Re: [Harp-L] Are we having fun yet?



Hey Richard,I totally agree. 

Focused practice doesn't have to be either/or. I base my harp teaching on a "three-legged stool" approach which includes: 
1) basic music theory
2) techniques/skills 
3) riffs/jams/explorations/FUN!!! 

When teaching myself to play, I was unfocused for years and pushed hard on the third leg (because it was fun), but the rest of my playing came up short and I fell over a LOT!!   :-) 
I believe that "focused practice" needs to give equal weight to all three aspects of the process so one can progress in balance.

Harpin' in Colorado,
--Ken M.
 
TeraBlu Band on My Space
http://www.myspace.com/terablu



----- Original Message ----
From: Richard Sleigh <rharp@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sat, November 21, 2009 7:59:53 AM
Subject: [Harp-L] Are we having fun yet?

The discussion about having fun vs learning techniques seems to imply that you have to take a stand. You are either for fun or for really learning the instrument.

Why not both?

When you are having fun, you are relaxed. I was an art student, and I found parallels between vision and hearing. There is a "soft gaze" which uses peripheral vision, and there is a hard focus which brings details into sharp focus but cuts out the rest of the picture.

The "soft gaze" for me was always more playful and relaxed, AND necessary to get the "big picture". The hard focus was is concentrated, and I suppose more like "work" and is how I fill in the details.

Focused practice with music is like the hard visual focus, and jamming and playing around with music is more like the playful "soft gaze" that alerts me to all sorts of input that I filter out when I am in the hard focus state.

I need both to be a good musician.

And I think we all find our own combination of these two elements, consciously or intuitively.

Richard Sleigh

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