Greetings from the home stretch of my pedagogy degree!
It's been a while since I've posted a new blog. Sorry about that! A senior recital and graduate school auditions temporarily took priority of my life. Now, they are successfully completed and I'm back to practicing and pondering about why we do what we do?
So....why do we do some of the things we do?
I'm actually referring to 'we' as teachers here and not as players. There are some things that I've even caught myself doing and realized that I was simply continuing a cycle of something I was taught at some point in my life. Here are a couple examples.
1: Why do we continue, as teachers, band directors, whatever, to propel the notion that one key is harder than another in reference to scales? I have students who are 100% convinced that B, C#, and F# are the devil. Why do they believe this? Why did I use to believe it? Well, it's likely they saw a bunch of ink on the page (in the form of sharps or flats) and it LOOKED harder. Understandable, right? However, that's where a teacher, at some point, failed them. Each major or minor scale is tonic, seven scale tones, and tonic again. The PERCEPTION might be that they are harder but that isn't matched by reality....except for the one we've slowly created over the years.
A good example is Ferling's 48 Famous Studies. Anyone who has worked through that book knows full well that etude 48 is in no way more difficult than etude 1. However, because of the way the book is laid out, the student sees the C#s and F#s in the back; making them appear far more ominous than they actually are.
The point I'm trying to make here is that we often shoot ourselves in the proverbial foot by making certain things appear harder than they really are or, at the very least, not dispelling the myth of their difficulty. Fair enough? Fundamentals should be presented as just that. Db is no more difficult, finger wise, than F. It's all perception.
2: At what point does saxophone advance (in regards to what's possible) that we stop using the term 'extended technique' for technique which is no longer really 'extended'. The world now has high school students playing literature which regularly carries them into the altissimo register and. truthfully, it's rare to find saxophone music being published today which DOESN'T have altissimo? Is this something which now needs to be presented at an earlier age? Do we not need to begin looking at voicing exercises for students much earlier in their playing careers? What about double tonging? It's common place for brass players within three years of beginning the instrument. It's less common in saxophonists but would it not be useful in not only solo lit but wind ensemble lit? The point is that perhaps it's time to reconsider hurdles to leap in the progress of a saxophone student because they just keep getting better. The bar is continually being raised as far as the skill of player at every level. In my opinion, that bar should also continually be raised in the teacher's studio, as well.
Thoughts? Comments?
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