2015 Term 3 Recital

This is my second recital. I played in one with Laura's students last year around Christmas time.

The experience this time was better than the last recital. I put that down to a few things. It might have been the banana I ate before playing. Laura has mentioned that helps steady nerves and I think it worked for me. It might have been less nerves because this was not my first recital. It was easier to get up and play this time. Perhaps it was the decision to perform was made about a week ago so I had less time to worry about it, Or perhaps I was more familiar with the pieces I was playing this time around.

I was near the end, right after Princess Sage played Sherlock Holmes on the piano. She was very good and hid her nerves well. My pieces were in tine! The only issue was the tendency to rush. I tried very hard to remember the dynamics and the tempo and for the most part it worked.

Hopefully for the next recital I can steal the Russian piece another young lady played.

And perhaps, if I can convince Laura and we work something out, I can play The Final Countdown (without the big hair and tight leather pants).

Violin lesson #125

This is the last lesson before the recital so  it spent on preparing pieces for tomorrow.

My first piece will be Mexican Fiesta. It's not a hard piece to learn but it is a challenge to get my fingers in the right place when I play in third position. And I play it too fast. Not only that, but when I start slow I almost always speed up by the end of it. I don't know why I find it so hard to keep to a slower and steadier tempo.

Laura never taught me to play Ode To Joy, but it was in the book, and mostly in third position, so I played that one. It was pretty good. Laura's suggestion was to play the third quarter of the piece with a soft floaty feel, then give the last three notes some oomph before the final quarter. The proof that practice and attention is paying off was in the second run through, where it was obvious from Laura's excitement that I had played it well :) Again, the biggest problem is my tendency to rush. This symphony is not played as quickly as some modern renditions would have you believe. A slow and steady pace is required here too.

I did work my way through Paris Cafe. The first half was pretty good. Then Laura walked me through the second half and I had problems with getting the correct notes. I don't pick the new music up as quickly as I would like, Typically I will get home and be able to play it well the next day. Getting it right on the spot is still a challenge. We decided not to do this one and just stick with the first two pieces.

Tomorrow should be a good day :)

Violin lesson #121-124

Now this is embarrassing... since moving to Saturday lessons the blogs are getting further and further apart, yet I don't think it's all about the lessons being on Saturday. The Sage has many irons in the fire - sometimes I think too many - and obviously this blog is getting less fire than it used to do. The good news is that my lessons are still going strong.

These last four lessons have been mainly about shifting to and playing in third position. Initially I used talcum powder to help but I have not used it for a while. I feel quite comfortable playing in third position. The fingers are closer together than in first position, so I have to be a little more careful with my "sausage" fingers.

Apparently there is also a half-position, which is the lowest position there is on the violin. This is the position for the E-flat major scale.

The sprinters book has songs that suit both of those positions, and as if that was not enough, I brought (via my mother and her Uncle Paul) a gift for Laura: The Hot Canary by Paul Nero. It is a virtuoso "show-off" piece and quite cheeky. The story goes when Uncle Paul saw me after he found out I was learning the violin he requested this song. Recently he was on a cruise that had a violinist (now there's a pretty cool career option). When he asked the passengers for requests, Uncle Paul promptly called out "The Hot Canary", and lo and behold the violinist knew it and played it. Uncle Paul was good enough to track down the music, which he passed on to my mother who gave it to me. I showed Laura. and after looking it over a little, she played it too. Very cool! Even cooler was Laura showing me how to play some of it. It doesn't have all of the tricks and things I have yet to learn, but it is surely recognisable as The Hot Canary. It's going to take a little while before I am ready to show anyone but I have made a start.

There is a recital this Sunday (September 20) and a week out Laura and I decided I could play a piece. Laura suggested Mexican Fiesta or Paris Cafe. At first I thought it was going to take longer than that but Laura knows best and I am sure Mexican Fiesta will be ready (more ready than Paris Cafe).

And one more thing, Sirisha came back, albeit briefly, and I got to meet Keerthan, her son. He is adorable. Sirisha and Anand are going to take the option of lessons at Laura's place on the north (aka the dark) side. Robertson is far too convenient for The Princess and I to give up.

The next post will cover the lesson and the recital this coming weekend.

Violin lesson #118, #119, #120

Yes, I have been terribly slack with blogging lately and I apologise. Stuff has been happening that has taken time and motivation away from blogging. Mostly this has been the kitchen renovation. While it is now almost 100% complete it has been a struggle to get there.

