November 04, 2006
Attendant
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on the back page of its Pursuits section in today's weekend edition. The subject is a recent report by the Magic of Music Initiative, a project started about ten years ago to study concert attendance at symphony orchestras and to attempt to find a way of reversing the fall in the fortunes of American concert halls. The study has uncovered a lot of useful background information on the listening habits and preferences of Americans, and simultaneously has reached a lot of dispiriting conclusions about pragmatic solutions to the problem of flagging concert attendance.
So what doesn't work in terms of driving up concert attendance? In short, everything. The study determined that none of the current outreach and advertising methods employed by symphony orchestras has a positive effect on attendance.
Free concerts are one of the most frequently used methods, and while they may be well-attended they don't result in greater paid concert attendance. The majority of attendees at free concerts are subscribers who already pay to attend concerts regularly. Those who go to free concerts and don't regularly pay to go to the symphony are almost never converted to paying customers by free concerts; they merely become regular attendees of free concerts.
Educational outreach is similarly ineffective. Symphony orchestras have tried to offer free or cheap lectures to the public on classical music, in the hopes that it would make the symphony less intimidating and spark an interest in concert attendance. Here, the imbalance between regular attendees and neophytes is even more stark than in free concert attendance: nearly everyone who attends these lectures is already a paying symphony attendee, taking the opportunity to broaden their understanding of the music.
Youth outreach generally doesn't work, either. Young Persons Concerts, orchestra performances at elementary and middles schools, and general exposure to live classical music seems to have no effect on concert attendance later in the lives of children thus exposed. The one slightly positive thing that the study uncovered is that playing an instrument does seem to have an impact on symphony attendance. 74% of regular concert attendees played an instrument or sang in a chorus as a child. Unfortunately, the correlation doesn't work in reverse; if you're a concert attendee, you probably played an instrument, but playing an instrument doesn't mean you'll become a concert attendee. So expanded hands-on music education offers a means of growing the pool of potential people to lure to concerts, but offers no lessons on how to actually get butts into seats.
So what works? Nothing. At least, nothing tried so far. The study did, however, produce interesting background research on American musical tastes and has given some idea of what aspects of the concert experience are problematic and what aspects aren't. The most hopeful finding: The music itself isn't the problem. 60% of Americans expressed an interest in classical music and in learning more about it, and a third of Americans make listening to classical music a part of their daily lives. But while that 60% purchases classical music recordings (owning an average of 16 CDs each), only 5% of the 60% actually attend concerts.
So the interest is there, but orchestras have thus far failed at turning that interest into attendance. The report posits several possible avenues of exploration in the future. The first is greater community outreach. Right now, the principle audience for orchestras is white, old, and wealthy. Symphonies need to do a better job of becoming a part of their community, rather than an island of high culture removed from its surroundings.
As an aside, this strikes me as a very confused and hand-wavey solution to the problem. Supposedly education doesn't work, free concerts don't work, and there's no need to change the music on offer because people are already interested enough in it. I'm not sure exactly how symphonies are supposed to integrate with their communities without offering free concerts, free education, or a selection of music designed to appeal to the local community.
The study also suggests that the venue is the problem. People enjoy classical music on the radio, and classical music CDs, but that doesn't translate to actually jackassing to a concert hall and paying for a ticket to listen to live music for several hours. Perhaps the solution is to perform shorter works or to charge less for tickets.
There's also another element that isn't really addressed by the study, but that I think might underlie a lot of the problems. Classical music is, you'll be shocked to learn, fairly conservative. It's been a long time since a new piece of music has entered the canon. That's not to say that new works aren't being composed, just that they seldom get much play by orchestras.
One of the techniques that various symphonies have tried to increase attendance by younger audiences is to increase the proportion of new pieces performed. The Magic of Music study determined that this doesn't work. It alienates older audiences who want the so-called Three Bs (Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms), and younger people aren't particularly drawn to the new pieces (Because they haven't heard of them, because nobody performs them). So playing new music just hurts symphonies and, according to the study, orchestras ought to stick to the classics.
