The Everyday Musician

If you’re a baby boomer, or perhaps an older sibling of one, you probably have been paying attention to what is described in a New York Times article today as “a booming industry” to help seniors exercise their brains. The feature article on the front page of the Business Day is titled “Exercise Your Brain, Or Else You’ll .. Uh…”, by Katie Hafner. The article largely focuses on the rapidly increasing number of software programs that specialize in “memory exercise”.

Indeed, there are already hundreds of memory exercise software programs, such as 200 listed today at http://www.rocketdownload.com/software/memory-exercise.html. Although I suffer frequently from memory loss, I don’t really need these memory exercise programs, because my family brutally tests my memory every day. “Mark, don’t you remember that… Now, come on, try to remember.” My family presents me with essentially daily memory flash cards, including grading of my performance.

I’m tempted to hunt down and quote here the most authoritative articles written in the last year on how marking music is good for our brains. Instead, I’ll just appeal to our intuition here. Learning to play a piece of music can’t help but be good for our memory. Even if you can’t play it fully by memory, you’re relying a huge amount on your memory as you perform the piece on your instrument, recalling all of the details of how the music sounds, and helping your fingers (and breath) execute your musical intentions.

Making music is a great low-tech, fun way to exercise your memory. If you have a hard time justifying spending that extra time each playing your instrument, think of it as analogous to devoting time to physical exercise each day, except that it’s probably more fun for most of us. There is no proof that it will help you lose weight, though.

For a somewhat more high-tech way to exercise your memory making music, here’s a very interesting idea that a customer, Michael Dodson, told me about yesterday. He is really into George Gershwin’s An American in Paris, and has the piano transcription for it. He took on a three-week project to “un-transcribe” the piano transcription back into something similar to Gershwin’s original orchestral version, using music notation software. At first glance, one might think that this is a silly idea, since the end result probably won’t be an orchestral arrangement that is any better than Gershwin’s original. It is the process here that is important, though.

In un-transcribing Gershwin’s music from piano back to orchestral, Michael’s head got deep into the music in a way comparable to a conductor does. Michael fanned out the various instrument parts from the piano reduction. He had to recreate the orchestral arrangement. He had to hear and make sense out of the lines of the various instrument parts. Michael told me, “Different sections would get to me and it was like meeting a new friend.” The final result of Michael’s efforts was a beautifully notated score, with Michael’s own hand in the arrangement. Although Michael already knew this piece well, he now knows this piece inside and out, like a conductor would. This was a fascinating brain exercise Michael came up with.

There are lots of ways we can exercise are brains with making music, with or without also software tools.

If you find yourself sometimes lacking imagination in your composing, here’s a suggestion for one way to loosen up your musical ideas.  Impose some constraints on what you’re going to compose.  Paradoxically, imposing constraints can actually free up your imagination to explore other dimensions of the music that are not under constraint.  There are many ways to do this.

Sometimes this Everyday Musician blog will offer some glimpses into the future of technology for musicians.  This one came across my desk today.  Researchers (including Mark Bocko) at the University of Rochester have simulated a musician playing an instrument.

The claim of simulating a musician might lend itself to controversy, as well as humor along the lines of drummer jokes.  I’ll let you all have the fun of making up jokes about this your blog comments.  This is very interesting stuff, that I’ll consider here seriously.

For many years, there has been a method of simulating instruments that is termed “physical modeling.”  The physical modeling of a wind instrument, such as a clarinet, is in part a computerized simulation of the wind tunnel in the clarinet, with wave pressures of air bouncing around.  The physical modeling of a violin string is a simulation of the string vibrations that are picked up by the body of the violin as the bow crosses the string.   Physical modeling has been available in commercially available electronic (MIDI) keyboards as early as the mid-90s.  When you hit a key soft or hard on the keyboard, your action is interpreted as blowing soft or hard on the clarinet, or bowing soft of hard on the violin string.

So, what’s new here?   Two days ago, the researchers announced at the International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing that their computer simulations not only mimic what’s happening inside the musical instrument but also mimic the physical actions of the musician himself playing that instrument. 

For example, this University of Rochester project simulated the physical activity of musician playing the clarinet, including “the fingerings, the force of breath, and the pressure of the player’s lips to determine how they would affect the response of the virtual clarinet.”

This simulation of the musician playing the instrument offers a far richer way of controlling the virtual instrument.  Instead of controlling the sound of the clarinet by just hitting keys soft or hard on the keyboard, and perhaps using a joystick on the electronic keyboard, the virtual clarinetist actually has a virtual mouth cavity, and lung blowing air, and tongue articulating the notes. 

As a keyboard player, I’ll be interested in how this technology might evolve to enable a keyboard player to “pretend” he is a clarinetist, by controlling the virtual musician portion of this simulated musician-instrument combination.