My lessons have been continuing. I still find getting practice time to be somewhat difficult. Life and the universe do not bend themselves to my whim so I continue to try and do the best I can with what I get and be happy with that.

The first and second of these lessons were focussed around the B-flat major scale. It has two flats, and  a  low first finger position. There are two things I distinctly remember about learning the B-flat major scale. The first is that while Laura has been playing for far more years than I have, making her hands and fingers ever more suited to violin, she has had yoga instructors tell her she is hyper-flexible (not double jointed, which is bad for violinists) which means it is easier for her to get her fingers to go where she wants them to when she is playing. The Sage, however, is the opposite. He is hyper-unflexi. It might be due to having played less violin, or to having fingers that have been great for coding / typing in the years Laura has been playing violin, or just something that is what it is, I struggle to get my fingers to behave the way I want. Not impossible. Just hard to do, so I need to be patient and kind to myself. The second thing is that while my hand / fingers are hyper-unflexi they are rather suited to this scale. My fingers naturally sit more comfortably in the correct position for this scale than they do for other scales I have learned thus far.

I have also noticed it is better to have one finger down at a time rather than trying to have multiple fingers down at once, especially when they are close together. If I want two fingers down in that case then one has to sit up right behind the other. If they don't have to be down and close together it appears to be easier to have them down separately.

The third of these lessons dealt with shifting. I did a little of this with some musical exercises some time ago. The time has come to tackle this again, and to back up exercises with a very pretty piece called Midnight Melodies. Perhaps a little unexpectedly, with this lesson came a revelation. To keep a good hand/palm shape always pretend you are about to play a fourth (pinky) finger. When I kept this in mind, it was far easier for me to shift to third position and be able to keep the good palm shape and thus play the correct note in third position.

Third position requires the mathematical ability to add two. By that I mean that an open string in first position is equivalent to a second finger in third position. Also, I can remember that seeing a finger position of 1 on a note in first position and a finger position of 1 on a note two tones higher (so line to line or space to space)  indicates a time to shift from first to third position (or third to first);

There are also some exercises to help with shifting, and I look forward to practicing those. I must confess to having played in third position for a few songs I have learned. The first in an improvisation to the ending of O Solo Mio. The second is for a Greek song I taught myself called I Mana Mou Me Derni (My Mother Beats Me). Domestic violence is not funny, but this song is mostly tongue-in-cheek so please don't take it too seriously.

One final note. There is a violinist trick to shifting, especially for people who have sweaty palms. A little talcum powder on the violin hand does wonders in helping the sliding motion. I don't tend to get sweaty palms so I'll probably not need it so much.

Playing in third position did make me think of Sirisha, who has been absent from classes since she became a first time mum. I hope her and Anand and little Keerthan are all doing well. I found a link to what I believe Laura was talking about - a baby wearing orchestra. Acoustic instruments have a tone that is soothing to infants. So I hope Sirisha and Anand are playing beautiful music for Keerthan =)

Violin lesson #117

It has been a fair while since the last lesson, and that is mostly due to school holidays, the new Sage kitchen (it has taken waaay longer than expected) and Laura moving house. Today itself was very busy and the Sage was running around right up until the lesson.

Part of the driving around was to get to Animato to meet Laura to try out violas. Yes. Violas. For a while now, a long while actually, it has been suggested I make a move from the violin to the viola. My build and my fingers are more suited to the larger instrument - I tried out the 16" size model - than to the violin. It doesn't mean I can't play the violin. Rather it means it will be easier to play than the violin. And it has a different sound which, now that I have heard it, I quite rather like. It is a half-octave lower and has a richer more mellow tone. So, having said all that, I am open to the idea of switching to the viola if I can find an instrument I like.

As far as the lesson went, I admitted I had little time for practice since the last one. We went over the B-flat major scale and followed that up with The Honeysuckle. It was short and sweet and I was happy to have had my lesson.

Just a little on time. If you subscribe to the principle that 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice” are needed to become world-class in any field, it would take over 27 years at an hour a day to achieve this mastery. An hour? An hour a day? I don't get an hour a day. I am lucky to get a half hour a day, and there will be many days with no practice at all. Does that mean I will never master the violin (or viola)? Perhaps. But then, I know I don't have the ten thousand hours to dedicate to learning to play those stringed instruments. So for me, mastery is not the goal. My goal is to be the best that I can be, to play music for my own enjoyment, and where possible, for the enjoyment of others. I have come to accept that sometimes I can practice for a half hour and sometimes I can go three days with no practice at all. It is what it is, especially for a man with a wife and two kids and a full-time job.