While that might be true in the short run, I think it's part of what's slowly strangingly classical music. One hundred years ago new pieces were being composed, performed, and, if audiences liked them, they entered the canon. There was a strong willingness to experiment with new music. That has stopped. A new piece hasn't entered the canon in over half a century.
The problem is that new music isn't particularly profitable. Essentially nobody is walking around saying to themselves "I never go to concerts because they never play music by bold experimentalists like Kaaija Saariaho, or even stuff by Phillip Glass or John Adams." Playing new music annoys regular attendees and doesn't bring anyone new in.
But playing new music is vital for the continued existence of classical music. Classial music has been made into an antique, an oddity to be studied carefully and not to be tampered with. Nobody gets excited about new pieces being performed, and that means that classical music lacks a vibrancy that popular music possesses. It's hard to attract a new listener with the prospect of the orchestra's five millionth performance of the same Brahms concerto that they play ten times a year.
The problem is the overall aesthetic. The lack of new music means that classical music is pitched to people not as a vital art form, but as a history lesson. That puts it at an advertising disadvantage; where popular music functions on a simple "attend concerts because you enjoy them" pitch, classical music sets itself up as "attend concerts, not because they are enjoyable, but because they are good for you and you'll learn something from attending them." Playing new music isn't a short-term means of attracting a new audience; it's a long-term way of transforming classical music from a high-brow academic pursuit into a normal form of musical expression and enjoyment.
But of course, the problem is that playing new music is something of a luxury. As mentioned, new music pushes out present customers and doesn't attract new ones, at least in the short term. And right now, orchestras are barely surviving with the old patrons. They can't afford to take a loss for the greater good of classical music by playing a bunch of new music that may never catch on.
I'm interested to know what people think about attending symphonies, particularly people who don't right now. Why don't you? This is not intended to be accusative. If, for instance, you're just not interested there's not much to be done about that. But if you are interested in classical music, why hasn't that translated to attending concerts? Too expensive? Too intimidating? Too long? Not enough interested friends to go with? Or does it just never occur to you to look into it?
Posted by Zach at 03:33 PM | Comments (0)
November 03, 2006
Lawyer or Hit-Man: You Make the Call
Another thought from Rigoletto: there's an interesting line mid-way through Act III that I found myself laughing out loud to, for reasons only tangentially related to the play.
Some brief background on the situation: Scarafucile is an assassin who has been hired by Rigoletto to kill the Duke. The Duke has been lured to Scarafucile's inn by Scarafucile's sister, Maddalena, who has used her feminine wiles to seduce him and put him to sleep. However, in the process she has fallen in love with him, and is now pleading for her brother to spare the Duke's life. Her brother is having nothing of it; killing the Duke means 20 Ducats. Maddalena then suggests that Scarafucile could leave the Duke alive, wait for Rigoletto to return, then kill him and take his money. Scarafucile is outraged:
"Kill the Hunchback? What the devil are you thinking?
Am I a thief? Am I a robber?
I have never betrayed one of my clients!"
These lines, I feel, can be seen as showing the lawyerly code of professional responsibility distilled to its essence: Lie, cheat, omit, even if it means inflicting great harm, even unto death, to others, but never, ever betray your client!
Posted by Zach at 12:57 AM | Comments (0)
June 28, 2006
Not Such Good Things
I learned this afternoon that girl punk rock band Sleater-Kinney has broken up. Well, gone on "indefinite hiatus" with no plans for future tours and recordings, which, to my understanding, is a distinction without a difference. They're planning to finish out the remainder of their scheduled concerts this summer, so if you'd like to see them you'd best get on it. Their show in Manhattan on August 2nd is already sold out. It looks like their last performance ever will be August 3rd in Chicago at Lollapalooza.
I blame myself for this. I'm not allowed to like bands that are still together/relevant. If I start liking a band, they will either become irrelevant, break up, or possibly explode.
