Code of honor was terrible through any lens. Sub Rosa, and others were bad weird, but understandable. It really amazes me how a show can go so high and so low on the same season sometimes.
Yeah, not going to dispute that the series overall had some bewildering and sometimes downright bad episodes mixed in between the treasure trove of gems (Sub Rosa being an odd duck for being both THAT bad and that late in the series).
I guess that's what happens when you have multiple writers running episodes in parallel to each other. Nowadays (with all the explicit continuity series go for) that's less likely to happen as writers are at least expected to have plot and tone carry over between episodes, but for older episodic "villain of the week" type shows like TNG it id more likely to happen.
It's okay to give up. Just give up for the right reasons for you. It's okay to give up because it's too time consuming, or it's too expensive, or it's not fun enough, or it's too fun.
It's your life and if you don't want to keep doing something, you don't have to.
Yeah, the species does better when people never give up because the species can afford to have many wasted lives in return for the advances that can come from the ones that don't fail. It's a little different for individuals, who, for all we know, have only the one life and maybe don't want to spend it trying to suck a bit less at guitar.
Though I would say to give things a fair chance because the first step of being great at something you love is almost always kinda sucking at something you aren't sure about. But I'm trying to find a healthy medium between making sure she tries things but isn't stuck doing them until she burns out with my daughter.
My sister was physically unable to breastfeed (it runs in the family) and a lot of people told her she wasn't trying hard enough. So they would have preferred her keep trying the physically impossible and letting the baby go hungry instead of just giving him formula?
All of the community's job is to fund the school district. There's not much a band teacher can do if there's no money for maintenance...and very often there isn't.
Not that I'm defending band teachers. Some are great. Some suck. Just like everyone else. But it's not like the pads grow on trees.
Or maybe they do. I don't know. I'm not a musician.
There's a big difference between "sorry, we can't afford pads" and "your fundamentals suck. Git gud, n00b." And that difference is a bad band teacher.
Also, the student or parents were willing to pay for private lessons. My private lessons all the way back in the 1900s cost 3-4x more than clarinet pads cost now. I'm sure they would have much rather covered the cost of new pads.
Finally, back when I ran technology for a middle school, I'd often help the band teachers repair and maintain instruments while chatting in my free time. If a band class/school district can't afford clarinet pads for years, then they are weeks away from every single instrument turning to dust in the hands of teenagers.
Which brings me back to my main point: if a school-owned clarinet has bad pads for years, then that band teacher ain't band teachering.
Yeah, like I said, I'm not defending any band teachers. However, my kids' elementary school band teacher was awesome, but the saxophone she loaned my son one summer was absolute shit. My daughter struggled with the drum kits in every grade because they were always falling apart. And our school district is considered one of the wealthier ones in the area.
I would bet that one clarinet's pads wasn't the only issue in the school district. It's more likely that the pads went unnoticed because there were so many other more significant problems that no one ever got around to dealing with the pads.
I'm not defending the band teacher. Just suggesting there might be a lot more to this.
That is very generous and understanding of you. But I'm sure if you casually mentioned to the band teacher that the saxophone was absolute shit, they'd probably agree with you.
What OOP is describing would be the equivalent of a language teacher telling you that your child is illiterate because their pencil broke while they were filling out a multiple choice sheet.
There's some math tricks that can help, too. Like for each hole, subtract 5 from your stroke count, and suddenly par doesn't seem so ridiculous. Or it wouldn't if golf wasn't such a ridiculous sport to begin with.
Same here. We were poor and got finally saved for a brand new Vamdoren mouthpiece. First day at a football game some child ran into the bell of my clarinet and I chipped the mouthpiece on my tooth. I sounded airy ever since and couldnt get out of the low chairs.
I can be in board with this story until he moved from last to first overnight. While I realize that’s exaggeration, at most I’d believe he moved up a bit unless he also changed schools or the band teacher changed. That would require the band instructor to admit they were wrong in their judgement of the student, which almost never happens.
Unless its a mudskipper. Then it'll lord its ability to barely climb the bottom of a mangrove root over all the other fish to feel better about itself, despite still being pretty bad at it as far as tree-climbing animals go.
When learning to weld, it's recommended that you start with Stick welding if you want to be serious and learn all the types eventually. It's harder to start with, but forces you to learn better hand control. Stick welding isn't like a broken clarinet, but the story reminded me of that.
This story is a good analogy for when they try to force kids to learn by certain methods instead of accepting that another method might suit them better
Sports never have been and probably never will be my thing. I hated gym class because almost all the activity was just exhaustive. Just doing a thing to get tired for the sake of exercise.
