Pitch Perfect

Alright, I’ll admit it: I don’t have perfect pitch.

I’m also perfectly happy not having it.
“What? Really? Why would you not want perfect pitch?”

[Before I start, I just want to throw it out there that I am in no way saying that people who don’t have perfect pitch are superior to those who do. I’m just writing the things I’ve noticed in my experience. I am also in no way painting all perfect pitch-ers with the same brush. Please don’t take offense to anything; I’m not mean, I promise!]

To be completely honest, when I was younger, I envied those who had perfect pitch. The first time I’d heard of the concept, I Googled it and read that only 1 in 10,000 people have perfect pitch. I wanted it so badly. I thought it was so cool, being able to know exactly what pitch is being played without seeing it being played. Then, I came to university to study piano performance. I found out recently that 9 out of the 12 people in my studio have perfect pitch. My best friend has perfect pitch. All of a sudden, not having perfect pitch was special. It wasn’t until I came to university that I really appreciated not having perfect pitch. Why? Because it has forced me to train my ear in ways that people with perfect pitch don’t necessarily have to, because they can already tell pitch without really trying.

Throughout my musical training growing up, I had to do a lot of “identification exercises”. I’m sure you’ve done these, too, if you’ve ever taken up music seriously at any point in your life. I’m talking about the identification of intervals, chords, and cadences. Someone would play you an interval, and you’d have to name it. Relative pitch is something that all musicians develop to some degree, and through lots of hard work, I’ve learned to hone that relative pitch. I always thought perfect pitch would solve all my problems, but I realized that my relative pitch was good enough to make up for the fact that I didn’t have perfect pitch. I’ve trained my ear in a way that I can hear a pitch and know what it is, not by perfect pitch, but by figuring it out quickly by using relative pitch, with my vocal range as a reference point.

The lowest note I can audibly sing is a C3. I know where the note sits in my throat. I’ve used it as a reference point so much, now, that I can physically place that note, not sing it, but still be able to hear it in my head. That’s the beauty of knowing your own body. You can feel where pitches are in your vocal tract without actually singing them, and make connections to that feeling. After being determined to develop some sort of “perfect pitch” for myself to use, I started trying to identify every sound I heard in everyday situations. The soft “ping” a bus makes when someone presses the button for the next stop is a G. I would hear the sound, hum a C3 to myself quietly, and then think back to the pitch I just heard. “Perfect fifth, it’s a G!” Gradually, this process started getting faster. Of course, it’s still not as fast as I’d like it to be (yet!!), but this is something I can continue to work on. Over the past two years, I’ve also managed to memorize where A440 is, mostly thanks to a job I had at a music store where people would come in to buy violin strings and ask me to restring their instruments. My counter was on the other side of the store from the shelf with the metronomes and tuners, and, being the lazy creature that I am, decided to memorize what A440 was so that I could tune their instruments without walking over to the other side of the store. Who said laziness doesn’t have benefits? (:

I’ve also learned to develop my relative pitch through playing things by ear. A lot. In Canada, our Royal Conservatory exams include melody playbacks, where someone plays you a phrase with your back to them, and you have to go to the keyboard (or your instrument, if you’re not a pianist) and play that same phrase back. This is the first step to doing something that lots of people find impressive: someone requests a popular song and you sit down and play it by ear. I started being able to play by ear many, many years ago, but it wasn’t until recently that I discovered how it worked in my head. First, of course, knowledge of chord progressions and harmonies will take you so far in this. But for me, personally, I realized that I’m able to play by ear well because I think of melody notes in terms of scale degrees. Instead of figuring out the intervals from each melody note to the next, I think of each individual pitch in terms of the key I’m in. This helps not only with learning the notes of the melody, but also with figuring out what harmonies to play along with that melody note. One of my favorite ways to develop this sense of scale degree recognition is to solfege every melody you hear. I’m not even kidding. I play a lot of video games, and I’ve realized that a lot of classic video game tunes are perfect for solfege exercise. Take the Tetris theme, or something from Super Mario Bros., or Pokemon… and just solfege the crap out of that stuff.

