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Post by jod on Mar 14, 2007 10:01:09 GMT
I spent alot of my practice time on Hinke Elementary Studies on the Oboe. I now use them in teaching in addition to scales to enable my one oboe pupil to develop skills she can use in her pieces. Interesting to see that you use this and (from the way you have written about it her) don't think of it as boring. I bought a copy of this off ebay (because everyone kept mentioning it) and my oboe teacher doesn't like it at all. He concedes that it does cover technical difficulties but thinks the pieces are not musical and encourage you to play notes rather than music. (Although somewhat illogically he also uses the Selmer fingering exercises which really are boring and which are the only things I really have to force myself to play and lack the will power to play at every practice session). He prefers Brod and then, for more advanced pupils, Ferling. Brod is more tuneful but Ferling I find too demanding to be thought of as an exercise. I used Ferling once I had passed grade 5, they are much nicer studies! My pupil is currently happy with Hinke, sure there not the most inspiring studies to listen to, but they do work as exercises. I also used difficult passages when I was working on my grade 7 and 8... now they were lovely exercises!
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Post by kerioboe on Mar 15, 2007 18:59:48 GMT
Apologies in advance to the pianists Jo have you ever given/used Telemann's Fantasias as a technical exercise? My teacher brought them in yesterday, saying I think you said you liked Telemann (true) and that these would be excellent for getting flexibility in my embouchure. Having attempted to sightread one today (he asked me to prepare it by myself for next week's lesson), my initial reaction is that they are harder than Ferling as there are huge intervals between just about every note.
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Post by Steve Hopwood on Mar 15, 2007 22:59:52 GMT
Apologies in advance to the pianists Jo have you ever given/used Telemann's Fantasias as a technical exercise? My teacher brought them in yesterday, saying I think you said you liked Telemann (true) and that these would be excellent for getting flexibility in my embouchure. Having attempted to sightread one today (he asked me to prepare it by myself for next week's lesson), my initial reaction is that they are harder than Ferling as there are huge intervals between just about every note. No need to apologise here. This is a great example of real music also being a vehicle for technical development.
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Post by kerioboe on Mar 17, 2007 19:19:29 GMT
Hi Steve, I have been thinking a bit more about so-called "technical exercises."
I think they do sometimes have an advantage over "music" in that they tend to work on one thing at a time. I remember getting very frustrated after I had been learning the oboe for about eighteen months and I was working on the Poulenc oboe sonata supposedly to improve my technique. At that stage, however, I felt that I could only do one thing at a time; either I could play the right notes in tune, or I could play the rhythms correctly, or I could add some dynamics but I could not do all three at once. I begged my teacher for some purely technical exercises. He was a bit surprised saying that he'd never had a pupil wanting to do them but he did bring a whole lot in and I did nothing but studies and exercises for a couple of months. When I went back to "music" again, I felt a lot more confident about it.
I suppose in my case having prior musical experience means I am somewhat atypical. French pupils seem to be appalling sight-readers whereas from my first lesson I have been able to sight-read (or at least hack my way through) anything he has put in front of me but this does not necessarily mean I can make music out of it, even if I put in hours of practice. With hindsight the Poulenc was far too advanced for me (it is on the grade 8 list) and had far too many technical problems for me at that stage of my learning.
I still spend a fair amount of my practice-time on technical exercises. (More so than I like to admit to my teacher who, like you, is a believer of technique via music).
Having said all that, I am enjoying the Telemann. After a couple of days of practice it no longer seems quite so daunting and I am starting to hear how it could sound.
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Post by Steve Hopwood on Mar 18, 2007 14:29:39 GMT
Hi Steve, I have been thinking a bit more about so-called "technical exercises." I think they do sometimes have an advantage over "music" in that they tend to work on one thing at a time. This is why I play Chopin studies; they are also great pieces of music. We pianists are lucky in this respect. When teaching amateurs, it is not a case of never doing exercises at one extreme, or always doing them at the other. The reality was neatly expressed by Frankie when she wrote this: Most of the people I teach would react in the same way. A lot of the kids I teach react similarly even to the standard 'classical' repertoire. Many of them have transformed their practise regimes since I discovered the contemporary repertoire I now use with nearly all of them. Good for you - no reason for you not to. What is important is what works for the individual. Carry on with those exercises.
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