i would be even more bitter, but i'm too distant and preoccupied right now

The other blog is... well. Apparently we got spammed? We'll deal with it later. Not high priority these days.

So. Had a concert tonight. We did Symphonie fantastique... well, the last two movements.¹ I am a little bitter about the excerpt in the fourth movement, but I'll get over it.² I suspect it gave the fifth movement a slightly angrier edge.

It's a shame, because I really like Symphonie fantastique. I've been listening to it since high school, when my French teacher introduced me to it. She loved Berlioz and hated Wagner, which always amused me. Since then I have attempted to play it with orchestra twice,³ written a few papers on and around it, and have had to work up the major excerpts for a few auditions. I don't even bother counting the rests in rehearsal. I don't need to.

This particular performance was... interesting. All through the rehearsals I thought for sure I was playing ungodly loud... and yet, every time the brass would attempt to back off on the volume, the conductor would start taunting us. It was not the orchestral experience that I am accustomed to. I'm not complaining, exactly, just perplexed.⁴ And, of course, there were some interesting moments, as there always are. Some of them were surely mine.

All in all, it was okay. I got another stab at one of my favorite pieces, made some money, and advanced my education in orchestra politics a bit.⁵ The best part, however, was afterward. I was down in the dressing room, putting away my trombone, and I turned around to find that a large plastic bucket full of beer and ice had magically appeared behind me.

Needless to say, I lingered a bit. After all, I had to soften the sting from the fourth movement somehow.

1. You know. The good movements.[↩]


2. Why I can play the excerpt by myself, but sound like hell when you put me with an orchestra, I do not know.[↩]


3. The first time was with a youth symphony. I wasn't actually capable of playing the part. I don't know that it counts.[↩]


4. I backed off once we were in the hall, because brass tends to be harsher there, and received no comment either way. People assured me that I was not sticking out like a sore thumb, but I still have a hard time believing it.[↩]


5. No, I will not elucidate on this.[↩]

i, uh... what?

Not much to talk about lately. Currently being abused by working on Symphonie fantastique. I may or may not write about it at a later date.

In lieu of actual content, I bring you this.

No, I don't know either. All I know is that it is amazing.

state of the practice

So, recently I started using the Alessi Warm-up. It is kind of kicking my ass, just a little bit. This is to be expected, as pretty much anything with Alessi's name on it is designed to kick your ass.

First of all, calling it a "warm-up" is a bit inaccurate. It takes me somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour to get through. It does not take me that long to be warmed up. I would say that the first 15 minutes or so is an actual warm-up, followed by fundamentals work.¹

At any rate, I'm going to keep it up for a bit, and see if it is actually beneficial or not. One school of thought would argue that as long as it is, in fact, kicking my ass, that it must be beneficial. The other school of thought might argue back that wearing yourself out during the first hour of practice isn't really all that helpful. We shall see.

Second session is still devoted to Rochut and scale work. I've been doing the scale routines from the Masters section of the Milt Stevens book, and I am woefully behind and still slightly under tempo.

Third session has been given to the Bourgeois, because apparently I really like to make myself suffer. I kind of suck at it right now. Especially the third movement:

I'm not quite half that speed right now, but it is damned close.²

I will note also that the third movement is by far the most prominent on Youtube, because apparently we only care about the flashy stuff. And to be fair, maybe we should focus on that, since trombonists suck at musicality.

Session four... doesn't always happen. It depends on many things. Whether I've left myself time for it, whether or not I was clearly already exhausted during session three. Session four is a combination of Schlossberg-related long tone exercises and some Arban's work. I am somewhat conflicted about my priorities here, because while I would normally argue that fundamentals-based practice should take precedence over solo work, I also know that if I don't play some actual music every day that mind-numbing despair will probably kick in.

When I am going full-bore, there's usually another session in there that consists of excerpt work. However, I have no auditions on the horizon, and so I am currently taking it easy for a bit. I haven't yet decided when I'll go back.

