Solfège des Solfèges, Miracle of Miracles

Well, just had a fight with a blueberry bagel and lost. But I'm eating it anyway.

Annnyway. I've been in a surprisingly good mood today, considering I have NO good reeds and just got back from a two hour dress rehearsal. May have had something to do with the epic progress Caroline and I made musically today!

We rehearsed Baroque stuff together right after my studio class (Caroline plays violin; we're doing Baroque chamber music together and we're the only two students in the Musicianship 7 class). Sitting next to each other without harpsichord, all of the sudden we could actually play in tune! It was miraculous. Something to do with finally having a decent reed, something to do with us having time to practice this week and feeling like we actually had time to prepare, something to do with sitting next to each other so we could actually hear each other and adjust. In Baroque music, I feel like once one thing falls into place, everything else comes and starts to settle along with it. So we made great progress on style as well, feeling larger beats and understanding the rhetoric more and more.

Then, after a luxurious dinner at Quiznos, we sightsang for about 15 minutes from the third book. SO many grace notes and silly little trills. It was so much fun to be extra dramatic about them.

Our chamber coaching went really well, and I wasn't frustrated the entire time and cringing at my intonation through it, which usually happens. Towards the end, I was getting sharp, but my lips were practically falling off, soooo...I forgive myself.

Afterwards, Caroline and I dedicated a solid, very productive chunk of time to rhythm. We're working on ridiculous subdivisions of the beat - 64ths and stuff (you know, hemidemisemiquavers and such things hehehehehe). But we were really getting the tough exercises that have different rhythms tapped and vocalized. And then we did some Bach, naming chords and inversions as Caroline read through, and then singing through again on scale degrees in the soprano. It's so much fun to work on this stuff with another person, especially when she's as nerdy about it as I am. Legitimately fun. I mean, I say it's fun anyway, but I mean fun like crossword puzzles or reading a novel fun. Practicing music exercises with other people is actually board games or charades fun. Okay, I'm babbling now.

I'm glad I could focus on the positive in this post and not just complain about my reeds the entire time.

Winding and Unwinding

Home! Got home on Sunday night. I've been taking some time to unwind a little. Things unrelated to music that I've accomplished: finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and finished cycle 16 of America's Next Top Model.

I love that show.

It inspired me to photoshop a picture of myself with various short pixie hair cuts, but I concluded that I don't think I could pull it off. :(

The final concert of IBIL was amazing! I had so much fun, particularly playing in the orchestra. I actually have felt that of all my playing so far, my playing has been best in orchestra. I feel that is true on modern oboe a lot too...I'm definitely a team player, and the extra push of inspiration and pressure I get from having to give the other musicians with whom I'm playing a really strong performance out of respect for their skill and practice time and dedication pushes me to places I wouldn't reach otherwise.

Fantastic after party at Cambridge Commons.

Since being home, I've played a couple hours each day of Baroque oboe. Yesterday, I again practiced while watching ANTM. I wouldn't normally EVER do such a thing where my attention is divided between practicing and something else, but I thought I'd give it a try for some specific skills and lo, it did have some positive effects. I think the biggest thing was that it gave self 1 something to do and talk about while self 2 took over the playing. I didn't work at all with music, just exercises. Primary exercise (basically a scalar long tone type exercise), scales in thirds, and then repetitive practice for some awkward issues, like B to C, Bb to A, Bb to C, F to E, etc. So the controlling, gossipy, negative part of my brain was focused on forming opinions on models and guessing who was going to be eliminated, while the part of my brain that can hear intonation very well and regulates my playing was paying attention to my intervals and finger motion. I definitely was not practicing without awareness. In fact, I'd say in many ways, there was a much more pure awareness. I never let an interval go out of tune without going back and fixing it, and overall, the pitch was fairly decent. And having the controlling part of my brain distracted, I could do some things much better - for instance, letting go of the reed in a way I've not been able to previously achieve, and getting a much cleaner finger control with very relaxed fingers. Of course, I can't rely on being distracted, and it's not a type of practicing I am going to do anymore, except on special occasions if I want to revisit the feeling of the good things that were happening. But I paid attention to how it felt when things were going very well, and when I was most both precise and relaxed, and now that I have identified the feeling, I will be able to regain it in my practicing (sans ANTM).

