Klarinet Archive - Posting 000239.txt from 1999/12

From: Neil Leupold <leupold_1@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Orchestral deafness II
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1999 11:23:43 -0500

--- William Fogle <bfogle@-----.org> wrote:

> I posed this question about six months ago, but want to ask for advice
> once again. I experience problems playing in the orchestra when I cannot
> hear myself. In other words, my playing skill (embouchure, intonation,
> dynamics) is lost when I lose my "feedback" (i.e., my ears). Does anyone
> else experience this? I really flounder (easy on the fish jokes!!!) when
> the brass takes an ff, and I produce a squeak or lose pitch. I can't
> believe my playing is so dependent on my *hearing* myself play.

This highlights the importance of not only paying attention to what
you hear, but to the cues and signals you receive from your body. If
you've spent the requisite time developing diaphragm technique, then
you should be able to gauge your breathing on the basis of what you
feel in your diaphragm. This applies as well to the embouchure, es-
pecially when the muscles and muscular reflexes in your embouchure
are well-developed. There comes a point over the course of this de-
velopment where those physical cues assume primary importance in du-
plicating proper technique, where the adjustments being made are of
a subtle nature only, based on changes prompted by what you hear.
The issue here is that, over the course of technical development,
consistency of proper technique is *built into* the process of
learning it, such that what you feel physically plays an equal role
in tone production/control as what you hear. Then, when you find
yourself unable to hear over the brass, you are not 'lost', because
you have a second set of sensory inputs to guide your playing. It
is always best to have cues coming in from both the ears and the
body, but it is not an impossible situation to play well when you
are temporarily unable to hear yourself. On the other hand, I would
get a little worried if I suddenly found myself unable to detect
the physical cues (i.e.; duplicate them on command) that inform my
playing, regardless of what I could hear.

-- Neil
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