Welcome to the first blog post for The Piano Technician Academy, the first and only online piano tuning school in the country!
About Me
First off, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Michael Stilwell and I am one of the professors here at the www.ThePianoTechnicianAcademy.com. I am a second generation piano technician and the owner of Stilwell Pianos located in Tempe Arizona. Stilwell Pianos has been in business since 1956 and was started by my grandfather Ralph Stilwell. I took over the tuning and repair business about 6 years ago and have since turned it into a “brick and mortar” used piano shop in Arizona.
As a professor at The Piano Technician Academy, I believe learning how to become a piano tuner can not be done by simply taking a course at our piano tuning school. That may shock some of you but becoming a piano tuner has to involve hands on practice in the field. Our course is designed to prepare you to enter the field. OUr students are encouraged to practice on as many pianos as possible while taking the course AND after taking the course. It is also advisable to contact other tuners in your area and ask if you can “shadow” one of their work days.
Recently a Piano Technician Academy student told me that he had been using Facebook as a way to advertise “Practice Piano Tunings”. He would tell his friends on Facebook that while he is in piano tuning school, he is offer $50 tunings to get practice. He did this after getting have way through our piano tuning course so by that point he had already covered all of the piano tuning procedures and just needed practice. He reported that within just a couple weeks, he had almost 15 people take him up on his offer! That comes out to $750 (the cost of the piano tuning course!). By doing this he completely paid for his piano tuning school by the time he got to lesson 8!
That brings me to my next point, owning your own piano tuning business requires more than knowing how to tune pianos- it requires using twenty first century business techniques. This means using social media and the internet as often as possible. The next blog post will be on this topic but for now, keep on playing and “stay tuned”!
