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How to Practice Intonation the Right Way
Intonation work is most effective when it is part of a daily regimen. This regimen is individual, but needs to contain three elements: objective self-criticism to identify the problems, determination of the reasons for the problems (by asking specific questions), and practice that’s designed to permanently fix problems. Unlike scales, arpeggios, and slow practicing, which work on several aspects of playing, an intonation regimen focuses only on intonation. According to neuroscientists studying motor skills, if you work on several skills simultaneously, you do not retain what you learn as well as if you focus on one skill at a time. So, focusing solely on intonation during part of your daily practice is the best way to improve it.
For your work, a good quality recording device (tape recorder or CD-RW) is important. Listening to a recording of your playing is the best way to objectively hear yourself and identify mistakes. In addition to investing in a recording device, take the time to make multiple copies of the music you’re working on. Using these working copies keeps your original music from becoming cluttered with pencil marks, which can be distracting during a performance. These copies also create a record of your intonation work, so you can see patterns of mistakes, identify continuing problems, and chart your progress. Begin your intonation work by recording one passage of music, no more than 32 measures long. Put down your instrument (to rest your hands and arms) and listen to your recording. As you listen, mark each intonation problem on a clean working copy. Using arrows above the note—up for sharp, down for flat, “U” for unclear—is an easy way to mark the music. (Write the date on this copy to help keep a record of when you practiced this passage.)
If you do not have a recording device, listen to your playing as if you were hearing someone else play across the room. While this is an excellent way to listen as you practice, it is very difficult to remember where each mistake occurred and how the note was out of tune. For this step in your intonation work, you want to be as self-critical and objective as possible, so you can identify all mistakes.
Rebecca Cole
While still in high school, Rebecca Cole had the opportunity to attend rehearsals and live-recording sessions for the famous Mahler Symphony recordings made by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Sir George Solti. This experience helped kick-start her interest in an orchestral career. Her studies with Franco Gulli at Indiana University were instrumental in beginning her exploration of Bach and Baroque and Classical performance practice and styles. After receiving music-performance degrees from Indiana University and Yale University, Ms. Cole's first job was Assistant Concertmaster of the Tulsa Philharmonic, and First Violinist of the Philharmonic String Quartet.
She then moved to Los Angeles, where she was a member of the Long Beach Symphony, played with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and LA Music Center Opera, and free-lanced with many LA-area groups. In 1990, she became a member of the Louisville Orchestra, and in 2000, Ms. Cole joined the Nashville Symphony.
Ms. Cole spent 17 summers performing as orchestra member and soloist at the Oregon Bach Festival under conductor Helmuth Rilling. In 1994, she played under Rilling at the Internationale Bach Akademie. She served as Principal 2nd-violin at the Peter Britt Festival for 12 of her 18 Britt summers, and was Assistant Concertmaster of the Oregon Coast Festival for 3 years.
In addition to playing in the NSO, Ms. Cole is a very active baroque-violinist, performing with Belle Meade Baroque and at several area churches. This past summer, she attended the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute, where she studied with Jeanne Lamon, and participated in the Vancouver Early Music Program. Ms. Cole's articles about various aspects of violin playing, and bicycle racing and training, have appeared in Strings Magazine, ASTA Magazine, Kentuckiana Health and Fitness, Crank Mail, and Extreme magazine. Until recently, she held an Expert level bicycle-coaching license.
She, and her husband Kenny Barnd, live with their 2 cats and smiley dog, Klepto.
Once, I was young and madly in love with the Bach Concerto for two violins in D minor. Sadly, I had a hard time finding anyone who had either the skill or will to play it with me. When my parents gave me a nifty, new-fangled cassette tape recorder for Christmas, it took me a while to understand the implications of this technology, but soon enough, I realized: if I recorded the second violin part, I could play the first part, with myself!
Anne Akiko Meyers has taken this idea to an entirely new level: She, too, has recorded the Bach Double with herself, but with the two Stradivari violins she owns, along with the English Chamber Orchestra, Steven Mercurio conducting. It's all part of her newest album, released Valentine's Day called 'Air: the Bach Album', which also includes Bach Concertos Nos. 1 and 2, 'Air' from Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D, the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria', and 'Largo' from Concerto for Harpsichord in F minor.
You did hear me correctly, Anne, whose recent recordings include Seasons…Dreams and Smile, does own two Stradivaris. About a year ago she acquired the 1697 'ex-Molitar/Napoleon' Strad (for a record price of $3.6 million). She has owned the 1730 'Royal Spanish' Strad since about 2006. At this point, she's planning to keep them both.
"Since I acquired 'Molly', or the 'ex-Molitor/Napolean' Strad, a lot of people were asking what the differences were between the tone of the two Strads that I own. They really wanted to hear them in concert together," said Anne, when we spoke over the phone last Thursday. "I started to think of what composition would be suitable for this, and then we started to think about Bach, and I thought, how ideal, to record the Bach Double, and to do both parts, which no one has done on two different violins. So it was a very novel idea, on a piece that has been played so much."
So which fiddle stars in which role?
"It was a very easy choice for me, deciding which violin went to which part, because the 'Royal' has a little more masculine kind of sound and is a dark -- tall, dark and handsome man!" she laughed. "The first violin part has so much in the upper register; it really captures the sonorities and overtones in Molly so exquisitely. I really wanted to make sure that it sounded like two different people, too. After I recorded it, I later found the Heifetz recording. I think that the big mistake there was that he was using the same violin, and he also sounded exactly identical in both parts."
Anne said she definitely thinks of 'Molly' in the feminine. "She's very responsive, but she's also very pure. And I think there's this cleanliness in the sound that carries over so exquisitely with Bach and Mozart."
In preparation for making an all-Bach album, Anne said she "bathed her soul in Bach," studying authentic ornamentation, tempi and dynamics.
If you strip down all the practices that have evolved around Bach and focus on Bach's manuscript, or the urtext, there's actually a lot of room for interpretation.
"I've studied Bach's markings and realized that there are no dynamics and no tempi markings, and every edition is different," Anne said. "I went back to the Henle edition and realized a lot of people were playing wrong notes, and wrong slurs, which make up the articulations. When you take all these things away, it takes the intimidation away. Nobody truly knows how it sounded back when he composed these pieces -- in a coffee shop! He played the violin concertos in a coffee shop, weekly. That was his getaway. After fathering 20 children, I really don't blame him!"
So what to go by? "The guiding light in Bach's writing is the pulse," Anne said. "It's all set to dances. Basically, if you can dance to the music, you're on the right path. It has to have a lot of energy, and there's always a forward-moving propulsion to his phrases. There's just many layers to his compositional style; but that's what makes it so fun to play."
"A lot of people try to intellectualize Bach, and that's a big problem -- you're looking for a kind of scientific structure to guide you to perform Bach," Anne said. "when you strip that away and you look at the actual music and how it makes you feel, it's just a very profound music, and very original in its style. You can easily speak, and let it breathe."
I asked Anne to share thoughts on what it's like to play a Strad, long-term, in light of the recently-published double-blind violin sound test (that I participated in) in which violinists rated new violins and old ones about the same, based on a short-term test in a hotel room.
"I think there's such a mystique with Strad -- and for a reason", Anne said. "He was a master craftsman, and (Stradivari violins are) so refined. It takes a special kind of technique to understand how to sculpt the sound and to bring it out. I think very few people actually get the opportunity to put a Strad under their chin, let alone spend enough time with it to figure it out, because it does take time. It doesn't play itself; it needs finessing.
"It's like a novel that you were so impressed with and that you return to years later. We all are changing human beings as well, and so what we bring to the instrument changes, as well," Anne said. "I really truly believe that each violin is like a different entity, a different personality, a different soul. It takes time to discover how to finesse that soul, to make it shine and soar as much as possible, in a hall. When you meet anybody, it's impossible to say: "I know them, they are like A, B, C and D, and this is exactly what you do to make them laugh, to make them cry, to make them angry. It's the same thing with the violin! You could spent the rest of your life just discovering, and exploring the depths of a violin. Also, it's just incredible to know the provenance and the history attached to a violin, that a violin has survived longer than we have -- over 300 years! And I can count on one hand, who's owned it. There's something really special about that."
And modern instruments?
"I think violins, in general, need to be broken in, especially when you're in concert mode," Anne said. "Modern violins don't have the history of somebody playing it for a long time, so it can feel like a new sound for quite a while. It just needs to be broken in. With the Stradivari's and Guarneri's, you have had 300 years of amateurs and collectors and professionals and people who have really worked on it. I think that the wood is very, very different. I also think there's something about the wood having gone through a cold temperature change on earth. All these things really do make a difference."
Here's another bit of news from Anne: she is expecting her second daughter, due to arrive in early March.
Anne's daughter, Natalie, is 19 months old, and she said she's really enjoyed traveling with her whole family when she performs.
"It's so enriching to be able to do what I really love and then travel with my family and do it together," Anne said. "For decades, I was traveling by myself -- every lonely hotel room and symphony orchestra around the globe! It was great, but so different now. Your priorities completely shift. I feel so thankful, to be able to laugh every single day with something that my daughter does. She loves music so much -- she has a little 1/100-size violin," Anne laughed, "She loves to bang the heck out of! It's super adorable. I highly recommend having children and continuing with your concertizing as much as ever."
"Sleep schedules and things like that just go out the window, unfortunately," Anne said. "You have to be very adaptable, very flexible. It's like being a musician - you just never know what's going to be thrown at you, and so it just builds experience."
Extracting scale-like patterns from existing music is the best way to choose material for daily scale work.
Take, for example, a section from Walton’s Viola Concerto, third movement, Rehearsal No. 46. Do forget for a moment that it is a familiar excerpt from a familiar piece, and work on it in the very same left-side-of-the-brain way you would on any abstract scale, taking care of shifts, smooth string crossing, evenness of sound. Examine it and find out:
- Do you want to use more or less bow at the frog or the tip, at the upper or lower strings?
- What would be the best location for your bow between the fingerboard and the bridge in this particular passage?
- How percussive do you want your fingers to be—from how far away should they hit the strings?
Briefly, work on this excerpt in the same way you would on any abstract scale. But do it with your own 'musical' fingering and with your choice of intonation befitting the passage (for instance, decide how 'expressive' you want your intonation to be and whether or not you should increase the expressiveness the faster you play). Allow yourself to celebrate your good and tedious work by giving the right side of your brain a fair shot as well, playing the passage with a lower level of technical thinking, and a higher level of musical desire and energy.
By Atar Arad
The Hair
The 'strings' on your bow are actually hair from horse tails. The bundle of hair is tied with thread at one end, then the knot is inserted in a hole called a mortise and held in place with a little wedge of wood. The hair is then carefully combed, tied at the other end, and that knot is inserted into another mortise at the opposite end of the bow. The hair is spread evenly at the frog end by a flat wedge called the spread wedge that holds the hair in a smooth, even ribbon. Having worn-out hair replaced is called a 'rehair'. It is a common procedure that all bows eventually need.
The hair holds rosin, which is refined from tree sap. Rosin melts slightly as you draw the bow, grabbing the string for an instant and breaking away. This 'stick-slip' action causes the string to vibrate and make the characteristic sound of a bowed string.
The bow hair needs to be replaced when it stretches out too much to tighten, when too many hairs break off on one side, or when the hair feels like it’s no longer catching the string like it used to. This common but tricky procedure must be done by a professional.
There is a common misconception that fine tuners are just 'training wheels' for beginners who aren't skillful enough to tune using pegs. The truth is that the use of fine tuners has more to do with the material that the strings are made of than the ability of the musician. These little devices were unnecessary until the advent of steel E strings, first introduced in 1919 by Thomastik Infeld. For the first few hundred years, all strings for the violin-family instruments were made of gut, first plain and then wrapped with metal. Think of the two materials: gut is quite stretchy while steel is not. You only have to stretch a steel string a tiny distance to change the pitch. But a gut or synthetic string must be turned much farther to change pitch the same amount. Pegs work fine for stretchy gut strings, but it's almost impossible to move a steel E string a small enough distance using a peg. As more steel strings came to market and were widely adopted – violinist David Oistrakh, for example, famously used steel A and E strings with gut G and D – more fine tuners appeared on tailpieces. Today, with full sets of great-sounding steel strings and high-quality tailpieces with built-in tuners readily available, there's no reason not to use them.
Jaap van Zweden: eerste viool
Jaap van Zweden biedt Maartje van Weegen zijn eerste viool aan.
Jaap van Zweden doneerde vandaag in de uitzending bij Maartje van Weegen de kinderviool waarop hij het Oscar Backconcours won aan Klassiek Geeft!
In een speciale locatie-uitzending vanuit Desmet Studio in Amsterdam vertelde Jaap van Zweden over zijn betrokkenheid bij het project en het belang van muziek voor kinderen.
Radio 4 haakt met Klassiek geeft aan bij de campagne Muziek telt! die zich inzet voor de muziekeducatie aan basisschoolkinderen, maar te kampen heeft met een groot tekort aan instrumenten. De teller van het aantal gedoneerde instrumenten staat op ruim 150.
Maartje van Weegen, Bas Melis en Jaap van Zweden
Vorige week vrijdag trapte Klassiek geeft af met een optreden van violiste Janine Jansen en 130 kinderen van het leerorkest.
De programma’s op Radio 4 staan nog een week in het teken van de inzamelingsactie. U kunt ook een instrument of een geldbedrag doneren via de website: www.radio4.nl/klassiekgeeft
1. Don’t ignore pain. Pain is an indicator. Your body is trying to tell you something. Stop playing, ice the area, take some time off, and try to analyze what may have caused the problem. Don’t forget to consider nonmusical activities as well as technique at the instrument.
2. Don’t be macho. Don’t try to practice for hours and hours. Consistency is more important than marathons. Don’t practice everything fortissimo and up to tempo. Pace yourself by practicing at slower tempos and with softer dynamics.
3. Don’t practice mindlessly. Use a tape recorder to practice with critical ears. Analyze and isolate
problems in your repertoire rather than going over and over a passage. Have a realistic plan that you’d like to accomplish before you start practicing. Don’t play through pieces all the time. Vary the types of music you practice. Physically, you use different muscles for different kinds of passages or repertoire, so you actually give yourself a break when you switch to another type of piece. It is more effective to limit time on a difficult passage and to return to it later in the day than to keep playing it over and over.
4. Don’t ignore chewed-up fingers. Either your bridge is too high or you’re pressing your fingers too hard or both. It doesn’t take hammering to press strings down. Only the playing finger should be in playing tension; in other words, don’t hold your fingers down. Release all nonplaying fingers.
5. Don’t jump into playing a full schedule after a vacation, after being sick, or especially after an
injury. Take time to get back into shape gradually. It’s better to play for short periods more often throughout the day than to practice in long chunks. Start with ten to fifteen minutes. Increase the number of ten-minute practice periods per day before increasing the length of time.
By Janet Horvath
At first glance elite violinists and cellists may not seem to have much in common with top athletes, but inside the mind, it’s much of a muchness. "In sports psychology, 'mental toughness' seems to arise more than any other word," says Dr. Noa Kageyama, a noted psychologist, in describing the phenomenon of excelling despite adverse conditions, even playing through pain or in freezing temperatures.
Kageyama, who builds these same attributes in elite musicians at the Juilliard School of Music, says that the sports world is increasingly lending these vital tropes to musicians. With more talented musicians than ever competing for limited spots in the professional string world, surviving pressure —or even thriving on pressure—could very well be the difference between a conservatory scholarship and the end of a student musician’s performing career.
Kageyama shares a few ways to sharpen one’s mental edge.
1) CHANGE PERSPECTIVE TO WELCOME CHALLENGE
Too often people are willing to dispense with effort and go immediately toward an instant solution, Kageyama says, rather than face the "brick wall" that can arise after a modicum of effort is expended. These challenges should be welcomed instead of shied away from. "In the course of doing anything worth doing, we encounter these brick walls," he says. "Instead of looking at it as an unfortunate and horrible situation, we should view it as a good thing." Musicians should view these metaphorical brick walls not as a barrier, but as a gate that only lets in those who can spend an extra five minutes in the practice room or otherwise keep going when 80 to 90 percent of everyone else has dropped out. Soon that resilient effort has become a habit, and one of the tools necessary for mental toughness.
2) SET REALISTIC GOALS & REWARD EFFORT
Preparing for a spot at a top-five conservatory while a student is still in middle school isn’t productive. A student should be working with a teacher who can lay out bite-size goals that are achievable in 30 seconds, or in a minute, and in gradually larger chunks until the student who was struggling on 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' is channeling Paganini. This, of course, will not happen overnight, but with 'microgoals' leading up to the Holy Grail achievement, it is manageable. Teachers should try leading students in a duo, Kageyama suggests. The small achievement of mimicking a talented teacher’s line of music "is really motivating," he says, and once small bits of effort are rewarded, more will come. Rather than heaping praise on talented students, reward the ones who show dogged persistence. That way, when the brick wall arrives, students will dive in 100 percent.
By Matthew Billington
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