90mph with no headlights

It occurred to me last night as I was practicing viola and becoming increasingly frustrated just what one of the major differences between this and the piano is.

You can go slow on a piano. Slowly, one note at a time.

The viola is more like a bicycle. You really do need to be going at a certain minimum speed in order for the thing to even act like a musical instrument. It’s maddening. Until you get it up to that minimum speed, it’s a goosenecked kleenex box.

As a beginner, I just have to remember that even if I am forced to go faster than I’d feel comfortable with, I won’t crack up on the side of the freeway in a ditch as a result.

Results of last night’s lesson

1. Find the “point” of a given piece, the trick that the student is supposed to take away, and practice that one part over and over.
2. Hold the bow as lightly as possible. Don’t tighten it so much.
3. Press down a bit more to keep the bow anchored so that it doesn’t creep up toward the bridge.
4. Long tones, scales, etudes, pieces. Long tones, scales, etudes, pieces.
5. Don’t move the bow so much initially, and one note per bow is fine at the beginning.
6. Slurs mean something mechanically on a viola as well as dynamically. (Slurs = take the notes all on the same bow.)
7. Lift 2 when you don’t need it.
8. Leave the bow on the strings.
9. Keep circular bow motion in mind, smooth motion. Play with confidence.
10. Get a music stand and a metronome.

I also want to work up an arrangement of “Sun in the Stream” to see if it is playable on viola and works well and easily for a given player.

Oy.

The Vince Guaraldi Collection

Marked as SMP 6, whatever that means — from the comments below and my own memory of the music, I’m imagining it’s going to be slightly below the stuff I’ve been playing recently, with occasional upwellings of some challenging spots. I think I need to get this.

If four fine tuners are good enough for him –

– they’re good enough for me.

“The Sun in the Stream” by Enya (1)

I’m a little wary of posting this since Enya is notoriously unwelcoming toward people actually touching her music, but this one piece is so lovely that I’ve wanted to work it out by ear for over a decade now. Well, I finally started doing it. After ten years, I’m doing something on a piano that I have been daydreaming about since before the turn of the millennium, and moreover something that I could never have imagined doing without sheet music listing exactly and only the notes to be played. Like the Grieg, it’s one of those ecumenical pieces that seems to flip back and forth happily between its relative major and minor — and also like Grieg, those are e and G (with upwellings of Picardy thirds in places). I’m enjoying doing just piano work with it at the moment, but am not at all surprised to tell myself that it should also make a very nice little piece for viola and piano. I’d like to see if I can’t arrange it and someday soon being it in for my instructor to play along with me just as a proof of concept that I can indeed do that starting by ear, even with a relatively short, simple piece of music (two themes, no cadenzas).

The problem of course is that I only have a limited amount of time in which to do all of this along with practicing with the viola and other more mundane tasks like showers, tooth-brushing, and bowel movements. Oh, and working for a living. *sigh* I can see the appeal of small, portable keyboards just as musical scratch paper. Even a keyboard app on an iPad would help me work through modulations and jot some things down.

Owning the Ginastera and (not) owning the viola

I think I have reached the point where I can regard the Ginastera as something that I can say at will rather than something I recite like a medieval necromancer who fears mispronouncing a syllable for fear of what’s going to bubble out of the cauldron. It’s not perfect, but I am thinking in larger terms for it, and while I’m still working on those large jumps (one in particular), I am confident that I “own” it in my head. Unfortunately, the Grieg is working loose, but I’ve been more lax in keeping it alive in both my hands and brain; it’s migrated pretty thoroughly into my hands at this point through lack of attention and is at risk of choke syndrome as a result. I can get it back, but it’s going to take work, almost like learning it for the first time again.

The mandolin cadenza in “Boat on the River” continues to stymie me, but I’ve buckled down and confirmed the modulations, and am currently listening to it over and over and singing it to myself to engrave it on my convolutions. It will take work, but it should be manageable, and when that part is finished, I think I’m going to do more than simply assign a “dal segno” and be done with it since DeYoung’s backing vocals put some pretty chords on top of Shaw’s melody on the post-cadenza go-around. I’ll probably return to the second part of the A theme with those chords in them, and then look into purchasing:

1) a new laptop, and
2) a cope of Sibelius or Finale, or whatever is generally agreed upon as good for amateur musicians who are arranging things.

