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Re: Gearheads

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2022-08-16 19:05

NOLA Ken wrote:

> To me, the "best" gear for a student is that which inspires the
> player to strive for what they want to accomplish and elicits
> the kind of encouragement and mentoring necessary for them to
> achieve that.

> Fortunately school students have a much wider range of good
> affordable instruments and better mentoring then we did in the
> 60s. I don't think that a $6,000 instrument is necessarily the
> best investment for a young school student. But I suspect that
> by high school an old plastic Bundy like I had in high school,
> even a well-prepared one, is not going to go very far to
> inspire either the student, their standing with their peers, or
> the teacher. Thankfully there is now some very nice middle
> ground.

I agree with this. But I think there is a wide distance between searching for the "best" gear for a student to somehow maximize his or her progress and searching for equipment that is functional at the level the student's musical activities demand. An entry level student rental instrument may not provide the qualities that a high school player needs to compete for seating in a decent high school band or orchestra. But, as you say, there's a range of equipment available (that wasn't available 60 years ago) that isn't budget-busting but does make better results easier.

And there is equipment available to students (who are the only ones undiscerning enough to use it) that *do* make good playing impossible. I've had many students who came to their first lesson and produced nothing but air sounds with a little pitch mixed in. I love those first lessons because the problem is so easy to solve. A change of mouthpiece and reed (I have a drawer full of each) most often solves the pitched air problem in one fell swoop. And it doesn't really matter what mouthpiece I pull out of the drawer as long as I know which reeds in my drawer will work with it.

Karl

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Gearheads new

Fuzzy

2022-08-03 00:07