On 5/13/05 3:05 PM, "Stav Tapuch" <tapuch@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> This has left me very skeptical towards the technical approach towards
> development. There was no single tip that made be sound better, I am just
> blowing and blowing and blowing all the while wishing for a better sound,
> and, eventually, I began to sound better...
Stav,
Your comments raise an interesting point. How do we learn? We don't all
learn the same way. All the things I mentioned I learned by blowing for
hours and experimenting for years. Not by being told about them. However, as
a teacher I try to explain these things to my students in the hope that it
will help. Some of us are helped by descriptions and some not at all. For
some things click years later. "Oh that's what he meant".
I don't feel that my approach is technical. I just spent so much time
trying to get the best sound I could and this is what I discovered. I also
don't want to forget, so I write things down to help me get beck to "there".
One of my Japanese teachers said very little about embouchure the 4 years I
studied with him. Now I understand he talks about it a lot. It just wasn't
the traditional thing to do 30 years ago. I wish he had said more. I might
not have had to struggle so much.
At the Boulder Festival some of the masters, like Yokoyama sensei did
explain embouchure. One said imagine you are swallowing a grapefruit etc.
They gave tips that might help one person have a breakthrough, though others
could become confused. Tips are there to be used. If they don't work for
you throw them out.
There's no substitute for hours of practice, but a word here and there can
sometimes really help.
What's fascinating is that any one who discovers something without following
a prescribed path, then usually tries to come up with a set of steps to
follow to help others get where they got without them. Huh?
Peter
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