Another thing you could try training yourself to do is to hear things in your head. I don’t mean voices, because that means you’re just… probably going insane and need help. Or something. Being able to read music and hear it in your head is called audiating. I developed this skill mostly through sight-reading. I always remembered when teachers would put a piece of music in front of a student and ask them to sight-read it. “I’ll give you a moment to look through it, and you can start whenever you’re ready.” Sound familiar? Well, of course, this “moment” is for you to look at what you’re about to play. What you should be doing, though, is hearing it in your head. We learn music easier when we’ve heard it before, so if you can’t physically hear the piece before you play it, why not sing it to yourself in your head? Being able to hear what you see on the page is such a helpful skill to have in terms of learning music faster, but it also helps develop other musical skills. If you train yourself to hear more than one note at a time in your head, it makes it easier to figure out harmonies and chord progressions from that. When you can hear where a phrase goes in your head, it makes it easier for you to kind of “predict” where the music is going next, even if you’ve never heard it before. Of course, this is all assuming that your teachers or examiners aren’t being total jerks and giving you some kind of atonal sh*t to sight-read.

 

And for those of you who wish you had perfect pitch, but don’t, here’s a reason to love not having it.

We can transpose stuff more easily than those with perfect pitch (for the most part). I know so many people with perfect pitch who have trouble with transposition, because they see something on the page and they hear what it is in their heads with the exact pitches. The transposed key sounds totally awful to them. I’ve seen the faces of people with perfect pitch show discomfort when something is transposed. They also have issues with listening to Baroque tuning, because it’s so off from the usual 440 tuning we’re all used to hearing. Without perfect pitch, we hear the general contour of the piece we see on the page without being locked down to a specific tonal center, so we’re more comfortable with playing things in different keys. We can also listen to pieces that are transposed, or use instruments that are tuned differently, without feeling uneasy because, once again, we’re not locked down by specific pitches we hear in our minds. We might know that a key is in the ballpark of where it’s supposed to be, but being a semitone or two off in either direction isn’t going to bother us as much, if at all, as it will for those who have perfect pitch.

Personally, I’m a pretty awful person when it comes to practicing in practice rooms at school. Because practice rooms at my school are little individual cubicles with no windows and poor soundproofing, it’s easy to mess around with people without them knowing who you are. Unless, of course, they get so irritated that they come into your practice room to hunt you down. When I hear people practicing a certain piece that I’ve learned before, or I know well, I’ll do several things:

1) Find out what key the piece is in. If I’ve already learned the piece before, then I’ll know what it is. If I haven’t learned the piece before, but I know it well in my head, I will figure out what the key is, usually by thinking of that C3 at the bottom of my range and figuring out the key of the piece from there.

2) Figure out how the piece goes. If a piece is in my head and I can sing it to myself, figuring out the scale degrees and knowing intervals inside out will make figuring out the pitches a piece of cake. I usually make up the left hand, just filling in harmonies that work.

3) Transpose away. This is the fun part. I’m a horrible human being, I know. But usually, I’ll take other people’s pieces and be extremely mean and play either a semitone away or a tritone away. (:

My favorite thing about not having perfect pitch, though, is that when I hear something out in the blue, like a car horn, I’ll turn to my friend who has perfect pitch and say,

“That was an F, right?”

And when she says yes,

I feel like a million bucks.

 

So for those of you who don’t have perfect pitch, just keep workin’ on that relative pitch and own it! And to those of you who have perfect pitch… Well, let’s just hope you never practice in a room next to mine.

Dream big, music-makers! (:

Follow The Leader

I had an exciting day today, so I figured I’d jump back to an anecdotal blog post today.

BECAUSE I’M NARCISSISTIC AND LOVE TO TALK ABOUT MYSELF.

Haha. Just kidding. But really, though. 

Today, I met with the conductor for the Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra, and in four days, I’ll be performing Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini with them. Super exciting stuff! If only the date wasn’t so close.

Sometimes, when everyone has busy schedules that are hard to coordinate, we don’t have the luxury of having multiple rehearsals before a concert. I met with the orchestra’s conductor today, we have one rehearsal on Saturday, and then the concert is on Monday. I have half an hour on the day of the concert to run through my piece with the orchestra before the concert in the evening. 

If it were a different concerto I were playing that didn’t involve so much back-and-forth interaction between the orchestra and the soloist, I wouldn’t be as worried. But considering this concerto is so interactive, and I can’t even manage to get some variations to sync up with my single-person orchestra (my orchestral pianist), how do you expect me to feel about syncing up with about fifty or so other people who have never heard me play this piece before?!! Talk about stressful circumstances.

There’s something that needs to be said, though, when working with limited time in collaboration. Of course, when you’re collaborating with an orchestra, you’re dealing with a force of more than fifty people, but there is no reason for you to compromise the way you feel about a piece for someone else. 

“I want to take this variation faster,” the conductor said.

As a student, I know a lot of people who would just immediately say yes and just go with it. We, as students, are used to be told what to do. Our teacher tells us that we’re doing something wrong, and we practice to fix it. But at some point, we have to learn that collaboration isn’t just about going along with what everyone else is saying and playing Follow the Leader. Sometimes it’s important to take charge and do things the way you want them to go. You’re the soloist, after all. Put your ideas on the table, too. Discuss, and then come up with the best solution.

“Let’s give it a shot, see how it goes,” I replied.

After playing through that variation at the faster tempo, he looked at me expectantly. “I don’t really like it,” I said. “Can we go back to the tempo I originally started with?”

The point is that although we didn’t end up going with the new tempo, at least I was willing to try. That’s the beauty of collaboration. Everyone has different ideas; as long as everyone is willing to listen and try out different things, collaboration is a great experience and there’s something to be learned, and to be taught, in every session. Collaboration is about keeping an open mind, and being ready for anything.

Of course, things don’t always go the way you want them to. Be as it may that tempos might have been alright today, but I might end up taking something slower on the day of the concert. Some variations might end up being faster. Being in a concert situation changes the way our minds work, and sometimes it’s not always the best thing for us when we’ve gotten used to playing something a certain way. The best thing to do at this point is to practice the piece in a way that nothing will catch me off guard. Practice things at the tempo I want them to go at, of course, because in the best case scenario, everything will fall into place on the day of the concert. However, that’s not how things turn out in life sometimes. Sometimes, sh*t happens. I practiced the orchestra part so I know it inside and out, so I can catch onto any weird blips that might happen and potentially throw me off. I practiced each variation faster and slower than the tempo I’d like to take it at, so that if anything happens and the tempo doesn’t happen to be where I want it to be during the concert, I can still catch onto it and keep playing as though that was the tempo I wanted. Being ready for any circumstance is a skill that every performer needs to have. Adjusting on the spot to things that were not planned is something we have to always be ready for, and practicing for any possible situation is the only way to be fully prepared. The best the conductor and I can do is to listen actively and fit to each other. There is no leader in this context; we are equals, working together to create a piece of art. With that mentality, I could probably play my concert tomorrow and still feel pretty good about it. 

Four more days, and the stage is mine! (:

Until next week,

Dream big, music-makers!

Baby Einstein

We have a new addition in our family! Ten days ago, our family welcomed baby Lucas, brother to two adoring sisters. Our family had been hoping for a boy during my cousin’s entire pregnancy, so when he entered this world and emerged with his little [man parts], we were all ecstatic! (:

With baby Lucas in our family, I wanted to share with you all some of the research that was presented during the conference I attended a few weeks ago. The lecture was given by Dr. Laurel Trainor, a psychology professor from McMaster University. She runs her research in the University’s Auditory Development Lab, where she studies the perception of sound in infants, children, and adults, as well as the acquisition of music and language. Her research focuses on what infants perceive when they listen to speech and music, how this changes as they grow, and what influences how sound perception develops.

Why do caregivers talk and sing to infants who don’t understand the words? Can infants recognize tunes? What aspects of the musical structure do they encode? How do infants perceive pitch, pitch patterns, and melodies? How is rhythm perceived? What is the multisensory relation between music and movement? How does musical training affect brain development? These are all questions she aims to answer in the lab.

Before getting into any infant research, though, we must familiarize ourselves with how we perceive pitch as adults. In our daily lives, sound is always present. Sounds reach our ears as one massive complex sound, and it may become unclear which sources certain sound waves come from. Our brain parses this complex sound to determine one source of sound from another.

But how does our brain do this?

It uses fundamental frequencies and overtones. Our brains understand that integer multiples of a certain fundamental frequency are mostly produced from the same source. Pitch is created in the auditory cortex in the brain, where harmonics are grouped together and perceived as pitch, at the fundamental frequency. Brains are amazing things. But to take it a step further, shall we? If the fundamental frequency was missing, but all the other harmonics are still present, we’ll still perceive the pitch at the fundamental frequency! Craziness. I know.

So this leads to the question: Can babies tell pitch with the missing fundamental?

After conducting an experiment, it was shown that babies at 3 months cannot perceive pitch at the fundamental… But they can at 4 months. This means that virtual pitch perception emerges in babies between the ages of 3 and 4 months!

