 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2016-06-26 03:29
Thinking about another thread on motivation brought some questions to mind, or maybe variations on one vague overarching question.
Why do we play clarinet? Why do we pursue it? Why do we work at it? Why do we play in the situations we do? What's the final goal?
I suppose if one knew answers like that, they'd know something about motivation, or possibly about motivating. When I answer those kind of questions for myself, I can't entirely admire the answers; there seems to be some selfishness involved, in the guise of wanting to be valued. Just liking music is part of it too, but I might in cold honesty rate that aspect to be sort of unimportant: rather, music is to a degree just something that happens with me whether I like it or no.
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Author: sonicbang
Date: 2016-06-26 04:02
Well if it sounds good (on my betters days) it makes me feel good. Also it's great to make music with other people. Like when you enjoy talking to friends about something important. I'm not sure it's about the instrument itself.
Mark
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2016-06-26 04:13
Alfred North Whitehead said "You can't tell me that the nightingale is singing to his mate out of anything but the joy of life, for the love of singing. These things lie deeper than thought, as sound strikes deeper in us than sight. When we were savages, I venture to suppose, we were much more impressed by the sound of thunder than by the flash of lightening." (From "Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead as Recorded by Lucien Price, 1954).
Whitehead was the philosopher of process, and engaging in a process seems to be what we humans are for. After Voltaire shows the world to be quite mad in Candide, he counsels the human race to engage in the process of cultivating a garden anyway. Music can be that garden too, and the clarinet is a way to dig into it and become a part of the process of growing. It is also a window to the eternal processes of change and evolution, without which everything stagnates, withers, and dies. Playing the clarinet is also a particular way of breathing, another way to participate in the process of life by soundmaking, just as gardening is a way to participate in the respiration of plants by breathing in their oxygen to give us life as we breathe out carbon dioxide to give them life--linking one life form to another.
Post Edited (2016-06-26 19:55)
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-06-26 04:32
I think you've really described two different paths.
I had been involved with music since before my first earliest clear memories, and my formal study of music began when I was 4 years old. I didn't get to the clarinet until I was around 10. I chose clarinet more or less because it was most like the simpler wind instruments I'd been playing for what then constituted most of my life. Music really was and is for me the driver and clarinet is just what I chose as a medium. Eventually, playing reasonably well is self-validating.
Many of the kids I teach have had no formal musical training or contact (though we all have *exposure* from nearly our first breath if not before) before they start playing the clarinet at age 9 or 10. Many of them have had no particular musical motivation to play - it was the first time that their school system allowed them to elect something that not everyone did, and many of their friends were starting at the same time (albeit probably on different instruments). Their motivations have been, at least at first, largely social, like "wanting to be valued" or wanting to be part of a select group (or their parents said they had to try it). Those are important social needs (even the need at 10 to satisfy parental expectations), and music participation is one important way to fulfill them.
Hopefully (from a teacher's point of view), students' attachment to music participation will with exposure, familiarity and increasing skill become a life-long involvement (not necessarily - probably not - as professionals) regardless of their initial motivation. They'll do it, no doubt like each of us here, because it continues to fill some need, which will be different for everyone.
Karl
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Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2016-06-26 05:39
I am far too busy practicing to have time for such esoteric questions like why it is I practice in the first place. ![[wink]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie3.gif)
Truth is, you'd think I'd have far more concrete answers for such reasonable questions beyond "because I enjoy it," especially given the time I devote to it.
With music as a love, clarinet served/serves many needs, from a vehicle to express and feel things with, to a difficult but manageable instrument that is a challenge, to a social vehicle, to a vehicle by which to now mentor others and meet needs to nurture.
Like Karl, clarinet was a natural extension of the recorder I got in 1st grade music classes--which I still recall as one of the happiest days of my life. For me, that piece of cheap plastic in its corduroy sleeve might as well have been platinum wrapped in cashmere for the happiness that playing it gave me.
Only wind instruments were offered in elementary school where I lived. I was hooked.
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2016-06-26 17:00
In all honesty I didn't particularly care for clarinet, but I had to get all my grades on something, so I did them all on clarinet. I played sax before clarinet but found the exam syllabus music at the time was dreadful being Baroque flute sonatas and very little actually written for sax that was tolerable. Had I wanted to play Baroque flute sonatas then I'd have played flute. But the clarinet syllabus was music written specifically for clarinet. I got distinction in the end but couldn't afford to do the diploma, so left it there as far as academics go.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: Tony F
Date: 2016-06-26 18:54
I took up clarinet at school because it was expected that you either play an orchestral instrument or piano, and I really didn't like the piano. I'd always liked the clarinet, so my musical path was set. I played at school without much interest or distinction, and later on in the R.A.F. I found that playing Eb clari in the station band was infinitely preferable to wandering round an airfield on guard duty on a freezing January night. I played in a couple of local jazz bands for beer money, and then I left the service and had to get a real job. I didn't touch the clarinet again until I retired 47 years later.
I'd always remembered the incomparable feeling of being a part of a band or orchestra when everything works and you are transported to somewhere else. I bought another clarinet, joined a New Horizons band and rejoined the real world. Today I play in 2 concert bands and a couple of jazz groups and I have regained that feeling of being a part of something that is greater than me. For me it's completely addictive and I dread the day when I'll no longer be able to play. In the meantime I'm making up for lost time.
Tony F.
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Author: GeorgeL ★2017
Date: 2016-06-26 19:50
"Why do we play clarinet? Why do we pursue it? Why do we work at it? Why do we play in the situations we do? What's the final goal?"
I'd generalize that to: Why do we play any musical instrument? For some people (me), it's because we enjoy doing it; for more competitive people, it's because it is something they can do better than other people. I started on sax and took up clarinet because there was one in the house after my brother stopped playing.
Why do we pursue it? Either because we enjoy it, or we want to get better.
Why do we work at it? Some of us (me) don't work that hard at it; others obsess over their playing. I have always disliked practicing by myself.
Why do we play in the situations we do? A high school director I had in the '50s told us he used to play gigs with a non-union band, and when the union enforcers come through the front door, the band bailed out the back door. Is that the kind of situation at issue?
What's the final goal? Different strokes for different folk. I enjoy playing in bands with people who are mostly at my level or higher; but it doesn't bother me to not be able to play in bands where everyone is much better than me. People who take music more seriously than me should play better than me.
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Author: mmatisoff
Date: 2016-06-27 04:21
Beautiful quote. And I agree. We play the clarinet (some of us) because it is part of our being. It's an extension of who I am. I've grown wiser, and so has my clarinet playing. It a journey that began with one step many years ago. Hats off to all clarinetists - beginning and accomplished.
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