has, with some justice from the busi
ness point of view, been regarded as a neces-
sary evil, as an addition to the overhead ex-
pense, and, therefore, to be kept down as much
as possible.
Tuners or Player Mechanics
1 am thus rather skeptical about the idea that
radio or anything else has killed the tuning
business. What has happened is that radio has
inflicted a very severe defeat of the player
business, which is quite a different matter. The
player business lias been very nearly killed,
without a doubt, but when tuners complain oi
having lost their customers, they really mean
that they are no longer loaded down with player
work, as they were until, say, three years ago.
Welte Mignon Experts
We install the original Welte-
Mignon Reproducing Actions
in all makes of pianos. Also
general renovating and re-
pairing of all types of player
actions.
WELTE-MIGNON PIANO CORP.
704 St. Ann's Ave.
28
New York
For the tuner had been becoming, during the
past twenty years, more and more a player
man and less and less a tuner. This was not
his fault. It was not the fault of anyone. It
was the result of a powerful movement in the
music industries of the country, brought about
by • the inventors of player mechanisms. This
movement enriched many manufacturers and
dealers. It did not enrich many of the in-
ventors; but that is the way of things in this
world. So long as this movement was meet-
ing no serious competition in the way of musi-
making devices entailing even less of effort or
intelligence to make them work, the player-pi-
ano was the favorite instrument of the masses.
Put the masses neither are nor ever were musi-
cal. I frankly confess to having made myself be-
lieve, during a good many years, that the player-
piano could be sold to the masses as a true
musical instrument; and I did my share to en-
courage tuners to become player men. At the
time, indeed, no advice could have been better.
Well, we have passed through that phase.
What now are the tuners to do?
Back to Music
Nothing, I suspect, save just' go back to tun-
ing pianos. Is it not true, after all, that the
good tuner has always had to depend, so far as
his piano work proper was concerned, upon the
small, intelligent, cultured minority, sometimes
professionally, more often amateurly musical,
whose pianos are the best, who have a sense of
tonal value, and who love music whether as a
life work or as a hobby. By no means all these
nice people are rich. Many of them are aca-
demic men and women on the usual small aca-
demic scale of pay. Others are the wealthy
leaders of local culture, women mostly, with
time, inclination and means to cultivate the
best in life. These are the persons who have
supported piano tuning proper; and these are
the persons who are supporting it now. They
will continue to support it. There need be no
apprehension on that score.
It may sound like a counsel of perfection,
but I am persuaded that both the present and
the future of the tuning business lie in cultivat-
ing the classes and leaving the masses alone.
Tlu- masses will support tuners just precisely
a- they have in the past, although doubtless
at a still slower rate. They will not do any
PFRIEMER HAMMERS
Always Found in Pianos
of the Highest Quality
Originators of the Re-enforced Tone
Producing Hammer
CHAS. PFRIEMER, INC.
Wales Ave. A 142nd St., New York
Lytton Bulldlne, Chicago