Taking Care of Business

Hello again!  My deepest apologies for my unintentional absence over the last few months.  School has been keeping me busy and it's hard to make time for blogging when most of the day is absorbed with practicing and writing papers for my classes.  This particular topic has been floating around in my head for a while and I finally decided to make time for it.

Taking Care of Business.  I mean exactly what you think I mean.  All too often in the field of music, people think that their talent is all that matters.  People skills aren't important and it doesn't really matter if you show up late and don't turn in paperwork on time.

LIES

I am sorry, my friends, but this simply does not work in the real world. It is unfortunate, but the field of classical music no longer operates in a manner that allows you to depend solely on your musical abilities.  Your musicianship may win you a job, but it is your people skills that will keep you in that position.  No one wants to work with someone who is unreliable.  There are far more musicians in the world now than there are positions for them to fill.  Every time you show up late to a lesson, rehearsal, or performance, you show your fellow musicians that you simply do not value their time.  Why would they ever hire you again when they can find someone who is equally qualified who will be respectful of their fellow musicians' time? 

This is equally true if you have to miss a rehearsal or performance for any reason (emergency or otherwise).  Do not EVER expect to get another call from an employer if you simply do not show up for something for which you have been hired to play.  Communicate with your personnel manager ASAP about the issue so they can find someone to take your place either temporarily or for the remainder of the gig.  If you are still in school, arrange for a fellow student to cover your part for you and communicate this with your conductor(s).  You hurt everyone in the ensemble when you fail to take responsibility for your music, whether you are playing it yourself or not.
 
I feel like this is a silly thing to point out, but for goodness' sake, learn your music!  Not spending time on your music outside of rehearsal is the number one way to show that you don't care.  Listen to recordings so you know how your part fits with the ensemble.  You should not be surprised when a major solo shows up in your music, especially if you are not in the principal role.  Spend time playing through your part so that when it comes to rehearsal time, you are not the cause of wasted rehearsal time.  Rehearsals are where everyone comes together to work on performing the work as a whole.  They do NOT exist to be your personal practice time. 

Be organized and responsible.  This is particularly relevant for the realm of academia.  Teaching requires us to do much more than simply teach.  Even if you only teach private lessons from your home, the level of your organization can greatly impact the impression that your students have of you.  Keep good records of your students' weekly assignments as well as the associated financial information.  As a student, it would always frustrate me when a teacher did not remember what music on which I was working.  It made it obvious to me that they did not care enough about my education to be bothered with keeping records.  If you know you have a terrible memory, make a spreadsheet for each student that allows you to keep track of their weekly assignments as well as long term goals and projects.  Technology can be extremely useful in this regard, as long as we remember to utilize it to its fullest capacity.  When working in academia, completing paperwork before deadlines is particularly important because you are typically not the only person that is affected by potential tardiness.  Your failure to complete paperwork on time could possibly effect your students' abilities to graduate on time.

You may not like a rule, process, or person, but we still have to learn to work with them instead of fighting against the system.  You certainly do not have to behave like an automaton and behave like a lemming, but you also have to be able to follow established procedures regardless of whether you agree with them or not.  You may not like your supervisor, section leader, professors, private instructor, or conductors, but if you don't want to establish a reputation as a troublemaker, it is best to just go with the established flow.  Recognize that you are not in charge of things and deal with it.  We do not always get what we want in life.  A reputation is something that is very easy to establish and extremely difficult to change.  Once you earn the reputation of being someone who will not follow the rules and does not respect authority, you might as well just change your profession completely.  I know many people who refused to work with the system and now cannot get a job as either a teacher or performer.  There are simply too many of us out there that are just as talented musically but are far easier to work with.  Why would someone hire a troublemaker when they can hire someone who is equally talented but with a much more pleasant personality?

Basically, all of this information comes down to one thing:  every decision you make can impact your career.  You are free to make any decision that you like.  Just remember that you are also free to deal with the consequences of those decisions.  There is always someone else who is more talented than you, practicing harder than you, with whom people want to work.  It is your choice whether to be the person that just gets the job, or the person who gets the job and can keep it.

Hello again!

Hello!  How's it going?

I just wanted to post a little something here so you all know that I haven't abandoned you.  Things have been going very well with my first semester of my DMA.  My playing has dramatically improved already and I constantly feel as if my brain is oozing out of my ears from everything that I need to do.  It's rather awesome :).  I'm studying with the fabulous Rick Todd here at UM and I am absolutely 100% positive that I chose the right person with which to work in order to fix my problem areas with horn playing.  For a few weeks I felt as if I was stuck in the 6th grade again because everything that I was (and still am) working on was fundamentals.  Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals.  My whole concept of producing a beautiful horn sound has been retooled and I'm so much better for it.

I plan on posting a few things once the semester wraps up here at the beginning of December.  I've been working on a couple of projects for classes and I really want to share some of the work that I've done.  I'm taking an ethnomusicology class that provides an overview of some of the different musics of Africa.  It's been a fascinating experience and has completely changed how I look at music from around the world.  My iTunes and Spotify collections have dramatically increased thanks to this class.  I'm working on a biography of sorts on a South African singer named Miriam Makeba, so I'll be posting that here when it's finished.  I'm also writing a paper on Mozart and his compositional style for solo horn (as opposed to his orchestral horn parts).  At the very least, I'll post here a biography of Joseph Leutgeb and his relationship with Mozart throughout his career.

Hang in there with me folks!  I'll be back soon!

Beginning of the Season Survival Guide

A new school year and season is upon us at last! As we once again throw ourselves head first into the seemingly bottomless pit of practicing, rehearsals, and performances, I have a few simple tips to help start things off on the right foot:

1. Hydrate
Water.  Drink it.  Drink lots of it.  Your body stands a much better chance of proper recovery if  it is not also fighting dehydration.  Be careful of your caffeine intake as well, as it will only dehydrate you further.  I feel slightly hypocritical saying that because of my own, sometimes desperate, need for coffee.  However, I also fully admit that my playing has the tendency to improve when I stop taking it intravenously.

2. Eat well
Lay off the junk and fatty fast food.  Yes, it's convenient, but the over abundance of salt and fat in these foods will only sap your energy and exacerbate any dehydration (see item 1).  Eat more fruits and veggies, lay off the salty snacks, choose lean meats over fatty ones, and make sure to eat 3 regular meals a day.  Skipping meals and eating poorly makes us lethargic and inhibits our body's ability to properly recover.

3.  Sleep
I have already covered this topic more in depth in another post, so I won't bore you too much.  We need sleep to recover.  Rest your mind and your body.  Exhaustion will only lead to ineffective practice and performance.

4. Balance
Be sure to balance your practice time.  We are not super heroes.  You will get much more out of practice sessions that cover a wide range of fundamentals, etudes, excerpts, and solo work than you will out of just playing Strauss 2 straight down for 3 hours a day.  Not only is that an ineffective use of your playing time, but no one who hears you is impressed.  Any time I hear someone trying to practice this way (the Strauss 2 method), my first response is not, "Wow! That's impressive!"  It's typically, "Wow.  You're an idiot."

5. Breathe
Run, or participate in some other aerobic exercise, regularly.  Do "Breathing Gym" exercises every morning to jump start your focus on your air.  Take up yoga to learn how to focus on your breathing. Take a 5 minute time out sometime during the day to take a few deep, cleansing breaths to relax.  Air is our friend and it's completely free.  Use as much of it as you want.

To play or to sleep? That is the question.

 Last week I had the privilege of being a part of the lab-band for the Messiah College Conducting Symposium for their Masters in Conducting program.  This entailed being at 3, 4 hour rehearsals Wednesday-Friday to work with 12(?) different student conductors on varying literature in addition to playing a concert of the repertoire on Friday night.  Between the rehearsals, working 8 hour shifts at my day job, running, private lessons, and marching band rehearsals, there was barely enough time left over to eat and squeeze in 5 hours of sleep each night.  Needless to say, I was exhausted by the end and my playing certainly suffered for it.