Anyway, that is more or less my current routine. Feel free to tell me about how I am doing it horribly, horribly wrong. Perhaps in the future I will actually have something interesting to say about music, but for now this'll have to do.

1. Perhaps the word 'routine' would be more appropriate?[↩]


2. Yes, I probably could take it faster, but I want precision, damn it.[↩]

also, he should have hired a librettist

So, I got this phone call that basically consisted of, "My wife and I are going to Götterdämmerung and we have an extra ticket. Would you like it?" And, really, there's only one answer to that.¹

I've seen the entire Ring Cycle before, about four years ago. I had a professor in the pit that was able to get me tickets to the dress rehearsals for the first two, another friend with an extra ticket for the dress rehearsal of the last one... and, uh, I may or may not have snuck into the dress rehearsal for Siegfried. It was four operas in the space of one week, and I was utterly exhausted by the end. Wagner is one of the only composers I know of that causes hangovers.

But, one of the nice things about the Ring is that if you only make it to the last opera, you're fine, because they will helpfully recap everything that happened before. Sometimes numerous times. This is why I walked into the hall at 6pm and walked out at about 11:30. There are two intermissions, at which they sell alcohol, and this is why. Thanks, Wagner, for assuming your audience had the memory of goldfish.

Anyway, let's start with the technical difficulties.

So, we're in the scene changing music for Siegfried's Rhine Journey. The curtain's down, the orchestra's playing. The orchestra reaches the climax, and then... trails off mid-phrase. The curtain is still down. Silence. In the pit I can just make out the conductor, talking into some sort of phone or walkie-talkie. More silence. The audience starts to fidget. Finally, the conductor picks up his baton, the orchestra backtracks a few measures and starts playing again, the curtain goes up, and it's business as usual.

Except then it happens again, in the opening for the second act. Finally, before opening the third act, they send some poor fellow out on stage to tell us that apparently all of the scene changes are computer-controlled², and that the computer in question had started crashing, and they were terribly sorry but were also confident that the problem had been fixed... and I assume it was, since we didn't notice any other mishaps.³

There was another charming incident on stage, after Siegfried has disguised himself as Gunther, wrested the ring back from Brünnhilde, sent her back into the cave to pout, and is now gloating.⁴ And as he's doing so, he is casually tossing the ring into the air and catching it. Except he drops it, and has to chase it across the stage.

Also, I do not understand why it is so incredibly impressive to see them lead a horse across the stage. Yes, yes it is a real live horse. There it is, on the stage. Why are you all applauding the horse? Is there some form of elaborate trickery required to get a horse on stage that I am not aware of?

There was also a nice moment when Brünnhilde says something to the effect of "Yes, I know that sword well. I also know its scabbard," and the entire audience snickered, because we are all twelve.⁵

I am, however, a little disappointed in the ending, which in this case was portrayed by lowering a translucent screen on which they then projected the image of flames. Because I feel that if your opera ends with, "and then everything caught fire, the end," that there should be real fire involved.

So, good times.

You may have noticed that I haven't commented on the music. You must be a very observant person.

1. I may possibly have answered before he finished talking.[↩]


2. I didn't know this, but if I had thought about it I probably would have guessed.[↩]


3. Insert your computer joke of choice here.[↩]


4. Look, just go read the synopsis.[↩]


5. Also, I don't believe a scabbard is used anywhere in this particular production. because he just ties it to his back with a bit of rope. But, you know, semantics.[↩]

a new place

So, it seems that I have acquired another blog.

Which on the surface sounds like foolishness, since I can barely manage to keep this one updated, but hear me out.

See, at some point I decided that this space ought to be mostly music-related. It made sense, because that's pretty much all I do, right?

Well, I'd still like to keep this one mostly music-oriented, but it occurred to me that I might like to talk about other things once in a while as well, because apparently it is considered healthy to have other interests. I guess. Whatever. And someone offered me a space, and so I figured what the hell.

The blog is here, and the first entry is, well... See, someone who shall remain unnamed wanted to know if it was possible to rewrite "It's a Small World" with profanity. And I decided to oblige, because I'm a good friend that way. And a horrible person. Go see just how horrible.

