Just click your heels together.

On both sides — heel of hand to heel of viola. If that’s done, it makes the shift much more repeatable. Problem is, I have to keep reminding myself to do it. After three weeknights and two weekend days, I only remembered to feel the shift heel-to-heel early yesterday afternoon. The first shift is going more and more easily as long as I remember to wind up heel-to-heel and drop my thumb a bit. The second shift (2-3 on the A string) is much tougher since it involves moving more “hardware” in the process. It’s tempting to grip the thing with my chin and reposition my hand explicitly, which feels tortured and wrong. It is tortured and wrong. So for now, I’m doing two-octave scales in C, messing idly with the next little Bach piece in Suzuki v1 (the cute one everyone knows, can’t recall the name), and becoming more comfortable with the whole idea of shifting. I need to start just futzing around again, doing improv in something happy and viola-friendly like G major.

The shoulder rest has for the moment been ditched, though. It’s too tall. I like the stability and forward tilt that it gives, but I cannot stand the way it lifts the viola up until it juts into my jaw and then down onto my collarbone. I’m thinking of putting some hardening modeling compound in a ziploc bag and just making one for myself, then sending it off to be scanned and printed at Shapeways, and mounted on what will be the cannibalized bits of my Forte Primo. With 3-d scanning and printing technology, there isn’t a reason not to have customized shoulder and chin rests.

And I’m becoming more and more frustrated at not being able to sit down at the piano and noodle on a composition; the viola is still eating into piano time more than I’d like. I have a wonderful thing in F minor that I’m playing with that is heading in some interesting directions, but too many of them. In order to really sit down and make some sense out of it, I’d have to just do nothing but that for an entire two-day weekend. No viola. Just coffee, tea, and that damn piece. Oh, it’s wonderful. I love the opening, I love the mature, well-developed sound to it, I love the way it gives me nice little motifs waiting to be investigated, seven doors to seven doors. What I don’t love is the time it takes to open all those fucking doors.

I have a strong feeling that I’m going to have to just open them all methodically, write down all the permutations of the motifs, write a couple development bits, and then find a way to stitch together the nice ones into something that evolves well. I also have a strong feeling that I need a first undergraduate text on composition. I wonder what they use in Writing Your Stuff Down 101 at Curtis?

And more divots

The E-G shift exercise on the D string has some advantages though, mostly that shifting to G is pretty easy to detect when you’ve hit it correctly since the string rings like a bell from the G below. (Or that could be my own viola which is a bit overenthusiastic about Gs in general.)

At any rate, I’m working on the two-octave scale for now until I have the time this weekend to work on that second E-F shift on the A string, involving getting my own arm to bend backward at the elbow before lifting my hand over the instrument itself. I think I’m getting used to how I have to hold my hand after the first shift, but this second one is not going to be comfortable or natural for a while.

I’ve also been having fun playing around with various things that I like — “Dove sei?” will always be a favorite thing to mess around with although I need to get the B theme set in my head, and Journey’s “Lights” is a lovely thing to play, smooth and vocal with lots of opportunity for expressiveness.

I’d also like to go to Home Depot and see if I can’t get a piece of PVC pipe with a capped end and some medium-to-fine grit sandpaper to practice vibrato. I’m not going to “get it” at this point nor use it, but it couldn’t hurt to start working on it a tiny bit.

So, two-to-three octave scales this weekend, shift exercises, and the odd fiddling around with opera and stadium rock. When combined with a bit of poking at a piece I’m writing on the piano, that sounds like a perfect musical weekend!

Divots in my finger

More like a rut. With a black smudge in the middle. It didn’t hurt, but I knew that had I tried the shifting exercise much more, it would have.

*sigh*

Are there any aspects of playing this instrument that aren’t physically painful?

I can also see the appeal of a shoulder rest, but even with it, I feel the necessity to clamp down on the viola with my chin a bit more in order to shift well and accurately, especially downward. I’m really going to have to work on remaining relaxed, or else I’m due for a crick in my neck that will make the planet spin off its axis.