I think most performers realize that sacrifices must be made in order to pursue our craft.  We give up time with our families and friends in order to practice and perform, we won't see a new movie for months because we're saving for some small, yet exorbitantly priced, piece of equipment, we skip meals when we don't have time to eat between rehearsals, and we skimp on sleep when we overload our schedules.  Unfortunately, we tend to give up food and rest (the 2 things we need the most)  more often than anything else in the name of practicing or making it to another rehearsal.  Or at least I do.  I certainly cannot speak for everyone, but I know that I'm not alone in this.  There have been countless times when I chose to practice instead of taking a much needed nap.  Sleeping is what gives our bodies a chance to recover from the daily grind.  We can rest our minds with television or books, but our bodies only go into full-out recovery mode when we're asleep.  Playing an instrument requires strength and flexibility in the large muscle groups of our shoulders and backs, as well as the smaller muscles of the face, arms, and hands.  It is easy to forget that these muscles need to rest after playing just as much as a body builder must balance their workouts with rest.  Overuse of any muscle without rest leads only to fatigue of the muscle in question.  Proper rest as well as proper nutrition are key elements of building strength.

Playing for hours on end, day in and day out, wears out our muscles.  I am unaware of any instrument that requires only large muscle groups to perform (although I certainly may be unaware of one).  Strings require extensive use of the small muscles of the hand and wind players abuse the delicate muscles of the face.  Unfortunately for us, the smaller muscles are much more difficult to repair than the larger ones.  Every body builder will tell you that you have to eat and sleep well in addition to building low-impact workouts into your routine in order to effectively build strength and flexibility.  It is important to remember that musicians are small-muscle athletes.  These rules apply to us as well, whether we like it or not.  Next time you are presented with the choice of sleeping or playing, if you feel tired at all, try taking a nap.  Chances are good that it will benefit you more than continuing to abuse your body with more practice.

Excerpts (and transposition) for beginners

I recently decided that it was time for one of my high school students to finally learn an excerpt or two.  I had never had a student advanced enough to even remotely consider this before, so I took to Facebook to ask for some thoughts on the subject from my Horn playing peeps.  I had my own thoughts on the subject, as well as particular excerpts in mind, but I was curious about what kind of feedback I would receive.  Some of the more standard answers I received were: "Start with Tchaik 5 to learn about phrasing," "The Finale from 'Firebird' since it's short," and, of course, "Freebird."  I knew that my hands were slightly tied with this student because, while I wanted her to start learning some of our amazing orchestral rep, we haven't yet broached the subject of transposition.  And somewhat unfortunately, at least in this case, there aren't very many major excerpts that are both written in F and attainable enough for a high schooler.  Let's just say that Heldenleben isn't going to happen any time soon.

Then I had a friend make the suggestion that I should ask this student what she would like to play, and then choose alternate excerpts that were related, if necessary.  If she wanted to play "Heldenleben" have her instead start with the tutti horn passage from "Don Juan."  If she chose Brahms 1, transpose the part for her.  The ultimate goal was to introduce her to some of the orchestral repertoire that she had not yet experienced on her own.  As is the case for many high school instrumentalists, her school does not have an orchestra program and the area youth orchestra rehearsals conflict with marching band season.  If she was going to learn anything from the orchestral repertoire, we were going to have to get creative.  I come from the school of horn playing that does not use transposed parts, period.  In my mind, if a composer wrote something for horn in D, I play the part written for horn in D.  I was so stuck in this mentality that I had lost sight of the ultimate goal for my student.  At her age, it doesn't matter so much if the part is transposed for horn in F, or into another key entirely, if it helps her learn some of the basics of the repertoire.  Make it clear that they are not playing the original part in the original key.  Our students are much smarter than we give them credit for.  They will understand your reasons for making changes to the part and even appreciate the lengths that you are willing to go to help them start learning some of our "big" literature.

Giving them a transposed part is also a great way to introduce them to transposition.  Transcribe all 3 parts to the Beethoven 3 Trio into horn in F.  Give them a week or two to learn the parts as written in F, then give them the original parts written in E-flat.  At this point I start talking about different ways that people can approach transposition (i.e. thinking in broad terms of the key signature vs. intervallic relationships between pitches vs. a combo of the two) and I hand them a C major scale in whole notes.  Then we dive in head first and see if they can swim.  Just like everything else we do on the horn, transposition just takes practice.  It can be scary at first and very uncomfortable for beginners, but we all manage to get the hang of it in the end.  Once they've managed to work their way through a few scale patterns in E-flat, go back to Beethoven 3, confiscate their F horn parts, and ask them to prepare the original parts in E-flat.  They may freak out about it, or they could happily embrace the challenge.  Either way, they'll learn it and they'll probably feel an incredible sense of accomplishment when they do.  Many instruments use transposition in some capacity, but rarely does anyone use it to the extent that horn players do.  It's one of our "special" skills that marks us uniquely as horn players and it's always fun to welcome a student to the "club" of transposition.

Overtones and Harmonics

About 3 weeks ago I started an e-mail conversation about overtones and harmonics from a musician's perspective that ended up being rather enjoyable for me.  My mother is a high school chemistry and forensic science teacher (who at one point also taught physics).  One of her physics teaching colleagues was about to start teaching a section on harmonics and overtones and was curious about the subject as musicians see it.  He knew that mom had a daughter who was a musician, she put him in contact with me, and here we are.  Ultimately he asked me if I could watch the following video on YouTube and just give him some observations from the viewpoint of a musician:




I watched the video and was particularly struck by how differently physicists and musicians think about sound.  In the grand scheme of things, sounds waves are a very abstract section of physics.  Many of the other subjects that are studied in physics can be seen by the naked eye.  We can see gravity at work, centripetal force, momentum, etc. without needing any special equipment.  Sound waves cannot be seen; just heard.  Scientists came up with drawings and diagrams long ago in order to give sound a more visual approach.  Assigning numbers to the different aspects of sound (i.e. frequency, amplitude, wavelength, etc) also makes it a much more tangible concept.  Musicians definitely have to keep all of these things in mind while we play, but we also tend to avoid thinking too heavily about most of this information simply because it can get in the way.

Before I go any further, I just want to say two things:

1) I am not a physicist.  Everything that I say here has either been verified by my mother or her colleagues as being accurate or I was able to verify the information with websites made available by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Princeton University.  These are all conclusions and paraphrasings of my own.

2) This is what I was taught.  I am also coming at all of this from the perspective of a brass player.  I briefly discuss harmonics as applicable to string players, but I don't stay on that subject long, seeing as I am not a string player myself.  If string players have any corrections to make, please let me know and I will be happy to make corrections.  I am certainly doing my best to not convey incorrect information.  Much of this is information taught to me by musicians combined with my own knowledge of physics, as verified by actual physics teachers.  If you believe that anything I say here to be incorrect, please provide me with a reputable source that contradicts me and I am happy to revise my research.  You just disagreeing with me doesn't count.  I need something in print that has been peer reviewed in order to consider any revisions.

After reviewing the video embedded above, this is what I sent in response:

"I finally had a chance to watch the video (which was great, by the way) and I was actually kind of amused by my train of thoughts as I listened and watched.  I kept hearing myself say things like "That's an octave" and "That's the fifth above it" (speaking in terms of the tonal intervals from the fundamental pitch).  It was particularly amusing to think about how differently scientists and musicians approach the physics of sound.  The scientists like to think in numbers and pictures, whereas musicians think in terms of the sounds (or soundwaves) themselves. 

As I said in my last e-mail, musicians will use the terms "Overtones" and "Harmonics" interchangeably to a certain degree.  And in many cases, they are the same thing.  It's one of those situations where all harmonics are overtones, but not all overtones are actually harmonics, at least in the mathematical sense. We have overtones that naturally occur in an extremely out-of-tune form in relation to the fundamental, so they don't always fit in a neat little box.  I play this thing:

When I blow into the mouthpiece, my lips vibrate and create a "buzz" sound that is amplified by the instrument (it's really just a really fancy and expensive funnel when you think about it properly).  As a brass player I am much more aware of the tendencies of the natural overtone series because the entire function of my instrument depends on it.  Without using any of the 4 keys available to me, I can play any of the following notes at any point in time without changing anything except for the speed of the lip vibration:

Which valve (if any) I have depressed determines which harmonic series is available to me because each valve combination changes the fundamental of the instrument (there are 12 different fundamentals, therefore 12 different sets of overtones [some instruments are instead restricted to 7]).  You can kind of see on the staff above where things start to get a little hairy and the overtones stop following the mathematical rules.  Each bracket is highlighting an interval between 2 pitches and each one is labelled with the kind and quality of the interval between the 2 pitches.  The higher you get, the more adjectives are needed to describe the intervals because they no longer follow the math.  In order to play these pitches in tune with the fundamental, I have to actively bend the pitch one way or another (speed up or slow down the vibration) or use a different partial from another overtone series with a different fundamental.  Granted, I try to not think too hard about any of this when I'm actually playing.  That's a lot of information to have to process when you only have a half a millisecond to figure out what you're supposed to be playing next.  I'd lose my mind.

