What a strange instrument.

A lovely thing, though.

After my second day of obsessively scaling through DM and AM, I’m already seeing improvements in bowing, how to hold the thing (I did a bit more research online of simply looking at photographs of people holding them and investigating shoulder rests, which are apparently the source of an Apple-vs-PC-level religious schism in the strings world), how to stand, and how to check one’s posture in a mirror. My right shoulder isn’t even sore. (Not that I don’t sound dismal, but it’s at least noticeably less dismal than Monday.)

My intonation is of course horrible at this stage, but at least I can tell that it’s off and moreover how (sharp vs flat and how much).

I’m also pondering some strange things said to me by violinists about the supposed “difficulty” of learning a viola, namely that there isn’t enough music written for it to make it interesting. I find this attitude mystifying. For one, the viola is exactly one octave above a cello. I’m sure that there are some physical differences between the instruments that might make cello music a challenge on a viola, but an octave is an octave is an octave after all. If you absolutely must play classical repertoire, then play cello music on the thing, for pete’s sake.

There’s also the fact — which wouldn’t have occurred to me before my own relatively recent musical epiphany — that a musician can play anything they please on their instrument. It need not have had “VIOLA” written on the jar by a dead, white European male before I’m allowed to open it. The piano keyboard doesn’t go silent between a low C and vaguely upward above the concert A, and operatic tenors are not mute. Thousands of brilliant tenor arias have been written, all of them precisely located on the viola’s range. Contralto works are the same. Marian Anderson’s voice does not disappear when moved to strings. And then there is the radical step of arranging the thousands of pieces written for other more modern instruments that land in that range. How many good guitar cadenzas have been written or performed that are waiting to be played on a viola? To say nothing of composition or improvisation by the musician themselves.

Any instrument can play any music. Strings have unfortunately labored under a great deal of baggage for some time that has exiled them in one form of music exclusively (perhaps bluegrass for violins as well, but for viola and cello, absolutely). Any music can be played on any instrument. The fact that the viola has been neglected within the classical realm and not permitted to move beyond that means that it’s time to push it out of the “hall closet.” Think about it: the viola lands in the tenor range. How many pieces written for voice-and-piano can be carried by viola-and-piano, and what’s more within the proper range of the vocal part, instead of pushing the vocal part upward by an octave so a violin can handle it? (“Vaga Luna,” anyone?) The tenor clef is after all, the perfect clef for the viola, much more than the oddly migratory alto clef.

I’m also pondering telling the next teacher that I contact that I have to play left-handed due to nerve damage in my right shoulder from a childhood accident — provided I decide that I want a teacher in the first place. (Turning the natural wiring of my brain into a disability may make me pitiable enough for them to relent on the medievalism.) I’m having enough fun sussing the instrument out on my own that it may take a while before I run out of enjoyment and begin looking for more formalized instruction.

Violists that I’ve discovered and like very much include the magnificent Kim Kashkashian, the pleasantly (thus far) forthright Yuri Bashmet, Olga Goija, and Mark Wood (a violinist according to the strict definition but many of his pioneering instruments encompass the range of a viola while still being played like a violin, so I feel comfortable in claiming him as Of The Tribe).

Wolves are not always wolves.

I’ve been confused lately by the claims of string players that their instruments can have “wolf notes.” I had no comprehension of how an untempered string instrument could have any wolves at all; avoidance of wolves seemed to me to be the whole point of removing frets.

It took some time before I realized that what they call a “wolf” was not what a keyboard player calls a wolf.

Keyboard wolves are mathematically defined and, depending on the tuning and temperament used, will always show up in the same place, regardless of the physical qualities of the instrument itself. They come about because the “circle” of fifths, a basic assumption underlying almost all of Western music, is actually incorrect. On a piano, the “circle” is forced to close by successively flattening each fifth so that twelve fifths will fit into seven octaves. Each note on a piano is slightly off-kilter compared to its mathematical definition.

