Posted by 'fess'r's final word on April 29, 2003 at 19:23:50:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: suggested guidelines posted by Alexandra on April 29, 2003 at 18:16:28:
I started this thread for my own amusement, knowing that suggesting that people do something "real" (and quite easy to define) rather than discuss (the typical) nonsense would get some folks hot.
Now, after all of the posts that I've lured in this thread, I'm beginning to realize that stereotypes exist for reasons.
Compare, in your mind, the typical best-in-a-given-metro-area high school or college-level flautist/violinist/trumpeter/oboist/bassist/classic guitarist/horn player/cellist/percussionist to the typical best-in-a-given-metro-area tuba player.
Picking any one instrumentalist above of your choice and comparing it to the tuba player, which of these two instrumentalists will likely be able to offer forth the most technical accuracy, technical velocity, and musicality? Which one will have devoted more time to serious practice? Which one is less likely to have "gimmicky" stuff on their instrument - or to be "hung up" about their equipment (blaming their instrument for their musical shortcomings)?
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Personally, when...say...a violist comes up to me after an orchestra concert and pays me a compliment, I do my best to be gracious and accept the compliment, but in my mind I will be thinking, "Geez, I did nothing compared to what you did. I played a couple hundred accurate and well-placed pitches, where you turned seemingly infinite numbers of nearly perfectly-executed musical phrases - and you sustained this energy for nearly an hour and a half of solid error-free music."
Upon executing searches on this bbs the endless entries related to "nonsense" topics - along with the grumbling and charges of by own "elitism" (when I simply suggested the execution of a reasonably do-able task - requiring a reasonable amount of practice) lead me to realize that we as a community are mostly a bunch of...well, what our stereotype dictates.
Let's go practice.