Don't be a Suzy

It takes many things to be a runner but I’d say that two of the most important aspects are intelligence and perseverance. Imagine running in a marathon and on the twentieth mile. At that point your whole body is screaming for you to stop and just walk. Your mind is racing and what seems like millions of questions are going through your head. Would it matter if I stopped? Who would care but me? Do I even care? Many people have a hard time not listening to those voices in their head. A truly amazing runner is able to stay focused and eliminate those thoughts from his mind.

While it may not be exactly the same, a musician has to have that same sort of perseverance in the practice room. I’ve always believed that you must be your own teacher and listen for your mistakes. That can be an arduous task and if you aren’t mentally prepared for it, you can get down. After all, your sitting there listening to sometimes very bad noises. This is where the runners mental strength is essential. I’ve seen it time and time again at music festivals and at school. I walk by and hear a musician make a mistake and then move on. They sometimes routinely practice it and try to make it better but it’s always with a stern face and a defeated attitude.

In most cases, no one knows how not to practice this way. Don’t you just turn on the metronome and repeat and repeat and repeat. Why would it matter if you weren’t in a perfect mood? Well, I’m no expert but practice with that attitude never gets you far. I’m not saying it doesn’t work because for a while it does. It helps you get to where you need to go but not as far you could go.

So this begs the question, how do you stay positive while practicing something your awful at? Quite frankly, I don’t know. Or I do but it’s not a clear cut answer. Unfortunately, this process is different for everyone. You have to find little things about music or about the pieces your playing that make the mistakes worth while. For me, I treat it like a puzzle. I like figuring out exactly what’s wrong and approaching it like a math equation. There are many elements and degrees that once I figure them out will produce the sound I want. Is my bow in the right place? Am I using enough pressure? Is my left hand in tune?

But this doesn’t work for everyone. I would even guess it works for hardly anyone. You might try just having a positive mantra. It seems like a simple solution to the problem I’ve set up. I also personally try and remember that I love the piece I’m playing, and the more I practice it, and figure it out, the closer I’ll get to performing it. Keeping these simple thoughts in mind, can completely alter the success of your practice period.

It’s like taking notes in an academic class at school. Suzy might take her notes perfectly and evenly, and it looks absolutely wonderful but Tommy took his notes and they looked disgusting and jumbled. Tommy aced his test and Suzy bombed it. It doesn’t mean that Suzy wasn’t trying, and wasn’t working hard because she was. However, she hadn’t found what worked for her. While Tommy’s notes are jumbled and crazy, it’s what he understands. He knows what works for him. In practice, you have to do the same thing. You have to find your own way of practicing and staying positive. No teacher can tell you exactly how to do something, because in the end it’s your cello and your music.  

Dun, dun, dun daaaaaaaa

Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve always had one composer in my life that makes me fall further in love with my cello and classical music the more I listen to his music. Good day or bad, he was always there for me in one way or another. I grew up on his symphonies and played his quartets. I read his letters of poetry and studied his scores. If it wasn’t for this one composer, it is doubtful I would be so captivated by music like I am today.

For me, that one composer was Beethoven. I know it may seem a bit generic but Ludwig Van Beethoven is and will always be my favorite composer. He changed my life. Some of my first musical memories are listening to his 9^th symphony. And I can still remember today sitting down to the piano and playing “The Fifth Symphony” from my first piano book. Who can’t recognize the opening theme? (Dun, dun, dun daaaaaaaa.. dun, dun, dun daaaaa.) Even from my ‘younger’ days, Beethoven had an obvious effect on my life but as I got older and became more advanced in my cello playing his music became more than just music I liked.

I was fortunate enough last year to be able to travel to Germany for a month as part of an exchange program. While I wasn’t miserable there, I would be lying if I said I was happy. I was thrilled to speak the language I had been studying and to be in another country, but I had never been separated from my cello for more than a week. I thought I would be able to handle a month of separation but of course there is always something to make matters worse. For the first two and a half weeks, I had no contact with home. Not through internet, or phone. I felt completely isolated and out of place. It was definitely a challenge and as the weeks seemed to be passing by like months I quickly became an emotional mess. I was more than ready to be home by the third week and counted down not just the days, but the hours.