And sports went the opposite direction, with a focus on winning and competition, on top of the exhaustion and typically overbearing coaches.
I started band in 5th grade and did it all the way through high school including marching band. And marching band is where it really started to click, having performative rather than exhaustive exercise.
Years later I discovered Muay Thai and that was surprisingly very similar in terms of a focus on form rather than speed or power. Really helped me dial in my physical awareness to the next level.
The point of my story is that even if you feel like you’ll never be able to do or be a certain thing, you may find later on that it’s actually a great fit, even if it doesn’t make sense from the outside.
And over the course of years…? The same exact unit with the padded issue?
Even if it’s an issue, someone that far along would know that’s the problem, the story doesn’t fit the details. You’re taught to inspect your instrument before and after every play, lube this every week, yadda yadda. There’s no way someone that good misses this obvious issue and blame themselves.
Pretty sure instrument maintenance is part of grade school music even.
How did any music teacher not hear how out of tune the instrument was. That story just doesn’t make any sense if you actually stop and look at the details. It’s made up bullshit.
Don't know about musical instruments, but with sports we were never told about proper maintenance. It should be a part, but I can see how it could be overlooked past the very basic maintenance
The private instructor quickly found the problem, sounds like on day one in the story.
You're taught that if you have a teacher that teaches that. Based on how disposable so many things in this world have become, I don't think there's a strong self-maintenance and repair culture underlying everything. It seems to be more of a skill picked up or pushed by individuals who have learned how useful it is to know how to maintain and fix things. I played trombone, saxophone, and percussion through school and can't think of any maintenance related things that were taught to me beyond occasionally opening the spit valve to let some moisture out, that reeds needed occasional replacement, and to not damage them.
Class was mostly about just playing the music or music theory. Though in high school, I believe my music teacher would have been able to help with issues that were ultimately maintenance issues, but in grade school we didn't even have a dedicated music teacher, just one of the normal teachers had fingering charts for the instruments we had and some music we could play.
I wish I had time for a ska band right now. I just joined a new band (first gig with them was last weekend and they did a hell of a lot better than I expected. I'm really proud of them) and have a few music related projects. My todo list has the following categories under music: transcription, arrangement, instrument design, technique instructions, band practice, and Navi.
I'm trying to limit myself right now and not join more bands than I have time to practice but you make a very good point.
I feel ya, I've been turning down new projects too, recently. Fortunately, my main squeeze is a ska band (skacore, close enough), so I get to live the dream lol
Too bad for me I had my guitar serviced, figuring it would be better to spend a little doing that rather than spend way more on a new guitar when the problem might have been me the whole time.
The guy said my guitar was perfectly fine after replacing the strings :( Not that I play it often either way, or would start playing it often if I bought a new expensive one.
But on the flip side, it turns out it was the equipment for my return to guitar hero/rock band sucking more than I felt it should. Though these days, it seems like it's hard to find a decent guitar controller at all (the new one I bought had to be opened so I could shave the strummer down so it wouldn't stick when you strummed it, and I'm still not sure where the circuit is for the star power tilt because it was as bad as any other guitar got by day 1), but between that and cleaning out and re-pasting/padding my PS3, I'm no longer getting a series of notes I'm sure I hit all of but the game says I didn't hit any of.
I played clarinet in 5th grade and was last chair. I challenged the girl next to me a couple of times and won, but then she'd take it back the next week. In my case it was because I didn't practice and didn't want to play the clarinet, I wanted to play the sax, but we already had a clarinet, so that's what I got. I still have the clarinet, it's in my closet.
When in doubt, remember that an apostrophe always takes the place of extra letters. For example, "who's" = "who is" and "whose" = the possessive form of "who".
Everyone in my class was required to learn an instrument too. Maintaining, cleaning and checking whether everything works was literally one of the first things we were taught dude. No way that kid never properly disassembled their clarinet.
I'm not sure if the right lessons are learned here.
Imagine that this person was handed a will maintained working instrument.
Then he would not have received all those specialized training and advanced techniques used to mask the clarinet's failing. Would be still have been as good years later?
66 Comments
LilB0kChoy@reddthat.com · 165 pts · 4d
ZC3rr0r@piefed.ca · 34 pts · 4d
I find myself using that quote on the regular still. TNG had some absolute insanely talented writers.
Colloidal@programming.dev · 4 pts · 3d
Then again.... Code of honor... Yuck.
