Comprehension is more than remember a combination of instructions

I'm starting to realise that the main technical fault with my violin playing is my comprehension of the music I'm trying to play.

It seems there are a few ways to analyse music...
- the phsyical notes.
- the finger.
- the bowing.
- the dynamics.
- the phrasing.

There is a number of technical physical directions in the music, which is great... but there is also something beyond just that. Comprehension is more than remember a combination of instructions. Comprehension is 'why'? Comprehension is taking an interest... Comprehension continues and builds on an idea. Comprehension is not the notes, but the meaning behind the notes.

A book as a number of letters making up a word. But, the story comes together to MEAN SOMETHING.

Music is abstract but it can be understood.

I'm finding that 'comprehending the meaning' of the music is my number issue with technical ability.

I'm not someone that can easily memories music. I haven't memories music in years.

But, whilst playing through my remit of etudes I'm find that the sections I struggle to comprehend are the sections that are technically difficult. The physically complex sections that are easy to understand I seem to have no trouble with....

One simple exercise with this is... Find a single bar that is troubling, try to memories it / understand what it is trying to say, and then try to play it. With the brain engaged it seems to 'prepare' the physical more efficiently!?

Today I realised for the very first time in my life... WHY THE FUCK DO I READ EVERY NOTE WHILST PRACTICING SCALES?!!?!?!? It's as though, if I look at the notes harder the meaning is going to suddenly appear. How ridiculous.

The notes are there to be read and understood. Playing them is a subsequent decision, on a simultaneous one.

In orchestra, the musicians that haven't heard the music and comprehended what the purpose of the movement is always struggle with the notes, even if they are dead simple.

It seems a technical physical research is not going to be enough. It is great to have a basic language of physicality, but to be able to play along with what my mind expects I'm going to have to also focus on improving my ability to comprehend music.

Practicing etudes can help improve both. Even practicing scales (without freaking reading every note) can help.

I seem to remember music I comprehend. It would be great if music wasn't abstract, so I could link it with my physical reality in a obvious way...

The Secrets of Tone Production on all Bowed String Instruments

Definitely going to try and get myself a copy of this and review it asap.

http://www.simonfischeruk.com/userimages/procart2.htm

Event Promotion Websites...

ABC Events
http://www2b.abc.net.au/EventCentral/View/Search.aspx?p=0&ci=0

Live Guide
http://www.liveguide.com.au/Submit_Event

Sydney Showcase
http://www.sydneyshowcase.com.au

Time Out Sydney
http://www.timeoutsydney.com.au (email)

2MBS FM
... radio advertising...

The Australian Tourism Data Warehouse.
http://corporate.tourism.nsw.gov.au/Get_Connected_p582.aspx

Arts Hub
http://www.artshub.com.au/au/arts-events/

ABC Classic FM
http://www2b.abc.net.au/classic/diary/diaryinput.htm

Limelight
http://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/Events/Submit.aspx

Music: Is it really therapeutic?

To share that positive experience with others must be positive...

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2009/2473393.htm

600 music therapist practicing in the UK.

Australia Music Therapist Association..

Started in 1975 in Australia.

A form of release?

Violin Lessons with Todd Ehle

Techniques to help reduce left hand and neck tension.



http://www.toddehle.com/

BSO concert

Really enjoyed seeing the Balmain Sinfonia play a few weeks back.

I've dropped out because I don't have time and too much other music
going on.

Very much looking forward to their next concert! Peter and the wolf
would be one of my favourite symphonic works....

Sent from my iPhone

A performers life

So you rehearse and prepare but actually if you're not switched on and
focused during the concert, for whatever reason, perhaps all that
effort is to waste.

Is that pressure? The word 'performance' sucks.


A recording of the performance :)
http://www.archive.org/details/MetropolitanChamberOrchestraMcoBrahmsViolinConcerto20JuneAim

Stop getting in the way of the audience

In my recent orchestra rehearsals I'm finding it helps to think about...

How to not get in the way of the audience. How to let the composer portray everything they intend to without adding any distractions.

How to express the composer ideas, whilst using minimal effort, and without getting in the way of the audience.

Composers > Performer > Audience.

Ideas > Minimal Effort > Audience.

I'm just glad i get to be in the audience sometimes.

An audience is critical when they feel as though the performer is getting in the way.

When a performer is struggling, the audience is still about to see through mistakes to what is the composers original intention.

There is nothing more frustrating that having to 'suspend disbelief' whilst listening to a musician.

An audience has no problem accepting and understanding great musical works, this comes naturally. The frustration and pressure comes from the experience of a performer getting in the way of this experience.

The perfect concert is one in which the performers are neutral and the audience is not distracted.

It seems, the greatest challenge for a musician is not technical skill, but the ability to offer less.

The ability to play a slow single singing note, smooth and peaceful is completely destroyed by an unexpected bump or groove by the performer.

What a classical music audience is looking for is conformity. This audience wants to be given the room to make up their own mind about the music. They want a blank canvas into which they are spill their dreams and be free.

The physical process of playing the violin is difficult. The difficulty is replicating a sculptured melody without chipping or dropping it along the way.

All this comes down to something quite comforting...

Performing is not about trying to draw blood from a stone. It's about letting the river run free.

The Australian Music Therapy Association

The Australian Music Therapy Association (AMTA) Inc. was founded in 1975 as the sole Australian organisation for the profession of music therapy. It is a member of the World Federation of Music Therapy and the Music Council of Australia. AMTA has State Branches, Interest Groups and representatives throughout Australia. It offers support and professional development for Registered Music Therapists, and general membership to anyone with an interest in music therapy

http://www.austmta.org.au/

I gotta get involved with these guys.

Finished reading The Mozart Effect and using in my life as a practical resource every day.

Breathing, Humming, Playing the violin, In my body, Life.

Violin Cloth

Following Midori's concert with the SSO at the opera house I had a thought.

I noticed that she, like me, had a cloth to cover her chin rest. This can be very useful to reduce skin irritation, inflamation and infection etc. Also, I find that because my neck is relatively long it helps to pad out the height of the instrument.

(I've tried lots of different 'heighted' chin rests and shoulder rests etc)

Anyways; back to my 'thought'.

Whilst watching Midori i noticed something very specific. Her chin cloth was attached to her violin somehow. I sat there wondering, how did she attach that cloth. I wondered what special sort of cloth...

Last night, i took my violin out and started practicing. I did what I always do which is 'arrange' the cloth on the chin rest and thought i should try to attach this thing to the instrument.

Long story short. I pushed the leg of the shoulder rest through the cloth and screwed it back into the padding. The cloth was attached. The process of raising the violin automatically lends the cloth to sit on the chin rest, ready for my chin.

I spent 2 hours playing the violin enjoying this cool new relaxing management. I have wasted so much time picking up, placing, reorganising that cloth every time i want to turn a page.

The future!

Emma Ayers talking at the NSW Art Gallery

Went along to Art After Hours last night and had an amazing time.

http://www.artafterhours.com.au/next/21_Jul_10

Here were some of my thoughts....

Arnold Schoenberg: one of the first composers to turn away from mainstream classical / romantic harmony. A atonal pioneer.

Emma Ayers Spoke and she was mesmorising...

- The discussion surrounding Arnold Schoenberg, atonal music, serial-ism and abstract music was fascinating. What is conditioning? What is innate?
- Emma Ayers: a role model. I listen to her broadcast every morning as my alarm. Someone that has a foreign back ground, intelligent, passionate about classical music, aware of the importance and power of music, socially sensitive, out an proud, unique, centred, acceptable. I found her presents comforting. I found her humble confidence meaningful.
- she is gay. I'm not, but I am slightly affeminate in my way of communicating and caring for others. Sensitive. Whatever. It's great to know that she is so out and proud.

I could've sat there and listened to her lively, humorous, friendly, youthful, creative, feminie, powerful, intelligent voice for ever.

Series 4 Programme

As a winner of this year's prestigious Churchill Fellowship award, Sarah-Grace Williams returns on August 7th for the fourth performance of the 2010 Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra (MCO) subscription series. This concert will feature MCO Principal Trumpet, Matt Dempsey, as he performs the well known Haydn trumpet concerto. The concerto will be followed by Mendelssohn's Sinfonia number 8, giving the audience the unique opportunity to watch the violas and double basses up-close during a rare appearance as solo instruments in the gorgeous, velvety Adagio. The concert will be perfectly rounded by Beethoven's Symphony Number 8, a symphony Beethoven felt very fond of, referring to it as "My little symphony in F". A concert not to be missed by trumpet enthusiasts.

- Haydn trumpet concerto.
- Mendelssohn's Sinfonia No. 8 (Adagio e Grave. Allegro, Adagio, Menuetto, Allegro molto)
- Beethoven's Symphony No. 8

Midori Live at Carnegie Hall

Swimming in the Unconscious

It is as if everyday awareness were but an insignificant island, surrounded by a vast ocean of unsuspected and uncharted consciousness.
—KEN WILBUR

How can imagery and music be used to tap into the unconscious? For twenty-five years, one of the most prominent researchers to pose the question has been Jean Houston, whose experiments employ music and creative visualization in an attempt to evoke
mythic images. In sessions that last three to five days, Houston and her staff of actors, musicians, and dancers reinvent a mythic story, such as The Odyssey, Parsifal, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, or the tale of Isis and Osiris, and use it to illustrate the ways in which the participant’s life follows patterns and rhythms that are strikingly similar. How many modern-day Orpheuses dwell among us who need only
discover their talent for playing the lyre, for charming everything from trees to rivers to wild beasts? Who among us has not, like Odysseus and his men, been enchanted by the chorus of Sirens determined to lull us into the abyss? Houston finds that using the whole body to reenact archetypal dramas generates more complex images than visualization alone.

Music and imagery can lead us into inner worlds. I often compare it to travel. For one thing, people experience similar phobias—the ones about leaving home and being stranded in a place with strange signs and symbols, a foreign language, and an unfamiliar climate. Sometimes it’s good to explore on our own, with nothing but our
166 / The Mozart Effect intuition. At other times, it makes sense to read guidebooks, study maps, and make all our hotel reservations in advance. We might also
opt for a structured trip with firm itineraries and tour guides. Despite his or her fears, the curious traveler will find ways to explore the unknown, balancing adventure and safety.

In my training seminars, I serve as a guide for participants. Sometimes, I let them journey through the music alone, because it’s important for them to discover things for themselves and learn to survive in new locales. At other times, I am more active, working with the music to ease them deeper into their unconscious.
To journey through inner worlds is to leave our logic and our emotional bearings behind. We swim differently in the bathtub than along the beach, and it is an altogether different experience to find ourselves alone in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There are different ways to feel at home in the depths. To some, the ocean is a beautiful place full of wondrous fish. To others, it’s a dark, cold abyss, teeming with unseen sharks and barracudas ready to devour us. The unconscious contains
all these things, from the loveliest to the most ghastly, and the right music can enable us to explore these depths like trained divers, ready for the glory, the terror, the intensity of the inner world.

Imagery, Music, the Unconcious and Yoga!

Have been reading 'The Mozart Effect' (Don Campbell), doing violin practice every night (nearly), doing yoga every morning before work and quite a bit of life drawing.

Interestingly. The Mozart Effect and it's chapter on 'Imagery' has clarified something I have unknowingly found fascinating over the past few years.

Here is a list of relevant experiences...

- Why do I find life drawing relaxing?

- Why is yoga more useful when I image the 'metaphysical descriptions' such as Tree Position (as in, imagine a tree)?

- How does my music help with my drawing?

The question is. What is the wholesome relationships between yoga, drawing and violin.

The chapter on 'swimming in the unconscious' articulates a very real relationship between the affects this sort of physical, imagery and sound have on the mind and it's ability to heal and function etc...

Swimming in the Unconcious from 'The Mozart Effect' By Don Campbell.

Up (Biceps), Down (Gravity)

Doing a lot of bowing exercise with Sevcik and Fischer. The more I do the more I'm starting to focus on having a relax arm. This is especially important when trying to maintain a smooth change of direction with the box.

How to transition from a down bow to an up bow without tension or disrupting the sound?!

RANT > TO BE HONEST: The answer is not in words, the answer is in physical exercies and physical experimentation. Writing about playing the is like dancing about architecture.

Anyways; my thoughts are leading me to something about 'engaging' certain muscles whilst doing large fluid strokes.

THERE ARE NO RULES. This idea only applies in moderation etc.

Up bow: Relax all muscles in fingers, palm, wrist, forearm, arm and shoulder. Engage only the bicep in order to raise the elbow like the wing of a bird.

Down bow: Relieve the bicep, relax the wrist and let the gravity of the bow and arm drag the bow downwards.

