 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: tree
Date: 2000-01-12 01:53
The following is just me stating my mind....just to warn you
I would just like to say that I find the whole competitveness of all of these all-state things incredibly ridiculous and out of hand. All that all-state is to me, is a week where a bunch of high schoolers get together, and try to "out do" eachother. Some of my friends at college went to one high school all state competition this november and said some of it was crazy with competition! When it comes to the grand scheme of things in high school music, I found that if you keep a competitve-free mind, you can improve by leaps and bounds by working on smaller things that will pay off in the long run.
On a side note, one of the most painful things I have seen at local competitions for all-counties and area all-states, are the little boys and girls in oerhaps 5th or 6th grade that come out of their performance in tears because they got a poor grade. At such a young age, should parents and teachers already be putting a competitive urge into their children's minds? I believe that not until later in high school, should the competitveness be emphasized a little more often. An this emphasis should only occur if the young musician has decided that they want to pursue music. Teachers who work with young students should work with students on how to play to THEIR best potential, NOT what some judge believes to be is their best potential. I learned much more from my past teachers who have left competition out of my musical growth than from my teachers who always said "Well te judge will want to hear it this way......"
The musicians who seem, to me, to excel the most are the ones who were taught to play confidently, and to ignore competition.This is just my opinion, but I think that the competiveness thing in young musicians has gotten way out of hand
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Author: Sara
Date: 2000-01-12 02:07
I agree with your opinion but if your not in high school then this probably foesn't mean much but at my high school if you are to be known that your good at school; its not your overall playing ability its oh what chair did you make in region band? Nobody in school cares how well you play its all about how high your chair is. They all ways say in my band that awards and chairs don't make winers and succeders but hard work and determination do. Well we would all like to live in a world like that but lets face it; it's never foing to happen.
Sara:)
PS: I told everyone I would post a followup on my audition well I made 3rd chair region band and I got All-state callbacks, so I'm really excited considering how I thought right after the audition.
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Author: tree
Date: 2000-01-12 02:34
When you get to college, noone cares where you placed in regions. They care about how you play, not how you play compared to someone else. And trust me, I know very well, what its like to grow up in a competitive high school environment. tree
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Author: Kim
Date: 2000-01-12 03:11
I 100% agree. When I came into college, I was worse than I could have imagined. Whether it was because there was too much focus on All-State, I don't know. Now, I am so fabulous and have improved so much that it is unbelievable.
I believe that making it into a Music Department is more prestigious than making any regional or All-State band because you are playing at that level(even higher) year round and you get professional lessons.
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Author: Simone
Date: 2000-01-12 11:16
For all non-Americans: What are All-States and All-Counties ?
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Author: steve
Date: 2000-01-12 13:34
random thoughts.....re competition in artistic endeavours....
we live in a society with organizations that promote and organize ballroom dancing and square dance competitions...
many years ago at Interlochen, a friend of mine (later to be a drucker student) organized half-serious "clarinet races"..in which two clarinettists played the 1re rhaposide nose to nose, and the person who finished first won...
I have listened to conversations concerning who's (was) the better clarinettist...wright or marcellus....
a trombone playing friend of mine at a well known university with a highly respected conservatory was co-organizer of the (no name given) Dormitory bathroom Olympics...no commentas to the subject material and judging criteria...
prhaps humans have a genetic flaw...the stupid competition gene, or scg-1...
s.
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Author: Melanie
Date: 2000-01-12 14:18
Simone,
In the United States, music students in high school and middle school can audition for bands comprised of the top players in the state. For each grade level, students play required solos and/or scales and are judged and then ranked with their peers. The All-County bands are similar, but the students in those groups come from smaller geographical areas. In many states, the band director's associations or other groups create districts or regions for these bands.
Hope this helps!
Melanie
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-01-12 15:02
Melanie wrote:
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In the United States, music students in high school and middle school can audition for bands comprised of the top players in the state.
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Just a very tiny clarification:
Not necessarily the top players in the state (country, district), but the top players who auditioned for the All-State et al. bands. I know (and I'm sure a lot of you know) a number of excellent players of many different instruments who choose not to audition for those bands for a variety of reasons.
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Author: Kim
Date: 2000-01-12 18:08
I had a friend audition for Western Regions and he made it with over a 100. He made into Berklee and was so upset that he didn't make All-State because he had achieved the highest level possible(making Berklee). These auditions are unfair and very political in some ways and don't give the small school(900) student the fair shot compared to the big school(1200 +). Names don't always mean everything. This boy was a fabulous musician and they jipped him big time. It doesn't just happen to him, but to other musicians.
