Posted by Rick Denney on May 27, 2003 at 15:35:35:
In Reply to: Tuba Lessons via the Internet posted by David on May 24, 2003 at 09:03:39:
The Internet is more widely available than lessons from a teacher who would give good answers to those questions. Something nobody wants to acknowledge is that there are teachers who wouldn't give the right answers, and we all know it to be the case. Teachers, especially those who teach beginners, are as subject to myth and lore as anyone else. At least here the myth and lore usually gets challenged and either upheld by persuasive evidence or rejected for lack of it, with the explanations providing the necessary tools of discernment for each reader.
But more importantly, for each question asked, there are many readers who were either too timid to ask the question, thought they already knew the answer (maybe having already asked their teacher), or didn't know enough to realize they needed to ask the question. If they subsequently ask a teacher, then they will ask better questions with more background knowledge with which to implement the answer. Yes, it may lead to analysis paralysis, but in all that risk seems worth taking.
It is quite likely that had I spent time on something like Tubenet when I was playing tuba in school (long before there was an Internet, of course), I might have learned enough to realize how badly I needed a teacher.
Rick "who thinks ignorance is always a disadvantage" Denney