ZC3rr0r@piefed.ca · 2 pts · 3d
The first season had some episodes that were indeed a bit tone deaf, especially when viewed through the perspective of today.
Colloidal@programming.dev · 1 pts · 3d
Code of honor was terrible through any lens. Sub Rosa, and others were bad weird, but understandable. It really amazes me how a show can go so high and so low on the same season sometimes.
ZC3rr0r@piefed.ca · 4 pts · 3d
Yeah, not going to dispute that the series overall had some bewildering and sometimes downright bad episodes mixed in between the treasure trove of gems (Sub Rosa being an odd duck for being both THAT bad and that late in the series).
I guess that's what happens when you have multiple writers running episodes in parallel to each other. Nowadays (with all the explicit continuity series go for) that's less likely to happen as writers are at least expected to have plot and tone carry over between episodes, but for older episodic "villain of the week" type shows like TNG it id more likely to happen.
vivalapivo@lemmy.today · 84 pts · 4d
And sometimes the clarinet is not broken and you have to give up things you love doing for things that you are simply capable of
bitjunkie@lemmy.world · 35 pts · 4d
This one hit me right in the career
CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 34 pts · 4d
I hate when people say "never give up".
It's okay to give up. Just give up for the right reasons for you. It's okay to give up because it's too time consuming, or it's too expensive, or it's not fun enough, or it's too fun.
It's your life and if you don't want to keep doing something, you don't have to.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 3d
Yeah, the species does better when people never give up because the species can afford to have many wasted lives in return for the advances that can come from the ones that don't fail. It's a little different for individuals, who, for all we know, have only the one life and maybe don't want to spend it trying to suck a bit less at guitar.
Though I would say to give things a fair chance because the first step of being great at something you love is almost always kinda sucking at something you aren't sure about. But I'm trying to find a healthy medium between making sure she tries things but isn't stuck doing them until she burns out with my daughter.
FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 3d
My sister was physically unable to breastfeed (it runs in the family) and a lot of people told her she wasn't trying hard enough. So they would have preferred her keep trying the physically impossible and letting the baby go hungry instead of just giving him formula?
ThermonuclearCactus@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 79 pts · 4d
fartographer@lemmy.world · 64 pts · 4d
Part of a band teacher's job is maintaining the instruments. The band teacher deserves all the blame attributed to those bad pads.
ramble81@lemmy.zip · 14 pts · 3d
Was looking for this response. A band director should have noticed that shit immediately.
NABDad@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
All of the community's job is to fund the school district. There's not much a band teacher can do if there's no money for maintenance...and very often there isn't.
Not that I'm defending band teachers. Some are great. Some suck. Just like everyone else. But it's not like the pads grow on trees.
Or maybe they do. I don't know. I'm not a musician.
fartographer@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 3d
There's a big difference between "sorry, we can't afford pads" and "your fundamentals suck. Git gud, n00b." And that difference is a bad band teacher.
Also, the student or parents were willing to pay for private lessons. My private lessons all the way back in the 1900s cost 3-4x more than clarinet pads cost now. I'm sure they would have much rather covered the cost of new pads.
Finally, back when I ran technology for a middle school, I'd often help the band teachers repair and maintain instruments while chatting in my free time. If a band class/school district can't afford clarinet pads for years, then they are weeks away from every single instrument turning to dust in the hands of teenagers.
Which brings me back to my main point: if a school-owned clarinet has bad pads for years, then that band teacher ain't band teachering.
NABDad@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 3d
Yeah, like I said, I'm not defending any band teachers. However, my kids' elementary school band teacher was awesome, but the saxophone she loaned my son one summer was absolute shit. My daughter struggled with the drum kits in every grade because they were always falling apart. And our school district is considered one of the wealthier ones in the area.
I would bet that one clarinet's pads wasn't the only issue in the school district. It's more likely that the pads went unnoticed because there were so many other more significant problems that no one ever got around to dealing with the pads.
I'm not defending the band teacher. Just suggesting there might be a lot more to this.
fartographer@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 3d
That is very generous and understanding of you. But I'm sure if you casually mentioned to the band teacher that the saxophone was absolute shit, they'd probably agree with you.
What OOP is describing would be the equivalent of a language teacher telling you that your child is illiterate because their pencil broke while they were filling out a multiple choice sheet.
Bonje@lemmy.world · 61 pts · 4d
Hi. It me. The clarinet.
vivalapivo@lemmy.today · 63 pts · 4d
Please change your pad
ray@sh.itjust.works · 40 pts · 4d
Have you tried putting your mouthpiece on a different clarinet?
SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social · 3 pts · 4d
I like where this is going.
Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 4d
Yeah this one hit me right in the mental health journey
baggachipz@sh.itjust.works · 55 pts · 4d
Lesson here is that I should definitely buy the new set of golf clubs
fartographer@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 4d
Just change your golf pads.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 3d
There's some math tricks that can help, too. Like for each hole, subtract 5 from your stroke count, and suddenly par doesn't seem so ridiculous. Or it wouldn't if golf wasn't such a ridiculous sport to begin with.
Baggie@lemmy.zip · 49 pts · 4d
Ah yes, the weighted training clarinet
crazycraw@crazypeople.online · 40 pts · 4d
this happened to me.
i wasn't last chair, I was "always second" but I was stuck with a hand me down clarinet with shit pads.
my mom was too poor to even look into having it repadded for years.
i silenced the class and got moved to first chair after playing with proper pads.
it was frustrating and glorious. you're just not allowed to blame your instrument. but I think we can all agree.
fuck em.
maturelemontree@lemmy.zip · 11 pts · 4d
Same here. We were poor and got finally saved for a brand new Vamdoren mouthpiece. First day at a football game some child ran into the bell of my clarinet and I chipped the mouthpiece on my tooth. I sounded airy ever since and couldnt get out of the low chairs.
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world · 23 pts · 4d
Happens more and more as you get older.
invertedspear@lemmy.zip · 21 pts · 3d
I can be in board with this story until he moved from last to first overnight. While I realize that’s exaggeration, at most I’d believe he moved up a bit unless he also changed schools or the band teacher changed. That would require the band instructor to admit they were wrong in their judgement of the student, which almost never happens.
BallShapedMan@lemmy.world · 21 pts · 4d
Systems theory in a nutshell. If we judge a fish for its inability to climb a tree it'll go through the rest of its life thinking it's dumb.
CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social · 31 pts · 4d
Unless its a mudskipper. Then it'll lord its ability to barely climb the bottom of a mangrove root over all the other fish to feel better about itself, despite still being pretty bad at it as far as tree-climbing animals go.
Kraiden@piefed.social · 8 pts · 4d
A fish destined for management
RobertoOberto@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 3d
At least that fish actually has some capability the other fish don't.
Which is more than can be said for most bad managers.
Hupf@feddit.org · 14 pts · 4d
Sidyctism2@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 3d
Exactly what i thought of first
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 3d
When learning to weld, it's recommended that you start with Stick welding if you want to be serious and learn all the types eventually. It's harder to start with, but forces you to learn better hand control. Stick welding isn't like a broken clarinet, but the story reminded me of that.
SourDrink@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 4d
If I ever get to retire, I would love to repair instruments for public schools.
frustrated_phagocytosis@fedia.io · 10 pts · 4d
Laughs in oboe If all the instruments need repair, everyone gets to suck at oboe
FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca · 10 pts · 3d
This story is a good analogy for when they try to force kids to learn by certain methods instead of accepting that another method might suit them better
otacon239@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 4d
Sports never have been and probably never will be my thing. I hated gym class because almost all the activity was just exhaustive. Just doing a thing to get tired for the sake of exercise.
And sports went the opposite direction, with a focus on winning and competition, on top of the exhaustion and typically overbearing coaches.
I started band in 5th grade and did it all the way through high school including marching band. And marching band is where it really started to click, having performative rather than exhaustive exercise.
Years later I discovered Muay Thai and that was surprisingly very similar in terms of a focus on form rather than speed or power. Really helped me dial in my physical awareness to the next level.
The point of my story is that even if you feel like you’ll never be able to do or be a certain thing, you may find later on that it’s actually a great fit, even if it doesn’t make sense from the outside.
ummthatguy@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 4d
This must be why Harry Kim joined Starfleet.
negativenull@piefed.world · 9 pts · 4d
plantfanatic@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 4d
How do you get that far without knowing basic instrument maintenance?
brian@lemmy.ca · 29 pts · 4d
rented instruments don't generally have a solid track record of
basicany maintenanceplantfanatic@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 4d
They’re paying for a private instructor…
And over the course of years…? The same exact unit with the padded issue?
Even if it’s an issue, someone that far along would know that’s the problem, the story doesn’t fit the details. You’re taught to inspect your instrument before and after every play, lube this every week, yadda yadda. There’s no way someone that good misses this obvious issue and blame themselves.
Pretty sure instrument maintenance is part of grade school music even.
