Klarinet Archive - Posting 000466.txt from 2001/06

From: MVinquist@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Re: Rhythm --- what is it?
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 12:57:21 -0400

Every complex skill involves gathering a sequence of simpler actions together
into something with a single trigger and name.

When children learn to walk, they do it clumsily. We say their nervous
systems are not yet mature, and this may have something to do with it, but
it's really because they haven't learned to make the various movements into
the single action of "walking." The physical growth of the nerves occurs
partly as the child grows, but they way the nerves develop is determined in
substantial part by the actions the child is learning to do.

When I started out on clarinet in the 7th grade, I could of course walk
perfectly well, but I stumbled like a 1-year-old when I tried to hold the
clarinet, make an embouchure, blow, use my tongue, recognize notes, remember
the fingerings and move from one note to the next. I had to create the
complex skill of "playing the clarinet," which I'm still working on years
later.

"Getting good" at something means more than a simple combination that's
always the same. In addition, you learn how to adjust a complex skill to fit
the circumstances. I can (sort of) trot along, dribble a basketball and
shoot when I get to the basket. Kobe Bryant can move in dozens of directions
more or less at the same time to get around constantly changing obstacles.

Basic training as a musician means learning to put numerous dissimilar
movements together, and making the difficult ones (going over the register
break) just as smooth as the easy ones (moving a single finger). "Getting
good" as a musician involves being able to put sequences of complex movements
together in any order and adjust them according to circumstances.

Getting back to the original question, playing dances involves learning to
make meta-movements - taking the complex patterns of movement you already
know ("C major scale," "broken diminished seventh arpeggio starting on E"),
stringing them together in larger groups characteristic of a particular
dance, and "swinging" the groups of movements in that dance's particular
rhythmic pattern. That sequence of gestures becomes a single group, which
you learn to vary with the circumstances, just as Kobe Bryant's drive around
everyone to the basket is, for him, like a sequence of jazz licks that he
recognizes the possibility for and strings together as he goes along.

Feeling the rhythm doesn't mean being free. It means knowing the
possibilities and their combinations and choosing among the correct
possibilities in a continuous flow.

Best regards.

Ken Shaw

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