In my time, I've heard a good amount of music. Radio music. Symphony Hall music. Bluegrass music. Street music. Middle school music. Every single time, music manages to surprise me and cast a spell which never ceases to enchant me. A good number of years ago, I fell under music's charm. I joined the band, learned a stringed instrument on the side, and began playing music around Aiken with my duo partner. I couldn't get enough of this wonderful art. I spent my evenings practicing for several hours and allowed my free time to be used up with YouTube music listening. Around this time, I had met my angel of music who inspired me to my passion for music. This person opened opportunities for me and taught unique details about music. I say all this to imply the divine splendor of music. Plato once wrote, "Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything." There is something truly divine about music after all, it is a gift given to us by God. Music is something which defeats all boundaries. It transcends language barriers, social class barriers, and age barriers. It embraces diversity and gives a home to anyone and everyone. It's true that not everyone capable of attending the great performances at the Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall, but still everyone has the opportunity to find music and listen. Listening takes talent. This talent requires you to open up your mind to the possibilities, to be open to whatever you may hear. Listening is directive something little kids have trouble with and an unattainable act some elderly possess. In our time on this earth, we must open our minds, our ears, and most importantly, our hearts to music. Some years ago, I discovered that listening--truly listening--was a choice and gift. I used to listen to music in the dark quiet of the night when all was silent in the house. I'd turn off the lights in the room, close my eyes, listen to the music, and let its sound wash over me. In those moments, I could feel the music, feel every emotion woven into the melodies and harmonies. In my mind, I'd separate the sounds of particular instruments and allow my ear to hear the journey of that one instrument. I could move my ear about the ensemble and remark on the dependence one instrument had upon another. It never ceases to amaze me how melody, harmony, and rhythm work together to create a product which contains so much unspoken meaning. Expression through music is something which has always manages to fascinate me. I doubt I'll ever forget my love for music.
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Disclaimer: I don't claim to be a composer. That doesn't mean I don't compose in my spare time. Within the last two weeks, I've been working on opus no.2 which I've now titled "Incarnations of the Heavens." This piece will be premiered this Sunday, June 1 and will be preformed by the King's Strings at SAPC. I'm exceptionally fortunate to have such a talented group of local musicians to perform my work. Reminder: I don't claim to be a composer. Creating melodies and harmonies to illustrate and express a point is something I think every musician should try once in a while. Composing music is similar to any act of creative composition like writing, but composing music contains an additional level of difficulty in the sense that it is wordless artistic composition. To present your artistic voice without words is a task similar to that of a mime. Wordless expression is perhaps one of the most difficult form of expression in this world, but I believe that such expression is the most rewarding to witness. Additional reminder: I don't claim to be a composer. I've roomed with a composition major all of my sophomore year, and if anything, I've learned that composing is not easy work. It takes time and a whole lot of patience. After scribbling through a melody four different times, I've certainly learned this lesson. Knowing the difficulties didn't discourage me from trying. Everyone needs to give it a try at least once. Not everyone is a composer, I certainly don't claim to be one, but it doesn't mean that one should give up the notion to be creative through composition. Finals have finished, the spring term is over, and summer has officially begun for college students.
For the last week I've been out of Furman, I've endeavored in some more writing opportunities. Not only have I been diligently working on rewriting my novel, but I've been on the writing scene in Columbia. Twice! On Wednesday, I went with some fellow poets from the Aiken area to Mind Gravy's open mic in Columbia. There, I met some fantastic poets and some excellent songwriters. I even read a new poem of mine titled "An Elegiac Reverie." My friend, Derek Berry, did a reading of his work, including a piece from his poetry book titled Skinny Dipping with Strangers. Check him out at http://derekberry.wordpress.com/. Just today, my friends and I went to the South Carolina book festival. Our wallets cried as we purchased a large quantity of books, but it was certainly worth it. We went to a panel or two, found familiar faces in the crowd of people, and enjoyed chatting with the South Carolina authors. Overall, a very successful day and a great way to begin summer. Do you feel sentimental? Do you feel the urge to pick up a pen and write from the deepest corner of your heart? Are you more aware of the flow and rhythm of your words lately?
Did you know it's National Poetry Month? Well, dear reader, it is! So celebrate by doing one or perhaps all of the following to give notice to this auspicious occasion: 1) Write a poem--This is paradoxically a simple and complex task to accomplish, but give it the old college try. What's the worst that could happen? Creating a mythical chimera rather than a free verse poem? 2) Attend an open mic--For anyone in Greenville, I highly recommend the open mics held at Coffee Underground in downtown Greenville. 3) Read some poetry--You'll find poems scattered all over this earth in British literature textbooks, on the Internet (I'd personally recommend seeking the advice of my friend Google), in a bookstore hidden away in the corner shelf, in an old journal of English writings you were forced to keep for a senior portfolio...the list can go on infinitely. 4) Watch some performance poetry videos by Andrea Gibson or Taylor Mali. 5) Give a pat on the back to poet--It's a harder job than you think. I hope you all get a chance to enjoy National Poetry Month. Big shout out to PRA Publishing and the Aiken Standard for the article in today's newspaper about National Poetry Month! http://www.aikenstandard.com/article/20140412/AIK0401/140419819/1031/AIK04/april-is-national-poetry-month Hello, world! It's certainly been a while since I last posted. So you might ask what I've been up to since last summer? Well...I didn't slay any dragons or travel to a distant land, but I did do plenty of other semi-noteworthy things. 1) Joined the Furman Symphony Orchestra and also traveled with the Furman Wind Ensemble to Jacksonville to perform a concert for a convention. 2) Learned to play the alto flute--yes, I said alto flute. 3) Became a stagehand at Furman. 4) Attended an infinite number of concerts put on during the Juilliard in Aiken residency. 5) Survived the snow-pocalypse. 6) Took my first English class here at Furman. 7) Oh, and signed a publishing contract for a book deal during my spring break. Nothing really interesting, huh? Perhaps, I should elaborate on the book deal news. About two weeks ago, I signed my publishing contract with PRA Publishing to publish a chapbook of my poetry. In late fall of 2014, A Close Proximity to the Heart will be released. I will be spending a good portion of my summer and winter breaks touring and giving loads of poetry readings. Be on the lookout for more information. Hello world! I've been up to an intense week of painting and crafting. I'm not usually one who does much crafting, but earlier this week, I took to doing a few DIY projects with a close friend of mine. We started the day off with decorating glass bottles with some colored gems. These bottles can be used as containers or for decoration or in my case, a little holders for a tea light. Somehow, I managed to squeeze a tiny little tea light into my glass bottle. My friend and I hot-glued the colored gems onto the glass (Note: This is easier said than done). It looks great in my opinion and that's what matters! The next project we embarked on was taking an old and very large T-shirt and redoing it so it A) fit and B) looked nicer. Basically, we cut the side seams of the shirt and, then trimmed it so it won't be so "boxy." Once the side seams were gone, we cut several thin, little strips on each side of the shirt, and then took the strips and knotted them together to hold the shirt back together. Just so you know, if you can sew, it would be certainly easier to do that than knot every little strip of fabric. The knotting process took us approximately two hours...and that's with us both working on a single shirt. Anyhow, we cut off the sleeves to make it a tank top and we also clipped off the extra fabric at the bottom of the shirt (since the shirt was way too long). The shirt fit and it looked pretty good in our opinions! I took on my own little crafty project by making a picture to hang in my dorm room. To make this, I took old sheet music and stained it with tea to give it an old look. I also took a quote about music, wrote it out on a piece of copy paper, and then tea stained that. I pieced various pieces of music to make a collage and then placed the quotation on an area of the background that I figured was kind of bare. Once I had that, I decided to paint a violin on a piece of copy paper. For me, painting on copy paper was significantly more difficult than painting on canvas. I used my own violin as a model and painted it the way that I wanted it to look. Finally when the paint dried, I cut out the violin, pasted it on the background, and framed the entire piece of artwork! Crafty? My final art project for the summer will not be finished until either tomorrow or Monday. This is literally the LARGEST painting project I've ever undertaken on my own. Stay tuned to my blog posts to hear about this enormous painting project. I've worked with a good number of young instrumentalists who struggle with practicing. They often find it frustrating and annoying...thus, they give up the notion entirely to save what's left their sanity as well as their parents' sanity. Practice sessions can be rendered unsuccessful for one of three reasons: practicing the piece too fast, learning too large of a chunk of music at one time, or perhaps the instrument is broken and it won't play right. The last option is a bit tougher to address and fix, but the other issues can easily be remedied if you know how to practice well. Here are some tips I've learned along my musical journey: 1) Always start up your practice session with warming up. This piece of advice is aimed toward wind players, not strings players. Long tones are a great way to start up your practice sessions; it'll get the air moving and get your brain focused on listening to your tone. Don't rush through the warm up process. Warming up should take more than half of your practice session. As you play through your long tones, think about your tone. Is it airy? Strained? Unfocused? Judge your tone and improve it whenever you can. 2) Practice in front of a mirror. Check your position all of the time. For flute players, look at your hand position and check to see if your fingers are curved and if your fingertips are on the keys, not the middle of your fingers. If you have this issue and you can correct it, you'll be able to play faster and more accurate. Also check to make sure your fingers aren't flying off the keys too high. If you keep your fingers closer to the key, you'll be able to play faster. For violinists, I recommend watching your bow in the mirror and constantly checking if it's straight. This is an issue for several beginner string players. Note: If your elbow is going behind you as you play the violin, then your bow is probably not straight. Also while you're looking in the mirror, check your left hand position and make sure that you're keeping the heel of your hand off the neck of the violin. 3) Take some time and work on scales, scalar patterns, and arpeggios. These are the meat to tons of musical literature. Learn all your major scales first and then move onto minor scales and then all forms of the minor and so forth. 4) As you practice, continue to think about your tone and ask yourself, "Is my tone consistent throughout a piece of music?" Make that call and fix it. 5) Practice with a metronome! It'll become your best friend and you'll use it throughout your musical life. This brings me to another point. 6) Practice SLOWLY and then gradually speed it up after time. If a piece of music is giving you a lot of grief, practice with a metronome at a ridiculously slow tempo to ensure you're playing all of the correct notes and correct rhythms. Once you're completely comfortable with it at a slower tempo, speed it up a few clicks of the metronome. Assume you practice it at tempo 60 and it needs to be at tempo 80. Speed it up to 63 when you're ready and then move on to 66 and so forth. Before you know it, you'll be at performance tempo, and you'll hopefully be playing everything correctly if you've followed my advice so far. If you're having trouble getting the rhythm correct, try putting the instrument down and clapping the rhythm. Sometimes, if we take away the pitches and the mechanics of playing the instrument, the musician can focus on just the rhythm. It also helps me to try singing the rhythm. 7) Learn some technical etudes. Every instrument has a book of great etudes to play through. Right now on the flute, I'm working on Berbiguier etudes and on the violin, I'm working on Wohlfahrt etudes. Your skill level will dictate what book of etudes you'll be working on. 8) Sometimes singing the music out loud helps with getting the style and articulation right. Try it out. While you're singing also think about dynamics. 9) If you have a particularly difficult passage of music to learn, don't try to conquer the entire piece in one run-through. Try chunking the music into pieces and learn a couple measures at a time. Breaking the composition down into bite sized pieces will make life feel loads easier than trying to swallow the entire thing whole. It's often recommended to figure out where the most difficult measures of music are and then start learning them first. 10) If you make a mistake, fix it. Don't keep playing it wrong day after day. Remember: practice makes permanent. The way you practice is the way you'll perform. 11) Take breaks every now and then in your practice session. Let your hands and fingers rest before woodshedding another segment of music. Should you ever get truly frustrated in your practice session, please do take a break. Nothing is worse than practicing when you're mad at your instrument or your fingers. 12) Practice means a lot of repetition, so don't be annoyed by having to play material over and over again. When you practice, don't just practice until you get it right; practice until you can't get it wrong. Good luck to anyone who is inspired to start practicing after reading this! I hope this helps! Part of the artistic process is knowing when you need to rest and take a little break. Today will be the day that I relax and recoup from the constant practicing and painting I've been doing over the last week. Last week was devoted to hours of practicing my instruments. There are a few concerts I have coming up, so it's better to start practicing earlier rather than later. Also, I'm practicing up for the music placement auditions when I return to Furman. Mainly, I've been working on the flute audition excerpts, but I must admit that I've been eyeing the violin excerpts as well. It would be amazing to audition for the symphony orchestra on violin this semester, but if anything, it's good practice to just learn the pieces on the violin. Later this week, I'll have a lovely blog post about practicing! Joy! Hope to see you all then! |
AuthorKendall Driscoll is an accomplished writer/ musician/ artist/ academic scholar. Archives
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