Posted by Zach at 09:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 19, 2006
Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
I just picked up a 2CD set of Johann Strauss waltzes from the library. The neat thing about Strauss's waltzes is that he gave them interesting titles, not unlike modern pop music, as opposed to things like "Concerto in D Minor for Clarinet and Oboe, Opus 376." I mean, there are good arguments for mechanically named pieces; the idea a lot of the time was that giving your music a bland numerical name would ensure that the music would speak for itself. When you call a piece "Romeo and Juliet Suite," people come in expecting the music to behave in a certain way and will box their interpretation of it within the context of the title. If you call the same piece "Symphony no. 7," the music can be whatever the listener wants it to be.
Still, it's nice to come upon songs with interesting names. As it happens, Strauss's waltz titles are all in German, which gives me a chance to exercise my neglected High School German knowledge. I was surprised at how many I was able to translate reading the track list. Here's what I came up with, without consulting Babelfish or a German-English dictionary or anything:
Disc 1
1. An der Schönen blauen Donau (On the Beautiful Blue Danube)
2. Frühlingsstimmen (Joyful-something)
3. Sphären-Klänge (No idea)
4. Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald (Stories of the Vienna Forest)
5. Du und Du (You and You)
6. Wein, Weib und Gesang (Wine, Women, and Song)
7. Tausend und eine Nacht (Thousand and One Nights)
8. Wo die Zitronen blühn (Where the Lemon Flower Blooms)
9. Liebeslieder (Love Song)
Disc 2
1. Wiener Blut (Viennese Blood (?))
2. Wiener Bonbons (Viennese Chocolates)
3. Künstlerleben (The Merchant's Life)
4. Morgenblätter (Morning Leaves)
5. Dorfschwalben aus Österreich (Something of Austria)
6. Rosen aus dem Süden (Roses of the South)
7. Kaiser-Walzer (Emperor Walz)
8. Accellerationen (Acceleration)
Posted by Zach at 06:50 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Oh! Now I Get It!!!
There's a neat work, Apophenia, that means seeing connections where you didn't before. That is, you may have known Fact A and Fact B separately, but you have an apophenic moment when you suddenly realize that A causes B, or some such.
I had such a moment tonight, regarding Sergei Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky Cantata. Alexander Nevsky has long been a favorite piece of music, but I never put together the context in which it was produced until tonight. So anyhow, the facts that got connected:
Sergei Prokofiev was a composer who lived from 1891 to 1953. Born in Russia, he emigrated to the United States in 1918, but moved back and forth between Russia and the US throughout the 20s and early 30s before eventually deciding to remain in Russia in 1936.
Alexander Nevsky was a legendary Russian hero of the middle ages. The story goes that in 1240 or so he rallied the Russian people to expel the occupying Teutonic Knights, who were there to spread Catholicism to Russia. He might have been made a Czar as a result. It's also possible that the Romanovs subsequently insinuated him into their lineage in order to give their rulership more credibility. In either case, Prokofiev's piece was a musical retelling of his life.
Soviet art and music was always heavily state-controlled, but particularly during the reign of Josef Stalin. Stalin felt art should have a purpose; art for art's sake is a luxury of the bourgeoisie, true proletarian art must be useful and functional. Therefore: A piece of music should have a message that advances socialist ideals. It should be easily understandable by the common man, and require no special training or sophistication to appreciate.
But what are socialist ideals? An interesting question, and the answer that you gave could determine whether you lived or died if you lived in Russia in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. The correct answer, of course, is that socialist ideals were what Stalin said socialists ideals were at that moment. Throughout the 20s, socialist ideals were mostly internationalist and cosmopolitan. The world revolution was coming soon, and Russia happened to be at the vanguard. Soon there would be no need for states, so petty nationalism was gauche, a sign of bourgeois sympathies. Russian artists should focus on creating a new, universal proletarian style.
