Instrument Players - Come and chat (Part II)

[CoteDAzur]

Previous thread is here.

We filled one thread, so here’s another

Our exams are also like Auditions - all students taking part are there as audience.

My knowledge/experience is with instruments that are taught by a single teacher (bassoon, harpsichord, horn...) in our Conservatoire, where the instrument teacher gives a list of suggested pieces and the panel of judges chooses the ones to be played by all students in the exam.

Not sure I like the sound of audition style exams! Just back from a piano lesson, got lots of answers on things like fingering etc so I feel like I can make some progress on my pieces. Love piano lessons.

My piano is being tuned at the moment, I love the sound of a piano being tuned. Almost as good as an orchestra tuning up. I'm getting to grips with the start of Grieg's Butterfly now, it is so clever - it really does sound like a butterfly.

Well, I'm very much enjoying the Clementi Sonatina and can play the first page very slowly - it is meant to be a lot faster but I need to start slow!
I am going to take my Bach book to my lesson on Monday so we can choose something from that to do as well.

I'm ploughing through my Schumann sonata, almost note by note. There are a lot of notes, and there are a lot of sharps and flats...

Success! I have a Bach piece! Prelude and Fugue No 1 in C Major. And I can play it, sort of. Great incentive to practise!

That is, I can play the Prelude part. I think the Fugue will be a challenge!

The prelude is so lovely. It is like the prelude to his cello suite #1. Clean and beautiful.

It really is lovely - my teacher went straight to that one so I think she loves it too! I don't think I'll get a chance to play it today but definitely will work on it tomorrow evening.

I'm supposed to be practising the prelude and fugue in D major, but now I'm having a look at the one in C... It's gorgeous x

Hi everyone. Since the last time I posted here, I played solo in a "British Baroque" (Purcell, Anthony Young etc) concert, and played the organ at a huge cathedral for 45 minutes It was amazing. The organ is such an incredible instrument! I think I'll do some organ along with harpsichord at the Conservatoire next year 😊

Cote I bet that was amazing! Congratulations on the solo
Sounds wonderful to be able to do organ lessons as well.

Cote the organ is wonderful. I occasionally get to play a gorgeous pipe organ. That feeling as the sound vibrates through your body when you play the pedals is hair raising.

Thanks, Loose The organ is considered a "complementary instrument" to harpsichord at our Conservatoire, so it looks like I will be able to switch to it for a couple of months without doubling my work load.

Fluke - Lucky you! I haven't yet used my feet to play anything so that will be tough in the beginning

So you study purely for your own pleasure Cote or are you doing a qualification?

Ooh playing an organ sounds amazing. Sadly I think the closest I can get to that at the moment is switching to 'organ' on my digital piano...not really the same!

I'm really enjoying improvisation at the moment. Organ seems to have a big tradition of improvisation around it (more than other classical music / instruments it seems?) - have you done much of that and is it something you're interested in?

Fluke - I practice just for my own pleasure. I'm trying to avoid exams where I can not to stress myself unnecessarily - I got myself into Cycle 2, 1st Year last year, which my teacher says is well under my actual level, so that I won't need to pass an exam for a couple of years.

Tintini - I don't know much about improvisation but will hopefully get there once I've had a few years of music theory under my belt (I just started it last year).

My teacher would like me to start learning/doing basso continuo (figured bass) which is related to improvisation but i just don't know that much about chords etc yet.

Improvisation was a big thing in the Baroque era so instruments like organ and harpsichord have a long tradition of improvisation behind them. Even set pieces were improvised upon to some degree - numerous texts say that no music should be repeated exactly the same but should be slightly changed with ornaments & other added notes the 2nd time.

I find it fascinating that from being such an important part of Baroque music-making, improvisation sort of 'fell out of favour' in the 19th century. I think in the classical period it was still quite widespread - Mozart did loads and it was normal to invent your own cadenzas etc - it was expected of a performer. Now it feels to me like it's considered a 'jazz thing' or an 'organ thing'...but actually it's just a 'music thing'!

It feels like standard instrument lessons tend not to cover it and it's not part of classical grade exams or anything like that. This feels strange to me because it's such a practical and powerful (and fun) way to understand how music works.