Interesting little experiment.

Started working on music today, spent a good portion of practice time on solfege (in French violin clef, hooray!). Also, tied two blanks and started scraping them, and shaped five pieces of cane. Probably about two of them are good, two of them decent, and one might possibly make a good reed. Too narrow at the throat, but still, I'll give it a shot for the practice scraping. These pieces of cane are three bucks each. Eww. Ridiculous.

I need to make a shopping trip to the hardware store before I can actually get a good jump into reedmaking.

Hmm, in other news, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell was a really fabulous book. I needed to read something fun. Not sure what I'm going to read next, but I did make a goodreads account! I listed as many books as I could remember since high school and the best ones from before that, but I left a lot out that I had from childhood on living social a while back. Woot.

If you don't get it, the title of this post, "winding and unwinding," refers to winding thread around reads and unwinding from a long week of hard work. Get it? Hardy har. I hate naming these things.

Meditation on Intonation

Scale degree 7 is not a leading tone.

Scale degree 7 is the third of the dominant chord.

Scale degree 7 is not a leading tone.

Scale degree 7 is the third of the dominant chord.

Scale degree 7 is not a leading tone.

Scale degree 7 is the third of the dominant chord.

Maybe if I repeat this to myself over and over between now and 8pm, my fa sharps will be in tune during the concert tonight.

Why are there ants all over my computer for the third time this summer? I don't understand.

So, topic for today, topic for this week, and for the rest of my life and yours: intonation. I'm struggling, and I suspect it is because I care too much and consequently am trying to control too much. That is, self 1 is trying to control too much and not allowing self 2 to do its thing, if I may use some Inner Game language.

I am going to make a list of things I know are true, but somehow when I play, I am prevented from trusting these truisms by the lack of trust I have in myself:

-There is a place on the reed where if I am using proper support and air speed, all my notes will be placed exactly where I want them to be.

-I know where I want every note to be. I know that I know this because I can sing them over a drone in tune. And when I sing a note over the drone and then immediately play it, it is immediately or very quickly, exactly where I just sang it and in tune.

-Scale degree 7 is not a leading tone. Scale degree seven is the third of the dominant chord.

-This does NOT mean it is a lowered third. Because that would imply that it is lowered relative to some arbitrary pitch value governed by a universal fudge factor. It means that scale degree 7 is a pure third above the dominant. Which means I will NOT think of trying to play "flat" every time I see an F# tonight. This means that I will simply match the third in the overtone series of re.

-Hiding my sound will not make me seem more in tune. Actually, it will make me sound more out of tune. Particularly, biting the reed will not hide my sound or my intonation. It will make my pitch obscenely sharp.

-If I keep an embouchure that is equally open and cushiony for all the intervals while voicing the correct pitch, I will play in tune.

-I will play ALWAYS on a G on the reed. This does not change across the range of the instrument. There are no high notes on the Baroque oboe. The Ab-Bb-C-Db exercise is for the modern oboe only. Forgettabout it right now.

Now, I know there's the right way to play the oboe where things are in tune, and I know that I know where things should be. At the same time though, I just found this spot today in my adventure with drones. The lips on the reed and the cavity of the mouth and the sympathetic resonance (that's a Gonzaloism) all have to be exactly right for the fa sharp in particular to be just so, and my body and mind are not trained to always find that spot right away on Baroque oboe yet. Gonzalo has told me over and over to be patient, fa sharp is the last note I will feel like I have conquered. I mean, for goodness' sakes, there are five fingerings for the lower octave fa sharp and seven fingerings for the upper fa sharp. I have been playing Baroque oboe for a month, and I am playing on reeds completely made by myself, literally zero adjustments by Gonzalo or anyone else. These are not excuses, and thinking these things over is not making excuses, and I should not beat myself over the head for "making excuses" if I think these things. It's placing myself as firmly as I can in reality so that I maintain a good relationship with my coach and my coach continues to help me and stay out of the way when it needs to.

