Klarinet Archive - Posting 000422.txt from 2003/07

From: "Joseph Wakeling" <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Ignorance and competence
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 08:19:52 -0400

Tony Pay wrote:

<< Yes. It's why masterclasses are less helpful to students than we
teachers think they might be -- because the (plausible) idea that the less
able learn from the more able, is scuppered by the fact that the less able
can't *hear* that the more able *are* more able, let alone *why* they are.
>>

<< What many students evaluate as their lack of ability to *do something
'right'* is rather, a lack of ability to *perceive what it's necessary for
them to do* when they play; and concomitantly, a lack of the same ability
used to *perceive what they actually do do* when they play. >>

My younger brother is a slalom canoeist. For those not in the know, this is
a watersport descended from slalom skiing: you have to paddle a kayak down a
white-water course, going through a series of downstream and upstream gates,
with penalties for touching or missing gates.

One day I was chatting with him and we were talking about a friend who is
also a canoeist, who has a problem---when something goes wrong in his race,
he goes to pieces. My brother said, "When something happens he doesn't
expect, he can't react to it."

"How do you react to it?" I asked him. He replied, "You don't just have one
way of doing things. You have *lots* of ways of doing it."

Which seems to be relevant here. For example, I can certainly *hear* when I
am doing things right and wrong---and when other people are---what I don't
have is the *physical* capacity to isolate and control those things.
Probably it's not helped by the fact that I want to get things right first
time. My brother, when training, will make lots of mistakes---through
trying out ideas, to see what works and what doesn't. It's a necessary
process. I seem to aim directly at the sound in my head and that slams me
right up against a brick wall.

-- Joe

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