The layout is... odd, in that it looks like a wiki. So, if you find yourself clicking on links and going strange places, well, that's normal. I'd try to be helpful and explain, except I haven't really got it all figured out just yet.

While you're there, you should also take a look at the other blog. I had been trying to persuade my friend to set up a blog for a while now, and I suspect I wasn't the only one, and so now here it is.

Share and Enjoy.

musician, tune thyself

I am more or less convinced that my intonation sucks.

"But," you may be saying, "aren't you convinced that everything about your playing sucks?"

To which I can only reply, "Well, yes, but this one has some interesting specifics."¹

The specifics are thus:

1. I and most of my colleagues have been trained to listen and adjust at all times. I have personally been told several times that if it sounds out of tune, I should simply assume that it is me, and adjust accordingly. Now, I don't actually disagree with this reasoning, but it does mean that I have essentially been trained to always assume that I am out of tune.²

2. There is no excuse for me to be out of tune. Okay, yes, this applies to all instruments (except perhaps piano-like instruments and most percussion). But, I have less excuse than most. My instrument is essentially a bell and a tuning slide.

3. I do not play in groups with great intonation. I'm sorry, but it's true.³ Which means I spend rehearsals frantically fishing around with the slide, trying to find someone or something to match if at all possible. If it's any consolation, I personally own recordings of the world's top orchestras playing out of tune, so apparently it is a problem that doesn't go away.⁴

4. Does the orchestra play at A=440? Maybe they play at 441. Or 442. OH GOD MUST KNOW NOW. I always smile a bit when I get info for an audition and they include the orchestra's tuning, because I have to wonder... if the orchestra tunes to 442 and I walk into the audition playing at 440, what happens? Is there someone back there zealously hovering over a tuner? Is that why I don't advance?⁵ Can someone find me two recordings, of the same piece and the same group, in which one is played at 440 and the other at, say, 444 or something? Because I'd love to listen to both, just to see if I could discern a difference.⁶ To make things more complicated, there are also things like this floating around.⁷

5. The math doesn't help. Yes, it's good to know the tendencies. Major 3rds go down, minor 3rds go up, the F partial is naturally sharp, blah blah blah. But it doesn't help me to know that a major 3rd is exactly 14 cents flatter than equal temperament, because I haven't a clue how to translate that into something of practical use. I play trombone, and intelligence was not in the job description. Are there people out there who can say "oh, of course, 14 cents" and then they are magically in tune? And if so can I meet them?

6. Melodic vs. harmonic intonation. I am so not discussing this. At all.

I've probably missed a few. Intonation is rocky territory, after all. It causes fights, and occasionally bitter, bitter rivalries.⁸

What does this mean for me, then? It means that if the group that I am playing with sounds out of tune, I assume it is me and attempt to change it. It is ultimately futile, and we stay out of tune. And if we sound in tune... then, well, I obviously can't trust my ears, because what are the chances that we actually are in tune? Clearly I am still out of tune, except now I can't tell because my ears aren't developed enough.

I will forever be insecure about my intonation. As far as I can tell, this is encouraged by music teachers in order to avoid complacency. I am wholly sympathetic to their reasoning, and have been known to encourage it myself, but I have yet to figure out how to deal with the side effects.

So what do I do? I listen and adjust as best I can. I practice scales. I have a drone CD. I have a tuner. Occasionally I remember to record myself, even though I have yet to hear anything helpful on my crappy $20 tape recorder.⁹ I try to find recordings that exemplify good intonation, although my inability to trust my own ears makes it hard to identify such.

I am trying to train my ears. I don't know how long it'll take before I believe what they tell me. Perhaps I never really will. Perhaps that's how it ought to be.

