Category Archives: Music

Practice slowly

Posted on January 13, 2012 | Comments Off on Practice slowly

Time was (it seems like only yesterday, but it was actually before 1995) if you wanted advice from an expert you had to seek them out and hope for an answer.

You could, for instance, investigate until you found their address and wrote them a letter. Or hunted them down in public and shouted your question over the heads of their security. And probably would be ignored.

Nowadays, some of them have a Facebook page and you can write out a question there and, some of them at any rate, will answer you there, or on YouTube.

Thus advice for beginner violinists from Itzhak Perlman, violin virtuoso. Yep. The advice that I remember the best (because I still have trouble following it) is to practice one or two bars of a new chart at a time and, above all, do it slowly.

Perlman: “If you learn something slowly, you forget it slowly….If you learn something very quickly, you forget it immediately.” Thanks, Itzhak.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Music, Science/Engineering, Scribbles

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Violin practice

Posted on January 7, 2012 | Comments Off on Violin practice

I find I actually feel guilty if I miss a day. Have only once in the past month.

Finally up to 30 minutes before my wrists start cramping, and scales, even though short and simple four-note ones on all four strings, one at a time or crossing over to two or more.  Prompting another revelation: not only are my fingers too short, they are too fat to stay on one string at a time.

And paying attention to my fingers makes my bow stroke go all to hell, also hitting two strings at once. Sigh.

Ah, but insipiration definitely helps. Even if she has been playing since she was eight.

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Posted in Music, Rancho Roly Poly, Scribbles

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Violin lessons: It’s all in the muscles

Posted on December 13, 2011 | Comments Off on Violin lessons: It’s all in the muscles

I played my first violin notes for Mrs. Charm the other day. The old viola player rewarded me with a broad smile and a reminiscence or two. The one-note-at-a-time playing was accompaniment to the Web instructor playing (on video) and a piano behind her adding a flourish or two.

Have discovered in these violin lessons that it’s as much a matter of muscles in shoulder, neck and arms getting used to the preferred playing posture as anything else. Mine ache. Also the fingers of my fingerboard hand (left) are almost too short for good play, and the work-arounds are contorting.

I got a squeeze ball to try and build up strength in those fingers, the stubbiness being (obviously) unsolvable. My intonation (bowing) is the bright spot, so far. Very nice sound, especially now that I know how to tune. Strange instrument to learn, the violin. I see why it is recommended for kids to start so young. Their muscles are untried and can be molded easier.

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Posted in Mrs. Charm, Music, Science/Engineering, Scribbles

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Violin lessons at age 67

Posted on November 29, 2011 | Comments Off on Violin lessons at age 67

I have rented a violin, embarking upon an effort to learn the instrument. Next is finding a teacher near the rancho. I have no illusions. It took me years to learn to play the trumpet and I was never very good at it. Likewise the acoustic guitar. Violin is just something I’ve been thinking about for a while. So, after a few weeks of Web wandering on the subject, I decided to give it a whirl.

Mrs. C. played viola in school, and we’ve talked about that, but my interest really grew when Mr. B. began playing the clarinet at the start of this school year. I’ve been helping teach him to read music and the sound of him playing everything from Ode to Joy to the Theme from Star Wars gave me the bug again. And I’ve also discovered the clarinet and violin are often paired.

Course having YouTube around is a great incentive: free intro lessons into the violin’s peculiar issues, and multiple chances to watch amateurs and professionals play what I think is going to be a very challenging instrument, indeed. Plus there’s the Violin Lab, part of Blackerby Violin Shop, the outfit I rented from. Adds up to enough instruction to make learning on my own feasible, if not necessarily successful. Have to wait and see about that.

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Posted in Mr. Boy, Mrs. Charm, Music, Rancho Roly Poly, Scribbles

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Nightmare

Posted on September 4, 2011 | Comments Off on Nightmare

This is one strange piece of music, first composed in 1936. Compelling, however, and also strange to think that a Swing-era big-band leader chose this for his theme song. Downloadable for free at this link, or just play it there until you tire of it. If you do. I didn’t so I bought it at Amazon for 99 cents.

Clarinetist Artie Shaw was the band leader, a nice Jewish boy who had a few other quirks. Which I am discovering in this exceptional biography. Married eight times. Estranged from two kids—though one of them made an effort to forgive Artie in his old age. Not a model in the parenting or husband department, obviously, but a helluva musician who lived to age 94, and was gutsy to boot.

Shaw, already famous and wealthy, did WW2 as a Navy chief leading a Swing band for the forces at front-line places like Guadalcanal where he was once bracketed by dropped Japanese bombs and went deaf in one ear. The word picture I can’t forget is from 1943: his band playing Nightmare as they descended on an aircraft elevator to their below decks audience on the aircraft carrier Saratoga.

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Posted in Library, Music, Scribbles

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Aida at Masada

Posted on May 29, 2011 | Comments Off on Aida at Masada

I was picturing my favorite Verdi classical opera, the tragic love story of an Ethiopian princess and an Egyptian army officer, on the largely barren crest of the 2,000-year-old Jewish fortress of Masada.

Alas, it seems it will be “at the footsteps” of Masada in June, apparently on the west side, “with the majestic mountain as a backdrop” not far from the Dead Sea. Well, a few miles from it, actually, though in the stark landscape out there it doesn’t seem that far away.

Now that I think of it, it would be a bear trying to get all those sets and stuff, not to mention the musicians, the dancers, the extras, and the cast, up on the top with only two cable cars. Asking them to use the long, winding “snake path” would be out of the question. Then, there’s the audience, going and coming. Couldn’t work, obviously. Pity.

It’s still impressive, the Israeli Opera doing such a thing out there. Wonder what the ghosts will make of it all?

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Posted in Israel, Music, Scribbles

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Nhu Quynh: Rule 5

Posted on April 29, 2011 | Comments Off on Nhu Quynh: Rule 5

 

The beautiful Nhu Quynh, whose singing is as sweet as her looks.  Song’s translation here. She grew up in Quang Tri province, now lives in Philadelphia. Photo from a 1998 calendar. (As you can see at the singing link, the photo didn’t require much retouching.)

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Posted in Library, Music, Rule 5, Viet Nam

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