Violin Tricks

Our second annual studio concert has been confirmed for the 11th of November, at the usual place.

I hope it will be a lovely concert.

This ties in both with a blog post on Violin Teacher’s Blog and with that 14-year-old who pushed her voice and used a microphone to sing “O Mio Babbino Caro” in America’s talent competition.

It concerns child prodigies, people who think they are child prodigies and the people behind them, living vicariously through your children or students and creating both egomaniacs and narcissists via overblowing “talent”.

The most important question I’d like to raise in this context is this:

What does all this have to do with music?

Personally I hate competitions, music exams etc, anything that feeds into the competitive character of young musicians and their parents (not of music).

Music itself is innocent.  Music is the oldest language, the language of undiluted emotion-without-words.  Music is a portal to a better world where daily worries don’t exist and only pure emotions do.  By “pure” I don’t mean only the happy ones; grief can be pure, heartbreak can be pure, and music expresses it purely.  Dissonances can introduce the conflict we feel when we are torn between forces…

… but you see:  Nothing, absolutely nothing in this ethereal world of pure emotion exists that will say, “I’m better than you”.  That is not the function of music.  Music does not exist to be a measuring system or a filtering system “you, yes;  no, not you”.  Music is universal.

The function of the musician

is to open that portal.  For himself and the listener.  The function of the musician is to transport the listener into that place where the real world disappears.  To “go there”.  The Pied Piper leads the way; the children, lost to the world, follow, entranced.  The Pied Piper is no less in a musical trance than the children; yet he creates it while experiencing it.

Now, can you imagine one of those kids pulling a pennywhistle out of their pocket and starting up a competitive tune with the Piper?  What is the result?  Instantly, the trance is broken for everyone around them, and a power struggle ensues (though I guess, more likely the Piper would simply pack in his instrument and disappear, leaving the kid to struggle alone).

The healing properties of music

I’ll get a bit philosophical here:  I believe it is the musical trance one enters while focusing completely on the beauty of the music, including its execution (sound production, intonation etc), that is so powerfully healing.

It could be that the actual frequencies of music straighten out disturbed frequencies in one’s brain (or to get “ethereal” about it, in one’s aura).  If you’re into “vibrational medicine”, you’ll quickly see how perfect harmonies can align what was misaligned.  But even if you believe that vibrational healing is voodoo, still the fact remains that sound waves have physical properties (frequency, intensity) which have physical effects in a body on a molecular level.

Then again, perhaps it is the absence of something else while immersing oneself in music, that heals.  In those ten or thirty minutes, you’re not focused on those worries and life stresses that are eating you alive the rest of the time.  Just giving yourself that break (similar to meditation, and music is meditation) may be the key thing that does the healing.

Sometimes I get a student in a lesson who is so consumed with worry about something that I need to sit them down and urge them to take that break.

I explain to them that this is their special time with music, and that nothing can take it away from them.  I suggest they leave the worries to take care of themselves for only half an hour.  If they manage this, usually the worry has also diminished and they know what to do.

The function of the teacher

A very sacred duty has been given into our (teachers’) hands:  To teach a young musician to open that portal, to find the entrance to that world called music.

There is no mechanical approach.  Of course we have to teach the mechanics behind handling the instrument; but are we teaching the kids to saw a bow across a string, or are we teaching them music?

One of my earliest mentors for teaching, a highly experienced and well-established clarinet teacher, instilled this in me.  It is not about the student, or the teacher, or the parent, or the exam:  It is about the music.

Am I teaching the music or the child?  Actually, I’m teaching the child music.  I’m not teaching the child psychology or how to deal with ego; I’m teaching the child how to open that portal and go into that magical land where nothing matters except the music.  Pied Piper Land.

All technical studies, everything about the instrument is merely a means to an end.  The focus needs to remain on the end result.  Lose sight of that and you’ve lost your way.

This is why the energy behind the music is so important. 

 

Egomania in action

A little anecdote.  In the early days of the studio there was a little girl who came to me for remedial violin, to help with a speech impediment.  For various years we made excellent progress, as she was a fast learner and practised diligently.  We had a lot of fun and explored the realm of music.  And then, one day, the parents got ambitious and insisted on her playing an exam, “for the paper”.  Ambition piled upon more ambition:  Suddenly just playing an exam wasn’t enough, it had to be a distinction.  (Any music teacher can tell you that’s nonsense.  You can’t “order” a distinction from a child.)  Long story short, coasting dangerously close to a nervous breakdown, this little girl played this exam; didn’t get her distinction (still passed well despite the nerves); her teacher was fired in favour of a “better teacher”, and I lost sight of her.  I presume she then went from teacher to teacher looking for that ultimate teacher.

