[Harp-L] Practice and the mind

["sam blancato" <samblancato@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Having read a couple of posts about the psychology of musicianship (Keith
Richards' dreaming of song riffs and the subconscious and all that) I just
wanted to share what my experience has been of the years and see if it jibes
with that of other players.

My experience has been something like this:  I go to work on a song or a set
of solos for a song, either of my own or something off a record that I
really love and want to do, and my process of learning has a pattern.  I'll
use "Juke" and Kim Wilson's "Low Down" as examples.  I worked on "Low Down"
almost every day for a whole summer (2002).  This was a hard song for me to
learn because at that time much of the technique Kim displays in it was
stuff I was still trying to master (glissando, throat vibrato, tongue
blocking, rips and shimmers).

So, first I got each 12 bar segment down and the order that they're played.
Then I worked on executing the song smoothly and with feeling.  By the end
of the summer of 2002 I could play the whole thing but I always made
mistakes here and there and this continued  to be the case for a couple of
years.  Sometimes while practicing, I actually got much worse at it as I
went along until I was just butchering the whole thing miserably.  

The other aspect of my performance of this song that was difficult was that
while Kim Wilson (as well as the trio backing him up on the song) plays the
song in a relaxed and restrained way, when I listened to my version on tape
(I  taped myself playing the song)I sounded kind of desperate and agitated.
This I later learned was because of my poor breath control.  It effected my
timing dramatically.  I'd start running of lung capacity during certain
passages and couldn't make a lot of notes decay properly. 

So over the next couple of years I'd come back to this song and work on it
and while my breath control improved and I no longer sounded desperate and
in a hurry, I still made mistakes.  

Then, one day about a year and a half ago, something happened, something
just clicked and the song just came out of me flawlessly.  I was kind of
surprised and so I played three of four more times just to see what would
happen and I was able to play that song perfectly each time.

This has been my experience in learning every thing I've wanted to do with
the harp.  "Juke" followed almost the same learning curve as "Low Down" and
many other songs but the time span has shrunk dramatically; I can usually
get a song down in a couple of weeks or months now.  Solos that I make up
myself take somewhat longer because I keep changing them when I should just
leave well enough alone. 

But that's the process for me.  I'm well aware of every stage of learning; I
get the song down, make mistakes throughout, start bringing in other aspects
to work on like breath control and timing).  And I can parse out every
aspect of a given song in terms of technique and where my problems are.  So
I'm conscious of these things.  The only mystery part is this period when I
leave a song alone for a little bit and when I come back to it, it seems to
have 'burned' in somehow.

Sam Blancato, Pittsburgh