Anne-Marie Houy Shaver
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Our flute anthem: The Air Was Still There

11/2/2016

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[I expect some credit if that becomes the title of one of Robert’s future pieces.]
 
I asked specifically about circular breathing and how to apply the bubble-blowing exercise to the flute. Robert encouraged trying to jump straight from bubbles to flute, so that’s how we spent the beginning of class. I had a couple of almost successful tries maintaining a (very rough) sound while circular breathing. Robert’s suggestion was to begin with the embouchure for soft dynamics, since this will allow the air more time to travel as it’s pushed out of the cheeks. We tried it in a few different registers. Playing a third-octave note gives more resistance, which is the most like the bubbles through the straw exercise. So, here’s to continuing this journey.
 
I’m borrowing one of Robert’s bass flutes for a piece I’m playing in our final recital. He said to keep the flute low on the face, which has helped tremendously. My biggest challenge with the bass flute currently is having the hand strength to hold it up long enough to practice, heh heh.
 
We again visited the Karg-Elert op. 107 Studies. We started with no. 22, which we sang through bits of in our last class. As he’s said before, Robert told us to turn up the volume of the singing in our head when approaching “trouble” passages. We talked about hand position again, and Robert brought out his opposite flute. Holding a flute to the other side demands a better awareness of hand position since everything feels so foreign. My brain about melted out of my ears just trying to hold the dang thing.
 
No. 23 of the Karg-Elert Studies was the next focus. Jenn played while Robert taught and I “coached”, aka I asked maybe two questions for Jenn to consider. Robert thinks no. 23 is akin to Italian opera with tons of drama and passion. Rolling with that idea, it’s important to establish a few things:  Who is singing? Who are they singing to? What are they singing about? Robert said, “As long as you are feeling what it means to you, the audience will feel what it means to them.” Boom.

And then the moment I’ve been wanting for years! We started really working on Voice by Takemitsu. We had talked about it earlier in the semester, but we actually starting digging into it more. Because this piece is basically a ghost story, Robert suggested thinking of the most terrifying feeling we could remember. He mentioned the Japanese mythology of Hoichi the Earless; a version of this folk ghost story appears in the film Kwaidan (around the 1 hour mark), which I’m watching in bits to help establish a basis for Takemitsu’s piece. I generally stay away from scary things, so we’ll see how this goes.

Robert has said the hardest part about Voice is the acting component. Right now, however, the hardest part for me is becoming familiar with the notation. But it’s exciting to experiment a lot with sound as we’re learning the piece. If a major goal is to create “other worldly” sounds, that provides quite a bit of room to figure out what works best. One of the markings indicates vocal involvement while playing. Takemitsu himself explained to Robert that he imagined this vocal sound as a grunt, as is done by shakuhachi players. Originally Robert had prepared these parts with singing the indicated pitch; since female players generally do not create the same type of grunt Takemitsu had in mind, singing and playing is a viable alternative. The fun part is that the indicated pitch in the score is not actually a pitch, so you can find what combination of singing and playing results in the craziest sound. For me personally, singing a tritone below a played note created some really crazy difference tones and sonorities. I think this process also helps make the piece your own. Another important aspect is to identify the characters of the piece (I’m choosing myself and a ghost), what the piece is (a narrative of an event), and who is talking when. I made myself a chart of the character changes for the first page. This exercise also helped me notice patterns and motives and use them to make informed decisions. Yay music making!
 
We ended class by talking about flute designers and makers. There’s actually a program where you can make your own flute. I don’t have the funds for it, but it sounds pretty legit. It would be AMAZING to try out new designs for the fingering systems though. Robert has done this a few times, and besides the flute looking awesomely crazy, it’s a great way to better empathize with beginner students and to also question if there’s a better way to do things than what’s always been accepted. It’s almost like the ACU difference #exceptional #innovative #real
 
Other things:
- Sarah and I watched It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown for Halloween! I forgot how much I enjoy that movie! (It’s on YouTube for anyone out there who hasn’t seen it. Please watch it. Especially if we ever interact. Because I say “I got a rock” more often than is probably normal, and I’d like the reference to be understood more.)
- Thanks to Jenn being wonderful and giving me a ticket, I had the chance to attend the Steve Reich 80th Birthday Concert at Carnegie Hall. A world premiere called Pulse was played, and I loved it. Besides being a great piece, it was my first time to see Claire Chase perform live (as part of the ICE ensemble). I may have teared up. No shame.

Picture
 Steve Reich and co (Stevey is 9th from the left)
- I tried a recipe from Budget Bytes. It was tasty.
- The Pixar short Piper is out! (It played before Finding Dory)
- Also, tree communities. It’s a thing.

Until next time!

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Check it out!

10/26/2016

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Guys. GUYS.

I can do this circular breathing exercise now!

