I just spent a peculiar several weeks, peculiar because vacillating between the fury of being without my customary email server (don't ask) and the bliss of being therefore undistracted from clear thinking.
It is not easy to reconcile the forces behind one's own life with those of the culture in which that life has been lived. One question emerges as central to my life and work: Why have I devoted so much time and energy to the two least-valued populations in the music world: amateurs and children?
It is my own childhood experience of specific sounds that has kept me on track musically and that continues to inspire all of my playing and my teaching. Because I refuse to believe that I was that exceptional I have taught children of all levels of "talent" as though they were myself, assuming that that level of intensity is accessible to all. I was quite right about that. That has to be the reason my young students do not quit taking piano lessons.
What is an amateur if not an adult who has opted to get back in touch with those elementally powerful sensations? And that is how I have dealt with amateurs. I was quite right about that one, too. By not encouraging amateurs simply to imitate professional players I have enabled them to get into the substance of Beethoven, Bartok, Mozart, et al. Despite limited practice time they experience deep affinity with the music they play - not quantity but quality.
Nothing superficial about it.
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Friday, November 14, 2014
The Child Meets the Adult on Equal Terms
Arts educators constantly bemoan the well-established fact that, usually by age 7 at the latest, children have already lost their innate receptivity to the primary experience of sound, color, rhythm, etc.
It gets trained out of us, as one eminent music theorist put it to me.
Not all of us, I would reply. Some timeless artists have said it in writing: The older they get, the more artistically mature, the closer they feel to the child they once were, in other words, to their artistic beginnings.
All of my work integrates the sensations I had as a young child with my continuing fascination with the elements of music. In teaching children I focus on their developing confidence in their own perception of those elements, not on my "more correct" perception. Often I find that their perception of sounds in, say, Beethoven, actually instructs me. My problem is that I know too much, that I was led to believe that what I dutifully learned in music training corresponded to the thinking of the masters.
Not so. The children come closer than I ever will, though I do continue to work at it.
It gets trained out of us, as one eminent music theorist put it to me.
Not all of us, I would reply. Some timeless artists have said it in writing: The older they get, the more artistically mature, the closer they feel to the child they once were, in other words, to their artistic beginnings.
All of my work integrates the sensations I had as a young child with my continuing fascination with the elements of music. In teaching children I focus on their developing confidence in their own perception of those elements, not on my "more correct" perception. Often I find that their perception of sounds in, say, Beethoven, actually instructs me. My problem is that I know too much, that I was led to believe that what I dutifully learned in music training corresponded to the thinking of the masters.
Not so. The children come closer than I ever will, though I do continue to work at it.
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Time Writ Large and Small
I am amazed at the difficulty I have in convincing people that awareness of time is a fundamental musical skill. People think I must be talking about keeping time, you know--the 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. But that is not it at all.
As a young musician I despised the metronome, if for no other reason than that it showed me (no kidding) how unable I was to agree with it. Gradually I figured out a better use for the metronome.
This simple exercise revealed to children that they have control over their own tempo, that is, their own unconscious involvement with time, and that getting control of it on your own terms is truly rewarding.
Play a piece you find challenging. Play it, then clock your tempo with the metronome and write down the date and the metronomic speed. Set the metronome to the speed you wish to play, which might be slower than what you just played -- slower is actually a more difficult adjustment than faster. Look at the music while this new beat is ticking, but don't play. Next time you sit down to play the piece repeat these steps and you may see a progression toward your desired tempo.
It comes not from the metronome, actually, but from within you.
As a young musician I despised the metronome, if for no other reason than that it showed me (no kidding) how unable I was to agree with it. Gradually I figured out a better use for the metronome.
This simple exercise revealed to children that they have control over their own tempo, that is, their own unconscious involvement with time, and that getting control of it on your own terms is truly rewarding.
Play a piece you find challenging. Play it, then clock your tempo with the metronome and write down the date and the metronomic speed. Set the metronome to the speed you wish to play, which might be slower than what you just played -- slower is actually a more difficult adjustment than faster. Look at the music while this new beat is ticking, but don't play. Next time you sit down to play the piece repeat these steps and you may see a progression toward your desired tempo.
It comes not from the metronome, actually, but from within you.
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Why the Beat May Be a Bad Idea
As a child playing the piano by myself I could not keep "the" beat. The problem persisted into adulthood, baffling many people besides myself. How come the problem vanished when I played other instruments, the organ, for example? Why did I not have the problem when accompanying singers or playing together with others?
The answer, though obvious once you think about it, has taken me years to figure out. It has to do with the difference between vertical and horizontal hearing. Alone at the piano, playing music composed specifically for its acoustics, I was so fascinated by the qualities of mixed vibrations that I simply could not believe that time could be objectified.
Once others joined me in music-making the impetus to move forward blocked the power of those enticing mixes; the beat won.
One important clue to the validity of this observation is the tendency that I and many other pianists have to hold certain sounds too long. Failure to release harmonies on time is a sign that harmonies crave duration. Their vibrations, in order to mesh, must complete a certain number of cycles. Interrupting that process is highly dramatic; takes conscious effort.
