At 01:24 AM 11/21/97 -0400, you wrote:
<%SNIP%>
>Accounting is like engineering, you must know how it all works. It must be
>explained in detail in order for it to be taught to someone else. Playing
>the trumpet isn't like that.

David,
        For some players this is true: all that is necessary is the demonstration of a particular sound or style, and the talented pupil is capable of reproducing the same...
 
        But this is a gift(or talent, if you prefer)...for some types of students it IS necesary to explain in more detail...many students will struggle again and again with trying to accomplish playing a two octave C major or chromatic scale...but if their embouchure is totally incorrect, or even slightly incorrect because of incorrect mouthpiece placement or perhaps
thrusting their tongue between their lips, they won't be able to accomplish their goal no matter how hard they try...

        For much of my life I had no trumpet instruction(merely participated in school band programs) and was largely self-taught, through much trial and error...I think I could have accomplished as much or more if I had had a thoughtful, thorough teacher to save me from some of the mistakes that I might have avoided with good guidance...

        When I finally DID take private lessons, in my senior year of high school, it was from a man who was doing his DMA in trumpet performance, and had spent a great deal of time thinking about pedagogy...it was from him that I learned about  H.L.Clarke, Claude Gordon, and the like...and I believe that, as a result of his input, I was able to achieve more progress in that one school year than I had in the previous nine years...

>An excellent trumpet teacher doesn't burden
>the student with a million different things to think about.

        *An excellent trumpet teacher* is one who enables the student to achieve the desired goals of being a good enough player to be able to produce MUSICAL sounds...this requires good tone quality, good technique, awareness of style and historical practice, and exposure to good literature...

>The success of a trumpet teacher is in being able to get a trumpet student to produce the
>desired result

Precisely....

>this is done by sound not physical instructions like how
>to close a cake box with fold here and tuck there.

But, David, if a baker is unable to efficiently close that cake box, he'll have a hard time getting his merchandise to his clientele(read *audience*) and his ideas have no hope of becoming known....

Sound must be achieved...and if it were possible to create a sound merely by listening and emulating a good example, then there would be many more Bud Herseths and Louis Armstrongs and Maurice Andres than this world has yet seen...

Be careful of trying to be too simplistic---the goal, as Dan Patrylak would say, is not to have the audience appreciate how difficult it might be to perform a particular piece...but how easy you've made it appear....

It is the hard work of practicing and pedagogy that enables us to produce the best of playing...the best of music...
 

Take Care!
Sincerely,
Jeanne
chopshopdoc@musician.org
jarcher@shore.net