[Harp-L] Re: Harp-L Digest, Practice and the mind

[Mark Stringer <mrstringer@xxxxxxxxx>]

This is just a little samba
built upon a single note
Other notes are bound to follow
but the root is still that note
This new one is just the consequence
of the one we've just been through
As I'm bound to be the unavoidable consequence of you

There's so many people who can talk and talk and talk
And just say nothing oh nearly nothing
I have used up all the scale I know
That in the end it's come to nothing
oh nearly nothing

So I come back to that first note
as I must come back to you
I will pour into that one note
all the love I have for you
Anyone who wants the whole show
Ré Mi Fa Sol La Si Do
He will find himself with no show
better play the note you know





Message: 7
Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2009 09:46:20 -0500
From: icemanle@xxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Harp-L] Practice and the mind
To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
Message-ID: <8CB68939E6C559A-15B8-3580@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

-----Original Message-----
From: sam blancato <samblancato@xxxxxxxxxxx>


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. 




Herein lies what I've discovered, after years of teaching and reflection, is the LONG road to understanding. 

Instead of approaching music and solos from the inside, discovering where inspiration and flow live, this?path examines the process from a distance. What Sam has done is try to reproduce, note for note, someone else's relaxed flow without understanding relaxed flow. The result, as Sam (and so many others) has found, is desperate and agitated in execution. Although Sam could spend months/years clearing up this problem, there is a shorter path.

Instead of learning by rote or memorization the flow of another, discover how to express the flow that exists within yourself at whatever level you play. Granted, you won't be executing ideas as advanced or sophisticated as Kim Wilson (who, by the way, has two important facts working to his advantage - 1) He's spent a LOT more hours with a harmonica in his mouth, and 2) He's put himself in a position where his soul/sole income and focus is on ONE endeavor - professional musician).

If Sam gave up his day job and started busking in the Underground in England as his sole means of survival, he would no doubt get much better faster, finding through necessity the flow and how not to run out of lung capacity.

Alternately, a shorter path may be found in discovering one's own flow and level of idea. If you are true to where you exist in your abilities, even a simple idea or sustained note will make Kim Wilson come up to you, shake your hand and tell you that he was moved by your performance.

In other words, don't repeat what Kim Wilson discovered by memorizaion. Rather, discover the place from which Kim Wilson finds his inspiration and express YOURSELF.

The Iceman






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Message: 8
Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 09:56:29 -0500
From: jim.alciere@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Harp-L] Super Harp
To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
Message-ID:
    <386fc0380903010656q3a04faai135233084f1647ed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Got the CD, Super Harp for my birthday. Nice concept. Good players. Be nice
to have the same idea but different genres, the blues shuffle, endless
riffing on blues scales business gets old. Let's get some trip hop and
electro house in there.
-- 
Rainbow Jimmy
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1372404/dhoozh_chapter_1.html
http://www.myspace.com/theelectricstarlightspaceanimals


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Message: 9
Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 07:59:37 -0800 (PST)
From: jarett yuknalis <jarett_y@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Harp-L] 1847 TEST Drive
To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
Message-ID: <4049.95367.qm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

If you have test driven the 1847 Seydel and your regular harps last no longer than a few months please e-mail me with results if youve been trouble free for more than six months with said model.


      

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Message: 10
Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 11:38:37 -0500
From: "John F. Potts" <hvyj@xxxxxxx>
Subject: [Harp-L] Practice and the mind
To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
Message-ID: <BC358BC6-2CFC-47B1-A166-14C1C86B74AC@xxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed

True story.  20+ years ago when my playing was not as developed or  
proficient as it is now, I was sitting in regularly with an R&B band.  
i had a few years of experience under my belt and i was practicing  
consistently every day, and practicing pretty hard in a disciplined  
way.  Mostly scales.

One night i was called up to play. We were on a big stage. and there  
was a good size crowd. The band was playing a hard rocking tune with  
driving horn licks.  I played a fiery solo, better than i ever had  
before, and maybe better than i ever have since.  Every note was  
right, phrasing was perfect, the crowd was dancing and screaming, the  
drums pounding and the horns punctuating the groove. It was a very  
high energy performance and the excitement it produced in the crowd  
generated even more energy. I felt very powerful and in total  
control.  An incredibly positive, intense, thrilling experience, and  
a fully realized musical expression at a very high level of both  
technical accomplishment and artistic emotion.

And when the song was over, i could not remember anything i had  
played.  i had achieved an unprecedented level of musical performance  
without any conscious effort and absolutely  no recollection of what  
i had done.  i remember this experience vividly to this day,  but  i  
have no recollection of any volitional action on my part.  it was  
almost as if i was in an altered state of consciousness.

Afterwards, I  spoke to other musicians about this.  Some of them  
told me that intense practice had occasionally produced a similar  
experiences for them during performance.  Since then, I would  
occasionally  have  somewhat similar experiences where i would find  
myself playing with unconscious abandon and playing very well, but  
never anything quite like what happened that night many years ago.

i don't know if it was one of those left brain/right brain things or  
what. I wasn't sleeping, but i might as well have been dreaming. It  
was like magic.  And now it does sort of remind me of Abner's dream  
experience.  Stuff like this does happen.