It should beat writing it by hand, which is what I’m doing now, which is fine as long as one has a gentle eraser but makes it hard to share in a neat, easily readable fashion. I’m also reconsidering the time signature; I’m not sure that 6/8 is what I’m looking for, really. 12/8 may be better, but it strikes me as having a 2/4 feel to it much more than 4/4, so I think 6/8 is more appropriate.

In viola news, things seem to be continue to settle down; I suspect I’ll be thinking that for the rest of my life really. Synchronization is becoming a bit simpler, string crossings are still Fraught With Peril but not quite scaring the cats out of the room anymore, and my scroll hand and bow hand both seem to be finding their positions of maximum ease and flexibility. The bow hand is easily the more challenging, while the scroll hand appears to be relaxing happily. I may even be able to use my pinky someday to do more than a sloppy modulation to V by going down to the lower string to hit a half-step lower than the next open string up. (I could not possibly imagine bowing with my nondominant hand. Righties and the rare lefty converts who are kidding themselves are out of their minds if they think this is even a reasonable suggestion. For pete’s sake, absolutely nothing of value is gained. Nothing.) I’m also glad that I’m a nitpicking obsessive about intonation. My hope is that it will program my fingers with a sort of “snap to grid” reflex.

Synchronization settling down a bit more

For some reason, I seem to have hit a few patches of excellent scroll hand/bow hand synchronization last night. I don’t expect it to continue since I don’t feel I have control over it at this point, but the picture appears to be snapping into focus periodically, so hopefully someday it will remain in focus as a default with a level of effort that will allow me to keep a bit of brain material aside for things like phrasing and musicality. There are simply so many thousands of things to do all at the same time on a stringed instrument. (Must we say “strings?” It’s so ungraceful. One sews button with string.)

I’m also losing patience with my constant complaints about not getting to Shaw’s mandolin cadenza in “Boat on the River” on the piano. I sit down, begin massaging the Ginastera into shape, and get lost in it. I simply have got to sit down, listen to that cadenza a few dozen times while sitting immediately in front of the piano, and just work it out and write it down. Then, it’s dal segno and the piece is finished. After that, the Band That Will Not Be Named seems to be the next up on the block, together with some viola-friendly arrangements, hopefully. I’d like to run a few past my instructor as I’m doing them to see how they are since I’m not knowledgeable enough about the instrument at this early stage to know what’s really possible and what will cause even a good violist’s knuckles to shatter.

This is getting ridiculous.

I have been studying this blasted instrument for just shy of a month if I recall correctly, and I have already gone from “Why am I bothering, this is hopeless” to “I think I’ll actually play this thing okay someday.” And back again.

However, I’m pleased that the second extreme is the one I usually sit at after my lesson, so I think my teacher thus far is a keeper. We’ll see how that goes in the future. I was happy that my intonation was pretty good last night, and I got some good “homework” type things to work on, so that’s nice. I learned that I may wind up on a smaller instrument, which disappointed me a bit since I really really like my current viola. It’s gorgeous and it sounds like a big viola. Well, we’ll see where that winds up in the future as well. Hands stretch as time goes on (they certainly do on the piano).

My apparently oddball concept of the viola

After the topic came up someplace — “What are your goals?” — I sat back and began thinking of this regards my own decision to study viola. My answers have indicated to me that I still have a strange idea of what this instrument is. Unsurprising, since I grew up as a pianist and hence didn’t absorb any of the cultural norms of the orchestra that says that violists are retiring, do not like to shine, prefer to blend, and enjoy completing inner harmonies.

1) I do very much like to complete inner harmonies. The melody is merely the skin of a piece, just the surface. The entire rest of the piece, the whole structure, is in the harmony. Controlling the harmony means controlling the modulations, the voicing, everything else except rhythm, really. If I’m playing harmony, I control modulations. Depending on the piece, I can throw the entire thing into a minor key on a whim, or change that V7 into a diminished 7th that can wind up anywhere.

