tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post3661398091705484775..comments2024-03-27T23:06:03.736-05:00Comments on The Music Salon: Teaching Styles and MethodsBryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-86986630457356883732017-03-30T12:15:27.174-05:002017-03-30T12:15:27.174-05:00I think you would have liked my mother. She was an...I think you would have liked my mother. She was an old-time fiddler and played all her life. When I was a child I was surrounded by "back-porch" music all the time! Music was something that people did in their spare time and they did it for their own enjoyment and for their friends and neighbors. And most people could play at least a little bit.<br /><br />When you say: "The music business turned ordinary people into a passive audience of consumers, intimidated by the strong skills of professional and virtuoso musicians. In many ways that was a spiritual loss that permeates our culture still." I think you express very well one of the profoundest problems of music today. A passive audience of consumers simply do not appreciate music in the same way that people do who also play music at home.Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-70455331759142998092017-03-30T11:59:57.810-05:002017-03-30T11:59:57.810-05:00I enjoyed your reflections on your teachers. Teac...I enjoyed your reflections on your teachers. Teachers really do influence us, engaging us seriously when we are impressionable. Of course the lessons we take are often not the lessons intended, but that is because a real learner must construct their own meaning from all experiences, and integrate it into our own personal and therefore unique understanding.<br /><br />The teachers I still reflect on were mostly in history and literature. I had a few guitar teachers but never could learn even 1 song and quit guitar twice, the last time was 22 years ago. I concluded I have zero musical ability.<br /><br />Funny enough, I picked up a violin 23 months ago and have played it almost every day, and a friend (business partner) whose heard me finally said the other day "its beginning to sound like music." Of course I say "its not music yet" but I do recognize enormous progress. I love sight-reading and have many books of sheet music. My daily playing (I prefer to just call it "playing" --isn't that a lot more fun than "practicing"?) is mostly roughing out a page a few times, then turning the page...going through many pages as an adventure each time. There are only a few pieces I've focused on enough to begin playing them almost passably --a Corelli sonata, a Vivaldi concerto, etc.<br /><br />I'm desperately poor right now so can't afford lessons. I've had a total of 4 violin lessons, a few weeks apart, last year, from a very accomplished violinist. Yes I took a few tips from him and certainly made a (more precise) long list of things I need to improve, but honestly I feel like a few lessons per year would be right for me, its enough to give me a learning agenda and then I can work on it privately. Maybe really I'm just too old and crusty and habitual and don't want a constant (weekly) nag telling me to correct some bad habit that's comfortable?<br /><br />I do sometimes get a tinge of regret that I didn't start younger, that I don't now discipline myself more in playing (to really learn to count time, to really learn to hold the bow correctly, etc), and that I don't have a teacher through which the master-apprentice process of classical music seems to be learned. It adds up to a tinge of sadness that I'll probably never be "classical" because I won't be "good" enough.<br /><br />But I also have a salve perspective on that: in my nostalgia for roots music like Appalachian bluegrass and really old country and other folk music, I came to appreciate how music was very different before recordings and mass media. Music used to be made by families, and sometimes including neighbors in the rural days of "front porch music." Even if you didn't play, you'd sing along, music was made by nearly everybody. It was the only music you had.<br /><br />The music business turned ordinary people into a passive audience of consumers, intimidated by the strong skills of professional and virtuoso musicians. In many ways that was a spiritual loss that permeates our culture still. And so, in harmony with the advice you report from Pepe Romero (I love his "Flamenco" disc on Philips label --I'm listening to it now!), about not playing from ego but rather from a spiritual base, and its not very different from what you say about having focus and concentration and using your own musicality: yes, even a back-porch musician like me can do that much, and over time doing that will make me good enough for the front-porch!Will Wilkinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01997868915978439364noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-13478502195244648882017-03-30T08:21:01.758-05:002017-03-30T08:21:01.758-05:00You bet! One of the finest young guitarists I have...You bet! One of the finest young guitarists I have heard in quite a while.Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-59910808795474749122017-03-29T17:20:10.972-05:002017-03-29T17:20:10.972-05:00I don't know if Mr. Henderson reads your blog,...I don't know if Mr. Henderson reads your blog, but if he does I want to congratulate him. That's mighty fine guitar playing if I may say so!<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com