All the ways…apprenticing with a mentor, reading, attending workshops and factory training, and most of all practice, practice, practice!

I’ll start by telling you about one of my mentors, Joe Garrett.  Joe was a fixture at the Portland Chapter meetings of the Piano Technicians Guild, sitting in the front row of our technical presentations, often commenting on what the presenter was saying.  He was a wealth of knowledge and seemed to have a story about every piano brand or style.  With his salt and pepper hair and beard and sometimes curmudgeonly style, he seemed like a wizard.  I screwed up my courage and asked him if I could come out to his shop to learn from him.  He said, “yes”.

Joe Garrett’s shop smelled like my dad’s basement workshop…sawdust, turpentine, varnish.  So, I sort of felt right at home.  But unlike my dad’s basement, the place was packed with old pianos, piano parts and specialized tools, crannied in around and behind four workstation benches.  A shelf with all different sorts of jars labeled with masking tape could have been potions.  It was a wizard’s laboratory.

Joe is probably the best teacher I’ve ever had.  When I asked a question, he might say, “what do you think?”  If I suggested an answer, he would say, “are you sure?” If I said, “yes”, I would need to explain my thinking.  If I said, “no”, he might say, “well you’re right”, and tell me why it was a good answer,   turning my sometimes fuzzy, intuitive thinking into solid reasoning that could be articulated.  Four years in his shop taught me how to think, building upon my formal college education in engineering physics.

Other times, when Joe set me on a task, he would refuse to answer why he wanted it done that way.  I was to just do it, get a feel for it, and slowly figure out the why’s of things.  After all, piano work is a craft that needs to reside in your hands.  

After finishing rebuilding a project piano, I stopped going to his shop.  I learned to do concert tuning work (more on this next time).  

I tried out techniques and approaches to repairs and rebuilding from other highly skilled technicians.  The result?  Often, I ended up returning to the ways of doing things taught to me in the piano wizard’s laboratory.  I was very lucky.

Thank you, Joe.

Amy