Another research question that was looked at was whether babies can tell if a pitch has a mistuned harmonic. This means taking one of the harmonics of a fundamental and altering it slightly. To adults, when presented with a pitch containing a mistuned harmonic, we should hear two pitches. The question is: do babies hear two pitches, too? The answer is yes! The ability to detect mistuning emerges between 4 and 6 months! Babies are amazing creatures.

Aside from research in pitch discrimination, Dr. Trainor also did work on how babies respond to rhythm. Young infants can discriminate rhythmic patterns with ease. First, we need to break down the concept of rhythm. Beats are derived perceptually from the surface of the music, while meter is the hierarchy of beat levels. As musicians, we are capable of internalizing sound events when no sound is present. In other words, we can hear strong beats even if no sound is there to emphasize the beats. In North America, we are enculturated to Western meters. When we’re presented with complex meters, the music is no longer isochronous (isochronous=equally spaced metrical divisions). When adults are first presented with a simple rhythm, then presented with a similar melody in a complex rhythm, we can generally tell that the two are different. However, when we are presented with a complex rhythm first, and then presented with the simple rhythm afterwards, it becomes more difficult to distinguish the two rhythms. When we are being presented with the simple rhythm first, the complex rhythm immediately sounds odd when we hear it. However, when presented with the complex rhythm first, our enculturated minds are working so hard to fit the rhythm into a simple meter that the simple rhythm that comes afterwards is also jumbled in our minds.

At six months, babies can distinguish between simple and complex rhythms when presented with them in either order. However, by 12 months, babies will have difficulty distinguishing between the rhythms when the complex rhythm comes first, just like most adults in North America, because they have also gotten enculturated to simple meters.

The last concept Dr. Trainor introduced in her lecture was that there is no such thing as “too early” to begin musical training. Studies showed that babies who undergo early childhood classes such as the Suzuki program develop sensitivity to sound 2 to 3 years faster than those who don’t. Her research also shows that music trains executive functions such as memory and behavior control. She showed us a video comparing two children at 12 months, one who took the Suzuki classes, and one who didn’t. The two children were presented with a xylophone and two mallets. The child who took the Suzuki classes attempted (rather successfully, for a one-year-old) to play the instrument, hitting the xylophone, alternating hands. This was already considered advance behavior, as babies at that age would probably only be able to control both hands to do the same thing at the same time, while this child was already showing signs of being able to control each hand independently. The other child, who did not take any classes, didn’t do anything with the instrument itself. He was eating the mallets. (: Cute, I know.

More of Dr. Trainor’s research shows that babies are sensitive to rhythm at 6 months, but they generally cannot follow tempo with whole-body movements until the age of 4. They can, however, relate movement to rhythm. This means that they will move their bodies slower or faster depending on the tempo of the music, but they will not be able to motorically synchronize with a beat.

If any of you are interested to see more of Dr. Trainor’s research, you can visit her research projects page here!

That’s it for today! Until next week,

Dream big, music-makers! (:

Healing

Hello hello!

I apologize for being away for two weeks; just had a lot on my plate!

Last week, I was invited to sit in on an international roundtable that brought together researchers from all over the world to discuss the effects music can have on the brain from both the artistic standpoint and the scientific one. Each of the five days dealt with a different neurological disorder and how music can be used to connect with individuals that have these disorders. Over the course of the next posts in the next few weeks, I would love to share with you all the awesome things that I learned last week during the conference, and hopefully it will inspire you as you gain even more insight into the power of what we do as musicians.

So, as an introduction, let’s just say we were to define what music therapy is. How would you describe it? To be completely honest, none of the researchers in the conference had a clear-cut definition of the job. Many people have the misconception that music therapy is simply just musicians playing for people in senior homes, hospitals, etc. That’s not what it is, though; music therapy has an effect on individuals that can give some sort of “recovery”, or help guide individuals to a goal, like someone who has just suffered a stroke trying to lift their arm again, or an autistic child learning to lengthen their vowels.

Here’s my definition of music therapy. Music therapy is the use of improvisation in music and musical elements to assess and identify client-centered goals. The intentions that go into the improvisation can create the framework for a client’s treatment.

How does this work?

One of the experiments we did during the conference involved one of the music therapists at the conference showing us how she was able to mediate someone else’s breathing. She told her “client” (in this case, a student volunteer) to breathe normally; inhale, exhale. This volunteer probably had about three or four cups of coffee at the time, so her heart was probably racing. The music therapist, guitar in hand, starting picking some chords, placing the downbeats right in line with the student’s breathing. After they had synchronized, the music therapist slowly started shifting the tempo of the music, filling in the beats with more music, breathing and singing along with the student. Everyone who tried breathing along with her was instantly brought to a whole new dimension. Our breathing slowed down with her, and suddenly the rest of the world just fell away. We were connected with our inner selves. I, too, had had way too many cups of coffee, but after this demo, I felt so calm. Energized, but no jitters whatsoever. It was incredible. (I hate people who say this, but… You just had to be there…!!)

