Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2015-04-03 18:50
Bill, that's perfectly cool. My advise is about finding, for the largest audience, the shortest distance (despite it still being quite long and arduous) to clarinet proficiency, spending money the wisest along the way.
Some players enjoy taking "excusion trips" along the way, be it involving the purchase of gear that may be only tangential to our improvement, playing outside the box of assigned lesson materials to the latter's detriment, or not practicing "enough." As long as the excusions are worth to a player more than the possible loss of proficiency that instead staying focused might have provided, I say go for it. Sometimes we even need such diversions to remain motivated.
To the purist, doublers take the diversions of learning another instrument, like saxophone, stealing time, and some argue embouchure (I don't agree) from clarinet. Meanwhile, in the real world where, full time classical clarinet positions in orchestras, let alone decent paying ones, are as rare as being struck by lightning, they're more likely to get gigs. So..so much for focus if you can't pay the rent.
It's the budding player who wants maximum advancement, already possessing good gear, who, in their case, wastes money and time buying a "Silverstein ligature," when for a fraction of that cost ($11) they could have bought Opperman's advanced velocity studies and worked on that, that irks me.
This is not a dig at Silverstein ligatures per se, as much as it says that in this case, the student needed a practice upgrade, not a ligature upgrade.
In your case the funds you spent to acquire your gear, (and now don't have to purchase other things with) seems to provide you more joy in adding variety to your maintaining clarinet interest, and seems to be worth more to you than what those lost funds would have gotten you elsewhere. You value things differently than others, and thank goodness you do; for if we all valued things the same, we wouldn't trade, and if we didn't trade we might have to make every product we need ourselves.
I agree that great teachers touch upon concepts that the student might not have initially even contemplated, but I hope they also do more than act as a motivational coach. Like a good personal trainer, they should not only keep your working, but doing so correctly.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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