mozart died today in 1791, anyway here’s a reminder to not overwork yourself in the music world and like…sleep every now and then
not that we’ll all get a wild fever and legends of some italian guy poisoning us, but i feel like mozart’s young exhaustion-fueled death is a pretty cautionary tale about the dangers of not taking a damn break
Richard Taruskin, in the Oxford History of Western Music, writes “Chaikovsky,” something which I have never seen repeated elsewhere. It is the only thing that he has written in the OHoWM that I immediately reject without looking for further evidence to disprove its existence.
we were in the middle of a full dress rehearsal today, music all intense and blaring, and suddenly everything stops and there’s a moment of silence before the director yells “WHOSE. BAGEL. IS ON. THE STAGE.”
Bass players? I don’t want to give unwarranted and unqualified advice here.
i’m not a bass player, but i am taking low string tech, and i have a good teacher.
the technique is basically the same as on upper strings— you come from behind the note (with out passing it!) and move your forearm and hand in unison (keeping good posture), starting slow with say, measured eighth notes, then gradually decreasing to sixteenths, thirty seconds, etc., until you have vibrato. similar to the way little kids tend to figure out the jaws theme. (da dun… da dun.. da dun da dun… dadun dadun……dadundadundadundaun…!)
my teacher likes to call this “the wah-wahs” after the sound it makes in the beginning.
[that said, the way i learned vibrato was by watching lots and lots of videos of my favorite performers and analyzing what they did, then practicing what i saw in front of a mirror. i also observed my peers in this manner. then one summer i decided to play cello and everything made so much more sense— probably because they play with gravity. i can now pull a pretty decent vibrato out of basically any stringed instrument.]
This further proves my theory that if band people are in the middle of a concert or marching show..
and the sky opened up and rained molten fire balls and the earth violently vomits volcanic matter and the and a plague of locusts and frogs carrying a bubonic level disease infested the immediate population..
They would probably finish the show before panicking.
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Interdisciplinary Studies major (music, gen.psych, counseling & ed.psych), internet nerd, paraprofessional problem solver... etc.
If you are in need of an ear, both of mine are decent.If you want to get in touch with me, anonymous or otherwise, I have a list of ways.