As I'm sure many of you are at this point aware, there was a rather ill-informed and offensive article posted on slate.com earlier this week stating that "classical music is dead." (Click here to read the full article on slate.com) I have been contemplating a response to the the author's comments for a few days but was having a difficult time moving beyond the extreme anger inspired by the article in order to formulate coherent thoughts on the subject. And I was also trying to avoid resorting to simply calling the author a "jerk-face" or "ass-hat." You know, at least make it somewhat apparent that at one point in my life I graduated Summa Cum Laude and earned a Master's degree.
Luckily, another blogger (Andy Doe, of properdischord.com. I very highly recommend following him) took it upon himself to write a response that gave a voice to my thoughts and feelings beautifully.
PLEASE go here to read Andy's spectacular response to the the offending piece.
There's only one thing I would add as a response to the author of the Slate.com article: Thank you. Thank you for so blatantly offending me and bashing what I do for a living. I really appreciate how easy you found it to declare classical music to be dead when most of your cited facts either supported the idea that support for classical music is increasing, or they came from looking at the number of "likes" on Facebook. Last time I checked, Facebook is not a viable source of unbiased information, nor is it likely to represent a sufficiently diverse enough population to give much credibility to the number of "likes" actually counting as an unbiased survey. Thank you for insulting how I have spent the last 20 years of my life and for declaring those 20 years to essentially be a waste of my time. Thank you for being so willing to assume that classical music has no place in the world of today. You all too easily declare that it belongs only to the elderly, yet here I am, under the age of 30 and completely in love with performing and listening to music from over 100 years ago. I definitely find it preferable to most of the disposable crap that's being produced today. Classical music will never die as long as we are here to fight you for it. Arts funding will never disappear as long as we fight for it. Orchestras will never die as long as we fight for them. It is clear that you do not care for classical music yourself and therefore have no problem with writing it off as deceased. Be sure that you do not mistake your own opinion for fact, and the fact is, classical music is not dead. And as long as I have breath in my body to fight for it, it never will be.
Friday, January 24, 2014
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Tonguing. Just Do It!
I apologize ahead of time if this post comes across as more than mildly frustrated...
I'm finding more and more that there are far too many high school horn players that have no idea how to articulate anything other than a slur. They use a "huh" attack on anything that does not have a slur marked on it, and they think that this is correct. Some of them are even proud of their so-called ability to articulate in this manner. Are they really not taught how to tongue properly before they reach their high school years? Being married to a band director places me in a position where I am fully aware that we absolutely cannot hold band and orchestra directors solely responsible for this problem. When you have 70+ students all playing different instruments at the same time, it's impossible to correct every single technique issue that may arise with your students. If the student doesn't make it glaringly obvious in rehearsal, they can glide through 4 years of high school and their teacher could never know there was a problem. There comes a point where you have to trust that your students are retaining at least some of the information that you try to impart to them each day. That being said, there is a distinct difference between knowing how to tongue and choosing to not do so properly (i.e. laziness) and actually not knowing how to tongue.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have always been under the impression that tonguing is one of the most basic skills that is required of wind instrumentalists (brass and woodwind alike). Air, buzz, tongue. Our primary tools. Whilst on my eternal mission to get my students to practice their fundamentals, I have been compiling the following mental list of ways to help them articulate:
- Say "tah" into the horn while you play (I know, "Thank you Captain Obvious." Right? I'm surprised just how many students cannot do this.)
- Play a whole note. Follow it with 4 straight quarter notes using the same air stream as the whole note. Simply interrupt the whole note with the tongue to create the quarter notes.
- Pretend to spit out watermelon/pumpkin/sunflower seeds. Actually spit out watermelon/pumpkin/sunflower seeds. Apply the same technique to playing.
- Pick a pitch. Play it as short as humanly possible at a loud dynamic. Keeping the note short makes it nearly impossible to start the pitch without the tongue in addition to not allowing time for pitch manipulation. This can help with pitch accuracy as well if you move around to different pitches.
- Do the same thing but as softly as possible.
- Tell them to spit tacks.
- Don't let them do anything aside from articulation exercises in their lessons for weeks. They'll do anything to move on to something new.
My request, as a friendly neighborhood private instructor, is that we don't allow our students to "get by" with lazy or lousy tongue technique. It is a fairly simple concept that can be taught when they are young. The older your students get, the harder it is to unlearn bad habits. Especially if they are not often corrected on it. Demonstrate proper tonguing often and bring it to your students' attention. Emulation is one of my favorite teaching tools with my younger students. They don't need to think about how to do something. They can copy anything you do if they just know what they are listening for.
I'm finding more and more that there are far too many high school horn players that have no idea how to articulate anything other than a slur. They use a "huh" attack on anything that does not have a slur marked on it, and they think that this is correct. Some of them are even proud of their so-called ability to articulate in this manner. Are they really not taught how to tongue properly before they reach their high school years? Being married to a band director places me in a position where I am fully aware that we absolutely cannot hold band and orchestra directors solely responsible for this problem. When you have 70+ students all playing different instruments at the same time, it's impossible to correct every single technique issue that may arise with your students. If the student doesn't make it glaringly obvious in rehearsal, they can glide through 4 years of high school and their teacher could never know there was a problem. There comes a point where you have to trust that your students are retaining at least some of the information that you try to impart to them each day. That being said, there is a distinct difference between knowing how to tongue and choosing to not do so properly (i.e. laziness) and actually not knowing how to tongue.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have always been under the impression that tonguing is one of the most basic skills that is required of wind instrumentalists (brass and woodwind alike). Air, buzz, tongue. Our primary tools. Whilst on my eternal mission to get my students to practice their fundamentals, I have been compiling the following mental list of ways to help them articulate:
- Say "tah" into the horn while you play (I know, "Thank you Captain Obvious." Right? I'm surprised just how many students cannot do this.)
- Play a whole note. Follow it with 4 straight quarter notes using the same air stream as the whole note. Simply interrupt the whole note with the tongue to create the quarter notes.
- Pretend to spit out watermelon/pumpkin/sunflower seeds. Actually spit out watermelon/pumpkin/sunflower seeds. Apply the same technique to playing.
- Pick a pitch. Play it as short as humanly possible at a loud dynamic. Keeping the note short makes it nearly impossible to start the pitch without the tongue in addition to not allowing time for pitch manipulation. This can help with pitch accuracy as well if you move around to different pitches.
- Do the same thing but as softly as possible.
- Tell them to spit tacks.
- Don't let them do anything aside from articulation exercises in their lessons for weeks. They'll do anything to move on to something new.
My request, as a friendly neighborhood private instructor, is that we don't allow our students to "get by" with lazy or lousy tongue technique. It is a fairly simple concept that can be taught when they are young. The older your students get, the harder it is to unlearn bad habits. Especially if they are not often corrected on it. Demonstrate proper tonguing often and bring it to your students' attention. Emulation is one of my favorite teaching tools with my younger students. They don't need to think about how to do something. They can copy anything you do if they just know what they are listening for.
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