Playing Fast Listening Slow

Slow is perhaps the hardest thing and getting harder with every passing nanosecond.

Everything in our culture is moving fast and faster.  Electronic signals, multitasking, so much to do, so little time.  And it shows up in our musical lives.

The hardest thing about teaching is learning to listen because it demands the ability to distinguish between one's own trained musical speed and the speed of the student, which is usually exponentially slower--even the so-called advanced student is slower than the practiced pro.

My own playing is much improved as a result of learning to listen slow.

How Fast is Fast?

Speed is a real issue for me, it always has been.  As a kid I was antsy, restless, easily bored, impatient, intolerant of anything slow.  Putting it in contemporary terms, I had an attitude: "Get on with it."

Now that I have become aware of the speed of hearing - it works 200 times faster than any other sense perception - I realize that I spent most of my life deceived by a perception that was actually far too slow relative to sound, namely sight.

With so much emphasis on reading and on trusting what we see, I had come to mistake the visual symbols of standard notation for music itself.  This huge oversimplification underlies the vast majority of approaches to music instruction, extending even to college-level ear training and dictation.

I train my young students to remain true to their most vibrant sense of the magic of sound rather than be tied down to the level of their neuro-muscular control.  I have had kids use the metronome to compare their innate sense of fast and slow so that, aware of the variables between friends, speed is not competitive.

Memory

A recent on-line discussion I have been following brought up the inclusion in Japanese music of sounds of nature, the most familiar example of which is probably the sound of the breath heard in music for the shakuhachi, the traditional Japanese flute.

This brings up my deep feeling that all music relates to things we have heard, not tunes that we recognize, but sensations of vibration, chaotic if you will, that we retain from our pre-natal life in utero.

The intrusion of technology into our definition of music is limiting our access to this deeper level of memory by placing a conditioner upon it.

To me the proper study of music is sound in the larger sense, not repertoire in the narrow sense.  Listening is the core of the art: the greater the expanse of auditory recognition the more meaningful notation is and the less inhibited performance becomes.

Professional vs. Amateur

An amateur musician asked me what it was like for me, a professional, to listen to amateurs play.  What a great question!

And complex.

I would have to say it all depends on the situation and what the amateurs' goal is.  If their goal is to imitate professionals I find it stale and lifeless.  But if their goal is to have as much fun as possible it is usually a trip to listen, mistakes and all.

When I worked with chamber musicians they were primarily amateurs and I encouraged them to let go of their inhibitions, to stop trying to sound like professionals (i.e., like some CD they had heard) and to react just to the sounds coming out of their instruments, flaws and all.

I learned so much about how composition works from listening in this way.  I only wish more professionals would trust their instincts and play this way.

The only thing that keeps them from doing so is competition in a conformity-driven world.

Variability vs. Reliability

Can you enjoy both?  Why not?

For example, I love the sound of unaccompanied voices singing in perfect harmony.  That is not a variable, though it is a function of the composition, diction, acoustics, and a few other, yes, variables.

But I love also the sound of the modern piano, by definition an infinitely variable phenomenon, almost impossible to replicate exactly from one piano to another, even from one day to another on a given piano.

It is only partly a matter of disposition.  It becomes a matter of social import.  If I must always have either one sort of sound or the other I limit the range of musical experience to which I open myself.

Perhaps that is why I rarely see the same faces at an early music performance as at a world premiere.

It's too bad, really.

When Is An Eighth Note NOT An Eighth Note?

The simple answer is when it is one of an unbroken chain of eighths in a Bach Cello Suite, as in the Courante of the C major.  Some of these eighths are articulated melodic values while others group into non-metric larger composites--arpeggios, for example, or melodic slides. The differences are not always clear, nor do they need to be.

That is why there are repeat signs: you get to do it twice, each time with a different twist on it.

When played strictly, without reference to shifting melodic and decorative purposes, the only thing that comes across is the bar line--clearly an error in Baroque music.

White Keys and Black Keys -- Again and Always

This morning my wonderful scientist-student, struggling to get the proportions correct in her Haydn D major sonata noticed something critical:

It begins with a prominent white key. all by itself, answered soon by a black key, again by itself, then two corresponding white keys.  After the double bar, however, a recognizably similar figure comes in: black key, signalling that we are in deep trouble as the bizarre colors thrown off by these intrusive sounds bewilder the ear, thickening the plot at an alarming pace.

Knowing theory, as I do (she far less) and knowing abstract sonata-form structure, as I do, alas (she far, far less) I am less observant than she of the shock engendered by such radical procedures.  Yet deep down I know that this power explains the surge of interest in the sonata form contemporary with the development of the piano.

It is a question of the acoustical impact of the short lever (black key) in contrast with the long (white key).

In the several conversations I had at a recent get-together of early music people none had ever heard of this dynamic aspect of piano playing.

Curious.  Once aware of it the delight is endless of fooling around with fingering, hand position, attack and release impact, and so on.  It certainly gets me up in the morning.