I have been meaning to write for some time, but haven't had the chance so I thought I would give those of you who were kind enough to read my lesson blog an idea of what I have been up to.
My lessons hadn't been going that great for some time. I don't know if it was from lack of effort on my part or what, but I wasn't getting a lot out of my lesson time, and I am pretty sure Kirt wasn 't either. Its only fair to assume that the teacher, regardless of any pay, must get something out of the lesson times of their students, or it just isn't worth the time.
It seemed to me that I was simply spinning my wheels, and not improving. One thing at my last lesson that totally threw me for a loop was that Kirt told me, while I was doing some scales (and not that well either) was to not look at my hands in the mirror.
Why is this a big deal? All through my lessons over the last couple of years, Kirt reinforced many times that I should be looking at my hands to make certain that I had the correct finger position. Therefore I made it a point to try and memorize the scales so that I could pay attention to what my hands were doing. So this came as a real shock to me, so much so that I didn't even raise a stink, which if you knew me was really unlike me.
Kirt told me of a pro that he knows, that creates his own charts and still reads them all when he gigs. While I would love to sight read better, this just seems daft to me. If I am playing anything other than classical, and I know that piece, the last thing I want to do is to have to look at the music, I only want to concentrate my mind to play well.
Kirt is still a great teacher, but it was time to move on.
Nevertheless, I started to play my daily practice routine looking at the music, and not my hands.
At the same time I was feeling badly about the lessons, I answered and ad that was looking for people to play Russian music of the 20's 30's and 40's. I wasn't much familiar with this, but when I realized a lot of it was either straight klezmer or something aligned with it, I was ready to play,
I had a great first night just jamming with the other musicians, since the singer was delayed by work. Lo and behold, I found out I could actually play something and not make people cringe.
I got the song list and started to learn the songs. It soon became obvious that while I enjoyed playing with the folks in the jams, that only one of them was really proficient at his instrument, and that the woman who wanted to start the group just plain couldn't sing. It was awful, since they were all such nice people, but I couldn't see myself spending my time backing up a singer that I didn't like myself, so I left.
My wife had heard my complaints, to so make a very long story short we decided to start our own band.
This takes a long time like you probably know, and we are still weeding out the material we want to play and learning it well enough so that we will be able to get some like minded people to play with us. I don't want to come off unprepared if we get some good musicians that respond to our add.
Still, I need to practice basics, while learning the songs so here is what I have been doing in my practices:
I firmly believe that at my level, I need to practice three things daily: major and minor scales, scales in thirds, and arpeggios.
What I had been doing in the past was to rotate on which days I played these, since many times I have a limited amount of practice time to do any thing in. What this meant was that I never really got good at any of the three of scales forms I need to know cold.
What I decided to do was to just play the major and minor scales, if nothing else at all, each day as the first thing I practice, after long tones and other warm up exercises. Bear in mind, I had never to that point gone thru all the scales, but crapped out 3/4 of the way through. Pathetic, I know. It was very frustrating to me to do this, and many times it took all the 45 minutes or so that I had to play through all the scales.
I had to start this way: for years, I played in lots and lots of bands as a tenor sax player with no complaints from other musicians about my playing ablilty, and still I never had learned all the scales on that instrument, which is stupid, since they aren't that difficult on the sax. So I was determined to not let this happen with the clarinet.
Its been several months since then, since I started playing the scales first (and looking at the music and not my hands too) and I feel I am making some progress at last. Also, and most important, I lowered the tempo for the scales from 88 on the metronome to 76 - and sometime even lower than that if necessary. After reading the great piece by Gino Cioffi, it makes perfect sense to play slowly and correctly, perfect sense.
Today, it took me less than 20 minutes to run thru all the scales, not blazing fast by anyones measure but much better than I was. This also means that I have enough time and energy left to practice the other two basic scale types every day. I alternate between the arpeggios and the scales and thirds. At some point, I will get down to where I can play them all and still have time left to play.
Nothing mind boggling here I know, its all just common sense but you know how rare that is! Someday I may take lessons again but if I do, it sure won't be about playing the basics. Thanks again to all who took the time to read my humble scribblings on learning the clarinet.
Posted by dana at October 25, 2009 01:20 PM