Group 1
Video of the TWI Check-In with Borbála!
Have you noticed that most of the time we talk about technique or musical expression separately? We practice technical elements such as arpeggio, fast scales, left hand independence, tremolo, or even legato playing, etc. separately, but never together with the musical elements. Enjoy this two-week intensive to be able to play the basic musical ideas easily such as changes of dynamics and tempo, articulation, accentuation, as well as to improve your musical creativity.
- Course Period: December 5th - 19th
- Sign-Up: November 30th
- Zoom Check-In: Dec 11th, 9am PT
ASSIGNMENT FOR THE FIRST WEEK:Exercises_Expression (1)
Please share a video of yourself playing the first three exercises and at least two variations of the fourth exercise.
1-3. Exercises:
- Take a tempo in which you can play without unnecessary tension and make the musical expressions (accelerando, crescendo) gradually.
Exercice 1: https://youtu.be/lf3aQznZyKQ
Exercice 2: https://youtu.be/PeGYFbXkjuY
Exercise 3: https://youtu.be/gCycBsDb7Xw
4. Exercise:
- If it’s too difficult for you to learn to play in one week, you can perform only the upper voice.
- Make attention, that fingering should be different depends on the desired musical character.
- Try to show the musical elements exaggeratedly, even if it seems to be too much.
- Try to imagine the character before you play the exercise.
Exercise 4: https://youtu.be/FTHMi7xghjg
ASSIGMENT FOR THE SECOND WEEK:
Please choose a short section (at least a phrase) of your current repertoire or one of the following
pieces:
- Fernando Sor: Six Divertissements Op. 2. No. 1.
- Matteo Carcassi: 25 Etudes Op. 60. No. 9.
- Leo Brouwer: Estudios Sencillos No. 5.
and demonstrate it at least in two different variations of musical ideas, musical characters.
You can/should change the fingerings depends on your imagined musical character.
You can use the Cheat Sheet of Observation of musical ideas to control your way of playing.
Cheat_sheet_Observation_of_musical_expression (1) Sor_Six_divertissements_Op_2 Brouwer_Estudios_sencillos_no_5 Carcassi_25_Etudes_Op_60
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December 9 Update
Here are the ones you suggested that I continue to work on. I have a separate video for the Court Dance because on the first one, I just was playing it so badly that I gave up. I then practiced it a bit more and recorded it again. It's still far from being good.
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Borbala Seres Thank you very much for the feedback. I will continue to work on my staccato and try adding it more to pieces.
On another note, I just listened to your new concert on the Siccas YT channel. Just breathtakingly beautiful playing! My favorite was the Scarlatti L238. It moves me to the point of tears.
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Eric Phillips Thank you! That's very nice of you. Yes, that Scarlatti is one of my favorite piece. So deep, so beautiful. That use to be my starting piece on concerts, because I can create the communication very well with the audience through this piece. That is very important for me, and when I can't reach that atmosphere with them, then I can't enjoy the concert so much.
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Eric Phillips Borbala Seres I also really enjoyed the concert on Siccas. I liked the playlist, especially my alltime favourite "una limnosa..." by Barrios, which you played very sensitive. The comparativly slow tempo gave me just a little hope that I am able to play this piece in this life in spite of the tremolos. Thank you!
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Ingo Thank you very much. The slow tempo is conceptional for my musical idea. I would say try not to mystify the tremolo, it's actually a kind of arpeggio, which we do on one string!
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Borbala Seres My problem with tremolo is to keep it really even when I speed up. I spent some weeks with it and then decided not to spend so much time in one technique. Maybe I'll give it a try again next year...
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Assignments for the second week have been posted! See you in the Zoom Call!
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Sor Op 2 No 1 Three Ways (Dec 11)
I'm sorry I could not attend the Zoom check in. I love the assignment for Week Two and I'm looking forward to having some fun with it. Here are three versions of the Sor: lively, sweetly, and bouncy.
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Eric Phillips Great, what will you do the rest of the week?
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Ingo Thanks, Ingo. Plenty more to do!
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Eric Phillips Thanks Eric, I loved all the three versions.
Only couple of things: for sweety you could experiment with even more rubato and slower vibrato. Bouncy: I'm so glad that you started to use articulation. I loved the staccatos here for the character. I would say the tempo could be a bit faster and you could add more accents to some places. The staccatos could be even shorter, but this is only my opinion. I don't know the exact imagined picture of yours here. Great job!
PS.: I would be interested in how the feeling was for you to experiment with these musical character ideas? Did you enjoy it? -
Borbala Seres Thank you, Borbala, for the feedback. I will experiment with your suggestions.
