Clarinet

My workload of late has meant my blogging mojo has temporarily (I hope) gone the way of my preaching mojo. And speaking of which, the displeasure of that sermon was recorded and is being critiqued this Thursday (*hangs head in shame).

However, with my blogging mojo lost, I've decided to just keep writing until it returns.

With the temptations of overworking myself at college, I decided at the start of the year that I needed a new hobby for when a break from study was required.

My first inkling was to sit down and play guitar or piano - two instruments I am relatively average at. For some reason on each instrument, I plateaued in my ability after about 3 years of sporadic practice. I needed a new challenge. For me, the choice was clear. I was going to learn the trumpet. Having always being a fan of ska music, I have long been a trumpet fan. I find myself often listening to music and imagining trumpet fills in the gaps between lyrics. To cut a long story short, good friend Matt from college studied at the Conservatorium of Music playing clarinet and convinced me with the offer of a free clarinet and free lessons, to teach me the clarinet. Oh well, the price was right, so close enough.

Ultimately my goal is to get to a level which I never attained in piano and guitar - the ability to play a decent solo. Especially some day in the future I would love to be able to play jazz (pronounced 'yazz') clarinet. While trumpet lends itself more to jazz, a clarinet is not out of place in a jazz band. I don't particularly love jazz, but I love the idea of great musicians playing relatively free and loose on the back of their talent. This reminds me of a classic Rich Hall line "Jazz is when you get a blues quartet and push them down a flight of stairs".

While all this thinking was going on, I came across an interesting theory from writer, Malcolm Gladwell. According to Gladwell, if you spend 10,000 hours honing your skills in any field, you will be world class. That is, everyone from Bill Gates to the Beatles spent on average of 3 hours a day for a decade honing their skills. Based on that definition, the only thing I'm on track to be world class at is Hebrew... and let me tell you, nothing could be further from the truth.

Since I started off slowly a few months ago, I've been tracking my clarinet progress. There was a few weeks where I simply hit the wall, but since then I'm slowly getting up to about 20 minutes a day. It's a far cry from three hours, but it's what I have at the moment.

Here's my clarinet practice by the numbers;
77 days since I first tasted the reed
25 days I've actually played the clarinet
8.33 hours played in total or 500 minutes
20 minutes per practice, which works out to
6.5 minutes per day
9991.67 hours until I'm world class, or
599,500 minutes until I'm world class
277 years old, will be my age when I finally hit 10,000 hours at my current rate