Posted by Klaus on January 11, 2003 at 15:08:49:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Swap my Holton BAT or York for a CB50? posted by Dale on January 11, 2003 at 13:35:15:
We agree on the value of keeping up the joys of life as a whole, of music, and more specifically of playing low brasses. And rest assured of one thing: you are better at that, than I am.
It is a very good situation, that you can manage general band playing.
And your situation might be even better, than you experience!
What you call anticipate, I call "pre-hearing". That might be bad English, but it expresses the semantics, that I connect to it.
I had a teacher, solo trombone in our RSO, a brilliant musician, also on piano. But having very little understanding of what he did, hence not the optimal teacher.
He maintained, that he played his entry notes in the orchestra at a pppppp dynamic level in advance to opening up fully, when the entry was due. His purpose was a pre-check of the tuning and sound.
I never believed him, and his demonstrations were not convincing, rather they were the opposite. That trombone player boasted perfect pitch, but why then this procedure? I simply took this as his own perversion of that musicianship, that had taken him very far, when he was a young man. His fate was sad. He took so many tranquilizers, that he had to leave the orchestra at an age, where most players peak. And he did not achieve even the age, that I have now.
There is a point behind this story, at least a point of mine:
Anticipating, pre-hearing, or whatever term applicable is not related to the physical hearing of ones instrument.
It might be perceived as a such process, but I rather think it is an internal procedure in the player.
This procedure has several components. The most important one happens in the brain well beyond the inner ear level. It is the imagination of the next note to be played. That is the pre-requisite command switchboard for everything else happening at a physical level:
embouchure adjustment
air speed/pressure adjustment (outer belly muscles, diaphragm, ribcage muscles, throat, palate, jaw, tongue, and probably more)
fingering (which is the least problem of all).
I will maintain, that if this mental-pre-control-of-the-bodily-aspects process is carried through and if one can hear well enough to apply a fast adjustment of minor aspect like finer intonation, then one can play at the level, that ones given musicality allows for.
When I first was trained in solfége, I liked to have an instrument in my hands to support the imagination of the notes, that I read. I am past that now.
It is very daring to "diagnose" a perceived problem of a fellow TubeNetter over 9 time zones. Yet I will dare that.
No doubt, that you have a clinical loss of hearing. But as you tell, you can manage all band situations but for one:
The one where your confidence is challenged anyway, because you are taken into a situation, where your basic routines, memories, overview, and every other musical tool is taken to its outer limit.
You might have perceived, that your anticipating has been related to an an actual physical pre-hearing of something coming out of the bell of your instrument.
I am tough enough to call you wrong on that perception. As I believe anticipation being a fully intra-body function, brain-wise and body-preparation-wise, my advise to you would be to move the imagined spot of your pre-hearing from the bell of your instrument to your ears no matter which clinical defects they might suffer from.
Large parts of my practising since a number of years has had to be done with practising mutes. It was a revelation, in my perception at least, when the Yamaha Silent Brass system hit the market. I have all of them from piccolo trumpet to tuba. I created a minor home-practise studio with lots of electronics, pedals and all.
I don't use the electronics any more, as I found out, that they of course gave me a short term boost in "sound-imagination", but what really counted was not, what happened through the headset, but in between its clamp and loudspeakers.
Of course there is a hidden agenda behind my long postings on this thread. I find it extremely sad, when collectors/players unload something special to gain something comparatively inferior.
I do not dismiss the fact, that you might need some tool for the process of teaching yourself a more productive way of anticipating. But you will not be happy with a tuba, that never was designed mainly to work in BBb. Get yourself one of the small Weril BBb's. And you soon will be back on your BAT's.
All the best
Klaus