Back to the video....

So when he was describing/drawing each of the harmonics, I was sitting here thinking "2nd harmonic, 1st overtone, that's just an octave." "3rd harmonic, 2nd overtone.  That's the fifth above that." etc.  This also reminded me of the fact that string players have a completely different idea of what harmonics are compared to brass players.  By dividing the strings with their finger tip at specific intervals, without completely depressing the string to the finger board, string players have the ability to actively play multiphonics (multiple pitches at once) on a single string.  Dividing the string actually multiplies the fundamental itself, creating a very ethereal sound when only the "pure" harmonics (in-tune overtones) resonate.  It's really pretty cool to hear when it's done well.  When it's not, I suggest running away.

Here's a graphic showing how the strings can be divided to produce these harmonics:

Non-string players can kind of do the same thing, but we can't do it alone.  We need a buddy to produce the second tone for us.  For example:  If 2 horn players play an interval of a perfect fifth, and that perfect fifth is perfectly in tune, the sound waves will actually produce a sympathetic overtone and you can audibly hear the next overtone in the series (a perfect fourth above the top note) as well as the major third above the bottom note being played, making it sound as if there are 3 pitches being played instead of 2.  Other overtones are also present, they are just inaudible to the human ear at the particular frequencies that they occur.

Something else that came to mind during the video was his comment about nodes and open-ended instruments.  I don't believe that woodwind players (flute, clarinet, oboe, etc) are as concerned about nodes as brass players are, or at least as brass players should be.  When the vibrations move through the funnel of a brass instrument, the sound waves bounce back and forth against the inside of the pipes and are amplified as they gradually move from a small area in the lead pipe to the much larger area of the bell of the instrument.  The locations of the nodes change depend on the speed of the vibration, the fundamental being used (valve combination), and the exact overtone being used in that series.  If we get a dent in the body of our instruments, it can drastically change our ability to play in tune because it causes a variation in the placement of the nodes.  The sound waves can no longer move evenly through the instrument, which makes it much more difficult to play accurately."

Hopefully this wasn't too terribly confusing for anyone.  I actually had a fantastic time with the conversations that resulted from all of this over the last few weeks.  All of the graphics used above are courtesy of Wikipedia.

Opera for the Average Idiot #4: Götterdämmerung

aka:

The Ring Cycle: The Conclusion.

Warning:  This is "the long one."  Or rather, "the really long one."  Or as some people know it, "the really really REALLY long one."  I'm about to condense 4 1/2 hours of opera into something more manageable.  Wish me luck. If I'm not back in 5 minutes, just wait longer.

We last left our heroes cursing the Gods, inbreeding (Aunt Brünnhilde and Nephew Siegfried), and generally setting themselves on a course of doom and destruction.

Or as the Norse called it, Ragnarok. (click here for more info on this mythological event)

Prologue
The scene opens with the Norns (daughters of Erda. Kin of like the Fates from Greek mythology.  Kind of.) weaving the rope of destiny as they sit around the rock where Brünnhilde had been laying in her ring of fire.  While they sing of the future, where Wotan burns all of Valhalla to the ground, the rope suddenly breaks.  Disappointed, they leave.

Brünnhilde and Siegfried make their first appearance, after having what we can only assume was copious amounts of sex.  She sends him off to do heroic deeds and asks him to remember their love.  He gives her the ring that he took from Fafnir (see Opera for the Average Idiot #3 for more details) as a token of his love, takes her shield and her horse, and rides off to do herioc type things.

Insert a fabulous orchestral interlude here as we transition to Act I proper.  This is also where we get the "Short Call," which is Siegfried's leitmotif throughout all 4 operas.  Listen for it around the 5 minute, 55 second mark of this video:





Act I

We find ourselves in the hall of the Gibichungs, somewhere near the Rhine river.  King Gunther is confronted by his half-brother, Hagen, who tells him that he (Gunther) needs to find Hagen a wife and their sister Gutrune a husband.  Naturally, Hagen suggests that Brünnhilde would be perfect for him and Siegfried would be perfect for Gutrune.  Why not, right?  We then learn that Gutrune has a love potion that she could use on Siegfried to make him forget all about his pledge of love to Brünnhilde.

Conveniently enough, Siegfried shows up while out and about on his quest to do heroic-type-things.  Gunther extends his hospitality, and his sister, who give Siegfried a drink containing the love potion.  Siegfried toasts to his love for Brünnhilde, drinks the potion, forgets Brünnhilde, and falls madly in love with Gutrune.

(gif source)

Now that Seigfried is single again, he offers to find a wife for his future brother-in-law (Gunther).  Gunther tells him of a maiden asleep, surrounded by a ring of fire that only someone who is fearless can cross (Sound familiar...?).  He and Gunther swear blood brotherhood and head off to find Brünnhilde's rock.  Hagen does not partake of the swearing of blood brotherhood, preferring to remain on guard duty as he sings of how they are unwittingly bringing the Ring to him.

"Myyyyyyy prrrrrreciousssssssss......"

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
Brünnhilde has a visitor in the form of her sister Waltraute (another Valkyrie), who brings her the news that Wotan has officially given up.  He has barricaded himself inside of Valhalla and is waiting for the end of the world, rather than trying to actually do something about it.

Waltraute asks Brünnhilde to give the Ring back to the Rhinemaidens (remember Das Rheingold from way back when?) to end the madness.  Being the selfish thing that she is, Brünnhilde refuses to give up the Ring since her Siggy gave it to her as a token of his love.  Waltraute gives up and leaves.  Enter Siegfried wearing the Tarnhelm, which makes him look like Gunther.  He (as Gunther) claims her as his wife and she fights him because she is still in love with Siegfried.  He tackles her, takes the Ring from her, and places it on his own finger.

Act II
This act returns us to the land of the Gibichungs where we find Hagen by the Rhine.  He is suddenly visited by his father, who is, surprisingly, the dwarf Alberich!!! We thought we had left this bastard behind in Das Rheingold, but nooooooooooooooo.....that would be too easy.  You guessed it, he's still after the Ring and he gets his son to swear that he will kill our hero and get the ring back for his father. Siegfried, Gunther, and Brünnhilde return and Brünnhilde is shocked to see that Siegfried is wearing the Ring, not Gunther who she had heretofore thought was the one who conquered her.

Brünnhilde to Siegfried: "You seduced and betrayed me!!"
S to B: "Did not!"
B to S: "Did too!"
S to B: "Did not!"
B to S: "Did too!"
S to B: "I swear on this spear that Hagen is conveniently holding, that I did not!"
B to S: "I swear on the same spear that Hagen is conveniently holding that you did!"

Unbeknownst to us, but knownst to our heroes, if an oath is sworn upon a weapon and the oath is broken, the owner of the weapon must kill the person who broke the oath.

Hellooooooooo foreshadowing.....

Siegfried heads off to the wedding feast with Gutrune.  Gunther agrees with Hagen that Siegfried must die for the insult he has given to Brünnhilde.  Brünnhilde is pretty damn pissed off at her former beau by now and she reveals to the conspirators that they can kill Siegfried if they stab him in the back.

Act III
subtitled:
DEATH!!! DOOM!!! DESTRUCTION!!!

We return to the banks of the Rhine where the Rhinemaidens are still mourning the loss of the Rhinegold (yes, three operas later, they are still in mourning).  Siegfried walks by after being separated from a hunting party and they beg him to return the Ring. He refuses and tells them that he would rather die than give it up.

Oh look....our good friend foreshadowing...nice to see you again....

(gif source)
Siegfried rejoins the hunters and starts telling stories of his childhood while everyone rests by the river.  Hagen gives him a drink containing a potion that restores his memories and he tells the tale of how he found Brünnhilde and woke her with a kiss.  Suddenly, Wotan's ravens do a fly-over, distracting Siegfried long enough for Hagen to stab him in the back.  Remember that Siegfried swore on Hagen's spear in Act II that he did not seduce/betray Brünnhilde.  Hagen was honor-bound to kill him for breaking that oath.  The hunting party carries Siegfried in a funeral procession back to the Gibichung Hall.