Shifting in a three-octave scale

Last night, my instructor (who I still suspect of moving me too far ahead too fast) introduced me to my first three-octave scale. This morning, I was in bed waiting for the alarm to go off and started thinking about the pattern on my scroll hand, and I realized something quite fascinating about it:

It’s the same pattern over and over, just moved up with the stopped strings taking the place of open strings near the scroll. Shifting onto a G on the D string simply recapitulates the same pattern that was followed on the G string at the base of the string. And of course, crossing over directly onto the A string results in a D; crossing directly over always results in going one fifth up. It’s almost fractal in that the pattern and shift to reach it recapitulates the base pattern smaller and further up.

There is a slight wrinkle in that the first iteration decreases the finger “number” by one since open strings are used, and I suspect that moving up off of the open strings causes the shift to happen between 3 and 4 and not 2 and 3, but I’ll have to see whether or not that’s the case as I look into higher scales. I’m not looking forward to them since they are still challenging on a viola, but it will be interesting to see how the algorithm works out when a stopped string becomes the equivalent of an open string. (A bit like barre chords on a guitar, I suspect.)

The chief draw of the viola is the beauty of tone, but working with an instrument where each string must do double duty for producing multiple notes really makes things very mathematically interesting as well. With the exception of that wrinkle due to not having to stop the open strings, the pattern is entirely recursive and somewhat fractal in that it continually recursively recapitulates itself as opposed to simply repeating. This is delightful. It’s also very interesting as one considers a viola with an infinite number of strings; upon that point, I imagine the shift could also happen on F so that one could cross onto the hypothetical E string and get a C, which would recapitulate the pattern from the base of the C string and start over. I’ll have to see how the shifting happens on a three-octave E scale, for example, to see how the algorithm works out off the open strings.

The basics of music, the basics of life

1) There are no shortcuts. There are no magic pills. Shut up and do the work. In fact, every time you start rooting around for a magic pill, I can guarantee you will make the problem worse, because by casting around for a shortcut, you’re not looking to solve the problem. You’re looking to avoid solving it. And what problem won’t get worse if you avoid solving it?

2) Small changes consistently made are the secret to success. Just keep moving forward and don’t think about it. Put your head down and move.

3) Play now, pay now. There is no play now, pay later.

Good lord.

Every now and then, I am incredibly shocked at how little most musicians (who are not pianists) know about the structure of music — what most of them call “music theory.” They seem offended at the idea that music is not just random notes, one after the other, with no structure underlying them. They resent it and consider it unmusical to actually be aware of what chord they are in — as if it is also unlinguistic to recognize when one is using a preposition.

It’s boggling. In hindsight, it makes sense to be baffled by that sort of thing when one plays an instrument that plays one note at a time, for the most part. And pianos have a massive advantage in that “music theory” can pretty much be defined as “whatever your left hand is doing.” Western music theory is built into the instrument from the ground up, and when one is playing a series of notes in the right hand while arping G-B-F in the right hand, and resolving onto C, it’s quite obvious what’s going on. What seventh chord resolves into what key? Count up five. What is the relative minor for a given major key? Count down a minor third (or count up seven). Curious as to why C is played on all white keys? (No sharps or flats.) How about the circle of fifths? Start at the lowest C and keep going up by fifths until you hit the tip-top key — hey, I hit one of every type of note! And if you look at the key signatures of each key, you add a sharp every time you go up a fifth. Neat!

It’s all right there, right under one’s hand. And it baffles me that musicians who play single-note instruments 1) find this confusing and 2) don’t understand why they should care about it. They seem to think that music is just one note after another, in mystically random patterns that sound nice. Try telling them that that’s not the case, and they just cannot get it.

Some can. Legendary bass player Carol Kaye has talked about the problem of beginner bass players who do not understand the value of what she calls “chord scales.” Arpeggios in particular keys, in other words. Knowledge of chords, the structure of music, and which chord one happens to be “in” when one is playing. In other words … music theory. (An absolute necessity when one is playing an instrument that will not carry the melody!)

