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[It's December Days time! There's no overarching theme this year, so if you have ideas of things to write about, I'm more than happy to hear them.]
Playing in a small ensemble develops the ear of a player more than playing in a large one, assuming that there is enough skill in the player to be able to hear what is going wrong. It is only recently that I feel like I have managed to develop things with that I can start hearing what others presumably always have been.
I'm not exactly a player that has had a lot of private lessons or elite group playing. And I don't really do a lot of practicing for lack of time and lack of seeming difficulty in many pieces. There is virtue in holding out long notes to build endurance and tune the ear to what the actual pitch is. I don't really have that.
I do, however, feel that there's an underappreciated thing in playing less than first parts on a regular basis. After you get out of the first few years where everyone is playing mostly the same thing into actual pieces, much of school bands is about trying to get to the first part so that one can play the actually interesting part of the piece. (This is usually the fault of bad piece selection by the conductor.) Second (and third) parts in these situations are often relegated to long notes that build the chord structure underneath the melodic line or the pluck of the offbeat (or on beat) oohm-pah underlying the march or the faster-paced music. Which are...necessary, but not necessarily interesting to the easily-bored teenager.
Better pieces with more complexity actually pass the melodic line around among the instruments and their parts. There's still a lot of pluck going on as well as whole note sequences, and long stretches of rest while woodwind instruments play runs that are only possible with keyed instruments, but things are better. In any case, much of the time I took in university probably improved technique and ability and the ability to produce volume on demand, but it wasn't as good for developing my ear, necessarily. But the pieces are better there, as well.
Which finally loops me back to the current day and my current group - mostly one or two people to each part, in an environment of musicians that have finally learned the importance of being able to engage in dynamic contrast. I've been told that the second and third parts have importance in the whole piece for my whole life, but it's only recently that I've been able to actually hear why. I'm not sure if I was finally able to get over myself, or whether I'm finally in a small enough group to feel important enough, but the texture of the part now comes through where it didn't before. And I can hear the difference when the part is present and when it isn't.
Funny how the things that everyone says with adult wisdom don't always come into existence until you've achieved some sort of adulthood. And they usually arrive after having been fought over and resisted and otherwise told to get lost. It could be equally a loss of ambition and a gathering of wisdom that allows me to finally hear the whole and realize how important my part is to the success of the piece.
So I highly recommend being in both a lead part and a supporting part for your endeavor. Being in support and seeing yourself as valuable is the more difficult operation. Always the more difficult option. But if you can do it, you will be rewarded in great ways.
Playing in a small ensemble develops the ear of a player more than playing in a large one, assuming that there is enough skill in the player to be able to hear what is going wrong. It is only recently that I feel like I have managed to develop things with that I can start hearing what others presumably always have been.
I'm not exactly a player that has had a lot of private lessons or elite group playing. And I don't really do a lot of practicing for lack of time and lack of seeming difficulty in many pieces. There is virtue in holding out long notes to build endurance and tune the ear to what the actual pitch is. I don't really have that.
I do, however, feel that there's an underappreciated thing in playing less than first parts on a regular basis. After you get out of the first few years where everyone is playing mostly the same thing into actual pieces, much of school bands is about trying to get to the first part so that one can play the actually interesting part of the piece. (This is usually the fault of bad piece selection by the conductor.) Second (and third) parts in these situations are often relegated to long notes that build the chord structure underneath the melodic line or the pluck of the offbeat (or on beat) oohm-pah underlying the march or the faster-paced music. Which are...necessary, but not necessarily interesting to the easily-bored teenager.
Better pieces with more complexity actually pass the melodic line around among the instruments and their parts. There's still a lot of pluck going on as well as whole note sequences, and long stretches of rest while woodwind instruments play runs that are only possible with keyed instruments, but things are better. In any case, much of the time I took in university probably improved technique and ability and the ability to produce volume on demand, but it wasn't as good for developing my ear, necessarily. But the pieces are better there, as well.
Which finally loops me back to the current day and my current group - mostly one or two people to each part, in an environment of musicians that have finally learned the importance of being able to engage in dynamic contrast. I've been told that the second and third parts have importance in the whole piece for my whole life, but it's only recently that I've been able to actually hear why. I'm not sure if I was finally able to get over myself, or whether I'm finally in a small enough group to feel important enough, but the texture of the part now comes through where it didn't before. And I can hear the difference when the part is present and when it isn't.
Funny how the things that everyone says with adult wisdom don't always come into existence until you've achieved some sort of adulthood. And they usually arrive after having been fought over and resisted and otherwise told to get lost. It could be equally a loss of ambition and a gathering of wisdom that allows me to finally hear the whole and realize how important my part is to the success of the piece.
So I highly recommend being in both a lead part and a supporting part for your endeavor. Being in support and seeing yourself as valuable is the more difficult operation. Always the more difficult option. But if you can do it, you will be rewarded in great ways.
