| I think the idea of only playing what you can also sing is not to be taken literally. On the other hand it can lead you to some interesting and, hopefully, rewarding exercises and insights, and I think it is in this aspect it has its strength.
For instance, it is very easy to come up with something you definitely can sing but will have to practise rather hard to be able to play if you are a bassist. For instance, can you play the tune/melody you learned yesterday in another key (you can certainly sing it in any key)? Can you play, or figure out how to play, the movement of the cello suite that you are currently working on in another key? (they were not written for bass so we may choose the key as we like, it is blasphemy anyway...)
You can also come up with things that you are able to play and which will be hard to reproduce with your voice if you are not a skilled singer and/or have a very good ear. Arpeggios are one.
A vulgar form of this is the idea of beeing able to play "any standard in any key" (preferably at very fast tempos) which seems popular in some forms of education. I'm not saying we should practise everything in every key, or even that such a method would bring what you "hear" closer to what you play, but if nothing else it shows that there is often a wider gap between our hearing and our playing than we would like to think, and that a situation where we can hear something but not play it can easily be constructed. Even very accomplished players may have trouble with rather fundamental things as those suggested above.
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Last edited by Nils Ö : 11-29-2007 at 09:51 PM.
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