JP


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Message: 11
Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2009 15:02:03 -0500
From: "sam blancato" <samblancato@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Harp-L] In Defense of "the long road to understanding"( long
    post)
To: "Harp-L" <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Message-ID: <0KFU00MWLFNBWA5F@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

After having read The Iceman's comments on my practice experiences I want to
comment on them.  Since his comments were somewhat condescending I want to
defend what I was doing.

The first thing to clear up is what my post was about.  The title of my post
was "practice and the mind"; not 'improvisation and the mind' or 'live
performance and the mind'.  Certainly, my goal is not to play "Low Down"
live, note-for-note.  I was talking about practice; wherein you make
mistakes and have problems because you're (hopefully) trying to do what you
presently cannot do.  I was also talking about 'mind', and the notion that
for me (and I wanted to know if this was true for others as well) there's
seem to be a period when not practicing where the thing that I'm practicing
seems to get 'burned' into place.

Now, to the meat of The Iceman's comments:  The first two larger paragraphs
begin with the phrase, "Instead of". 

"Instead of approaching music and solos from the inside, discovering where
inspiration and flow live," 

I wasn't trying to discover where my own inspiration and flow was living.  I
was trying to learn to play an extended instrumental where several ideas
were strung together in a very nice way that involved techniques I was
trying to master.  And yes, my execution was choppy and lacked a relaxed
flow - because my breath control was not very good.  But by learning this
song it got much better, and not just on this song; it got better
everywhere.  Breath control isn't just muscle control, it's also learning to
plan ahead and to think about what's coming next. To do that you sometimes
have to have to ideas set out for you so you have something follow that is
beyond what you might do on your own at your current level.  By learning
"Low Down" I did learn a lot about breath control, stamina, and working with
a lot of technique over an extended period.  

"Instead of learning by rote or memorization the flow of another, discover
how to express the flow that exists within yourself at whatever level you
play.  Granted, you won't be executing ideas as advanced or sophisticated as
Kim Wilson" 

Yep, that's right.  When I was a 5th grade teacher one of the things I tried
to get students to do was plenty of reading at their level, even if their
level was third grade.  Because I knew that this builds strength and
confidence.  But I also knew challenges had to be introduced into this mix
or very little progress would me made. 

At any point in my history of playing harmonica there has always been my
level and the level or several levels I wanted to get to (all of which flows
from trying my best to be a careful listener but that's entirely another
discussion).  If I just played at my own level, using only my own ideas I
know I tend to follow the path of least resistance.  Maybe that's not true
for others but it is true for me.  I'm defiantly not Kim Wilson but neither
am I some dolt out here in Pittsburgh just mechanically memorizing other
peoples playing by rote.  

You use the phrase 'rote memorization' like this is some inferior thing.
You are just wrong about this.  There is this mindset out there that says
that the imitation of really great harp players as some kind of low road,
or, as you call it, the "long Road".  If this it true than Kim Wilson, Gerry
Portnoy, Mark Hummel, and a score of other blues harp greats are guilty of
this low road.  Because they all did exactly what I was dong in my practice
and they told me so first hand.  Actually, Hummel told me he studied and
imitated SB I and II and LW and George Smith.  Those were the guys out there
when he was coming up into his own.      

Look, blues harmonica is a language.  And there are established ways to
learn languages.  If you want to learn Italian, you don't get an Italian
dictionary and a set of instructions on the syntax and grammar of Italian
and start constructing sentences that express your thoughts.  You learn
whole sentences like 'Where is the train station?' or 'Does this restaurant
serve fish?', or 'That was a very interesting film, don't you think?'  The
grammar and syntax are learned both formally and discretely but also in
practice.  You PRACTICE Italian by speaking canned sentences and phrases so
that you eventually SPEAK Italian by reshaping the canned stuff into ideas
that meet your own ends. For me, Kim Wilson's "Low Down" is a long,
complicated, canned sentence in the blues language.  Since I didn't
construct it my self, how could it be anything else? 

"Alternately, a shorter path may be found in discovering one's own flow and
level of idea. If you are true to where you exist in your abilities, even a
simple idea or sustained note will make Kim Wilson come up to you, shake
your hand and tell you that he was moved by your performance."

This isn't a shorter path, this is an incomplete path.  You are talking
about playing original, improvised material and there is certainly a time
and a place for setting aside the canned sentences and trying to find some
place inside yourself from which to speak your own truth.  But even Gerry
Portnoy told me he thought it was next to impossible to create new blues
material on harmonica "whole cloth", as he put it.

"If you are true to where you exist in your abilities" - what does that
mean?  I was writing about practicing harmonica not improvising or
performing. What I was doing in 2002 with a Kim Wilson song helped me a lot.
It made me a much stronger player.  Ah, but you might say it didn't make me
a more original player or a player who's more comfortable in his own flow
and level of idea.  Well for me that is EXACTLY what it did.  Learning that
song, and dozens of others like it, helped me lay a strong foundation so
that I could express my own ideas. 

I obviously have way too much time on my hands today.  

Sam Blancato, Pittsburgh


      
  



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End of Harp-L Digest, Vol 67, Issue 1
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