Basically what's happening is that I'm inhaling through my nose while closing off my throat with my tongue and using my mouth to push out the air I've collected there.

Applying this to my flute playing while keeping an effective embouchure is going to be a journey, but this is an exciting step!

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“Sometimes you just need to cry.”

10/18/2016

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This quote is actually something I said to Robert. He commented that it sounded almost like a lyric John Lennon would write; I thought that made it blog-title worthy.
 
With singing and playing being a constant goal, we’re always looking for ways to practice that without repeating the same scales and exercises. So, we worked with major and minor blues scales, focusing on hearing the intervals and pitches before singing and/or playing them. We also sightread no. 17 of the Karg-Elert op. 107 Studies with singing and playing. (Admittedly, I had played this particular study before, heh heh.) We covered the topic of grouping notes musically, which may differ from how they are grouped via notation. For example, in m. 3 of no. 17, it appears that the notes are clumped together in groups of 6 (4+2); however, musically it makes more sense to group them with the sixth note in the group belonging to the next set of notes (the first E-flat better groups with the following C, and so on).
 
In no. 18 of the Studies, the big take-away was to make a distinction between the melodic line and the harmonic “blurbles.” This can be done in a multitude of ways: adding vibrato to the melody, changing the dynamics between the two lines, or playing with different tone colors for each line. Related to that, Robert shared some teaching advice he’d heard to “play the unimportant notes like they’re unimportant.” About this study specifically, taking time, especially to breathe, is totally allowed since it is described as “quasi cadenza.” A change for me to make in this piece concerned the teeny-tiny notes in m. 7, after the fermatas. I was putting emphasis on the beginnings of the groupings (E, F-double-sharp, A-sharp, etc.), BUT the chord being outlined is best represented by the top/last note in the groupings (B, D, F, G-sharp, etc). This means I needed to shift my thinking from using the first notes in the groupings as a “downbeat”, seeing them instead as pickup notes into the anchor top notes. This approach can also help with the overall feeling of building momentum to the high G-sharp/following A.
 
We’re also moving forward with circular breathing! A next step is to start with the familiar (the embouchure for high notes) and transition to the unfamiliar (maintaining the pressure of the top lip while storing air in the cheeks). Previously, I was trying to go from the puffed cheeks to the puffed cheeks with an engaged top lip. This proved difficult because I was going from a somewhat unfamiliar sensation to an even more unfamiliar sensation. So, we just altered the process. Boom. Another exercise is to practice consistently blowing bubbles into water through a straw while circular breathing. I am still working on this, but I think it’s improving! One key aspect is to understand tongue placement during the inhalation stage; say the word “gong” but stop on the “ng” with the tongue blocking the airway. While this is happening, you push out the air being held in the cheeks while inhaling through your nose. To help understand the motion and feeling of pushing the air out of the cheeks, one can blow water out of the mouth using the same muscles.
 
The Berio Sequenza was worked on too. Octave accuracy is one area for me to work on. We listened to recordings of the piece by two different flutists, Severino Gazzelloni and Harvey Sollberger, and we discussed their strengths and weaknesses. One of the comments that most stood out to me was that in some cases, musicians might be unsuccessful with pieces like the Sequenza because they’re using a 19th c. approach to 20th c. music.

Picture
The view while apple picking at Rose Hill Farm
Other things:
- Sarah and I spent the weekend with our friends Tyson and Jennifer (and their pup Brady!) away from the city, where sirens and people aren’t constantly bombarding you. We went to the farmer’s market, picked apples, and hiked through some beautiful foliage THAT ACTUALLY SHOWS IT’S FALL! It was wonderful to get away for a bit.
- Robert had a show of free improvisation with a bassist and bass clarinetist at Spectrum. Robert played on a variety of flutes, and it was interesting to hear how the different registers from each flute instrument still blended and worked with the other low bass instruments.
- We went to a talk/performance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of Paul Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler symphony by The Orchestra Now in conjunction with the artwork of Max Beckmann; both Hindemith and Beckmann were inspired by the artist Matthias Grünewald. The set up for the performance was great, starting with an explanation of the piece and artists (including excerpts), the performance of the piece, and a Q&A session to wrap it all up. And the weather was perfect to walk through Central Park on the way back to the subway :)

Until next time!

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"What the f***?!"

9/24/2016

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Class started with Robert playing the F bass flute prototype that he has. Because of it’s length, it’s able to create a “stereo sound” effect quite well! I had no idea bass flutes in F existed. Yay for learning!
 
We’re still on step 1 of learning to circular breathe, which is the blow fish embouchure/huff and puff stage. I’m getting better though! It is pretty difficult to let go of any semblance of an embouchure, but attempting to release my inner 4-year-old seems to be helping. Step 2 will be to add the top lip as embouchure with the puffed cheeks, so we’ll see how that goes. Also, it turns out that the Hungarian approach to multiphonics is done with lots of breath pressure (versus lip placement and air direction), so I’ve been unknowingly using that technique and getting some multiphonics when practicing the huff and puff.
 