However, I can already do that in a far more complete and thorough way on the piano. I don’t need the viola to do that in a much less satisfying way, a mere one note at a time.

2) I think of the viola as a solo instrument. It doesn’t blend well; that’s the whole point of the thing. It’s tonal quality is the most “different” of all of the string instruments. It doesn’t blend well, and if one cannot blend, one should stop trying to. Ella Fitzgerald wouldn’t blend into a classical four-part choir very well, either. The solution is not for her to sit and tell herself that she prefers to not stand out and sing quietly so as to avoid drawing attention to herself. The solution to the “problem” of her voice is for her to go it alone and for her voice to be appreciated for itself, uncompared to others.

3) Being a good solo instrument that stands in better for the voice than any other string instrument … it’s natural companion is (wait for it) the piano. I know that I have reasons to be biased on this, but I think there are real objective reasons for this. I did not choose the viola at random. One of the most complete small performances is that of voice-plus-piano. The viola is meant to be in that setting, not an orchestra. Fill work for inner harmonies is fun, and it can pay the bills, but it is not what the instrument is best at. Like the tomboy girl or the effeminate stepson, it may find its identity and opportunity to shine more readily once it is outside of the confines of the “family” of the orchestra and leaves all comparisons to the prom queen and the football captain behind.

In practice news:

1) The bounce is still there. *grumble*
2) Bowing straight is more challenging than I would have thought. I will swear I’m bowing away from myself when the bow is straight as an arrow. And when I swear it’s straight, it’s going toward my head.
3) I truly do think that I’m ready to start owning the Ginastera in a serious way. However, I need to get off paper entirely. I can feel certain parts that I memorized easily in the right hand that are somewhat fragile. I have them in my muscles and play them thoughtlessly, but if any stress appears and I begin to overthink, I can tell that the thoughtless parts — the parts that I play the most easily and fluidly — will be the first to evaporate. The left hand is pretty firmly in place, but those strange bits in the right hand need to be nailed down and held in the mind and the muscle at the same time, or else they will vanish at the first sign of overthinking.
4) I find it very aggravating indeed that I cannot print something out at Kinko’s that is out of print anyway. There is a certain group of musicians in this world who have written a large amount of excellent popular music who will not be named. If one wants their sheet music, one will either pay a premium for guitar tabs (which are machine operating instructions, not music) or else one will pay a larger premium for nightmarish “easy big note” sheet for a whopping twelve songs. If the blasted music does not exist, I see no reason why I can’t print it out. I would be delighted to pay for a legal copy of 311 pages of decent voice-plus-piano sheet for the Band Who Will Not Be Named. In the absence of this preferred avenue of obtaining it, I’d still like to have paper copies of the blasted stuff.

*smaller sigh*

I feel a bit more confident with the three tiny pieces I’m working on from Suzuki v1 (the three immediately after Twinkle). I’m not happy, and I’m still getting a bounce out of the bow, but I’m just not stressing out over it. I’ve sussed out how to manage the bow on the down-bow. Tonight, I will simply do the same movements in reverse — push down with the pinky nearer the frog, and push down with the index finger nearer the tip. Transition when the center of mass of the bow passes over the strings. (I may put a colored sticky dot on the bow at the center of mass.)

I’m pondering getting an electronic tuner to tune the open strings, though. I dislike the idea of using one just on principle, but I’ve come to realize that as a beginner, I am using every single scrap of concentration I have just to bow two open strings at once. If someone were to come up to me and say “Hello” in English I wouldn’t recognize what they were saying. I have no brain cycles left over when bowing two open strings to use listening to the resulting sound and counting beats. It takes too much mental energy just to do it much less analyze it, which means I am de facto out of tune every single time I pick it up. And having the open strings tuned properly makes playing so much easier and simpler that I think that the benefit of using an electronic tuner for the open strings will outweigh the disadvantages, at least at the beginning. I plan to ditch the thing the second I feel confident enough to bow and listen as closely as I need to every single time.

I am however, going slowly out of my mind from not playing the piano as much. I miss it horribly. I need a winning lottery ticket.