June 2008

Mind Over Matter

June 24, 2008 20:27

Though I'm itching for lessons and miss having a regular schedule I must say that the freedom of summer has its pluses. As my time is more free, it seems as though my mind is more free as well. Free to daydream, wonder, muse, experiment. Not having a teacher at the moment is really forcing me to constantly make musical decisions on my own. It is frustrating sometimes, but also very liberating and exciting.

Bruch. Sarasate. Bach. Prokofiev. Excerpts. With Aspen fast approaching, my repertoire load was starting to worry me, so I was wondering how to increase my efficiency. I ran across a pretty fascinating thread where Buri advised running through a piece mentally right before going to bed. I've only tried it a couple times so far, but I'm sure it can only help. The more angles I approach the the music from, the better I'll know it. Listening, score study, and mental practice, in addition to standard practice, converge to form a solid, living foundation for my musical study. Each method enhances the others. Score study away from the instrument reveals overlooked details and helps me look at the structure of a piece. Listening to a variety of artists gives musical inspiration and helps my aural memory of the music. Mental practice increases concentration and reveals where the 'blank spots' are in my knowledge of a piece.

I've been reading Galamian's Principles of Violin Playing and Teaching this week, and one thing that has struck me (among the wealth of information here) was the importance of what he called "correlation". According to Galamian,

The foundation upon which the building of technique rests lies in the correct relationship of the mind to the muscles, the smooth, quick, and accurate functioning of the sequence in which the mental command elicits the desired muscular response. It is the improvement of this correlation which provides the key to technical mastery and technical control and not, as apparently is commonly believed and taught, the training and building of the muscles. What counts is not the strength of the muscles, but their responsiveness to the mental directive," (excerpts, pp. 5-6).

Then Galamian goes on to describe the practical application of this concept:

"All practice concerned with the building of technique or the overcoming of particular difficulties has to center on the development and improvement of this correlation. The basic procedure is to present to the mind, for transition to the muscles, problems that progress from the simple to the ever more complicated. These are problems of timing and coordination in the form of various patterns of rhythm, of bowing, of accentuation, and of the combination of all three of these factors," (excerpts, p. 95).

He then gives an extensive list of musical 'puzzles' for scale practice, with the charge that a good violinist will take this concept and continually invent new challenges, not merely for their own sake, but again, to develop that 'correlation'. These correlation exercises apply not only to scales, but also arpeggios, double stops, etudes, and challenging passages in repertoire. So far I'm trying to use this concept scales and a little Kreutzer. Also, his point that you must always be mentally anticipating yourself helps SO much when I'm practicing my repertoire.

Basically, the more you use your head, the better. Just try to avoid learning your Bach by Harold Hill's "think system." ;)

1 reply | Archive link

Bach as teacher

June 22, 2008 06:45

I really miss having a teacher right now. Hah, v.com might as well be my teacher, for all I learn on here. As much as I can learn through careful practice, recording myself, reading books, and browsing this website, there really is nothing that can replace a great teacher. *Sigh* . . . just four weeks until Aspen. I can't wait. Let's just hope I'm ready for it.

Let's hope my Bach is ready for it, that is. Oh, Bach. How I love and hate you in the same breath. You reach to the depths of the soul in your eloquence as you frustrate with your difficulty. I can practice you for hours and feel like I have just scratched the surface. You evolve slowly but constantly, as I evolve with you. Your fugues organize my brain cells as my fingers try to organize their many voices. You croak under my inept bow more often than you sing at my caress. But you are worth it, of course. Muah.

Yesterday I recorded the Grave from the A minor sonata, which I'm starting over the summer. Needless to say, it still needs a lot of work. Intonation, obviously, but also better planning of the chords and bow distribution. Also, vibrato is leaving me in a quandary at the moment. I need to go through and decide how much and what kind I want throughout. So far I've just been kind of doing what feels natural, but given my inconsistent tendencies, default vibrato is not such a good idea. There are just so many ways to play Bach, sometimes it's hard for me to decide! I've been listening to everything from Grumiaux to Midori to Hadelich and I like aspects of them all. I have a framework for how I'd like to phrase the Grave, but it's things like vibrato and how 'romantic' to play it that leave me stumped. I like Bach that is simple, but not sterile, and finding that balance will be the challenge as I continue working on it.

7 replies | Archive link

Three cheers for scales!

June 18, 2008 15:22

I've always had challenges with my bow arm, but this year especially, as I keep moving to harder repertoire, I've realized that I really need to make improvements in that area. This semester I had a master class with Brian Lewis on Introduction and Tarantella. The sautille was giving me some trouble, so he suggested that I practice it in my scales daily. Reading around this site, I've noticed several people discuss how important it is to practice different bowstrokes daily.

