Over the past year one thing I have been working on in all
aspects of my horn playing is getting it right the first time, and every
subsequent time. It is something then when I write it out it seems like common
sense, but more often than not it seems that the process of “learning” invites
in the possibility to make lazy mistakes. Expanding on what I wrote about last
week in regards to interpreting the music into digestible and accessible fragments,
this week when I took what I had learned and placed it back into the context of
Nebadon I had to be very active in making sure I only allowed good habits and
thoughtful actions into my playing.
What I mean by the above statement is that when I have a piece
of music under control I will shift my focus to be more on musical elements,
allowing the technical things to be driven more by the work that has been done
to establish them. As I am still early on in the process of learning this work
I have to be mindful to make sure that though I am pursuing musical things I cannot
let mistakes happen, I have to remain in control and in anticipation of what
could go wrong.
This is a concept I have worked on a great deal in my etude
work this year that is having a great carry over to repertoire. To repeat, it
is the process of being aware of my playing in a way that allows me to
anticipate something coming up so I can act before the mistake happens. An
example of this could be as such: My mid-low register is not responding as
quickly as usual, so in my approach I need to take this into account so I can
adjust the equation of air/attack/volume/etc. to make sure that the notes come
out.
There could be an argument made (as I have heard it made in
the past) that we should always be striving for musicality. I agree with this
100% but, that can’t be an excuse to allow mistakes to happen, if you have a
great phrase and you chip a couple notes and are out of tune I do not believe
that your musical line will come across. All things in balance.
No comments:
Post a Comment