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.

Georgia On My Mind

Hi guys! I finished BPI (Baroque Performance Institute) last Sunday, so I haven't been updating. I had originally intended to just blog for those two weeks, but I think I will keep it up. I've actually heard from some people that they were reading this blog for real, which is really cool! I had no idea anyone would actually check it out, much less follow it! How exciting!

I'll definitely have a lot of interesting things to write about - right now I am at an oboe camp in Georgia for a week, and in a couple of weeks, I'll be attending the International Baroque Institute at Longy. This Baroque thing is kind of addictive. Next year I'll definitely be keeping up with the Baroque oboe, so I'll keep everybody updated on that. And I'll have grad school lessons and auditions, so it might be kind of cool for those a year or more younger than me to see what that process is like. I'm also hoping to put on a big Baroque historical performance recital at Blair next year, so I'll write about what those struggles as well.

So let me go back a little and wrap up BPI! The final concert went really well - I performed in a trio sonata, a piece (supposedly) by Handel. And we opened the concert with our dance class performing the minuet that we had learned. Kanad (my lovely dance partner) and I rocked that minuet. My second lesson also went very well - Gonzalo is really a fantastic teacher.

After that final (again four hour) concert, there was a small get together in this crazy house with crazy cats. Pictures on facebook eventually. Crazy gamba collection.

I've been at Oxford Oboes since Sunday. It's an oboe camp for middle and high schoolers, and each day there are masterclasses, reed class, and chamber music. During the masterclasses, some students split off into smaller assigned groups for different classes (like English horn class) or have individual lessons. I've had so much fun here so far. Most mornings I've been in the masterclasses. When younger kids are playing in the masterclasses, I I only hear a little that I haven't heard before about oboe playing, but it has been such a great educational experience in pedagogy. I find myself really paying attention to how the professors approach different aspects in the music, what kinds of explanations work best for different ages, that sort of thing. Really important stuff for when I'm teaching later. When I was playing in the masterclass, the professors often brought up something I did well and explained/demonstrated it for the kids, a really good tactic, I think.

Love that the professors play the accompaniment (on oboe, often a bass line) along with the kids playing the solos. I can really hear in their sounds a huge increase in confidence, and they take more risks. In my lesson with Dr. O, we ended by playing through an entire Barrett sonata movement together, and I found myself gaining a lot of confidence and taking more risks as well. And just having so much fun! Wish I had recorded that.

Today I coached a sextet of beginning middle school oboists.

Yeah, you try that sometime. You can't even imagine.

But what an interesting experience, trying to figure out what they can relate to, trying to figure out what ideas are most important for them to be exposed to, not wanting to talk way above or below their level, but slightly above it, or at least at the ceiling, to challenge them but to keep them interested...teaching is hard. I've also been working with the students often at reed class, and it's really crazy having to dissect something you've been doing so long that it's permanent muscle memory in order to explain it to an ADHD middle schooler. ie tying reeds. And I didn't really realize how far I have come in reed making until seeing the beginners and intermediates. Reed making is one of those things that is so frustrating because it feels like I'm never making any progress (oboe playing too, for that matter). But to see how awkward it is for the beginners to hold a reed in one hand and a knife in the other reminds me of how natural it is for me to hold a knife or scrape a reed.

What a weird thing to be good at. Life is weird.

Oh yeah, and the other thing. Chamber music. Thirteen oboes in my chamber group, and I am the appointed leader. Why does this keep happening to me? Haha. Not complaining though, I guess somebody has to do it. I was so worried that we weren't even going to be able to stay together for the first rehearsals, but somehow miraculously around Wednesday, things started to really shape up. These rehearsals have been so much work. A very different kind of work than I am used to in rehearsals. First off, keeping everyone focused. Come on guys, every time we stop playing is not an opportunity for you to practice your part on your own or tell your neighbor a story...and I don't wanna be the bad guy or the band director. It's a very difficult balance to find!

But everyone has simmered down a lot since the first day, and there's a lot less chatter and a lot more focus. It's weird to go from group discussion of purely musical elements and subtleties like in college to directing people on how to play rhythms and things like that. There were a lot of transitions and things that we had to work through together, and a lot of spot work that took up a lot of time. The first two rehearsals, we had a professor come in for part of it, which was really helpful. I was particularly thankful not to have to be the bad guy for the entire rehearsal and to have someone with authority backing up what I was saying. I mean, I technically have authority officially, but it is an odd thing to only be a few years older than the oldest of the group. Particularly since I how I look could still pass for 17 or 18 if one didn't know I was actually old.

Gosh I feel really old here. There's an incoming college freshman here who was born in 1994. What's up with that? Sooo old.

But anyway, I suppose I'm doing an all right job organizing and waving my arms around a lot. The piece is coming together nicely, and we are even playing dynamics now! And sometimes we look at each other! Little steps.

So that seems like enough for now. Kind of a long post, but I haven't updated in a while. But I will continue to update from now on, expect a new blog every 1-3 days! Good to hear a few of you out there are reading it! :)

Eine Kleine Post

Gosh guys, sorry about that delay there. Got a little carried away. Perhaps being a little too social.

I'll work backwards a bit.

