Re: GG: Invention and masking

[mwilliamson@alston.com]

        Well, this was very interesting; thanks for posting it.  It is 
        interesting how well-suited the keyboard instruments are to this kind of 
        technique:  certainly the playing of such instruments requires constant 
        auditory monitoring but at least pitch is not a factor and timbre not 
        much of one.  Imagine trying to play the trombone or the violin without 
        being able to hear the sound externally.  Although certainly violinists 
        and trombonists often play their instruments in their minds . . .

______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: GG: Invention and masking
Author:  "Joseph Podlesnik" <veronese@jerseycape.com> at Internet
Date:    11/21/96 5:50 PM


Dear Bradley Lehman:
     
Thanks for your note. GG's early epiphany (at the ripe age of 12 or 13) 
with the vacuum cleaner really did involve the Mozart Fantasia and Fugue K. 
394. You may be thinking of the time when GG, years later, tried masking 
the sound of his piano while he was having difficulty playing a Beethoven 
passage. However, in this instance, he recreated the masking effect by 
placing two blaring radios (perhaps even a TV) on the both sides of his 
piano -- to help him to attune (and make subtle adjustments) to his playing 
based on INTERNAL feedback, not to EXTERNAL feedback (which would be the 
actual sound of the instrument). 
     
It really is quite remarkable that we should be discussing this just now, 
as I am going through similar behavioral/neural approaches regarding my 
life-long stuttering problem. My clinician urges me to attend to the 
internal feedback of what my articulators (tongue, lips, jaw) are doing as 
I speak and make corrections, and not to external cues (the pressures of 
the situation, what others might think of one who stutters, etc.) Very 
interesting idea. Think about it: GG was VERY attuned to subtle changes to 
inner feedback -- to the precise height and tilt of his chair, to the 
actual side-to-side "play" of the keys on his CD-318 piano, to the room 
temperature, etc.. It's as if he erected a fourth wall (as actors do) to 
keep him from be distracted by external feedback (the audience). 
     
The other interesting idea regarding this approach to creative masking has 
to do with the gestalt principle of closure. When something is left 
unfinished, we instinctively use our imaginations to complete it. It is 
interesting what creative things we can come up with when we are forced to 
supplant what is left out. (There is a line from a poem by one of the 
English Romantics that alludes to how unheard melodies can sometimes be 
sweeter than those that are heard. What masking really does is offer a 
different way to view a work (your own or someone else's). In my visual art 
courses, I try to show students ways in which they can view their works 
differently ( looking at their work through colored or fogged transparent 
materials, through the reversed reflection in the mirror, holding the work 
upside down, perhaps through dark glasses, or even using a strobe effect -- 
to see the image in a brief instant, instead of a series of moments. I 
believe GG's early formative experience has ties to such ideas.
     
Joseph Podlesnik