Which chapter was this in? I don't recall him condoning this type of practice. Perhaps during his music education he had tried this. Could you quote the passage?Thanks!
Chapter 2, page 40:The advantage of reading a book while practising for pure technique alone is that it enables us to forget the boredom of playing a passage over and over again, a dozen or fifty or a hundred times until tha body has absorbed it. Not all books, however lend themselves equally well to this employment. Poetry interferes subtly with the rhythm of the music, and so does really admirable prose. The most useful, I have found for myself, are detective stories, sociology and literary criticism. However any reading matter that distracts the mind without engaging the senses or the emotions too powerfully will work.
Blabla.... Put differently, when your technique for something isn't solid and automised yet, you need to pay attention to the sound you are producing etc.Once your technique is solid and automised, you don't need to practice it anymore.But then again, is this perhaps a bit black-and-white?When something is half-automised, you start paying attention to different things, you can just let the whole thing happen and "zoom" in at will on different aspects. In my experience this can lead to further improvement. Maybe the background stuff (reading/radio/TV) could have the function of helping some people with this: it first breaks the habit of concentrating obsessively on what you are used to concentrating on. Once you are "detached" you start looking at what you are doing from a different angle? it sort of opens the mind and might be related to relaxation in a way?blabla...Egghead
Please could someone tell me how I should quote a thread properly. Thankyou.Egghead
I would like to make a comment on his chapter on recording. I would like to speculate that the era of recordings may have done damage the life and education of live performance. It is virtualy impossible for a performer to replicate the perfection that a recording seems to provide. Splicing gives the illusion of the performer in their recording studio just playing through their program without much effort. Many, including myself, in the early stages of learning piano are duped into believing that all performances should be perfect and that professionals never make mistakes. Luckly I grew out of this, after seeing many great artists flub up on several occasions. But its the ones who never seem to get over this perfection thing that bothers me and I have watched them quit because they don't believe in themselves.
Topic: Book Discussion- Charles Rosin 