I can't believe it's been a week since my last post - where has the time gone? Well, actually, I can see from my calendar exactly where the time has gone..... I teach at two local colleges and both of them started on the same week, and while scheduling and teaching in two studios isn't all that daunting, the first-week-of-classes email deluge is really something to behold. Add to that, that I'm trying to squeeze in as much summer with my daughter before she starts pre-school next week, and well... here we are.
So one thing I've been thinking about lately is hearing. I mean, we all hear things the same way, right? I guess not, or I wouldn't have to point out pitch issues when I'm teaching. One thing that has taken me a long time to learn is how to listen and place pitch both vertically and horizontally. (relax, I'll explain as best I can, and it's actually not rocket science) I ask my students to listen to their intervals, and many of them are working on scales in thirds at the moment, as a way to deeply learn the fingerboard and become more confident as they shift up the A and D strings. It bothers me that so much pedagogy allows students to take the G string as the way of ascending without asking them to really learn the higher positions on ALL their strings. We have a wealth of beautiful tone colors to choose from on our other strings.
Ok, but I was talking about pitch, or hearing pitch, or really hearing ahead of time how you want to place your pitch in context. So here's my example today: as you play a scale up and down, probably you are thinking horizontally, that is from note to note, how far to space your half and whole steps. So it probably sounds fine. But if you place a drone note below your scale (if you're in C major, let's say, you might work with a C or a G below your scale as a reference point) - you'll find that you need to adjust your pitch in slight ways to make the notes consonant with the drone note. That's a vertical pitch placement.
Why does it matter? Well, if you play with a piano, a fixed pitch instrument, you'll need to think about placing the pitch against that kind of drone. If you're playing with other string players, you'll all bend the pitch around to each other and the key you're playing in rather naturally. Also, in the case of yesterday's lesson, I had a student working on solo Bach and playing heaps of double stops. If he played the melody line alone for me, his placement of the notes was fine. But once we added in the double stops, he had to adjust his melody notes (especially when they were above an open string or harmonic, basically a fixed pitch) to correct the intervals.
Ideally, I'm working on pitch in both ways, just not both at the same time! It's important to think about how your melody is written and whether you are going to color a note, accentuating a leading tone for instance, by pushing it a bit closer to the tonic note. If you are the accompanying voice and your pianist has the melody, really find the piano and be centered on that pitch to match the piano's temperament.
Maybe this seems a bit head in the clouds, but I've seen great results in students who practiced their scales against drone pitches every day. It gives them a real sense of grounding the pitch and regulating it, so that when they do decide to use color, it is a musical decision and not just a whim.
Happy practicing!
Gaelen
Friday, August 31, 2012
Friday, August 24, 2012
Becoming an ideal student
I was emailing Orin O'Brien yesterday and thinking about an article she recommended to me when I was looking for a grad school teacher. It's titled "Becoming an Ideal Student" and was written by Jeanne Baxtresser, the wonderful flutist and pedagogue. Do read the article (I linked to it) and don't just take my word for it. One of the items I have taken to heart as both a teacher and a student is investing in the way I prepare for lessons. Ms. Baxtresser talks about having her students use index cards to write what they worked on, what needs attention, questions to address in the lesson, etc, and she keeps those cards filed as the semester progresses. I don't use that system exactly, but for a long time I did use a carbon copy paper where I'd write out the main items a student needed to work on, ideas from our lessons, any music they needed to buy. This way I could give them the sheet and still have something to refer to the next week as they were warming up, helping me to prepare better to teach that specific person.
But the times, they are a changin'. I don't even use that system anymore. I felt it created too much paper for both the student and me. Like most other teachers, I now require my students to bring a notebook to each lesson, and for the younger ones I do the note taking. My high schoolers need to take their own notes! This year I've experimented with also using a video service where I can easily upload the lesson to a private site, and only the student who was taped can see their lesson.
How you do notes or notebooks or videos is really not the point I wanted to make (honest). What I'm thinking about today is how I prepare myself to teach or learn. I need to clear my mind, turn off my cell phone ringer, and give my student my full attention. As a student, I also need to do these things, and even more, put myself in a place where I can receive comments not as criticisms, but as helpful tools to better my playing. I'd say teachers have it easier in this scenario! While my students are tuning, I read their notebook, get out music they are working on, and generally prepare to really listen to where they are right now in their playing. Maybe they've had a week where there wasn't much practicing. I find we often have great lessons on those weeks! Perhaps because there is only growing that can occur? I'm not sure, but often I find my students are more receptive on weeks where they are slightly underprepared. (However, students, you know that we can't make progress like that every week. Practicing simply HAS to happen.)
I wonder how often we really set ourselves up to be present for our students? We all have deadlines, voicemails, text messages, emails, begging our attention away in little intervals. In fact, I'm amazed at how much will accumulate during just a few hours of teaching, while I wasn't available to anyone but the student in front of me.
This was the biggest take-away from Ms. Baxtresser's article for me: being present with your student. Do you have other tools you use to help frame your lessons? I know of a percussionist who studied with a teacher who insisted on a 30 minute sitting meditation before their lessons. While that's a great idea, I doubt I could get any of my 7 year olds to do a 2 minute sitting meditation!
Cheers to being present!
Gaelen
But the times, they are a changin'. I don't even use that system anymore. I felt it created too much paper for both the student and me. Like most other teachers, I now require my students to bring a notebook to each lesson, and for the younger ones I do the note taking. My high schoolers need to take their own notes! This year I've experimented with also using a video service where I can easily upload the lesson to a private site, and only the student who was taped can see their lesson.
