A huge compliment
So, the holiday season is over officially. I had my first student today since before Christmas, and threw away some Christmas paraphernalia. But this year I did get a compliment that made such an impression on me that I thought I might write it down here so as not to forget it.
This year, I played three Messiahs, three church Cantatas, one ASO concert, and one really strange gig for the Mountain Brook Country Club garden party. Anyway, this compliment came from one of the canned cantata gigs in Hoover, and it was from a high school girl playing horn two seats down from me. The weird thing about this was that I don't think she understands exactly how big of a compliment it is to me, she was just calling it like she heard it, which is in fact the reason why it's such a big deal (she wasn't just trying to be nice).
Anyway, I was sitting there in the orchestra pit, warming up and making sure my reeds were actually going to quasi-function in the sub-zero climate they had prepared for us in the sanctuary. And she comes to sit down, and after a few minutes of me playing, she tells me that my playing sounds like somebody playing on a synthesizer or some type of keyboard.
Now, you might think that is insulting, right? I mean, what wind player wants his playing to be as robotic and lifeless that it sounds like it could easily be replicated by an electronic instrument? However, that isn't how she meant it. What she was talking about was the smoothness and evenness of my sound. Apparently to her it sounded so smooth that the homogeneity of my scales could be compared to the homogeneity of the scales on a keyboard. For an oboist, that is a HUGE deal, since getting every note on the oboe to sound connected and enough alike is really hard to do.
Why do I think that's what she meant? Well because I can remember thinking the exact same thing about the way my teacher sounded back when I first heard him playing when I was in high school. It was the smoothness of his sound and the clarity of his high notes that stood out to me; being the complete oboe n00b that I was back then, I had never heard anything like that before in real life. Of course, I don't sound like he does, but to think that my playing could make at least somewhat of the same impression on someone is AMAZING and very gratifying.
If she only knew...
This year, I played three Messiahs, three church Cantatas, one ASO concert, and one really strange gig for the Mountain Brook Country Club garden party. Anyway, this compliment came from one of the canned cantata gigs in Hoover, and it was from a high school girl playing horn two seats down from me. The weird thing about this was that I don't think she understands exactly how big of a compliment it is to me, she was just calling it like she heard it, which is in fact the reason why it's such a big deal (she wasn't just trying to be nice).
Anyway, I was sitting there in the orchestra pit, warming up and making sure my reeds were actually going to quasi-function in the sub-zero climate they had prepared for us in the sanctuary. And she comes to sit down, and after a few minutes of me playing, she tells me that my playing sounds like somebody playing on a synthesizer or some type of keyboard.
Now, you might think that is insulting, right? I mean, what wind player wants his playing to be as robotic and lifeless that it sounds like it could easily be replicated by an electronic instrument? However, that isn't how she meant it. What she was talking about was the smoothness and evenness of my sound. Apparently to her it sounded so smooth that the homogeneity of my scales could be compared to the homogeneity of the scales on a keyboard. For an oboist, that is a HUGE deal, since getting every note on the oboe to sound connected and enough alike is really hard to do.
Why do I think that's what she meant? Well because I can remember thinking the exact same thing about the way my teacher sounded back when I first heard him playing when I was in high school. It was the smoothness of his sound and the clarity of his high notes that stood out to me; being the complete oboe n00b that I was back then, I had never heard anything like that before in real life. Of course, I don't sound like he does, but to think that my playing could make at least somewhat of the same impression on someone is AMAZING and very gratifying.
If she only knew...