When I was a freshman oh so long ago, I got a copy of Don Sinta playing the Ingolf Dahl Concerto with the Michigan Wind Ensemble. I must have listened to it over a hundred times thinking "Man, I could NEVER play that piece.". A few months after I got the recording, Sinta played a recital in Memphis. He played 'Distances Within Me', William Albright's 'Sonata', and Bolcom's 'Lilith'. Immediately I had three more 'mythical' pieces. That is, pieces that only someone like a Don Sinta could play.
I arrived at Martin a few years ago and began to hear the same things from some of my classmates. "Man, the Mackey Soprano Concerto is impossible!" "Wow, Black Dog will never be played on my clarinet. It's just too hard!"
"No wonder you can't do it! You acquiesce to defeat before you even begin."- Pai Mei, Kill Bill, Vol. 2
Whether you decide a piece is impossible or eventually one which you can play, you are 100% right. The biggest thing to recognize that each and every master (with a few exceptions...those jerks!) was once where we are now. Their arrival as a 'great' one on their chosen instrument was accomplished by choosing one path; locking themselves in a practice room and busting their collective tails until they had the chops to play whatever they wanted to play. Get out that scale book and the metronome. Work on scales. Work on etudes. Work on articulation work, voicing, patterns......anything you can work on to get better at your instrument. Remember this rule, always...
FUNDAMENTALS NEVER STOP BEING COOL!!!!
Get in the practice room. Get the chops. Make those 'mythical' pieces just another part of your arsenal.
......oh, and the Dahl? Learned the third movement this fall and putting the rest together this spring.
GET TO WORK.
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