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Author: J. Calhoun
Date: 2000-01-12 18:14
Since I did not come from this type of musical environment, I have some questions:
1) How many high school players are so burned out by excessive rote drilling to place high at these competitions that after high school they give up altogether?
2) If everyone wants to play first chair, who will play the lower chairs?
3) If everyone is trying to twiddle notes as quickly as possible, how will they perform in the real music world where adaptability and a good attitude are more important than whether you can play XXX piece at 2,000 MM?
4) Is there really any correlation between long term success as an adult musician and success at music and marching competitions?
Although I have a very modest talent, not a whole lot of formal training, and have never participated in a musical competition, in the last 25 years I have usually been able to work musically about as much as I want to (I am not doing this for a living, but neither will 90+% of the high-school All-whatevers). I try to be adaptable to whatever the situation is, be pleasant on the stand, on time and professional, easy to work with, and try to always do the music justice even if it's the 90 millionth time to play "In the Mood" or "Feelings".
It seems to me that high school musical training may have gotten off track and that musical education may have gotten somewhat mixed up with football competition.
Are these sentiments too radical for today's world?
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Author: steve
Date: 2000-01-12 19:05
j. said..."It seems to me that high school musical training may have gotten off track and that musical education may have gotten somewhat mixed up with football competition."
I agree with j. to a point, but we have to see the bigger picture, imho...making music is making music...competition is competition...two different animals....
in the music business, you have to compete with other musicians to land the job. this is true in all areas where you get paid to do something. what we are doing that imho is wrong, is merging the two paradigms of music making and living making, and then assigning value to the outcome. You can get into an idiotic situation such as asserting that drucker is a "better" clarinetist than stoltzman because he holds down the ny gig and stoltzman schleps his horns from hall to hall doing the soloist gig....
as adults, we know that competition and its outcomes do not necessarily ascribe value to what an individual is or does, but kids can get hurt by these attitudes...they haven't developed the elephant hide self esteem we older folks have....
I think alot of this paradigm mixing at an early age is the need for educators to be able to cite something (in industry called metrics) that shows that money for a program gets results, liker all-state seat placement....you then get into the idiotic situation where a common sign outside a Catholic school reads "this school saves taxpayers x amount of dollars" instead of "this school tries to educate children as well as we can..."...also American schools are starting to develop trade school attitudes instead of education attitudes....but that's a whole 'nother diatribe...
s.
s.
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Author: Ginny
Date: 2000-01-12 19:09
I think that culling for the best as the sole objective in sports, arts or mathematics deprives our society of the human resource of taking each individual to their fullest potential. It is a great pity that many still believe that music or sports or math should only be for the choosen few. Our physical and mental health as a society would improve with a change of attitude, IMHO.
As young adults, music competitions can start careers and this is the conservatories are the place for it. But I see no reason to ruin the pleasure of music for the rest of us, just to let these folks practice for these events.
I have no doubt that my clarinet playing son could compete in a few years, he's quick and well trained. The body count is too high for me to sanction such musical jockness.
I am glad that my son's enlightened band teacher hands out clarinet parts randomly, giving each a chance to play 1 or 2 or 3. My son likes to play harmony and band is a great joy for him. My other boy's jazz band has no audition, although only the experienced players do the concert, all are welcome to learn. Lucky us.
Ginny
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Author: Lelia
Date: 2000-01-13 21:31
I have mixed feelings about all this. We do need some way of separating people with career potential from people without it. On that level, competition works.
But still, it does drive some people out of music. I'm one of those people who quit music after high school, because of stage fright. The stage fright applied only to music, oddly enough. I could (still can) stand up in front of a hostile audience and pontificate my brains out without the slightest nervousness. But, stick a clarinet in my chops or sit me down in front of a piano, even in my own house, and I turn to Jell-O if I know someone can hear me practicing. My theory about the stage fright is that it developed because I knew I couldn't compete with the best in music. It was very clear, very early, that I didn't have the stuff to be a pro. I mentally compared myself the the best and managed to notice that I didn't measure up. With that thought in the back of my mind at all times, I tanked every music competition I ever entered -- played like a pig (much worse in public than anything I ever played in practice) and made a fool of myself until I gave up.
Unfortunately, I think here in the USA, we have a tendency to think of professionalism as the highest and best value. "Leave it to the pros." If you can't sound like Jack Brymer, forget it -- go listen to records; don't pollute the air with amateur noise. Making the grade in student competitions becomes the benchmark of worthiness.