How you do notes or notebooks or videos is really not the point I wanted to make (honest). What I'm thinking about today is how I prepare myself to teach or learn. I need to clear my mind, turn off my cell phone ringer, and give my student my full attention. As a student, I also need to do these things, and even more, put myself in a place where I can receive comments not as criticisms, but as helpful tools to better my playing. I'd say teachers have it easier in this scenario! While my students are tuning, I read their notebook, get out music they are working on, and generally prepare to really listen to where they are right now in their playing. Maybe they've had a week where there wasn't much practicing. I find we often have great lessons on those weeks! Perhaps because there is only growing that can occur? I'm not sure, but often I find my students are more receptive on weeks where they are slightly underprepared. (However, students, you know that we can't make progress like that every week. Practicing simply HAS to happen.)
I wonder how often we really set ourselves up to be present for our students? We all have deadlines, voicemails, text messages, emails, begging our attention away in little intervals. In fact, I'm amazed at how much will accumulate during just a few hours of teaching, while I wasn't available to anyone but the student in front of me.
This was the biggest take-away from Ms. Baxtresser's article for me: being present with your student. Do you have other tools you use to help frame your lessons? I know of a percussionist who studied with a teacher who insisted on a 30 minute sitting meditation before their lessons. While that's a great idea, I doubt I could get any of my 7 year olds to do a 2 minute sitting meditation!
Cheers to being present!
Gaelen
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Hello world :-)
Seems like I've talked about blogging long enough and want to dip my toe into the pool.
I've been playing with the Rochester Philharmonic for 17 years (though it's gone by in a hurry) and happily teaching private students for about as long. The more I teach, the more I know about playing. And the more I perform, the more ideas I have about how to improve my teaching. This is a great two-way street to be on!
Just to be clear, these are just my opinions and I welcome your comments and dialogue. I'm certainly not "right" about anything, and think sharing our tools as teachers and performers can only strengthen our commitment to our art and pedagogy.
Today, I'm thinking about one big item I've been working on in my Alexander Technique lessons with Katie Fittipaldi. She's a wonderful teacher here in Rochester, and also a cellist, which adds great value to our discussion of technique. We've been addressing my right shoulder and the way I tend to let it slip forward when I play. If I focus on keeping it back, that feels like I'm adding extra effort and tensing a new set of muscles. But one idea I've been playing with is that if you are pronating as you bow out to the tip, you can also be "unwinding" the upper arm in opposition to that. It sounds weird, yes? But try it without the bow in your hand:
1. move out to the right, like a downbow, and notice that near the end of the stroke you'll naturally start to turn your hand over the stick (probably more noticeable in french bow hold, but I play German and we do this to some extant as well).
2. do it again, overdo it this time and make sure you use and turn from all the way up in your should socket. Now your arm is like a washcloth that wrung in one spiraling direction. Can you feel it pull in the pectorals and across the top of the shoulder?
3. now do it again, but as you move out in the bow, think about your upper arm twisting towards your back even as your lower arm is twisting towards the bass. You don't need to "do" anything about this, don't try to make them do the opposite actions, just imagine this is the direction each part of the arm is going. Can you feel the relaxation in the pectorals now? I also find my shoulder blade eases back into my back while I practice this way, since I'm not trying to pull the upper arm into the bow action anymore.
The bigger challenge for me is to incorporate this motion not only during practicing, but during performance when all my instinctive habits kick in. Start small - start with whatever your easiest warm up is (open strings, simple scales) and keep attention on letting the opposition happen, rather than making it happen.
Happy practicing!
Gaelen
I've been playing with the Rochester Philharmonic for 17 years (though it's gone by in a hurry) and happily teaching private students for about as long. The more I teach, the more I know about playing. And the more I perform, the more ideas I have about how to improve my teaching. This is a great two-way street to be on!
Just to be clear, these are just my opinions and I welcome your comments and dialogue. I'm certainly not "right" about anything, and think sharing our tools as teachers and performers can only strengthen our commitment to our art and pedagogy.
Today, I'm thinking about one big item I've been working on in my Alexander Technique lessons with Katie Fittipaldi. She's a wonderful teacher here in Rochester, and also a cellist, which adds great value to our discussion of technique. We've been addressing my right shoulder and the way I tend to let it slip forward when I play. If I focus on keeping it back, that feels like I'm adding extra effort and tensing a new set of muscles. But one idea I've been playing with is that if you are pronating as you bow out to the tip, you can also be "unwinding" the upper arm in opposition to that. It sounds weird, yes? But try it without the bow in your hand:
1. move out to the right, like a downbow, and notice that near the end of the stroke you'll naturally start to turn your hand over the stick (probably more noticeable in french bow hold, but I play German and we do this to some extant as well).
2. do it again, overdo it this time and make sure you use and turn from all the way up in your should socket. Now your arm is like a washcloth that wrung in one spiraling direction. Can you feel it pull in the pectorals and across the top of the shoulder?
3. now do it again, but as you move out in the bow, think about your upper arm twisting towards your back even as your lower arm is twisting towards the bass. You don't need to "do" anything about this, don't try to make them do the opposite actions, just imagine this is the direction each part of the arm is going. Can you feel the relaxation in the pectorals now? I also find my shoulder blade eases back into my back while I practice this way, since I'm not trying to pull the upper arm into the bow action anymore.
The bigger challenge for me is to incorporate this motion not only during practicing, but during performance when all my instinctive habits kick in. Start small - start with whatever your easiest warm up is (open strings, simple scales) and keep attention on letting the opposition happen, rather than making it happen.
Happy practicing!
Gaelen
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