Without getting too lose. I see the palm as always remaining heavy and relaxed on the bow and the wrist and bicep being the 'related' in their drive.

It's difficult keeping the shoulders and forearms relaxed whilst playing. This is ironic because it starting to appear as though they are possibly the last muscles that should be doing any sort of work.

Playing long full bows is like being a bird and flapping your wings. Do the chicken!

The Mozart Effect

It's bee a while since I've updated this blog but I am still very close to all these thoughts.

Finished Wohlfahrt Op. 45 a while back. Absolutely loved it. Celebrated with a glass of wine.

Interestingly; what does it mean to have "Finished Wohlfahrt"!?

- Understand what Wohlfahrt has mastered. Comprehend the physical and musical ideas, language and theory about playing the violin.

- Be able to play through each study at a suitable (perhaps slightly slow) speed with a metronome.

- Play each study in it's entirety. See it as a 'whole'.

- I stuck with each study for approximately 1 week. I generally have 4 / 5 studies plus scales and sevcik going during a 1 hr practice session. I stop because my eyes get tired.

To replace this I've added Flesch scales and Mazas 75 studies Op. 36 Book 1. Still trying to find Book 2 online. Much more interesting and easier for my flat mate to listen to. Musical. Enjoyable. Meaningful. The more I do this, the more I enjoy it, the more confident I become.

Anyway; back to the subject of this post. Reading the Mozart Effect by Don Campbell at the moment and really enjoying it. I recently described it as a 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' for Music. This book has a strong connection with Oliver Sacks Musicophilia. All amazing insightful into the human mind, evolution, mental and physical needs, relaxation.

CONCERT SERIES THREE

Only doing MCO for a while. Too busy.

Gotta do that well at least.!


19 June 8pm Balmain Town Hall &
20 June 5pm Australian Institute of Music
Program: Beethoven 'Egmont Overture', Brahms 'Violin Concerto' with Susan Collins & Schubert 'Symphony no 4'

My last concert with the MCO

More details...

http://www.archive.org/details/metropolitanchamberorchestra2010-04-18.aimconcert

Firm Thumb

I've found another technique to help with playing loud and forcefully!!!

Up until now i've used..
- faster bows.
- playing at the nut.
- pushing down with the index finger.
- focusing on pressure with the 3rd finger.

i've found a new thing!

When pushing down with the fingers ensure the thumb is pushing up with equal force to ensure the energy is being sent down the bow to the required point above the string.

Practice and Performance

Is all practice rendered meaningless, for a given concert, if the performance is bad?

Someone I spend my time thinking that practice can be a success even though the subsequent performance might be entirely technically flawed... bizarre.

Is practice for performance.

Or. Is practice for many reasons.

If a performance is bad does that bring into question the practice?

I get emotional and intellectual meaning from practice. somehow that doesn't translate into my performances.... annoy!

Sharper with a Push!

Haven't written agse... I've been working very hard on my violin practice and enjoying my new house etc. it's been months but still enjoying it loads.

Made a vegie patch today. awesome. Did my practice this week... approx 1hr . day.

Doing a lot of technical stuff with Simon Fischer. His comments basically surpass all my technical jargon...

Really enjoying performing with 2 orchestras at the moment. Lots of preparation involved.

Anyways. this update is about something simple.

There are usually 3 different ways to tune a violin. I've found a 3rd...

1. Use the tuning pegs.

2. Use the 'tuners' on the tail piece.

3. If the sound is slightly sharp simply pull on the string make the pitch slightly lower...

... but how to slightly sharpen a string?!? (i've found this important whilst using an electronic tuner on my iphone. I find using a digital tuner helps get my brain 'intune'. no perfect pitch here...)

4. Apply pressure to the string within the peg box. It pulls the string slighly tighter and the 'top nut' seems to retain the shifted pitch?! Not sure how persistent the change is but this seems to get the instrument in tune :) Don't use it often but thought it was interesting...

This Terms Repertoire

Balmain Sinfonia:
- Berlioz: Hungarian March
- Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody
- Dittersdorf: Double Bass Concerto
- Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 1

Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra:
- Mendelssohn: Overture & Scherzo from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'
- Elgar: Introduction and Allegro - Featuring principal MCO string players Manu Berkeljon, Alastair Duff-Forbes, Jenny Compton and Clare Kahn.
- Mozart: Symphony No. 41