The journey continues, and as always, I wonder what's going to happen next.

Deep Blue: India Stories

Now I know why I found myself in the front row for this Brisbane Powerhouse performance. It's a little hard to see the stage from there. But I don't care because I was watching Deep Blue and the show was amazing from start to finish.

Deep Blue are a string ensemble who combine string playing with theatrics and audience interaction (via smartphones and tablets) and in this case story-telling and sand-art as well as an excellent tabla player. I loved them when I saw them on Australia's Got Talent in 2011 (you know with Cosentino and Timomatic and Jack Vidgen) where they made it to the Semi Final round. I liked them even more when I realised Greta Kelly was one of the group. For those who don't know I'm a fan of Brisbane world music group MZAZA for which Greta plays violin (geez, what a surprise, the Sage likes the violinist) and Persian spiked fiddle.

Deep Blue started with three members playing classical music. I'm sorry but I don't know their names, and they were not introduced. They were charming and rather funny - two of them on violin and one on cello. The cellists spent most of the performance carrying their instruments, so they are obviously a rather fit group :) They joked that for the people who had accidentally wandered in expecting a classical concert that that was it.

The show was based around the groups visit to India and they told and portrayed stories of their experiences there. They visited one of the largest slums in the world where people made a living recycling everything that was thrown away. There was music and choreography that mimicked celebrations and fighting. Being as close as I was, the "fight" scene was very intense and dramatic, and the expressions on the faces were very intense. As well as the choreography there was playing on stilts, and playing while jumping rope. There was singing (which was as good as it was unexpected). There was a "clock" scene that reminded me of Metropolis - I don't know if that was intentional. There were people that were playing as they stood on a double-bass. One thing I saw that I wanted to learn was the duet: two people close together, both playing the violin, only they would each play the left hand on their own violin and use the bow on the other person's violin! There were kids who had been taught a song that day - they were awesome too, and made me miss my Patience. The music was all Indian-themed, even the version of Paint It Black. And there was a choir to finish off. The encore started with a tabla solo, during which I thought that guy had like three or four hands, Turns out he was just really really good.

Perhaps the only thing missing was pyrotechnics and a trapeze LOL

The only part I could not get into was the electronic interactivity. Sorry for being old-fashioned and all, but there was too much going on stage for me to be watching the monitors and texting answers to questions like "what would make you turn to crime" (a starving and desperate family) or "if you saw a red door would you paint it black" (no, but I might wonder why it was red). The screens were getting plenty of interactivity without my help. I was happy just to watch and listen.

If you get a chance to see these guys and girls, take it. They may have started off as an experiment in contemporary orchestra but I think they are certainly going in the right direction.

Brent Miller: Points Of Departure

Princess Sage has been very fortunate to have had percussion lessons with Brent Miller. Today he performed Points Of Departure as part of his Masters thesis, and the princess and I were there.

The program was as follows:

Sudhana's Steps: Ananyagamin
Point of Departure #1
Eight pieces for Timpani: Saeta
Point of Departure #2
Sudhana's Steps: Asha
Point of Departure #3
Eight pieces for Timpani: Improvisation
Point of Departure #4
Sudhana's Steps: Priyadarsana
Marimba Concerto

Brent actually played the pieces that were NOT titled Points of Departure. They were played by Ba Da Boom - a group composed of nine players from the Conservatorium.

The pieces Brent played were a joy to listen to as well as watch. His performance had plenty of energy and was enhanced by the lighting that went along with the show. He used the time when Ba Da Boom were playing to re-arrange his instruments for the next piece and I imagine to catch his breath :)

The only downside of having nine timpanists playing at once was that it was hard to watch all of them at once. I felt like I didn't want to miss anything so I was constantly looking from one to another to see what each was doing. At least when Brent was playing we could focus on what he was doing.

The last performance was great too, as much for the piano as for the marimba. Both Brent and Kathy Sander (on piano) looked like they were enjoying themselves, and Brent's performance was at times theatrical. He made playing the marimba look almost effortless (though I know he was working very hard).

The Princess and I spoke to him after the show and shared our thoughts with him. We look forward to seeing him in his next performance in September.