Historically (and even today) some players dislike the way that the Pythagorean comma is chopped up finely and evenly distributed over the keyboard. They would tune a piano such that certain intervals were more perfectly tuned to their mathematical counterparts, and hide that bit of discrepancy between 12-fifths and 7-octaves in one interval, most often between G# and Ab. (Usually, keys with few sharps and flats were tuned most pleasantly, while the remoter key signatures went more and more off-kilter as the “circle” progressed.)

That “bit of discrepancy” is the wolf interval. It comes about as a result of the theory of Western music being slightly off from the reality of physics. (Most forms of music are. Music is always an approximation.) It is mathematically defined and on any two keyboard instruments tuned in the same manner, the wolf interval will show up in the same place.

When a string player talks of a “wolf note,” however, they mean something quite different. Violins, violas, and cellos are more fussy than pianos often are, although your typical piano tuner-technician would take exception to this. Because of small asymmetries in the structure of the wood and strings of each individual violin, certain notes will hit strange resonances and cause the device to behave oddly. One never knows where they are unless one has played the thing well enough to sense where the wolves are hiding. They are unpredictable and emergent, and connected to the physical structure of the instrument in a very deep way.

So the string player’s wolf is not the pianist’s wolf. Our wolves are more predictable, utterly unavoidable, mathematically defined, and disconnected from the individual instruments. Theirs are unpredictable, can pop up or not, are impossible to define mathematically, and a fundamental part of the instrument.

I’ve done something silly. (Well, potentially silly.)

I’ve bought a viola. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s a Gliga GAMA level, which is the second-best type that they offer, made under the direct supervision of Vasile Gliga. The two beginning and advanced student level ones are made as factory instruments, while the top levels ones are made by Vasile Gliga himself. Like most musical instruments, including pianos, the soundboard is spruce and the rest of the thing is maple. (Flame maple in this case, which is very beautiful.) The color is a ruddy golden buckwheat-honey color, and the depth of tiger-stripe figuration on the wood is very pretty indeed. I purchased a decent quality carbon fiber bow to go with it, as well as a case with a nice, deep burgundy velvet interior. Not a travel-quality case, so I dare not check it as baggage on an airplane. I travel enough for work that I should invest in a good-quality travel case since I do intend to bring it with me on long trips — a major advantage over a piano!

I’ve discovered that I’m more finicky about tuning than I thought I might be as a pianist (I feared the pianist’s “lazy ear”). I imagine that DM and AM scales are preferred on the thing since they are the easiest to pick out, each being a whole step above the lowest open strings.

The biggest obstacle is simply the physicality of the instrument. It’s highly unnatural to hold although I haven’t dropped it yet. I’m not too terribly bad at finding the right notes thus far, and I’m also very finicky about that as well. I cannot stand being off by even a zillionth of a cent, so as long as I can master the thing physically, I should have decent intonation. I’ve found four good mp3′s of open viola strings online and will put them in my iPod to ensure being able to tune it when no piano is extant.

The only thing I’m pondering is whether to pursue lessons or not. Being left-handed complicates things more since I am not a gullible 8 year old who will believe the teacher when they feed me the line that left-handers “get” to do fingering with our dominant hand. Let’s face it, if it were such an advantage, right-handers would be doing it. (I’ve been left-handed for 44 years. I know what I can do and what I can’t, and I refuse to be hamstrung as a musician because of someone else’s pedagogical limitations.) Left-handed violas are clearly for sale since I had my choice of three excellent instruments at Gliga, and all but one luthier that I spoke to was happy to convert to left-handed and had done it multiple times before. The nonexistent “paucity” of left-handed instruments is a threadbare excuse.

Employing a teacher means putting no small amount of trust in them. It’s very hard to trust one’s musical development to someone who is demanding that one do something that the other person clearly has no intention of doing: bowing with the wrong hand. Someone who demands — for absolutely no reason — that I use my clumsiest hand in a way that they would refuse to do themselves is clearly someone who doesn’t have my best interests as a musician at heart, and I just can’t trust them if they value pointless conformity over a student’s artistic development. They are, after all, supposed to be teachers. If they don’t know how to teach left-handers, they can just do what I do when I’m confronted with unfamiliar situations at work: learn how. That’s why they pay me.

