 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: kdk
Date: 2016-06-15 06:48
Wow! From master insurance salesman to the band director from Hell. J.K. Simmons is always impressive.
Karl
Post Edited (2016-06-15 06:59)
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Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2016-06-15 18:07
For many reasons it is not. Litigation concerns of schools, teacher's [even tenured ones] fear of losing their jobs, not to mention that rarely does such an approach work best. Motivating through fear shouldn't be the tool of first choice, it has its limits, and it can backfire.
If you search the bboard for William Revelli you might find some stories of how intimidating he was, but second hand accounts I've heard tell me that if you did your work, Revelli generally had little issue with you; that isn't to say that he didn't sometimes lose his temper if a band member talked briefly to another when they weren't suppose to, even if for purposes of communicating things like the measure Revelli desired to pick the music up from--that had gone unheard despite careful listening to Revelli's orders.
Some of the best clarinet teachers try to latch on to what's good about your play and offer you what I refer to as a "criticism sandwich:" or positive feedback, followed by negative, followed by positive. Manasee, Hawley, Spring: these are guys that try to motivate through positive reinforcement, or at least so I'm told with the latter two.
I've certainly witnessed my share of conductors throwing chairs, but in the "other direction," aimed at nobody, and IMHO, where frustration on their part (if not action) was indicated.
Sometimes certain disciplines need..well...a disciplinarian. This is not to endorse, Mr. Simmons' character's demeanor. But we have Hyman Rickover to thank in part for a accident free nuclear navy, (both in propulsion and weapons handling) and Revelli for this.
Maybe "the ends justifies the means" is never a valid argument, but nice guys often don't get results like these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbmL8ogtuhs
Weber's 2nd Clar. Conc, 3rd mvmt is challenging enough for a soloist. Now try to be in perfect unison with multiple players.
Post Edited (2016-06-15 18:25)
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2016-06-15 18:49
I like the idea of a "criticism sandwich" - thanks Dave.
I followed the Revelli thread when it appeared, and it led me to a number of great band videos on YouTube (including the one you've linked here), plus other reading on Revelli. He apparently justified his pressure tactics much the way the movie character did, i.e., to push people to play their best. Things probably are not that simple, but no doubt motivation did result.
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Author: kdk
Date: 2016-06-15 19:30
Philip Caron wrote:
> He [Ravelli]
> apparently justified his pressure tactics much the way the
> movie character did, i.e., to push people to play their best.
> Things probably are not that simple, but no doubt motivation
> did result.
I haven't seen Whiplash, so I don't know what the surrounding plot context is - these are relatively short clips. I never saw Ravelli at work, either, so I don't know if his "pressure tactics" rose (or descended) to the level of personal cruelty Simmons's character exhibits in these scenes. My own personal reaction is that no level of technical perfection justifies this kind of treatment of one human being by another (unless life and death themselves are involved, as in training for an elite military unit), and this is only entertaining because it's fiction.
As screen acting, the effect is exactly what I'm sure was intended. My stomach began to knot up just watching it. I wasn't sure why someone didn't chuck a stand at *him.*
Karl
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2016-06-15 20:06
I've heard stories about Revelli's ability to get the best out of a band, but every one of them comes with a parade of horribles about his cruelty and repulsive personality.
I'm happy I didn't go to Michigan. If it makes you feel any better, Resta at the West Point Band was much worse.
Ken Shaw
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Author: mmatisoff
Date: 2016-06-15 20:57
I, personally, find that there are less abusive ways to help students. Belittling, yelling, abusing, embarrassing, and otherwise harassing a student, particularly a good student, does nothing more than make them doubt themselves. The more doubt, the worse the outcome. Once you "break them" of their bad habits, they become afraid to play at all. In middle and high school, there is no place for abuse. If a student has no talent or ability, have them transferred to a different music program. I don't believe (in most cases) that the student is playing badly just to irritate the teacher.
My concert band director wasn't all that different from J. K. Simmons. She punished me when I did something she didn't like by moving me from first chair to fifth (a chair that didn't exist). A day later I was first chair again. This routine lasted three aggravating years; my parents weren't aware of the problem because I never told them. After graduation and seven years of playing in the band, I put the clarinet down for good. During my years with the marching band, the director never felt the need to belittle or humiliate us. Whether we played while marching down a boulevard or performing a concert at the Shrine Auditorium, we all did our best and we sounded great.
Most importantly, I wasn’t the only person who gave up music after graduation. All of my friends gave up music after graduating. I, luckily, with my wife's encouragement, took up the clarinet again after 43 years. Even after all this time, I'm still nervous about playing in the community concert band. Nevertheless, I am joining the concert band this fall.
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2016-06-15 22:39
In another YouTube vidscene from the same movie (Whiplash), the drummer and the conductor meet in a bar, quite some time having passed since the earlier scene. The conductor no longer has the job at the college, because a student committed suicide.
The conductor explains his methods in relation to an anecdote (which I wonder whether it's true) about Charlie Parker in his early days being similarly abused by another musician for a bad, or rather, just ok, performance. Charlie Parker responded by practicing harder, and eventually became great.
So the conductor also wanted to push everyone to somehow be the next Charlie Parker. The drummer asks if there wasn't a line there, past which a potential next Charlie Parker would become discouraged and give up, and the conductor replied, if they were Charlie Parker they wouldn't become discouraged. He then admitted he'd never had a Charlie Parker.
It's a pretty strong scene, and the point is made, but I'm not trusting it. You can't extrapolate from someone like Charlie Parker. And, there's a lot of ways talent can be derailed, but I can't imagine why lack of abuse would necessarily be one.
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2016-06-16 10:24
>> In another YouTube vidscene from the same movie (Whiplash)... <<
First, the point of this scene is lost without seeing the rest of the movie
It's almost like watching a Tarantino movie without the ending
The anecdote about Charlie Parker, from what I was told, is partially true but was changed a little to make it sound worse than it really was.
A lot of musicians didn't like the movie either because it's not really like that or identifying with the character (I don't watch movies this way). I mostly liked the movie and didn't think it was meant to show how it's really like anyway. Except it was too kitchy and would have been better if it was less (especially the very end).
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2016-06-17 03:52
The Charlie Parker incident was a bit different. At a jam session, evidently, someone decided to test the still young and inexperienced Parker by starting a tune in a very difficult key that was, at the time, unfamiliar to him. So Parker did experience some humiliation by fumbling through the changes. But this challenge only alterted Parker to the need to learn to play in all keys--a project that he immediately set out to accomplish both by deliberately transposing all his solos by ear and searching out etudes to sight read and practice in all keys, including, according to some reports, a set of etudes by Ferling (sound familiar?)
Parker does not seem to have been victimized by a ruthless martinet of a band director but rather enjoyed his experiences playing with Jay McShane and other bands. Parker's discipline was more self-imposed, as he set out to copy the solo work of Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and other sax players but in all keys! Parker was aware of the classical sax players also and had even made plans to study with Marcel Mule in Paris before failing health prevented him from doing so.
Post Edited (2016-06-17 05:46)
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