This is our second edition of the Newsletter under the direction of our new Editor, Scott Thile. It sounds like Scott has an interesting line up of topics to feature in upcoming issues, so we are back in business. Thanks to everyone who responded to the surveys we conducted in the last issue and again to Scott for compiling the data from his unequal tuning survey to share with us in this issue. We should do this survey again in a few years just to compare the results. In the meantime, one of our upcoming issues may address the topic of unequal tuning for institutions in greater detail.
As you have noticed, this issue's feature topic is a review of the pros and cons of institutional piano loan/lease programs. There could hardly be a piano topic more CAUT specific, and which has greater impact on the overall operation of our positions within the department. Are these programs too good to be true, or are they justifiably coveted by the many who may feel left out of these arrangements? What can a technician do to help facilitate such a program should one be desired?
If your schedule has been anything like mine, which is a reasonably safe presumption, then you will more than deserve a sunny week in Orlando next July during the Annual Convention. The details of our CAUT forum this year have just been set up and it looks like we have all new material. Half of the forum will be a presentation by Brian De Tar on behalf of Yamaha called, "New Age Voicing". This class will reveal some new voicing procedures which have been developed by Yamaha over several years specifically for working with Yamaha hammers. The other half of the program will be a presentation by myself. I will share the findings of a joint research project I have been working on with one of the physics professors at my school. This class is called, "A Spectral View of Mass and Leverage". We will compare partial spectrums of the same note, on the same concert piano, and even using the same hammer, but configured differently with mass and leverage.
In case you need the dates again, it is July 23-27. Start making your plans now!
Dennis Johnson
CAUT Chair
