Klarinet Archive - Posting 000456.txt from 2000/04

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Student motivation (or lack thereof)/ Lame Excuses
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 08:49:53 -0400

Matt Goff wrote,
> However, I do not think that a week of no practice must necessarily result
in a wasted lesson time. I do think that the younger the student is, the
more likely it is to fall on the teacher to keep the lesson from being
wasted. One person on here mentioned that his/her teacher gave a lesson on
working
reeds one week, for example. >

In high school, I jammed a middle finger in a misbegotten attempt to catch a
baseball with the meat hand instead of the glove hand. The finger looked
like a rotted sausage, bloodshot black right down into the knuckle. The
whole hand and wrist swelled. Playing the clarinet or the piano was out of
the question for more than two weeks. I sat and did my homework during
orchestra class that half-month, but my piano teacher asked if I would like
to come for my weekly lessons anyway.

We spent one lesson listening to selections from records of pianists. We
talked about what he approved of and didn't approve of in their performances,
and why. We reversed our usual seating, with him at the piano while I felt
strange (but somehow older and wiser!) sitting in his chair across the room,
as he demonstrated things to me. For the next lesson, he asked me to compose
something for him to try to play from my manuscript. This proved a most
fascinating and instructive exercise, since I had to "hear" what I wanted
while trying out only bits of it one-handed. (You will not find this magnum
opus in the catalogues of music dealers, but, since we had no recycling back
then, my Op. 1, No. 1 may have achieved timelessness in the Marin County
Sanitary Commission landfill in California, in a stratum about thirty-seven
years down and progressing Hellwards with every earthquake.) We spent that
whole lesson discussing music theory. These sessions taught me so much that
I was almost sorry to return to the normal routine the following week!

Lelia

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