Our seminar ends with close of seminar Saturday, May 6 th. Depending on who (if anyone) wants to come, we might take one of the nighttime ghost tours (they charge for that). It is a “no charge” tour, except you will pay for your own hotel room while there (and can share with another student, if you like), and share the gas to drive over and back. Randy has been there more than a dozen times and knows a few things worth sharing. Another side of his family served in a New York Regiment. Several of his ancestors, on both sides of his family, fought there, including several in Custer’s famed Wolverines, Michigan 6 th and 7 th Cavalry. If students are interested, and arrangements are made early enough, Randy will be offering a tour of Gettysburg Battlefield National Park. You can get more information about the MARC at Pre-Seminar Gettysburg Battlefield and Valley Forge Tour : These students will receive a $50 discount off the regular registration, and $100 discount if they also attend one of the special classes the extra day.
Current students of our school receive a discount on registration fees at the NEECSO and MARC seminars. In 2017 the MARC is in Harrisburg, PA, April 27-30, 2017. Technicians come from all over the US and Canada, and often from around the world, to attend this seminar.
In fact, most years the MARC / NEECSO has about 60-70% of the number of attendees, and the same as far as exhibitors and exhibits, as the PTG Annual Convention. This seminar (along with the New England – Eastern Canada Regional Conference in even-numbered years, both spearheaded by the organizational team of Taylor-Adams-Cheng) is the largest PTG regional conference, and is second in size, in technician attendance, and number of classes, instructors and exhibitors, only to the PTG Annual Convention. Since we moved our week-long hands-on seminars to Philadelphia, we decided to coordinate our dates with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Seminar (MARC). Students are encouraged to consider attending the Mid-Atlantic Regional Convention.
By that I mean that while we have a list of subjects, topics, and many props ready, based on what students have asked for in prior years, we are prepared to use some, all, or none of them, depending on what the students attending this year wish to cover. The Pre-Seminar Seminar (PSS) is almost entirely student directed. Over the past several years we have experimented with having just one extra day, or two.
So we started by adding two additional days at the beginning of the seminar, before the seminar starts. Others wanted some one-on-one tuning help before the seminar started. Others had specific tuning, repairing or regulating questions they wanted to work out. Some were so new they wanted to make sure they understood the basic action part names, functions of vertical and grand pianos, tool names and how they worked. Several years ago students began asking if they could arrive early, and spend extra time with our instructors before the seminar started, to work on specific areas of interest to them. Pre-Seminar Seminar / Mid-Atlantic Regional Convention : Video segments of factory visits will be available to seminar participants to watch as time permits.
Randy has toured many piano factories including Bechstein, Blüthner, Schimmel, Hamburg Steinway and Steingraeber in Germany, Egtved in Denmark, Kemble in England, Bösendorfer in Austria, Petrof in The Czech Republic, plus Renner’s vertical action factory in Seitz, Germany. Randy has both visited, and trained at, several European piano factories, so when time permits we show videos of factories in Europe, depending on which factory videos students would like to see.