Science comes up quite a bit in class, and Robert believes musicians should be knowledgeable in two scientific areas: acoustics (the study of sound) and psychoacoustics (how we/audiences perceive sound). Our friend Arthur Benade came up again, this time concerning his book Horns, Strings, and Harmony.
 
A good portion of class was spent on breathing, expanding on Robert’s YouTube video “Prepare to Breathe.” There are exercises you can do to even out inhalation, which should be mostly concentrated in the lower abdominal region, not by the ribs and shoulders. The trick is to keep your rib cage up and engaged while using the lower belly as the “balloon” that inflates and deflates; this way, your chest can stay open to be a great resonating chamber.
 
Semi-related to breathing is vibrato. Once again, Robert suggested creating vibrato with the throat/voice for standard, everyday vibrato and using breath-pulse vibrato for the more Romantic “wow” moments. To practice the throat vibrato, determine a pitch that you can sing comfortably (we used B-flat in the staff). Sustain that pitch on the flute while fading the voice in and out, building up to a speed as is used in vibrato. Then take out the actual voice, but engage the same sensation in the throat. Robert thinks teachers should wait for vibrato to come naturally to students and then it can be refined, rather than teaching pulsated breath kicks in rhythm. He also made the point that when we imitate things that occur naturally, it is perceived as beautiful. In the case of vibrato, think about how something in nature, say a twig or branch on a tree, comes to rest after activity; strive to imitate that type of movement with your vibrato speed and depth. We also discussed how specific registers on the flute work with vibrato. For example, using air/vibrato in the cheeks is best for high notes because the mouth is the primary resonator for that register; however, the same type of cheek vibrato won’t work as well in the low range.
 
Some exciting news is that we will be looking at more repertoire soon! Robert made the point concerning learning music that one needs to practice the nuts and bolts of a piece (the technical aspects) AND musical interpretation together, not as two separate processes. Each side informs the other, and you’ll understand the piece more thoroughly if you combine the aspects from the beginning of the learning process. The pieces we specifically wish to focus on are Luciano Berio’s Sequenza I and Tōru Takemitsu’s Voice.
 
Understanding a composer’s style is part of the learning process as well, and in the case of Berio, knowing the influence of James Joyce is helpful. For further listening, Berio wrote a piece for voice and tape called Thema (Omaggio a Joyce); for further reading, Robert suggested the famous last chapter of Joyce’s Ulysses. Berio’s Sequenza is written using proportional notation, so Robert asked us not to get the edition that inserted bar lines. He also suggested making a copy of the piece to mark up, since it will need some love to learn initially; the first step is to make the “tick” marks more obvious. The next step is to circle dynamics with an “f” in red and dynamics with a “p” in a different color. The colors will work with your peripheral vision to help you notice and learn the contrasts quicker. After this comes the best part: scatting the piece. Aim for note contour rather than accuracy, focusing on the dynamics and getting familiar with the proportional notation. (And you can take it slower than marked.) It may also be helpful to visualize two characters throughout the piece and to mark where each switches off.
 
Concerning Takemitsu’s Voice, Robert is going to be a fantastic resource because he (casually) worked with Takemitsu on it. It turns out that some of the notation is not clear in depicting exactly what Takemitsu wanted; for example, the “circle” notes are more of a growl rather than actual sung pitch. This is partly based on the shakuhachi flute tradition, where players were exclusively male. Robert had prepared the piece by singing the notated pitches (instead of the grunting/growling), and Takemitsu liked that version, even though that wasn't what he was after! So Robert decided that’s how he’ll teach the piece to female flutists (aka me). He shared that the most challenging aspect of Voice is the acting involved. It’s the story of a ghost, and though the text isn’t all in English, you should figure out how you would say things and react to things in your own language. It was at this moment that instead of “qui va la/who goes there?” Robert decided “what the f***?!” would be a more natural reaction to a ghost appearing. He had no qualms screaming it to demonstrate. (Side note: I wrote a paper in grad school on the musical relationship between flute pieces by Debussy and Takemitsu; let me know if you’re interested in reading it. And to get a feel for Takemitsu’s style, here is a great list.)

Picture
Lego Lion in the NYPL
Other things:
Sarah and I took a free audio tour of the New York Public Library earlier this week; it was so cool! We saw one of the 48 remaining Gutenberg bibles, a writing desk that used to belong to Charles Dickens, a Brahms manuscript, the original Winnie the Pooh stuffed animals, a Cage score, a lock of Mary Shelley’s hair, and so much more. And all for free?! Continuing on the “free” idea, today I walked part of the High Line and also checked out Chelsea Market. It’s so easy to get my steps in here. And the weather is almost fall-like!!! We're so close. Gah, I can’t wait.
 
Until next time!

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