Here’s a fun little snippet for practice. To be able to try this piece, you should be pretty fluent playing scales in 10ths like I’ve done in this video.
Once you’re playing 10ths fluently, playing the top two lines makes for a tremendously fun and beautiful sounding exercise or warm-up. Here’s the best of 2 quick capture takes, not perfect, but will give you a sense of the approach for your practice.
No way I’d be able to play all of this, but doing the 2nd violin and bass part together could be something I think I could polish up. And, if I could convince either violinist in my trio to try it, I’d hand them a mandolin (so they’d be at a handicap), I’d put on a very loud metronome and give it a go.
While playing this piece takes a lot of technique, it also reminds me how great it is to learn music thoroughly. I just about sat down and playing the first phrase perfectly the first time (naturally before I was recording, lol), because the music has been so thoroughly learned. I’m playing this piece (on cello) with my trio. And, in so doing, we’re working through all the movements, listening to excellent reference recordings and just really digging in.
I’m very excited for our show on Tuesday. I’m playing bass gamba with the group this semester. If you’re in the area, stop by and say hello.
The Tufts Early Music Ensemble presents
Music of Venice
featuring Daniel Meyers, recorder & Thomas A. Gregg, tenor
works by Monteverdi, Gabrieli & Merulo
Tuesday, November 18, 8PM
Distler Performance Hall, Granoff Music Center
Tufts University, Medford Campus
Free event, No tickets required
www.tufts.edu/musiccenter
I was thinking of building a fun little quiz game where you take the first 10 studio albums and put them in order. Somehow that seems be a fun exercise in restoring order to the universe, just putting those in order.
I’ve recently been rediscovering Caress of Steel, what a fantastic album!
Last night I saw Hesperion XXI with Jordi Savall at the Sanders Theater. What a fantastic show. Such great playing from the entire ensemble. Really inspiring.
There was a signing line after the show, and it was a real honor to meet him briefly. What a super nice guy!
There’s a great chapter in The Listening Book called “Finding a Teacher” that I’ve always really enjoyed.
This summer I met my cello teacher, before I was even playing cello again. She was the conductor of the big band at the World Fellowship Early Music Week. I knew from our first rehearsal that she was a musician I wanted to study music with. We were playing a beautiful Lully piece and she was halfway between conducting and bouncing up and down, exuding this tangible sense of joy.
On Wednesday afternoon it was such a beautiful afternoon that she canceled rehearsal and declared a group swim. Fantastic! I went for a swim in this beautiful lake, and this part you got to visualize a bit. (I wanted to draw a picture, but I can’t draw.)
Start Visualize
So, I’m swimming in this beautiful lake with a mountain view. My cello teacher is about 10 yards ahead of me. Next thing I know, I look up and she’s standing up in the middle of the lake. Turns out there’s a big rock in the lake that you can stand on, just at the water’s surface, and she knew just where it was. End Visualize
To me, that’s sort of what your teacher can do with music. Show you what’s possible! And, you should make sure that you feel that way about your teacher’s playing and coaching. When I was much younger I wasn’t so proactive about these things. For example, my studio placements at NEC I left entirely up to the school. And, that wasn’t a good idea. You have to be proactive about that. I would do undergrad at music school SO DIFFERENTLY now. Alas.
Anyway, so I’ve had two private lessons with her and it’s been really helpful to my re acclimation process on cello.
I don’t think she’d mind if I shared one anecdote from our second lesson when we took a look the Suite 1 prelude. And, this does (finally) relate a bit to electric bass. I’ve been playing this piece on electric bass since I got one when I was twelve. As such, I had really lost track of the phrasing and articulation and the composition’s structure. So, back on cello, I’m playing that first phrase with the first three notes in a down bow, and she has a really good coaching for me: “Think of those first three notes like the ringing of church bells in a cathedral. Really big on those three notes in your down bow. The rest of the notes, lighter, as if they are the reverb sounding from those three big notes. Call and response.”
Isn’t that fantastic? Here’s a video clip where I repeat all that, and then try to bring that coaching into the beginning of the phrase on my EAB. Really hard, but worth trying.
That’s what a great teacher does! I’ve been playing that piece for years, but I’ve got an entirely new way to look at it now. Fantastic!
Let me end by saying that studying is such a great part of the musical process, and no matter what level you’re at, participate in that dynamic. Take some lessons, help support the players you admire, and coach those that admire your playing. It’s really a core, special part of the process, and what connects and binds us all together. That and the Force of course!