The third weekend I was there though, my host family decided to take me to Bonn, Germany. For those of you who don’t know, Bonn is the city where my beloved composer Beethoven was born. The plan was to visit his birth house. I was truly ecstatic. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever been more thrilled. It definitely tops going to Disneyworld when I was five! As we walked up the street, every so often there would be a picture of a composer and their name in the sidewalk; Clara and Robert Schumann, Edward Elgar, J.S.Bach and all the greats. And then, right in front of his house, Ludwig Van Beethoven. The house was small and obviously very old but absolutely lovely.

 As I walked in the door it was like the weight had been lifted off my shoulders. It wasn’t just being in Beethoven’s house that made me feel better, but it was being with musicians and fellow Beethoven-lovers. For the next few hours I didn’t just wander through his home, but I spoke with musicians who loved him just as much as I did. I talked with an old lady from New York about her life of playing Beethoven piano sonata’s and concertos and how she had always wanted to visit his home. She told me a few stories about performances of her favorite Sonata’s and she expressed to me that more than any other composer, she loved him the most. She couldn’t express why, but it had always been that way.

I walked through the exhibit and found myself asking that same question. Why do I love Beethoven so much? I listened to the audio tour and saw such meaningless things that were so important at the same time. His eyeglasses? Walking cane? Quills? All simple stuff really. Let me clarify, there were also amazing items like his instruments, portraits, scores and pianos. But even the small simple items had extreme meaning just because they were his. It seems slightly weird doesn’t? To find such value you in a quill? But when you think about it, it isn’t really that strange at all. How many men have effected billions of people, been listened to by hundreds of generations, and will be appreciated by the next hundred. What an incredible power Beethoven had.

At the very end of the tour were Beethoven’s scores. As part of the audio tour they gave to listening clips; one of what Beethoven would have heard of the Fifth Symphony, and then one what he would have heard of his Ninth Symphony. I must have looked like a blubbering buffoon, but I just started sobbing. To be completely deaf is one thing, but to hear only muffled sounds and muted tones is maddening. It was like being outside a concert hall. You can hear that music is being played but it is impossible to know exactly what is being played and you can never ever know. I’d never been able to imagine Beethoven’s sorrow and I still can’t today, but that was the closest I had ever come.

To this day, I have a hard time not crying when I listen to any Beethoven piece. His music will always have a special place in my heart and I will always love playing his music more than any other composer. I look forward to figuring out why Beethoven has such a hold on me and that little old lady and what makes his music so different.

"Take Me Out To the Ball Game"

Last night I attended a Chattanooga Lookouts ballgame. Everything was perfect. The Temperature was just right, it wasn’t too humid and as I kicked back with an ice cold coke zero I began to think back on the years I had spent at the baseball field. To be honest, I haven’t attended many games but I have been to enough to know all the traditions. As I began to think about it, most of them were centered around music.

As the baseball game started we all stood for our national anthem and as I glared down into the field and looked for a singer who I would end up disliking for one reason or another, I instead saw 25 trombones. Honest to God, there they were. The stadium filled with the wonderful choir almost as if we were in a cathedral. The sound was marvelous. As it came to a close everyone sat down and murmured to their neighbor about how cool that was and all the little kids were pointing and tugging at their parents shirts asking, “What were those instruments.”

What a great start to any ballgame but the music didn't  end their. Next is the ‘national anthem of baseball’ which is always sung at some point in the game. You all probably have it memorized and if you don’t, I’d suggest memorizing it now so you don’t embarrass yourself later.

“Take me out to the ball game, Take me out with the crowd;

 Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks, I don’t care if I never get back.

Let me root, root, root for the home team,

If they don’t win it’s a shame, for it’s one, two, three strikes your out,

At the old ball game.”

It’s one of those songs that puts a smile on every American’s face when they hear it. It gives you somehow pride to be an American. But why is that? It’s just a song with rather corny lyrics and bad grammar but when it’s played everyone sings along excitedly.

Ahhh! Now here is the point to my passage. Music, no matter how cheesy is important. I would argue that nothing else in the world can bring together that many people. I’m sure as I sat there singing that simple tune, there were Democrats and Republicans, Christians and Atheists, Woodwind players and String players happy to just be there. Contrary to what I may have believed, it doesn’t have to be Beethoven Symphony No.9 to be a deep piece of music.