1. By 'interesting' I don't actually mean interesting. I actually mean 'something that I can ramble about for a bit,' and so the rest of you get to suffer.[↩]


2. It is a simple fact that if the group is out of tune and someone insists that they are, in fact, in tune, that they assuredly are not. There are no exceptions to this.[↩]


3. I criticize because I love.[↩]


4. Some other time, perhaps, I will talk about my Solti/Chicago recording of Mahler 3 and my Crisis of Faith... but not today.[↩]


5. Answer: no.[↩]


6. Most of this is irrelevant, because as mentioned earlier none of the groups I play with ever stay with the tuning that they start with. Most don't even start at the same place, much to the chagrin of the principal oboist.[↩]


7. People send me these things, I swear. I don't go looking for them.[↩]


8. There are stories I could tell, but they would require me to name names, and so I shan't.[↩]


9. It helps me to spot rhythm and time discrepancies, but it tells me almost nothing about pitch. Or I just suck at listening. Yeah, that's probably it.[↩]

no, still no original content... sorry

Listen when no one is speaking, for something is still being said. Speak when no one is listening, for you will still be heard.

-Anonymous

I really have nothing original to say here, except that if you have ever fancied yourself as being even the slightest bit creative, I recommend you set aside 20 minutes and watch this. She's got some interesting ideas.

i also love the movie, by the way

He could no longer tolerate silence; except when he was sleeping, or talking over the circuit to Earth, he kept the ship's sound system running at almost painful loudness.

At first, needing the companionship of the human voice, he had listened to classical plays - especially the works of Shaw, Ibsen, and Shakespeare - or poetry readings from Discovery's enormous library of recorded sounds. The problems they dealt with, however, seemed so remote, or so easily resolved with a little common sense, that after a while he lost patience with them.

So he switched to opera - usually in Italian or German, so that he was not distracted even by the minimal intellectual content that most operas contained. This phase lasted for two weeks before he realized that the sound of all these superbly trained voices was only exacerbating his loneliness. But what finally ended this cycle was Verdi's Requiem Mass, which he had never heard performed on Earth. The "Dies Irae," roaring with ominous appropriateness through the empty ship, left him completely shattered; and when the trumpets of Doomsday echoed from the heavens, he could endure no more.

Thereafter, he played only instrumental music. He started with the romantic composers, but shed them one by one as their emotional outpourings became too oppressive. Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz, lasted a few weeks, Beethoven rather longer. He finally found peace, as so many others had done, in the abstract architecture of Bach, occasionally ornamented with Mozart.

And so Discovery drove on toward Saturn, as often as not pulsating with the cool music of the harpsichord, the frozen thoughts of a brain that had been dust for twice a hundred years.


from 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

The blog's been dormant for a while now.

Not for lack of trying, though... I have four or five entries sitting in my drafts folder that will never be posted. While this space has mostly been reserved for bitterness and cynicism, even I have limits on what I'm willing to subject others to. Typically I will start an entry, and then partway through realize that it is way too depressing to post, and so it gets abandoned.

So, instead you get a quote. Without context. If you really want to know where it comes from, go read the book.

Mr. Clarke and I could have had an interesting discussion about music, it seems. I note that there is no mention of any modern music (which is slightly hilarious, since Ligeti shows up all throughout the movie score).

That being said, while I am currently torturing myself with working on the Schumann Romances once again, I have also returned to the Bach cello suites. It was necessary.

I will probably return to my excerpts soon, and once again devote my energy to exploring all the ways in which the Romantic composers chose to make my life difficult as a trombonist. The thundering declarations and overexuberant marches; the doom and angst and fire and endless adolescence that mark my repertoire; all these things that make the trombone both fun and exhausting to play.

But not just yet.

why did i not know about this?

Oh my God you guys this is amazing.

This is part 1 of an animated version of Das Rheingold. I shit you not. Parts 2 and 3 are here and here.

Random thoughts while watching:

1. I should probably be offended at the idea of Wagner in English. However, since they've cut the entire opera down to 30 minutes, I don't think it actually matters what the language is.

