Klarinet Archive - Posting 000326.txt from 1996/06

From: "Joie Canada , Jcanada713@-----.COM>
Subj: Talent vs. Hard Work
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 02:09:38 -0400

I can't help putting a few cents worth in on this one. When I was a
teenager, I volunteered to help another kid learn to play the guitar. He
learned all the strums I gave him, and his scales as well. He practiced very
hard, but he never made music. Among other things, he couldn't hear pitches.
He couldn't sing Happy Birthday in anything but a wavering monotone, and he
couldn't distinguish whether a note was higher or lower than another if it
was closer than a fifth. He spoke quite normally, and his mother and sister
sang in the church choir. He is the only really tone deaf person I ever met.
All the motivation and practice in the world didn't help him--he came to
each practice session with his guitar out of tune and never knew it. He
tried to switch to drums but everything he played was precise but
irritating--he made rhythmic noise, not music and I have pondered on this
ever since. I never saw anyone try as hard as he did with so little success.
He took drum lessons from a very good teacher and tried to play in the band
but finally gave up after two years because he began to realize that there
was Something there that was happening for other people that he just couldn't
get.

Over and over, I have come to recognize that some people can learn the
mechanics of an instrument and never quite make music. Any number of
youngsters learn Fur Elise on the piano, but some of them never make it a
moving experience for the listener, yet some kids can play Twinkle Twinkle
Little Star and make you want to tap your feet. Some of this can be taught,
but some of it escapes from the realm of tuition and is more innate.

One noted music teacher said "A music teacher should scream in his studio
once a day--it may be the nearest thing to music he hears all day!" I've
heard good college level players who play without technical flaw, but with
what one fellow musician once discribed as "the soul of a brick" I think
some of this is due to inhibition about emotional expression which also seems
to manifest itself in bad dancing, particularly in Latin dances like the
Samba. I've seen some rather properly brought up people from the Midwest
United States trying to learn to Samba from a Brazillian who tried in vain
for over an hour to get them to move their pelvises in the peculiarly liquid
motion the Samba demands and all they did was blush and twitch their hips.
They were all over 21 and maybe they needed to learn this motion at a
younger age and without the previous training they had in the proper way to
move ones body in public, but the effect was frustrating to the Brazillian, a
well known drummer and dancer, and utterly hilarious to anyone watching who
had already learned to Samba.

Even simple music can be utterly enchanting when played musically, but the
best composition in the world can be boring when played with mechanical
perfection and no "soul" The player has to be able to submerge the ego and
self consciousness and fuse with the spirit of the music, which some people
do not do easily, or in some cases, at all. It's a real shame, because some
of those people would really like to do so and struggle very hard to make
music, and some of them recognize their inability to make more than notes and
carefully counted rhythms and become very discouraged. The intensity of
their attempts often makes the results worse--they come out as instrumental
Florence Foster Jenkinses without her sense of humor and torture anyone who
comes within earshot. I wonder how good music teachers handle this sort of
student--how they overcome the problem of the technically competent, highly
motivated one who seems to be "tune-deaf"?

Joie