Soap Box #1

My student (singular) knows how serious I get about the connection between musicality and breathing. As a string musician you have to think about 20 million things before you start a performance: bow placement, bow pressure, bow speed, tempo, dynamics, your pianist. The list is overwhelming. I demand a lot from my student and he always gets frustrated when I stop him again and again because he didn’t breathe. He thinks I’m being ‘silly’ and one day he even said, “I just don’t see why.” I immediately laughed when I could think of ten reasons ‘why’. I pulled out my soap box, and for the remainder of the lesson I explained exactly why breathing, above all else, was most important.

I started with what I believed to be the most important reason of all. Breathing is an immediate way to connect to the piece your playing, and to remain engaged throughout the piece. It allows you to feel the tempo, and emotion. It can connect you to the audience. And what is more important than that? Nothing is more important than properly expressing whatever piece you are playing to the audience. That’s the point of performing. Enough said.

Breathing also plays an important physical role as well (duh!). Before you delve into any performance you can experience a wide variety of tensions and anxieties. I can’t stress enough the importance of a good breath before the first note of any piece. Part of making a good quality sound comes from being relaxed! Can you imagine if you walked into a yoga class, and they told you to breath as little as possible and when you did take breaths they had to be shallow and quick. NO, of course not! In the first yoga class basically all you do is sit and breathe. It seems like such a simple task but the conscious act of breathing before you play can perfectly prepare your body for the strenuous task ahead.

The wonderful thing about music is the opportunity to create with other people. It’s true, most classical musicians spend 90% of their time in the practice room alone, but that’s not why we do it. I can remember the first time I truly learned the importance of breathing in music. I was only in eighth grade, and it was at a summer music festival at Tennessee Tech University. I had never played in a small ensemble before and I was thrilled about the opportunity. I remember sitting behind my cello hoping not be called on or even looked at. But sure enough, my coach turned to me and told me to start the quintet. She gave me the tempo and then stared at me in anticipation. Of course the first attempt was a miserable failure! She told me to ‘breathe’ and move with the music. The second attempt was only marginally better but by the end of the first rehearsal I had learned how to breathe out of necessity. I took that lesson to the practice room, to orchestra, and it became second nature to take a big deep breath before I started anything. It wouldn’t be until many years later that I would truly understand the gift that chamber coach had given me.

I could probably continue to speak on the topic of breathing for many days but inevitably everyone would get bored except for me. So I will keep this post succinct. I obviously didn’t even scratch the surface if you consider the fact I didn’t even mention wind players or singers. In the end, performing, collaborating, and expressing yourself would be impossible without the simple act of breathing. Breath in (1,2,3), breath out(1,2), repeat and repeat and repeat...

But wait, don't you love music??

We all have things that irk us to the core; pet peeves that we just can’t stand and for me it’s when someone claims to ‘love’ music, and then later say they ‘hate’ Country and find classical music ‘boring.’ But wait, don’t you love music? I’m confused. It’s like someone claiming to love Shakespeare, but not liking his sonnets. It doesn’t work. I’m not saying it’s necessary to want to listen to all music, but it seems only right to respect its existence and understand how it could been enjoyed.

Quite frankly, I don’t personally listen to the Country genre of music (I hope I haven’t offended). When it comes on the radio I change the channel, but I don’t hate it. I can understand why many people enjoy it. While it’s not my personal choice, I do respect its history. For many people, Country music is what they grew up on and listen to everyday. It has helped them celebrate their triumphs, and grieve their losses.Who am I to say it’s not good music and to condemn someone’s way of expressing themselves?

This begs the question what can be classified as music? I am by no means an expert on the subject, although I am seventeen years old, which makes me ALMOST an adult. But this is exactly the reason I am writing this blog. To discover in depth what music is to me, to my friends, and to my family. This blog will include but not be limited to my experience with music, my love for music history, my life as a classical musician, and what it takes to truly love music.

Here is a little bit about me. First off, I’m a cellist. I could say it a million times and still feel like I haven’t emphasized it enough. I am a cellist. I eat, sleep, and breathe cello. I have been playing for approximately seven years and I’ve loved every minute of it. I can’t wait for the next seventy years of learning how to be a musician. My favorite composers are Beethoven, Brahms, and Mahler but put any composer on and I won’t mind at all. I do of course like ‘normal’ people music too and mostly I choose to listen to Indie, Oldies, and good ole’ Rock n’ Roll.

Finally, I need a favor. I’m not only here to express my own opinions, but to learn as well. I want to expand my knowledge on music and become a better writer. So please, comment and makes suggestions, express your own opinions, or suggest a good song! It’s all welcome.