(scene dissolve)

The procession arrives at the Gibichung Hall where Gutrune is waiting for Siegfried.  Gunther blames Hagen for Siegfried's death.

Hagen defends his actions by reminding everyone of Siegfried's broken oath and he claims the Ring by right of conquest.  Gunther tries to stop him but Hagen attacks and kills his brother easily.  Hagen goes to take the Ring and Siegfried's hand moves in a threatening manner.  Hagen is startled and Gutrune dies.  Why not, right?

Brünnhilde makes a sufficiently dramatic entrance and orders a funeral pyre to be built by the river.  She then takes the ring from Siegfried's hand and summons the Rhinemaidens.  She tells them to take the Ring from her ashes when she is gone as the fire should cleanse the Ring of the curse.  Her final act is to send Wotan's ravens to Valhalla with a message of their impending doom.  She mounts her horse, Grane, and rides into her own funeral pyre.

I give you.....the end of the world.

The Gibichung Hall burns down.  The Rhine overflows.  The Rhinemaidens take back the Ring.  Hagen decides to be a complete idiot and goes after the Rhinemaidens to get the Ring.  They drown him.  There was much rejoicing from the Rhinemaidens (yay!).  The scene closes as we see Valhalla glowing brightly in the distance as all of the Gods are burnt to a crisp.

The End


Congratulations!!! You made it to the end!  I suppose I could have saved you even more time by simply saying that everyone dies at the end, but where would the fun be in that?? 

(gif source)

(gif source)
Now, if you don't mind, I think I have earned a drink after this one.

Slate.com article: My Response

 As I'm sure many of you are at this point aware, there was a rather ill-informed and offensive article posted on slate.com earlier this week stating that "classical music is dead."  (Click here to read the full article on slate.com)  I have been contemplating a response to the the author's comments for a few days but was having a difficult time moving beyond the extreme anger inspired by the article in order to formulate coherent thoughts on the subject.  And I was also trying to avoid resorting to simply calling the author a "jerk-face" or "ass-hat."  You know, at least make it somewhat apparent that at one point in my life I graduated Summa Cum Laude and earned a Master's degree.

Luckily, another blogger (Andy Doe, of properdischord.com.  I very highly recommend following him) took it upon himself to write a response that gave a voice to my thoughts and feelings beautifully.

PLEASE go here to read Andy's spectacular response to the the offending piece.

There's only one thing I would add as a response to the author of the Slate.com article:  Thank you.  Thank you for so blatantly offending me and bashing what I do for a living.  I really appreciate how easy you found it to declare classical music to be dead when most of your cited facts either supported the idea that support for classical music is increasing, or they came from looking at the number of "likes" on Facebook.  Last time I checked, Facebook is not a viable source of unbiased information, nor is it likely to represent a sufficiently diverse enough population to give much credibility to the number of "likes" actually counting as an unbiased survey.  Thank you for insulting how I have spent the last 20 years of my life and for declaring those 20 years to essentially be a waste of my time.  Thank you for being so willing to assume that classical music has no place in the world of today.  You all too easily declare that it belongs only to the elderly, yet here I am, under the age of 30 and completely in love with performing and listening to music from over 100 years ago.  I definitely find it preferable to most of the disposable crap that's being produced today.  Classical music will never die as long as we are here to fight you for it.  Arts funding will never disappear as long as we fight for it.  Orchestras will never die as long as we fight for them.  It is clear that you do not care for classical music yourself and therefore have no problem with writing it off as deceased.  Be sure that you do not mistake your own opinion for fact, and the fact is, classical music is not dead.  And as long as I have breath in my body to fight for it, it never will be.

Tonguing. Just Do It!

I apologize ahead of time if this post comes across as more than mildly frustrated...

I'm finding more and more that there are far too many high school horn players that have no idea how to articulate anything other than a slur. They use a "huh" attack on anything that does not have a slur marked on it, and they think that this is correct.  Some of them are even proud of their so-called ability to articulate in this manner.  Are they really not taught how to tongue properly before they reach their high school years?  Being married to a band director places me in a position where I am fully aware that we absolutely cannot hold band and orchestra directors solely responsible for this problem.  When you have 70+ students all playing different instruments at the same time, it's impossible to correct every single technique issue that may arise with your students.  If the student doesn't make it glaringly obvious in rehearsal, they can glide through 4 years of high school and their teacher could never know there was a problem.  There comes a point where you have to trust that your students are retaining at least some of the information that you try to impart to them each day.  That being said, there is a distinct difference between knowing how to tongue and choosing to not do so properly (i.e. laziness) and actually not knowing how to tongue.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have always been under the impression that tonguing is one of the most basic skills that is required of wind instrumentalists (brass and woodwind alike).  Air, buzz, tongue.  Our primary tools.  Whilst on my eternal mission to get my students to practice their fundamentals, I have been compiling the following mental list of ways to help them articulate:

-  Say "tah" into the horn while you play (I know, "Thank you Captain Obvious." Right?  I'm surprised just how many students cannot do this.)
-  Play a whole note.  Follow it with 4 straight quarter notes using the same air stream as the whole note.  Simply interrupt the whole note with the tongue to create the quarter notes.
-  Pretend to spit out watermelon/pumpkin/sunflower seeds.  Actually spit out watermelon/pumpkin/sunflower seeds.  Apply the same technique to playing.

-  Pick a pitch.  Play it as short as humanly possible at a loud dynamic.  Keeping the note short makes it nearly impossible to start the pitch without the tongue in addition to not allowing time for pitch manipulation.  This can help with pitch accuracy as well if you move around to different pitches.
-  Do the same thing but as softly as possible.
-  Tell them to spit tacks.
-  Don't let them do anything aside from articulation exercises in their lessons for weeks.  They'll do anything to move on to something new.

My request, as a friendly neighborhood private instructor, is that we don't allow our students to "get by" with lazy or lousy tongue technique.  It is a fairly simple concept that can be taught when they are young.  The older your students get, the harder it is to unlearn bad habits.  Especially if they are not often corrected on it.  Demonstrate proper tonguing often and bring it to your students' attention. Emulation is one of my favorite teaching tools with my younger students.  They don't need to think about how to do something.  They can copy anything you do if they just know what they are listening for.

Cross Training

The busy holiday season has struck once again.  Between all of the gigs, the baking, the ugly sweater parties, and the traveling, we still somehow have to find time to practice.  The gigs will certainly help keep us in shape, but since it is rare that those are our only obligations, we are forced to find creative ways to squeeze productive practicing into our busy schedules.  Whether it be from lack of endurance, lack of time, or neighbors who do not appreciate you playing through Mahler 3 at 11:00 at night, there are any number of reasons why we may not be able to practice according to our usual routines.  And let's face it, sometimes we just need a day off from playing to let our bodies rest.  It is times like these that I am a particular fan of productive practicing without playing the instrument itself.

Finger/Air the Music
Much of the time that we spend cleaning technical passages is devoted to coordinating our fingers with our tongues.  Finger through these passages without playing in order to listen for your coordination.  Listen for clean valve changes without being distracted by your sound from the bell.  Finger through while airing the part to improve coordination between fingers and tongue.  There is no need to waste precious endurance when much of your work can be done silently.

Sing/Buzz
Sing or buzz through your parts to ensure that you are hearing the correct pitches and intervals.  Many times when we miss something it is a result of not being able to hear the pitch properly in relation to the surrounding pitches.  If you can sing and/or buzz it (and you're using the correct fingerings/technique), you should have little trouble playing it.

Listen
Take the time to listen to recordings.  Turn on your favorite recordings when you're driving from one party to another and sing along with them (yes, without words).  Familiarity with a work can remove much of the frustration associated with learning something new.  Even if you cannot listen to a specific piece on which you are working, listen to other works by the same composer or another composer of similar compositional style.  Combine listening with a little score study to really maximize your productivity (not while driving, of course).

Practicing tonguing
Practice your multiple tonguing as you walk around.  Many of our coordination issues without "t's" and "k's" are best improved upon away from the instrument anyway.  If your tongue gets tied in knots while double tongue a string of 8th notes on a single pitch, go back to the basics.  Take things slowly and work with just your tongue and a metronome without complicating things by adding an instrument into the mix.

