Klarinet Archive - Posting 000887.txt from 1999/10

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] The scientific method, learning strategies, and 'shoulds'
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 03:45:21 -0400

It might be a good idea to draw an analogy here between the scientific
method and learning strategies. Then what I was saying about 'shoulds'
may stand out clearer.

The scientific method is a way of attempting to analyse a complex
system. Essentially, it consists of holding all the variables of the
system, except one, constant. Then you can see the effect of changing
just that variable.

In this way you can determine that plants need water to grow by
depriving one of two identical (or as near as possible identical) plants
of water, keeping all the other environmental variables (light,
temperature, soil and so on) the same.

When you are learning an instrument, you are also engaging with a
complex system. It's not one that you want to understand
intellectually, but one that you want to master experientially, so that
you can play what you want accurately, instinctively and naturally --
as you do when you sing, as someone here was saying on another thread.

It turns out that there are some variables that can profitably be kept
almost constant in this learning experience, too. A teacher may
well suggest these to a student. An example that I've written about
here is the constant abdominal flexion system that allows us to use our
diaphragm to modulate dynamic.

Now, this last 'constant abdominal flexion system', often called
'unvarying support', is *one way* of playing. It's a very useful way of
playing, but it would be wrong to say that it's how we *should* play.
Sometimes we get better, more appropriate results by playing without
support, or by varying support. Several examples of this are given in
my "All that Stuff about the Diaphragm" article.

Essentially, as explained in that article, constant support allows us to
learn the use of the diaphragm, which is otherwise inaccessible to our
conscious experience. But that doesn't mean that we 'shouldn't' vary
the action of our abdominal muscles.

A similar holding of a variable constant is the idea of 'constant
embouchure', which allows us to find tongue positions that work. And we
may find that we need to vary embouchure much less than we thought, just
as we may find that we need to vary the action of our abdominal muscles
less than we thought. If we do find these things, playing is
considerably simplified.

(It might plausibly be argued that our tongue movements, though they can
be amazingly subtle, are less under our conscious control than our
embouchure movements too; so there is a further analogy between the two
pairs abdomen/diaphragm and embouchure/tongue.)

But here again, there is no implication that embouchure movements are of
no use. Delicate variations of embouchure position are essential in the
altissimo register, for example. Taking a different embouchure is also
useful in playing 'neutral', piano second clarinet parts, in tune, in
registers that may ordinarily be sharp. Or in playing a clean, forte
staccato in the low register in the second movement of Stravinsky's
'Dumbarton Oaks'. And there are many other more subtle examples.

To lead young players (and older ones too) to think that there are
technical 'shoulds' in these circumstances is criminal, in my view.

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

.... A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer.

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