I love this piece, it fits really well on bass. I wanted to put up something this morning, and realize I never put a YouTube video of this one. So, here’s a quick take on the EAB via instant upload. You can hear a polished audio version from my 1996 recording Music for the 6-String Bass at http://bentorrey.com:2112/music/track06.htm For a PDF transcription and an article on this piece that I wrote for Bass Frontiers mag in 1997, check this post out.
I really like getting music with iTunes because keeping track of physical CD’s, and the space and etc, has always been a bit of a challenge. So, that’s what I love about iTunes. What I can’t figure out though, is why in the heck can’t you get the liner notes as part of your purchase?
The liner notes are so important. I’ll give you three examples.
1. Weather Report, Heavy Weather.
The liner notes on that recording really intrigued me as a kid. I remember thinking, “Jaco plays mandocello? Cool, where can I get one of those?” I tried to hunt one down, but they were very expensive then, and still are now. (Funny that you can get a mandolin for $150, but the cheapest mandocello is $2500. I guess that’s supply/demand? Anyway.)
2. Egberto Gismonti, Danca dos Escravos
I love this album. At the very end of the liner notes, past what looks like the last page of the mini-booklet, you turn one more page, and you get this picture.
Don’t you just love that? Somehow I think I would have had less of an understanding of Gismonti as a person if I hadn’t seen that.
3. Capritio from Tragicomedia
AT lent me this fantastic album last week. Like most recordings of this type, the liner notes are a really good source of information about the works themselves. And, the liner notes in this case, were totally essential. Ah, that’s a lirone, what a tone, what sustain! And just knowing the composers and instrumentation on each track was essential. The Sonata a mandolino, e basso, by Carlo Arrigoni, is definitely one I’m going to learn on mandolin. Beautiful, beautiful stuff. So, I’m going to have to buy this album physically.
So, that’s a long way of saying, I think I might want to rethink my strategy of iTunes, and think about getting organized with CD’s.
But, it sure would be nice if the full liner notes could be available as a PDF and synced right in with iTunes. Maybe that’s coming down the road.
The Adagio movement is really great. It’s really fun to study all the embellishments that Anth0ny Pl33th puts in there. Here’s a first take practice clip via the YouTube instant upload (A=415). I don’t quite have all the embellishments memorized, so there’s a few goofs.
One note on approaches to bowings. I think sometimes there’s a temptation to follow the bowings almost too closely. Say for example in measure 3, maybe articulating the first note only, and doing all three notes on one string with pulloffs. While I experiment with that approach from time to time, I think the non-articulated notes, on pizzacato bass, just drop off too much, so they should be articulated, maybe a bit lighter.
Here’s some more work on the Marcello Sonata No. 6. Here’s the 2nd movement, which I can’t quite play up to tempo with the great recording I have (A=415). I’ve got some fingering and raking approaches that are really working here, but it’s not quite under my fingers at this tempo. I’ll keep cranking it with the metronome, and hopefully will record it with AT on harpsichord one of these Tuesday nights.
I have to tell a quick story. Back in the days, my cousin AC was the first one to get a license and we used to drive around with him to the Burger King and other key attractions of the South Shore. One time though, we were going on a ski trip to New Hampshire and AC was driving. He had gotten really into that tune Footloose, so he got the LP from the library and taped it continuously on both sides of a 45-minute tape. He made me and my brothers listen to it the whole way up. Boy, that was a long ride.
But, I still think of that sometimes when I’m learning pieces, I’ll do my “footloose” listening, and loop it enough times to really absorb every detail. Of course, these days it’s a lot simpler to do that. My car’s CD player has a repeat track option, and very easy with an iPOD of course.
When I got the latest Avishai album, I did my “footloose listening” with Pinzin Kinzin (Like I had with Remembering on the last live album). It’s funny how much you pick up by that type of absorption listening. I really enjoy that. There’s a spot at 0:56 that seems like a real “in the bass/drums groove DNA” type moment, when the bass drops down the octave and the drummer switches to the ride cymbal. That’s such an instinctive moment.
Anyway, I went to the Avishai show last week with my mentor, teacher, and good friend Wesley Wirth. Great show! Wes and I had a really good time catching up, it had been quite awhile. He’s working a really cool project with a great pianist in the area, and he dug hearing about all the early music stuff I’m up to. It was a really special night all around.