Do nothing
Give your ears, mind, fingers, and body a break.  Instead, read a book, watch a movie, learn to knit, pet a kitty, do yoga, meditate, take a nap, meet a friend for coffee, go for a drive.  Do ANYTHING but think about playing.  We can be so busy and driven that it's easy for us to forget to chill every now and then.  If you don't have time to practice, maybe it's a good time to take a break anyway.  Warm up as you need to in the morning, play your jobs as required, and put the instrument away long enough to recharge your batteries a little.

Read
Take a few minutes to catch up on the latest Horn Call, or another music journal, to see what you've been missing in the horn world.  You may learn something new, or at the very least be reminded of a technique or exercise that you can use in your own playing.

Blog
Writing here is one of the ways that keep myself honest with my playing.  If I have the audacity to advise others to do something, it would be awfully hypocritical of me to not follow my own advice.  Sometimes I realize that I need a little reminder myself and writing it down makes it seem as though the words are coming from an external source.  It's harder to ignore your nagging shoulder angel when anyone can read about it.

Victory

When, in one practice session, you conquer both Beethoven 7 and the Long Call in one shot:

Remembering to Sing

The last few months I've been spending a rather extensive amount of time working on solos and excerpts for upcoming DMA auditions.  Most of the works (all but 1 excerpt to be exact) are from principal parts, directed toward principal players.  This has been mildly problematic for me over the last few weeks considering the fact that I am primarily a low horn specialist.  Yes, we all have to be able to play the full range of the instrument, and yes, I do still need to be able to play all of the excerpts, but some players are built to be principal players full time whereas I most definitely am not.  I am happy to play Don Quixote or Shostakovich 5 all day, every day with no complaints whatsoever.  To give a running comparison, some players are meant to be sprinters (high hornists) and others are meant to run marathons (low hornists).  Sprinters still have to work on their endurance and marathoners have to run sprints to maintain balance in their training.  However, both types of runners still manage to maintain their focus on their individual strengths instead of trying to fit into the mold of being something that they are not.  I had somehow allowed myself to fall into the trap of being a marathoner who was working on her sprints 100% of the time. 

It was actually a colleague of mine who pointed this out to me after I had broached the subject of the frustration that has been building since starting my full-time work on my audition music.  Remembering where your strengths lie is such a simple idea and I had allowed my focus and drive to blind me from it.  The need for technical and mechanical perfection had completely over-ridden the ability to hear and cultivate a beautiful, characteristic, horn sound.  Basically, I had forgotten how to sing.

I mean this in both the literal sense of using my voice to sing as well as the figurative voice that we use to sing through our instruments.  As I drove home after the aforementioned conversation, I realized that I could not remember the last time that I sang along with the radio at the top of my lungs.  My primary source of inspiration for playing a beautiful melody is opera, especially arias in the bel canto style.  While I am certainly not an opera singer myself, I can belt out show tunes with the best of them.  I used to always be singing along with Beauty and the Beast, The Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, or Ragtime, to name a few.  I started singing along with Phantom and was quickly reminded of just how much singing can help your breath support, phrasing, style, vibrato, and so on.  It felt fantastic and it was extremely liberating to rediscover this part of my voice.

The focus on principal solos and excerpts had consumed my practice sessions to the point where I would literally play nothing else outside of my warm-up routine.  It was a much needed reminder that the ultimate reason why we play this instrument is the beautiful sound, not the technical aspects of performance.  I needed to rediscover the sound that I loved.  It was time to slow down on the long tone exercises and use them to perfect my tone rather than as a launch pad to more technical exercises.  Milk the Arnold Jacob "Beautiful Music" exercise for all that it is worth (many thanks, my tuba playing friends).  Play through some of the big movie themes (i.e. Star Wars, Star Trek - new one, Star Trek: First Contact, Jurassic Park, etc.).  I had a particularly splendid time reading through the Rochut trombone Melodious Etudes books as well as the Shoemaker Legato Etudes based on Concone's Vocalises and the back section of the Arban's book for trumpet.  It was an extremely pleasant way to remember why I love to play in the first play.  Air was moving, my sound was returning, and both physical and mental stiffness finally relaxed.

The ultimate lesson that I received from all of this was to remember that there is always time to remember why you play.  No matter how soon or how far away an audition may be, you cannot forget to work on your sound.  The required music will always work as long as you love what you do.  Stiffness, anger, and frustration are some of the biggest barriers that you can face on the road to an audition and you have the power to do something about them.  Trust yourself.  Trust your horn.  Trust your heart.  There is always the time to play something simply for the sake of making music.

Transposition

When you get a part for horn in E, and someone penciled in the wrong transposition through the entire piece...

Opera for the Average Idiot #3 - Siegfried

After extensive inbreeding...

the saga continues....

Siegfried, part III of Wagner's "Ring Cycle"

Act I
Scene I
The scene opens with the dwarf Mime attempting to forge a new sword for his foster son, Siegfried (the son of the brother/sister pair Siegmund and Sieglinde from Die Walkure).  Being the sneaky little bastard that he is, Mime took in Siegfried after Sieglinde's death in order to train him to defeat the dragon Fafnir and win back the Ring.  Siegfried barges in with a live bear that he just defeated.

Siegfried:  "Look at me!  I'm awesome!  I cannot be beaten!  Mime, where is my new sword?"
Mime:  "Here it is.  I've been working on it all day."
Siegfried: *breaks sword*  "This is shit."

Siegfried knows that the only reason he sticks around with Mime is because he wants to know about his parentage.  He forces Mime to tell him all that he knows about his parents, which also leads Mime to show him the broken pieces of his father's sword, Nothung.

Siegfried:  "Fix it for me!"
Mime:  "I am too weak!"
Siegfried:  "Definitely not news to me..." *stomps out of the cave with his temper tantrum*

Scene II
Wotan comes to visit in his guise of the Wanderer.  In exchange for the traditional hospitality that is due to all guests, he challenges Mime to a riddle contest.  Wotan answers correctly all 3 of the questions that Mime asks him ("What is your name?...What is your quest?...What is the capital of Wiseria?"), but Mime still refuses him hospitality.

For the insult, Wotan makes him answer 3 riddles as well:  What is the name of Wotan's favorite race? (the Wolsungs)  What is the name of the sword that can destroy Fafnir? (Nothung)  Who is the person who can reforge the sword?  Mime correctly answers the first 2 questions but misses the third.  Wotan reveals that the sword can only be reforged by "he who must not be named" "he who knows no fear."  He also reveals that this is the same person who will kill Mime.

Scene III
Siegfried returns from his pouting and throws another hissy fit when he learns that Mime has made no progress on reforging Nothung.  Mime realizes that "he who knows no fear" is Siegfried and he scrambles to convince him that he should be afraid of something.  Siegfried decides that he wants to know what fear is about and Mime agrees to take him to see the dragon Fafnir so he can learn.  Siggy gets all excited and decides to repair Nothung on his own.

*insert forging song here* *P.S. it's AWESOME*

 (photo courtesy of Wikipedia)
 While Siegfried belts out his forging song, Mime prepares to poison him once he has the ring in his possession.  Siegfried finishes Nothung and demonstrates the strength of the new blade by slicing an anvil in half.

Act II
Scene I
Both Wotan and the dwarf Alberich show up at Fafnir's cave, Alberich to try to get the ring back, and Wotan wants to observe the shenanigans that are about to ensue.  Wotan wakes up Fafnir from his hibernation for Alberich so he can try to bargain for the ring.

Alberich: "I want the ring back."
Fafnir: "You didn't say the magic word."
Alberich: "Please?"
Fafnir: "Nope."
Alberich: "But someone is coming to kill you for it."
Fafnir: "Bring it on."

And Fafnir goes back to sleep.

Scene II
Siegfried and Mime arrive at the cave and Mime immediately shows his cowardice by leaving Siegfried to face Fafnir alone.  Siegfried decides to befriend a little woodbird sitting in a nearby tree and makes several attempts at carving a reed flute to communicate with her.