I’m also curious about something else. My development as a pianist almost reads like a textbook example of a classically trained musician. I achieved a level of technical proficiency that’s impressive … and stopped because it felt like paint-by-numbers. After an 18 year hiatus, I was able to go back and pick up almost exactly where I left off due to the very rigorous technical training I had … but if there had been more creativity and joy involved, perhaps there would have been no 18 year hiatus in the first place. The rigor wasn’t the problem; the absence of creativity was. Again, I don’t recall my teacher with anything but fondness; she was a very focused, intelligent woman who got enormous amounts of valuable technique into me. I remember her well.

But I’m curious as to what sort of difference it will make to me to learn an instrument on my own. Of course, “on my own” here translates as with the help of books, online forums, YouTube, and several decades of mature judgment. I’d like to see how my attitude changes toward the music, and perhaps even toward playing for others, if I just buckle down and do it myself. It wouldn’t be the first time that I had to learn something myself due to the limitations of potential teachers. It wouldn’t even be the first time that I mastered something at a high level in that situation.

For now however, I have a long road ahead of me. I purchased my viola yesterday. I had it on my shoulder yesterday for about two hours, possibly longer, in small five- and ten-minute intervals. My neck and upper arm are sore, but my hands and fingertips are fine, and if things begin to get sore in an alarming way, I will do what I did with my other activities and find a new way to do things. I’ve heard it said by violinists online that one’s arms will turn purple and fall off unless you have a proper teacher, but I’ve heard pianists say the same thing in online forums, and my own experience with that instrument qualifies me to call them on it. Good teachers are an enormous benefit, true. But when generations of fiddle players in countries all over the world, including this one, have learned and played for centuries, there’s no reason to imagine that classical violinists aren’t wrong on this one as well. All that it is needed is care, patience, logic, attention, and the thoughtfulness to do something with an eye toward making it better every single time.

We’ll see how it goes. For now, it will be back to the DM and AM scales for the next several months until I feel comfortable with an instrument propped on my right shoulder. I’ll see where I go from there.

In other news, “La moza donosa” continues apace, with frustratingly incremental progress each day but progress nonetheless.

“Danza de la moza donosa” by Alberto Ginastera (6)

I think I’ve solved the issue of the rolling thirds. Fifths and octaves are easier to stabilize I think, because the fingers are further apart. When the fingers are closer together, they seem to function like the fulcrum of a seesaw, and the hand can rock back and forth more easily. Imaging putting a two by four between two saw horses. If you place the saw horses further apart, the two by four is more stable. Slide them until they are closer together under the two by four, and suddenly it can rock back and forth more unstably.

The solution? Hit from the elbow and not the wrist. Instead of using my hand and wrist to press down, and moving my hand at the wrist in this instance of repeated close thirds, I keep my hand steady and press from the elbow. Again, like pressing down hard on the octaves with half-steps in the B theme, I wouldn’t make a habit of it, but it seems to work for these close repeated thirds that want to roll otherwise.

This is also, to my surprise, the last annoying bit. Pinning this down seems to have helped me mentally enough that I can approach the sudden drops in the B theme a bit more easily. They still aren’t 100% every time, but they are a lot closer now that I don’t have to worry about what is on the other side of them.

And, as predicted, I’ve shelved “Solace” and am into the second theme of “Bethena.” The training on octaves and octave drops and raises in the Ginastera is helping a great deal. Joplin must have had hands like Grieg.

“Solace” by Scott Joplin (1)

Well, I seem to have gotten sucked in. It’s not even my favorite. I think I’m going to stick it back in my music stack and pull out “Bethena,” which is my favorite of Joplin’s work. What a wonderful piece of music. I don’t mind “Solace” at all; in fact it’s great. But there’s a gulf of meh in the middle of it, between the first and fourth themes. I may continue to work at it, or I may go home tonight and pull out one of the best concert waltzes ever written.

