Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Edward Elgar

Date: 01/25/14
Orchestra: chamber
Repertoire Rehearsed: Prokofiev and Elgar (two very impressive names for they both are known as composers of very difficult music)

Note:
With everyone, including myself, getting sick, chamber is having a bit of a late start. But let's put our gears back on!

The Elgar is a bit of an eccentric piece, in a sense that the emotional content of it is soooo repressed. as if there is a sadness blocking the piece to completely bloom. I explained the fact that Elgar was a composer living during one of the worst and ugliest periods of human history. When the entire world is seeking destruction, and death of another, where can beauty be found, but in your own imagination? Everywhere you look, you see death, and torture, and a scheme to over power another. Imagine what "beauty" means in such an environment. It is only but a fantasy. It does not actually exist - not to them. So music like this is not only pretty, but desperately needed, and at the same time, the repressiveness of this piece tells us that, this beauty is born out of sadness and despair, which in itself is a beautiful notion when looking at it objectively. But when we perform it, we need to BE desperate - desperate for quietude and peace, and beauty.

Imagine, then listen. Listen, then imagine.  

I'm not getting much help from the other group in terms of the selection to our rock songs, but I really do want us to get started by next week. There is a lot of benefits to be gotten from learning different formats and styles, and I mean to do it properly. So next week, we will discuss "how non-classical music generally works", and hope to have you experience actually "being" a non-classical musician!



Monday, January 27, 2014

Beethoven maybe smiling

Date: 01/23/14
Orchestra: CYO
Attendance: very good
Repertoire Rehearsed: Beethoven
Little Things I noticed: It just makes me so happy to see the orchestra get bigger and bigger. We now have a nearly complete full orchestra!! Please welcome the new members of the group! And also the video recording is helping me tremendously with the blog writing :)

Note:
With a new brass section, and four cellos, and a bunch of talented youngsters playing Egmont, I'm sure Beethoven is smiling in his grave. He might even lend us some super powers.

And since we have a newly formed "brass section" now (including the saxophones who were part of the woodwinds before), I moved the seats around a bit, but I'm not too settled on the current seating, so we will probably need to do some more relocations in the near future. I want to try to find the best seating situation for our purpose.

We had Mr. Lin lead violin sectionals while I led the rest of the orchestra during the first half of the rehearsal. I now think that doing sectionals in smaller groups (such as per instrument), might be beneficial. I just need to figure out how I can do that effectively in terms of logistics.

We finally went through the ENTIRE Egmont Overture (and this was only our third rehearsal of the piece!)! That is a huge accomplishment in itself. I hope you guys are feeling somewhat proud of yourselves. When you have a larger goal, it is very easy to forget to appreciate your efforts in achieving smaller goals, but please don't forget, without accomplishing the smaller ones, we can never get to the big one. So try to really cherish the small things you accomplished and use that as motivation to get to the next step!

At this point, I think a couple of things need to happen as the next step. One is the obvious, being a little more physically comfortable with playing the notes you have in front of you. When you are physically comfortable, you are in control of the notes. When you have the control, then you have flexibility in terms of what you can do with the notes and play them however you want to, and whatever way you desire to play them - you'll have control over the timing, intonation, articulation, dynamics, and color, and you'll have the ability to adjust and fine-tune each of those aspects per note. Wouldn't that be a wonderful thing?

The second is to get to know the very piece better. So please keep listening to a recording of this piece many many times. You can never listen to it too many times. The more you listen, the more you discover, and the more you know, well, the better you play. If you don't have a cd, or mp3 file, you can always come back to this blog and go to the entry where I posted a link to a youtube video of the piece :)

Monday, January 20, 2014

random rant after being in bed for three days...

I almost never get tired during rehearsals. So when I did last Thursday, that should've been a warning for me. But then again, by that time, there probably was nothing I could've done anyway...
I got sick on the way back from rehearsal on Thursday, on the train. I ended up lying on the bed through the entire weekend... That was exciting...
To be honest, I wasn't eating well in the few days prior... In retrospect, this was only to be expected. Must. eat. well.
And because all I could think since Thursday night till now was, "shoot, shoot, shoot" (or it's equivalents...), my memory from Thursday's rehearsal is spotty at best. So I decided to to just randomly rant for this entry.

As a teacher, I receive emails from students and students parents about how they are not happy about their (or their kids') progress while practicing. Not as in complaints to me, but they seem confused when they are on their own. To be honest, I never fully understood any of these concerns. Only because, there is nothing wrong with slow progress, especially if you are not even practicing two hours a day, everyday. First, you have to do it, before you can hope to get better at it. With anything, really.

Imagine, you are born into a samurai family for instance (this may sound silly, but bare with me). You are told that in fifteen years, you are to go into a battle field and fight. Well, I don't want to die, so If I were in that situation, I probably would train every waking moment of my life up until that day, so the probability of me staying alive is greater. One day of slack, can cost my life. And on the flip side, no one can kill an enemy with THAT much determination.

You may think this example isn't here nor there in relation to practicing music. But I practice because I want to keep my job. And so long as I have certain skills, no one can take that away from me. Most of my students have other dreams beside being a musician. That's fine I do plenty of other things too. But I don't expect myself to be as good with those other things as I am in music, simply because I don't spend as much time doing them. Therefore, I look upon those with the skills with much admiration and respect, but I don't expect myself to become like them. I believe that I already have a role in society, and my priority is to keep it, and fulfill it as best as I can. In regards to other things, I do them simply because they make my life a little more interesting, and make me feel more like a human being than a music making machine. And therefore, I regard my other things just as important as music, only I don't spend as much time on them.

