September 2013

V.com weekend vote: Do you use a shoulder rest?

People have strong feelings on the subject of shoulder rests, and they always have.

I just had a conversation with a violinist who told me that, back in the day, you just weren't considered a legit soloist if you used a shoulder rest!

But most modern-day soloists and orchestra players do use them. Granted, the shoulder rest has come a long way from the velvet-covered rock (seemed like a rock to me, when I found it in my grandmother's violin case) that attached to the button of the fiddle with a leather strap.

Still, there are good arguments for going without a shoulder rest, and I was reminded of these in a master class with Dylana Jenson a week ago: one can really connect with the violin, and if you adjust your technique properly, you can be a bit more moveable and avoid torquing your body in certain ways.

I use a shoulder rest, though, and I'm perfectly happy with it. That said, I think that, with or without a shoulder rest, one needs to find a balance between supporting the violin with the collarbone, chin and hand, and this article illustrates that well. And the reason for finding that balance, and for all of this, is to avoid injury!

How do you play, with or without a shoulder rest?

29 replies

V.com weekend vote: Should kids stop learning to play musical instruments?

I'll admit it, this article, called Stop Forcing Your Kids to Learn a Musical Instrument, got on my nerves this week.

Not that I think people should "force" their children to play the violin or anything else. But I certainly do believe in the value of music education and literacy. Probably the most unnerving thing about the article was the author's underlying musical illiteracy, revealed in this comment, "Look, I love the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, but one could make the argument that Rebekah (his daughter) would be better off learning to play the Lumineers’ 'Ho Hey' on guitar."

Nice pop song. But it would take about five minutes to learn the four chords in "Ho Hey" on the guitar. I'd estimate that it would a person around 12 years of music education to learn the literally hundreds of skills required to play the Mendelssohn concerto. Guess what? If you have learned the Mendelssohn, you can get very easily to the bottom of that Lumineers song and just about any other music, no problem.

Why devote years to getting to the level of playing the Mendelssohn Concerto? For the same reason why you devote 12 years getting to Calculus class, or the reason you devote 12 years getting to the point where you can read Shakespeare and understand it. Education teaches you to think, and we do need adults who can think. It doesn't matter if you still play the instrument that helped you get an inside view of music, or if you still do the calculus problems that stretched your brain to the highest level of math, or if you regularly go back to reading the Iliad. You are an educated person for all these things, better able to appreciate culture, function in the world, and contribute to your community as a citizen.

And so. This week's vote:

13 replies

V.com weekend vote: What kind of metronome do you prefer?

This week I've been sharing my metronome travails, and it made me wonder, what kinds of metronomes are people using these days?

Here are my primary two (one nifty new and one newly repaired), and I also have a metronome app on my phone for emergencies:

How about you? Please answer the poll, then read on:

Though I use all kinds of metronomes, I must say that I have a special place in my heart for the mechanical ones. I just feel like they have a little bit more humanity, like a heartbeat or footfalls. They move! The electronic ones may be trusty, but can they do something like this?

The explanation with this video is that if you set 32 metronomes, set to the same speed, on non-moveable surface and set them rocking out of synch, they will remain that way indefinitely. But if you place them on a moveable surface and do the same, eventually they will synch up.

To me, this almost mimics the energy of an orchestra, this unspoken give-and-take that eventually allows these separate objects to move as one.

I'm pretty sure that if you set off 32 electronic metronomes at the same speed at different times, they'd remain quite un-interesting and annoyingly out-of-synch. My sanity would run out long before their little batteries did!

12 replies

V.com weekend vote: Have you ever been stiffed, or paid unacceptably late, for a music-related job?

I was actually pretty shocked to learn this week in Catherine Manoukian's blog that there are festivals who would fail to pay their soloists for more than two years!

Argue all you want about what a performance is "worth," but once you've hired someone to perform and once that person has given the performance, you must pay.

And yet it happens. For me, I've been in several situations where an orchestra has failed to pay the musicians. In one situation, they negotiated with the union, after the fact, that the musicians would be retroactively "donating" their time.

I think it's one thing to agree to do a benefit concert, but one doesn't agree to "make" it a benefit concert after being hired to perform for a fee! And being paid does not mean being paid years from now, it means being paid in a timely fashion. Does such a thing need to go in a contract? Maybe so!

Have you ever been stiffed, or paid in an unacceptably late fashion (i.e. years), for a musical performance, or for teaching, or for another musical service you provided?

18 replies