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Talk me off the ledge. Nothing going right
Topic Rating: 5 Topic Rating: 5 Topic Rating: 5 Topic Rating: 5 Topic Rating: 5 Topic Rating: 5 (18 votes) 
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BowMeAway
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July 13, 2016 - 12:53 pm
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I have been incorporating so many of these tips and I am actually looking forward to practice again and randomly picking up the instrument to play a bit here and there throughout the day.

I am very grateful, folks.

I am also liking certain of my sounds better. My staccato is less spaccato, for example (has been a big problem of mine) and I am sounding "smoother" (like drawing the bow through butter or pulling taffy, as my violin instructor says).

I also adjusted my shoulder rest so the violin is more horizontal rather than leaning way down across my collarbone and all of a sudden it seems SO much easier to hold.

Most of all I'm trying to remember, at each practice, why I wanted to play in the first place. It wasn't to impress a teacher, "move on" to a new piece each week or apply to Julliard. It was to make and enjoy a few pretty tunes.

Thank you all so much. 

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Demoiselle
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We are all chained to the most beautiful instrument in the world, which unfortunately has not mercy on their slaves. But the sweetness of slavery outweighs the torture of souls.

My violin is a 3/4 violin, made for right-handed players, though I play it left-handed. As I felt she was the best in the shop of all 3/4 violins I tried and the luthier agreed. I prefer Obligato strings together with Eudoxa E string. Self-made bow, weight: 24 g / 0.85 oz

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Jacques
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July 13, 2016 - 10:53 pm
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If I sat down and read sheet music all day - I would be very bored and progress slowly as well.

http://www.thestrad.com/cpt-la.....he-violin/

Why I first started I read only enough sheet music to learn all of the positions which means completing two or three beginners music books and playing nothing twice only play each page once. So you can cover more ground. You're not going to be a master by practicing beginner music over and over again. You have to push yourself.

to create music is to be creative. After you've read the article above and 

http://j2jenkins.com/2013/04/2.....ing-music/

might you be inspired to try purely inprovisational music to get the sound you want.

Learn the notes not the music.

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Demoiselle
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July 14, 2016 - 6:11 am
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It is basic knowledge in jazz, that improvisers mainly learn by listening. But it is a prejudice, this was invented in the 20th century.

The reason why improvisation got lost in classical music, was the hype around a few people they hyped up to ubermensch/superhuman/genius. Which is the same ideology which started fascism: the leader is all, you are nothing. In the pre-classical era, baroque is part of it, there were basically different ideas about music, which have been very similar to jazz. Handel went to Italy to study music and I'm sure he learned a lot by listening. Telemann preferred to listen to peasant bands and he especially liked to travel to Poland to find new ideas there.

I performed with jazz for decades, but at some point read about improvisation in the baroque era. And because I already knew how much you learn by listening night and day, I bought as many soloistic sonatas I could find and listen to them all the time. That's how you grasp the style we call baroque today, just like it's being done in jazz. There are even play-alongs on the market, you can ride on: https://www.muziekweb.nl/Link/.....naten-Bd-1 They are meant for playing with notes, but I just improvise. Listening, listening, listening and improvising. But listening is the more important thing, because that's where the music comes from you can play.

My violin is a 3/4 violin, made for right-handed players, though I play it left-handed. As I felt she was the best in the shop of all 3/4 violins I tried and the luthier agreed. I prefer Obligato strings together with Eudoxa E string. Self-made bow, weight: 24 g / 0.85 oz

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Jacques
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I wish there was or was not a distinct difference between jazz and improvisation. What do you feel is the difference between the two?

 

i mean I am a purely, improvised violinist. I would like to say that I play jazz however, your current view of jazz is not canonical with my interpretation. I believe jazz is in essence "freestyle" without precincts I.E. Conceived from the soul - not pre existing music. I am mostly an African American male, and I love that other races are so proud and accepting of jazz music, but I just feel that if I am right about this origination of jazz music - our definition should incorporate the word "freestyle" improvisation so that the distinction is made that jazz is music formed from 'the top of the head' purely idealistic.

Its distraughtening when I discover a person claims to play jazz by sight reading. It's sort classical music. Classical music became classical when people started to make songs into repertoire. Replaying pre existing music makes it a classic.

Thus I move to clarify 

jazz- improvised music in freestyle form.

freestyle - a form without prexisting connotation

classical jazz - music of repertorie from past jazz performance

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Demoiselle
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July 14, 2016 - 3:54 pm
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I strongly feel, black jazz musicians have not been treated fairly since the white "dixieland jazz" came up in 1915. Again and again it happened, that white commerce used new styles of black music and made big money with it. Dixieland was nothing but trying to copy the black New Orleans style - of course the copy was terrible. The next black style the music industry copied was HotDance/Charleston and so it later happened with Fletcher Henderson's swing style. Black artists who had created those styles hardly profited from the big money, the music industry got out of it. That was a problem.

But in the meantime things got better. Duke Ellington and Count Basie had success and so had the black giants of Bebop. Especially Dizzy Gillespie would disagree with you: Modern jazz has been formed in cooperation between black and white musicians who influenced each other. You cannot racially divide jazz anymore in our time - that's a racist thing of the RACE RECORDS label, black artists were limited to in the 20s. That was musical segregation and no good.

The sheets-only concept belongs to classical music post baroque. Before that, professionals had to be able to do both: read sheets and improvise. This is also what professional black jazz musicians do today and those black jazz musicians who teach it on colleges teach both: sheet and improvisation.

And by the way, the creators of jazz took the European concept of major/minor tonality and use it for their jazz style. This shows, jazz began as a style of black and white elements. For centuries European music had always been inventing, loaning, stealing, influencing - giving and getting back. And there always have been winners and losers. Handel took ideas from Georg Muffat, which is clearly to hear. Europe stole baroque music from Spain and I'm not sure where Spain had stolen the basic concept from in the first place. Maybe we will never know. But humanity creates by cooperating and you cannot split anything of it to divide mankind. The majority will not follow you, which goes for the majority of blacks too. Dividing is a concept for the sidelines, you won't win anything.

My violin is a 3/4 violin, made for right-handed players, though I play it left-handed. As I felt she was the best in the shop of all 3/4 violins I tried and the luthier agreed. I prefer Obligato strings together with Eudoxa E string. Self-made bow, weight: 24 g / 0.85 oz

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Demoiselle
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July 16, 2016 - 6:46 am
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@Jacques

You should quote a sentence where I spoke about a "difference between jazz and improvisation". I never said that. I improvise a lot in jazz and baroque style and I improvise way more than covering melodies from a sheet or just by ear. But improvisation cannot be all, because musicians are limited in variation they show while improvising. Be it Satchmo, Charlie Parker, Handel or Bach: they all repeat themselves a lot and if you listen a lot to them it's really striking. All human beings are limited and this also goes for those we call Great Masters or Giants.

In the high school  band of my early days of playing jazz we already learned, when we only improvised, there was lack of variation. There were three people in  the band who were able, willing and ready to write arrangements—including me. We did not buy note sheets, we took a pencil and worked something out ourselves, to add a special chorus to some titles which would have a special sound. Which made a big difference to our sound and the audience liked it!

Right yesterday evening I sat down at my spinet and worked out an arrangement for a Telemann Menuet. I did partly improvise the spinet part of Handel's Sarabande and have already performed it as play-along for my dance part. But I decided to work the spinet backing for my Menuet dance chorus out and write down the notes. Because an arrangement sounds different to improvisation and a Menuet sounds better if completely worked out. Nevertheless, I will improvise the Menuet choruses for my vocal and violin parts into my handy recorder microphone. I'm not sure whether the violin is going to play the theme in the first chorus. But I know, most of my fiddling and fluting will be improvisation the evening I will perform.

What's bad about notes? I write down words if I have a new idea for lyrics (I also added my lyrics to Telemann's Menuet) and I write notes if I have an idea for a new composition. But improvising is what I do mostly. I learn faster if I practice by improvising, because I can always spontaneously improvise phrases which I need to practice—slowly raising the level. That's more effective than just playing songs and I profit a lot from it. So improvisation is the best of all, but it cannot be all.

My violin is a 3/4 violin, made for right-handed players, though I play it left-handed. As I felt she was the best in the shop of all 3/4 violins I tried and the luthier agreed. I prefer Obligato strings together with Eudoxa E string. Self-made bow, weight: 24 g / 0.85 oz

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Jacques
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July 16, 2016 - 12:03 pm
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Demoiselle said
@Jacques

What's bad about notes?

@Demoiselle 

My personal issue with " Notes " is found between definition and linguistics e. g. jazz / improvisation and artist / musician . We have discussed our opinions on jazz / improvisation , and so moving on ...

"What's bad about notes?"

Disclaimer * Obviously most people need NOTES as a guideline to make music, as means of organizing tunes thus NOTES are essentially vital to the communicating world.

In short , when ' musicians ' call themselves ' artist ' it affects me . Because , I consider myself an ' artist ' specifically because I never read sheet music . The opposite would be if I read sheet music I would consider myself a ' musician '. Thus a discrepancy is formed between artist and musicians . So if you mean 'sheet music' when you say "notes" . . . I feel it is only bad on a personal level because of the artistic restriction that sheet music will place on an instrumentalist . And the effects that repeated phrasing has on the violin itself is not good . To mature the violin into a colorful instrument it needs to resonate with improvised music instead of repeated melodies . Perhaps the reason Strads sound so good is because they were mostly improvised on for their first 100 - 200 years . Improvisation opens up instruments in ways that memorizing music scores can never do .

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Demoiselle
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The problem is, you're not listening and then misquote other people. I told you, I write my own notes sometimes whenever I want to involve notes. Music is an artistic language and there should be some kind of script to not forget ideas over longer periods of time. Feeling it effects you how other people define themselves is highly egocentric thinking. You should respect how people define themselves, just like others are supposed to respect how you define yourself. Personally I never called myself an artist since those I've met and who called themselves "artist" were often extremely arrogant. People have called me an artist several times and each time I've replied I don't like the term "artist". It doesn't mean anything to me. I'm an improviser, composer, singer and dancer who writes her own lyrics. That's me and good enough for me. I don't want to be among people who constantly self-praise themselves "artist" for I'd find that simply embarrassing. I'm not out for honor I'm out to express myself—be it by improvising, be it by composing or arranging and writing notes.

My violin is a 3/4 violin, made for right-handed players, though I play it left-handed. As I felt she was the best in the shop of all 3/4 violins I tried and the luthier agreed. I prefer Obligato strings together with Eudoxa E string. Self-made bow, weight: 24 g / 0.85 oz

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Jacques
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July 16, 2016 - 5:37 pm
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i want to apologize to everyone who reads this because I should have never responded to @Demoiselle. 

Decisively ,  my responses are directed at the general public based on my observations, and not directed at a single individual. I try to be a progressive thinker because I am as idealistic as one can get, I do not lament in the past and only act on what I feel is best for the future - in this aspect the topic is terminology. Jazz, artistry, musicianship, music scores, and notes ; how I feel about them is neither fact nor fiction - it is a matter of my personal perspective. I suppose this ideology my ego and quotation is what makes me a true artist. 

 

Also, in regards to differences between jazz and improvisation, the question wasn't just asked to you but to anyone willing to provide feedback. I was not quoting you at all. On the contrary your quote about being chained to ththe instrument is beautiful. Lovely, did you come up with that yourself , demoiselle?

Lastly, I am not verbally attacking you demoiselle so please stop retaliating at me. 

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Demoiselle
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July 17, 2016 - 3:33 am
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@Jacques

"I wish there was or was not a distinct difference between jazz and improvisation. What do you feel is the difference between the two?"

  • There's no difference between baroque and improvisation,
  • there's no difference between classical music and improvisation,
  • there's no difference between romantic music and improvisation,
  • there's no difference between jazz and improvisation.

All these styles have the same value and they all use both, improvisation and notes. If the majority today abuse several of these styles and many are chained to sheet stands it's their slavery and not my problem. I don't burn the pencil on my spinet, just because notes make other people unfree. To me composing and arranging is part of my musical freedom.

I'm not joining a crusade against slavery in what ever style of music. I performed a lot with a swing combo on trombone and trumpet. Since the late 90s I rather work on baroque where it's recorders and since last May violin too. And to me there's no difference between jazz and baroque. The deeper I go into baroque, the more I feel, jazz was already there, long before the 1800s.

It probably goes for classical and romantic music as well, I just don't know enough about those periods. People have been misusing these styles in the 1900s a lot, but this does not devalue any of these styles. Today many people misuse jazz in the same way—there are many who play jazz classics just from sheets and never improvise. So this is a phenomenon jazz shares with 'classical music' in the general meaning. It is sad, but not my problem and must not necessarily be your problem.

My violin is a 3/4 violin, made for right-handed players, though I play it left-handed. As I felt she was the best in the shop of all 3/4 violins I tried and the luthier agreed. I prefer Obligato strings together with Eudoxa E string. Self-made bow, weight: 24 g / 0.85 oz

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Demoiselle
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July 17, 2016 - 3:44 am
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Actually I don't even use the word "baroque" if I talk about music to people who have knowledge. The term "baroque" was an 1800s insult against all arts of the ancien régime. I say "General Bass Music" or "Continuo Music", which are terms from the 1600s and early 1700s. Then there's mainly the difference between French Music and Italian Music—music which is ideal for dancing and music which is ideal for improvisation. The 'fans' of Lully and Corelli were opposing like two parties. I'm not even part of that old dispute, for I like to use French and Italian styles.

Which to me is a fascinating world which kept me "off the ledge" when I started on the violin. If I know what I want, where I'm going to, driven by love to a certain kind of music, I will always find enough motivation inside me. I always struggle if beginners tell me, "Oh, I like any style of music and wanna play everything." I'm way over 50 and have experimented with many styles and periods of music, but I always had preferences. In fact I was specializing on just one style for years—swing was about the whole decade of the 80s. And there have always been other kinds of music which I disliked and partly my taste later changed.

Nonetheless I do not intrude my musical likes and dislikes on other people. I just watch other people to find out, whether cooperation might be possible. Because some have preferences which don't match my preferences or have nasty attitudes.

My violin is a 3/4 violin, made for right-handed players, though I play it left-handed. As I felt she was the best in the shop of all 3/4 violins I tried and the luthier agreed. I prefer Obligato strings together with Eudoxa E string. Self-made bow, weight: 24 g / 0.85 oz

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Fiddlerman
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July 18, 2016 - 2:05 pm
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Let's be cool and civil towards each other. We have rules about how to treat each other on the forum and it's all about showing respect. I'm not referring to any one person in this case just asking for everyone to show respect.

"The richest person is not the one who has the most,
but the one who needs the least."

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Demoiselle
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I'd like to take back my expression "sheet slaves". A band/bande/banda bigger than two melody instruments plus b. c. must have notes and if it's a really large orchestration notists are vital. And certainly there should be people who specialize on playing from notes. Otherwise we had to burn all scores for music with large orchestration, which would be tragic—be it Lully, Dvořák or huge Hollywood scoring.

Not everybody must also play a keyboard instrument and explore the 'science' of musical harmony to be able to create their own music. And if a hobby violinist is just happy with playing favorite melodies, that's fine. I don't have and never had children, other people have children and probably not the time to spend evenings and weekends with researching music deeply. And everybody has their own right to make music the way they want to.

I never had debates with people who advocate improvisation. I always had to debate those at times who tried to convince me it was improper to cover Bach. Which is an opportunity to finally affirm, that I have no conflict with Bach himself. I did cover his Gavotte from his 3rd Ouverture months ago but had no idea for lyrics. Yesterday I found words and they are really funny. Which is a much nicer way to unchain from Bach fundamentalists who kind of made him a God since the late 1800s. So now Bach is more human and I like him too. They did not let him be a court musician and had to make church music. And then I like him even more. Poor Bach. :(

By the way, it's after 6 p.m. here, I just came home and had bought a new CD. This time I did not go to the Ancient Music department, I went to the Bach corner, because I have no Bach stuff for solo violin. There was a CD with just Midori Seiler, who also plays with Academy for Ancient Music Berlin, and it's all Partitas. So if I listen to it, it's just me, Seiler and Bach. And these two nice fellas teach me sometn' then. :)

My violin is a 3/4 violin, made for right-handed players, though I play it left-handed. As I felt she was the best in the shop of all 3/4 violins I tried and the luthier agreed. I prefer Obligato strings together with Eudoxa E string. Self-made bow, weight: 24 g / 0.85 oz

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BowMeAway
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Update:

I have my first two "real" pieces: Bach's Minuet No. 1 and 2. (What would you officially call these pieces? They were originally for cello, right?)

Anyway, I am REALLY enjoying these pieces. I've taken a bit of advice here and there from all over this thread and it really has just come together and I'm enjoying playing again.

The pieces are much harder than any I've done due to the many string changes, where I tend to accidentally double-down and/or get whiny/whistle-y, but they are both coming along and I love them so much. I just love these pieces. So I'm trying to take these as: learn the WHOLE PIECES to SOUND NICE and sound emotional and expressive...not "pass" them for my next class and my next piece.

That's my update for now...I'm still fiddlin'!

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Charles
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Good job!  Glad to hear the whole experience is so much better now.

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Demoiselle
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BowMeAway said
Update:

I have my first two "real" pieces: Bach's Minuet No. 1 and 2. (What would you officially call these pieces? They were originally for cello, right?)

That's the best way keep your dignity. I work that way too: If I play a sonata meant for violin, they will compare me to other players which probably play it better. I'm planing to add Handel's final minuet of his Royal Fireworks to my program, plus I'm preparing a Telemann minuet for recorder. Possibly will play the Fireworks minuet theme on my violin too, although I wrote lyrics for it years ago and also will sing it.

My violin is a 3/4 violin, made for right-handed players, though I play it left-handed. As I felt she was the best in the shop of all 3/4 violins I tried and the luthier agreed. I prefer Obligato strings together with Eudoxa E string. Self-made bow, weight: 24 g / 0.85 oz

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damfino
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@BowMeAway Glad that you found the practicing mix that works for you and makes it fun again! Keep it up, and let us know how you're doing :)  

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coolpinkone
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August 21, 2016 - 9:02 pm
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@BowMeAway I loved reading all the tips and replies to you! Bravo in voicing your Concerns. We all learn from these posts.

I was very frustrated for over a year in learning to read sheet music. I am Very glad that I stuck it out. I Never thought it would take me so long.

I also had trouble with pain after 20-30 minutes in the beginning and in my first year of playing I did not force practice. (even though I should have). The pain went away and I can play for extended times now.

I had several of the same frustrations.

I love Minuet 1 Bach.

I am excited to hear more of your journey!

Cheers, Toni

Vibrato Desperato.... Desperately seeking vibrato

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