[QUOTE=Don Logan]
Good point Jonathan Chance- Greg Maddux has said that his goal is usually not to struck out a batter, but to get them to hit his pitches, because if he has thrown it right, he knows where it is going and that it will be an out. This was of course during his heyday, not so much anymore I guess.
[/QUOTE]
To throw a tailing fastball from 60 feet 6 inches.
Naturally or intentionally. !
[QUOTE=F. U. Shakespeare]
Like the OP, I play the guitar, and the lap steel guitar.
One really useful lap guitar technique is the choke: where you bend one of the strings horizontally behind the bar. This very useful effect led to the development of the pedal steel guitar, which achieves the same effect relatively easily.
Since the knuckle moves the finger in an arc, you tend to pull the string downwards. But this pulls the string away from the bar, cutting off the sound. So you have to practice pulling up slightly as you pull towards you. It looks simple, but took me the better part of a year to get even passable.
[/QUOTE]
[Phil Hartman as Ed McMahon]
I did not know that!
[/Phil Hartman as Ed McMahon]
I do play slide on a regular electric - and a trick I have come to realize is key is damping the strings - you have to use your fingers on your fret/slide hand to lay on the strings behind the slide so no extraneous noise gets through. You also have to rest the fat of your picking-hand palm across the guitar’s bridge right where the strings are. You think are going to completely squelch all sound - and you will if you do these two things incorrectly - but when done with the right touch, you allow only the picked string to make a the desired slide sound. Takes years to get correct…
I play the clarinet. I am by no means a professional–a proficient amateur is more like it. There are things that I learned long after I began that improved my playing markedly and that definitely don’t occur naturally when you stick a reed in your mouth. Things like arching the soft palate and opening the back of your throat so that air can travel to its optimum capacity. Being able to shape and control the airflow with your embouchure and your entire body. Or positioning of the hands on the keys–the fingers should be arched and ready to hit the keys, delicately but firmly. Hold it with purpose and direction (like a lover, as someone once told me.) Alternative fingerings to prevent hitting sour notes during certain transitions, like when trilling from A to B over the break, which is pretty much impossible with standard fingerings. Anyone can play the clarinet, but it’s the little things that make people actually want to listen to you.
I’m also teaching myself to play the recorder (soprano/descant, of course) this summer, and I was expecting it to be almost exactly like the clarinet. It is so totally different. Different mouth shape, different embouchure, different tonguing styles. Touching the tip of the mouthpiece to stop the vibration of the reed just doesn’t work with a recorder since there is no reed there to vibrate. So instead of stopping the vibration of the reed, you’re really stopping the flow of the air through the instrument. Possibly I’m the only one who’s fascinated by that, but it surprised me when I stopped to analyze what I was doing.
In tennis, the advanced players can play all out on every point no matter what the situation.
Less advanced players will naturally tighten up on the big points but advanced players will blast away on match point in the same way they hit during the warm up.
From basketball, I’ve played with guys who played college ball. One thing that separates them from the scrubs is their ball handling, the ability to dribble equally well with either hand, never looking down at the ball, never thinking about dribbling
I sing in a “performance” church choir. In other words, we sing in church almost every Sunday from Sept. through June, take a couple months off, and start again. This doesn’t require any great vocal talent on my part. However, one night when our regular pianist was unable to attend choir practice, I was struck by the ways in which our substitute, while a wonderful pianist in her own way, wasn’t a tremendous rehearsal pianist.
A good rehearsal pianist sightreads well, even in complicated keys. A good rehearsal pianist is good at turning pages and keeping up with the choir and director. A good rehearsal pianist knows when and how to simplify the accompianment–so that the choir gets the cues they need, even if the pianist opts not to play all the frills. A good rehearsal pianist understands, can identify, and will play when asked Soprano, Soprano Two, Alto, Tenor, Baritone, Bass or any other vocal part requested–with or without other parts. And finally, a good rehearsal pianist can switch effortlessly from playing the accompianment to playing parts if that is more helpful for rehearsal.
Not being able to do all of these doesn’t neccessarily make one a bad pianist—but they demonstrate a lot of the differences between being able to play a song on the piano, and being a good accompianist.
As a writer, I’m more conscious of things professionals don’t do that amateurs do. I do some critiquing, and find obvious issues like:
In writing, a pro will always be thinking about how the reader will react to each line, and what a character says and does affects that reaction. An amateur won’t consider this aspect and just assume the reader will like the character.