Awareness of this phenomenon is heightened by Tonal Refraction. If it is a problem you have ever experienced, get in touch with me. nancygarniez@tonalrefraction.com
The answer, though obvious once you think about it, has taken me years to figure out. It has to do with the difference between vertical and horizontal hearing. Alone at the piano, playing music composed specifically for its acoustics, I was so fascinated by the qualities of mixed vibrations that I simply could not believe that time could be objectified.
Once others joined me in music-making the impetus to move forward blocked the power of those enticing mixes; the beat won.
One important clue to the validity of this observation is the tendency that I and many other pianists have to hold certain sounds too long. Failure to release harmonies on time is a sign that harmonies crave duration. Their vibrations, in order to mesh, must complete a certain number of cycles. Interrupting that process is highly dramatic; takes conscious effort.
Awareness of this phenomenon is heightened by Tonal Refraction. If it is a problem you have ever experienced, get in touch with me. nancygarniez@tonalrefraction.com
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Hearing Harmonically Takes Time, a Very Specific Kind of Time
Hearing harmonically is entirely different from hearing lines contrapuntally. In order to form a true harmony tones must converge with the same note values and the same articulations so that their vibrations may blend for a sufficient number of cycles to allow the essence of the chord to establish and clarify itself.
Linear hearing, on the contrary, is in constant flux; whatever momentary stases occur must not interrupt the flow and may even have to be slightly "out of tune" in order to affirm the fleeting nature of that texture.
We are not conventionally taught to recognize the difference. Especially not if we play the piano. Therefore our articulation is sloppy, our releases non-existent, our sense of line woefully inadequate to the genius of, say, Beethoven, or Mozart -- two composers we do not even think of as contrapuntal.
Try once counting the number of actual chords (as defined in the first paragraph above) in a movement by either of those two masters. I pretty much guarantee you will be shocked. Then make sure when you play that movement that you respect the difference between the one kind of hearing, which tends to be sluggish, and the other, which is anything but.
Linear hearing, on the contrary, is in constant flux; whatever momentary stases occur must not interrupt the flow and may even have to be slightly "out of tune" in order to affirm the fleeting nature of that texture.
We are not conventionally taught to recognize the difference. Especially not if we play the piano. Therefore our articulation is sloppy, our releases non-existent, our sense of line woefully inadequate to the genius of, say, Beethoven, or Mozart -- two composers we do not even think of as contrapuntal.
Try once counting the number of actual chords (as defined in the first paragraph above) in a movement by either of those two masters. I pretty much guarantee you will be shocked. Then make sure when you play that movement that you respect the difference between the one kind of hearing, which tends to be sluggish, and the other, which is anything but.
Monday, November 10, 2014
Boredom, Again, This Time Front Page News
In the Sunday Review section of The New York Times, Sunday November 2, is an Op-Ed piece by Dr. Richard Friedman of the Weill Cornell Medical School, a psychiatrist who is knowledgeable about ADHD. In his view the cause of the "illness" is boredom. A kid has trouble paying attention who is not given something worth attending to. duh...
The thing that gets brushed over in teaching children music is the level of perception which is most real to them: not notes but vibrations. Tonal Refraction puts children in vivid contact with what they hear at a magnified rate of intensity so that they know it is real. Because it is visualized they can also talk about it on a par with the teacher or a parent. The method can also reattach adults to that level of intense perceptual alertness that was mangle-ironed in the process of churning out tons of reliable (i.e., boring) notes in music school.
I have long known that boredom is one of my prime motivators in life. It conceals always the question: "What am I missing here?"
The all-new www.tonalrefraction.com is up and waiting for you to pay a visit.
The thing that gets brushed over in teaching children music is the level of perception which is most real to them: not notes but vibrations. Tonal Refraction puts children in vivid contact with what they hear at a magnified rate of intensity so that they know it is real. Because it is visualized they can also talk about it on a par with the teacher or a parent. The method can also reattach adults to that level of intense perceptual alertness that was mangle-ironed in the process of churning out tons of reliable (i.e., boring) notes in music school.
I have long known that boredom is one of my prime motivators in life. It conceals always the question: "What am I missing here?"
The all-new www.tonalrefraction.com is up and waiting for you to pay a visit.
Sunday, November 9, 2014
Vertical vs. Linear Hearing, Again
It is a rich topic, one that does not receive enough attention in our training - we are saving time, after all.
In the tension between the two modes of hearing one experiences the liveness of sound, if I may call it that. It is as if sounds teeter on the brink of stability, longing to be stable but not quite "knowing how." What pulls the tones higher or lower is sometimes acoustical, a function of the instrument's mechanics, sometimes the feeling of the singer or instrumentalist.
Sometimes it is the composer's skill that exposes this quality where we least expect it, on the piano, for example. This morning I heard it happen in the Minuet of Beethoven's Op. 10, No. 2. Combine Ds and C#s in just the right octaves and proportions and, voila! the sound moves.
In the tension between the two modes of hearing one experiences the liveness of sound, if I may call it that. It is as if sounds teeter on the brink of stability, longing to be stable but not quite "knowing how." What pulls the tones higher or lower is sometimes acoustical, a function of the instrument's mechanics, sometimes the feeling of the singer or instrumentalist.
Sometimes it is the composer's skill that exposes this quality where we least expect it, on the piano, for example. This morning I heard it happen in the Minuet of Beethoven's Op. 10, No. 2. Combine Ds and C#s in just the right octaves and proportions and, voila! the sound moves.
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