Klarinet Archive - Posting 000558.txt from 2000/08

From: Neil Leupold <leupold_1@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] taking up the clarinet again
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 14:40:02 -0400

--- William Wright <Bilwright@-----.net> wrote:

> So it's a trade-off (as I see it right now). You can start out the
> easy way with a student horn and thereby not get discouraged too easily;
> but this will doom you to picking up some bad habits of which you will
> be completely unaware until later on, and you will have to unlearn them
> later on. Or you can start out the correct way and take the risk of
> feeling so frustrated that you may give up and go back to listening to
> CDs instead?

The horn is not quite as important as the type of guidance you receive
while learning the instrument. There's no reason for a beginner to pick
up bad habits -- student-level instrument or not -- if they receive the
proper guidance and attention. Bad habits form due to a lack of appro-
priate monitoring and feedback, something which can be largely avoided
by taking regular private lessons with an observant and knowledgeable
player. Even if the student spends nine years on a crappy instrument,
developing innumerable bad habits sans any private instruction, (s)he
is by no means "doomed" to those habits forever. I started playing when
I was 9, self-taught on the worst of the worst (a used, unmaintained Art-
ley), and did not receive my first private lesson until I was 18 years
old. I was fortunate enough to find a top-orchestra player with both
limitless knowledge and seemingly boundless patience. Within two years,
all of the bad habits were replaced with good ones, and I discovered the
joys of effortless playing and music-making.

Musicians in general spend entirely too much time obsessing about their
equipment and its assumed effect on their potential to grow technically
and musically. Ricardo Morales is an acknowledged gadget freak. Nobody
would be so thick-headed, however, as to attribute even a hair's width of
his abilities to the brand or workmanship of the clarinet he plays. And
we all know the humorous John Bruce Yeh anecdote by now about his mouth-
piece.

Neil

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