- Mon Dec 28, 2009 4:25 am
#9329
Just because it came up elsewhere, I thought I'd get a thread going here...
Many teachers that I have studied under teach solo's by giving them in a particular order, and having you repeat them a certain number of times. There are a lot of good reasons to do this from the teaching point of view.
1) when working with a group, everyone can play the solo at once, and everyone will stay together (you hope)
2) you can observe the student playing the techniques a known number of times, so you can see how well they repeat the phrase, and you also know when they are going to transition to a new technique, so you can see how they handle the changes
3) it takes pressure off of the student, since everything is spelled out for them, they do not have to worry about the creative elements of "which order?" and "how many repetitions?"
Another element of repetitions is that it can help students understand "aligning with the dununs". Ideally they should "hear" when to start and stop relative to the dununs, but some people have trouble with that, and this is one way of helping them. (I am thinking particularly about solo techniques that are shorter than the dunun melody)
In the other thread, it was pointed out that this is not how it happens "for real" in the village or even in performance. It is unfortunate that more of the master teachers do not talk about this. I think it is one of those things that they assume that you will work out for yourself with experience.
There are many ways of breaking out of this habit, the one that immediately comes to mind for me is to play for dancers! (though I do wonder if some student dancers would have the same problem? I'm not sure how many dance classes have a set number of repetitions per move? any help from those of you who play for dance classes?)
Personally, I tell people to listen to a lot of recordings. There are very few dance classes in Maine and NH. An important exercise that not enough of my students follow through on is to listen to a recording of the song that they just learned. It is a great exercise to hear how Mamady or Famoudou treat the "traditional" solos on their CDs. (it does help to know a bit about the context of the recording as to how they might be interpreting the solos, "village" recordings are often more clear in their presentation of the traditional "techniques" and the more showy cds tend to stray further from the source (though it is still very cool to hear what they do in that case!))
Any thoughts?
C
Many teachers that I have studied under teach solo's by giving them in a particular order, and having you repeat them a certain number of times. There are a lot of good reasons to do this from the teaching point of view.
1) when working with a group, everyone can play the solo at once, and everyone will stay together (you hope)
2) you can observe the student playing the techniques a known number of times, so you can see how well they repeat the phrase, and you also know when they are going to transition to a new technique, so you can see how they handle the changes
3) it takes pressure off of the student, since everything is spelled out for them, they do not have to worry about the creative elements of "which order?" and "how many repetitions?"
Another element of repetitions is that it can help students understand "aligning with the dununs". Ideally they should "hear" when to start and stop relative to the dununs, but some people have trouble with that, and this is one way of helping them. (I am thinking particularly about solo techniques that are shorter than the dunun melody)
In the other thread, it was pointed out that this is not how it happens "for real" in the village or even in performance. It is unfortunate that more of the master teachers do not talk about this. I think it is one of those things that they assume that you will work out for yourself with experience.
There are many ways of breaking out of this habit, the one that immediately comes to mind for me is to play for dancers! (though I do wonder if some student dancers would have the same problem? I'm not sure how many dance classes have a set number of repetitions per move? any help from those of you who play for dance classes?)
Personally, I tell people to listen to a lot of recordings. There are very few dance classes in Maine and NH. An important exercise that not enough of my students follow through on is to listen to a recording of the song that they just learned. It is a great exercise to hear how Mamady or Famoudou treat the "traditional" solos on their CDs. (it does help to know a bit about the context of the recording as to how they might be interpreting the solos, "village" recordings are often more clear in their presentation of the traditional "techniques" and the more showy cds tend to stray further from the source (though it is still very cool to hear what they do in that case!))
Any thoughts?
C
