Author: Terry Stibal
Date: 2004-09-29 16:40
Also, bear in mind that young minds (those up to the age of 15 or so) are the ones that are capable of learning things "into the hind brain" with ease. Do the drudge work while you are young, and you'll pick it up much better than if you wait until you're mature enough to discipline yourself to do the work (say at twenty years or so).
James Burke (the author of Connections, and a very interesting guy in person too, by the way) did a nifty demonstration of this many years ago, with a guitar and an EEG, showing how the mental activities needed to play a guitar by a "learner" were centered in the "forebrain" (the "reasoning" portion of the organ) while the same activities being performed by a "skilled" player were located in the "hindbrain" (the reptile portion of vertebrate brains, that portion where our walking and speaking abilities reside). That's why a "beginning" guitar player can't sing along, while a skilled player can actually carry on a conversation while playing. (The second is hard to do while playing the clarinet, by the way...)
It also accounts for the problems that I've encountered over the years with particular instruments. I have lived on the bass clarinet since I was a wee one, spending far more time there than on the soprano or other instruments of the family. All of those endless trips up and down the horn in thirds and such, along with the embouchure and diaphragm adjustments that accompany them, are pretty well ingrained in my mind.
My usual bass clarinet warmup consists of running all of the major scales (up and down) for two octaves, starting from low F to first line F, then the thirds in a similar fashion, a couple of rips through the chromatic scale over the compas of the horn (with differing articulations each time) and finally running through a fragment of Russian music (Ippatov-Ivanov, I think; Procession Of The Sadar?) for general finger agility, all of it while wondering what time the meal break is going to be granted. It's all on auto pilot (more or less), and it's all a function of long, long, LONG practice many years ago.
I can pick up a bass and sight read music with little problem, even the more complicated stuff that gives many players pause, and THINK ABOUT SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT at the same time. (As in "Who's that good looking babe up on stage in the second female lead part, and where should I offer to take her to dinner tonight?") Clarinet's about the same (with some distraction in the extreme upper register, since I've never spent much time up there on the soprano).
But, put an alto sax in my hands and suddenly I have to start doing a little "thinking" as to what to do next. It's a relatively subtle difference ("Loosen up, dummy!" when diving down to low C, B and Bb, and "You're getting ready to play some high notes now; remember to start from the bottom on the palm keys, yobbo!"), but the difference is there nonetheless.
Move to baritone and I get a little more comfortable, but change to bassoon (as I had to do during No, No Nannette last spring) and it's a completely different story. Then, it's "Think about the lip", "Think about the various vent fingerings", "Think about reading bass clef", "Where's the stupid water cup?", and a myriad of other little "things" that make fag playing a lot more "stressful". On bassoon, I have to focus to the extreme, and there're no spare "processor cycles" left to watch the girls in the chorus. One wonders what an EEG of the brain would look like under those circumstances...
I have noticed that, with the relative intensity of my saxophone playing these last five years or so, my facility has improved on the brass horns. And, now that I own my own bassoon (currently sitting up in Saint Louis following a complete rebuild; I get it back sometime this fall), perhaps I'll get enough flight time in on the horn to avoid a bit of the double reed anxiety.
But, with certain instruments (soprano sax (intonation), flute (air flow and just holding the stupid thing), English horn (double reed and balance issues, combined with limited opportunities to play it), and (shudder...) oboe (embouchure issues)), I am reconciled to never accomplishing the degree of mastery that I've achieved with the others.
I've seen learning theory studies that suggest the minimum number of iterations to "learn" of a single operation (a transition from one note to another on a horn, for example) to the point that it is "habituated" is around three hundred. Based upon my learning of the series of thirds (I consciously set out to learn those at about age 14), I'd have to agree.
Short version of the above:
If you're serious about music, you need to obtain the grounding in the "fundamentals" while you're "young enough to learn". You only get a limited window to master them before your "brain" stops "learning" the automatic stuff; don't waste the opportunity.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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