Klarinet Archive - Posting 000863.txt from 1998/11

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] Should I......?
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1998 05:24:30 -0500

Well, should I?

This is just to point out a way of expressing ourselves that some of us
have on this list that in my opinion, gives the wrong impression. I'd
also say it's likely to cause problems itself from time to time.

I'm referring to the habit of asking for help about a particular
technical difficulty in the form, "Should I X?", where X stands for
something or the other, like "keep my throat open", "use resonant
fingerings", "change my embouchure" and so on.

I'm also referring to the habit of answering such questions, I'm sure
always with the intent to help, but sometimes IMO presumptuously, by
saying "You should definitely Y", where Y stands for one of those
something or the others above, usually a different one from the one in
the question.

Of course, the difficulty is compounded when the dogmatic instruction to
Y is given by someone who pretty clearly has no experience of the varied
contexts {C1, C2,...} in which Y might or might not be appropriate, and
therefore fails to communicate that to the questioner. Perhaps indeed
they are just repeating what somebody once told *them*, or even what
somebody said some other supposedly respected player was overheard to
say to somebody else, sometime, somewhere. (Please don't anyone take
this to refer to *you*.)

Technical considerations always defer to musical intentions. Thus the
best fingering for a given note may be highly context-dependent. It's
perfectly possible that you would want to choose a non-resonant, 'worse'
fingering for a particular note because it plays a particular role in a
passage, and therefore needs to be weak to make the passage sound right.
(Like the last 'the' in the previous sentence.) Likewise, the
instruction to "keep your throat open" is useless if the music requires
you to whisper at that point. "Don't change your embouchure" is
sometimes quite the wrong thing to say.

*For a given student*, you might want to give dogmatic instructions
because you can see, or hear, that that will give the student access to
another variable that they had not been considering up to then. For
example, to one student, you might want to say, put more air through the
instrument! To another, on the contrary you might want to say, you
don't need to put air *through the instrument*, you know. The air
that's going to vibrate is *already there*. All you need to do is have
the reed vibrate freely!

But you couldn't do that on this list. Because the idea is always then
to put them back in touch with the result, to find out if that is what
they want to hear. And if they produce what they want to hear,
consistently, then *that* is what shows them what they 'should' be
doing, not what other people say they should be doing.

So, let's have a few more questions like, to get such and such a
result, how could I think of..., etc, and answers a bit more like, I
find that..., how about trying..., etc.

Should I have?-)

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE
tel/fax 01865 553339

"...his playing soars so freely, one is aware of witchcraft without
noticing a single magical gesture."
(C.D.F.Schubart on the harpsichord playing of C.P.E.Bach)

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