As a teenager playing a lot it never even crossed my mind to do it...I guess because I thought it was only for specially gifted 'musical' people or after many, many years of playing...and of course no-one did it!

But it's a completely learned skill and the great thing about it is it's completely at your level - if you're a beginner you do a simple improvisation, if you're advanced you do an advanced one. But it's hard to just 'do it' with no direction - a beginner can definitely do it but it massively helps to learn just a few simple rules first.

You've inspired me to look more into organ improvisation this morning and I found this musician's website which includes some interesting articles, especially the one called "An organist's monopoly: improvisation": www.ronnykrippner.com/improvisation

*As a teenager playing a lot it never even crossed my mind to do it...I guess because I thought it was only for specially gifted 'musical' people or after many, many years of playing...and of course no-one did it!

But it's a completely learned skill and the great thing about it is it's completely at your level - if you're a beginner you do a simple improvisation, if you're advanced you do an advanced one. But it's hard to just 'do it' with no direction - a beginner can definitely do it but it massively helps to learn just a few simple rules first.*

I 100% agree with all of this. I didn't improvise as a child piano student. It just wasn't something you did. Now I find improvisation hard, because I am too focussed on "doing it right" and I find it hard to give the time to something when my head says it's more "productive" to practice "proper" pieces. I play guitar and piano, both of which lend themselves to improvisation, and I have enough theory (I can transpose easily) but it seems that learning to improvise at 50+ is hard.

My DS16 on the other hand is totally comfortable with improvisation. He has about 18 months of music under his belt, a natural interest in theory and he's spent many hours improvising over backing tracks (he uses a looper pedal to record chord sequences then improvises jazz and blues inspired guitar over the top). He can improvise on piano too although not as skilfully, because he's only been playing piano for 6 months (although he is already better than me which is thoroughly depressing, he can reel off Chopin nocturnes that would take me weeks to learn).

He plays in an adult jazz/blues group and is easily the best improviser - they can chuck any old chord sequence at him and off he goes. They all find it vaguely magical, because he hasn't been playing very long at all - it just seems that adolescent brains "get" this more readily. He's not an especially creative teen in any other way and prior to taking up guitar he hated music, so there's nothing you can identify as "innate". It's just long hours of improvising practice and gradually ramping up the difficulty (choice of scales and positions, speed, use of "advanced" techniques), and above all a lack of self consciousness and a willingness to make mistakes.

Talking about improvisation, have either of you seen Alma Deutcher improvise from four notes picked at random? Here is am example.

I never really consider improvisation because all I want to do is play Beethoven.

I remember seeing that documentary - Alma is just incredible.
Improvisation hasn't really come up in my lessons either. I know DS does it a lot in his bass guitar lessons but I don't know much more than that - I'd agree with Mistigri about it being easier for the adolescent brain!
Enjoyed playing the Bach Prelude last night in my lesson - downside was I'd neglected Sonatina so now have to relearn the tricky bits so my fingers remember them!
I'm glad half term is coming up next week - I should be able to work from home which means more practice!

Alma's great isn't she! I love that she's doing it in a classical style - showing that it's not just for jazz. The other thing is that she clearly loves it and is getting creative joy from it.

Although of course my improvisations are about a million times simpler, I do now think I understand how she does it. The effect is magical, but I firmly believe it's just as Misti said:
It's just long hours of improvising practice and gradually ramping up the difficulty (choice of scales and positions, speed, use of "advanced" techniques), and above all a lack of self consciousness and a willingness to make mistakes.

Alma has been improvising and composing since she was 2 - she loves it and does it all the time. She has done literally thousands of hours of practice already, even though she's so young.

I imagine Misti's DS could do an amazing improvisation on 4 random notes too, but perhaps he would choose the jazz idiom? You just need to work out which scales and chords those notes could fit in and then all your experience of playing the licks that characterize your musical idiom allows you to create beautiful music. It's not brand new music, it's just a new arrangement of all the stuff you've ever played.

I think the biggest barrier for me is probably getting to a state of lack of self consciousness and a willingness to make mistakes since my musical education was all focused on not making mistakes! It's a big thing to unlearn. But I think it's possible.