Ben’s Blog

This book is a classic, and with the MA Suzuki Fest coming up next month, I figured I was due for a re-read of Ability Development from Age Zero. What a joyous book. Here’s a great quote from page 25:

“A recording of the piece the student is practicing-a recording of Kreisler, for instance-should be played for the child at home. After the lesson I ask, “Who is your teacher?” and the student answers, “Kreisler.” Then I laugh and say, “Give my regards to Kreisler.” What I mean is that Kreisler is the teacher. The student should have a lesson with him everyday. I want the student to know that I am only helping him in his lessons with Kreisler. The children will be happy and proud because they are the students of the best in the world. Further, by listening to good music continuously, they will internalize it.”

That couldn’t be better said. Fantastic stuff! If you haven’t read this book, check it out, there’s a lot of great stuff in it.

bentorrey :: Jan.31.2009 :: Books I Enjoy(ed)/Will Enjoy :: No Comments »

I just finished reading a fantastic book called Talent is Overrated:What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin. It it, he discusses what makes great performers and analyzes their practice methods in particular. It’s fascinating. I highly recommend it.

It really made me think about my own practice routines, and it seems, being New Year’s, a great time to be thinking about tightening that up and getting a bit more focused. In the book, he talks a lot about practice routines where people practice things outside of their actual activity. Football players weight training and running, for example. When I consider that, I realize that I don’t do so much of that stuff musically. I used to practice scales, arpeggios, and string crossing exercises and the like when I was younger, but as I got more experienced, I felt that was a waste of time. Sort of along the line of Yngwie’s famous quote, “why play scales when there’s such great music to play?”.

While I still agree with that, I have to make sure that my practice time is filled up with things that are difficult for me, and not merely playing what is not a challenge. Maybe the difference between running and jogging to make a running analogy.

I play usually about 2 hours in the morning before going to work, and that’s usually a mix of playing, listening, transcribing, gig prep, repertoire review and activities like that.

This book has really inspired me to take a look at my practice regimen and see where I could improve. Maybe that will be something compelling to blog about in 2009.

bentorrey :: Dec.31.2008 :: Books I Enjoy(ed)/Will Enjoy, Musical Thoughts, Practice :: No Comments »

I really enjoyed Barry Green’s second book The Mastery of Music Ten Pathways to Musical Mastery.

Each chapter focuses on an instrument family and characteristics typically embodied by those musicians. It’s a lot of fun to read, and points out some real fundamental truths that are quite funny to consider. Like, has anyone ever heard of an oboist being late to a rehearsal? That’s just a laughable thought. Of course they’re never late, who would anyone tune to? But, back up and think about what it means to be an oboist, and what can you learn from someone like that is a really cool thing to consider. I also really dug the viola chapter.

They are definitely ten characteristics that are really valuable to think about, and I highly recommend reading this book.

bentorrey :: Aug.20.2008 :: Books I Enjoy(ed)/Will Enjoy, Musical Thoughts :: No Comments »

I had no idea this fantastic book of Scott LaFaro solo transcriptions by Phil Palombi was available. I was reading the BassBooks.com email newsletter and it jumped off the page at me. I ordered it right away.

I’ve had a really great time working through some of the solos in Waltz for Debby. The transcriptions area incredibly well done. I highly recommend this for any Scott LaFaro fan.

During college I studied these two albums really hard, and in fact, I transcribed most of the albums BESIDES the solos actually, and I’ve been looking for those manuscript books for my own reference.

Scott LaFaro’s melodic approach was so unique, and the space that Bill Evans gave him to explore his musical ideas was just so special. If by ANY CHANCE, you don’t have these two records (Waltz for Debby and Sunday at the Village Vanguard), go get them right now!!! Then, get this book. Dig in and study one of the greatest masters ever to play bass.

bentorrey :: Aug.01.2008 :: Books I Enjoy(ed)/Will Enjoy :: No Comments »

This book was recently recommended to me by a new friend. What a delightful read, and so impactful!

I’ll give one example of something that occurred to me since reading this book.

For awhile I’ve been tossing around the idea of starting a VERY SMALL scale Suzuki program here in Malden. One of my concerns in so doing was of course keeping up all my family commitments going. But when I looked at it from the possibility perspective, I thought, well what if I hired our 16-year old to help with aspects of starting and running the business. Wouldn’t that be great experience for him? He’d have to learn about how to setup and register a business, how to manage the books, how to answer phone calls, how to sell parents on the program, how to manage scheduling, how to handle marketing and publicity.

Anyway, I don’t know if we’ll do that, but it’s the type of book that helps you think about possibility in new and exciting ways in your life. I highly recommend it!!!

bentorrey :: Jun.02.2008 :: Books I Enjoy(ed)/Will Enjoy :: No Comments »

I’ve always loved Sor # 6, which I did on Music for the 6-String Bass in 1996. This is a “really hard” (for me anyway) arrangement though, and I’ve always had trouble pulling it off live.

Last week I had a late night lesson with my lute teacher. After an 11 hour day at work though, I figured I needed some good dinner so I stopped by the best Tibetan restaurant in Somerville. While I enjoyed a hot cup of kushu chankul (hot apple cider with cottage cheese) and listened to the chanting monk music, I read over and meditated on one particularly brilliant page, page 100, in Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner.

“The apex of impressive artistry is the ability to perform technically advanced music with the same ease and inspiration as a simple folk song.”

