Klarinet Archive - Posting 000020.txt from 2005/03

From: Adam Michlin <amichlin@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Becoming "what you are"
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 11:53:03 -0500

This is, to my mind, a slightly different matter. The matter being finding
one own "voice".

There's a relatively famous alto saxophonist in LA who sounds (and looks)
almost exactly like Cannonball Adderley. His take on it is that it better
to sound like somebody than sound like nobody.

Gene Quill (of Phil and Quill fame) was once accosted at a bar he was
playing and accused of merely stealing from Charlie Parker. His response
was "Here, you try it." (I seem to recall being told his actual response
was more vulgar than that, but I can't be sure).

They both have very fine points. It is, indeed, better to sound like
somebody than to sound like nobody. The mistake is to think that sounding
like somebody is the ends rather than the means. You sound like somebody
else (or sombodies else) in order to eventually sound like your self.

I get very concerned when I hear teachers preaching "don't listen to
recordings" or "the most important thing is to sound like yourself". There
is a very different sound to someone who learned the rules and then broke
them for artistic reasons than to someone who never bothered to learn the
rules at all.

To be fair, Dr. Paull did hint at this subject:

"In so doing, you will be your own original, tinged with an appreciation of
things passed."

-Adam

At 11:12 AM 3/1/2005 -0500, Mark Charette wrote:
>Apropos to the "I yam what I yam" posting:
>
>Dr. Jennifer Paull had a very interesting (and to me intelligent) response
>to a posting on the doublereed list this morning:
>
>http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/Doublereed/2005/03/000000.txt

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