But the world revolution didn't come, and the new party line became Socialism in One Country. Russia would build its own socialist paradise and soon the rest of the world would fall in line. Suddenly it became very important to show how great Russia was. The Socialist Universalists were exposed for the utopian naifs that they were, and many found themselves in labor camps in Siberia. The true Socialist Art was art that exemplified the glories of the Russian people. The old Russian folk heroes who had been discarded with the revolution were rehabilitated, their histories re-written to reflect the true proletarian spirit with which they obviously acted before their stories were hijacked by the old aristocracy. Art that glorified the Russian People was the true Socialist Art, at least in the late-30s and early-40s.
And, of course, the big story in Russia in the early 40s was the Great Patriotic War (the Russian name for World War II).
All of this information had been floating around in my head until tonight, when suddenly it all came together and caused a revelation: Prokofiev wrote Alexander Nevsky when he was in Russia. He would have written it under the supervision of Stalin and his art commissars. And: Alexander Nevsky's legend is all about a great folk hero inspiring the Russian people to rise up and expell an invading German force. So I looked it up and confirmed: Alexander Nevsky was written in 1939, when tensions with Germany were at their peak before the German invasion of Russia. And it was written to serve a useful purpose, per Stalin's guidelines. It's not just a piece of music that happens to evoke an interesting story from history; it has a second layer as a piece of propaganda art, an inspirational work designed to say "We beat the Germans before, now let's rise up and beat them again."
It's interesting; before I'd always listened to Nevsky in a historical vacuum. I'd heard it as a piece of music that tells a folk story, but the music was divorced from the context of its production. Now I won't be able to listen to Nevsky without thinking about Leningrad and Stalingrad and the Great Patriotic War. The interesting question is whether knowing more about the piece will cause me to appreciate it more, or whether knowing that it was designed to serve a simple utilitarian purpose will make me think less of it.
And, for the heck of it, here's the fourth movement of Alexander Nevsky, Arise, Ye Russian People. It's a recording by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Claudio Abbado. It's available on a nicely priced album from Deutsche Grammophon that includes the Lieutenant Kije Suite and the Scythian Suite, also by Prokofiev.
Posted by Zach at 01:37 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 09, 2006
Music Appreciation
Tangentially inspired by a conversation with a friend, I've decided to somewhat expand my knowledge or classical/orchestral music. I mean, I've heard a lot of it, I enjoy it, I own quite a few CDs, but I feel like I don't really have very much range or depth of knowledge. So I've bought a couple of books, Classical Music 101 and Opera 101, both by Fred Plotkin, former performance manager for the Metropolitan Opera.
They both come highly recommended and focus on giving a broad introduction to listening and enjoying the music. The classical music one features a huge list of performances to get and listen to in order to follow along with the book, which is sort of good and bad. On the one hand, following along and buying the music will give me a nice set of good recordings of a wide variety of works. On the other hand, even buying hunting around and buying these CDs used/on the internet it'll probably cost over $1000 to get everything he recommends. The trick is that he wants you to buy specific recordings so that he can make reference to interpretations and arrangements exhibited. So it's not enough to buy Beethoven's 7th Symphony, you have to buy the recording of Beethoven's 7th Symphony made by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch and available only from EMI Classics in a deluxe boxed set of all of Beethoven's symphonies. Which is nice, insofar as it meanst you wind up with all of Beethoven's symphonies, but less nice insofar as it's a lot more expensive than the $6 Naxos recording of Beethoven's 7th.
The Opera version is somewhat cheaper, insofar as he covers fewer works, though of course operas tend to be more expensive to purchase than other classical CDs, given that they tend to come with more CDs plus a libretto.
But of course, if anyone were interested in exploring the classics along with me and sharing music purchases, it could be a lot cheaper. Is anyone interested?
Posted by Zach at 12:31 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
April 25, 2006
Breach of Decorum
I don't want to seem like I'm obsessed with my roommate's sex life, but...
First, let me say I'm completely fine with my roommate having sex, especially since he has it in his own room. I don't even mind that it's loud, or happens late at night; the walls are nicely insulative, and I'm usually up anyway. I'm just mortified about my own activities when the sex is happening. If I were having sex, I'd want to be as little a nuisance to my roommate as possible. Therefore I'd rather he be walking around going about business as usual rather than, say, putting on headphones or locking himself in his room or whatnot. So I tend to act as though nothing's happening. But then I worry that my activities might be loud and annoying when my usual business at that moment is, say, washing the dishes or taking out the garbage or tromping around on the creaky floorboards in hiking boots. Is this taking casualness too far?
