Performance and Practise: Group Dynamics

front row, left to right: Helen, Sally, Me (John)
back row, left to right: Clare, Alison, Tony

For the last few years, I have enjoyed playing with my sisters at a few Christmas concerts. These started as informal get-togethers, but have morphed to something a bit more planned since I joined in (mainly because I live out of town and have to plan to get down). As we contemplate doing even more concerts, I have been musing about group dynamics.

Basically, my sisters enjoy getting together and signing popular or folk songs, usually in an easy-to-sing key, with everybody singing harmony. It's fun - making music is fun. Without changing this format, a pleasant performance can be put on for people. We also realize that we can deliver an even better concert experience if we vary things.

We can change between song styles. We can sing unison, harmony and a capella. We can experiment with different keys, moods, and even different instruments (banjo's anyone?) Perhaps Clare or Helen can do a lead, or we can do call and answer. Adding another instrumentalist to the mix when I joined allows Sally to rest from guitar and play the violin. With Sally available I don't have to play every song and can also take a break, or break out the harmonica. Sally and I have different guitar styles and talents, so we can vary the repertoire more.

All of a sudden it is not so cozy. Which songs are we going to play? Who picks the songs? How do we produce a dynamic difference in performance? Who will efface themselves so that others can shine? How much should we push ourselves to learn different things? All these put a bit of a strain on the group - are we still having fun?

Fortunately the answer is still "Yes", and I am learning so much about music just by performing with others. As long as we listen to each other, give respect, and know when to let things just slide, I am sure we will continue both to have fun, and get better. It is interesting to see how much things have changed the last few years, but hopefully the main reason to get together will never change.

Performance and Practise: Perfectionism, Pragmatism and Pride

Sally lent her guitar method book to me last year, and I have been studying it daily. The first solo piece that you come to in the book is entitled "Spanish Study". As you can see in the small snippet pictured, the first section has pairs of eighth-notes, and the second section has triplets.

There is no speed posted for the piece, and I originally learned it about 60. It is simpler than it looks as the high note is a drone on the open E. At a speed of 60, I am playing two notes per second in the first part, and three notes per second for the triplets. The triplet is awkward, but I eventually got it to not sound too ragged, and then worked on improving my speed. I stopped at a speed of 96, pleased with the overall sound of the piece. Still, a nagging part of me wondered what the tempo should really be ...

I found out. I was listening to Liona Boyd play a piece called Asturia, by Isaac Albeniz. Suddenly I heard the theme! "Spanish Study" is a brief excerpt from a longer piece called "Asturia"! Well - the tempo was pretty quick. Very quick. I fished out my metronome and tried to measure it. My metronome only goes up to 208, so it was too slow. My best guess is she is playing at a speed between 220-240, and she was doing it fluidly and effortlessly.

I was devastated. My puny 96 was mocking me. I knew I was not going to be able to play at 240 (approximately 12 notes per second), but surely I could gain some speed and salvage some sense of self worth. After three months of practise (I practised other things also) I was up to a ragged 132 and feeling topped out. Should I drop it down to 120 and play it smoothly? Is that good enough for performance? After all, who will know what speed it should be at? Those were the thoughts of my pragmatic side, which wins out quite often. But shouldn't I try to play it perfectly for a performance? My pride and sense of professionalism was trying to have its say. 240. 240. 240. The chant was maddening.

I decided to do something I hadn't done in a while - I looked at the music. Imagine my astonishment to see "p i a" for the right-hand fingering on the triplets. I had carelessly been playing it "p i m", probably because the opening couplets were labelled as "p m". (Terminology note: p=thumb i=index m=middle a=ring). Unfortunately, "p i m" pulls your hand out of alignment, which was why I was struggling with the speed. In classical guitar, all else being equal, your top three strings each belong to a specific finger, and since I needed to play the first and third strings, the first and third fingers were obviously called for.

So I decided to try the new fingering, and even with the awkwardness of using the ring finger, I could sense the difference. Once I brought the strength in my ring finger up to par, my speed increased dramatically. I decided to set myself a goal of 176 for the tempo, which would be a nice quick speed and still reachable. I would then polish it, perform it, and put it away. What I didn't realize was that I would hit my speed target in three weeks.

So now my inner demon is saying "176 is not too far away from 200 - you can do it". I'm not really sure now when to quit. Is it "good enough", or do I try for "better"?

I face this dilemma in anything I try, but rarely is it as clear cut an issue as in this piece. I would love some feedback from my sisters on their thoughts between the drive for perfection in performance, and willing to settle for "good enough"

Performance and Practise: Problem Composers

In my guitar practise, I frequently meet with pieces by Robert de Visée, court guitarist for Louis XIV of France. These pieces are not any more technically challenging than the others surrounding them, but I have always had difficulties in playing them. The timing seems weird, or the harmonies seem wrong. Or I get the notes right but it sounds like a random collection of notes, with no sense of conveying a musical piece. An example is the Saraband pictured above. I practised this on and off for a three month period before I could even play all the way through it without mistakes, but it still sounded "wrong".

I understand that this is not a unique problem - Alison can not play Mozart, for example, even though she can play technically more demanding pieces from Débussy or Chopin. Even world-reknowned recording artists seem to have their favourite composers to play.

So the question is - what do people do about this problem? I have no musical teacher to help me out. Alison suggested just skipping the composer on the grounds of incompatibility - you don't have to learn everything. This seemed quite practical, but I am stubborn. I refused to consider that a composer could "beat" me.

I found a solution that worked for me.

I was fortunate enough to find a CD in the library that had Julian Bream playing de Visée's entire suite in Dm. I took it out and listened to it. A light went on. I listened to it again and again and just absorbed the composer's spirit (as filtered by Bream). I have probably listened to the piece over 100 times now. The first of my mistakes was that I was subconciously playing it like a J.S. Bach piece. I had to throw that thinking out. Secondly, I realized my tempo was wrong - the piece has a stylized and deliberate tempo. Lastly, I listened to Bream personalize the piece.

Here is a link to the first eight bar theme as recorded by Julian Bream. Go ahead, click and listen.

Bream omits some notes, adds his own grace notes, varies the tempo, and varies his tone - the simple piece comes alive when he plays it. I have now started to incorporate some of his techniques in my playing, and now the piece sounds like it means something. I have applied this thinking/approach to other de Visée pieces, and it has paid off - I no longer fear him.

Practical advice - if you have acomposer you just can't fathom, listen to somebody you admire playing that piece, and dissect their approach and then try to incorporate it. Listen 100 times if you have to, until you "get it"

You will open up new worlds in your repertoire, and learn new performing techniques as well.