Wow, that’s a great quote. I decided right there that I’d like to try that with some of the solo bass arrangements that I have. I have it in my head that they are “so hard” and can’t be played easily. Here’s an attempt at practicing this piece with some insight from page 100.

bentorrey :: Feb.03.2008 :: Books I Enjoy(ed)/Will Enjoy, Repertoire :: 1 Comment »

A long while back I was driving around and heard some really great recorder music on WGBH. It was Dan Laurin playing a set of variations by Jacob van Eyck. I had tuned in on a John Dowland tune, Comeagain. I bought that tune on iTunes and started to transcribe some of the variations. I like looking at variations a lot these days, from a compositional standpoint, since I’m still working on getting “unstuck” with composition. I decided to get a sheet music edition of the set to save time.

I had a window of time on Saturday one week so I headed to the Von Huene workshop (love that place!). I bought the set of variations and eyed a plastic Yamaha alto, but decided to work on the variations on my sopranos (I have a Yamaha plastic soprano and a decent wooden soprano) and maybe fretless electric. If I could find my USB CF card reader thing I’d post some clips, that’s been fun to practice.

Anyway, while I was there, funny enough, I ran into an old friend of mine from Tufts/NEC, Elaine a great flutist. She was living in New York and playing a lot and things. I was talking to her about my whole Artist Way “artistic recovery” and things, and she mentioned Kenny Werner’s book Effortless Mastery. I hadn’t heard of that. I ordered it a few weeks ago.

I just got it last week, and I know it’s going to be a really helpful book for me. Helpful in attempting to shut down the negative “cross talk” in my mind when I’m playing. I put the CD on in the car and just listen, noticing my resistance to embracing the concepts like “I am a master. I am great”. Geez, I’ll have to try that though!

bentorrey :: Jan.18.2008 :: Books I Enjoy(ed)/Will Enjoy, Musical Thoughts, Repertoire :: No Comments »

I really enjoyed Passionate Practice: The Musician’s Guide to Learning, Memorizing, and Performing by Margret Elson. A lot of very helpful ideas there.

It’s largely based on the idea of prepping for a big performance though, and I think I need to simply just do a LOT MORE PERFORMING to improve my skills, rather than spending time at home in the “woodshed” working toward a big performance. Sort of what runners call “miles in the bank” when working toward a long run.

To that end, I’m thinking of finding a place where I can get a weekly gig and just work out some repertoire in a background music type setting. I think I could find a low key place to do that. Maybe on a Monday night at a local restaurant or something. Definitely stuff I’ll work on after my April quest is completed.

I think after a few months of doing a weekly gig like that I’d be a lot more ready to read Passionate Practice again and take it to the next level.

bentorrey :: Jan.06.2008 :: Books I Enjoy(ed)/Will Enjoy, Musical Thoughts :: No Comments »

Barrios is one of my favorite composers. A few years ago I got the Mel Bay Barrios Volume 1 book, which really gives you a taste for the full book. I’ve wanted to read Six Silver Moonbeams for a long time, and finally picked it up at the library after trying to find a print edition for awhile.

It’s an absolutely delightful read. When it comes to composition, I’ve always felt that the greatest composition come from life inspiration (of course right?). It’s so fun to read about the sources of inspiration for my favorite Barrios pieces. I hope one day to contribute some music to the universe, and Barrios’ approach to composition is a guide for me. It’s almost more like “transcribing” or “channeling” an experience that comes through you. This gets back to the Artist’s Way stuff and the belief in The Creator as the source of everything, not yourself necessarily. This is important stuff for me to revisit because my compositional “blockage” was one of 2 key reasons that I stopped playing music altogether in late 1997. More on that later.

As to Barrios on bass, geez-um, not much of it translates over very easily. I’ve played snippets of lots of tunes. The latest two measures that I spent 2 hours trying to work on was one of my favorite compositions, Julia Florida. What a pretty piece! I can actually play the first few measures on my 6 tuned E-F, I’ll record that sometime.

Here’s a snippet of the beginning of Las Abejas played on my Dean acoustic electric bass. That’s a really handy fingering for that i iv v65, and really allows it to be played almost at tempo. The only trick is when you end up on the A major chord V chord and need to come down the arpeggio there from the top A, you have to start that with pinky of left hand, since there’s no time to move.

Anyway, here’s a GP5 of the 4 measures, and a PDF. I’ve notated left hand fingerings below the staff and right-hand above.

So, if you like that, only 36 measures to go, lol. In the meantime, get on YouTube and check out Nukebass’s version for bass!

Wow, very humbling. Nice job Nukebass!

bentorrey :: Dec.07.2007 :: Books I Enjoy(ed)/Will Enjoy :: No Comments »

I think most people have read this great book by W.A. Mathieu, but just in case you haven’t heard of it and have stumbled upon my blog, and since I have a category for Books I Enjoy(ed)/Will Enjoy, I have to mention The Listening Book.

I think this is one of the greatest books written about music. I first got The Listening Book around ‘93 or ‘94, and read and re-read it frequently between ‘94 and ‘97. I don’t think my 1996 recording would have come out as nicely as it did if I hadn’t really dug into this book.

I’ve since owned at least 10 copies. The last copy I bought I’m going to keep for myself. In fact, I’m due for another re-read - the expanding treasures of this book are limitless.

bentorrey :: Nov.14.2007 :: Books I Enjoy(ed)/Will Enjoy :: No Comments »