I was once mesmerized by an oil painting. The artist had painted a book cover that when viewed in real life was simply asoutnding in the the way it took the light. I attended a lecture she taught and it was all about layering of glazes which as I understand now was technique used by renaissance artists. I wish I could have purchased one, I can rmember people telling me if I liked them so much to buy the print but I couldn’t get them to understand the difference. Maybe it was just me.
I have seen really good jugglers do absolutely amazing things. I saw a guy juggle three balls with his feet. I’ve seen countless jugglers juggle while bouncing a ball on their head, and then catching the ball and just letting it balance on top of their head… apparently this is almost expected of professional or competition level jugglers these days. The really amazing stuff I won’t bother to tell you about because if you aren’t a juggler you wouldn’t have the faintest idea what I was talking about. If you ever get the chance to watch Vova and/or his sister Olga Galchenko juggle… it’s absolutely incredible. They’re brother/sister from Russia and probably among the best jugglers in the world right now. I’ve been lucky enough to see them perform at juggling festivals and they make the hardest stuff look effortless. The transitions in this video (I saw them do this routine in Buffalo) are amazing: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4589411820702187488&q=Galchenko
Oh, for the sake of the funny: the video above… they did it (and won) at the competition in Buffalo (IJA Festival 2004). Then at the big show at the end of the week, they performed it as well… except for one minor change. They switched places. I mean really. She wore the track suit, he wore the dress. He did everything she did in the first video… they totally hammed up each other’s performance. It was hilarious. I took a video with my digital camera, which is very low quality, but you can get the idea: http://gallery.opalcat.com/albums/IJADay6/vova_olga_crossdress2.mpg
[QUOTE=drm]
Since mine turned out to be fake, I’ll add another one.
Intentionally shaping your shot in golf. I’m a pretty good golfer and I know all about opening and closing my stance and I can get the ball to move the direction I want but I can’t control the amount - at all. Watching Annika and Tiger do it in those demonstrations on the golf channel is really quite impressive.
[/QUOTE]
I used to be pretty decent, 8-10 handicap. I can work the ball both ways. I saw the pros many times in person at Avenel (used to be the Kemper Open) and remember one particular shot. Don’t remember who it was. Second shot into a par-5, like 240 yards or so. When I cut or fade it, I start it out, say, to the left, and it comes back to the right, curving the whole way. The pro’s shot started low and rose and rose, DEAD straight. Then at the end, it “fell off” like 5 yards to the left. It was like he had remote control. Just a thing of beauty!
draw or fade it…
There’s a very subtle difference between dancing and doing a bunch of moves you learned all put together.
It’s in the dancer’s facial expression and the way he or she moves her head, partially, but really a lot of it is in the timing. Most choreography has very very precise timing already given, so it seems like it should be easy, but the dancer really has to feel the music and use their own tiny subtle changes in timing to turn it into DANCE.
The same goes for solo singers. Although the timing is given, my voice teacher always tells em I have to make it sound like I’m saying what the song is saying and it just happens to be put to music. It’s not nearly as difficult with singing as it is with dancing, though.
[QUOTE=drm]
This isn’t exactly subtle but, as a soccer player, it’s one of the most impressing thing I’ve ever seen in the world of sports.
I’d like to see an amateur do this
[/QUOTE]
I’ll see your Ronaldinho and raise you Soufiane Touzani…
youtube vid 1 <– some really good stuff about 2m30s in
actually, they’re Google vids, not YouTube.
An aphorism about music I always liked:
A difference between a professional and amateur musician is that an amateur practices a song until he gets it right, while a professional practices it until he can’t get it wrong.
Poker:
Beginning poker players play any cards. Good amateurs play the odds. Professionals play the people. This is especially true at no-limit and shorthanded poker. A lot of amateurs get themselves in trouble when they watch the hand selection and playing styles of professionals in the late stages of no-limit tournaments, and think that this translates in the local 3-6 limit game. The pros play the hands they are playing based on their judgement of things like their opponent’s state of mind, their relative stack sizes, whether they have a dominant position, etc. None of this matters in a full loose ring game.
