Elna Claire Valine

A thousand years ago when I was in 4th grade, I started playing the violin in the school program. My teacher was Elna Claire Valine, and I just found out that she passed on last week after a long career in music. She taught in the Wichita Public Schools for 33 years and was the principal second violinist for the Wichita Symphony. She probably never knew that I grew up to be a string teacher in the public schools.

Memorizing Tunes

Still riding the wave of good feelings after Sierra Fiddle Camp. It doesn't hurt that I am playing the tunes with my cellist friend several times a week. I am still finding that having learned tunes by ear has been another way to open up my musical understanding.

The biggest issue has been that I remember the names of the tunes, I remember the tunes, but I've been having trouble remembering which names and music go together. We'll say, let's play XXX, and then we look at each other and say, "how does that one go?" 

I am finding, though, that the more we work on one or two tunes at a time, and then really keep playing them over and over, I can recall how the tunes go, and what note to start on. Once again, multiple repetition is the key. 

Huh.

Catching Up and Fiddle Camp

I have been remiss in posting. I have not been remiss in making music integral to my life. The end of the school year brought the usual concerts - the fruition of our work. Vista Orchestra and Recorders performed, the EIMP of CUSD performed, and my private studio students were in a recital. The Women's Choir at church sang in the big music service.

However, right now on the forefront of my mind is the amazing, transformative week I spent at Sierra Fiddle Camp. My mind is swimming with tunes. Scottish tunes, Swedish tunes, Old Time USA tunes, and a few from other places.  Tunes on my fiddle, tunes in my voice.

I learned how to learn tunes by ear on the fiddle. This is big for me. I know that it has created new synapses in my brain, and I think I may spend a good deal of time on our upcoming sabbatical in working on fiddling. I wondered how I would continue learning by ear. In camp it's set out for you. The teacher plays a tune in full, then breaks it down into chunks and we repeat small chunks and add them to others until we have a whole A or B section, then we end up knowing the whole tune.

(Interesting fact. Although I felt as though I knew the tunes really, really well, when I played them by myself at home, I needed to relisten to the recordings I made to clear up some fuzzy places. It's very helpful to be playing in a group (which is one reason I love teaching string classes).)

So, someone suggested that I make my own recordings of tunes to learn. I can play the small chunks for the looping. I will have to try that. I also have some recordings from Peter Cooper's book with work on ornamentation, so that will come with me on sabbatical.

Alexander Technique

I have been meaning to write about the Alexander Technique lessons that I have been taking since April. I think I keep putting it off because there is so much to say. I had taken a workshop several years ago and noticed immediate benefits. I hadn't really realized that one takes a weekly lesson with a teacher for ease of overall body movement, but when my friend, Lynn, started taking lessons, she convinced me to start.

It has been an amazing journey. I have learned so many things from my lessons, and, after orchestra rehearsal last night, I realized that my back no longer really hurts on my right (bowing) side after playing through three movements of a symphony. I am also more fluid in the fast passages, although I am still working on playing faster.

One of the interesting things I've had a hard time allowing myself to do is to practice where I am not at all concerned about the quality of the sound, but about how my body movements feel. I have worked on making my left hand fingers go fast up and down the fingerboard (sloppy), or moving my bow quickly while fingers are relatively still. Then I put them together, and think about the arc of the music, or the direction. Of course, I still have to practice playing correct notes and rhythms, and I do that slowly and gradually increase my tempo. I figure that both approaches will meet in the middle.

It's been what seems like a long time getting to this point, and now I have a greater appreciation for my students who are learning to hold their instrument and play it for the first time. It is something that takes hours and hours of practice, and little by little, it comes along.

Busking

So, the school year is off and galloping, and music runs much of my life, so maybe I should get back to blogging about it.

Last night our Celtic Group, Drowsy Maggie, had a busking gig in the Claremont Village. I have put up a little video and some pics from the evening on the Drowsy Maggie Facebook page.

String Quartets For Weddings

It's wedding season again. A while ago I blogged about choices of music that brides made for their ceremony. Today I am thinking about what you get when you pay a group of musicians to set the right mood for your special day. Recently a bride asked me if we could give her a discount since she was "way over budget" for her wedding. (She is not a friend or even an acquaintance - I have actually never met this woman.) After I picked my jaw up off of the floor, I realized that people probably have no idea what it entails to perform in a wedding. It goes well beyond the 30 minutes before the wedding plus the ceremonial music.

You pay for:

• Spending time with the bride selecting the music for the ceremony
• Finding the sheet music (or arranging it which will require an extra fee - this takes a great deal of time)
• Rehearsing (probably an hour - we've played together before, but we might need to discuss and practice where we might end, depending upon how long it takes for certain things to happen)
• Transportation to and from the wedding. Even if the wedding is within 15 minutes, we like to carpool and we arrive early to set up and to make sure we don't get caught in traffic.
• And, of course, performing. Remember, it also took us many years to play at this level, so you are paying for our expertise.

Multiply this by 3 or 4, and we are into at least 10-12 hours. If a professional musician's time is worth $50-$100 and more per hour, then you get the idea why the price seems to be so much.

Improvisation

This morning at Women's Choir rehearsal, while waiting for more people to show up, we took advantage of the drums that were set up for the Sunday School lesson and had a mini drum circle. This stuff that we do with kids is also great for any age!