You may hate it, you may tell yourself that it’s unartistic and unmusical to turn Music™ into mere math, but it’s just too bad. Music is art, it’s math, and it’s also language. If you are content with mediocrity, don’t bother with music theory. Be like every other guitarist in the world who only plays tab and can’t read music. Be like every other amateur violinist who can’t do a thing unless a piece of paper is under their nose showing them exactly what notes to play. Hamstring yourself when it comes to improv and cling to your inability to think ahead in terms of structures. Be as ignorant of the legos in your bucket as you can.

You’ll make it easier for the musicians who do understand this stuff and can play rings around you. The other session guitarist who can read music, that bass player or fiddler who knows when they are moving from E7 into Am and why while playing something in CM … they will thank you for it.

I need to start gorging myself on Gregg Rolie.

His work has always struck me as pseudo-Baroque in that “oh the cleverness of me” sense, but without the self-indulgent narcissism of most art rock despite his having started in that vein. More joyful than arrogant. Even when he got a bit caught up in his virtuosity, it never seemed to stem from anything but delight in his own technique as opposed to proving to his audience how much better he was than they.

And he does seem to be one of the few people, aside from Händel, who can get a keyboard instrument to wink and wiggle its backside.

Given that my latest bit of fluff seems to be touching on some Baroque conventions (not so much meaty chord work, and more bouncing melodies and motifs back and forth between the hands), I’d like to begin digesting Rolie’s own keyboard work in a more attentive way rather than simply enjoying his all-too-infrequent solos in Journey (and very early Santana). I hope that his work in the Gregg Rolie band spotlights him more instead of just using him as a rhythm section; his solos in Journey are frustratingly few and far between.

Lesson last night.

Went well. The shoulder rest is a bit of an adjustment. It helps my scroll hand reach but feels incredibly unpleasant near my neck. The viola feels like a wing, angled up like that, and it’s very unpleasant near my collarbone and neck. It will take some time for me to get used to it, but the increased stability and tilt forward that it gives the thing helps with accuracy. I’ll have to see how it all works out.

I’m still crooked on the G string, but am aware of it and can work on it via the ever-fascinating long tones. At this point, it’s still just playing anything over and over a million times, getting used to bowing straight, holding the bow properly, setting in a feel to my scroll hand that will let me hit both half-steps near the scroll and still hit a fifth up on the open strings … and relaxing, always. Not allowing the tension that was in my hands to communicate itself up to my neck, not playing too long once I realize I can do it better than I could previously. Taking it slow at first. All the general advice.

Happily, my instructor is pleased with my improvement, but I’m not. I could do a lot more if I had the time.

Lesson tonight.

And once again I feel like I haven’t done anything and am hideously underprepared.

I have had breakthroughs on certain things, but they haven’t yet translated into sounding any better, so I’m a bit grouchy about it. My bow wrist is much more supple, and that has made a huge difference. I found out how to do the half-steps at the base of a string, and that realization has made things much more relaxed.

I still have trouble not bowing toward my head on the G string. I’m still a three-fingered viola student in (what I think amounts to) first position. My string crossings are still a bit seismic. I still go flat on the A string more often than not. I still have trouble looking ahead while playing and thinking of where I need to keep a given finger so that it can function as a landmark for the next. I also cross too shallowly when moving from G to D.

Both hands are more relaxed, and unfortunately my neck and shoulder are tensing up now in some sort of unwanted picking up of slack (not quite the right word in this context, but there you have it). Before, my hands were tense and my neck was fine, now it’s the other way around. I think it’s just part of having tension that has to come out somehow, and partly feeling a bit more at home with the instrument and hence being willing to clamp on and “look it in the eye,” so to speak. I’ve brought a shoulder rest with me so that my instructor and I can play around with it if it’s needed.

I never feel adequately prepared for lessons, but damn it, things have been busy lately … *sigh*

When does “feeling more comfortable” translate to “sounds better?”

*sigh*

My hands feel more comfy, I’m starting to settle out my bow hand (supple wrist = good), and I’m anticipating string crossings slightly less seismically.

I can only hope that this will translate into sounding better at some point.

I also overdid it today. Weekends are so tempting; one can play for the whole day. It’s glorious. Until it hurts. Then, it’s not so much.

Oh, well.