For the musicians feeling down..

Love Begins
hello vonnie

Origami Around

★
styofa doing anything
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
One Nice Bug Per Day
Mike Driver
Not today Justin
🪼
occasionally subtle
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣

if i look back, i am lost
Monterey Bay Aquarium

oozey mess
RMH
d e v o n
Game of Thrones Daily

izzy's playlists!

seen from India

seen from France

seen from Malaysia

seen from Brazil

seen from Peru

seen from South Africa

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from Brazil
seen from Brazil
seen from Netherlands
@pshostakovich
For the musicians feeling down..
Graham Fitch on fioritura.
I’ve used this technique of practicing many precise versions to ultimately get to a free version. I think in this video he leaves out one key detail that helps you get from precise to free: eventually you have to hear the direction of the line and feel the gravity of where you will land with the hands together.
So if you have the notes perfectly secure and fluid from the precise practice, and then shift your attention back up to the larger idea of the direction of the line, you can make the leap to freedom!
(via Practising the Piano Chopin’s Fioritura - Practising the Piano)
I'm a orchestra kid (not vocal), I have a question. Why is the whole "that kid is good at opera thing" wrong? Is it something like it's dangerous to strain their voice with that material or something? Sorry if I'm bothersome, I'm genuinely interested
I’ll start by saying that you’re not bothersome at all! I’m glad you asked, actually! I’ll order these in lessons so it makes more sense.
Okay, so…Lesson #1: You only get one larynx in your life. You don’t get another one if you fuck it up.Lesson #2: The muscles that control your larynx and the stuff above it (like the muscles that keep it in place, the muscles that control your tongue, etc.) don’t even begin maturing until you’re a teenager. This is why teenagers’ voices crack all the time. THUS, any child who sings like an opera singer and gets a sound out that sounds like a mature opera singer is not using a real voice. They are using a LOT of muscle tension and a lot of excess force to make that sound.Lesson #3: Any behavior that is done repeatedly is going to happen when you don’t want it to. That’s how neuropathways n your brain work. If these kids want to sing later in their lives (which I hope they do, singers are great), they will have a BITCH of a time untraining all of that unhealthy singing.Lesson #4: All of that unnecessary tension on the voice that is maintained as the voice develops can sometimes never go away. There are conditions that happen to your vocal folds like nodules, polyps, and Muscle Tension Dysphonia (to name a few) when you repeatedly stress them. These things happen to adults as well as children when their voices are misused.Lesson #5: Children are not vocally ready for a performing career in singing like the one that they are competing for on America’s Got Talent. Children should be singing like children. They should let their voices develop naturally instead of trying to sound older. There are training singers in their twenties that are forcing maturity into their voices and are having adverse effects because of it. This kind of thing in children is only worse.Lesson #6: These arias that these kids are singing are things that fully grown adults struggle with. Technical challenges in these arias need to be ironed out by teachers who teach grown adults with mature musculature.Lesson #7: If any of this seems like malarky to anybody (it isn’t because it is literally scientifically true), look at the aria translations that they’re singing. The subject matter for these pieces aren’t for children. O Mio Babbino Caro talks about suicide. Nessun Dorma is about strong, passionate feelings of love.
If anybody ever says that somebody is a singing child prodigy, tell them that there is no such thing. Because there isn’t. People can literally fight me on this. I will defend this sentiment until the day I die.
People are going to say that I’m saying these things because I’m jealous. I am not jealous of “child opera singers” because I already make money as a singer. I am getting a Master’s Degree in opera performance. I have already worked my way into some form of professional music. These kids are not taking my jobs from me because they are not in my job market.
A child singing opera is not a prodigy. It is a gimmick. Even if the child wants to do it, it is a gimmick. PLEASE. REMEMBER. THIS.
THANK YOU.
