Technique and Filling Gaps

Often neglected in the practice of art is the emphasis on techniques.  

Musicians have to know how to play a scale and arpeggios before they play a  concerto, otherwise they will not be able to play the  notes written, or even a jazz musician who is improvising needs to have a good idea of the note progression before they play something on the fly!  

Creative artists are often told to be imaginative without ever having scaffolding of methodology and process-practice in place!   

Why is that so?  

Among reasons I think is that there is a fear that technique could outshine expressiveness or stifle creativity. 

If you treat technique as a servant to creativity and push the boundaries of what is possible – now you are talking!  This is useful in all the arts.  

When I built French horns in a workshop in rural Maryland many years ago, we had excellent players come in to have work done on their horns.  They would go downstairs and play their most practiced and polished concertos with a breathtaking amount of prowess and beauty – it was marvelous!  

However, the really outstanding players would remain upstairs with us while we worked on their instruments, picking up whatever horn was available, and try with all their might to stretch their limits doing things they could not quite yet accomplish or attempting to do things just out of reach – maybe this time it would work!  Whew!  Awful sounds and piercing flops resounded!  

Often in the background the radio would be broadcasting recordings of these very musicians, playing soaring melodies with a finesse that was so inspiring!  The reason they were not doing the concertizing in this moment at the workshop, was that they were stretching to see if they could add yet another bit to the breadth of their already fine toolbox of technique.  Often they would succeed to their delight (and ours!).  Sometimes it was the result of adding just a bit of extra help from another ‘tool’ like a new mouthpipe on their horn, or a bell flare redone. 

I think the improvement resulted mostly from their understanding of the need to continually work to fill the gap over and over between where they were now to where they wanted to be next.  This is what true work on technique looks like.  It was their servant and next tool to accomplish a  greater range of expressiveness and power.  

 One day a horn player was playing right next to where I was working on his horn.  He had just been summoned by a major orchestra to be their principal hornist rather than the principal chair he already occupied – (skip the audition buddy – you’re in – we want YOU).  After making a series of truly awful sounds he put the horn down and asked me if it was really all that bad!  Evidently I was grimacing!  We both had a chuckle when I hastily assured him it was really okay!  I totally understood what he was after and it was fun for me to to see (and hear) progress happen!  It was a wonderful lesson for me to witness.  I never forgot this, nor all the others who did the same thing.  They were the truly great players!  

We all can choose to be really good or truly great – the difference is how we treat the gaps that we have in our practices and how we use these techniques as tools to vividly express the inexpressible.  That is after all why we do art, isn’t it?