*insert the most glorious bassoon/English horn/oboe/clarinet solos EVER*



Failing to produce a reasonable sound, he gives up and switches to playing his horn (The Long Call) to communicate with her. In doing so, he wakes up Fafnir. They argue, they fight, and Siegfried kills the dragon.  With his dying breath, Fafnir warns him to beware of treachery.  Siggy retrieves his sword and accidentally gets some of the dragon's blood on his hand.  He brings his hands to his mouth out of reflex and tastes some of the blood, giving him the ability to understand the speech of animals.  Per the woodbird's instructions, he pulls the ring and the Tarnhelm from the dragon's horde (see: Opera for the Average Idiot #1: Das Rehingold).  Mime reappears and tries to poison our hero, to no avail.  His new-found ability to understand animals helps him understand that he has been betrayed and he kills Mime.  His little bird friend starts singing about a sleeping woman, surrounded by fire, who would make a perfect wife for him, and they head off into the sunset to find her.

Act III
Scene I
The Wanderer wakes up a very confused Erda and proceeds to tell her:

Wanderer:  "I no longer wants to prevent the end of the Gods.  I'm cool with it.  We can leave the world to Siegfried and Brunnhilde."
Erda: "oh...um...sure...whatever you say..."

Erda is dismissed.

Siegfried arrives and unknowingly sasses his grandfather when he is blocked from reaching Brunnhilde.  He breaks Wotan's spear with Nothung and continues on.

Scene II
Siegfried finds the ring of fire and enters to find a figure dressed in armor who he thinks is a man.  He removes the armor and is very surprised to find a woman instead. 

Keep in mind that up to this point in his life, Siegfried has never actually seen a woman.  He chooses this moment to finally be afraid of something (i.e. someone with breasts).  He kisses her out of desperation and wakes her up.




Brunnhilde:  "I love you!"
Siegfried:  "I love you too!  Even though I'm your nephew!"
Brunnhilde:  "Whatever!"

They renounce the world of the gods, and The End.

Bowing and Breathing

Last week I was fortunate enough to be in San Francisco when the SFSO was playing Mahler's Ninth Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas.  Over the last decade the SFSO has very much made a name for themselves with their release of all of the Mahler symphonies with Tilson Thomas conducting.  I've been a fan of those recordings for some time now thanks to the fact that not only are their performances superb but I feel his Mahler interpretation is impeccable.  I was particularly excited to hear the ninth symphony live since it spans the whole gamut of dramatic emotions (anger, excitement, joy, peace, etc).  That kind of work is best experienced in the live setting where the visible energy and intensity of the musicians can greatly influence your perception of the piece.

My seat was in the terrace, right behind the orchestra, less than 10 feet behind the bells of the horns.  As far as I was concerned, there was no better seat in the house.  It was as close as I could get to sitting with the horn section without actually being on stage.  Within the first bar of the 2nd Horn solo at the beginning of the first movement it was painfully obvious to me that it had been several years now since the last time I was able to hear an orchestra of this caliber in person.  It made me long for the time that I lived in Cincinnati a few years ago, when we would go down to Symphony Hall on a weekly basis to hear the CSO for the affordable cost of a student ticket.

Throughout the concert, there were two things that were particularly enrapturing from a visual standpoint:  the bowing of the strings and the breathing of the brass.  Playing as an ensemble is a skill that is often overlooked in our musical training.  So much of our time in school is spent learning how to be a soloist.  Yes, we learn excerpts, and yes, we spend time playing in ensembles, but how much of that time is completely devoted to learning to perform as a cohesive unit?  I feel like the woodwinds and brass have a slight advantage over the rest of the orchestra simply because of the increased emphasis on involvement in multiple ensembles in universities.  Many of your wind instrumentalists are members of both the bands/wind ensembles and orchestras at the same time in addition to any chamber music opportunities.  We also have the tendency to spend drastically more time on excerpts as a required part of our lesson repertoire.  It was an incredible experience to have my breath taken away by the purely visual aspect of watching the strings perform.   Each of the individual string sections were moving in complete synchronization.  Every performer used the bow to its fullest extent.  Down bows.  Up bows.  Every movement happened in exact unison.  All of the string players were playing their individual parts at the top of their individual abilities, and then threw all sense of individual identity out of the proverbial window.  It didn't matter that they were a group of individuals from all different backgrounds and schools of music.  The only thing that was important was to think, move, and perform as a single unit.  It was so enchanting to watch that you could have completely muted every sound coming from the stage and the performance would have been just as enthralling to observe.

The breathing of the brass section was just as mesmerizing, but more from an aural standpoint than visual.  Every attack was precisely together using the same style and articulation.  As impressive as that was, I was moved even more by the precision of their releases.  Every performer played the end of every statement and phrase the exact same way as the rest of their compatriots.  There was not a single release where someone would breathe out of sync with the rest of the section.  Every phrase was seemingly approached with the idea that the end is always the goal and is therefore the most important part.  The releases became the most awe inspiring aspect of the entire concert.  Individual identities were gone and nothing was more important than sharing and utilizing a single musical mind.  The communication that can occur silently in the span of a single breath was mind boggling to observe.  It was as if I had been specially invited to observe a sacred ritual.  This kind of performance cannot be captured in a "canned" recording.  The amount of editing that occurs on modern albums completely eliminates these magical moments that can only be observed and felt during a live performance.

My re-inspiration.  That's what I'm calling this concert.  This performance gave me back some of the spark that had been missing from my own playing for quite a while now.  I had forgotten what it really felt like to be a part of a larger whole, the bigger picture, or whatever you want to call it.  We get stuck in our practice rooms playing the same music the same ways over and over again and it is too easy to lose sight of the amazing things that can be accomplished when we belong to an ensemble.  I am not trying to belittle soloist or solo work at all.  There is simply a level of enlightenment that can be attained when you give up your individual musical self in order to achieve the musical and mental harmony that can only be found when truly playing as an ensemble.

Finding your Focus

We often forget just how much of the quality of a performance is based on our ability to maintain focus.  Music is a mental game.  Just like a chess champion trains to out maneuver their opponent, we must train to out maneuver our minds.  The mind is a fickle thing.  If we are constantly concerned about our "shoulder angels" telling us what to do or think, we can easily be distracted from maintaining our focus on what we are physically doing here and now.  I've always found Yoda from the Star Wars franchise to be a particularly apt music teacher.  Before agreeing to train Luke in "The Empire Strikes Back," he comments on how "All his life has he looked away...to the future, to the horizon.  Never his mind on where he was.  Hmm?  What he was doing."  This is a perfect example of how our minds are prone to wandering.  We worry incessantly about superfluous things instead of focusing on what we are playing this moment.  Our shoulder angels are constantly whispering to us as we perform: Damn! I missed that again!, I always have trouble with that passage, Don't screw up!, and so on.  This stream of discouragements force us to avert our concentration away from what we are actually doing in each moment of a performance. 

I am the last person to advise any kind of micro management of muscles as we play because it will only lead to getting so tangled up in ourselves that we cannot move.  Analysis paralysis can be fatal to any performance when too much  thinking occurs.  The kind of focus that I am referring to  pertains to concentrating on only one thing at a time, such as: allowing your body to stay relaxed, concentrating solely on what your air is doing, ensuring that your fingers are moving at the appropriate speed, etc.  The busy society in which we live has convinced us that we must multi-task in order to be considered successful.  Smart phones, tablets, and other electronic devices are supposedly designed to streamline our lives so we have more time for other pursuits.  Unfortunately, they also have taught us to depend on a constant stimulus.  It seems to be increasingly more difficult for people to be comfortable with concentrating on only one thing at a time.  Instead we listen to music, while using an e-reader, while talking on the phone, all while we drive from one life event to another.  We are determined to find success by our ability to check things off of our to-do lists, regardless of the quality of the work we perform.  Focusing on one thing at a time, and being comfortable with focusing on only one thing, is a skill that requires us to work our mental muscles in the same way we work our embouchures, arms, fingers, and voices when we perform.  Focus must be practiced daily in order to stay in shape.


