Klarinet Archive - Posting 000242.txt from 2004/07

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Bumblebee2
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2004 00:01:56 -0400

Tom Puwalski began his advice with,
>1. know your scales, slow clean with out mistakes, with a beautiful sound

Yes. A corollary to that good suggestion: When you know each scale and get
to the point where you're running through the whole series to retain it,
mix up the order every day. Have a family member or a friend call out the
keys to you in scrambled order, or make yourself a deck of flash cards,
shuffle them and turn them over one at a time to determine the order of
scale practice for that session.

Here is a moment from the bad old days, when I participated in a "piano
party" for children who studied with about a dozen teachers from my area. I
think the kids in this group ranged in age from eight through twelve. These
so-called parties were supposed to be "non-competitive" -- the usual "every
child is a winner" drivel, which of course any child with the brains of a
rutabaga *knows* is drivel -- with purple, blue, red and yellow ribbons
presented so liberally that the remaining "winners" who get the dreaded
green ribbon are ready to go jump off a bridge. As one of the older kids
present, I knew too well that one of the eight-year-olds, a child prodigy,
could play me right into the floor. I had worked my brains out and I was
extremely nervous. I knew my scales backwards and forwards. That's exactly
how I'd learned them and that's how I'd practiced them.

Well, I sat down at the piano in front of the five judges and the many
non-competitors (some of whom knew me well enough to expect a total
breakdown and to eagerly await it with little elbow-nudges and gleaming
eyes). The head judge, instead of asking me to play a prepared piece first,
said, "Play a scale in B major, starting downwards from the top." I reached
for a high B and then got flummoxed, because I'd trained myself to play my
*first* scale with no sharps or flats; and I'd always started from the
bottom of each scale. I didn't really know my scales, after all.
Inadvertently, I'd memorized *a piece* that consisted of the scales up and
then down, always in the same order, up the scale and then down the scale,
starting from C major and proceeding, major-minor, around the circle of
fifths. I didn't know how to deconstruct that piece, or how to start
playing it anywhere except from the beginning. Several hesitations and a
wrong note later, the judge said crisply, "Thank you! Next!"

But of course I was a "winner," too, with a green ribbon to prove it.

Lelia Loban
http://members.sibeliusmusic.com/LeliaLoban
Re-defeat Bush in 2004!

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