Meanwhile, that first large drop in the center of “Moza donosa” continues to annoy me. It will take time before I can hit it every single time. I’ve sussed it out in its broad strokes, but it’s still not at 100% with practice and application.

Sharps, Flats, and the vagaries of equal temperament

I’m seeing two possible definitions for sharping a note (and the same goes for flatting). On a piano, these definitions are the same because the instrument is digital in the old-fashioned sense, and tempered. On a non-fretted instrument, they may not be.

How to Sharp a Note:

1) Push the note upward by a prescribed amount N. (Understood to be a half-step on a piano).
2) Take the note and the nearest note upwards in the key signature, and go halfway between. (A-G)/2, for example.

The problem I’m having is is N = (A-G)/2? On a piano, it is absolutely defined as such — but the piano has been tempered to artificially fit those twelve fifths into seven octaves even though they don’t quite match. Is this understood to be the case on non-fretted instruments? If a cellist plays an F# in the context of a certain piece, and a Gb in the context of another, are these notes at the same frequency?

“Danza de la moza donosa” by Alberto Ginastera (5)

Don’t strike, press.

That seems to help me avoid roll, or at least get rid of the worst of it in those thirds in the Ginastera.

When I think of the keys as objects that I hit from above, I get a roll. When I think of them as objects that I lay my fingers against and press down on, the roll seems to go away. This mental technique is also the way I manage those strange large chords in the second phrase with the half-steps in the middle: put your fingers in place on the keys and press down, as opposed to hold your fingers over the keys and then strike. Put an apple on the desk in front of you. Put your hand out and pick it up with deliberation, and think about how that feels in your mind. Now, put the apple back in place and snap your hand out to snatch it up quickly. That feels very different — in the first situation, you were placing your hand on something, and in the second you were striking out at something with it like a snake. Sometimes you’ll want to do one or the other, and sometimes you’ll want to be in the middle, but they have different domains of applicability, and it’s been worthwhile for me to become aware of this.

I wouldn’t want to do “press and hold” for too long because it does seem more tiring and take more strength, but in some places, it’s just what’s needed.

“Danza de la moza donosa” by Alberto Ginastera (4)

So I think I have a good coping technique for one of the sticky bits. There are three phrases just past the middle of the piece that consists of a couple handfuls of big, strangely shaped chords and some profound jumps. In the first of these phrases, the jump in question unfortunately puts both hands on top of one another, which had been causing problems. Flattening the left (lower) hand as far down as possible did not help … but what did help was tilting it profoundly to the left. (Its business only consists of hitting a B with the middle finger and an F with the thumb, so it’s not terribly difficult to do. Not tilting the hand and merely flattening it made the F very dicey.)

Tilting the hand until the middle finger is almost on its side allows the hand to be completely out of the way of the right hand descending on top of it, ensures that that F gets struck, and also allows the hand to pull away quickly on its way to the quite low C that it its next target. With this literal “twist,” I can hit this combination just about every time.

The next phrase is challenging, but only because of the work involved in making sure that the top note in the next handful of chords is well marked.

And the third phrase comes with a set of challenges all its own. I’m glad I’m on the tall side and have long arms or else I’d have my nose against the music stand.

Pedaling is also a challenge in this piece since it seems that the correct rhythm for pedaling changes from the A theme to the B theme. The A theme works best with a very drumbeat, even twice-per-measure pedal. The B theme (the mild and the chunky parts both) work best with a twice-per-measure syncopated pedal … sometimes.

Then, there are those annoying thirds in the reprise of the A theme that I seem to want to roll constantly. I can avoid a roll if I strike them quickly, but that doesn’t quite give me the control I’d like to have over them. Once I pin down these three phrases, eradicating roll in those thirds is next on the list. Then, I work on getting the piece down to the point where, like Grieg’s “Last Spring,” I can simply say it how I wish.

