IF ONLY THE DINING TABLE COULD SPEAK ......!

If only the DINING TABLE could speak

The dining table is where modern family namely the parents meet the children and eat together with a thankful  heart.

Dining table is where the guests are entertained as it is always in a room with access to the kitchen.

Though known as the dining table, it is used for purposes far more than dining.

The table is where the family says a prayer for the meals.

Joyful events like births, engagements are announced.

Daily events are shared by the family at the end of the day during meals.

Television is watched together for news, matches, movies and events.

Sad news too - accidents, ill health, deaths are shared, tears shed at the table.

Children study at the dining table, do the last minute home work before the school.

Progress cards surrptiously shown to the parents at the last minute just before school at the eleventh hour for the signatures!

Children watch the parents communicating with the near and dear and learn how to communicate.

Dinner time is the best, when the unwanted food is shoved below the table to the dogs without the knowledge of the mother! ( giving special meaning to ' we are not worthy to pick the crumbs from under Thy table!'......)

MId-night forbidden raids to the fridge and the stolen food gulped in the dark at the table, watching midnight movies!

Dining table seats visitors dropping for a chat, news, gossip and tea.

Every birthday is treated with cake cutting, singing, good wishes and unpacking around the table.

Formal prayer meetings demand more seats around the dining table for singing the thanksgiving.

When children leave for college, there is loneliness around the table and the feeling of emptiness is palpable.

Children grow up to be young men, and get married; their families join in and more joy pours in.

Grand kid/s come forth into family. 

Music, happiness and laughter around the dining table yet again.

And life goes on!

If only the dining table could speak ……!

VIOLIN MATTERS - WHY MUSICAL STUDIES / ETUDES / EXERCISES MATTER!

Violin Matters          

 WHY MUSICAL STUDIES / ETUDES / EXERCISES MATTER!

 

“Without a solid foundation, you will have trouble creating anything of value”

Often questions arise in the minds of the student. Why am I still doing studies / etudes/ scales? Why is not the teacher making me do the concertos, sonatas?

What does musical exercise/ study or etude do? Each exercise concentrates on one aspect of technique. For instance if it has to do with the right hand (bowing) – it may be legatos. The exercise will focus on legatos –for the whole bow, the upper half or the lower half. So once the exercise is mastered, one has a reasonable control over the legatos.

Exercise on staccatos – may focus only on the short note to be played and full stop and wait before starting on the second note. One learns this technique SLOWLY and then speed it up with regularly increasing intervals. The single bowed staccatos are different from slurred staccatos. So the exercises could be different.

Left hand application of the exercise is similar, it may have to do with the position of playing first or second or higher positions. The I to III positions are mastered before the advanced student progresses to  high positions. Each exercise is specific and caters only to that aspect of playing.

As for the left hand techniques – shifting of the positions, string crossings, the double stops, the vibratos, left hand pizzacato, harmonics with double stops, etc, each can be practiced separately and then applied to the repertoire.

Now coming to repertoire, composer would have, depending on the complexity of the musical piece, employed various techniques which one would have individually studied in the  studies earlier on. It is important to scan the music, and while attempting it slowly in the beginning, identify the troublesome spots. Then analyze each difficulty and go through it  in detail.

If necessary, revert back to the technical study, practice it all over and then come back to the repertoire.

In case of attempting a difficult piece, it is important to:

• -          Isolate the difficult part and work at it  in small segments |( one or two bars if necessary) and analyze why it is difficult ( section A)
• -          Work at the solution , slowly for a short while
• -          Go back to some other section of music ( section B)
• -          Come back to the troublesome spot, now with its solution and practice this again ( section A)
• -          Practice some other section of music ( section C)
• -          And come back to section A again – and gradually speed it up to the required tempo.

This has worked largely for other colleagues as well as me. It is easier to do this rather than playing the music from top to bottom over and over when each mistake is made.

Substitute learning to spin a ball at cricket or  hit a curvy spinning shot in tennis or a difficult knotting in laparoscopic surgery with remote instruments - it all comes to the same principles as above.

Short bursts of working at difficult sections with analysis, repeated in small sections saves much of wasted time and is retentive in memory easier than otherwise.

Violin Matters - OPEN STRING VIBRATO in VIOLIN

Violin Matters

OPEN STRING VIBRATO

Open string vibrato is useful in some of the selected areas of violin playing.

The usual string vibrato where the finger is placed just below the note and moved to the correct note – back and forth is based on frequency modulation.

The open string vibrato is based not on the frequency change as there vibrato finger is not on the string involved. It works by amplitude modulation

There are mainly three techniques for doing vibrato on the open strings. They are:

1)      If you wish to do G open string vibrato, place your third finger on the D string (G note) and do the vibrato on the third finger, but play the open G string. This is with the note one octave note higher doing vibrato. You can also do this technique for G, D and A strings vibratos       

www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8PXrnHIasQ

2)      You can also do the open string on D, A and E vibrato with the fourth finger on the lower string and do the vibrato in a similar manner. Here the note is the same but the vibrato is on the lower string.
                     www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_Yxg_qo7NA

3)      Last method is to do any of the  four strings – namely G,D,A or E by playing the open string, but vibrato with the wrist in the air ( without touching any note) 
                      www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA6o25OkJ-o

4)      There is a fourth vibrato – ‘ the bow vibrato‘ from the 16^th century. It is demonstrated by the shaking of the bow in the direction of the bowing (up or down) in the same direction. It was described in the 16^th century by Ganassi in 'Rigola Rubertina' when vibrato was introduced in Renaissance music as a musical ornament. It sounds like a stammer – not a tremolo where the bow alters direction. It is at present, an uncommon bowing technique.

