Klarinet Archive - Posting 000842.txt from 2002/07

From: notestaff@-----.de (David Glenn)
Subj: Re: [kl] kimber, the wrestler
Date: Sun, 28 Jul 2002 07:51:36 -0400

Kimber wrote:

> Dear Rien, What exactly do you mean by "hard nuts"? I am playing everything
> from the music from Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and The Little Mermaid to
> Aaron Copland and Tchaicovski (pardon if I misspelled that one..:) ) I play
> anything I can get my hands on. I am even getting the music to La Copa De La
> Vida, or The Cup Of Life, by Ricky Martin. ;) My wrestling has been somewhat
> put on halt, because my boyfriend is out of town. He's also on the team,
> (though the two things do NOT merge) and has his own homemade mat. No one
> else to practice on now. But I do expect good things next season. Thanks for
> appreaciating me, Rien Stein and all the others who have. I knwo I am
> probably acting like a typical teen, though I insist there is no such thing.
> I apologize to all for this... ;) But, sigh, I guess I will have to suffer
> the endless drama of being a teen until I grow up, if that ever actually
> happens... wink wink. And, about the clarinet, why is it so hard to practice
> after I have played my flute for a while. I've noticed I can play less and
> less the more and more I play my flute. I just took up my flute, so I have
> to practice to get to the level I am at on the clarinet. But in practicing,
> my fingers have lost their memory and I can't play some of the more advanced
> songs that were pretty easy for the longest time. And,l I forget a lot of
> the fingerings now, even though I have ben playing for four years...why is
> that?
> Kimber the Wrestler
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: rien stein <rstein@-----.nl>

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Kimber,

That phenomenon seems often to occur when one take's up something new. I can
often tell when one of my clarinet pupils has been playing the recorder again
(common instrument to start with here in Germany) as they will use recorder
fingerings and make a confused impression. I noticed the same at the beginning
when I started to learn German. Spanish words kept coming out since I learned
(and thought I'd forgotten) some Spanish in school in California. In any case,
don't worry. The difficulty will pass and eventually you will change
effortlessly from flute mode to clarinet mode.

I think that I store clarinet and sax fingerings in different parts of my brain.
I've heard about people doing that on purpose with languages. I think that's why
my two children speak both English and German fluently as natives. They
associate each language with specific persons. If at rare occasions, my son and
I should exchange a word or two of German it *feels* wrong somehow. It's like a
dissonance which we will resolve by changing back to English. I get the same
sort of feeling when one of my German acquaintances speaks a few words of
English to me. I'm relieved when it changes back to German. To get back to the
fingerings, I think eventually you will start associating the fingerings more
closely with the sounds and that the problem will then disappear.

Well, for me this was a bit chatty but I have a few free days. Next two weeks,
I'll be mostly gone again so don't worry.

David

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