I enjoy this work very much. I confess that I do not find any enjoyment doing un-musical technique exercises. I much prefer working on technique in the context of actual music. I understand the arguments for doing technique exercises outside of the context of actual music, but I find it almost impossible to stay motivated while doing them. Using real musical examples to work different techniques (which is what we are doing this week) is wonderful for me!
I do find it very difficult to think of a name for the character I am trying to give to the music, much less any kind of "story" for an entire piece. I understand how this can help in creating an image in my mind, but I find it very difficult to think in that way. I feel like I lack this type of creativity.
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Eric Phillips I have to confess you also sg. I hate them too
. Your idea is the same than mine to work with the context and anyway pieces always use to be different from any exercises from any methodbook, but sometimes it's necessary to have couple of them, to make progress.
With practice you will be able to find characters easier, you just have to start to formulate them clearly. Just keep going and listen to your recording of Sor, or the second version of Brouwer, how joyful is to listen to your interpretations. It's quite rare, that a piece has a whole story, sometimes they have changes of different characters, moods. More common is, that you can formulate something: "this scale is just like a lough", it's just like...., or that is just like.... That .... is what you have to formulate and to find the best tool to formulate it. -
Borbala Seres Thank you so much for this response. Reading that you actually like my interpretations has put a smile on my face that won't go away for a long time.
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Brouwer Estudio Sencillo 5 Two Ways
The first one is the way I would typically play it. On the second one, I tried to go a little wild with contrasts.
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Eric Phillips
First version: Just a question: I have the feeling that you take it more as an etude which is fine, but in this case I would ask you why do get a different tempo in measure 10? Is it conceptional, or just accidental?
Second version: It's much more interesting and enjoyable for me. I would say I didn't get the exact concept behind it, becase sometimes you mix the contrasts and it's not clear why? If it's like a dialog it should be even more shown. Did you have any concept or did you just try to play with the use of the different tools? -
Borbala Seres In the first version, I didn't even know I was speeding up in measure 10. I guess it just felt natural to me.
For the second one, I had no concept in mind (and I really don't know how to do that). I was just playing around with timbre and tempo mostly, in a way that felt natural. Obviously, measures 10-17 seems like a different section, with the return of the first section at measure 18. So, I decided to use measure 9 to do an accelerando into a faster tempo, and measures 16-17 to slow it back down again. In the last section (measure 18 and onward), I simply tried to accentuate the harsh dissonances by going ponticello. The last measure could have also been ponticello, but I intentionally did not do that, so it's almost like the character of the opening eight measures prevails in the end. (I am not sure if any of that is making sense at all.
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Eric Phillips That is basicaly a concept and I found it fine, but if you have the first 8 measures like one kind of character, than don't go to ponticello in the 3. bar, because it confuses your idea. That's why I asked you about the concept. I would recommend you in a nice melodic phrase not to change the tone color, when the whole phrase is repeated there you can make a color change, that has a better effect. At the end when you took the accented ponticello for those two chords, that is an other story, ther you can do it, as an inmediate effect.
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Borbala Seres That makes a lot of sense! Thank you so much!
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Tarrega Prelude 5 measures 14-17 two ways
I thought I'd try playing around with a piece I've already been playing for about a month. These measures are already a contrasting section, so maybe they would benefit by having even more contrast.
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Eric Phillips That is a very good idea at measure 14 to be able to show the bitter character of this minor part. I would stay at that articulation that you cut the pointed rhythm not only for the first beat, but for the second and third quarter, I would keep doing it for the whole 14-15 measures (till the bass A sharp). Then from measure 16 you could continue with legato.
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Borbala Seres Great idea! I will work on that.
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Video of the TWI Check-In with Borbála!
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Borbala Seres Here is my practice of exercise 3 (Staccato).
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Raul Guzman Vidal hi Raul,
Thanks for the video.
Left hand stacc is perfect. It looks sometimes that you would put extra pressure while doing it, but I can't see it exactly, maybe I'm wrong. But it's very nice!
RH altern. is great too!
P staccato I found nice too. Isn't your p finger too tense a bit? It looks like that, but again not sure. You can tell me better what you feel, that's your body, and we all have different hands. If I'm right, then try to relax your p last joint. It doesn't have to be necessarily in that tensed back position.
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Borbala Seres Thank you for the quick response. I will keep practicing relaxing more my right hand. Here is the 4th exercise of the first week, doing only the upper voice. I will start practicing the second week exercises right away.
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End of the Year Challenge: Finish Strong!