Many years later I heard her during a youth performance (she played quite well); and she gave a speech at the end.  The speech brought tears to my eyes.  Not tears of joy.  Tears of despair, of how this child’s perception of music had forever been corrupted.

All the speech was about, was on how important it was to be the Best.

To be the best.

Nothing about the meaning of music.  Nothing about the way music can unite people (“Alle Menschen werden Brueder” – Beethoven); nothing about how it is the oldest language that stirs things in us that cannot be expressed in words.  Nothing about how music has the power to change nations, to change the world; nothing about how music, by its very physics, is a healing force the ancient Greeks already acknowledged (spherical geometry tied in closely with musical intervals).  Not even, Glory to God for our talents (the line another young player took).  Nothing; nothing.  Only:

How one has to be The Best.

I’m sorry.  Mozart would have laughed at her.  Mozart, aged 6, taught himself violin.  The best?  Excuse me, do we even have one such person on the planet today?  And can this poor deluded young violinist compare herself to even today’s greats;  David Garret; Martha Abrahams?  Can she even stand up and compare herself to an ordinary versed professional orchestra violinist?  The Best?   Dear child, what has been done to you??

 

Talent is only a potential.

A potential for unlocking that portal.  You wouldn’t stand up and crow conceitedly:  “I’m the holder of the keys!”  if you understood that this is what talent really is.  “Look at me!!  I have the keys!”  The keys to what?  “I don’t really know, but I have a lot of them!  I’m so special!”

People who make it all about themselves and their performance have lost the way.

Does a great musician deserve to enjoy the applause?  Of course!  She worked hard for that applause. Applause is the gift of the audience to the player, after the player has given the audience the gift of a wonderful experience in music.  It is the natural exchange of energies.

But if that’s all the soloist is playing for, she needs to reevaluate the meaning of life.  Why bother with music?  Music is hard work, there are easier paths to fame!  Why not instead do something mind-boggling – walk through the streets without clothes on, and harvest instant fame?

(Note the difference between “musician” and “soloist”:   Musician – a maker of music.  Soloist:  An “aloneist”.  The ego is embedded in the word.  Many teachers, including me, maintain that a player isn’t a complete musician before he can also accompany well.)

How to deflate an inflated ego

Luckily (or unluckily, depending how you see it) there is a path to deflate an overinflated ego.

The path is called failure.  Failure to get applause.  Failure to even get that solo position.  Failure to attain the fame you built your entire ego around.  Emergency intervention for every egomaniac who falsely believes they are the best, should include a total cold-shoulder from the world for an extended period.

That is like waking up from a trance.  The dream was great, but here’s reality:  While others were quietly, solidly, following their own life goals, stepwise studying and practising mundane professions and becoming really good at them, you were flitting from one gig to the next in the forever-hope that gigs will get more and better paid.  And then the gigs stop coming.  Nobody is interested in you anymore.  You’re not the youngest talented baby on the block anymore; someone younger ousts you from that position.  Your music, that has been neglected in favour of ego, is not powerful enough to stand on its own and actually entrance people, open that portal for them; that wasn’t your focus.

And you realize that you’ve done nothing else.  That aside from self-worship, your life has no content.

This experience will be followed by an existential crisis; followed, hopefully, by a resetting of goals, giving up on grandiosity, and starting the first little steps towards a genuine life.

Because only people who can lose themselves entirely in music, who can lose sight of not only their ego but their very identity, who can disappear into the magic realm, can really become musicians.  If you’re an egomaniac who plays for admiration only, it’s not for you.

There’s a novel in here somewhere. Wait…

One of the most difficult things to learn on a violin is intonation.  Intonation is the accuracy with which you hit the right pitch on every note.

In my 17+ years of teaching violin I have been ceaselessly seeking for ways to make learning intonation easier.  If you are still playing out of tune, first of all be comforted:  It isn’t you.  Intonation is difficult and takes hard, consistent work.

But there is good news!  It can be mastered; and like with so many things based on muscle memory, once you master it, maintaining it is much easier.

How to hit that pure intonation

• There is of course the gold standard, the combination tone.  Leopold Mozart is the first who described this phenomenon in his “Violinschule”.   If you play two notes perfectly in tune, they create a third, lower tone that harmonizes.  This is known as the combination tone and can be used as a tool to check your intonation.

