Re: Horn Switch on Solo


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Posted by Rick Denney on February 05, 2003 at 15:37:32:

In Reply to: Horn Switch on Solo posted by TC on February 05, 2003 at 14:50:03:

If the notes go by slowly enough and if I know the tune well enough, I can usually make the switch, but with occasional lapses. For fast, technical, or "modern" stuff, I can't do it.

As to whether I learn the notes or the fingerings, for me it's the fingerings, but only after I know the pitches. I still can't necessarily tell you the note that a particular pitch is on a certain work, even though I can play it from memory, unless I reconstruct it in my head. But I know what it sounds like and can't memorize it unless I know what it sounds like.

At the Army conference, Ray G was trying out a horn and played a silly little solo for a TubaMeisters Polka. He played it for me, because it was a solo I used to play in that group. Then, I tried it. Though it had been ten years since I'd played it regularly, and though at that time it was firmly imprinted in my memory, I still struggled with it first time through. But then it came back. Here's the point: As I was struggling with it, I was hearing the pitches in my head and trying to process the buttons needed to achieve that pitch. The pitches were still imprinted, but the fingerings had faded. That gave me a bit of insight into my own memorization process.

I don't think this proves anything, actually. I once asked Chuck Daellenbach why he didn't use an F tuba in the CB, and he said that some F tubas had tempted him to switch, but that he had all those dozens of tunes memorized on his C tuba. Clearly, the fingerings are part of his memory patterns, too, even for stuff he's played thousands of times on stage, and even though he was just trying to be nice to a geeky participant in one of his master classes.

Rick "providing a data point from the lower echelons" Denney


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