{"id":13456,"date":"2014-06-28T00:29:21","date_gmt":"2014-06-28T07:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/?p=13456"},"modified":"2014-06-28T11:56:28","modified_gmt":"2014-06-28T18:56:28","slug":"this-musicians-holy-trinity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2014\/06\/28\/this-musicians-holy-trinity\/","title":{"rendered":"this musician’s holy trinity"},"content":{"rendered":"

The symphony season is over. Astoria Festival (for the big orchestra) is done. Now, it’s time for the summer regimen to begin. No matter how great the orchestra, playing in an orchestra over time does some pretty insidious things to one’s playing. Since you cannot really hear yourself, it can create a harsh approach to playing in the louder dynamics, and softer dynamics can begin to lack a certain depth, becoming flat and boring, devoid of life. Intonation also begins to decline. And one tends to be rather passive as a musician – the “there’s that guy with the crazy hair waving his arms at us, do I’ll just do what he says” attitude that can creep into the rest of one’s musical life. So, it becomes necessary to get down to brass tacks insofar as one’s playing is concerned. As I recently described to a friend, the summer months are spent “scraping the pigeon shit off the statue”. So, what is the poor, downtrodden orchestral string player to do?<\/p>\n

That’s where my “holy trinity” of practicing comes in. It’s pretty simple – but not at all easy!<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Scales & Arpeggios – the basic building blocks of music. They get one around the whole range of the instrument, and expose weaknesses in shifting and intonation like virtually nothing else. Doing them slowly also is an excellent laboratory for tone production work.<\/li>\n
  2. Etudes – sometimes diabolical, but always worthwhile. These can range from the micro-minimalist style isolation etudes of Sevcik or Schradiek to Kreutzer and Fuchs. The key is, find an etude that gives you fits, and give yourself a week of daily practice to try to break it to your will<\/li>\n
  3. Bach – if you do your work on nos. 1 and 2 well, then this is your reward, or at the very least, your Rubicon – it exposes every weakness of technique (whether you’re working on the violin Sonatas & Partitas or the cello Suites) – and also forces you to exercise that often underworked (in orchestral musicians, anyway) interpretation muscle.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The symphony season is over. Astoria Festival (for the big orchestra) is done. Now, it’s time for the summer regimen to begin. No matter how great the orchestra, playing in an orchestra over time does some pretty insidious things to one’s playing. Since you cannot really hear yourself, it can create a harsh approach to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2907,2706,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etudes-studies","category-practicing","category-the-orchestra-world"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-3v2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":131,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2006\/12\/04\/orchestral-citizenship\/","url_meta":{"origin":13456,"position":0},"title":"orchestral citizenship","author":"Charles Noble","date":"December 4, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I'd gotten a couple really good responses to the semi-rant that I posted a couple days ago, and one of them came back to having orchestra members coming out to the foyer after concerts (it's a practice that we instituted a few years back, but the number of players going\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1722,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2009\/01\/18\/pulling-ones-own-weight\/","url_meta":{"origin":13456,"position":1},"title":"pulling one’s own weight","author":"Charles Noble","date":"January 18, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been thinking about the elaborate process of playing in an orchestral section, and thought that hearing about that process might be enlightening for both casual and avid observers of orchestras. Particularly in the string sections, it's a constant balancing act - literally. \u00a0Keeping one's sound both within the sound\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"mt1133913028","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/mt1133913028.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":908,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/04\/02\/continuing-education\/","url_meta":{"origin":13456,"position":2},"title":"continuing education","author":"Charles Noble","date":"April 2, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday, thanks to the generosity of Chamber Music Northwest, my string quartet [the Arnica Quartet] got the opportunity to get a two-hour coaching with an internationally-renowned chamber musician - Steven Tenenbom of the Orion Quartet and Opus One piano quartet.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a great experience for us to get some\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4202,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2010\/03\/15\/a-tale-of-two-pieces\/","url_meta":{"origin":13456,"position":3},"title":"a tale of two pieces","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"This Sunday the Oregon Symphony performed a concert consisting of three pieces which it had never before in its history performed. (My apologies for that seemingly Google-translated-to-English-from-German sentence).\u00a0 The Delius Irmelin Prelude was pleasant fare, and having a couple nice section viola melodic moments (and one big, exposed viola solo\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":78,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2006\/09\/24\/smells-like-team-despirited\/","url_meta":{"origin":13456,"position":4},"title":"smells like team (de)spirit(ed)","author":"Charles Noble","date":"September 24, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"What does make an orchestra \"good\" or \"bad\" or \"mediocre\" or \"great\"? It seems like it should be a simple matter: better orchestras play with more precise and adaptable rhythm, pitch and dynamics than lesser orchestras do. But we've all been to a Big Five orchestra concert which was severely\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13315,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2014\/04\/29\/the-john-williams-experience\/","url_meta":{"origin":13456,"position":5},"title":"the john williams experience","author":"Charles Noble","date":"April 29, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Wow. Last night (Monday) was quite a night for the Oregon Symphony and the 2600+ lucky audience members on hand for John Williams' first appearance with the Oregon Symphony in its 118 year history. I cannot remember, other than the OSO's Carnegie Hall debut in 2011, a concert which so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static2.hypable.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/john-williams-book-thief.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static2.hypable.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/john-williams-book-thief.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static2.hypable.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/john-williams-book-thief.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}