The combination tone is actually a physical phenomenon:  It is the interference wave between two audible wavelengths.  If they interfere with each other in good harmony, i.e. they are in tune with each other, this wave becomes completely regular, and audible.

• • Left-hand posture and placement facilitates intonation.  If the left hand is relaxed and assumes the same posture every time you pick up the violin, you’re helping your muscles remember where exactly that finger must hit the string.  This muscle memory sees to it that we don’t have to relearn intonation every time but can retain a fairly accurate skill between practices. Of course, what builds “muscle memory”, i.e. what lays down neural pathways to our muscles?  Practice and repetition…

 

• • Keep those semitones tight!  That’s a little shortcut.

 

• • Scales are often used to practise intonation.  The usefulness in this is that with a scale, you have very little else to focus on besides intonation (and bowing, possibly).  They are not a “tune” per se.

 

• But the most important thing is development of an accurate ear.  You develop an accurate ear, i.e. laying down of neural pathways, by… yes you guessed it:  Practice and repetition.  But not only that; while you practise, you need to focus specifically on listening for your intonation.  Be strict!  Your audience will be.

 

I think, if I could have a magic wand to improve even one aspect of my students’ play instantly (leaving the rest to hard work, as usual), it would be intonation.  Even a mousy player who sounds, as a friend of mine puts it, “like a mosquito”, sounds better when playing in tune.  Remove intonation as a learning difficulty on the violin and you have a much more manageable instrument.

So, kids, the one who cracks the mystery of good intonation first, wins!

Hi all my students & parents

There is a House Concert and a Ceilidh afterwards, this weekend (Saturday the 10th September) at the Fairy Glen house.

Concert starts at 17h.  Ceilidh ends whenever people are tired of it and want to go home.

Bring your instruments plus some finger food or dessert for the potluck table.

🙂  See you there!

 

It is the same every year.

Of a handful of students who are highly motivated at the beginning of the year to enrol for exams, there are always one or two who simply do not practice.

When I explain to them at the beginning of the year what it takes to play exams, they nod solemnly and promise they will bring their side.  And then… that gets forgotten over school, hockey, friends, parties, new apps on the smartphones, and so on and so forth.

“I didn’t have time to practice, because…”

Bullshit!  Sorry, kids, there is no such a thing as “no time”.   Every person alive gets the same allotment of time:  24 hours each and every day.  It’s not about time.

It’s about what is important to you.

Of course I don’t want you to stop eating, lose sleep or never have a bath!  That is just silly.

But you can afford to put that smartphone down.  You can afford to reschedule that play date to the weekend.  And you can afford to watch less “CARtoon network”.

You have a test at school?  Guess what: So does everybody else.  Some will study and some won’t. I’ll bet you that if you start revising your work (for the test) from the day you know you are writing it, you’ll have time to study AND to practise.  And what about all the other days, when you are not writing a test?  Why can’t you practise then?

If you always use such a lot of time studying for tests in school that there is no time left to practice, you should not be doing violin at all.  And then I’d like to see your grades, because anyone who studies that hard ought to be a straight A student, no mistakes ever!  Or else, you’re just using those tests to pull the wool over my eyes.  I’m sorry.  Do I look stupid?

You see, kids:

Learning for a test in school is usually an exercise in how fast you can push a certain amount of knowledge (don’t call it a “lot” – it isn’t a “lot”, it’s always bite-sized) into your heads before writing it all out again and forgetting it by the next week.  I’m not saying this is how you should be doing it, but be honest – that’s how most of us study for a school test and even exam.  (With the exception of Maths – ha, caught you!!)

Violin doesn’t work like that.

Violin doesn’t even work like Maths, although that is also a subject you can’t cram overnight. I like to compare Maths to building a house, where you can’t leave holes in the foundation (or in any level of the wall) and hope the whole structure will not collapse.  You have to put every brick in, understand every part.

But violin takes even more than that:

Violin doesn’t only use your brain.  It uses your whole body.

We are working with nerves and muscle groups growing; with posture (the way you hold your violin and bow, which has to be learnt and practised); with fine sensory perception (the touch of your fingertips vs how clearly you can discern intonation); energy output (think:  Yoga or martial arts – violin needs the same kind of energy control) and so on.  Then we’re also working with learning an entirely new language – and not just a language but one that is written differently from every other language you’ve learnt.  Reading music is something that needs to be practised just like you would have to practise speaking French.

So, imagine a farmer.

