Do you play piano?

[piannaman at aol.com]

Gregor,

Yes, I play.  In fact, I was jamming with a young (26 year old to my 54) friend last night.  I noticed how badly I need to employ myself on my OWN piano.  I can't afford me though....:-)

I started playing piano when I was 15, and developed a real affinity for it.  2 years later I was a piano performance major at San Jose State.  3 years later, I quit school to "find" myself, get a job, and schlep around for 5 years or so sort of trying to work as a musician.  I got a job as a mover/helper/tuning apprentice at a store 30 years ago, and have been in the piano business ever since, except for 2 years of stay-at-home-fatherhood from 1999 to 2001, when I became self-employed as a tech.

I still play a fair amount, and I'm glad I have the young dude to get me motivated to keep a few chops handy.  

Think I'll tune my piano today, even though I can't afford my rates.  The killer octave sounds nasty!


Dave Stahl, RPT

Dave Stahl Piano Service
650-224-3560
dstahlpiano at sbcglobal.net
http://dstahlpiano.net/



-----Original Message-----
From: Gregor _ <karlkaputt at hotmail.com>
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Sent: Sat, 2 Jun 2007 4:13 am
Subject: Do you play piano?



Are there techs outside who don´t play piano? If so: how came in your mind to become a piano tech? 
 
As a rough guess I think here in Germany there might be about 20 percent of techs who don´t play. Here it is usual to learn a profession by aprenticeship when you are 16 - 20 years old. To start an aprenticeship beyond the age of 25 is very uncommon. On the other hand: you don´t have any possibility to learn that profession lagter by attending commercial classes because such shools don´t exist. I understand that many people would like to learn piano tuning/repair, because they play piano and their first career in another profession was not sucessfull. But it´s hard to understand why anybody should want to learn that profession without a relation to pianos. In my class there were some folks who decided for piano tech because the father aranged the aprenticeship or because the best friend did so, too. 
 
What´s about you? 
 
Gregor 
 
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