Viola Strings

I thought it might be time to change my viola strings when some of the low sections of the orchestra music were playing sounded a little too gravelly while trying to be quiet. I tried a different kind of string from Tomastik - the Superflexible variety which are only $60 for a set. They sound brighter than the Dominants, but I am still getting the gravelly sound on the C string in the piano sections. I am trying different bowing techniques, and perhaps I will hit upon one that will do the trick. These particular strings have stayed in tune pretty well since putting them on - one reason I like the a manmade core.

Playing Music

I love the fact that we don't call what we do as "work music" but rather, "play music." I know that actually making music takes a great deal of discipline and practice, but the goals are to actually play.  Over winter break one of my self-assigned tasks was to watch a few TED talks that I had heard about. Normally I find out about these talks but don't have 30 minutes at that time to watch, and then I forget about them. This time I wrote them down and the first one on my list was a talk about play by Stuart Brown. You can watch the video here. (I had a hard time with streaming from the TED site, so I hit the download button at the bottom of the video and watched it that way.)

I would love to work on ways in which to get my students to play more in music class. Of course, I have basic skills I need to teach them in order for them to have some kind of music vocabulary with which to play, and since I only see them once a week or so, this is tricky. Now I need to find a TED talk about incorporating play into the classroom. Anyone?

Playing without Pain

This was a concert weekend which meant lots and lots of playing the viola. Two hour dress rehearsal, concert Saturday night (one and a quarter hour) with repeat performance this afternoon.

This morning my friend Wendy, trained in Alexander Technique, came to our Women's Choir at church and worked with us a bit on how to use our bodies more naturally for better tone production.

It got me thinking about the pain I have been having on the left side of my back when I play viola for a long time, and I think it has to do with how I share the stand with my stand partner. I asked Wendy about this and if she knew of anything to do, and she said that it is just a matter of trial and error. I think this problem is compounded with violists since our instruments are larger than violins and can really get in the way of each other.

So just before the concert this afternoon, my stand partner and I worked on a new arrangement that put her closer to the music and me looking at it straight on instead of twisting a bit. We were both happier and more comfortable about this new arrangement, and we wonder why we haven't worked it out sooner.

Now if only the notes were bigger and clearer so we could see better, and if only the Eroica was not so intense for so long a time and it was easier to concentrate through that whole symphony.

Irish Fiddling

One of my summer projects is to work on my bowing for Irish fiddle. It's one thing to play the notes of the song, it's another thing completely to use the correct bowing which is not quite related to classical violin bowing.  I was mentioning this to a friend of mine who plays fiddle, and he recommended this book. After starting the book, I realized that I should have ordered the CD, and I went right back to the internet to rectify that problem.  The CD arrived today, and I am just about to pop it in and have a go!

Liking Brahms

This weekend I played viola in two concerts of Brahms' German Requiem.  Knowing that even Classical music fans do not like Brahms in general (just google "don't like Brahms" and see what comes up), I discussed that with various orchestra members.  I think that most of us agree that we like and even love Brahms - symphonies, concerti, this requiem.

I have played all four symphonies, although I can't always remember which movement is from which symphony.  My first impression after listening to a recording of the requiem is that all the movements sounded similar to each other - ponderous.  After rehearsing it for nearly two months, I now have favorite movements, favorite parts of movements, and parts that work their way through my mind at a whim.

For many, Brahms requires a little work and many visits. I imagine that it's like reading Faulkner.  I've read The Sound and the Fury once and found it extremely difficult.  I think that if I read it in a class and worked through it with patience and some other insights, I would come to actually like it.

What I also learned over the weekend that I could not really comprehend during rehearsals is that although the notes are not particularly difficult (the passages are not crazy fast or demand high shifting), playing through the work from beginning to end requires quite a bit of focus for a straight hour.  I found that I missed notes in concert that I never missed in rehearsal, especially in later movements.

It's also tiring to play a controlled muted sound for an hour, since our large orchestra has to play underneath the choir (and soloists) for so much of the work.

I guess I come down firmly on the Brahms side of the Brahms/Wagner debate....

Bell Ringer

I chose the photo where I am hiding...

This morning in church I resurrected an instrument from my past.  Okay, the instrument was not dead, but I have not played in a bell choir since high school.  This month in church we are highlighting the music ministry, and I volunteered to be part of an ad hoc group of children and adults in a version of the 150th Psalm.  It was great fun to ring the bells in a cacophonous sound which ended on a C Major Triad.

Yoga

I have been taking yoga classes once a week for about 15 months now, and it has made a difference in my violin and viola playing.  One of the things we work on every week in yoga is opening up the chest, partially by pulling the shoulders down and back.  That opening helps to relax the instrument as well as bow holds, and that relaxation produces a better tone, not to mention taking away any pain and tiredness from playing for a long period of time.

Now, if I could only have my students attend yoga classes, too!  I try to help them with relaxation, but it would be even better if they could practice the techniques outside of music class, too.

Trying Tenor

I've played a few times this summer with the Village Pipers, and today we pulled out a piece of music that didn't have a soprano part, so Sandy loaned me her tenor which has the same fingerings as the soprano.  So, while I could read the music, I had a hard time knowing just where my fingers were since they were not only stretched out farther, but there are also these extra things which fit over the holes for certain fingers for ease of playing, but I was just not used to it.

However, it was fun to play, and if one magically appeared at my house, I would probably spend some time with it.....

Alexander Technique Again

Today I had a private lesson with Wendy using the Alexander Technique with two purposes.  First, I wanted to learn ways to help students begin learning how to hold their instrument the right way from the get-go.  Secondly, I wanted help with my own viola playing.  An hour is not nearly long enough, and yet, that's still so much information to try to remember.