So, if a seventeen year old doesn't sound like Yo-Yo Ma, and is crying about it, I pity the student, not because his/her level is not high enough, but because of how out of touch he/she is with reality. I'm not saying one should lower the standards, but your goal should reflect the likely hood of how much time you would be spending doing the activity. If your goal is simply being better than other people, then you got a life time of misery awaiting for you. Like a samurai, who's sole goal in life is to survive, then you will lose sight of everything else around you, and you may survive, but will never live - not a humanly fulfilling life. You'd just be a cold-hearted fighting machine. And even a well conditioned machine, would eventually fail.

I'm a musician, but my goal is to live and show life, through music.

Somehow, humans have made this world a place a very fast pace, competitive, and I dare say, a destructive world, that favors machine like "warriors", and not very kind to life-loving artists. Sadly, even in the music world. Those that can play the instrument well (whatever that means), are favored over those who can transport you with sounds (people who can play music, rather than their instrument -  there is a big difference). One of the pit falls of the classical music is that, it is sooooooo ridiculously demanding. When the notes are that hard just to play them, we focus on those stupid notes, and forget the message that those notes carry. And when we focus on the notes, we forget why we play music in the first place, and start liking them less. And that's why I love non-classical music as well. You can get right down to the music, right past the notes, because for the most part, the notes in other genres tend to be easier (unless you start improvising, of course -  then it is all about your own battle with your instruments AND music).

Nobody likes school or work. Every time we get a day off from them, we cheer. Yet otherwise we go diligently, every single day. A lot of time is spent in those places. Of course you'll see some kind of result. After all, we spend more time in those places than doing any other activity. I just hope it is worth it.

As a teacher, I try to offer things I felt were left completely untouched during my school days. The ability to see other possibilities in life for one, felt like it was decidedly suppressed, and seemed like it was considered dangerous. Well, I'm not a dangerous person, and I think seeing possibilities is way too important of a skill to not touch upon. And the best way to teach that is through creativity. I think of creativity is one of most essential traits of a human being. If my job is not considered important, then you might as well remove brains from all people on earth and replace them with computer hard drives.

People might respect me if I say "I'm a musician". I think because many people think of people like Jay-Z or Miles Davis or Guns n Roses, when they hear the phrase. But when I say "I'm a music teacher", all of a sudden I find myself having much less audience, and respect for that matter.

Anyway, what does any of this have to do with having better practice sessions? There are two ways. One is to treat practicing as one of the things you do every day, whether you like it or not. We all do a lot of things we don't like doing everyday. Homework, job-related stuff, even tooth-brushing (who actually likes doing that?), etc. you might as well throw practicing in there. Do it without questioning.

The second and a more enjoyable way is to simply listen to yourself carefully when you do practice. You must know this, that every time you play a piece with your instrument, you are getting better at it. Try to listen to your improvements. Play and then try to listen for what's gotten better. But you must listen very very very very carefully, for reality isn't THAT kind. But it is true and you must know that it is true, that, every single time you play, you are improving.

Saturday, January 11, 2014

new challenge for the new year

Date: 01/09/14
Orchestra: CYO
Attendance: excellent
Repertoire Rehearsed: Beethoven
Little things I noticed: 
So I tried using a conductor's baton for the first time today... It's rather awkward, I have to say... Maybe I just have to get used to it...  someone mentioned Harry Potter's wand. I wish it was a magical wand, that way, I can turn anyone naughty into a goat for a while as a punishment, and an amusement for the rest of us

Note:
welcome back!
hope you had a nice relaxing and joyful winter break! it's good to see you all again.

so, the beethoven piece i gave you is a piece that is somewhat significant to me, for it was one of the first major classical orchestra pieces i ever played (i was nine), and left an incredibly positive, immensely huge, and long lasting (forever) impression on me. i felt that i subconsciously learned so much about music, just by playing and working on it.
i do believe it will have the same the same effect on you - the piece is that powerful.
and i was very impressed with your reading skill!! that is NOT an easy piece to sight read at all(!), but it didn't even feel like it phased you at all. amazing. this is a very difficult piece, and i was hoping to push you a bit, but judging from the way you handled the first rehearsal, maybe i can push you even more...
at any rate, i mean for us to perform this at a very high level, since we have some time till May. i figured with a piece like this, the longer we spend time on it, the better it is for us. it's like musical medicine. you can't possibly have too much beethoven in your life.

Here's the link to the best recording i found of the piece on youtube:
the link does not say who the conductor is or which orchestra or provide any information of this recording at all, but my guess is that it is Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. I've heard that recording before, and I think it's the same one. This video is doubly nice because it comes with the score!

new challenge for the new year

welcome back!
hope you had a nice relaxing and joyful winter break! it's good to see you all again.

so, the beethoven piece i gave you is a piece that is somewhat significant to me, for it was one of the first major classical orchestra pieces i ever played (i was nine), and left an incredibly positive, immensely huge, and long lasting (forever) impression on me. i felt that i subconsciously learned so much about music, just by playing and working on it.

i do believe it will have the same the same effect on you - the piece is that powerful.

and i was very impressed with your reading skill!! that is NOT an easy piece to sight read at all(!), but it didn't even feel like it phased you at all. amazing. this is a very difficult piece, and i was hoping to push you a bit, but judging from the way you handled the first rehearsal, maybe i can push you even more...

at any rate, i mean for us to perform this at a very high level, since we have some time till May. i figured with a piece like this, the longer we spend time on it, the better it is for us. it's like musical medicine. you can't possibly have too much beethoven in your life. 

Here's the link to the best recording i found of the piece on youtube:

the link does not say who the conductor is or which orchestra or provide any information of this recording at all, but my guess is that it is Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. I've heard that recording before, and I think it's the same one. This video is doubly nice because it comes with the score!