Re: Standardizing Skill Levels

["Ken Wolman" <kwolman@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Meaty.  A giant slab courtesy of Joe to sink your teeth into.

Joe and Cass Leone wrote:
> 
> 
>  I wasn't going to get involved in the subject because I have written 
> about it countless times, and I fear I wasn't understood.

Well, I never read any of it before, so this is all news to me.

> I am leaving spaces so that anyone who wants to hack, can insert their 
> thoughts at will.

Been there, will do that.

> "One should have a plan"

My first thought was the wrong one: "Oh, I have to plan to become Toots 
or Larry or Cotton or Gruenling by Date X."  No, what I take away from 
it is the (God forgive me) Army commercial, i.e., be all that *I* can be.

[House and boat metaphors noted and omitted]

>  I have tried other instruments and found that the instructional 
> material is basically all the same. This is because someone started the 
> ball rolling and every writer after that just added to the alloy. After 
> many years, the original material (fine in it's day) has been altered to 
> suit new discoveries, BUT the lesson plans are still UNIFORM throughout 
> the instruments sphere of influence. example "Belwin Clarinet Method"

I have played the clarinet off and on since I was about 9 years old. 
I'm not 9 years old anymore.  I sucked then and I suck now.  But "suck" 
is a relative term.  It means I'm not going to replace Stanley Drucker, 
the principal clarinetist of the NY Philharmonic, if the guy ever 
retires.  I can make nice noises on the horn if not professional ones. 
I've played the saxophone, specifically the soprano (and farewell to 
Steve Lacy, gone far too soon).  Same deal: not awful but not Steve 
Lacy, John Coltrane, Jane Ira Bloom, or Sidney Bechet.

In all cases there was a METHOD, there was a plan--yes.  Scales, 
arpeggios, reading music, etude books, deceptively simple pieces to 
learn phrasing and rhythm, a metronome, fingering charts, embouchure 
practice.  Moments of total frustration mixed with "I GOT IT!"  Too few 
formal lessons, but some.

Most of all--for me--an "ear" and feeling for the music I could and 
wanted to play.

> All guitar plans are the same, all trumpet, all clarinet, all accordion, 
> and so on. Now. here's the SCAREY part. Even different instruments start 
> with the SAME basics, and only branch off when the need is to suit the 
> particular instrument.

Extrapolation: playing the harmonica is playing a musical instrument. 
Really.  Duh.  I didn't get that until I picked it up again, or really 
picked it up for the first time since I was a kid.  I've mentioned the 
one-buck Marine Band I had when I was a kid, the one I disassembled and 
couldn't put back together again.  Blat, blat, honk, screw it.  No 
lessons, just blowing into it five notes at a time because NOBODY SHOWED 
ME WHAT THE HELL TO DO.  So I threw it out.

I got the idea that this is a musical instrument when I got a chromatic. 
  Hey, this is HARD.  Breath control, finger/tongue/lip coordination. 
Learning where the notes are.  In fact this is a bitch.  And not all 
chroms are created equal or at least the same for everyone.  You 
accumulate enough of the things to help wreck your credit, you figure 
out that a Suzuki is not a Hohner Adler model is not a Huang is not a 
Hering.  If someone dies and leaves me money I'll get a Renaissance, 
assuming I can play it.

> No one has come forward and given an incentive to any harmonica player 
> that I know of to START. Harmonica players (themselves) are busy making 
> a living and aren't going to stop everything and write a book.  Maybe 
> there's no money in it, I don't know.
> 
> IF someone HAD (years ago) laid down a lesson plan for harmonica, by NOW 
> it would have  been honed, preened, cultivated, and just like 
> toothpate....become "New & Improved". Unfortunately, no one started the 
> ball rolling.

What got me to start at age 60?  Hearing another free-reed, the 
bandoneon, especially when played in New York last November by a 
virtuoso tango musician named Raul Jaurena.  Now, I can't afford a 
bandoneon.  Hell, I can't afford to LOOK at a bandoneon.  Besides, 
they're all in dealerships in Montevideo or Buenos Aires: Sam Ash 
doesn't have these.  Hohner used to make some of the most prized 
bandoneons around.  So what's the nearest?  The accordion is too 
expensive, the concertina made me think of sailors with parrots on their 
shoulders, but there's the harmonica classified as a free reed 
instrument, and there's the great TA-DA!  Ta-da my tuchis.  My first one 
is an Adler/Hohner 12-hole.  I sound like crap, not like Larry Adler who 
sounds better dead than I could hope to while I'm still upright.

Where's the help?  In bait-and-switch books on how to play the chrom 
which then refer you back to the book you didn't buy on the diatonic so 
you have to go back and buy THAT.  I'm not ready to grow into Doug 
Tate's book yet--that book is a reward for achievement of a certain 
level of skill, not a mere instruction manual, and I'm saying that 
because I mean it, not because Douglas reads and posts here.

Who teaches harp or "mouth organ"?  In my part of Jersey one guy, Dennis 
Gruenling.  That appears to be it.  I want someone to stand in front of 
me and say "You're holding your mouth like a freakin' guppy, puckering 
should look like THIS" and make me follow him or her.  I want someone to 
stand in front of me and say the same thing when it comes to tongue 
blocking, because I'm sorry, but I haven't seen a diagram of tongue 
blocking yet that didn't look like it was drawn by someone who washed 
out of art school.  If I'm going to slobber into my harp and glom up the 
reeds I'd like to know I'm doing more than looking like my dog while I'm 
STILL blowing 8 notes at once.

I got invited to a man's house back in March, he's the President of the 
Pt. Pleasant Harmonica Club.  Some of you probably know him if you're in 
Jersey.  Nice old guy, and I mean that.  A collection of harmonicas of 
both species that I wanted to steal.  But he couldn't TEACH me.  He 
didn't stand facing me and tell me what my mouth looked like.  He gave 
me the equivalent of the Carnegie Hall advice: "Practice, practice." 
Well, if I keep doing the right thing the wrong way, I'm going to keep 
on playing like shit, and at age 60 I'm too old to want to do that.  In 
other words, to go back to Joe (remember him?), I need a foundation, and 
nobody out there seems to be around to help provide it.

I'll wax your car if you will help with that foundation...wax on, wax 
off....

Ken

- -- 
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538