Ever since I started working through the Flesch Scale System, I've used basically the same practice method for scales. I think it originally came from some well-known teacher (Galamian, maybe?? or maybe I'm just imagining things). Anyway, the way it works is you set the metronome to quarter note = 60, and start with half notes. Then you do quarters, quarter note triplets, eights, eighth-note triplets, sixteenths, sixteenth-note triplets, and lastly, thirty-second notes. Also, you alternate two beats slurred and two beats separate notes (so you end of playing in all portions of the bow). Oh, and there's also this little turn at the end that makes the rhythms work out better (for example, if you were doing C major, you'd play c-e-d-c-d-e-f-g-a-b-c and so on up the scale). Later on I developed a similar system for arpeggios.

This method was a good start, but is not nearly thorough enough for the level I'm at now. I need a good system for covering as many bowstrokes as possible on a daily basis. So, I went through the Flesch and racked my brain for as many possibilities I could think of. Here's what I've come up with so far:

SEPARATE BOWS
Legato (frog, middle, tip)
Spiccato (starting 4 strokes per note for the entire scale, then repeating that process with 3 strokes per note, then 2, then 1)
Marcato
Detache
Portato (3 and 6 note groupings)

SLURRED PATTERNS
3 notes per slur (frog, middle, tip)
6 notes per slur (upper half, lower half)
12 notes per slur (whole bow)
24 notes per slur (whole bow)

OTHER
1 separate, 2 slurred (frog, middle, tip)
1 separate, 2 up bow staccato (frog, middle, tip)
2 slurred, 1 separate (frog, middle, tip)
Up bow staccato (2 slurred, 10 stacatto, 2 slurred, 10 stacatto, 2 slurred, 17 stacatto; see Flesch, p. 56)
Dotted rhythms:
- Dotted eighth/sixteenth/straight eighth (separate bows up the scale, hooked on the way down; frog, middle, tip)
- Sixteenth/dotted eighth, straight eighth (separate bows; frog, middle, tip)

I'm sure there are a lot more combinations of rhythms and separate/slurred patterns. Probably way too many to do them all every day, so maybe I'll challenge myself to think of an extra 'bonus' pattern each day. :)

I tried this new method all the way though for the first time today, and I felt like my brain and my body were really engaged. It took just under an hour to do both this and my old system, plus arpeggios and double stops, but I never felt bored. After doing all those bowstrokes, I felt like I really knew my way around my instrument. I'll have to be careful and take some breaks so that all that repetition doesn't tire my left hand, but overall, I'm happy with this plan. Yay for scales!

If you have any comments/suggestions, I'm always grateful for advice. :)

16 replies | Archive link

Kids say the darndest things

June 11, 2008 13:12

"So, if your violin is your baby, does that mean you slept with a cello?" - John, my 16 year old brother.

8 replies | Archive link

One man's trash . . .

June 5, 2008 14:50

. . . is another girl's summer collage project. Because hey, we all need a little sunshine after Prokofiev, right? ;)

8 replies | Archive link

A Living Sound

June 1, 2008 21:21

I love how going to an excellent concert makes me feel both inspired and daunted. Inspired in that I am blessed to witness such amazing music and daunted in that I have so much yet to learn. Yesterday I saw a concert that I'd been looking forward to for quite some time — Augustin Hadelich performing the Dvorak Concerto with the Kansas City Symphony. I'd been intrigued by Hadelich's playing ever since I read the Strings article on the Indianapolis Competition, which he won in 2006. I watched several videos of his playing online, and was impressed by the energy and beauty of his playing. Needless to say, I was looking forward to the concert.

But I am getting ahead of myself. The first delight of the evening was hearing the KC Symphony for the first time. Now that I think of it, I've seen very few really good professional orchestras live. It's so incredible what a good orchestra can do. From the opening bars of Mendelssohn's Final's Cave Overture, the orchestra's sound grabbed me because it was so alive. It's so hard to describe . . . it was just this incredible synchronicity of sound, like the orchestra was a living, breathing entity rather than a collection of individual musicians.

And then, the Dvorak. Hadelich's playing was superb, both musically and technically. He has a warm, passionate sound, beautiful vibrato, and excellent bow control. I'm realizing more and more how incredibly important a good bow arm is. It can really make or break a fiddle player. It's also something that I personally need to work on. I think I've fallen prey to that common violinistic fault of focusing on my left hand (particularly regarding intonation) to the detriment of my bow arm, and now it's catching up to me. Also, I feel as though I simply know more about left hand technique. If I have problems with my left hand, for the most part I know how to fix them. Whereas with my bow arm, there are times when I'm completely stumped. Or have so many options that it takes me forever to try them all and decide on a solution.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the concept of personal sound. Sometime I get so caught up on the details of a particular piece or technical issue or musical idea that I don't truly listen for the sound I'm producing. I've been trying to pinpoint exactly what goes into making a truly beautiful sound on the violin. Obviously, how one uses the bow — speed, weight, angle, sounding point, distribution. There are so many combinations and possibilities! And then vibrato, with all its variations of speed, width, and consistency. And of course, good intonation is always key to a clear, ringing tone. But I think the most important tool of all is a good set of ears. You can never change or fix something if you can't hear it first.

I only wish I had more clues to help me through the maze of possibilities. I really want to develop a sound that is alive, beautiful and personal. How I can do this remains something of a mystery to me.

8 replies | Archive link

More entries: July 2008 • May 2008