Tips for finding your ability to focus

1. Turn off the TV/Phone/Computer/Tablet/E-reader.
Yes.  All of those little (or not so little) devices have an on/off switch.  Use it.  Many of us fall into the comfortable trap of watching TV while we practice.  Warm up routines are almost perfectly built for distraction, especially if it is a routine that one has used for years.  We get to a point where we go through the motions simply because that's the way we've always done things.  It's so easy to turn on the baseball game, the DVR, or Netflix to help pass the time while we go through those motions.  Then we finish our warm up and we're in the middle of a movie or TV show.  Rather than turn off the TV we decide to leave it running while we "practice" our solos, etudes, or excerpts.  Instantly, our attention is divided.  How are you supposed to actually pay attention to your breathing when you're more concerned with how the Cardinals/Pirates game is going (go Cards!)?  The answer is, you can't.  Our minds are not designed to be able to concentrate fully on two different activities at once.  The moment you try to multi-task, your attention is divided in half for each activity.  Not only did you just play through a piece without actually fixing anything, but you still have no idea what is going on in the game anyway.  Turn off the electronics and give your practicing a fighting chance.

2.  Set immediate and attainable goals.
There was a spectacular article written for The Bulletproof Musician last month here: http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/two-things-experts-do-differently-than-non-experts-when-practicing/

The article discusses two things that experts do differently than non-experts while practicing.  The author cited a study done by two researchers at the City University of New York that compared basketball players, specifically the best free throw shooters to the worst.  The study found that the top free throw shooters set specific goals for everything they practiced, such as keeping their elbows tucked in while shooting, instead of their weaker counterparts who set much broader goals along the lines of simply making the shot.  We can and should do the same thing in our own practice.  Rather than telling yourself, "Don't mess up," decide how you are actually going to not "mess up."  Set the goal of cleaning the movement of your valves.  Work on the the coordination between your tongue and your air so they work together.  Play with a drone pitch to concentrate on improving your intonation.  There are countless goals that you can set to improve your ability to perform any piece of music.  Choose one at a time and clean, clean, clean.  If you continually miss something, determine the specific reason why you miss.  If your answer is just that you suck, you'll always be stuck playing the same thing the exact same way, always missing.  Break things down and use the process of elimination.  Was my tongue getting in the way?  Were my fingers coordinated?  Did I choke off my air supply?  How was my air speed?  Find the specific source of the problem and set about fixing it.

3.  Leave yourself reminders.
The sticky note.  My favorite practice tool.  Sometimes I'm convinced that I single-handedly keep the Post-It company in business.  Pick your favorite color of sticky note and be prepared to use them.  You may laugh at yourself when you open a book to find your lime green sticky note reminding you to breathe, but I can guarantee that you will definitely be focused on your breathing when you work on that etude.  Sometimes we just need that external prodding to do something, even if we have to do it ourselves.

4.  Get physical.
Start running.  Do yoga.  Take up Tai Chi.  Sign up for a Zumba class.  Physical activity is a fantastic way to teach yourself to focus on one thing at a time.  I do actually recommend against the gym setting for achieving this.  Most of your gyms have televisions all over the place and are designed to entertain the gym users who are easily bored by working out.  Running outside or taking a group class gets you away from the TVs and does not give you a choice but to focus on what you are doing at that moment.  Leave the phone at home and find an activity that clears your mind and doesn't allow for the multi-tasking that leads to distraction.

These are only a few suggestions of things you can use to rediscover your ability to focus, or help you find it in the first place.  Don't be afraid to try new exercises, techniques, or activities to find what works for you.  While I am a runner who loves to do yoga every morning, I know plenty of people who cannot stand doing either activity because they get frustrated and angry instead of clearing their minds.  The biggest thing to remember is that we perform how we practice, so we must practice how we wish to perform.  If you allow yourself to be distracted while you practice on your own, you will never be able to achieve the level of focus required to attain perfection in a performance.

Opera for the Average Idiot #2 - "Die Walküre"

Since I seem to possess the inability to function like a normal human being and according to a normal sleep schedule, we're just going to continue on our little journey through the Ring Cycle without being forced to use too many brain cells.

(Just wait until I get to "La Boheme."  I do a mean rendition in 5 minutes or less using sock puppets.)

Without further ado, "Die Walküre."

Act I
We meet Siegmund, a warrior of the Volsung race who is currently on the run after causing a bit of mayhem and destruction.  He seeks shelter for the night at a cottage and is greeted by Sieglinde (and no, the names do not get any easier to remember...).  Conveniently enough, they fall in love shortly before her husband, Hunding, gets home (surprise, surprise).  Siegmund tells his story:

"I killed some folks at a wedding.  Possibly the bride.  Whoops."

Hunding reveals that he's part of the mob hunting him down a la "Kill the Beast," however, he's bound by custom to provide him with shelter for the night.  They agree to duke it out in the morning, much in the style of the Dread Pirate Roberts:

"Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning."

Sieglinde drugs Hunding, Siegmund pulls a magic (sort of) sword from a tree, and realizing that they are twin brother and sister AND are in love, Siegmund and Sieglinde run away together.

Let the inbreeding begin!

Act II
We finally meet the Valkyrie Brünnhilde, otherwise known as the character solely responsible for the idea that all operas involve large women wearing breast plates and horns whilst holding a spear.  See Exhibit A below:


Wotan to Brünnhilde:  "Protect Siegmund."
Fricka to Wotan: "Siegmund's gotta go.  Nice try, using him to get your stupid ring back.  This is not the hero you're looking for.  He's your bastard son, so deal with it."
Wotan to Brünnhilde:  "Well, shit."

Wotan needs the ring back supposedly to prevent the downfall of the gods.  The problem is that Fafnir stills has it (as we learned in "Das Rheingold") and he's still in the form of a big-ass dragon.  Hence, Wotan has started listening to the familiar tune, "I need a hero!  I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night!..."  Since his wife is the one who really wears the pants in their relationship, he tells Brünnhilde that Siegmund must die.

Siegmund and Sieglinde appear (have I lost anyone on the character names yet?).

Brünnhilde to Siegmund:  "Sorry little brother, but you're going to die."
S to B: "Can I take my lover who is also my sister with me?"
B to S: "Nope."
S to B: "I don't wanna!!!"

Brünnhilde turns out to be quite the sucker for a romance and agrees to help him win.  Fighting begins between Hunding and Siegmund and when Siegmund seems to be winning, Wotan finally grows a pair and takes care of his own dirty business by shattering Siegmund's sword and allowing Hunding to kill him.  Brünnhilde takes the broken sword and Sieglinde away with her.  Wotan takes off after her to mete out punishment for her disobedience.

Act III
**Please do me a favor and take a moment to revel in the sheer awesomeness of one of the greatest (in my opinion) bass trombone parts ever written.  When performed well, the opening of this act can be a life altering experience.  Now, back to our regularly scheduled program.

The rest of the Valkyries make their appearance on a mountain top.  We now have 8 beefy women in armor on stage causing a cliche overload.  Everyone is thoroughly alarmed when Brünnhilde shows up with Sieglinde, who is alive (they only hang with dead people) and we find out is also pregnant with her twin brother's child (Ewwwwwwww......).  Brünnhilde decides to stay behind to distract Wotan so Sieglinde can get away.  She also names the unborn child Siegfried (Now have I lost anyone on the names??).

Wotan to Brünnhilde:  "You have betrayed the express command of your king. Through your arrogance and stupidity, you've opened these peaceful realms and innocent lives to the horror and desolation of war! You are unworthy of these realms, you're unworthy of your title, you're unworthy... of the loved ones you have betrayed! I now take from you your power! In the name of my father and his father before, I, Odin Allfather, cast you out!"


**Sorry...I just made a slight detour into Marvel's "Thor" with my best Anthony Hopkins impression and I just couldn't resist a little Chris Hemsworth here.

Despite my detour, the same thing conveniently happens in the opera.  Wotan strips Brünnhilde of her powers, leaving her as a mortal.  He's going to just leave her in a magic induced sleep to fall prey to any man who may find her, but she gets rather weepy and convinces him to give her the protection of a ring of magic fire that only a fearless hero may cross.  Wotan agrees, puts her to sleep, and calls Loge to create the ring of fire to protect her.  Note: We begin to hear Siegfried's leitmotif when they speak of the unnamed fearless hero.  Don't worry, you'll hear this theme a LOT in "Siegfried" and "Götterdämmerung."

Love!  Incest! Adultery!  Murder!  Mayhem!  Magic!

How can you go wrong?!

End note:  I have to make the recommendation that everyone watches the production at the Metropolitan Opera starring James Morris as my favorite Wotan and Jessye Norman as Sieglinde.  She is AMAZING in that role.  I'm pretty sure that her jaw comes completely unhinged in Act III.  Seriously, she could swallow your head in one bite.  It's scary and impressive all at the same time.