Of course it's going to be frustrating that my conductors and chamber coaches keep telling me certain notes are sharp or flat when I know they are sharp or flat. It's embarrassing to think that perhaps the coaches and conductors think I can't hear that this or that note is out of tune, because I can hear it (which makes it feel much worse). The problem is, I hear it after I play it. I need to hear it before I play it.

But observing. Nonjudgementally. Observing nonjudgmentally when a note is sharp or flat is what I need to be attending to. And not worrying about what the coaches or conductors are thinking is the problem. And I shall.

So much of this is the mindset. There's nothing to be afraid of. There is literally no reason to be anxious about playing out of tune or rushing such and such a spot. Today in chamber rehearsal, people (including myself) kept making remarks to that degree - "I'm worried I am going to rush this spot" etcetera. Finally I said something about it - that if we know how we want to play it, there is no reason to hypothesize about what could go wrong. Someone else said that it wasn't so much fear as professional concern. I mean, I know what she meant, and she's right to the extent that we do need to be involved (duh). But since the word "concern" can have two meanings, and one of those meanings is emotionally charged, I don't entirely approve of the terminology. I know that's awfully picky, but this is important to me in my own quest for mental discipline right now, to think about these things in just the right way so that I fully comprehend them, and when I'm teaching in the future, I want to communicate my personal philosophy about performing in the clearest, most concise way possible. "Engaged" or perhaps "highly conscious" or "highly aware" works a lot better for me than "concerned." Instead of "I'm worried we are going to rush here, let's run this spot and try not to rush," I think the better approach is, "Let's be extra conscious of the tempo and pulse here, we want it to be precise and energetic." There's no negative emotion or positive emotion in this latter approach, merely a statement of the goal and a call to notice how that goal might be better achieved. Chances are, that spot will be in tempo next time and not rush. If it does rush, this can be stated without a value judgement.

I only make such a big deal out of this because the extent to which I have engaged in this type of thinking is the extent to which I have improved both my musicianship and my emotional health, particularly over the past year. The discipline that I lack in this area (as evidenced by my recent freak out moments/rehearsals about intonation) leads to physical tension and a worsening of the problem.

After I said the bit in rehearsal today about not being "afraid" of anything, I suddenly played 300% more in tune. Surprise surprise.

Firsts

All right, so first day and a half. I'm already so behind on this blog because I've already assimilated so much new information! Unbelievable!

So, travel day yesterday was pretty overwhelming. Last night of Hot Springs, stayed up with my friend Natalie until 4 am, which yielded 2 hours of sleep that night. Slept an hour and a half on the plane, but that was it. Got into Oberlin at 5:15, orientation at 6, and "audition" at 7:20. So no time to play oboe that day, and I was a little concerned that I would have to play a Baroque piece on modern oboe for the teacher (haven't recently worked on anything I would want to play for a professional Baroque performer ie I'm not about to play unaccompanied Bach for an expert).

But of course I didn't have to play anything, and the professor is super friendly. He wrote me out a fingering chart and sent me on my way. He was a little shocked at first, I think, that I had never even played more than a few notes on Baroque oboe. Possibly slightly concerned. But I think that after he considered it a little and noted my genuine enthusiasm, he started to get a little excited that I was a clean slate. No reed at this point yet.

