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.

IBIL Update

I survived the concert last night! Hooray! I'm establishing a good pre-performance routine that includes Alexander and meditation.

I ended up basically making the reed I played on right before I went on stage - not making it entirely, but finishing it, at least. I feel independent! How did I suddenly develop the ability to make good reeds? I am still astounded how it suddenly clicked in May. Like, the mathematician works for days, but then the solution comes as a bolt from the blue when he's sitting at the bus stop thinking about something else entirely...finally, three long years of dedicated, frustrated reed making are paying off. Of course I'll have my future slumps and new frustrations, but I'm suddenly at an unprecedented level of comfort and ease, and it's a little bizarre. But I'm cerrrtainly not complaining.

I guess I finally have a little time to update about many of the adventures in Baroque of the last week. Tonight is the faculty concert, and there was a chamber concert at lunch today as well, but other than that, nothing in the afternoon. I'm fairly exhausted.

I've gone through a LOT of rep this week. 2-4 brand new movements per day, ornaments and everything, to be played in masterclass the next morning. On top of actually getting to know the instrument, making a type of reed I've never made before, and warming up every day. And learning the chamber and orchestra music, and reading duets and things for fun. Solfege has been really invaluable, and in my initial practice sessions with new pieces, I spent a lot of time at the harpsichord singing (not that the harpsichords have actually been in tune by the time I get to them, but at least I get a starting pitch and can check the general vicinity of intervalic relationships (that last phrase was absolute nonsense, but I'm going to leave it in here anyway because I kinda like it)).

I've also bought a lot of drinks at Starbucks. It's across the street from the dorm I'm staying in, on the way to the music building...

Other fun activities - orchestra, oboe band. Two chamber music groups. It's been incredibly busy, but I think it has felt that way mostly since until today, I spent nearly every free moment (before 9am, lunch and after orchestra at 5) practicing. Although we have had coffee and pastry breaks every day at 10:30 between master classes and chamber, which has been really excellent. Except for the lack of caffeinated tea. This herbal stuff just doesn't cut it.

Oh, and we had Wednesday afternoon off. There was a fabulous bowling outing involved.

I've had such trouble sleeping the past few nights because I've been so excited about early music. And music in general. And grad school. I have so many grand plans for next year, including an early music extravaganza recital in the spring. I have a ton of verrry exciting ideas. The most difficult bit I think is going to be getting some key people on board. Probably obvious who I am talking about, specifically........

Anyway. I think a nap might be in order.

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.

Errrr

Blarg I have a lot to write about but no time to write! Must...practice...early tomorrow.

I LOVE MUSIC.

That is all.

Today's Entry

I'm posting two entries at once - don't be confused, the last entry I wrote yesterday but couldn't post until just now because I didn't have the internet.

Played in my first Baroque orchestra today! Eee! It was...so. cool. I'm a little frustrated with myself because I know I was playing scared - it's hard not to do when everyone sounds so much better than you and the ornaments are coming at you waaaay too fast to read. But I've learned so much from the experience already; just sitting next to the verrrry good bassoonist is extraordinarily enlightening.

F#, I am playing so scared of F#. Least favorite note.

I survived the sonata in master class! I played the first three movements, and all things considered, it wasn't terrible! I'm polishing a little more but also taking on some new music, including music in French violin clef. Yay! The ornaments are surprisingly hard in FVC, I'm not sure why they should be. I'm reading by interval. But somehow the ornament part of my brain is wired to the treble clef, seeing the notes on the page. WWPD? (What would Ploger do?) I'm not visualizing the ornaments probably. Should visualize the ornaments probably.

Mmm, popcorn.

Baroque dance class continues. There was a lot of hopping around today. I was pretty ungainly. Baroque French dance, and subsequently the music, requires a good deal of elegance, poise, and grace, none of which are inherent aspects of my...person. My mother will certainly attest to this.

But tonight, what an excellent surprise! I was practicing, and Gonzalo and company came in to the room I was in because they needed to use the harpsichord to read some Couperin. They invited me to stay and listen, which I did (DUH). It was beyond amazing. I absorbed so much from just listening and following along with the score. Gosh, the ornaments. All in the fingers, not the wind, Lindsey. Remember that. Blarrrrg and the harmony, it was just soooo good.

Also we worked on reeds today. I tied two blanks. I'll keep you updated on how those turn out...this is a very unorganized blog entry. My brain is kind of unorganized but filled with intense French Baroque ornaments right now. Whee.

Yesterday's Post (I didn't have internet)

Well, no internet yet tonight, so I won’t be posting this until tomorrow at least.

So I have arrived in Boston! Specifically, Cambridge. I’m here for the International Baroque Institute at Longy (aka IBIL) for the next week.

After orientation, we met in sections. Gonzalo handed me a French sonata and said, “Here, you can play this in masterclass tomorrow.” This was at 9pm. And there are only three of us, so the slots of time are pretty big – meaning, more than one movement. Meaning, he and I are expecting me to have the entire thing learned by 9am tomorrow.

So! Perfect study in Learning Music Quickly, a point of extreme interest for this blog. So I can’t resist writing about what I’ve done so far tonight, even though I really need to get to bed (if I wake up at 6, I can be practicing by 7:30…).