A new week, new teacher! Today was the first day Gonzalo was here - we got a reed class and a how to play the oboe lecture. He sounds like magic. Velvet magic. He had a lot of great things - NEW information - to give about both reed and oboe. It's pretty rare at this point in my education that someone comes in and says something I haven't heard even part of before in other terms, but he did! Interesting points about the gouge of the reed and scraping relative to the ratio of the gouge - for instance, at the beginning, there's no point in working on forming a tip, because the gouge already ensures that the sides will be thinner than the tip! Huh! Probably everyone else has realized this without having been told, but I certainly needed to hear it! Changes the way I think about making the reed. And something EVERYONE says, and I am taking very much to heart - RESPONSE is FIRST priority. Period. Always. And forever.

About playing, Gonzalo had some great stuff about breathing to share - he explained how normally, breathing at the peak of our inhalation, we "hold" our breath while we're playing. But if we allow the ribcage to disengage first, we can just blow forever and the brain doesn't freak out that it's not releasing carbon dioxide or taking in oxygen! Cool. Also, voicing in the high register. Low to high, oooo to eeee. This is what Ms. Henderson was talking about. My sound up there is sooo much more beautiful when I do what he's saying there.

Made my first Baroque reed! Unfortunately, I forgot that it's okay and even normal for Baroque reeds to leak (SO bizarre). And the reed played by itself, but not in the oboe, so I kind of freaked out a little and started scraping way too much out of the heart and back, and clipping, clipping, too far. All the poor thing needed was some Teflon tape. It does vibrate beautifully, and the response is quite nice. Just, you know, sounds like a duck. Wanna buy a duck?

Anyway. I'm in a big girl chamber music group this week - Handel Trio. So that's me, a violin, viola da gamba (Baroque cello for those of you non-musicians), and harpsichord. Oooo we sound prettttty awful. Although I have to say, yesterday I sounded about like a fifth grader, and I'd estimate that today I moved all the way up to sixth grade! The intonation is the most difficult part, because I'm not sure of which fingerings are totally going to work for where. Though now that there is a team of oboists here who play on my type of instruments, I am going to get a lot more help in that area, as they are familiar with this type. But I still have a lot to work out on my own, and I think singing my part a lot is really going to help.

I didn't practice my part very much at all between yesterday and today. What I did do, however, was to really work on my reading on Baroque oboe, in a fantastically fun way. Eric (cello), Kanad (flute), and I read through some trio sonatas by Telemann and Vivaldi. Stuff that was way more difficult than I should be playing, even with ample time to work on it. But I think I really needed to stretch myself way beyond what I thought I could do to prove that I could do it. And I really do think it helped enormously in chamber music today - I was MUCH less worried about the notes, and could exert more of my brain power thinking about the groupings and cadences. (WEAK CADENCES, LINDSEY, STOP SLAMMING INTO THEM.) Ahem.

I do need to open my ears more now. No excuses! I'm way too much in my own little bubble. Actually, funnily enough, I'd say I'm listening really, really well to the gamba and harpsichord, way more than I usually listen to harmony and bass. Which is awesome! But oddly, not listening so much to the violin, the character I am supposed to be in conversation with! Usually, all I hear is the treble/melody! So again, this should be an easy thing for me to do, now that I have noticed and reflected on it. Observe, observe. No judging.

Oh, I must write a little bit about the concert, shall I? It went really well! Marc was very proud of us. The warm up with him was really rough, but I hadn't warmed up at all and was not mentally in a calm, relaxed, focused state. But we weren't going to play for another two hours...that's right, the chamber concert was four hours long. So I had plenty of time in the real warm up room to get myself right in line. Played for about ten minutes or so, lots of open, relaxed G's and D's, some scales, checking some spots. Then did some meditation, some Alexander (rolling down and up, shoulder moves). Hung out a few minutes longer, warmed up for the final time, this time playing some chord tones with Heike for tuning purposes.

I was. Nervous? This was very bizarre. Understandable, I suppose, considering I had been playing this new instrument for four days, and now all of the sudden I am about to go onstage and perform on it for the first time in front of a ton of experienced Baroque players. I haven't been nervous for an oboe performance...ever, actually. I've definitely gotten nervous for certain auditions, but never for a performance. But it was nothing unmanageable, and definitely didn't affect my performance very much at all.

But we were so cute in our matching outfits (black shoes, skirts, and BPI tshirts) and so smiley and laughing that they LOVED us. We were out the green room door and someone came in yelling for us to back on stage, they were still applauding! Not too many people got double applause! I think they also were very appreciative of the fact that we were real beginners at the instrument. Our bows were VERY well coordinated. Best bows of the concert I would say.

Other recent highlights include the faculty concert. Marc really rocked the Bach aria solos, totally stole the show away from the vocalist, poor thing. I mean, in my opinion. My friend Annie, who I spent seven weeks at Banff with last summer, is here this week (she goes to Oberlin and is a counselor for the flute institute), so that's been very exciting. Went to Olive Garden yesterday! Have been going out at night and hanging at Eric's house a lot with lots of people, probably should be getting more sleep. Tried Woodchuck's Spring cider, has aftertaste of maple syrup. Would highly recommend it. Even sweeter than the other ciders though, so be warned. Kanad and I have been very artistic in our refrigerator poetry - there's lots of word magnets on the fridge in the dorm kitchen.

Those seem like the most important bits! I'll certainly re-update if I remember anything else I feel is essential.