So. Pushing the Nerf ball up the hill. Sat in my bed for a long time with the Baroque oboe and the fingering chart. Visualized the keyboard. Solfege syllables on keyboard. Arranged my fingers correctly. Thought about the staff too, but not as much since that's clef dependent. Was as intentional as possible! And I looked at the chart as little as possible, focusing on the fingerings that are different from modern oboe. I went through the entire range chromatically several times, saying each solfege syllable out loud as I fingered the note and visualized it on the keyboard. I made a point to consider all the enharmonic spellings as well, and did some fake reading of Modus Novus, just to get some practice reading crazy intervals I'll probably never see playing Baroque oboe. But hey, if I can quickly process that, I can read anything. And then as I was falling asleep, I went through all the notes in my mind again. First thing in the morning, I reviewed. After viol class, reviewed again, this time with oboe in hand. By the time oboe reed class rolled around, I could easily play anything he asked me to do (scales, thirds, etc). So that Nerf ball is up! And since I will be playing every day from now on, it will stay up easily. (Until I start having to learn alternate fingerings).

8am every morning - viol class. I have a bass!!! Even just carrying it around last night after it was issued to me was a little overwhelming. Such a huge instrument! You have to be careful turning around in the hallway with it! And there's a BOW. I've only really even held a string instrument twice that I can think of offhand. And gamba of all things. Class was hilarious though, and we made some really awful noises. The class situation was odd for me - the lack of personal attention resulted in a lot more doubt than I am used to. But I got over that quickly, and took more risks to see what sorts of things worked and what sorts of things didn't (I'm thinking specifically of the bow grip). I need to do that more in my modern oboe practicing. I think that because Jared is such a good teacher, I am a little too dependent on him to point out areas I could improve. How often do I take risks with how I think about embouchure or air in order to experiment with different tones? Not very often. Occasionally, but nothing has ever really come of it.

I was forced to do that today with the Baroque oboe. In reed class, he gave me a reed, a little bit of guidance on embouchure, and instruction on how to overblow notes, but that was really it. We spent the majority of the time discussing reeds. He gave us some exercises to work on (ocatves, scales in thirds). So in my hour and a half or so of practicing today, I really had to figure out for myself how to make the instrument sound the way I wanted it to sound (not that I've accomplished that yet). I had to hear what I wanted in my head first before I played. Same for intonation. Button pushing is literally impossible on Baroque oboe, and it really reveals how much button pushing actually does go on, even when I am conscious of notes and intervals. Without really hearing it first, nothing works. I even tried an exercise in thirds where I alternated between singing and playing notes. And surprise! The intonation was nearly perfect! Some of the more difficult notes were a little warbly, but considering that without listening first, they were almost a half step off, I think it was a major improvement...

So one interesting challenge is going to not only be intonation regarding the instrument, but how I listen for intonation. The pure intervals apparently are going to take precedence over scale degree function: that's why my teacher recommended scales in thirds instead of scales. Practicing this let me know I really do know how intonation should sound! Because I could sing what I wanted very easily. Need to trust myself!

Dang cross fingerings are a beast to tune.

Well, I feel like I'm skipping a lot, but like I said, a lot happened. A bit on the Bach chorales. The institute is performing St. Matthew Passion, and they are going to have us in the audience sing the chorales (kind of like a flash mob, but you know, with Bach chorales. Kind of). Like this...

Handel Flash Oratorio

Um, anyway, so we rehearsed two chorales last night, and it was one of the most beautiful musical experiences I have ever had. I've never actually sung a chorale in German - only in solfege syllables or scale degrees or what have you. But to actually immediately comprehend the word painting in real time was such a different experience than merely pointing it out after or even before the fact. The physical feeling of singing a tritone on "Missetaten" and understanding what it means immediately was incomparable. It was so great that the musical director had us sing every part before putting all our parts together; even with all my struggle with the German language, I got a nice picture of the part writing. It was a lot to wrap my head around though, considering I don't even reeeally know how to pronounce German. I guess I have a decent idea, but you try tracking on the keyboard while struggling to read a language you've never spoken aloud before...so of course, as soon as it was over, I was eager as a beaver to go contemplate some intervals and notate some heptachord shift. Played two parts at a time today a little. Goal is to be able to play all these chorales on the piano before we actually perform them! I want to really understand what is going on as I sing them.

Well I suppose that's really enough for now. Gonna go practice, sing some more Bach chorales. Maybe some gamba practice? <.<