Re: Re: types of teachers


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Posted by Rick Denney on June 18, 2002 at 16:53:45:

In Reply to: Re: types of teachers posted by my own reply on June 18, 2002 at 14:52:35:

You make a good point, and it is one that fits closely with my own experience.

I've had several teachers. One was of the former school, and he himself was such a wonderful player that I'm not sure he even knew what it was like to struggle with poor technique. I learned much from him in just a few lessons about air production and focusing the air stream. Like you, I already had the sound in my head. In many ways, I'm still assimilating what I learned from him more than 15 years ago. But after a few lessons, we were either going to have to start doing something systematic, or we were just going to say again those things that had already been said.

Another teacher had struggled more in his development, but has even so reached similar heights of accomplishment. He first exposed to me a fault in my embouchure that I'm still working to correct. My current teacher (if I ever start back up after the crunch that invaded my life since the first of the year) spent considerable time on both the technical aspects and the air and concept approach. He's the first to give me something systematic to do to solve those faults, and I'm seeing improvement.

But it was something Pat Sheridan said in a master class that gets at this issue. He never practices technique while playing actual music. When playing music, he focuses solely on the music and sound product, without regard to the mechanics of achieving them. But if a technical problem crops up, he works on it separately, either without the instrument, or by doing drills specifically oriented to solve that problem. For example, he recommends lip-slur exercises to solve a flexibility problem, as opposed to working on the fault in an oft-repeated trouble spot within music.

I'd like to draw a parallel with another technique-dependent activity: swimming. No, it is not an art, but the best swimmers are so smooth and graceful and effortless that they raise it nearly to that level, just as a dancer would. But only the real naturals can swim that way. The rest of us must learn the mechanics, in the simplest possible terms, using targeted drills that isolate each technical process. The best coaches are not the best swimmers. The best coaches are those who can see into the best swimmers what they do that makes them good, and convey that in terms assimilable by someone with less talent. No, I'll never be more than a poor swimmer, but by following this approach I got good enough to swim miles at a time, and almost enjoy it.

Therefore, I think the best teachers are not necessarily the best players, but they see into the processes undertaken naturally and without thought by the greats, and distill that down into processes that can be learned by the rest of us. That's why my first teacher, though a world-class musician, ran dry with me after a few lessons. A person with more talent could have gone much further with him.

Many argue that any thought devoted to the physical process are necessarily an impediment. Were this true, swimmers would be no better now than they were 100 years ago. The key is to keep the physical process in its place, so that it serves the music and not the other way around. But sometimes, you have to work on that process to the exclusion of music, subsequently bringing mastery to the music. That seems to me the purpose of drills.

Rick "who needs lots of drill practice" Denney


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