Subject: RE: [Harp-L] Practice and the mind

[EGS1217@xxxxxxx]

Something else I agree with you about, John.  If I'm finding an  especially 
difficult jazz song troublesome ...even on a chromatic (the  supposedly 
'easier' harmonica according to SmoJoe <G>)...
 
....I will spend 'enough' (which can translate into a good deal of) time  
focusing on the one part giving me trouble, but when it becomes frustrating more  
than pure enjoyment to play, switching to another song or stepping away  
altogether occasionally has meant coming back to it later, or the next  day...or 
even a good while down the road...to find my subconscious has worked it  out 
for me...as Sam says: 'burning it in".
 
Of course one has to 'know' the song (in my case)...and that takes having  an 
ear for it, to my mind...something I don't know if pure readers do in quite  
the same way. I imagine for them it's an entirely different 'working out'  
process.
 
For me breathing is never a problem until I try playing in front of an  
audience. Then I have no air at all <G>...
 
....but Joe Filisko gave me a mini one-on-one 'seminar' about breath  control 
during one of his teach-ins at SPAH when I had no idea what was going  on, 
and his ideas worked sufficiently to get me through my very first time  playing 
in front of other people. I'll be ever grateful.
 
Elizabeth
 
"Message: 1
Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 10:35:29 -0500
From: "John Balding"  <John.Balding@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: [Harp-L] Practice and the  mind
To: "sam blancato" <samblancato@xxxxxxxxxxx>, "Harp-L"
<harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>


Your experience fits perfectly with  mine. Sometimes it helps to step
away from a song in order to really "get"  it. Counterintuitive, but it
works for me.

John  Balding
Tallahassee, FL

-----Original Message-----
From:  harp-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:harp-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of sam  blancato
Sent: Sunday, March 01, 2009 9:23 AM
To: Harp-L
Subject:  [Harp-L] Practice and the mind

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  


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