A few things about playing pool at a professional level:
[ul]
[li]A professional pool player is always thinking at least three shots ahead - not just how to make the ball, and not just how to make the ball and get cueball position for the next shot, but to get cueball position for the next shot in such a way that it gives the right angle to move the cueball to the shot after that. If you can do that, you can run tables.[/li]
[li]Professional pool players, when banking shots, will consider how the room humidity changes the rebound angle off the cushion. Other things that change the rebound angle: cushion hardness, ball spin, speed of the shot.[/li]
[li]Professional pool players will cut a ball into a pocket when possible with a little bit of outside spin on the cueball, to minimize the ‘throw’ effect on the balls. The throw effect comes from the fact that the balls have slightly dirty surfaces, and therefore stick together and travel together a bit before separating. Since it’s impossible to predict how much ‘throw’ there will be (there’s a random factor that comes into play here, since the contact point of the balls might be the spot that has chalk on it from the cuetip), imparting a little spin on the cueball causes it to roll off the object ball instead of sticking to it, making the cut more predictable.[/li]
[li]When a pro player calculates where the cueball will go after cutting a ball into a pocket, he considers the spin that the cueball picks up after rubbing against the object ball, and how that will change the rebound angle after it leaves a cushion.[/li]
[li]In eight ball after the break, the player usually has a choice of whether to take solids or stripes. Weak players tend to always take the side that has the most balls already pocketed. Good players look at which balls are in a better position for running out the table. That means taking the side that has fewer balls tied up in clusters, or have the most open pockets.[/li]
[li]In 9 ball after the break, pro players are immediately looking for ‘problem balls’, and planning a strategy for eliminating the problem as early as possible. That means if there’s say a cluster with the 7 and 8, they’re trying to solve that problem by breaking the cluster open on a shot as soon as possible. No one wants to run down to the 7, then try a miracle shot, only to leave the opponent with three balls to pocket for the win. You see amateurs doing this all the time.[/li]
[li]Pro players never ‘lose’ the cueball (meaning making a shot and having the cueball go careening around the table unpredictably). They try to always know the exact path the cueball will be on, and where it will stop. Losing the cueball means taking a chance on scratching or of hitting other balls in a way that destroys your strategy fpr running the table. This even includes the break. A pro player tries to break in such a way that the cueball jumps back off the rack and stops in the center of the table, giving the maximum probability of having a shot after the break.[/li]
[li]In 9-ball, if there are balls tied on on the table in such a way as to make a run-out very difficult, pro players immediately start thinking about safeties, and play position not to run the table, but to set up a good safety shot.[/li][/ul]
In general Pool is far more nuanced and rich in strategy than most amateurs ever know, including a lot of ‘bar’ players that have been playing the game every night for years. Some of them are great shot makers, having practiced so much at judging angles, and yet they get trounced by players who really study the game. It’s also why pool hustlers can make so much money against these players. They never look as good as they are, because the weak players don’t pick up on the little thngs they are doing (like ‘accidentally’ tying up a couple of the opponent’s balls, missing shots inentionally but in such a way as to solve a problem on the table or to make a problem for the opponent, etc).
I’ll echo the golf one. I’m not a pro or anything,but I’ve pulled off some really silly shots worthy of Tiger. In my peak, I’d say I was a single digit handicapper.
One of my best friends has a positive handicap. He’s pretty good at shaping his shots in to fit the lay of the land, although I always argue that people do it too much because they CAN do it.
He wishes he could hit it low like I do, I wish I could hit it higher like he does.
Go fig.
…unless we’re widening the definition to video games. I went to school with a guy that was ranked something like 17th in the world in Halo 2. It was funny seeing the way he approached different situations different from others.
Hell, that’s almost mundane and pointless.
I’d also like to throw my support to the people talking about pool players and the soon-to-be chess apologists, as well.
Sam Stone - that is some incredibly cool stuff. Great insights.
[QUOTE=Least Original User Name Ever]
I’d also like to throw my support to the people talking about pool players and the soon-to-be chess apologists, as well.
[/QUOTE]
Okay, I’ll start on the chess.
My father had a Master’s ranking in his youth and he used to defeat me – hell, he used to humiliate me almost every game we played.
He told me I could play an opening with almost anyone, so all he had to do was wait until about the 8th move, when the board opened up. He said all he had to do was figure out the possible moves I didn’t see, and take advantage of it.
He also pointed out that at his best, he was only mid-level, and that when he played someone who was really good, he couldn’t even comprehend their scope of the board.
This is not very technical, but it applies to every pro, no matter what: the mental game.
Read an article about Michael Jordan, and the mental games he had to go through to keep playing well. According to the article, when MJ is confronted with a dull game (say, playing the then-wretched LA Clippers late in the season on a Tuesday night), he’d try to convince himself that the guy on the other team had been dissing him, to juice himself into playing harder.
Being somewhat lazy and stupid, I find it interesting how the pros have to find ways to motivate themselves at times. You’d think talent and desire would do it, but there still needs to be something extra added at times, if you really want to make it to the top and stay there.