Opera for the Average Idiot #1 - Das Rheingold

Once again you all are subjected to the ravings that result from my sleep-deprived mind.  For the uninitiated, I love opera.  I love it far more than any sane person should.  A series of health problems a couple of years ago led to me not being able to play for more than a year.  In order to keep my mental musical skills sharp, I started watching operas.  One a day, to be exact (occasionally extending the longer ones over multiple days if needed for sanity's sake).  By a happy accident I had discovered that my county library system owns a ridiculous collection of all of the Met HD broadcasts as well as countless other older productions.  I was on a mission and I'm rather proud of the fact that I started this project thinking that it would be difficult and quickly learned the error of my ways.  It's kind of killing me right now that it's still the off-season for the Met.  I always have the alarm set on my phone to alert me when they do their weekly live stream broadcasts so I don't miss one (Rigoletto was ridonkulous last season).

I digress.

I am fully aware that opera is not for everyone and it pains me greatly that so many people refuse to give it a shot.  You'd be surprised how similar most opera plots are to the movies that are the most popular nowadays.  Sorry, Peter Jackson, but Wagner did it first (just without hobbits).  So, in an effort to expose some of you to the more standard operatic repertoire, I've decided to summarize their plots in as concise of a manner as possible while keeping the emphasis on the most important/exciting/entertaining/amusing parts. Cliff notes has nothing on me.

Since I'm a bit of a masochist we're just going to start things out with Wagner's Ring Cycle.  Go big or go home, really.  In an effort to be kind, I will at least break it down into the 4 separate operas that comprise the whole shebang.  Without further ado, I give you "Das Rheingold," the very much abridged version.

Scene I
Scene begins under water, accompanied by the longest E-flat major chord ever written.  And it's to die for. We are introduced to 3 Rhine maidens and a dwarf named Alberich.  The Rhine maidens have been charged by the king of the gods (Wotan) to guard the Rhine gold (a lump of gold that came from the Rhine river).  The scene progresses as follows:

Rhine maidens to Alberich:  You're ugly and we're pretty and could use some help learning some manners. Btw, father told us not to tell you that you can take the gold only if you renounce love.  And you can use that gold to make a ring that will make you all-powerful (one ring to rule them all...familiar, no?).  Oh, and we're dumb. 

Alberich to Rhine maidens:  Jerkfaces!  I will totally renounce love and it just so happens that I work part-time as a jewelry maker.  Neener neener neener!

Alberich takes the gold and the Rhine maidens get all upset.  End of Scene I. 

Scene II (30 minutes later)
The sun rises on the newly constructed Valhalla.  The action quickly proceeds to Wotan being busted by his wife for trying to sell her sister to the Frost Giants in exchange for them building Valhalla.

Wotan: What a lovely morning! Look at my shiny new castle!  Oh, btw, I had to sell your sister for it, but no worries!  We've got these awesome new digs that I can fill up with dead heroes now!  You'll never miss her!

Fricka:  Nice try.  Your ass is grass.

Her brothers appear and king of the gods or not, Wotan knows that he's screwed.  He calls on Loge (Loki), the god of mischief and fire to help him blunder his way out of this one.  They bargain with the giants who agree to let Freia go in exchange for a pile of gold the same size as she is (they really wish right about now that they had gone for one of the Valkyries.  Much beefier in stature).  Loge and Wotan head underground to rob the dwarves. End of Scene II.

Scene III
While shit is going down in Scene II, Alberich has created the ring and also made his brother, Mime, make a helmet called the Tarnhelm (magic helmet = invisibility, etc) from the Rheingold.

Wotan and Loge arrive in the caves of the Niebelungs (dwarf-type folks).  While the Niebelungs start carrying gold up to the surface for the gods, they find out about the ring and the helmet.  Wotan refuses to leave without them since he's a greedy little bastard.  He and Loge are just as nasty as the Rhine maidens and trick Alberich into getting himself trapped.  They take the helmet but can't manage to get the ring from him.  Apparently being a god doesn't mean a whole lot in the power department....

Scene IV
Back in the land of sunshine and daisies...
Wotan finally yanks the ring off of Alberich's finger leading Alberich to curse the ring (duh duh duuuuuuhhhh!  The moment we've all been waiting for!).  The gold is piled up in front of Freia (the sister-in-law) and now the giants decide to get greedy.  The Tarnhelm is thrown on the pile and the giants demand the ring as well because somehow they can still see Freia through a massive pile of gold.  Fricka demands that Wotan give up the ring to save her sister:

Fricka: Give it up or you're never getting laid again.  Also, gold is soooo not your color.

Wotan's mommy (Erda) even gets in on the action and shames him into giving up the ring.

Erda:  You never did listen to me.  How many times have I told you to play fair with the other kids?!  

Wotan gives up the ring, the giants let Freia go, and the curse strikes for the first time.  The giant Fafnir kills his brother right away so he can posses the ring before he runs off with the ring, the gold, and the Tarnhelm to turn himself into a dragon and be all menacing and stuff (he'll be back, no worries).  The gods then cross their fancy-pants bridge made from a rainbow to move into their new digs at Valhalla while accompanied by the Valhalla motive which is freaking gorgeous.  Loge tells the audience that everyone is doomed (as if we didn't already figure this out), and we're left with a cliffhanger, forcing everyone to return the next night for the sequel.

Well, that's the story of "Das Rheingold" in a nutshell!  Now that you know what's going on while they sing gloriously in German, watch it!  I always recommend watching the full spectacle of a performance rather than just listening to it.  Especially if you've never seen/heard it before.  After a while you can even start keeping a tally of the deaths (this can easily be turned into a drinking game, and a dangerous one, if you aren't careful).  James Morris will always be my favorite Wotan.  Find him and love it.

Scales, again?

So why, exactly, should we practice our scales?

We all do it.  Run through our scales as fast as we possibly can so we can check them off of our list of things to do, like a household chore.  We play them because our teachers tell us to.  We play them out of a sick sense of guilt that occurs if we don't. We play them because that's the way we have always warmed up.  It's a shame, really, because our scales provide us with the ideal vessel for perfecting so many different aspects of performance.

Probably the most obvious thing to work on is tone.  Take time with your scales.  Play them as long tones and never move on to the next note before achieving the most perfect, pure tone imaginable.  Keep in mind that practicing your scales does not mean that you have to play all of them.  Just accounting for majors and all 3 forms of minors you have 48 to choose from.  Select a handful to focus on each day.  If you have trouble keeping your tone consistent between the low, mid, and high registers, slowly play them the full range of the instrument, making each note tonally perfect through the entire range before moving on.

Practice them in different rhythmic patterns and at different speeds.  When you have your scales memorized, and I mean truly memorized, you can focus entirely on your rhythm without the notes themselves getting in the way.  Note accuracy should not be an issue, so do more than just play them as straight eighth notes.  Throw in varying articulations while you're at it.  Staccato, accents, marcato, slurs, legato, and so on.  Use this as an opportunity to practice making a distinct difference between the different articulations we are required to use.  Practice your multiple tonguing.  Work them faster and faster until you can no longer control the rhythm precisely.  Switch things up by playing a jazz rhythm/style.  We horn players are notoriously "square," so take the time to work on your swing patterns every now and again.  You may surprise your fellow orchestra members at your next Pops concert.

Dynamics.  Oh how easily we forget to actually practice these.  Start soft and crescendo as you ascend.  Start loud and decrescendo as you descend.  Start loud, decrescendo halfway through, and crescendo again as you reach the top of the scale.  Start soft, crescendo halfway through, and decrescendo as you reach the top.  Play all of them as soft and controlled as humanly possible.  Play them all as big (with focused and controlled tone of course) as possible, pushing your dynamic limits to their max.

Use them as part of your warm-down routine at the end of the day.  Soft, slow, descending scales are a perfect way to pull an abused embouchure back into the proper shape again.  Keep your focus on controlling your corners and bring the very center of your embouchure back into control.  Get rid of any gravel that may have appeared in your sound and eliminate any occurrence of a double buzz that can appear when we've played heavily.

We seem to always be looking for that perfect exercise or etude to fix all of our playing problems.  You already have the perfect tool that you can modify in any way you want to fix any problem you may have.  Never forget how to effectively use them.