He wants to plant maize (mielies) and harvest it in June.  (In the northern hemisphere it would be much later in the year.  June is winter, for us.)    So he goes out and buys lots of  seeds, and then… he gets distracted.  There are games to be watched, children need to be taken to their activities, he wants to go out drinking with his mates, there’s a holiday at the sea, and every day there is just such a lot to do with Pokemon Go…  Then suddenly it is end of May and he remembers his maize.  Oh, OOPS!  He runs outside and plants, and irrigates and fertilizes like mad…

Now, Children.  Who of you can answer me this:  Is he going to have a harvest?

Or what about the farmer who buys his seeds and then plants them, and irrigates and fertilizes them well for two months and then forgets them?

Is he going to harvest?

Violin is like that.  You can’t cram for a violin exam!

If you’re planning to cram, tell me at the beginning of the year, then I won’t enter you for exams.  But it is a gross disrespect to everyone around you, your parents who paid for the exam and the books, your teacher who puts in extra effort and sometimes even extra lessons to rescue you little rascal’s skin, the accompanist (I am embarrassed to ask her to accompany you on the piano if you don’t know your pieces!), and even the examiner, to go in and play a lousy performance because you haven’t practised.

So, to all of you who haven’t yet pulled up your socks to your chins with practising:

We have five weeks to the exams.  Five weeks is not enough for a full harvest.  But maybe you can plant a quick crop and farm really intensely; something like spinach (you like spinach, yes?), and harvest at least something.  We are now in injury time.

And when I say, intense, I mean, intense!  You thought you didn’t have time to practise half an hour every day for the whole year?  Well, now we’ll have to make it two hours every day, just to harvest some spinach – just to scrape through the exam.  The real competency has not been learnt; the level has not been gained (you were supposed to gain the level through the year by practising consistently).  But maybe 3 pieces and a set of scales can be prepared intensely enough to sound palatable.

Good luck… you’ll need it.

To my sweet students, parents and friends of the Studio:

There’s a new term up ahead! In only another few days, we’ll be tackling Great Things.

Some of you will once again be taking the Trinity College London system on your horns with exams in the last term; this third term is there to prepare.

Term 3 is usually long and difficult, which is why we intend to break up the monotony with at least 1 Ceilidh and 1 house concert.  Our Irish Ensemble (“Trad”) is ready with a number of new pieces to entertain you; this time including lovely slow tunes like “Danny Boy”.  Our Mozart ensemble has a few items nearly ready for public consumption.

The Junior Orchestra will be rehearsing at the same address but in a slightly roomier place, as the weather grows warmer.

Music is the vision of a better world.

We must make music our reprieve.  When we play music, we forget about our troubles.  Let’s give this term the best we have and then some, by making music our refuge.

For your inspiration:

Lindsey Sterling with “Into The Woods”

 

Just a heads-up:  Our exam kids for this year have been applied for the practical violin exams.

Now all we need to do is breathe, relax and practice.  And of course, come to lessons ;-).

 

Wish the kids and I already sounded this good with our Mondays ensemble…  🙂

But we’re working on it, and discovering this beautiful music together.  Well done my first violinist for some quality sight-reading in the Presto.

 

Hi all.  Due to a number of circumstances we decided to move the Studio Concert to June this term.  There will also be a house concert, for the following reason:

We have 2 ensembles (not counting the Junior Orchestra which will be playing at the Studio Concert) that are playing programs too long to fit into a Studio Concert.  They are the Mozart ensemble and the Irish Trad ensemble.

We’re very excited about the Mozart ensemble which started only last term.  I’m hoping that many of you will want to come and listen.

Both dates are not yet fixed but I’ll inform you as soon as they are.

 

It turns out that we have 3 different ensembles going in the Studio at this point.  There really is something for (almost) everyone:

The Irish ensemble (playing jigs, reels etc, Irish folk music) nearing very good amateur levels and playing gigs in various places;

Our Kiddies’ orchestra on Saturdays (for which I am looking for suggestions for a nice name, as “Twinklers” doesn’t apply any longer);

and recently, our “Mozart Ensemble”, consisting of mainly teenagers playing at a fair level, with violins, celli, and viola.  We’re playing Mozart divertimenti and string quartets; we’ll lace the repertoire with other music as well, of course (e.g. the Pachelbel – the real Pachelbel – is on the menu).

There is too much ensemble music in preparation to accommodate it all in the Studio Concert, so that it was suggested that we split the concert; to have the official Studio Concert with solo performances on one Friday night, and the Ensemble Evening on another weekend.

I am looking forward to both!  We haven’t decided on dates yet; nor have we decided on a date for a Ceilidh though one is due.  Keep watching this space.