Klarinet Archive - Posting 000097.txt from 2002/12

From: Jeremy A Schiffer <schiffer@-----.edu>
Subj: RE: [kl] Benefit of taking time off
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 12:38:15 -0500

On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Lloyd, David - Business Directorate,Trading Standards wrote:

> You will find the guitar utterly frustrating and unintuitive to begin with
> and your fingertips will hurt a lot.

I started playing the guitar a few months ago, after playing the clarinet
for about a decade. I never found it unintuitive though, actually quite
the opposite. The geometry of the instrument makes applying intervals and
chords much easier. I already had a very strong academic music theory
background, but now I feel I'm gaining _practical_ music theory
experience, which I didn't have as a classically trained clarinet player
who now is learning klezmer. Despite being able to do a Schenkerian
analysis of a piece, I couldn't improvise over chord changes to save my
life, but noodling around on the guitar (both melodically and
harmonically) has already brought substantial improvement in this area -
on the clarinet.

The biggest problem I've had on the guitar is that my hands are fairly
small, so some chords are basically impossible to reach. If you have long
fingers, you're a lot better off.

Your fingertips, however, will certainly blister and hurt a lot at first.
Especially if you're using a steel stringed instrument.

> Your rhythmic sense and theoretical knowledge can only benefit from learning
> the guitar.

Absolutely. Playing any chordal instrument (piano, guitar, accordian)
provides an invaluable learning experience for those of us who have
concentrated on monophonic (one note at a time) instruments throughout our
musical lives. Stepping away from the flurry of notes and melodic lines of
the clarinet, to sit with the rhythm section and play chords, gives one a
much more complete understanding of music and how the different parts work
together. And this is from someone who has over 400 hours of classroom
music theory in his past (plus at least 1,500 hours doing the assignments
and projects). In less than 1/4 that time, learning the guitar has
already brought me things that theory classes never could.

-jeremy

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Jeremy A. Schiffer
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