[Harp-L] Re: Positions Playing and breathing patterns

[IcemanLE@xxxxxxx]

Here is where you have different teachers w/different philosophies.
 
My approach shows students that scales are really note choices. I try to  
move quickly away from talking "scales" and the mind set that goes with "scales"  
(practicing up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down - and then, 
after  a while, moving on to "music" as a subtly separate entity). One 
successful  approach is to add the ninth scale degree to your basic diatonic major 
scale.  Instead of practicing up and then down the "scale", you play the scale to 
the  "ninth" and back, (without repeating the highest note) and treat it as a 
melodic  line. This means you can arc it, slow it down as you end it, whatever 
- but it  becomes "music" through note choices. The ear begins to hear into 
it as a  melodic line and not so much as a "scale" separated from music. This 
opens  the imagination and understanding towards notes, where they live and 
making note  choices much quicker than any method I've tried.
 
Memorizing breathing patterns gives you memorized breathing patterns and  
they become an entity unto themselves - once you start the memorized pattern,  
you continue on making the same note choices through habit (automatic pilot) and 
 you start playing more predictably, eventually boring yourself as well as 
your  audience. Most have been there. The solution? Learn more newer breathing  
patterns? Learn more memorized licks? This is a short term fix, as you play 
new  ideas {predictably}, but end up at that same dead end eventually. Then you  
wonder why you are stuck on that plateau AGAIN.
 
So, what is the shortest route to keeping yourself interested in what you  
are playing and/or flowing musical expression that is ever evolving and  
changing?
 
I've found that it is not through approaching your instrument via memorized  
patterns (note and/or breathing) nor SCALES (per se), but rather speaking  
musical line as soon as is possible.
 
Granted, my methods run counter to "the way it has always been done" and  
seems to sometimes raise the hackles of players that learned through the old  
memorized patterns and running scales approach. I'm not discounting the  values 
found in "the way it has always been done". I'm suggesting new  ways to shorten 
the path. 
 
The Iceman
 
 
In a message dated 3/13/2009 7:47:32 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
hvyj@xxxxxxx writes:

But  isn't this what muscle memory is about and why we practice  
scales?  Not an end in itself, but an effective means to "learning  
where the  notes live" and building technique and speed, among other   
things?

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