I practiced a lot yesterday, so it was actually a very good thing that pre-orientation I had only practiced about an hour, because by the end of the second hour, my chops were a little eeeh and I was biting a little (eeeeeh). Probably more than a little. (That’s bad, if you don’t play oboe and don’t know what I’m talking about.) So that second hour started at 9:15ish, when the oboe meeting was over and I was left standing in the room with this sonata by Andre Cheron. Immediate fight or flight response (choosing fight of course) was to dive irresponsibly straight into trying to play the music at tempo with all the ornaments. Dumb of course. But I was saved actually, by the harpsichord maintenance team, or whoever they were, who came in after about five minutes to put together a harpsichord in that room, and I moved rooms. It was enough time to clear my head and say to myself, “Here’s an opportunity to learn something quickly the correct way, so take it.” Luckily, there was a fully functional (but radically out of tune, alas) harpsichord in this new room (much easier than playing a half step lower than you are singing solfege on the piano).

So I sang through movement by movement, and in logical chunks, I’d go through the rhythm, sing it (using the piano to check intervals I wasn’t totally sure of, but surprise, I wasn’t ever off, I don’t think), and then attempt to play it. I made it through the entire piece like this, leaving off the ornaments, and on the fast movements often playing something slowly once and then speeding it up. Then I started to go back to the beginning and work on first shaping the phrase the way I wanted it (still starting with singing the solfege until it sounded the way I wanted, then playing it), and then adding in some ornaments. But I didn’t even make it past the first half of the first page when the security guard came in and told me the practice rooms were closing.

It was 10pm. What? What kind of practice rooms close at 10pm??? I take Blair for granted, I guess.

So I came back to the dorm (about a ten minute walk, I was impressed that I can already navigate around here, haven’t gotten lost yet. Well, the first time I set foot in the town doesn’t count, but I’m just saying that every time I’ve had a general idea of where I wanted to go after that, I haven’t been lost). I went through each movement all the way through, two times each for just singing rhythm without the ornaments (including the inegalite, which I sure hope I am using appropriately, probably not). After that, I spoke solfege in rhythm, without ornaments. The solfege is really important for getting the groupings and the phrasings just right – things suddenly make sense, which they don’t do if I just start playing on the instrument and barrel through, trying to get the right notes. So then I spoke through with ornaments, which is a bit more of a challenge. That’s the hard part. It is particularly challenging because it is a matter of both getting the rhetoric correct and getting the fingers to be extremely graceful and not blurble or slam down or wind a note at the end of a gesture because it is a cross fingering, and it might not come out…or something.

So hopefully this will all pay off tomorrow, and I won’t be so dead tired that I can’t function. I woke up at 4:45 this morning to head to the airport. Had some rough sleep on the plane (but long sleep, almost the entire three hour flight, surprising for me) and then napped when I got here for about two hours. We shall see. Luckily, there’s a Starbucks across the street.

Oh yes, the other thing I have been meaning to write about. So yesterday I was watching America’s Next Top Model. You laugh, but this is very relevant! (I was also practicing Baroque oboe at the same time, which might not have been entirely healthy, but we can discuss that later…). So (cycle 16, if you’re interested) one of the first challenges for the girls was with a prominent acting coach. The challenge was basically, to face the “inner critic.” When I heard this, I had to laugh because this is such a familiar concept to us musicians (at least us musicians at Blair and us musicians who have read Inner Game of Tennis and probably everyone else). In The Inner Game of Tennis, the author talks about Self 1 and Self 2, Self 1 being the voice that rambles on and on, trying to control everything and getting in the way of the performance (tennis, music, anything really). Professor Ploger’s name for it is the “coach,” that is, pretty much the same thing – the berating voice that is the biggest obstacle for any performer.

In the past year, while I was practicing at school, I had been focusing on building a better relationship with my coach. We were really on bad terms, and I hadn’t even been noticing how mean my inner coach was being to me, how much it was affecting not only my playing, but my overall happiness. I spent a lot of time, particularly first semester, both paying attention in order to notice my coach’s negativity, and literally having conversations (mostly in my head, sometimes out loud, don’t institutionalize me haha) with my coach. I was forgiving, made offerings of friendship, was gentle. In years before, when trying to deal with the negative voice, the (inappropriate) response I gave was always equally negative; I knew thinking these things were not doing me any good, but I didn’t know how to fix it – “Don’t be stupid, why are you thinking like that? If you think like that, you’re never going to be any good. Now play it right this time and stop beating yourself up.” Ironically of course, just another form of beating myself up.

But the gentler, patient approach worked really, really well. I’d say my coach and I have an excellent relationship now. Except sometimes the coach is lazy. Well, okay, a lot of times the coach is lazy. So that’s my challenge now, and particularly for the next year – I’ve gotten the coach to stop hurting me, but the coach doesn’t always put out the effort to help me in the way I know it can. And that’s largely on me. I think more Alexander and possibly (hopefully) yoga are in order here.

I do want to finish describing the ANTM challenge though! Because I think I will do it sometime possibly, it sounds like a good idea. So the acting coach had an easel with poster paper and markers set up behind each girl, and after he described the concept of the inner critic and they all understood it, he told them to turn around – 15 minutes to draw their inner critic. Then each went up on stage to face their inner critic in front of the other girls (the acting coach held up the poster and played the part of the critic while the girls had to confront the inner coach and tell it what’s what). Good idea I thought.

Which reminds me of something else I should mention, since the girls definitely weren’t gentle with their inner coach. There does have to be a definite degree of dominance – gentle, yes, but firm first. Resolute. Stare it down. Let it know you are in charge, and you won’t be putting up with its nonsense anymore.

Recommended Reading: The Inner Game of Tennis

Recommended Viewing: ANTM