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Well, yes, you guys are all right. And I still have a few years of my life to decide if such a thing is the job for me. But trust me, I am not the kind that can work factory lines or work in a cubicle for the rest of my life. For some people it is sports, and for some, it is art, and for some like me and many others on this site I am sure, it is music. Though, for the younger ones here like myself, like many have said, once we find out the demands of that field, we may not be necessarily interested in it anymore. But the main thing is, we have only one life here on this earth, and we have to make the most of it. Now I go by Christian standards, and if I don't know how many here believe in Christ Jesus, but I personally do, and he made us all unique. He gave us individual personalities and gifts to serve him while on this earth. Now I have always considered myself gifted in the arts such as music and drawing, though over the course of the years, I have geared more toward music than drawing though I do still draw. But I would rather be living a RICH LIFE filled with fulfillment rather than one that just makes me want to jump off a bridge. I practice everyday, and I work toward my goals, so therefore I am competitive in music. I try my best to get better so I can play better and funner things, and so on and so forth. But you know, my mom told me, I have another 3 years of my life to decide what I am going to do for my life. And with God's guidance and the people he set in my life to help guide me, I am sure I can get there.

I know you all aren't trying to discourage me from pursuing a career and music, and I am glad you understand. Yes, it is competitive, and I understand that, my mom stated that up front to me. But she never stopped my brother from pursuing what he was passionate about as a career and she said she won't stop me either.

There is a song by Jon Bon Jovi, I don't know how many of you have heard of him but I am sure a good portion have. He wrote a song called "It's My Life" and some particular lyrics that always seemed to touch me is "it's now or never" and another "I don't want be just a face in the crowd, your gonna hear my voice when I shout it out loud". And that is very inspiring and moving to me.

I believe that God has a plan for me though, and the people that he set before me in my life will guide me on the right path.

I think it would help me if you guys could find me a description of all the careers related to piano. If I had something like that and maybe an idea of what all the career options for a pianist are, then maybe that will give me some insight?

With lots of practice and dedication, and a open and reasonable mind to goals and career options and responsibilities, I would definitely say go for music.

However, if the goal is just: "I wanna be a concert pianist and study at [insert big conservatory name here]"... well, then, no.

Also, your mom is wrong. You don't have another 3 years. You have 3 years until you decide on college. You have as much time as you need to decide what you want to do with your life.

How about a piano tuner? I am not sure if one even needs to finish high school to join a piano tuning school.

A successful piano tuner makes tons of money. Like my piano tuner, he does not take anybody as a customer. He showed me his black list people. He assigns customer number to each of his customer and he assigns specific code for the trouble maker customers so that it will be easy for him to discern them when they call him for an appointment.

None of the excellent piano tuners I have used over the past few years earns "tons of money." I guess, then, by your definition, they are not successful.

They may have chosen not to do more than so many tunings a day, or to charge a relatively low fee to make themselves accessible. But a highly industrious piano tuner who tunes, say five or ten pianos a day at $100 each, for 50 weeks a year, that's quite a bit of money, is it not?

I don't know where you get the idea that a "good" tuner can tune as many as ten pianos a day, given that all the "good" tuners I have had have never spent less than two hours tuning my piano - which, by the way, is a piano that is in good condition, being tuned three or four times a year.

Even were he to do a good tuning in an hour and a half, even five tunings would take seven and a half hours, and, since no five clients live next door to each other, add in travel time and maybe a few minutes for a lunch break, how much time do you have to spend just to tune five pianos well? I would think that five pianos a day would be a maximum for most conscientious tuners.

I don't think that most piano tuners would have so large a clientele list that they could count on having even a minimum of five pianos to tune daily, every working day of the year. Given a year of 50 weeks, five pianos a day, five days a week and even if all of a given tuner's clients had a tuning twice a year (which most don't), for a tuner to be employed as you suggest, he would have to have over six hundred clients. No tuner I have ever known has had that many clients nor is so solidly booked. Otherwise, when calling for an appointment I'd get a message to the effect that my tuner could come Tuesday afternoon from 2:00 to 3:30 in four month's time.

Since these tuners are, for the most part, self-employed (excepting those who work for dealerships where the dealership take a percentage of their fee), they don't have company medical, dental, eye care benefits, sick leave with pay and retirement plans. If they are funding their own care and maintenance, much of their disposable income goes into that maintenance.

However, I am still very much in doubt about their making "tons of money" tuning as many as ten pianos a day. It just doesn't add up.

I do hope a piano technician comes in here and sets the record straight. I thought you needed to understand at the very least college level Physics to be able to go to piano tech school.

These are the requirements to get into Piano Tuning School in Chicago.

The applicant must:

have a high school diploma, GED, or home school equivalency
have full manual dexterity and be able to lift a significant weight (e.g. grand action with keys), and be able to move around with it without aid
be capable of standing at and moving around a piano for many hours at a time
have the full capacity to complete the entire curriculum as depicted, with the goal of achieving a Certificate from CSPT in the required time span
have a current tetanus shot
complete an Application process, including the Self-Evaluation, Piano Keyboard Music Assessment, and interviews

Making tons of money relatives to only having high school education. If one does not go to college and does not want to work in a cube (boring job), piano tuning is a cleaner job than many other labor jobs (plumbing, car mechanic etc). For people with high school education, there are not so many piano related job that will pay more than tuning piano. I think piano tuning is perfect for people who want to have flexible schedule.

If per tuning is $100, 3 tunings a day, and work 5 days per week. The total income is $100 x 3 x 5 x 4 = $6,000 per month.
It means $72K per year. Not bad for a person without college education.

@Bruce, My piano tuner has big list of clients, he even does not take people who he does not like. I have to make appointment like a month in advance. Apparently, the piano tuning market in your area is not as high as in the Chicago area.

Which piano tuning school is that? Is that a reputed school? Is this information from their website? Could you please give me a link?

from stateuniversity.com, job descriptions :

Earnings and Benefits
Piano and organ tuners earn a median hourly rate of $13.47, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Earnings are usually higher in urban areas. Benefits for employed tuners and technicians vary according to the size of the business. Benefits may include paid holidays and vacations, health insurance, and pension plans. Those who have their own businesses must provide their own benefits.

Read more: Piano and Organ Tuner and Technician Job Description, Career as a Piano and Organ Tuner and Technician, Salary, Employment - Definition and Nature of the Work, Education and Training Requirements, Getting the Job http://careers.stateuniversity.com/pages/335/Piano-Organ-Tuner-Technician.html#ixzz1J9eQkAqI

Apparently, he does not have too many choices then.
He wants a piano related job, but he cannot play piano well so that he cannot teach or play for public. Tuning piano does not pay much (according to the study).....So I do not have any idea what kind of piano related job....selling piano?

I think that information may be out-of-date, although when I go the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics website, I don't find a precise number for piano and organ tuners as a separate category of worker. The closest I find is this aggregate information. The dollars shown are a bit higher, but still not great.

Is becoming a piano tuner really something to strive for? C'mon now, people.

I think you just insulted a good number of people who frequent PW.

While I do think that it was a really bad insult, I also think it plays important role in this context - I wouldn't say that being a piano tuner is really a music-related job anymore than making test-tubes would make one a chemist. They're involved and vital, but it's not the same.

Of course, one can (and many I know do) do both.

That said, it really would have done some good to have said it with a bit more tact.

Lingyis, as you may have made out from my posts, I'm a grad student at a very decent University. I'm fairly confident (with some hard work of course) that I'll be successful in my field. However, I might enroll myself in a piano technician course sometime after I'm done with my PhD. I would also consider running a piano dealership (though that would be even more into the future). I might have considered these options quite seriously as viable career options even if I didn't have a PhD simply because I love being with pianos. I'm fairly certain that I can make a living from it if I set my mind to it. Attribute this to my being young (enough) with a fairly positive view of the world and the opportunities it has in store for people like me. In fact, if I have a University professor position by then and if I make enough money from this, I might even give up my teaching job. If you look at the faculty list in the piano tuning school that RS linked us to, you will find the profile of a man who after doing an engineering degree went on to become a piano tech. He is now a grad student in Acoustics at Penn State University. People do stuff.. stuff that's interesting and rewarding to them (not necessarily in a monetary sense). Its also almost always these people that come up with ideas and inventions that make a huge difference in human lives.

Let me ask you this: Is being a banker something that's worth striving for in life?

Yeah, I should have said it with more tact. What I meant was: for a 14-year old, really, should he strive to become a piano tuner?

In addition, in my mind I have separated piano technician with piano tuner. I think there's a lot to what a piano technician does.

So, just to be perfectly clear, when you're 14, I don't think you should strive to become a piano tuner as a career.

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Is that better?

I'm not the most articulate person; made even more difficult is that I've gone between being idealistic and practical. But to start painting picture of my "philosophy" (not really wanting to use such a overbearing term), I can reply that:

"
If I had put money first, I wouldn't have gone to grad school in the first place. In fact, I despised finance before going to grad school.
"

I think that helps to fill in some blanks.

When it comes to working in finance--most of us PhDs stilconsider ourselves sell-outs. Working in a bank isn't exactly in our DNA.