A fantasy that never came true for me is that my family of three children, my wife, and I would make music together.  It just didn’t happen, largely because it wasn’t of sufficient priority.  I’m afraid that music was just “my own thing”.  I didn’t really try at all to pull together a family musical group, even though all of us except one child have explored singing and/or instrument playing.

We home-schooled our children.  “We” is generous to me, because it was my wife who home-schooled the children, somewhere between one half and two thirds of all of their schooling years.  Home-schooling offered a great opportunity for me to encourage musicianship in my children, but I didn’t take good advantage of that opportunity. I didn’t push music on my children. 

It wasn’t our home-schooling style to push anything very hard on our children, because we trusted that in pursuing what was most compelling to themselves, our children would achieve greater self-fulfillment, and we inherently trusted that they would do right.  Our children all have strong minds and wills of their own, that do not need to answer to their parent’s expectations.  Does that sound risky?  Well, maybe were just lucky that these three children have all turned out to be great young adults.  Or, maybe it was good that we didn’t get in their way, so that they didn’t have to go out of the way to dramatically rebel against us.

So, my half-hearted fantasy of our family making music together wasn’t fulfilled.  It wasn’t important enough to me to force it on my family; and it would probably have backfired anyway.  This is a strong-willed bunch of family members here.  I have no big regrets about this.

Also, there has nevertheless been plenty of music in our family, not just counting the sounds of my piano echoing through the house.  My wife and youngest son, David, are always humming tunes.  All of our family members listen to their favorite styles of music.  My two sons have sung in choirs, and mess with the guitar some.

I did make an honest attempt to lure David into piano playing.  We used to play what we called White and Black Keys.  Starting at about 5 years old, David would improvise a melody on the white keys while I’d play an accompaniment on my second piano.  As long as my accompaniment was centered in C-major or A-minor, David’s melody sounded good; and he always played with a nice synchronized rhythm.  We were really jamming together!  After playing on the white keys for a while, I’d say, “Get ready. Now. Black keys!” and we’d jam together on just the  black keys.  This was a good starting point to lead into note reading, which I attempted to teach to David; but sight-reading didn’t work out.  I wasn’t going to push it on David.  Black and White keys sure were fun with David for the three or four years we did that together.

Many of you will have much more successful stories to tell than mine.  Please do share with other readers how you succeeded in forming a family music group.

Each December of every year, Althea gave her piano students a music composition project. Althea was my beloved piano teacher for 12 years of my youth.

Althea’s annual composition project for her students was simple:  Start with a Christmas carol; keep the chord progression; change the melody to your own.

That’s a good way to get started on your first composing effort.  In this exercise, you focus attention on just melody writing.  The structure of the song, the meter, the harmony, even the key signature, are all given to you.  You just have to come up with a new melody, which is fun!  Of course, you can borrow from other types of non-copyrighted music, not just Christmas carols.

As you write the new melody, you’ll probably be forced to change the rhythms some.  That’s good practice for you to work with both the pitches and they rhythms of the new melody.

I believe that Althea’s method for getting young people started on composing was simply brilliant, that is, brilliant in its simplicity.  I started doing this when I was 8 or 9 and really enjoyed it.  That’s what got me started on a life-long hobby of composing music.

Althea was way ahead of her time some 50 years ago.  She knew that nobody would sue her students for stealing their chord progressions from Christmas carols.  Althea anticipated 50 years ago PG Music’s popular Band-in-a-Box software:  you provide the chord progressions, and then Band-in-a-Box plays a small ensemble accompaniment to which you can improvise a melody.  Althea also anticipated the application of holistic teaching methods in music, at a time when her colleagues were still hitting the fingers of their students with rulers when they hit a wrong note.   (See a blog post about Althea at http://everydaymusician.com/?p=11).
 

Althea was my piano teacher, and one of my very favorite people ever.  She was positive about everything she said and taught.  She called her students “her children.”  For sure, her music studio felt like a foster home, safe from the emotional hazards of childhood.

There are many kinds of music teachers; I wouldn’t want to claim that Althea was better than other types of music teachers.  But Althea was my music teacher, to whom I owe so much of my musical identity and my overall personality.

Althea never demanded perfection.  Perhaps I should blame Althea for my imprecise piano playing, but I don’t.  It’s just not in me play perfectly.  If Althea had demanded perfection, I would not have lasted six months.  Althea taught music, and the love for it.  Althea never spoke about religious ideas; she never preached; but through demonstration she taught love itself, by highly valuing me as a young person, by encouraging me to express myself musically.

Althea was my music teacher from my first lesson, on my eight birthday (the lesson was a present from my parents) until I left for college.  I was one of Althea’s many children who have loved her as she did us. 

Do you play by ear, or do you sight-read music?

That question is too simply asked, when presented as either/or.  If you mostly play by ear, then a better question is:  Do you use chord charts or fake books or other notated musical “hints” as you play by ear?  Or, if you mostly sight-read, a better question is:  How much do you use your ear when you sight-read?

There is a wide spectrum between playing by ear and sight-reading music.  At one extreme of this spectrum is the performance of a musical savant who can play on the piano with amazing fidelity some complex music he has heard for the first time.  At the other extreme is a professional Holloywood musician who can play his part upon first reading as though he had been practicing it for weeks.  Most instrumentalists play somewhere between these two ends of the spectrum.

I’ve observed that some musicians who are fairly far out at one end of this spectrum or the other hold a surprisingly degree of awe about the musicians at the other end.  I’ve heard musicians who play very well by ear discount their skill and express envy of the musician who can more literally play from sheet music.  And I’ve heard musicians who are excellent sight-readers express envy of those musicians who play by ear.  These must be cases of grass looking greener on the other side of the fence. 

All musicians deserve credit, however, for playing by ear, more or less.  A musician who is sight-reading is not some sort of computer with an optical scanner reading the sheet music and sending signals to his arms, hands and fingers to press this or that key with so much pressure.  There’s a brain operating in the middle of all of that, which adds rich musical interpretation, based on prior musical experience and overall life experience of emotions.  The musician is telling a story in sound as he is playing.  He is playing by ear, even if he doesn’t give himself credit for that.

Still, I must confess, I envy musicians who play well by ear.  That shouldn’t be easy for me to say, since the name of my business is Notation Software.

Confession:  I make lots of mistakes when I play the piano.  It’s just not in me to polish my performance of a piece, no matter how hard I try.  I rarely try very hard to polish a piece, except to have one on hand if I might be asked to play.  This means that any listener with a discriminating ear is likely to hear many wrong notes, let alone less than perfect control of tempo, dynamics, accents, and musical interpretation in general. 

How can there be any joy in my piano playing for anyone?

In spite of my unprofessional musicianship, there is plenty of joy in it for me.  When I play with imperfection, somehow I’m able to hear around my mistakes.  It’s not like I don’t hear the mistakes at all.  Rather, they’re more like noises coming from somewhere else, mixed in with beautiful music.  You can still enjoy listening to music in your car, even though lots of noises are coming in from the streets.  It’s sort of that way with my playing.  I don’t get upset by the extra noise, which I somehow can kindly disassociate myself from, even though I’m the blame for it.

Is this a personality flaw?  It certainly would be in a concert pianist.  But I sort of think of it as an asset, a blessing, that I can hear past my own playing mistakes.  It frees me to get my head into the music I’m playing, to be part of it.  My ears lie to me, revealing the beauty of the underlying music that I am so poorly performing.  I might do much better to listen to a concert pianist’s recording of the piece I’m brutalizing; but that would be such a different experience.  I won’t assert that listening to the piece well-played is a passive experience, because listening can be very mentally active.  However, the physical activity of delivering music through my fingers upon the keys of the piano adds an extra dimension of involvement in music that makes it worth the price I must pay to hear the wrong notes.  It’s very likely not worth the price to anyone else listening, because they don’t enjoy the benefit I do of intimately participating in the music.

Therefore, I usually play away from direct earshot of anyone.  My family all hears my sloppy playing, but muffled through walls and doors.  My playing is mostly just noise in their lives, like the many other noises from the outside that invade our home in its semi-urban setting.

I’m not a complete hermit musically, but most of the time I am.  It’s best that nobody hears my mistakes, including myself.

Music tells a story through sound. 

Many kinds of stories can be told through music, drawing from the full spectrum of emotions that can arise from within us.  Emotions can arise in a blink of time, such as fright in a dramatic instance of the unexpected.  Emotions can also arise gradually, such as a sense of peace felt from a relatively long period of calmness. 

Music has an amazing power to evoke familiar emotions.  It does this not in the same way as when we revisit emotions by, for example, looking at a photo album.  Music brings back familiar emotions through abstract story telling, which subconsciously reminds us of our past joys, pains, peace, or tension.

That music tells a story does not necessarily mean that it has a clear plot and cast of characters.  Nor does life itself have a clear plot and a constant cast of characters. Music still tells a story, even if it has some of the same randomness that we experience every day of our lives.  Music tells a story, through sound, because it reminds us of the emotions in our lives.

Musicians are story tellers, who remind the listener, and themselves, of life’s many kinds of emotions.

Think of some music you recently played, or sung, or composed.  What stories were you telling?

To describe oneself or another as an everyday musician doesn’t sound very flattering, does it?  It sounds like: ”just an ordinary musician.”

An everyday musician is not an ordinary musician.  An everyday musician is serious about his music making.  An everyday musician has serious fun making music.

Really, no individual is ordinary.  How can an individual, a unique person, be ordinary?

There is perhaps something even less ordinary about an everyday musician.  She is not only unique, but she expresses her uniqueness through music.

Of many different ways that individuals can express themselves, doing so with music seems to stand out as extra special.  The musician reveals her unique personality, her own life experiences, through abstract story-telling in sound.  There’s nothing ordinary about that.

An everyday musician is certainly not ordinary.