How did any music teacher not hear how out of tune the instrument was. That story just doesn’t make any sense if you actually stop and look at the details. It’s made up bullshit.
kettuli@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 4d
Or maybe - and just hear me out - it’s a shit school with a shit teacher.
sukhmel@programming.dev · 3 pts · 4d
Don't know about musical instruments, but with sports we were never told about proper maintenance. It should be a part, but I can see how it could be overlooked past the very basic maintenance
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
The private instructor quickly found the problem, sounds like on day one in the story.
You're taught that if you have a teacher that teaches that. Based on how disposable so many things in this world have become, I don't think there's a strong self-maintenance and repair culture underlying everything. It seems to be more of a skill picked up or pushed by individuals who have learned how useful it is to know how to maintain and fix things. I played trombone, saxophone, and percussion through school and can't think of any maintenance related things that were taught to me beyond occasionally opening the spit valve to let some moisture out, that reeds needed occasional replacement, and to not damage them.
Class was mostly about just playing the music or music theory. Though in high school, I believe my music teacher would have been able to help with issues that were ultimately maintenance issues, but in grade school we didn't even have a dedicated music teacher, just one of the normal teachers had fingering charts for the instruments we had and some music we could play.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 4d
this might be the kick in the ass i need to repair my saxophone
swab148@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 4d
Do it! Join a ska band!
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 4d
I wish I had time for a ska band right now. I just joined a new band (first gig with them was last weekend and they did a hell of a lot better than I expected. I'm really proud of them) and have a few music related projects. My todo list has the following categories under music: transcription, arrangement, instrument design, technique instructions, band practice, and Navi.
I'm trying to limit myself right now and not join more bands than I have time to practice but you make a very good point.
swab148@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 4d
I feel ya, I've been turning down new projects too, recently. Fortunately, my main squeeze is a ska band (skacore, close enough), so I get to live the dream lol
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
Too bad for me I had my guitar serviced, figuring it would be better to spend a little doing that rather than spend way more on a new guitar when the problem might have been me the whole time.
The guy said my guitar was perfectly fine after replacing the strings :( Not that I play it often either way, or would start playing it often if I bought a new expensive one.
But on the flip side, it turns out it was the equipment for my return to guitar hero/rock band sucking more than I felt it should. Though these days, it seems like it's hard to find a decent guitar controller at all (the new one I bought had to be opened so I could shave the strummer down so it wouldn't stick when you strummed it, and I'm still not sure where the circuit is for the star power tilt because it was as bad as any other guitar got by day 1), but between that and cleaning out and re-pasting/padding my PS3, I'm no longer getting a series of notes I'm sure I hit all of but the game says I didn't hit any of.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
So many guitar repairs are bridge height
DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 3d
I played clarinet in 5th grade and was last chair. I challenged the girl next to me a couple of times and won, but then she'd take it back the next week. In my case it was because I didn't practice and didn't want to play the clarinet, I wanted to play the sax, but we already had a clarinet, so that's what I got. I still have the clarinet, it's in my closet.
Okokimup@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 4d
Neville Longbottom has entered the chat.
gastroglizzy@piefed.social · 2 pts · 4d
"It's" = "it is"
"Its" = possessive form of "it"
When in doubt, remember that an apostrophe always takes the place of extra letters. For example, "who's" = "who is" and "whose" = the possessive form of "who".
13igTyme@piefed.social · 6 pts · 4d
Apostrophes don't always take the place. Noun with " 's " is possessive. We say Bob's not Bobs.
magikmw@piefed.social · 7 pts · 4d
This is my favourite part of a comment section.
python@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
Everyone in my class was required to learn an instrument too. Maintaining, cleaning and checking whether everything works was literally one of the first things we were taught dude. No way that kid never properly disassembled their clarinet.
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 3d
Something something !adhdmemes@lemmy.world
Sabrinamycarpet@sh.itjust.works · -2 pts · 3d
I'm not sure if the right lessons are learned here.
Imagine that this person was handed a will maintained working instrument.
Then he would not have received all those specialized training and advanced techniques used to mask the clarinet's failing. Would be still have been as good years later?
BetterDev@programming.dev · 3 pts · 3d
I think its an analogy fam.
Some of us get handed broken clarinets in life and have to figure it out. In order to kinda fit in.
Some of us get regular clarinets that sound fine.
Surprisingly maybe to you, everybody assumes the person with the bad sounding clarinet is just bad at clarinet despite trying their best.
But when given the right tools, they're amazing.
JackbyDev@programming.dev · 1 pts · 3d
Yeah, you definitely did not learn the right lesson from this.