Re: developing musicians and a musical culture

[bruno kleinefeld <brunoklein@ideastudioweb.com>]

>--- Mark Sottilaro <sine@zerocrossing.net> wrote:
>
>>  I'm not sure I agree about the whole instant gratification thing.  I
>>  think that our culture has too deep of a division between musician and
>>  everyone else.  Too many teachers begin giving students dry drills. 
>>  Turns them off to music forever... or at least to the idea of being a
>>  musician.  A box that's got some instant fun involved can spark a fun
>>  aspect and get a student to move forward.  Many, of course, will
>>  realize it's not for them and drop it, but I think it's not necessarily
>>  a bad thing all the time.
>
>I think you're absolutely right. There's been a very rigid view of music
>instruction over the years and it's crippled a lot of people 
>creatively. I had a
>piano teacher when I was a little kid who definitely discouraged me with 
>her
>perfectionism and emphasis on music I didn't connect with. Between her 
>and my
>parents refusal to continue paying for guitar lessons when I didn't 
>practice
>regularly, I put the playing of music aside for many years. It was only 
>toward
>the end of my time in college that I picked it back up. Such a shame 
>to have lost
>some of the best years for learning that sort of thing.


When I was ten years old I had been admitted at the Milan Conservatory
directed by Mr Abbado (the brother of the director Claudio)
he looked at my hands and my teeth
and decided I would have been a trumpet player
(they were lacking inscriptions in the trumpet class...)

My teacher had been the first trumpet of La Scala for 30 years (thirty!!!)
he was retired, but still teaching. He stopped playing the very last 
day of his job in the Orchestra (I mean he didn't even take the 
trumpet in his hands anymore after that day). (BTW, did anybody see 
Prova d'Orchestra of Federico Fellini? well it deserves a look...).

After three years of playing the trumpet
(only "long notes" and scales
to train my lips...) I left.

I had a guitar... and I did the rest by myself.

Ah the great accademic  tradition of the old european institutions!!!

b:k