So, what does this say about what music therapists do? How does this relate to neurological disorders? Well, of course, the breathing thing is just one example of the activities music therapists do. They use different techniques to find problems with the patient, whether it be difficulty pronouncing certain words or sounds, difficulty in movement, difficulty in remembering things, etc. They also try to find things that the client is good at – following along to tunes, tapping along to rhythms, etc. – and use these strengths to attain the goals they’ve set.

Of course, there are many people out there who think that music is just a way to make people happier; it’s a recreational activity. Where does its place fall in science, then? That was one of the biggest squabbles during the conference; we had the scientists coming from a place of little tiny details, moving towards a bigger picture, saying things like, “We need results, we need them now, and we need to make generalizations to make sure this stuff works and works all the time.” Then, we have the artists, who come from a place of big, abstract ideas, who would tell those scientists first of all to STFU (NOT KIDDING, THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED), that we can’t get results in such a short amount of time, nor can we make generalizations because music has a different effect on different individuals. Really, the debate didn’t go anywhere until… the last hour on the last day… Funny how some things happen, hey?

So, why music? (:
ALLOW ME TO LIST SOME OF THE REASONS WHY MUSIC IS AMAZING.

The point that most of the researchers made first was that music improves concentration and focus. When you have a musical line to follow, it’s easier to remember. You know where the musical phrase is going, and you want to take it to the end. You want the song to keep going. Your brain has something to hold onto with the rhythm and the melody. I have an amazing story about an 4-year-old child with autism who has the most incredible sensitivity to harmonies, but you’ll just have to wait until next week to read about it…! (Yes. Keeping regular readers. Because I’m cool like that.)

Music reduces agitation and depression. We all know this; we listen to music to match our mood, and it somehow makes the sad things and the frustrating things more bearable. Singing along makes it a whole lot better, too, especially at the top of our lungs. (One thing music therapists really encourage is karaoke. You have no idea how much karaoke came up during the week. I am so pleased.)

Music improves social awareness and interaction. Especially when singing in choirs or making music in groups; making music with other people creates a connection that isn’t possible to have with simple day-to-day communication and interaction. Music brings people together in a way that other things can’t (except maybe dance); music makes our breathing synchronize. We’re living in the same musical space, our heart rates going up and down at the same pace because of the music. For those of you who are of age… There’s a reason why people go clubbing. There’s a reason why people are more attractive in clubs, and no, you can’t put 100% of the blame on alcohol. The music plays a role in that, too. You automatically connect with the people who move in sync with you. It’s an odd little thing that we develop when we’re about four months old. (More on that next week.)

Music increases melatonin levels, which increases feelings of relaxation, which can not only redirect pain, but also can also raise our threshold for tolerance of pain. So, yes, listening to music when you’re giving birth might help. Probably not by much, though… This is why music is also commonly brought into senior homes and hospitals, because it helps patients relax and mute their physical pain, even for just a moment.

Music is a truly powerful thing. (‘:

More on the specifics in the next few weeks! But in the meantime,

Dream big, music-makers!

No F**ks!!

I have an exam tomorrow. I have a recital to play on Sunday.

I am flipping out. But that’s okay!

Why? Because I’m ready. Or, at least, that’s what I’m telling myself.

And that’s what you should be telling yourself, too. You spend so much time in a practice room perfecting everything, making sure all your notes are in the right place at the right time with the right sound and the right color. You spend hours working on those two bars for them to sound great. You spend days doing slow practice, rhythm practice, metronome practice, sometimes even all at the same time. You put in all that work.

Shouldn’t you believe in yourself?

People always tell you what you should think about when you’re on stage. “Just have fun!”, “You’re gonna be great!”, “You know your stuff so well!”

Sure, these things help. But me? Nah, I’m a little more vulgar than that. Excuse the language.

“NO F**KS. HERE WE GO.”

That’s the mentality I like to take on. You’d be surprised how much better you play when you just let everything go. It’s not just, “I don’t care about how my playing ends up being,” it’s more like a… “I don’t care if you like my playing or not, I’m just going to play this how I want to play it, whether or not you like it isn’t my problem. I’m just gonna do my thing. Take it or leave it. Kay, thanks, bye.”

