Comments

really good piece of info and profound insight. some deep carp. thanks. Very thought provoking. Thank you Buri. So true! Every time I play with real emotion, it hurts my performance, as I got distracted where I need all my concentration to make the it sounds right and the music flows properly. I thought this was just because I’m not quite there yet technically speaking. In a way it’s probably true and one day I’ll have the freedom to goof around when I play.

I believe this for some time that expressiveness in music and our daily emotions (joy, disappointment, sadness, etc.) must be categorically different things. They are related of course, and I suspect that the former describes the later and the later may inform the former, but to equate the two or to reduce one to the other is a result of a conceptual mistake. I mean, how many of us would spend money to feel the real sadness we sometimes experience in our life? Yet many of us do not hesitate to pay big money to listen to music (or watch sad shows for that matter) which often arouse some deeply sad feelings. More interestingly, when one is depressed, playing sad music often eases the pain or at least makes the wrenching quality of pain go away. But if they were the same kind of emotion, you would expect the sadness be deepened or intensified.

Very interesting! Please, could you paraphrase your last sentence? I don't quite catch it and I feel it's important.
Nowadays I'm very concerned about finding a good stage attitude which suits me. I'm very aware of the two attitudes as you described people can have and I'm certainly not the knight-fighting-for-his-life-on-the-battlefield-type. The thing is, while doing everything to avoid I get absorbed by the music, instead of transferring it, I basically only listen to my playing, judging it constantly to know objectively how the audience hears my music. However that doesn't make me being involved of course and it certainly doesn't make me communicate. Then I get comments like "your playing sounds practiced, but it's not alive at the moment, you don't display your heart." (My professor has a specific gesture for that: take your heart out and put it on the table :-))
Displaying your heart in a communicative way asks a lot of courage and personality though, which I maybe might not have... I wonder whether I can learn it, even if I'm a shy person. Greetings,
how do you feel when you are giving a gift to someone you love? How do they repsond?
Can you perform from this perspective. When you play to yur teacher look at him and consciously use the sam,e experience. 'This is my gift to you." When you play to an audience choose a person and really try to connect with them. "This is a present for you." Imbue the action with the samme attention and focus as when you give you mother a Christmas present or your boyfriend or whatever. Not a casual glance in the face and then move elsewhere.
This may help.
Also try not focusing on your playing sound. Instead watch a DVD over and over of your fvaorite palyer. Get taht image in your head. Now, your purpose when playing is simply to -look- exactloy like that perosn as they would play the piece in question.
Very powerful tool.
Cheers,
Buri Amen, Buri. Greetings,
did I die? ;)
Cheers,
Buri Yes! In other words, you have to mean it when you play. Just like when you say something to a person, you mean every word of what you are saying. So, instead of saying “play it with emotion”, we really should say “play it with intention!” or “play as you mean it!” And if I can connect with a great violinist and to convey to my audience the same intention that the great violinist conveyed to and touched me, then hopefully I’ll be able to touch my audience. Am I getting it? Greetings,
actually I wondered if tahtw asn't an intelligent rewording of the original problem? Play it with intention sounds rather like something the self will interpret in the same way, samme old patterns.What I am always lookling for is ways to short circuit them so the genuine stuff coes out.
One thing that definitly helps is to stampy your foot the moment before you play.
Incidentally, an interesting thing cropped up last night. I was coaching an orchestra in the 1812. the cello opening was rather bad and ten rets wasn't uch better so I asked who actually knew the content of the work stroy wise. The repsoinses remminded me of the Woodey Allen classic:
"I tok a speed reading course once. We studied War and Peace- it was about Russia.'
So I exmplained about how the russian weather killed 490 000 oiut of an ary of half a million, that the opening might be seen more as pareyerfrom grieving women demanding as only women can to a diety why human nature has to be so stupid. A sort of bitte rpain appropriate to a church.
Then the cellos played again and....
it was even worse!
So I looked at the score and noted that they were beginnign all their crescendos a bar too soon and the three time that a legato as opposed to tneuoto/portato 8th note occured tehy weren't makign any distinction.
That got the right sound immediatley.
Cheers,
Buri Maybe the metaphors work better when the students are at least close with the technique. But expression comes as a result of technique, no amount of "feeling" will help in the absence of expressive technique. Now this is extremely clear to me, eveb though I need to put it to practice to fully appreciate it. Thanks Buri and Laurie!