Intuitive Musicianship: The Mary Had a Little Lamb Challenge
Today we had an interesting guest presentation at ASU by Don Wilkinson on the topics of playing naturally and intuitive musicianship. Dr. Wilkinson is on the woodwind faculty at the University of Texas at El Paso, and his session was a preview of a session to be presented at TMEA. Many topics were addressed related to intuitive musicianship, on which he has a book nearing completion. In the presentation he gave one interesting challenge.
A multiple woodwind player, once he was playing a job on alto sax and played an improvised solo less well than he would have liked. A tenor sax player leaned over and said to him something like “you can’t play Mary Had a Little Lamb in every key, can you?” To which he replied of course he could! What an insult, to say someone can’t play music as easy as Mary Had a Little Lamb! But when he went home and tried it he found out that he could not easily play it in every key. Practice and progress was the result.
You don’t need (or want) music to do this. Can you do it? Take the Mary Had a Little Lamb Challenge today; it may open your eyes a bit.
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