People kept on telling me to take this attitude for the past few days while they’ve watched my confidence in myself fall below zero. Today, I finally found that feeling. I dragged a friend into the recital hall today and asked him to listen to me play some Tchaikovsky. By the end of it, I realized I was thinking to myself, “YOU KNOW WHAT, I KNOW THIS. WHATEVER. JUST GO FOR IT.”

And sure, there were a few inaccuracies, but it was AWESOME. It was exciting. It was full of energy. And it was me. It was the kind of feeling that I wanted to get from playing that piece. It was exhilarating.

And that’s when I knew for sure, that’s the trick. I’m not supposed to tell myself that I can do it. Why am I telling myself something my body and my heart already know? F**k it all. That’s it.

Dream big, music-makers! (:

PS. I’m really excited about my recital dress. Okay, I’m done.

Handwritten

Ever get stuck on memorizing your pieces, and you just can’t seem to get it into your head regardless of how many times you’re playing it and repeating it? Yeah, I’ve been there. I think we all have. We’re trying to memorize a piece, trying to repeat it over and over it again just to get it into our fingers, and then it happens – THE WALL. WE HIT THE WALL. You know that wall. It’s the one that you’re just constantly banging your head against, because nothing’s staying in your head and you’re just frustrated.

Sometimes, the best thing to do for memorizing pieces is not to keep playing, but just to sit yourself down at a table with a huge glass of tea (or whatever suits your fancy), with a pen in your hand. I did this for one of my pieces and the memory came naturally the next day. I sat there for hours, a red pen in my hand, writing down every single chord in my piece. Writing down all those Roman numerals on your score will help you understand your piece better; the chord progression, the voice leading, which notes are where and why the composer put them there.

Another thing you could do is grab yourself some staff paper and copy out your score, all the notes, expression markings, dynamics, and articulations to a tee. Not only will this help with memory, but you might discover some things you hadn’t seen before while you were so busy at the instrument trying to get everything clean and accurate.

The act of reading through your score away from the piano forces you to hear things in your head (…well, your music. If you’re hearing weird creepy voices in your head, then maybe it’s time to go see a shrink…! Ha.) It forces you to think about what you want to do with the music, what you want to hear. Sometimes, your fingers don’t necessarily play what you think you’re hearing, and it’s frustrating because you haven’t given yourself time to breathe. You get frustrated right off the bat because your hands aren’t doing what you want them to, and you’re just furiously trying over and over, headbutting that stupid wall that won’t budge. Baby steps, friends. You can’t get a running start if you don’t back away first. Sit away from the instrument and just work with the music. The answers are all there; you just have to find them. And little by little, you’ll conquer that wall. I promise. Patience is key.

Dream big, music-makers! (:

STOP.

I wanted to take a post (probably the first of many more to come in the future) and write about practice-induced injuries. As final exams are coming up and people are scrambling to get their jury or recital repertoire under their fingers, stress levels are rising and our bodies naturally get tense.

A few years ago, I was practicing for long hours every day preparing for competitions and concerts. One day, I felt something pull through my hand all the way up to my elbow, and up to my shoulder. Me, being young and foolish, thought it was nothing, and kept playing through pain. “It’ll go away,” I told myself, “I need to practice.” That’s the kind of attitude all musicians take when they’re determined to get something right. It’s a great attitude to have, but sometimes the stubbornness behind it can really cause some damage.

I had two weeks full of concerts that month, so I kept on telling myself, “I can’t slack off. I need to clean things up.” During the last concert, something pulled in my hand. Hard. It was the kind of pain that sent a shock straight from my fingers all the way up to my shoulder and my back. Tendinitis. Hooray.

So for those of you who don’t know what tendinitis is, it’s just a fancy word for when your tendons are all inflamed. Painful, uncomfortable, and just a real drag. Trust me, I would know. I have tendinitis in all four limbs. (Yes, all four, I’m a dancer, too. And very disaster-prone.)

My doctor got at me for practicing through the pain. “You should have just stopped,” she said. “If you stopped that first day, your hand wouldn’t be in such a bad condition right now.”

“Stopped?” I thought. “How could I stop? Piano is my life, I can’t just stop playing. That’s like… offensive to my entire existence.”

A few days ago, I was practicing the Brahms Handel Variations. I was working on cleaning up the fugue, until it happened. Something pulled. Hard. Right from the knuckle joint of my fourth finger all the way up to my elbow. “F***, that hurt.” Yes, I curse in the practice room. Loudly. I’m so sure everyone within a ten-mile radius could hear me, considering the sound-proof walls in my building are not actually sound-proof.

Just to make sure the pain was what I thought it was, I played through a scale slowly. Found that the pain was coming from my third finger joint, and it pulled all the way up to my elbow. “Crap. It came back.”

I reluctantly packed up my things and left the practice room. I spent the rest of the day with my arm propped up on a pillow with an ice pack. I took the next day off, didn’t touch a piano at all. I also stayed away from anything at the computer that would require typing. (Papers? What? Nahh, I’m injured, can’t write those.)

So, all y’all who have stuff coming up and feel like you need to practice… I know you feel guilty if you don’t practice, but you’re going to feel worse if you practice through pain and end up landing yourself out of commission. It sucks to keep yourself away from your instrument and from your music, but the best thing to do if something hurts is just to STOP. Don’t play through it like I did. I know you’ll really want to, but please don’t. Trust me; I’ve learned my lesson. I went back to the piano today after a day and a half of rest and ice and pillows and relaxing… and everything feels better. Everything sounds better, even.

Sometimes, the best thing you can do for yourself is just to drop everything and take a break. Pushing yourself is good, but knowing when to stop is also something essential to learn. Injury prevention is also something to know, but more on that some other time.

Until next week,

Dream big, music-makers! (:

The ‘A’ Word

During the course of every pianist’s career, one is bound to be asked to play with instrumentalists or singers. Although we can get away with being completely independent playing our solo music, instrumentalists and singers can’t hide from pianists forever. At some point, they will hand us some orchestral reduction of a concerto. They will give us the piano part of a piece they need us to play, whether it be an art song or a sonata for piano and [insert their instrument here].

Just because we are working with someone else doesn’t mean we don’t shine. A sonata for violin and piano includes “and piano” in the title because we are just as invested in the music as the violinist is. The sonata isn’t for them; it’s for us both. Art song is the same way; the singer may be the one reading the poetry, but the pianist is the one who creates the atmosphere and really sets the scene for the singer to tell the story. I hate to sound super pompous about it, but they can’t survive without us.

So, being given this huge role to support and collaborate with someone else, why is there often such a big difference in the way we approach our own solo works as opposed to pieces that other people want us to play with them?

“I’m just the accompanist.”

Wait, what? You’re a what?

No. You’re not an accompanist. You’re not the carpet the singer or instrumentalist walks all over in order to get to the spotlight. You share that spotlight. You’re just as invested in the music as they are. You have the power to control the way the instrumentalist plays, the way the singer sings. You’re creating this music together.

The next time a singer or an instrumentalist asks you to play for them, play it like it’s your solo piece. Think of it as though you’re taking to the stage by yourself, giving every ounce of your energy. Music is music, no matter what you’re playing. Whether it be a chamber work, an orchestral reduction of a concerto, or an art song, you should be putting every bit of attention to every detail. You should be completely invested emotionally. There’s no excuse for half-assing anything, for lack of a better word.

You’re never accompanying. You’re collaborating. You’re making music together. And don’t for once tell yourself that no one listens to the pianist. If they’re not listening, give them something they will listen to. Make them pay attention. Compel them to listen. That’s when you know you’ve done your job as a collaborative artist. 

Dream big, music-makers! (:

Brain Fart!

As performers, we all know what it’s like to get nervous before a show. We’ve all experienced that feeling before: THE BRAIN FART. Don’t even pretend like it’s never happened to you. It could be anything: nerves, stage fright, fatigue, stress, illness… or just an off-day. You’re staring at the keys – sometimes before you start, sometimes mid-performance – and your mind just draws a blank. And then you panic. Oh my goodness where am I what are my hands doing what are my notes where are my notes what are these chords where is my left hand what is my right hand doing what is the melody – OKAY I’LL JUST STOP.

And then you start feeling around for something that’s familiar. This chord? That chord? Is this my starting note? Okay, beginning of the section. Wait, I’m in the wrong key. Shoot, backtrack a few bars? Oh, no, that’s not right, either. Maybe I’ll skip ahead to the next section…

We’ve all been there. Even if it may not have been as bad, we’ve all experienced some sort of panic attack where we need to think quickly and recover.

