Klarinet Archive - Posting 001060.txt from 1998/11

From: Roger Garrett <rgarrett@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] Absolutes
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 14:28:12 -0500

On Fri, 27 Nov 1998, Tony Pay wrote:
> Two ways to be dogmatic:
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> (A) To tell someone what they 'should' do to achieve something on the
> instrument.
>
> (B) To tell somebody how they 'should' play something musically.
>
> Two circumstance in which this dogmatism *may* be counterproductive:
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> (1) On this mailing list.
>
> (2) In a one to one teaching situation.

Tony, these are your opinions. You are welcome to them. I don't agree
with you - they seem narrow to me. Also - because you have already
admitted that you don't teach young students, it would appear that your
experience in this area is quite limited - certainly not representative of
what one should or shouldn't do. Of course, your playing is wonderful and
your older students are probably marvelous. What I am saying here should
in no way be construed to detract from any of that.

All that being said, any conclusions you base on the above hypothesis or
theorems, or whatever you want to call them, would be false if the
theorems are also false.

I simply don't agree with your position on this.

> I think that expert players, unless they are experienced teachers,
> underestimate to a considerable degree the extent to which inexpert
> players think of themselves as doing some such something, 'wrong'. To
> have them dig themselves even deeper into their difficulties by
> presenting them with isolated bits of advice that they are supposed to
> concentrate on doing, particularly if there are several contradictory
> opinions from different people, may indeed be damaging.

Again, while I enjoy most of what you say and all that you do in terms of
playing, you don't have the experience with inexpert players at a very
young age to conclude what you have above. Simply put, students need the
structure. This is a proven concept of education - and not just in music.
What you suggest is the equivalent of giving a student a physics textbook,
putting them in a room with 5 sheets of paper that suggest different
approaches to solving problems and seeing if they can figure it out on
their own. The average student will not get very far. The occassional
star didn't need the extra suggestions.

> The situation is helped slightly if the way in which the bit of advice
> is presented keeps the student in touch with his or her technical
> intentions, or even better, musical intentions. Then there is some
> chance of the student's playing moving in the direction of the results
> that other, better players produce -- on recordings, say. Again, those
> of us who listen to such recordings with expert ears considerably
> underestimate the degree to which a beginner doesn't hear what's going
> on, and precisely how what they do differs.

I never suggested that Tony. I'm not sure why you feel many people feel
that way. Young students learn a great deal from listening to recordings.
But if you are advocating that as a way to become musical, it is no
different than a teacher saying....."play it this way." You can't change
a recording - it says "play it this way" the same way forever.

> When I first started teaching, I fondly imagined that a master class
> would be the ideal way for students to learn. After all, the less good
> students would learn from the better ones, no? What I failed to realise
> was that those less good students had the problem that they couldn't
> hear in detail *how the better students were better*. Had they been
> able to, they would have been better themselves anyway.

And you just identified the reason some students require absolutes - until
they can develop these listening skills on their own. It is a simple
concept.

> As I said before, it's concentrating on the 'thing you should be doing'
> that does the most damage. Therefore, we should try to minimise the
> extent to which that happens.

Now you are talking about how information is presented - which is a
combination of personality, information, presentation and demonstration.
Your discussion of teaching technique is so general as to be irrelevent.

> In (A)(2), I prefer rather to approach the student by telling them to do
> something in a more metaphorical way, and include direct instruction
> within the metaphor. I posted one such metaphor here, about leaps, a
> couple of months ago, if you want an example of what I'm talking about.

Your approach works for you - great - let's just not say the approach that
seems to work well for others and doesn't work for you is wrong or less
effective. It's just less effective for you.

> ...but I think you'd agree that it can be done in a number of ways. The
> tongue doesn't respond well to direct instruction (try sticking it out
> at yourself in the mirror, and then tell it to stay still!), but it can
> learn to perform the most precise actions imaginable. We learn to do
> this when we speak, just by imitating the results that other people
> produce.

Imitation is one of the best ways to learn. Humans are the best imitative
creatures. Some students learn better with instructions however - and
with verbal descriptions. This is especially true with young children.
Therefore, knowing what you do is as important as guessing how to do it
through imitation. Many great performers are horrible teachers because
they don't know how they do what they do - they were, perhaps, the
occassional star who could learn with just the textbook - and imitation
was enough for them. The best teachers for young children are those who
know what they are doing, why they are doing it, and can impart in many
different ways that information to others so that they can do it.

> What the tongue does on the clarinet is to *interrupt* the vibration of
> the reed. Experimenting with interrupting a steady, well-sustained
> sound in various registers, and noticing where your tongue is doing the
> interrupting, can lead to your 'tip to tip' result, but 'held' by the
> student in a very different way from how it's held under direct
> instruction.

It can also lead to tip to middle, tip to just below tip, middle to tip,
middle to middle etc...it all comes back to how well they can hear while
blowing air, mainting an embouchure, banging their tongue on a reed and
listening at the same time.

> On the other hand, in different registers, with different reeds, I
> sometimes find that I get better results when my tongue does other
> things than tip to tip.

Check out the archives - we've discussed this before. I actually tonuge
on top of the reed - beheath my tongue. John Mohler once shushed me when
he asked the studio class where we tongue and with which part of the
tongue we tongue - I answered below the tongue! Later he explained that
to be a valid, fine way to articulate - but that it would mess everyone up
if I explained it that way. He was right.

> I also use various metaphors, some of which would be applicable to
> younger players. Look at my chapter in the Cambridge Companion to the
> Clarinet for a small subset of those metaphors, if you're interested.

I am interested, and thanks for the tip.

> In (B)(1), I said that when we say how something 'should' be, musically,
> we ignore that that something will always be in a context. We're better
> off pointing the student at that context, and then saying how the
> musical idea we have is related to that context, because then what they
> produce will have some unity.

Your paragraph works better if you say....."It can be more effective if we
point the student at that context....." rather than to say it is always
so. It isn't always so.

> In (B)(2), as well as pointing to the context, and asking how what they
> play is related to the orchestral or piano accompaniment, or what the
> historical evidence is, I sometimes have students play things in ways
> that they really don't want, and have difficulty with, in order that
> they see a way of making it work other than the one they're naturally
> disposed to. The idea is to expand their range of choice. So that's
> very intrusive. But I always make it clear that I'm doing that, and
> tell them why at the beginning.

But this is a standard technique. It doesn't mean that the young student
shouldn't be given a way to do it and then ask them to come up with other
ways.....in which my last post suggested.

> Obviously I wouldn't be intrusive with younger students, but we could
> just say what musical context or atmosphere might work, and then play it
> that way ourselves, perhaps in the duet we were discussing. Then, how
> about some other way? Could we play this duet like a march, or like a
> little song, or sadly.....? I'm sure you do this sort of thing anyway,
> and I hope I haven't given the impression that I'm against it.

But we don't use duets ONLY to teach tonguing, hand position, musicality,
technique, etc. We use them as one of many tools. True teaching for
young students involves much, much more.

Roger Garrett
IWU

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