In general the overtone sound effect is similar to the bowed vibrato, though the intensity is reduced due to the sympathetic vibrations. The character of the open string vibrato can be altered by the type of open string bowing and the type of the vibrato on the adjacent string - rapid or slow.

VIOLIN MATTERS - BOWING WITH FULL HAIR OR TILTED HAIR

Violin Matters                   

BOWING WITH FULL HAIR OR TILTED HAIR

FULL HAIR

TILTED (partial)  HAIR

Violin bowing is one of the most intricate aspects of violin playing.

It is personal and every expert holds the bow and plays in his / her own characteristic way.

Clearly this shows that there are many ways to skin the cat.

There are controversies covering each aspect of bowing.

What this blog attempts to cover is only if the bowing should involve the edge of the hair or the whole hair on the string.

Carl Flesch mentioned this and bow tension in the Art of Violin Playing. 

Flesch observed that violinists who used the Russian bow hold had a tendency to use a looser bow hair and flatter hair, while those who used a Franco-Belgian bow hold tend to use tighter bow hair and tilt the bow more.

The arguments for both sides are presented. 

Each violinist needs to decide and adopt what to do based on the dynamics and tone.

IN FAVOR OF TILTING HAIR TOWARDS THE BRIDGE / BOW STICK TOWARDS THE SCROLL

Hair Tilt

Paul Stoebing in his book on ‘The Mastery of the Bow and Bowing Subtleties’ has mentioned three fundamental rules of bowing. Rule 2 is “Play with the edge of the bow hair, the stick itself being slightly turned towards the saddle and the peg box”

Paul Stoebing's 'The Mastery of the Bow and Bowing Subtleties'

He goes on to explain, “Play with the edge of the hair, but modify the amount of hair touching the string according to the part of the bow employed. At the extreme nut change, with as little hair as is compatible with a comfortable wrist position and tone quality, increase imperceptibly the amount of hair towards the middle…..”

Ivan Galamian in his “Principles of Violin Playing and Teaching’, mentions,“…Moving up -  the bow  from the square (middle section) towards the frog, the stick of the bow should tip gradually and slightly towards the finger board. 

This tilting accomplishes three things: (1) it preserves the straightness of the bow stroke as the frog is approached, since the arm is foreshortened a the hand gradually drops from the wrist ;(2) it removes the inner edge of the hair from the strings, thus compensating for the natural increase of bow weight; (3) it contributes the correct type of bend and flexibility to the wrist action.”

First of all tilting the bow does not necessarily mean that all the hair is not played on the string! This is because the hair is loose and can twist to lie on the strings depending on the pressure applied even if the bow is tilted.

Just as a painter uses different shades of brushing and dilutions of the color, the amount of touching the strings can produce very soft, melodious, transparent sound to suit the phrase.

Right hand – figure of eight choreography is used by many violinists with forearm pronation may involve some degree of tilting of hair.

Right hand - Figure of Eight Choreography

Pic from William Fitzpatrick with thanks.

Ray Chen the virtuoso goes to the extent of bowing with similar bow tilt at the frog and the opposite tilt at the tip of the bow to get the appropriate effect of tone.

IN FAVOR OF KEEPING ALL BOW HAIR ON STRINGS /BOW STICK ON TOP

All Bow Hair on the String

All the hair of the bow should lie on the strings from frog to the tip. 

This gives a rich, full tone.

People who play most of the time on the edge of the hair play only a percentage of the hair with a tilt of the bow to 45 or 60 degrees or even more. Less hair, less energy in sound.

Also when the edge of the hair is used by the tilted bow, this results in the breakage of the hair.

Playing full hair gives full, rich, robust sound which projects to the back of the concert hall.

Flat hair produces louder sound and more articulation; the fewer amount of hair, the sound is smoother but quieter with less articulation.

Playing all hair on the string, it is still possible to play softer and with altering dynamics of the phrasings by lessening the weight of the bowing on the string.

Flat, full hair technique was used by Erick Friedman, Aaron Rosand, Mischa Elman.

Anyway, as one plays the higher positions, one needs to play full hair with proximity to the bridge or the sound is going to be thin.

Strad Magazine (Jan 2012) "The Motion of Emotion".

"Many people consider straight bowing (keeping the bow at an angle of 90 degrees to the string at all times) to be the gold standard. 

Crooked bowing - they would argue inevitably leads to an inferior sound by introducing longitudinal vibrations in the string. 

However, in practice we can observe many violations of this standard, and the bow can be considerable slanted even in the performances of renowned players. 

Does that mean that their performances must suffer, and that they could produce a better sound if only they could keep their bow at a straight able? In most cases the contrary will be true."

  

CONCLUSION

There is no one magic answer to this issue. 

Situation depends on whether it is solo playing in the hall where the sound has to carry to the last seat.

It is good for one to familiarize with both techniques – knowing that the flat hair playing is a solid one. 

I started with the tilted bowing – but now changed over to the fuller hair for most of the legatos. 

But where the phrasing dictates different coloring and shading, bow tilting has to be done.

There are aspects not covered in this blog such as tightness of the bow, the bow holds for the right hand or the type of strings used (gut or synthetic). 

Recordings and live performances are difficult to compare as the mike placements and management by sound engineers can play a significant role in the modern music era.