Now, I’m no expert on keeping my nerves calm during performances. I get real nervous.  And I mean really, really nervous. There were a few years during high school where I had a memory slip literally in every performance I ever did. I can’t say I got over it; I still get nervous. I still get memory slips… But I have to say, the number of memory slips I’ve had since then has decreased significantly. I can’t tell you how to win over stage fright or nerves, but what I can tell you is just several ways I’ve learned over the course of the last few years to help lessen the chances of having those memory slips. Of course, they will still happen, as we are all human, but having a certain amount of padding underneath your feet will always help cushion your fall if you ever slip.

1) Brain work.
One of the things I’ve been doing with my music for the past few years to help solidify memory, and help speed up recovery time during performances, is to divide up my pieces into a lot of small chunks. Eight bars, sixteen bars, whatever’s logical. These chunks are usually a phrase or two. I would practice each of these chunks over and over, knowing exactly how the chunk starts – the key, the harmony, the melody – so that if I ever have a memory slip, I know exactly where to jump. After familiarizing myself with these chunks, I would start quizzing myself. “Start from H,”, I would tell myself, and the chunk marked letter H is exactly where I’d start. In doing this, you’re getting to know your music inside and out. It’s also reassuring to know that no matter what happens in performance, you can have faith in yourself that you have somewhere to jump and you know it well.

2) Muscle memory.
If you don’t have enough faith in your mind to jump exactly where you need it to, train your fingers to know exactly what to do. This exercise is actually one of my favorites because it’s just so stupid. What I like to do is take a really slow tempo and literally bash out the notes at quadruple forte as unmusically as possible. Obviously one would never perform this way, but playing everything loudly, with confidence, makes sure that your fingers know exactly where to go and what to do on their own. Slowly, turn the metronome up no more than a couple notches at a time and repeat until performance tempo, and you’ll find that your fingers will know what to do even if your eyes are closed and you’re pretty much half asleep.

3) Perform, and love every second of it.
The best way to learn how to recover in performances, is to keep performing. Take each opportunity you have to perform for others. It doesn’t matter whether your audience is one person or a thousand. Perform as much as you can, for as many people as you can. Don’t tell yourself that you’re feeling “nervous”; you’re “excited”. Excited to play for an audience. Why? Because you enjoy the music you’re making. Immerse yourself in the music. Smile. You’re a performer because you love doing what you do. You want people to hear the reasons why you fell in love with the music you’re playing.

I’ve written these words in a previous post before, but they’re important, so I’ll write them again:

Play the music, not the notes.

When you lose yourself in the music, you stop thinking about the smaller things like, “what’s my next chord?” Stop it. You know the next chord. Your head knows it, your fingers know it. Don’t doubt yourself. It’s the little doubts that trigger the big slips. When you’re focused on the right things, magic happens.

Dream big, music-makers! (:

Symphonic

Not too long ago, there were certain skills that were once considered essential that tend to be glossed over these days. Transposing, improvising, reading figured bass, and reducing an orchestral score.

Of course, all of these are important, and most are still taught to young pianists. However, it’s common to forget that reducing orchestral scores is something essential for pianists, especially those looking into working in the field of collaboration.

The piano is one of the few instruments, if not the only one, that covers the entire pitch range, and dynamic range, of an entire orchestra. With recordings being available at our fingertips, the act of going to the piano to try out what something sounds like is something that doesn’t really happen anymore. Although these recordings are easily accessible, though, the best way to learn a piece of music is to play it. In playing orchestral reductions, we learn how to create different timbres and colors, different textures and new ways to voice certain things. It also trains us to audiate, which is to say hear the music we see on the sheet in our heads. In our minds, we have to sight-read while figuring out which notes we should leave out and which lines we have to keep.

Almost all the great composers that we love, such as Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart, and Schumann, all wrote pieces for orchestra. In learning how to read orchestral reductions and being able to hear all the different sounds of instruments in our heads, we can translate all those rich textures into our solo playing. Many of the Beethoven piano sonatas are very symphonic in nature, with their big dynamic contrasts and layered lines. The way you get a warm sound and a full texture in big chords and loud passages is to think orchestrally. Think about what instruments would be playing which notes. Think about what color you want to express in a certain passage and associate that with an instrument that’s not the piano. Maybe horns are playing the melody, while strings are sustaining beautiful long notes underneath. The flute is delicately doing runs above the texture, and suddenly one beautiful clarinet line pops out from the mass of sound. The possibilities are endless when it comes to orchestrating your solo music, and the best way to familiarize yourself with  orchestral music is to listen to orchestral music and do your own score reduction.

When your instrument can take on the role of an entire orchestra, why not take advantage of it to its fullest?

Dream big, music-makers! (: