Author: brycon
Date: 2021-08-10 19:10
Quote:
Was it satisfying to you to include that bit of snark? Because I think your reply was a good one *without* it.
Sure, why not. It's a thoughtful thread and a serious topic, for both more and less advanced players. Paul's unserious and entirely snarky straw-man response deserves a bit of snark in return.
Quote:
To add something to the topic, I think there's a place for both nuts-and-bolts learning and for more philosophical discussions of the "whys" behind the "whats" and "hows." At this stage of my learning -- a mere 2.5 years on the instrument -- I find I benefit more from concrete information than from the esoterica threads often devolve into.
But it isn't an either/or. Rather, you have to move from "why" to your "whats" and "hows" and back again in an ongoing loop; you don't graduate from one to the other.
A completely mediocre teacher, for instance, could tell you: "Raise the back of your tongue, then touch the tip of the tongue to the tip of the reed, etc." (And I completely understand how, as a student, it feels very comforting simply to receive a set of instructions to follow!) A marginally better teacher would explain the technical results of these steps: "The back of the tongue has x and y effect on the voicing, etc."
An even better teacher would then be able to supply some exercises so that you could hear and feel for yourself what both "correct" and "incorrect" tongue positioning and movement feel like, and, in this way, since you become more aware of your own body and the sounds of your clarinet, you can go about fixing the issue in the most natural way for yourself (for your unique tongue, mouth, etc.).
But the best sort of teacher, at least I think, would do all these things while, throughout the entire learning process, cultivating a sense of expression and musical know-how. The student, then, wouldn't necessarily wait to be given the steps to fixing his or her articulation but might instead say to the teacher: "I'm working on the Mozart concerto, and my articulated eighth-notes sound too heavy. I don't think it will blend with the piano or orchestra part."
Clearly, this student, even if he or she is mistaken in the preconceptions of Mozart, has received some knowledge! It isn't a matter of having the "correct" answers, of being able to recite, "The back of the tongue should be raised, and the tip of the tongue should touch the tip of the reed," because countless students know the correct answers but still can't play the clarinet. Instead, the student is thinking musically, has formed a basic interpretative decision about an aspect of Mozart, and therefore has come to the important conclusion that what's correct in this instance is what will lead to the realization of his or her interpretative decision in a performance.
It's much more similar, as I was saying in another thread, to how children learn to speak: they have the desire to communicate and express themselves, they listen to their parents and siblings speaking, and then they begin experimenting with various noises and sounds modifying things as they go. They don't, however, read an English textbook.
Similarly, you can't simply follow the correct steps according to famous clarinet player x, read a pedagogy book about long-dead clarinet player y, practice some etudes by truly long-dead clarinet player z, and become a good musician. While these things can be useful, in another sense, they don't really teach you anything: they're pieces of information. To learn, by contrast, you must have in mind your expressive and musical goals, try things out on the clarinet, listen and perhaps record yourself to see how successful your experiments were, modify things, and try again, as though moving in a circular rather than a linear way.
Post Edited (2021-08-11 01:21)
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The Clarinet BBoard
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