Re: [Harp-L] Re: Rostropovich

[Ken Deifik <kenneth.d@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Funny, this subject came up on another list and the figure given to
> reach the elusive 'mastery' was 2,ooo hours.
> A term that I labeled ridiculous. Since the levels on ALL things in
> our world keep going up, it only serves to prove that mastery is
> NEVER reached. I took a lot of heat for it.

As the 10,000 hour mark clicked by for me I said, "Okay, now what?"

One of the big challenges that comes along with long experience, as I'm 
sure you've found, is that it is harder and harder to identify one's 
current limitations.  It's not as though one feels one has nothing left to 
learn, but that which you do not know sometimes seems unknowable, or 
doesn't even seem like a limit, just the natural boundary of one's art and 
craft.  (Those boundaries are illusions, but they're powerful illusions.)

That's one reason I like to practice every day.  It's inevitable that 
you're going to come up on your limitations more often, and can then set 
the goal of making further breakthroughs.

If only somebody gave us a few bucks when we made those breakthroughs.

> When one reaches
> the level 'Master Mechanic' the pay scale at that level doesn't allow
> mistakes. If you make mistakes, you are a 'Journeyman'.

I've actually never heard of a job where you weren't allowed to make 
mistakes, so I'm glad I'm not a mechanic.

At gunpoint I'd probably say that mastery of something like mouth harp 
would mean
        1. That when you play people feel something, especially the 
feeling of merriment
        2. That you produce musical feelings that even surprise yourself 
as they come out
        3. That you've pretty much excised the clunky stuff from your work 
(less important if you can reliably make people feel good anyway)

> It's like Segovia said when he was in his late 80's (paraphrase?) "I
> think I'm close to getting it".

When I'm in a bloviating mood, which you could probably guess is kind of 
often, I like to tell younger performers and writers that they should get 
used to the feeling that they've just only recently figured out how to do 
the job well, as it is the chief evidence that you are continuing to improve.

That can be a trap, too.  I know songwriters and screenwriters with lots of 
excellent backlog that they won't take to market because they are under the 
impression that they only really started to get things right recently.

In fact, mastery of something like an instrument may be for your audience 
to decide, or in fact as we haven't even begun to define mastery in this 
short discussion, the term itself may not really have the same relevance as 
it would have for a master mechanic.

For instance, there was a time when a record producer would not consider 
taking his BMW to anyone but a master mechanic, but would hire the first 
schmoe with a harp in the right key to play on a record.

I've seen that happen.  It gave me a bad impression of some record producers.

K