One of my pet peeves these days is how often teachers and players brand their recommendations. My interest in brass embouchures has led me to look closely at a lot of different method books and internet resources that offer good examples of branding in brass pedagogy – Pivot System, Balanced Embouchure, Superchops, Song & Wind, you get the idea. Sometimes there isn’t a specific term used, but rather these methods are identified with a particular teacher (Claude Gordon, Carmine Caruso, Bill Adam, etc.). On the one hand, it’s nice to be able to easily separate these methods with a short phrase or name that lets a reader familiar with these approaches know exactly what you’re talking about, but when I look at the big picture I think that the idea of partitioning off these ideas does more harm than good.
It’s certainly true that many of these different methods are mutually exclusive. For example, Donald Reinhardt (Pivot System) instructed his trumpet students to never practice pedal tones while Claude Gordon’s method relies quite heavily on them. In discussing these ideas it can be helpful to look at the contrast, but in separating them into brands it leads to an argument from authority, rather than a logical discussion. We should be considering facts, not individuals. If we want to discuss pedal tone practice for trumpet players it’s best to simply discuss pedal tone practice, not argue which teacher was right.
One of my favorite online brass forums to read is the Trumpet Herald Forum, which has different sections devoted to different brands of playing. While it is nice to be able to look for information about a particular approach and get what I hope is an accurate depiction, the effect this tends to have is to stifle any conversation about why an author or teacher recommended something and instead inhibits criticisms or modifications that may be valuable to consider. As a regular reader of a few other brass forums and blogs too, I’m always a little amused at how many people go out of their way to inform the reader that they studied with teacher X for a certain number of years. The implication is that we should pay close attention to what this person has to say because of that association, not because what they say is rational and fits the facts as we know them. Sometimes these public debates seem to be more devoted to a cult of personality than a discussion of how and why a particular instructor taught.
The trend to “certify” teachers pass on a particular method is this cult of personality run amok. Good brass pedagogy stands on its own merits, regardless of whether the individual offering advice has taught thousands of successful students or none at all, published a lot on the topic or written nothing on it before, or whether the teacher is a noted brass performer or doesn’t even play a brass instrument (Carmine Caruso, for example, was a saxophonist and didn’t perform on any of the brass instruments). Musical performers and teachers need to consider many different options, put those recommendations into a rational context, and adopt an approach that both suits their own physical and mental tendencies (and those of their students). Here in this blog you can find a number of posts where I criticize some noted brass pedagogues that I also acknowledge have been a huge influence on my own teaching and playing. There is always room for improvement in any method and by placing your system into a brand you end up locking yourself into something that is inflexible and unchanging.
I don’t want people to misunderstand my main point. We shouldn’t adopt the pedagogical relativism that some seem to (“all methods are fine, just find the one that works for you”). That leads to a lot of the proverbial spinning wheels and can waste too much valuable practice time. Yes, I do think that we should use an approach that fits the individual, but not all methods are equal, and some can be downright counterproductive, in my opinion. Rather, I would like to see pedagogues and players alike be more willing to engage in an open discussion of ideas that removes concepts from the association with a brand or particular teacher and simply weigh them according to how logical and useful they are for a given situation. You can criticize an author’s point without having to throw out everything else out. Similarly, even a broken clock is right twice a day and we can find some helpful advice from the most unlikely sources. We can be advocates for an approach without being disciples. If you want to truly help players and teachers separate the wheat from the chaff, a public dialogue that allows this open and honest debate about both the merits and the disadvantages of an approach is not just useful, but essential. Branding your approach may work great for selling books, but aren’t so helpful for moving discussions forward and discovering the truth of a matter.
Dave, you are really putting out some nice content on this blog! I really couldn’t agree more with what you have said. I am frequently disappointed by online forum conversations that revert to argument by authority. It really shouldn’t matter WHO said something but, rather, WHAT was said. Of course, there are some reasons to think certain people/teachers have done the proper research and learning to make their points valid. However, this doesn’t actually mean that you should take their word as gospel truth without considering what they are saying, how they came to their conclusions (evidence, methods, etc.), and weighing these factors for yourself. We can only move forward as teachers and students if we actively seek out the truth and try not to let our biases, opinions, and allegiances interfere. Unfortunately, this is not a mindset that I encounter when speaking with other musicians.
In any event, great post! Keep up the great writing!
Rich
I really enjoy these posts of yours that get to the very nub of what teaching music is about. One point I’d make here is that, as you have often stated, all the empirical evidence is not in on brass embouchures. In music therapy the new neuroscience is giving us some real data points we can build on, but for things so physically/mentally complex as brass embouchure, I’m not sure the science has even begun to settle. I’ve seen far more informative imagery of what the brain looks like when making music than what’s going on with brass embouchures.
Since trombones have been around for centuries and people still can’t agree on the best way to play them, seems to me these debates on embouchure aren’t going to be decided until there’s a lot more solid data. As you’ve said, anecdotal info is rife with error, feeds these debates, and is a perfect Petri dish for confirmation bias. Seems to me that until it’s displaced by solid data, it’s something we just have to live with? While I agree branding can be over done, maybe a little bit helps categorize the morass of the anecdotal info out there?
” We can be advocates for an approach without being disciples.” – That’s a great line!
Let me just chime to say I’m in agreement with all three of you. Honest discussion about brass problems and solutions, absent arguments from authority, is a rare thing, and I would very much like to see more of it. (As I am seeing here, on this great blog.)
Cheers, Dave!
You guys are all too kind and need to start being ruder. It’s becoming like I’m an authority or something. 😛
So true, and it will never be completely settled, like anything else. I recently came across a video by a British comedian, Dara O’Brian, who said, “Science knows it doesn’t know everything otherwise it would stop.”
Dave,
Well, that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?
Authority or not, you’re posting great information, and a fairly objective point of view. What’s not to like?
Keep up the great work!
I’ll go another way with some of this. I teach low brass at a small lib-arts U and find that at this point it’s faster to get students to think in terms of looking at the various methods as prepackaged ‘Lego’ sets. That way I can get them started with the business of playing.
I find the challenge is to make sure that the student sees that a long tone (for example) can accomplish many things. Further, that Author “X” has tried to set it in one context while Author “Y” is using the same basic skill to highlight a different aspect of horn playing.
For what it’s worth, I also enjoy your take on the various subjects. Thanks for posting!
Hi, Bo. Thanks for your comments and reading!
Lego sets, I like that analogy. What I’m really arguing against is the idea that brass technique should ultimately be separated into different sets, though. When I was a kid I didn’t have any Lego sets, I just had blocks and had to make what I wanted out of them. Brass playing and teaching is sort of like that, I think. Each player/student is unique and needs to create their own set out of the blocks they are naturally endowed with.
Still, I agree it’s useful in teaching situations to have easy terms to describe different approaches. It’s a fine line to tread, no?
Dave,
A very fine line.
The Lego analogy looks as though it needs a bit of polishing. The Lego sets I grew up with varied mostly by amount contained in the box. The sets these days are quite specialized. I can see trying to make the analogy based on the newer marketing model would be problematic. I was thinking in terms of the “big box o’ Lego” that was much less specialized. Maybe that helps.
Best,
Bo