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RE: Sometimes Teachers are Weird! (in reply to NormanKliman)
I think repect is earned through achievement. For each person it can be different though what he considers to be an achievement. For some it is high knowledge in some fields, for others it can be an attitude or aspect of personality of someone or a high skill somebody has developed in years of studying. It makes sense to me that one can appreciate such things. The time somebody has spent on earth though, or being born before i was born, i would not consider as an achievement. There are tons of people younger than me deserving more respect than me and tons of people older than me that deserve less respect than me. People are NOT equal, and its really not the age that is the most interesting difference in them - more about the quality of what they say and do.
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Joined: Jul. 26 2009
From: The land down under
RE: Sometimes Teachers are Weird! (in reply to NormanKliman)
quote:
I agree that all old people deserve respect and that many young people today don't seem to care about this. On the other hand, there's no fool like an old fool.
I am 35 so i still have plenty of getting older to go. It's interesting when i think back to when i was in my late teens. I would look at older people without the knowledge to understand why some people behaved certain ways. I would think, and believe, that I was never going to be like that. Now i see so many of the same things with a new level of understanding. And i understand why they were like that
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Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Sometimes Teachers are Weird! (in reply to XXX)
quote:
The time somebody has spent on earth though, or being born before i was born, i would not consider as an achievement.
Obviously. You are not alone. I think that is a mistake.
About achievement we talked before about history of internet and how newbies despite their background have to start from zero and pretend their experienced opinion carries equal weight to every and any moron they come across. So Achievement starts from zero for everybody new to a forum or chat and it is main cause of frustration and sour arguments IMO.
RE: Sometimes Teachers are Weird! (in reply to Mark2)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Mark2
I never really got it by playing with more experienced guitarist in classes-they were holding it down, not me.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo I did have students sit in but honestly, for their sake...it's pointless. THey don't learn how to do it unless they do it alone...
How about bringing a student and getting them to do palmas? I think that way s/he can feel the groove with you and be able to focus more on what you're playing rather than trying to do his own stuff.
RE: Sometimes Teachers are Weird! (in reply to Tomrocker)
In reply to Bulerias2005's video.
You may be right about the "hero worship" element in the guy's response, but
there may also be some common sense involved. He probably realized that to
publicly criticize Segovia would pretty much have put a monkey wrench into
his own future career as a classical guitarist.
Think of what would happen if some student had been criticized by PDL and then turned around and started responding on an emotional level. It would end up only hurting himself.
and another thought;
why was the guy using Segovia's arrangements and then re-fingering them? It's like telling Picasso you want to change the colours in one of his paintings.
I know there are certain teachers who encourage that sort of thing.
I once had a teacher re-finger an entire Bach prelude for me and I spent a lot of hours learning it that way,
only to have the next teacher tell me to change it all back to the way it was.
I was none too impressed with either teacher at that point.
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Joined: Oct. 14 2009
From: New York City
RE: Sometimes Teachers are Weird! (in reply to Wannabee)
quote:
why was the guy using Segovia's arrangements and then re-fingering them?
There is nothing sacrosanct about Segovia’s or anyone else’s fingerings. I learned that from personal experience a long time ago. I started out as a classical guitarist, and I was learning the Sor Twenty Studies.
Sor had written hundreds of studies, and Segovia selected twenty of them, published them as a group, and they became famous as the “Sor/Segovia Twenty Studies.” Segovia said that anyone who could play those twenty studies fluently could play anything.
Well, Segovia had fingered all twenty, and when I was studying them I followed his fingering scrupulously. In one of them, every single time I came to a certain place, I faltered, and no matter how hard I tried, I could never get it right.
Then one day, in frustration, I said to myself – almost guiltily, because I wasn’t supposed to say that – “I wonder what would happen if I used this finger here and that finger there, etc.” So I tried it, and instantly I played it perfectly the first time. The fingering was all wrong – at least for me, though I consider it wrong in general.
From that day on, I never paid too much attention to someone else’s fingering, and just worked out my own.
RE: Sometimes Teachers are Weird! (in reply to XXX)
quote:
The time somebody has spent on earth though, or being born before i was born, i would not consider as an achievement.
In principle, I agree with this. However, one has to proceed with caution. People born before us may have experienced challenges of which we're ignorant; challenges which, if we knew about them, might increase our respect for those persons.
And then there's that whole thing of realizing how difficult aging is only as one grows older...
RE: Sometimes Teachers are Weird! (in reply to Ramon Amira)
quote:
There is nothing sacrosanct about Segovia’s or anyone else’s fingerings. I learned that from personal experience a long time ago. I started out as a classical guitarist, and I was learning the Sor Twenty Studies.
I agree in principle, but if you are taking individual "filmed" lessons from a high profile teacher, it would only show a modicum of respect to follow their fingerings.
If he wants to change things on his own afterwards, that's his own business.
I saw an interview once where Chris Parkening described a similar experience
with Segovia. Segovia was well noted for that sort of attitude. The guy should
have known better.
I don't agree with all of Segovia's fingering ideas either, but I wouldn't have been so foolish as to do what that guy did.
In the end, you have to work out what works for you, but as one teacher told me
one time,
"it's utter folly to expect a young student to be able to re-finger a piece properly"
It takes years of experience to understand why things are fingered in a certain way.
If you change them, you have to be able to make the changes work musically and not
"just cuz it's easier to play that way".
One of the reasons I was turned off of Classical guitar is that teachers seemed
so full of themselves and concerned about specific fingerings etc. It was years later before I realized why they said what they did.
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