some questions

[RJ]

Hi,
I have some more questions..

1- Does it matter what foot you use to tap. I've been reading some books on brain use and was wondering if anyone knows of there are different effects from using either foot.

2- Are there specific tempos for the excercises?-I haven't found this anywhere else, maybe I missed it.

3- I'm at the end of the 4th week and I feel I need more work on the 4ths. Do I continue on to week 5 anyway, or should I repeat week 4 till they are better?
My chops are a little beat up after this week- top lip is thin and a little sore.

Thanks for the help,
RJ

[Goldenchops55]

[_bugleboy]

Rj,

1- Does it matter what foot you use to tap. I've been reading some books on brain use and was wondering if anyone knows of there are different effects from using either foot.

CR: Use either foot, just keep a strong up-beat in your mental counting.

2- Are there specific tempos for the excercises?-I haven't found this anywhere else, maybe I missed it.

CR: As mentioned by GoldenChops, Rule 1 does mention MM = 60, and it is a good tempo for most exercises. Some other exercises may go a little faster to quarter note = 80, a little later.

3- I'm at the end of the 4th week and I feel I need more work on the 4ths. Do I continue on to week 5 anyway, or should I repeat week 4 till they are better?

CR: Do the 4ths another week and then move to the 5ths

My chops are a little beat up after this week- top lip is thin and a little sore.

CR: If you have a hard blowing day coming up at school or on the gig, keep the Caruso that day to just the Six Notes, or do it early enough in the day to allow several hours rest before the gig, at least 6 hours. If there is any damge to the lips from heavy blowing, if possible, don't play at all until they are healed.

Thanks for the help,

CR: You're welcome

[Nicholas Dyson]

Hello. Thought I would interject some interesting things I've heard about foot tapping recently.

Let me qualify this by saying I forget which is which...ie left brain vs right brain and artistic vs logical. (I know those are broad and sweeping terms, but you get the idea).

Anyway, I heard that by tapping the foot OPPOSITE the side of the brain you are trying to engage, it helps a bit. Not sure how... So, if you are playing technical studies and the like, you'd want to tap the foot opposite the side of the brain you use for logic. If you are improvising or playing with a decidely artistic approach, you'd want to tap the other.

Anyone got any further info? Anyone remember what side of the brain is what so I don't seem AS MUCH like a rambling idiot??? Anyone heard the same thing???
_________________
Nicholas Dyson
Ottawa, Canada

[_PhilPicc]

Hi Nick,

As far as right brain and left brain I will get back to you on that. My wife is a RN and works with people who have closed head injuries. She is very aware of left and right and what there functions are.

As far a tapping the foot goes, I just pay attention to the one thats moving closest to the music. Pretty scientific I think.

Happy Tapping,
Phil

_________________
Philip Satterthwaite

[ This Message was edited by: PhilPicc on 2002-07-16 21:57 ]

[RJ]

Guys,

This is all from a book I'm reading "Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot" by Restak.

"The left side deals with the main language center, speech, writing, calculation.

the right side is simple language comprehension, non-verbal ideation, and spatial construction.

Reading activates your occipital and frontal brain areas. Listening to music with your eyes closed fires up your temporal, frontal, and cerebellar areas.

Music provides another means of sharpening your brain's creative powers. According to recent brain research, musical training stimulates and enhances brain circuitry. For instance, PET scan studies demonstrate that the cerebellum is larger in the brains of musicians than in those of nonmusicians. Encoded within that enlarged cerebellum are the fine motor control patterns required to play a musical instrument. And the cerebellum is directly linked with the cerebrum and its store of musical knowledge, learned over many years professional development.
During a musical performance, the cerebrum and cerebellum engage each other in a dialoge conducted in intervals measured in thousandths of a second. This knowledge is not just localized- as previosly believed- to only a few specialized areas. Expert musicians, including conductors, use widely dispersed though interconnected brain areas while intently concentrating on rhythm, melody, harmony, and other subtleties of a musical composition.
But you don't have to learn to play a musical instrument in order to enhance your brains performance. Simply listening to music you enjoy activates parts of the frontal lobes and the limbis cortex on both sides of the brain. Music you find unpleasant or disturbing, on the other hand, will activate a different brain area- known as the parahippocampal gyrus- on the right side of the brain. As a result, those areas of your brain that areassociated with pleasing music turn off. Thus, there is a sound neurological basis for avoiding music you find unpleasant while surrounding yourself with music that makesyou feel good. Since people differ about the music they find pleasurable, your choice will have to be a personal one."

---What it sounds like from what I've read so far is that each side has specific specialties, but they work together in many ways to make the whole expereince. According to this book ----" In the 70's the notion took hold in the popular culture that everybody was either right or left brained. This concept evolved from a misunderstanding of the work of Roger Sperry."

His concpets of hemisphere specialization are based on his experimental findings in epileptics who had undergone an operation consisting of splitting, and seperating the two halves. This releaved seizures and showed the two halves could function independently.
But it says "unlike Sperry's patients, our brain functions as a unity. But knowing about the specialization pattern of the two hemispheres can provide useful strategies to enhance our brain's overall performance."

Anyway.. take whatever you want from all that, I'm still learning.

[Nicholas Dyson]

Thanks RJ, that's a ton of info!

Just based on the first couple of lines of RJ's post, and in an effort to POUND some intelligence into my previous post, I will say that:

"The left side deals with the main language center, speech, writing, calculation. "

So if you tap your right foot, somehow stimulating the left side of the brain, this would supposedly help you in sight reading, or playing well with a group.

"the right side is simple language comprehension, non-verbal ideation, and spatial construction."

That sounds artistic to me, so if you are trying to forget about 'trumpet crap" and just play music, or improvise, tap your left foot.

Non of this sound scientific to me, other than all the other posts, but this kind of fascinates me. Sorry if I've rambled too long on too little.
_________________
Nicholas Dyson
Ottawa, Canada

[trumpetteacher1]

RJ

Restak has made a bunch of of money writing general books about brain functioning. But I frequently disagree with his "spin".

To say that

"In the 70's the notion took hold in the popular culture that everybody was either right or left brained. This concept evolved from a misunderstanding of the work of Roger Sperry,"

is a bit of a fabrication, in my opinion. Maybe Restak originally came to that (either-or) conclusion in his younger days, but plenty of others saw the bigger picture (unity) much earlier.

The truth is, almost everybody is right or left brain DOMINANT, an out of balance condition which most often exhibits itself when the person is under stress. Shifting brain activity to one hemisphere is a little understood strategy the brain develops early in life to deal with issues of high emotional content or pain. Further, with the relative level of stress in today's world, especially the low level type of stress that never seems to get resolved, there are more extremely right ot left brain dominant people out there than ever.

The question is not whether you can access the other hemisphere, but rather, how EASY is the access? When stress is high, access starts getting denied.

There are simple tests to figure out hemispheric dominance. Restoring the brain to a more balanced state is the ultimate goal.

But that's another thread for another board!

Jeff
http://www.trumpetteacher.net

[ This Message was edited by: trumpetteacher1 on 2002-07-20 17:45 ]

[RJ]

Like I said, "take whatever you want from all that, I'm still learning."