“Danza de la moza donosa” by Alberto Ginastera (3)

I’m happy to say that I arrived at fine today. It’s not that much to crow about since the last page is rather pleasant and not challenging at all (with the exception of the thirds in the melody, which for some reason I have a devil of a time not rolling even a little. Eradicating roll appears to be my purpose in life lately, aside from turning oxygen into carbon dioxide and food into something we won’t mention.)

However, the three parallel phrases loaded with enormous chords are still presenting equally enormous challenges. I’m getting them, but not reliably, and still with some annoying problems with aim. I am confident that I’ll get to a point with it where I can hit the chords predictably, but it will take a lot of time and focus and repeated attempts while trying various coping techniques.

This brings up the question of “What next?” and I seem to be sappy lately. This is probably the next thing I’ll be working on, although I have a while to go before I get there, since “Danza” will be demanding my undivided attention for some time, and after that, it’s time to return to “Twilight.”

“Danza de la moza donosa” by Alberto Ginastera (2)

Ignoring the alarm bells in one’s head can be trying sometimes. And I didn’t expect to hear any.

I knew that this piece would be a challenge since it was speckled with so many accidentals and used so many strange intervals (half-steps are common). Until I got to the middle section, with its large chords, I hadn’t realized how much of a challenge this would be … nor where the challenge would lie.

Large chords by themselves, even syncopated, don’t bother me. I have big hands and I like handfuls of notes at once, far preferring them to trills and quick ornamentation of the sort you’d find in Bach. The difficult thing about these particular handfuls of notes is that they are not “chunkable” into easily recognized chords, and worse still, they often involve repeated whole and half steps in strange places. One section involves an octave phrase of F-F’ to E-E’ and Eb-Eb’ — and back again (not sure how the capitalization works out on that, but these are the octaves above middle C typically found in Joplin-style rags).

The problem lies in the fact that, between the Fs, Es, and Ebs lies a half-step: B-C, moving to Bb-B, then down to A-Bb. These are extremely strange combinations that feel very alien to my fingers. In almost every other piece of music I can think of that I’ve ever played, I have not only never used a half-step like this, but I’ve never been asked to pound it out repeatedly in fortissimo. Alarm bells go off in my head telling me, “MISTAKE MISTAKE MISTAKE!!!!!” and it’s very difficult to keep on going without trying to thoughtlessly “correct” the things by dropping the first note in that half-step pair by a whole step and making a normal major triad.

Basically, any time you reach for an octave defined by Es on either end, with a B in the middle, a pianist’s finger will want to hit a G#, not the next black note to the right! And my fingers will repeatedly try to do precisely that unless I concentrate with the focus of a levitating Buddhist monk.

I knew that this piece would be challenging because of the memorization (it’s harder to memorize things that don’t chunk easily into recognized structures). I didn’t realize that it would be far, far harder to overcome my muscle memory, developed since I was ten years old, that demanded that I hit a note a whole-step down from the lower note in that half-step pair. Doing it that way sounds wrong even to me, since I know this piece fairly well (I’ve listened to Gabriela Montero play it dozens of times). But while it sounds right to play that half step, it still feels wrong. What looked like a mildly challenging grade-7 piece may indeed be a grade 9, taking that into account. Attempting this as my second piece since ending an 18-year hiatus from the piano leaves me wondering if I shouldn’t have my head examined.

However, the mechanical difficulty of the notes isn’t beyond me, and I’m confident that I can manage thing thing, even if it does take me longer than it took to get the Grieg down. Most things give way after I bash at them for long enough, and as long as it’s not presto furioso and littered with trills, I should be able to manage it.

But the unanticipated origin of the chief difficulty with the piece has blindsided me a bit. This is going to be a fun (bumpy!) ride. I’m glad that this difficult section is only two and a half bars. I think I can manage it if only because it’s not terribly short, and that heartbreakingly beautiful A theme is on the other side of it. But it will take some gritting of teeth and bullheadedness on my part.