IMHO, that's unfortunate. I think people need to make music. There's something different about making music for ourselves than there is about passively listening to it. We don't necessarily need to make other people sit there and listen to us if we're not comfortable performing or if we're really not up to commonly accepted standards of perfection. On the whole, I'd much rather listen to a Jack Brymer recording than to one of my practice tapes. (Gaaaak!)
Somehow there's got to be a way educators can get the idea across that amateurism is okay, too. It doesn't have to be a choice between getting into the best music programs and quitting, the way too many kids perceive it. We accept the idea of amateurism better in other fields of endeavor and I think we could go back to the idea of amateur music that prevailed in the days before recording technology, if we want to. Before records, people made their own music. If it didn't have concert hall quality, no big deal. People didn't hear the concert hall every day for comparison, the way we can listen to recordings every day for comparison. I imagine people didn't hold themselves to quite such high standards. I don't advocate mediocrity or laziness, but I do think we could do better at teaching kids to enjoy making amateur music, in the same spirit that we play pickup basketball casually, without feeling bad that the Lakers aren't likely to come running with contracts.
After all, if someone doesn't write well enough to get a novel published, society doesn't tell that person to give it all up and quit writing e-mail (or income tax returns).
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Author: Dee
Date: 2000-01-13 22:49
Lelia,
The problem stems from the fact that way too many teachers, students, and parents make contest results the goal of their musical training. Thus they are studying strictly for the contest and so failure at a contest is a big deal.
The way it should be is the student studies music attempting to reach his/her overall personal best. Those who have the interest can prepare for contest as part of but not their sole course of study. No one should be forced or expected to go. After the contest, it should be used as a constructive experience. The student should be sincerely congratulated on his/her score and the judges comments reviewed to see if there are items that need special attention in future study. The teacher and student can use it as an independent check of the student's strengths and weaknesses.
What many people forget is that some students are early bloomers and others are late bloomers. In the end, the late bloomers (if they don't give up in frustration) may achieve a higher level than the early bloomers. This is true in a lot of areas such as sports not just music. Way too many students get pushed out of activities simply because they are late bloomers. It takes a lot of dedication and perseverence in these cases.
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Author: steve
Date: 2000-01-14 15:53
imho, leila's post is a wonderfully written, frustrating story of the present state in music education in america. it should be required reading. She is an eloquent, expressive writer, and I am sure her music-making has the same eloquent, expressive, and most importantly unique qualities. The fact that she "quit" and we can't hear her is our loss!!!
It is possible to get back into a world of music before concert halls, competition for orchestra jobs, district marching band contests, media trumpeting that person x is the best sarrousaphone player in the galaxy, etc, unfortunately, in my experience, it's not in the classical music area.
I had been playing clarinet for nearly 25 years....studied with the best at northwestern, became fully steeped in the competitive/professional values mode...then I discovered traditional american appalachian music, or old time music....I learned to play banjo, guitar and fiddle, and found a subculture that champions musical diversity, individuality, non-competition, music-for-music's sake as part of a larger social/community function....operating in both worlds is a bit jarring, but traditional had, for me, a dose of humanity and reality that was lacking in the classical area...
hell, there may be about a dozen people in the US who make a living playing this type of music...not much money changes hands...it's more fun to do it in a kitchen than a concert hall...its inclusive, rather than elitist....
check it out...
s.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-01-14 17:23
Steve,
There's a small (but growing) number of us who are getting together more or less monthly to play for & with each other - kids, adults, grandparents, whatever. We've had a song & dance act, piano, violin, clarinets, and I sat in on Mozart piece where the bassoon part was taken by trombone (the trombonist was great at sight transposition, the the piece really need the low end to keep the rest of us in line :^)
Get friends, relatives, and whatnot to get together & play music. It's fun!
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Author: Jim
Date: 2000-01-15 10:18
To Dee via Lelia: The points you make are very valid and I heartily concur with them. However, administrators and boards of education have taken stances in direct opposition to these sound standards. Bands are judged by eye more than by ear. The results of ratings are seen more than the players are heard. The cardinal fact in this matter is very simple: in 30 years of teaching, I was constantly amazed at the number of teachers pushing competition. Demanding that students attend rating feastivals and striving to let everyone know what "their" kids did! Music teachers were not asked to start these competitions, they did it on their own hook and the result is very evident from the responses to this BB by hs students. I have listened to so many retired teachers tell me,"If I went back to teaching, I certainly would not teach music! I would teach performance and competing for that is the jist of the situation at hand". Sadly for some students this is bad, but for some it is great and they glory in it. You pays your money and you takes your choice.
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