From now on I will post the diaries every 2 weeks. It’s a lot of work to each post and the practices repeat a lot. This way, with more information in each post, you can also see the frequency of practice sections and of what I practice in each section (me too!).
Just arrived? Here is an introduction to the TCHAIK PROJECT.
Readings of those weeks:
The correct way to sit in a chair
And I finished watching the Kato Havas workshop that is on Youtube. The first video is here. Very interesting.
Readings of those weeks:
The correct way to sit in a chair
And I finished watching the Kato Havas workshop that is on Youtube. The first video is here. Very interesting.
September 16th, 2019 - Monday
I finally finished reading Tchaikovsky’s page on Wikipedia. Has some interesting insights about how to look at his work...
I opened the violin and started playing the 1st movement. Out of the blue. I played a little under tempo, seeing if I memorized something. I have the notes and rhythms of the 1st page already in my head (not all the fingerings yet, specially at the end of the page). I still have to memorize the bowings, a good part of the dynamics and a more solid idea of what the orchestra has. But I got very happy!
I have a little more than 1 hour to practice. I’m lost about what to do, I confess…
- Cycle 1234 (I’m specially anxious today…)
I used some passages of my orchestra’s repertoire as warm up in random mode to see tone, shifting, mobility of the left hand and coordination of the effort between left and right hand.
Just so you know how I do that in fast passages: I play with very heavy and condensed bow, and the fingers of the left hand rising a lot with a very light sensation, so light that the notes fail and the sound is horrible. Speeding up the passage I use each time a little less effort and things fall slowly into place. When I reach the right tempo I already trained my body for an optimal balance of powers, quite different from my natural tendency, which is to force the left hand too much.
Tchaikovsky 1st movement
- Bars 176 to 180 (very slow, imagining the next note and using Constructive Pause between each note. I did it only once because my time was over, but even though, it was worthy.)
September 17th, 2019 - Tuesday
Posting and reading these diaries I saw that the parts I practiced the most were exposition and Cadenza, followed by the recap. I also practiced a little of the middle section. Today I intend to start practicing the Coda, which I haven’t practiced yet, and more of the middle section.
I don’t feel like practicing at all…
- Body warm up
- Warm up using my orchestra’s repertoire in random practice (30’)
Tchaikovsky 1st movement, Coda
Random (35’)
- Bars 305 to 307 (intonation, shifts and fingerings, with no final conclusion yet)
- Bars 314 and 315 (using Constructive Pause between the 2 bars, at the shift)
- Bars 317 to 320 (intonation of the double stops)
Tchaikovsky 1st movement, middle section
Random (40’)
I played a little slower to see which excerpts to practice and realized that the previous practices are having an effect! I finished a lot less tense than I expected!
- Bars 180 to 183 (very slow, feeling my body between the notes, imagining the next note an tuning)
- Bars 162 to 165 (first only bow, slow, watching for phrasing + bow distribution, then still very slow, but with the notes, stopping sometimes to feel the body)
- Bars 186 and 187 (intonation and shifts very slow and imagining the next note)
At the end of the section I started playing some of the beginning. I see that I do it a lot. I played calmly until I reach the second theme and decided to practice a little this part (bars 67 to 94), find out what I want musically. Of course I still need to analyze the score to have a better idea, but something is already forming in my head.
Then I played the Cadenza and thought that how I practiced so far is having an effect. Obviously I still have a lot to practice. I think that the most difficult part for me is to be patient to practice right (calmly, imagining the next note, distributing the bow, practicing mobility with minimum effort, etc.), without running through the piece, anxious to be able to play without thinking. I say that because when I do that I bring back all the tension I’m trying to release in the process of transforming my relationship to this piece, taking the risk that this tension spreads to other pieces I play.
Practice plan for tomorrow: analyze the exposition, practice technique, passages from 111 to 118 and 289 to 295, start looking at the 3rd movement, read.
September 18th, 2019 - Wednesday
I had plans, I had beautiful plans. But as it usually happens in a routine, my plans went down the drain and I find myself with less than 2 hours available. Not all time was wasted, I read more of the book “The Art of Possibility” and I wrote on my notebook about an interesting class I had at the Contemporary Music Lab at the University. In this class the teacher guided some physical and interaction dynamics that are between meditation and drama class. What I actually found most interesting were the conversations and questions those dynamics brought up in the class. “How do I deal with embarrassment?” “Does anyone have gone to the theater and felt excluded from the play? And included, even in a tradicional play?” “Can we tell how well a musician is going got perform even before he or she starts playing?” “I realized that when I performed in front of an audience of unknown people I acted in a more closed fashion, and when I performed for friends I played differently, more at ease. Some people even said I was a completely different person playing!”
What remained with me was the main theme of the inclusion of the audience in the art making. How do we do that? I feel like the audience should be included since always, since when you start practicing a piece (any piece). Then I started thinking of how this reflects on our daily work.
What I can think of right now is about the acoustic issue, to practice violin to make sounds that reach far, until the last person in the back, so that the whole theater understands the story I am telling. For that there is an heretic sentence I say sometimes to my students: what is on the score is not what you have to play, is what the audience must hear (I don’t remember if someone told me that or if I got to this conclusion by myself at some point.) This is good specially for dynamics.