Addendum to a fantastic post: putting a kid in a prodigy role, regardless of whether they’re singing, playing an instrument, etc, has the potential to be very stressful and damaging. The pressure is high, the standards are high, and that’s not exactly something you can shake off, especially when you’re like…twelve. It is SO easy to make someone’s life way harder than it needs to be by putting them in the public eye as a prodigy at a young age. Source: idk, the entirety of music history? See also: any post you’ve seen floating around here about how damaging “gifted” programs can be.
“But what’s the problem with encouraging a child’s talents so they can be the best they can be?” that’s fine on its own. It’s when you start advertising the kid that’s the problem (e.g….regularly putting them in front of a crowd of thousands with the promise of an ~Unreal~ sound. HISTORICALLY…THAT DOES NOT…TURN OUT GREAT)
Additionally, if that kid pursues a career in adulthood, those few years of mega-popularity on America’s Got Talent will definitely be something they have to carry around, for better or for worse.
And then when it comes to vocal technique, you have all that genuinely career-jeopardizing things OP mentioned can happen when you assign a child Puccini arias on the regular. And then try to get a big honkin performance career out of them at the same time. So like…please stop doing this.
What’s So Hard About Being a Music Major
(Subtitle: “Oh, I thought about majoring in Music, but I decided I wanted something less easy.”)
(Sub-subtitle: How to rebut people who think music isn’t work)
So sometimes, people can assume that music is easy. Anyone can sing, after all, right? It’s just tapping/rubbing/breathing through something, right? How can classes on that be hard?
Well, they are. They are hard. Here’s the lowdown on why being a music major is something worthy of knighthood (or at least fewer side-eyes at the holidays, Aunt Carol).
Sheer number of classes. I’ve taken, on average, 8.5 classes a semester while I’ve been in college. To a high school student, that sounds like average, or maybe a little high - however, that is TWICE the number of classes you need to be normally considered a full time student! They get away with it by considering a lot of classes only one or two credits, leaving me to take an average of 20 credits for those 8/9 classes. This equals 20 hours of in-class time per week. The problem is…
The amount of work assigned for those classes! When every class has readings due by the next class period, and you have four or five classes a day, plus three papers to write, plus a quartet to orchestrate, plus a recorded Aural Skill assignment, what you get is three hours of homework some nights on top of the five hours you spent in lectures. 3 hours of homework, four nights a week, is another 12 hours of stuff each week. Then you add in…
Essentially mandatory extra-curriculars. Sure, being in that extra ensemble isn’t required. However, the winners of the concerto competition the past four years have been in that ensemble, so you feel a little superstitious and join it. Then you realize it’s probably not good to have no small groups on your music CV for grad school, so you join one or two of those. Boom. There’s 7 hours of rehearsal a week, right there. Then add in the six or so concerts you’re expected to attend, and that averages out to another 1 hour per week over the course of the semester.
Practice time!! Oh right, your actual instrument! As a performance major, I’m expected to practice 24 hours a week on my repertoire (!!!). However, because I am not super-human, I usually manage about 8 singing hours and 4 reading hours.
Length of the average day. A lot of music major classes are put at 8 am. I don’t know why. A lot of rehearsals run until 9 or 10 pm, just because we have SO MUCH OTHER STUFF TO DO! Fourteen hour long days aren’t fun, kids.
No weekends. The thing with being a music major is that most concerts end up being on the weekends. A concert that you’re performing in is also known as “a really good way to prevent yourself from doing social things that weekend.” Furthermore, in order to realistically get in all your expected practice time, you should really practice at least once each weekend. I don’t see HR majors putting aside two hours every weekend to practice their hiring chops. (Sorry HR majors.)
No social life. If you don’t have weekends, and you often don’t have evenings, you don’t have a booming party life. I hope you like your roommates and the people in the music department.
Incredibly high level of competition. Once you graduate, unfortunately, you are going to have to keep pulling LONG hours and working your tail off if you want to become the best of the best. Musicians accidentally undercut each other sometimes because we all love what we do, and therefore will do it for peanuts. That means that to get paid decently, you need to be REALLY GOOD.
Little EXTERNAL reward. People don’t respect the title of “musician” the way they do “doctor” or “accountant.” They aren’t going to nod and say good job. Good thing music is there for you!
Requires ENDLESS dedication. Seriously, after all of the above, you NEED to need music like air if you’re going to keep at it. And/or just be a stubborn mule who is GOING to keep going, even when that passion for music seems to fade a little.
So. Being a music major is work. It really is. If you love music, though, don’t let this scare you off! Some people have a taste for this kind of labor - don’t fail to at least attempt it just because it seems like a lot.
To all you music majors and prospective music majors out there: I commend you!
Expanding on the concept of multiple endings. 🤓
The concept of multiple beginnings allows you to save on rewriting the same phrase/section multiple times when everything is the same (and gets repeated) with the exception of the first bar. For example, I might have a loud crash cymbal hit on the down beat of the verse coming in from the chorus, everything in the eight bar section of the verse repeats for a total of 16 bars with the exception of that crash on that first down beat. Instead of essentially writing the entire loop over again, all I need to do is indicate that the first bar is different the second time around. -OP
can’t wait to start composing :)
i realised it was difficult to see the instrument names and i’m v proud of them so here u go friends
Sleep, by Eric Whitacre (arr. Bence Simon)
This is an absolutely gorgeous arrangement, I’m extremely impressed by his arranging ingenuity and six-mallet control!
How do/would you visualize complex orchestral music? It seems hard to focus on the whole piece.
Hm, if focus is the experience you’re looking for then I’d recommend 1) listening to it a bunch of times, really immersing yourself in the moving parts and exactly how they form a cohesive whole. But honestly my advice is to just enjoy yourself; be moved when you hear something moving, be excited whe you hear something exciting. If you’re itching to understand the music I recommend studying the score and listening while reading along
wtf musicians are so cool we literally look at little ink spots on paper and then translate it into movements and then music happens
tfw rachmaninov
beginning musician: canon in d is such a beautiful song. I love it! :)
intermediate musician: canon in d is starting to get boring, tbh.
advanced musician: canon in d is the epitome of all that is wrong with classical music, and is the reason that the majority of the population has a disgusting bias against the entire genre. it has such a boring rhythm, is in a boring key, has very little room for interesting variation in dynamics, the cello part for most of the typical arrangements is literally just half notes, LIKE 8 UFCKING HALF NOTES REPEATED OVER AND OVER. CANON IN D CAN GO DIE IN A HOLE. WHY CAN'T WE LISTEN TO SHOSTAKOVICH MORE? BECAUSE WE'RE BUSY LISTENING TO CANON IN FUCKING D. SEE YOU IN HELL, PACHELBEL.
@people who shit on pop music because they listen to classical
don’t be such a shostakobitch
Do certain personalities play certain instruments?
Hey everyone! So I’m doing a little experiment just for fun. I want to see if there is a correlation between certain personality types and what instruments they play. Everyone always talks about how people who play certain instruments act a certain way. And we all know about the band section stereotypes. So I created a little survey for you guys to take to see if this is actually true.
For this survey you will need to know your MBTI personality type (if you don’t know that, you can take a free personality test here to find out).
You can take my survey here. It’s only two questions (your personality and your instrument) so it won’t take you very long. The survey ends on February 10th. Thank you guys so much!
listening to shostakovich: shostabrovich
playing shostakovich: shostanobitch
Remember, the audience are on your side.
What is it to be musical? You will not be so, if your eyes are fixed on the notes with anxiety and you play your piece laboriously through; you will not be so if, supposing that someone should turn over two pages at once, you stop short and cannot proceed. But you will be so if you can almost foresee in a new piece what is to follow, or remember it in an old one—in a word, if you have music not only in your fingers, but also in your head and heart.
Robert Schumann, Advice to Young Musicians (via leadingtone)
my final comic for the semester! an 8 pager with the theme of “something that makes you hopeful or something that makes you happy”, i chose music!
@dylanbean