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Old 02-05-2012, 09:49 AM   #14
Keith Larman
Dojo: AIA, Los Angeles, CA
Location: California
Join Date: Apr 2005
Posts: 1,604
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Re: Techniques in themselves don't work

The best analogy I've ever been able to come up with is to compare it to learning to dance. You can put the little cut-out footprint things on the floor and work out the choreography. And you can train and train on those particular steps and movements. But at some point the choreography needs to "go away" leaving behind someone who is "dancing" and not just doing the movements.

Same for me in playing music. I have a classical piano background. And there is a difference between playing the notes to the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata, and *really* playing the third movement... One is a performance of the notes Beethoven wrote. The latter is creating music through the notes Beethoven wrote.

So I see techniques as being like choreography or notes on a piece of paper. They are ways to get ourselves in to a place where we can begin to really express the art. The technique itself as a teaching device that hopefully allows us to periodically glimpse that which transcends the choreography.

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