The second thing I think of is, obviously, to have a story to tell, to invent a narrative from all those black thingies on the score, something bigger and more interesting than “playing the right notes”. When I go to a concert I want to feel something, I don’t go to count other peoples mistakes. This is why I am analyzing the Tchaikovsky Concerto full score, to build (or invent) this narrative, thinking of what I want to tell, and to whom.
Thirdly, I think of performance practice including the audience’s presence. One option is the visualization of the performance moment with stage, audience and everything else. When you feel inside the situation, start playing as if it was the concert. Another option are the mock performances. Anyone is good as audience: parents, uncles and aunts, pets, musician friends, non musicians, neighbours, people on the streets or subway. The goal is to communicate with your audience.
I also remember the classes of my last Alexander Technique's course, which was all about that, to feel the energy of the people around you, to feel and to enjoy this exchange. All in the body. And the moves were delicious. But it’s very easy to get to this point in a sunny room with a competent professional guiding you, every person in the room open to this kind of speech that sounds very subjective. It’s very different when I’m alone preparing a piece that HAS to be in tune, in tempo, includes other musicians and probably the artistic decisions are from someone else, i. e. a conductor.
So, it seems natural that I forget this communication sometimes. If the passage is out of tune, I miss notes, it’s not fast enough, I haven’t had the time or health to prepare it the way I like, oh my God, the horror! Well, you know the drama. Then I see I’m tense and this is my body telling me to go back to the place of pleasure, and get out of the place of judgement. This is my body being gentle with me (I will talk about this later).
Then I have to find a way back to the following ideas: I don’t make music to make it right, but to make it beautiful. I try to focus more on the story, the message, the atmosphere, the style, things to what the technique is subordinate (as taught to me by Dora Schwarzberg). I make music because it is a pleasure. I make music because the people who go the concert want to feel something. They want to hear us playing beautifully, they don’t want to judge us. And also because it’s much nicer to make music in those terms! (which surprisingly also leads to less mistakes!)
My mind is wondering too much today… sorry guys.
(Here is an awesome talk to listen to about those things I was wondering about.)
September 19th, 2019 - Thursday
I analyzed yesterday. Wow, how interesting this is!!! Since I’m super tired physically, I’ll just keep analyzing. I got to the second theme.
There are 97 pages of full score. I reached the first chord of page 13. It’s very tiring for the mind and a lot of work. But it’s so interesting to see what procedures are repeated, to see that the dominant-tonic sensations are reached through some sophisticated moves and chords. I’ll try to record a video about what I realized already from the score. This is just a first contact, extremely important to guide the practice at the instrument. During this one year this analysis is going to be revised, discussed, transformed.
September 21st, 2019 - Saturday
I woke up feeling like practicing. Must take this chance cause it happens once every 100 years…
- Body warm up (body is all weird and muscles still kinda hard)
Random (40’)
- Open strings - 12, 14, 16 and 18 beats per bow at 60 bpm
- Vibrato
- Trills
- Shifts starting with 2nd finger on E string
Orchestra repertoire in random (45’)
Tchaikovsky (30’)
- My orchestra's repertoire
- 1st movement bars 114 to 118 (as before)
- 3rd movement, first 3 lines (just bow, slowly)
Wrote bar numbers of the first page of the 3rd movement on my part.
Tchaikovsky (30’)
- Something from orchestra
- 1st movement bars 291 to 295 (passage relative to the one on bars 114 to 118)
- 3rd movement bars 53 to 80 (seeing fingering and mobility very slow)
September 23rd, 2019 - Monday
- Body warm up
Random (20’)
- Open string 12, 14, 16, 4, 3, 2 beats per bow at 60 bpm
- Vibrato
- Shifts starting with 3rd finger on E string
Practiced only orchestra parts, not the Tchaik.
September 25th, 2019 - Wednesday
- Body warm up
- Open string 12, 14, 16, 18 and 20 beats per bow at 60 bpm
Practiced only orchestra parts, not the Tchaik.
September 27th, 2019 - Friday
- Body warm up
- Open string 12, 14, 16, 4, 3, 2 and 1 beats per bow at 60 bpm (10’)
- Exercise 1234 for intonation on A string, interleaved with Vibrato without bow
Recorded videos in English for a previous post.
September 28th, 2019 - Saturday
- Body warm up
- 1’ bows
- Cycle 1234
Super cold and freezing hands, I will practice in blocks to warm up the hands progressively.
- Vibrato
- Trills
- 2 octave major scales with correspondent arpeggio
Tchaikovsky 1st movement
- Bars 28 to 35, the first theme after the intro (intonation)
- Bars 54 to 58 (intonation)
- Second theme (I sang, then sang with bow gesture, then sang playing open strings, then I played the passage, always with metronome at 60)
<<< TCHAIK PROJECT 4 - When a week is short
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The Tchaik Project is part of the Master’s Degree Research of Helena Piccazio, enrolled in the Master’s Program in Music at the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo (ECA-USP).
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