odd comment

[hokkmike]

The adage is that the pros can hide their mistakes so that nobody knows. We amateurs are less able to do so.

[Rick Denney]

The adage is that the pros can hide their mistakes so that nobody knows. We amateurs are less able to do so.

Oh, I dunno. Lots of pros I've heard have made mistakes that were all too easy to hear.

Listener standards have changed and that has affected the standard being set for professional orchestras. I think recorded music in general has made listeners accustomed to hearing perfection. They can also become so familiar with a work that they know the details of how it is supposed to sound, and are attuned to even small imperfections.

But conductors have always been demanding. Jacobs tells the story of how somebody would always be in Fritz Reiner's hot seat. Jacobs adopted a strategy of effortlessly playing the most challenging excerpts during his warmups before rehearsals so that Reiner would hear that he had those excerpts down cold. I'm not sure most would agree with that strategy these days, and doing that in front of an audience is almost a sure sign to me that the player will mess it up during the performance. But the point is that Jacobs felt as though he had to demonstrate his technical sufficiency to stay out of the hot seat.

I hear what Joe is saying about violinists, and there are certainly wonderful musicians in the string sections. But there are also those who have a section mentality, and I suspect these are more numerous in less polished orchestras. They play stuff far more demanding technically than we are asked to play, but they do it with many others who are doing the same thing. The wind and brass musicians are nearly all soloists and have to be prepared to command their material, not just keep up and blend in. It takes a different mentality. I did not achieve even a hint of that mentality until my year playing with the TubaMeisters, when I played hundreds of shows as a professional. Other than pure chop endurance, I'm not sure how much my actual fundamental technique improved that year, but my ability to put consistently out there what skills I did have surely did improve.

Thus, it seems to me that this question comes from insecurity more than competitiveness. A person scared of his mistakes will listen for them and judge performances based on them. Sheridan talks about dealing with trouble spots in material, and how we usually put a big red circle around the trouble spot. We see that red circle coming up from two pages away, and have mentally programmed ourselves to mess it up even before we get to it. We've given it too much consideration in our heads. This can happen as we listen to others, too--we project our trouble spots onto their playing. He advocated for separating the musical aspect of the trouble spot from the technical flaw, and then working on the technical flaw outside the context of the music (with scales, appropriate etudes, or other fundamentals) as a way to avoid drawing that red circle while still doing the work necessary to solve the problem. The focus should be on the musical product, not on the possibility of failure.

Rick "who'd have reason for fear" Denney

[Teubonium]

Does improvisational jazz have any wrong notes?

No wrong notes, but some CHOICES are better than others!

[sloan]

NakedStringQuartet.jpg

[termite]

Oh my goodness. (mops brow while blinking feverishly).

[Tuba Guy]

Hmm, if all string quartets were as attractive as the Gravitation quartet, i'd be much more interested in watching them...

[UDELBR]

Does improvisational jazz have any wrong notes?

No wrong notes, but some CHOICES are better than others!

Rich Matteson used to say that no matter how wrong a note you land on, you're only a 1/2 step away from a right note.

[UDELBR]

Does anyone (besides the person who spoke to me) actually attend concerts to see if people mess up?

Sorta along the lines of the original question, I was astounded the first time I got to sit on the "good" side of an audition: on the committee. Seeing colleagues do nothing more than make a mark every time a candidate chipped a note. As if that's a reliable barometer of virtuosity or even musical potential ...