The Impaler wrote:Where do you think I got that little equation? Who do you think that Pat Sheridan got it from? Isn't it just slightly possible that I'm doing the same thing that you mentioned above?
I don't think it was the equation that annoyed Chuck, but rather the "all I need to know" part, or more likely, the implied extension of that to "all YOU need to know". The equation gets the thinking in the right direction, but as we progress, we surely learn more, and that knowledge helps us.
Permit me what seems an unrelated story. A few years back, I was involved in triathlon. This was a foolish enterprise at first, because I could not swim aerobically and would be gasping for air after one length of the pool. So, I took swimming lessons and swam four times a week with a master's swim program. I learned how to swim aerobically enough to swim the 2.4 miles of the swim portion of Ironman USA three years later with a solidly average time. I did better in the swim relative to other participants than I did on the bike or in the marathon, which is a bit surprising given that I came to triathlon from a cycling background.
The point of this story is that the best swimmers never really thought about technique. I'm talking about the Olympic-class swimmers (one of whom was my coach when I lived in Dallas). They jump in the water and just swim. They know what going fast feels like, and they make a myriad of unconscious adjustments to go fast. The key word there is "unconscious". They are focused on the result. They know that if they turn their hand a particular way, their catch will grab a bit more water, and if they can stretch their shoulder ligaments with a bit more flexibility, they can make a smaller hole in the water. They just do it without thinking about it, right from the start.
But what about the rest of us? How do we learn that, even though we have no feel for the water as do the greats? We can't use trial and error, because we don't know what a successful trial feels like.
The good coaches study those few remarkable swimmers, and understand for the rest of us what it is that they do that makes their greatness possible. Then, they teach it to us. And they teach it the same way we learn music, by focusing on the feel we have in the water. But they still drill us on specific physical activities that will position our bodies in the water so we can experience that feel. Some swimmers, once they experience that feel, will go on to become great swimmers, perhaps. Most won't, but they will get good enough to enjoy it. But even they will have to drill the elements of a good swim stroke until it becomes automatic. While they are drilling, they are not thinking about going fast in the water, but rather they are thinking about making sure they turn their hand the way they've been taught, and so on, until they do it out of habit. Then, they turn their minds to the feel of the water.
That's exactly how most of us learn to play music. Yes, we get in our own way when we think too much about the process of technique when we are trying to play music. But we must build those processes into our subconscious one way or another if we are to succeed. We are either born with it, or someone teaches it to us and we learn. Once we learn the move, we have to go beyond the move to bury it into our subconscious so we can focus our intelligence on the music. There is absolutely nothing about this process that is antithetical to the way Jacobs taught or the way Sheridan teaches, based on the examples that I have seen.
I took lessons with Mike Sanders, who was himself a long-time student of Jacobs, many years ago, and he tried to get me to start moving air. He didn't do it with simple equations. He did it using three methods: 1.) he demonstrated what moving lots of air looked like and sounded like (and the sound of that is still in my head nearly 20 years later), 2.) he drilled me on air movement outside the domain of melody ("tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-to-tu-tu-tuuuu-inhale-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tuuuu...), and 3.) he had me buzz on the mouthpiece (which eliminates the helping resonance of the instrument and thus requires more air). These techniques go far beyond your simple equation.
But I still don't think about them when I play, any more than I think about how I turn my hand during the catch portion of my swim stroke.
Rick "eschewing the obfuscation of being simplistic" Denney
