I developed an interest in adult learners partly as a result of having two very different adult pupils shortly after I started teaching, partly through working with adult wind ensembles and mostly as I need to find something to write about for a dissertation in music psychology. I mentioned in a previous post that I would reveal the secrets of the adult amateur musician. One participant in particular from my study made a couple of remarks that stuck with me and gave me some ideas to ponder. This particular clarinettist was also a keen gardener and she noted that gardening and music were very much alike. Both are very much hands-on and take a fair amount of nurturing and patience and a great deal of time. I thought of her today as I enjoy my garden and in my aim to lead the Good Life up here in the country I have experimented with vegetables, fruit and a few flowers. There have been some successes but some spectacular disasters too, a little like my harp playing! The patience was worth it today as I finally got round to digging up my parsnips. I started small with just a few seeds last February in one of Chris's old beer buckets rather than in the ground to make it easier to dig them up and to have stone free soil. This afternoon I pulled up a couple of whoppers, over 30 cms in length. A tenuous link to music perhaps but I wanted to mention the parsnips as I was really impressed! Moving back to the other point that my interviewee so elegantly put was that making music as an amateur was like making love. You can go and hear the LSO or Berlin Phil in the same way that you can go and watch Hollywood stars in a love scene in a movie. It's polished, the sounds and movements blend harmoniously and the climaxes are reached together. She realised that it isn't quite like that in real life playing your clarinet or, you know, the other thing, but it's much more fun to take part in it yourself!
Many of the musicians that come on the courses that I run with Caroline and others are keen to play as much as they can. As well as courses they join local ensembles and get together with friends to play together. If that's not enough there is always the option of arranging your own course! A big task but one that Norwich based flautist Elizabeth managed many times as she was keen to bring more opportunities to her corner of Norfolk. I got to know Eliazbeth when she was on a course I was running a few years ago. We kept in touch and she asked me to lead a one day woodwind workshop course that she had organised. We also worked together on a weekend residential which was great fun. Highly organised and extremely efficient I learnt a lot from her and she hopefully gained a lot from my rehearsals! Elizabeth is my latest sponsor and today's session was dedicated to her. I played through all of my scales and arpeggios, up to 92 now, and decided to tackle some new exercises in Harpe d'Or. Contrary motion is when you go one way with one hand and the other way with the other hand. The first exercise was simple, right hand goes up 4,3,2,1 and left hand goes down 1,2,3,4 but I had that feeling that you get when trying to write something on paper by looking at just the mirror image. It should be easy but something tells you that it's wrong. Once I got into a pattern it was fine unless I speeded up but when I moved onto the next exercise I had to start all over again and relearn the new pattern. Fortunately there isn't too much of this skill needed for grade 1 but it's worth stretching yourself as it will make all the easier stuff much easier. Another 10 minutes managed in the evening going over the exercises again and finishing with a couple of easy pieces. Oh, and the car passed its MOT so a good day all round!
No comments:
Post a Comment