May 26th, 2012

Yesterday at a cello lesson we were working on a very specific technical thing - how to transition from one kind of trill to another. It dawned on me that in purely technical transitions what matters most is the preparation: in other words, once you've transitioned, you're there, the transition happens before the event. In classical music, the events themselves are predictable because of music that is composed and practiced, so anticipation is easy (sort of). Wouldn't it be great if we could anticipate more in real life as well, and ease the transitions that way?