I had a thought again. Apparently a lot has been going on in the sub-conscience in the last 8-months. 

My thought is related to compositional process, pragmatism, performing and the audience experience. I think we all face performance situations where we practice something so very hard, but come the performance, it just does not go well. Or, where some aspect of a piece is unnecessarily difficult, and not for much gain. Some pieces sound harder than they are; some pieces sound easier than they are. 

The second movement of the Cassado Solo Suite is pretty hard, it's a virtuosic Sardana-dance with lots of fast octaves, jumping around, crazy double stopping, multiple voices etc. I love it - the challenge is well worth the work! The last chord is my least favorite, even thought it's by far not the "most difficult" passage in the piece: a D major chord up on the fingerboard, where you can't really easily block but you have to anyway, to get the fifths. There's plenty of time to get up there, so it should work. I hit it every time in practice. And...so far, whenever I've performed the piece, I've missed it. I hate that one chord to the point where I might not program the piece because of it. I've heard other cellists say the same exact thing. So...it occurred to me...what if, I just took that chord down an octave?

Would changing that one chord influence the audience experience in any way? Probably not for the negative (unless there was a cellist in the audience, who, knowing the piece was either biting their nails from nervousness on my behalf or gleefully waiting for me to fall off the fingerboard). Would it change my performing experience? Ummm, yes, absolutely! For infinitely better. And, in the end, would anybody really care? Would Cassado care? 

It's probably obvious what my answers are. BUT - this could, and would be a slippery slope. Once the door has been opened to the idea of changing a passage for convenience, where's the line? I think the answer has to do w a balance, and the composer should always get a veto. The main question for me is the audience experience, and whether or not the creative "edit" would in some way change the essence of the piece. I am a pragmatist - but I don't want to sell out either. So I've tried to do it his way for 15 years. Next time I'm trying it my way - I'm so taking that chord down.  

     

We musicians like to talk about how we are a lot like athletes, in the way we use (and abuse) our bodies. I've heard it said many times, that playing the cello is the same as this sport or that sport, we just use smaller muscle groups. I agree. I am definitely feeling it. If I take breaks from practicing, I don't come back as fast as I used to. I played a run of West Side Story last week and my back is still giving me trouble. My core muscles need a serious overhaul (they never quite recovered from the child bearing business) and I'm working on that. But what about the actual daily routines that I have, besides learning new music? 

For a while now I have been in search of a maintenance routine that would allow me to keep my hands and body conditioned when I am not actively learning a new piece or preparing for a performance (on those occasions I generally have no problems motivating myself to practice). The parameters of that routine are simple: it needs to encourage sensitivity and accuracy while maintaining muscle conditioning, in the shortest possible time (three kids, full time job, no time...)

I have talked with many friends about their routine, some play a Bach Suite every day, some focus on Popper (I heard that a handy way to do this is to rotate each batch of 10 for a week, the way they were written). My teacher Erling Blondal Bengtsson was quite well-known for his routine of playing through a different Bach Suite every day, and on the 7th day all the Piatti Caprices. He said that they really touched on all aspects of cello that one needs. I definitely agree (I just can't do it). I was on the Popper Project for a while (I still have a couple to learn, but it's almost all done!) and playing 3 Popper Etudes a day certainly kept my hands conditioned, maybe a little too well - at times I was hurting so bad I had to take a day or two off from fear of injury. Plus it took a lot of time! More than I have most days, anyway. For the last year I've done my warm-ups (which I do religiously every time I practice), then playing around the circle of fifths, Poppers and Piattis, using the "I wonder what I feel like doing today" organizational method.

Today, I was talking about the issue with my massage therapist. He suggested that instead of flying by the seed of my pants, why not design a program for myself, approaching it like a fitness cross-training routine for cello. This makes so much sense it's a little ridiculous. Of course it should be a rotation of different cello-fitness routines, 2 days of muscle conditioning following by 3-5 days of cardio! Not sure what that exactly means yet, except that Popper is going to be heavily involved, as is Bach. It's easy to think about the left hand, but what about the bow, how does that factor in? Should there be explosiveness training involved, or are different forms of calisthenics enough if rotated with some isometric movement? And what does cardio mean for cello anyway? I think I just found my summer project...         

This is kind of a long story so I'm going chronological - 

E3Q has practiced two times since school is out. In and of itself that is remarkable. Mark has written a sweet chord sequence in C phrygian, and so I've been playing around ("fooling around") with the Phrygian. I love it - I think it's my current favorite mode. I have also been toying around with another progression that I wrote, and thinking about how to use the modes to write a Prelude for the Lullaby Project (recording soon!). At the same time, my friend Maria and I have been picking repertoire to play for a concert this summer, and I thought of the Cassado Solo Suite, which I have neither played or thought of in 13 years. Today I decided to play all the C modes (Major, dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian...) to warm up, before reading through the Cassado to see what was what. And, low and behold, how does the Cassado start? First declamation, D dorian. Repeat that in C mixolydian, then c lydian. And so forth. The whole thing is modal. And I heard them, and was able to recognize them by ear and also by pattern for the first time. I didn't really know that before: I probably knew that he piece was modal in some way, but I didn't really KNOW it. Mind completely blown. 

What sort of freaks me out is that apparently my ear knew, and nudged my sub-conscience ("remember the Cassado?"), but it wasn't until I actually played the piece that I realized how exactly the Cassado fits all the other things I am currently working through. 

The things us classical instrumentalists hear from our teachers, "always practice with thought","don't just fool around but have intent" are certainly words of wisdom. I know that growing up, "fooling around" on the cello, and "playing without thinking" were somewhat synonymous. Now I am really questioning that. In fact, when I "fool around" with the modes or any other set of of parameters, I am thinking very hard and certainly, have just as much intent, if not more, than when I read music or practice music written down by somebody. I think "fooling around with intent" should be highly encouraged in instrumental learning! I really would love to see some brain imaging done on improvisers brain compared to a brain reading music...The two processes are incredibly different.