2. That being said, I am not in the least surprised that the plot can be summed up in half an hour, although I suspect it would be a bit confusing for anyone that didn't already know the story.¹

3. Those familiar with the animated version of Lord of the Rings² will note that the same animation techniques are used here. Because nothing says class like heavy-handed rotoscoping.³

4. "Okay, so is this for the kids then? Wait, no, Alberich just asked the Rhine maidens to make love to him. Never mind."

5. Wotan is... Batman?

6. And Loge is apparently a conehead from Mars. I'm not very well versed in my mythology, but I think I would have remembered details like these. I don't know what the Nibelungen are supposed to be.

7. Pretty skimpy there, Freia. I'm just saying.

8. I do not remember Alberich losing a hand. I do like the way it magically stopped bleeding, though.

9. When one considers the amount of hacking and slashing that must have been done to the score, the music is put together surprisingly well.⁴ I might call it a pale gutted corpse imitation of the original opera, but it's probably not good for me to be so judgmental.

10. There were, however, a few moments in the orchestra that I would dearly like to blame on Youtube's sound quality. Pretend with me, won't you?

I would like to thank the Opera and Classical Music Lovers group on Ravelry for bringing this to my attention. Sadly, it appears that this was the only opera of the Ring Cycle to be brutalized condensed in this manner. It's a shame, since I imagine the other three operas would have been equally as laughable fascinating if not more.

Still, it's hard to beat the classics.

Better?

1. Granted, I suppose one could say the same of the opera.[↩]


2. another tour de force[↩]


3. Yes, I know it's a technique that can be used quite effectively, but... look, have you seen Bakshi's Lord of the Rings?[↩]


4. I imagine it would be like taking a battle-axe to an antique four poster bed and then attempting to make a chair out of the shattered remains.[↩]

as if my insanity needed more documentation

Damn. I was doing so well with the updates, and then I disappeared. I guess it was too much to hope for.

So, I recently performed Brahms 3. The performance was okay... Brahms 3 is probably the least stressful of the Brahms symphonies for the trombone section, but it is some awfully nice music regardless. I do love the way that Brahms wrote for the trombone, even if I'm not always capable of executing it properly.

Now, I know this orchestra has a limited budget, and probably can't afford the best editions. That being said, I really wasn't expecting to get a first trombone part transposed into bass clef. Maybe they thought they were doing me a favor, since I know some people don't like reading alto clef.¹

So what did I do? I brought a personal copy of my own and read the part in alto clef, of course. Yes, I suppose I did make it harder on myself. Theoretically a trombonist should be equally adept at all three clefs, but in my experience this is rarely the case.²

Why, you ask? I'm still thinking about it myself. Maybe it's because I thought I needed to do more reading in alto clef.³ Maybe I was acknowledging that most orchestras don't do this, and that I wouldn't be doing myself any favors if I took the supposedly easy way out this time. Maybe I just like to make a martyr of myself, even when no one else knows I'm doing it. I think if someone had noticed, however, it would have been less martyrdom and more, "Why would you do that? Are you a masochist?"⁴

I don't know. I just... couldn't bring myself to play a Brahms symphony in bass clef. It felt wrong. Yes, the notes are the same, but for some reason I had this idea that it would sound different somehow.

How? I have no idea. Am I actually suggesting that the different clefs sound different in my head in some way? Could be... my head is a pretty strange place. It makes no sense, but that didn't stop me from reading in a less comfortable clef when I didn't have to.⁵

Does anyone else ever get that? The idea that changing the way the music is notated will change the way you play it? Or am I the only crazy one?

Yeah, I thought so. Can I get that straitjacket in black? I think it'll really kick out nicely against those white padded walls.

1. I don't always like it either, but come on, it's part of the job.[↩]


2. My personal exception to this? I have a mental block when it comes to playing alto trombone in any clef other than alto clef. I don't know either.[↩]


3. Oh, do I.[↩]


4. The short answer? Yes, yes I am. The long answer? Pretty much this entire blog to date.[↩]


5. Interesting side note... my biggest problem while reading Brahms 3? I kept overshooting notes. It was weird.[↩]