Which leads me to my final question, which is pressing since the roommate is mid-coitus: Would practicing the banjo while he's performing in his carnal carnival be stepping over the line that separates "casual indifference" from "passive aggression?"
Posted by Zach at 12:05 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
April 20, 2006
Matter and Anti-Matter
What would be the opposite of mood music? Like, what sort of music would take someone who is in the mood for sex and makes them not in the mood for sex any longer? For purposes of this question, it has to be mainstream music; no children's songs or any such.
Posted by Zach at 07:17 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
April 11, 2006
Comes Now a Petitioner
The esteemed Justice Woolsey addresses a matter of grave import. The meaning of language is a matter of deep significance to all professions, but especially the legal one. Moreover, a precise and accurate understanding of musical lyrics is utterly essential to the continued reasoned governance of an increasingly complex and interdependent society such as ours. It is for these reasons that this court grants certiorari to answer the narrow question "In precisely what manner does a baby want God's love?"
This is a matter of first impression for this court. The question derives from an issue of textual interpretation: How are we to understand the following lyrics from the band Iron & Wine's song "Fever Dream"?":
"I want your flowers like babies want God's love"
The authors of these lyrics clearly intended us to understand their desire for the audient's flowers within the context of the manner in which babies want God's love. Unfortunately, the careless authors failed to provide a precise definition of their terms and we are left to seek sources outside the text to allay our confusion. It is advised that future authors of song lyrics understand that, if they are not satisfied with the interpretation that this court lays down today, they ought to write their lyrics with a great deal more care and precision so as to prevent such ambiguous terms slipping in. In the instant case, a verse appended to the end of the song providing explicit definitions for all the relevant terms used would have proved most helpful, and would have obviated the need to turn to the canons of construction in examining the lyrics.
Sadly, no binding precedent exists for this court as to the interpretation of the phrase "like babies want God's love." The authors are advised that if they are to use a term of art, as they have chosen to do here, they would do well to choose one with a precise and well-understood legal meaning. In the absence of such guidance, we are left to reason from unrelated, but analogous, precedents.
We are faced with three principle questions: What, precisely, is a baby? What is God's Love? And to what extent and in what manner can a baby be said to want God's Love?
A search for the term "babies like" in the relevant annals reveals that a Washington woman is "Poppin' out babies like gumballs." 35 Sploid 184 (Wash. 2006). In the absence of contrary authority, we can therefore liken a baby to a gumball for purposes of interpreting these lyrics.
A further search for the term "God's Love like" reveals that "We should at once find that bitterness will close our hearts to God and His love just like turning a faucet on our shower." 54 ChristianSite 1094 (Ga. 1996). Clearly, in the cited opinion, our hearts are like faucets, and God's love is like water.
Thus we find that, because babies are analogous to the case of gumballs, while God's love is more or less equivalent to water, we can understand babies to want God's love in much the same way that gumballs want water. While gumballs can not, in any meaningful sense, be said to want water, given that they lack the mental capacity to form such a desire, the court can nonetheless extrapolate their interests in the matter, in much the way that a court can extrapolate the interests of a child who finds itself a ward of the court (noting that, as discussed above, children and gumballs are more or less equivalent).
Would, then, a gumball want water? Water, it seems, would wash away and disintegrate the protective outer layer of the gumball. We therefore treat with suspicion any contention of a positive affinity between gumballs and water. Further, water would leave a gumball soggy and waterlogged, a state that most would find uncomfortable indeed.
It is argued that saliva is equivalent to water, given that it is mostly composed of water, and that saliva is an integral part of the chewing process, which is an essential element of the gumball's intended purpose. We do not find this argument compelling. To begin, saliva is not just water, but contains also various acids. Moreover, the most essential part of the saliva is the acid, not the water. The water serves only to dilute the acid, which lends credence to the claim that water merely subverts the chewing process. Moreover, it is uncertain whether chewing is, indeed, the desired destiny of the gumball. Is its purpose to be determined by its creator? By its purchaser? Clearly it is not, given that we are examining the gumball qua gumball, and not anyone else related to it. Were it so, we would care not about the babies' desires for God's love, but their parents's desires. Given the inherently destructive nature of the chewing process, it seems premature to declare that chewing is desired by gumballs. It would, nonetheless, be a breach of decorum to rule on the desires of the gumballs to be chewed at this juncture; such a determination is better suited to a finder of fact at the trial level.
This court therefore holds that there is a rebuttable presumption that gumballs do not desire water at all. Therefore, babies do not want God's love, and thus Blood & Wine does not want your flowers. We leave open the possibility, however, that gumballs wish to be chewed, and that water is an integral and essential element in the chewing process. The lower court is instructed to conduct an inquest to produce a finding of facts on what, exactly, gumballs want. We remand the case to its court of origin for further proceedings not inconsistent with this ruling.
Posted by Zach at 11:53 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 10, 2005
And on a more stupid note...
Did you know that you can sing the lyrics of the Marine Corps Hymn to the tune of Wabash Cannonball? Well, you do now!
Posted by Zach at 10:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 16, 2005
Jazz Noodling
The guy who lives directly below me plays, I believe, some form of saxophone. It might be the kind that looks like a clarinet, like Kenny G. plays. He often plays in the afternoon, generally as I'm trying to take a nap. This is annoying, but I really shouldn't complain; I practice my banjo in my room, though I close the windows and I don't believe he does, given how his noise carries. There's something odd, though, and maybe some saxophonist could clarify it for me. He does a lot of jazz noodling, just playing a lot of random notes. He noodles as well as anyone I've heard, though I don't really have much of an ear for it. It's not discordant, really, but there's no melody or anything. It flows, but it doesn't go anywhere. Then occasionally he practices scales and I'll be damned if I've ever heard him get through one without screaching and seriously screwing it up. I always understood improv to be one of the hardest musical skills out there, yet this guy seems to improv well but can't play scales. So saxophonists: Is this normal? Are scales that hard/is improvising that easy?
On a slightly related note, while cleaning up dishes I heard him blasting out "Everybody Hurts" and singing along. I really wish he would close his windows.
Posted by Zach at 08:12 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
September 14, 2005
I don't think I'm mature enough to play the banjo
Just one more banjo post and I'll lay off the subject for a while. As I work through my book, I find it disturbing that so many banjo fingering techniques sound, to my ear, like the names of masturbation techniques. You start with the pinch, then develop the forward roll, the backward roll, the alternating thumb role, the slide, the hammer-on, and, finally, the pull-off. I'm not sure if this says more about the people who developed the bluegrass style of banjo playing or about me. Probably the latter, though.
Posted by Zach at 06:39 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Agh! My hand doesn't bend that way!
In my banjo studies, I've now reached the point of learning more elaborate left hand techniques. The first of these is the slide, which involves starting with your finger on one fret, striking a note, and, while the string is still vibrating, quickly sliding your fretting finger down the string to a new fret, thereby sort of creating two notes with one pluck. It makes sort of a weird sound, and I'm not quite sure how it fits well into music, but I'm sure it does, and who am I to doubt Jack Hatfield?
In any case, I'm fine with sliding my middle finger from the second to the third fret. I have some trouble sliding from the second to the fourth fret. I absolutely cannot slide from the second to the fifth fret, the maneuver demonstrated in the attached before-and-after photo. As you can see, the player's left hand is initially positioned in a pretty normal, comfortable playing position. After the slide, she has contorted her hand into the Vulcan Claw of Death. There wouldn't be a problem except the book says you're supposed to keep your hand anchored in its initial position and only move the middle finger. I tend to treat such strictures like the strictures in typing manuals; it's perfectly easy to ignore them, but if you do you're not training your hand properly and you're only cheating yourself.
My frustration is compounded by the explanatory text, which claims "If you have proper left hand position, it should be possible to perform all the slides in this book without moving your thumb. If you are an adult or older child you should be able to slide all the way to the fifth fret with your middle finger without ever moving your left thumb." It's so easy even an older child can do it!
So I spent my bored moments today trying to make the Death Claw, with an emphasis on stretching my middle finger as far as possible while bent. This earned me some odd looks from students sitting next to me in Civil Procedure and Torts.
Posted by Zach at 06:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 11, 2005
The Left Hand of Darkness
This another post about learning to play the Banjo. I'm working through my book, and it has some recommendations with respect to fretting. For those who don't do stringed instruments, fretting is a term of art referring to the work your left hand does on the neck of your instrument. You see, the neck of the instrument has a finger board with periodic little metal bars, or frets. By holding the string down behind the fret, you cause the string to produce a different note when picked, since the string is effectively shorter. The act of pushing down strings to produce different notes is called fretting. However, strings on stringed instruments are strung very tight. You have to push down pretty hard to get the right sound when fretting. Too soft, and the string doesn't touch the desired fret and your finger just serves to prevent the string from vibrating, so instead of a note you get a plunk.
Hence the book's recommendation: develop calluses on your left hand fingertips. This makes sense. For one, calluses are insensitve and tough, so they allow you to play for longer periods (pre-calluses, left-hand fingertip pain can be quite an annoyance, since you're pretty much constantly digging tightly-strung wires into your fingertips). Further, hard calluses make fretting easier. You don't have to push as hard to get the string down when you're pushing with a hard surface as you do with a soft one.
So the book gives tips for developing calluses. For one, it recommends dipping your fingers in rubbing alcohol before and after you play. This helps in the long run by making your fingertips dry, and therefore more amenable to developing calluses, and helps for the practice session because it's slightly easier to fret with dry fingers.
It also recommends doing everything you can to keep your left hand dry. "Water is the enemy of calluses." Their recommendations include not washing the left hand and wearing a glove while in the shower. I imagine you'd want to also get used to keeping your left hand in your pocket, as after a couple of weeks of this it seems doubtful you'd want to show it in public. But man, would you have well-developed calluses.
Posted by Zach at 01:10 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
August 30, 2005
Inappropriate Familial Relationships
As you know, Bob, I've been learning to play the banjo. I'm still very much an amateur, and have mostly been working through Jack Hatfield's "First Lessons Banjo" in what free time I can find.
One of the first songs the book teaches is "Go Tell Aunt Rhody." It is a relevant point that the lyrics to this song are "Go tell Aunt Rhody, go tell Aunt Rhody, go tell Aunt Rhody the old grey goose is dead." Shortly after learning the basic version of this song, the trainee is taught the Pinch, one of the most basic banjo player's tricks to make songs more complex and interesting. It consists of quickly striking the high-D and high-G strings, the outermost strings on a 5-string banjo, using the index finger and thumb respectively, in a pinching motion.
The trainee is then given a new version of Go Tell Aunt Rhody, this one deploying the pinch to make the song more dynamic, in order to practice the pinch in context. It should be pointed out here that the book has an accompanying CD, which the trainee can listen to and play along with, so as to get the appropriate timing and to hear what a song is supposed to sound like. It's quite useful.
Nonetheless, my training has now hit somewhat of a block because of this CD. The track containing the altered version of Go Tell Aunt Rhody is introduced by Jack Hatfield, the book's author, announcing in his southern drawl that we will now "Go Tell Aunt Rhody, with pinches." Whenever I hear this, I involuntarily chuckle and have to compose myself quickly before the actual song starts. I can't help but thinking of the sort of relationship one has with one's aunt that would lead one to use the mechanism of pinching to convey the death of a, presumably, beloved fowl. I think I'd better move onto Tom Dooley and the Forward Roll before I get stuck here.
Posted by Zach at 10:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack