Klarinet Archive - Posting 000183.txt from 1994/12

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: An important skill for young clarinet players
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 1994 13:39:31 -0500

I am constantly amazed at the level of knowledge shown by the younger
people on this board. It is so much more profound than anything I knew
at roughly the same age, that it stuns me to think of the advances
over the last 40 or 50 years. And their interests are so broad, so
catholic, so all encompassing, too. But that brings me to a skill that
seems to be on the bottom of the priority list for younger players. Let
me explain.

Assuming that some (or hopefully all) of you will achieve a measure of
importance in some future world of clarinetry, you are going to be asked
to write something about the area of your expertise. You may be asked
to do a brief essay on how you achieve tone production of the quality that
you do achieve; you may be asked to write an article on "The Playing of
the Clarinet Repertoire Demanding Electronic Interfaces"; or you may be
asked to do a piece for the Clarinet magazine on the famous clarinet players
at the start of the third millenium. Who knows. But it is almost certain
that you will want to and/or be asked to do so. If you get good, people
will want to hear what you have to say and they will seek you out to do it.

It is very difficult to accept as fact that being able to write in an
articulate fashion is an important clarinet-playing skill; but it is.
At the minimum level, if the material written sounds as if it came from
an uneducated person, the audiences will have less faith in the writer's
credibility. If the grammar is poor or the spelling atrocious, the
message may get lost, no matter how good it is.

And this is equally true with respect to public presentations on the clarinet
and its playing. If you speak well, you are 50% of the way towards convincing
a skeptical audience that you know full well of what you are speaking.
Certainly, if you go into teaching it is imperative that one has the
ability to communicate verbally with both fluency and panache.

As a retired person, I spend a lot of time on the INTERNET and so I have
the time to read posted communications perhaps more than those who are
less occupied than I. And I am sorry to say that language usage and
spelling is occasionally of a quality that causes me to dismiss what would
otherwise be a sound argument. When I see something like "I think your
reely rite" (and it came across this way about a month ago) instead of
"I think you're really right" I see something that can act as a serious
impediment to an ability to contribute in the future. Look at a guy
like Eddie Daniels: such a wonderful player, such an articulate communicator
both in writing and in person. A good deal of his well-deserved
reputation descends from his ability to communicate effectively outside
of his spectacular playing. You don't have to agree with what he says,
but he says it well, both verbally and in print. His credibility is in no
way diminshed by an inability to communicate. And his income is enhanced
by both skills complimenting each other. So there is a practical benefit
involved here.

I'm preaching. I shouldn't be, but I am. And I shall probably get
six postings that tell me that my writing is not so hot either, so why
am I suddenly acting like a California preacher? Probably true. But
it is a subject that has never come up on this list; i.e., what skills
does a clarinet player need to succeed that don't have much to do with
playing the clarinet??

Some, such as interpersonal relations, are obvious. It does not matter how
well you play. If you cannot get along with the members of your section,
or if you are a difficult person or an orchestral troublemaker, you are
going to find it difficult to get and/or keep a job. The attitude of
those responsible for hiring you will invariably be "Oh boy!! Can s/he
play. Wow! But it is not worth the trouble you have to live with."
There are GREAT players today walking the streets of big American cities
who can't get work for exactly this reason.

But back to my point. I only mentioned the interpersonal relations issue
to highlight the fact that a player has to do a lot of non-playing
things well in order to succeed (and that is true in almost every
discipline, not only clarinet playing). But in developing a writing
skill, it is harder to see the relationship to playing the clarinet
on one hand and having good written communication skills on the other.
So I thought that I would highlight (or is it hilight?) this matter and
see what others have to say about it (or is it hylight or hilite?),

There is another important aspect to good verbal/written skills. If you
can't say what you mean or write about it with clarity, I suggest that
you really don't know it. There was a charming note to this effect in
a brief anecdote I read. It was so clear, that I cut it out and it
hangs on my wall:

"I once had a brilliant student, now a well-known
professor, who wrote a highly technical thesis. I
asked him to assume that I was an ordinary corporate
manager. Would he explain his thesis briefly?

He went to the blackboard and began to cover it with
mathematical symbols. I stopped him and reminded him
that I was an ordinary manager, not a mathematician.
After a long pause he said, 'I don't understand what
I've done well enough to explain it in nontechnical
language.'

Unless people can express themselves well in ordinary
English, they don't know what they are talking about."

[Excuse the chauvinism. It's probably a true story in languages other
than English too. I was only quoting.]

And the reason why I felt that this was the right time to bring up this
subject has to do with the fact that a recent posting or series of postings
that I made on the matter of marketing LeBlanc products was so badly written
that one board member accused me of being sarcastic and/or hostile.
So even when one works hard at good communication skills - as I try to do -
it is very easy to miss the mark by 100 yards. It is especially easy to
do in writing because there is no inflection to soften the words.

The father on receving a note from his son reads it aloud to
his wife in a gruff tone: "Father. Send money right away!"

"That's a helluva tone to use when demanding money," says the
father.

The mother looks at the note and says, "You read it wrong. That
is not what it says at all. It reads as follows:"

... [sigh and with both a catch and a loving gentleness in
the voice] ... "Father ... Send money ... right away..."
[weep, ..., tear, ... swallow, ... gasp]

To which the father responds, "Well. Since the tone of his voice
has changed so much, I'll send him the money."

End of sermon for the day.

====================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
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