Whoa, Bessy!

I recall when I was a student (not undergraduate) how fellow pianists would complain that their teachers obsessed over Beethoven on a note-by-note basis.  This is exactly what I find myself doing with my young computer animator student, who is just now really getting down to the business of seriously reading music -- i.e., reading it in terms not of mechanical physical responses, but in relation to his instinctual auditory life, which is both rich and precise in its way.

Those last three words provide the key to this kind of reading.  For we are all idiosyncratically involved in what we perceive, no one more so than Beethoven in response to the sound of the piano.
This is what teachers fail to point out, or to bring out in their students.  Students are, therefore, understandably and justifiably confused about whose ear they are trying to satisfy.

My approach is to slow my own hearing down to the point where I perceive the interstices between my ear, the student's ear, and what I presume (from the printed score) to have been Beethoven's ear.

This is utterly and endlessly fascinating to the two living parties to this transaction.

Foot Tapping to Your Own Playing

Predicting the beat is dangerous to really paying attention.  Once you get used to predicting the beat you are likely to lose the ability to attend to all that goes on between beats -- where the going is really at its most interesting.

People who complain of melodies going around and around inside their heads are often at the mercy of a rhythmic notion that simply does not apply to real music or to real music-making.

The best place to start curing yourself of the habit is in your own playing.  Make it impossible to predict your own beats.  Hold every note you play as long as you can stand to hold it.  Don't move on until you can't stand it any longer.

See what happens.  Send me a message. 

Reducing the Band of What is Heard

When, at age 12 or so, I first became aware of overtones on the piano, I was so confused by them that I played always with the soft pedal, effectively blocking them.

Many years later my first truly great teacher, Hans Neumann, insisted that I play always with the piano lid up so as to become increasingly involved with overtones.  (Of course, the overtones on his piano in no way matched those of mine, thus they were incredibly confusing, though admittedly still overtones.)

Yet again many years later I had a student who did the same thing, and was able to address the issue in terms of welcoming the difference between "mine" and "hers."

Now I find myself describing to people that this is exactly what they have done, but to their hearing. No matter what instrument you play you probably have a tendency to block the complicating factors of its sound so as to match the overtone-poor quality of most commercial recordings.

Allowing the overtones into your sound, into your awareness of sound is empowering beyond belief; for along with it goes increased range of expression, of dynamics, even of speed.

Music Inside and Out.  Check it out.

Music and Emoticons

For quite some time we have been confused by a tendency to reduce pieces of music to simplistic frames of reference, in essence, to verbal emoticons.

For example, Beethoven's Eroica, by definition, "heroic" symphony, has become, under the batons of countless literal-minded conductors, a simple-minded, pretentious work.  Of necessity "heroic" whether you mean it or not, is as ridiculous as the line my kids love from Flanders and Swann: "Always be sincere, whether you mean it or not."

The first time I heard this work performed by a period orchestra I was stunned at its transparency.  The mere sounds of the natural horns, the period drums, strings tuned as they would have been back then, conveyed such a wealth of emotion as to defy all the literalism of hundreds of years of misguided program notes.

The audience was even laughing aloud in some of variations.  Unheard of.  Unless, of course, heard.

A Rare Person Who Cannot Listen to Music

I met this person last week and have thought about her a lot.  She simply cannot let music become a background thing as she has plenty else going on in her mind, so she chooses not to listen to music.

It struck me that I have a similar reaction to taking in artistic media that might overpower what is already active inside of me.  I don't need or want interference with the new routings that are taking place.

What a relief to be able to concentrate at last after so many years of feeling I had to keep up with everything.

A New Kind of Speed Addiction

You might not have noticed it, but one of the strongest effects of a steady diet of recorded music is similar to the effects of speed-reading: You get through a lot of material lickety-split, but miss a great deal in the process.

This is accomplished by simplifying the sound input that remains on the disc when you finally listen to it, and by the reduction implicit in transmission via an ear bud or headset.

To take in the fullness of sound with all its rich resonance requires the ability to enlarge sound moments so that they have more than one dimension.  I have seen countless amateur musicians try, and fail, to hold themselves to the standard of speed they covet from listening to music via recordings.  In the process of striving for that meaningless goal they shortchange themselves, for their innate responses are usually infinitely more interesting and more revealing about the music than the commercially homogenized product they so envy.

Check it out: Music Inside and Out

Another One: Bor-ed

Every time I hear the story I recognize the problem: it's just what I described in the Marshall McLuhan post.  Piano teachers laden with finger exercises get in the way of the child's innate musicality.  I just met another such adult, describing that circumstance in exactly those terms, indicating that in no way could he have said to the well-meaning teacher that he quit those many years ago because he was bored.  Then he asked me, "But don't you have to teach the children technique?"

"Not the way I teach," is my reply.  When every aspect of playing is directly related to the ear technique follows as the night the day because the child so wants to play a particular piece and to play it to her own standard, which is inevitably higher than the standard I would have deemed acceptable for her.  I have watched it happen.  It is not a miracle, but the result of a great deal of teacher / parent patience and belief that the only worthwhile goal is long-term.

It is a matter of the heart and soul, not of achievement.