For years now I’ve sparred on Saturdays – we have long had a senior sparring class on the schedule in a late afternoon timeframe, finishing up around 4 pm. I don’t get out there every week – Saturdays are big days at our school and sometimes my workload prevents it, but I try. Sparring is […]
“I want to be better at improvisation, you know, just go to a jam session, have someone play a melody, and then improvise my solo part around them.” Last night a friend who plays the guitar and I were talking about our playing, what we like, and how we are accomplishing it. She plays the […]
I downloaded a pdf document that lists the Suzuki repertoire by book. I know from experience, of course, that it’s accurate for books One and Two, more or less, so I assume it will hold up as I progress. There’s quite a bit of fun stuff coming up. Book Three, my next up, includes four […]
Brahms wrote three sonatas for violin and piano – G Major (Opus 78, 1878), A Major (opus 100, 1886), and D Minor (Opus 108, 1887). Like his canonical Violin Concerto (Opus 77, 1878), all were composed for his very close friend Joseph Joachim, the legendary and prodigious violinist of the 19th century. The Guardian online […]
The Beethoven Minuet has four sections, each of which repeat, then half of it repeats again. Many minuets, Teacher says, have a trio section – this Beethoven does, the third and fourth of the four sections, but my first three Bach minuets, for example, did not. The trio section definitely involves a shift in the […]
Guinness World Records is serious business – the officials even have blazers. Back in July of 2013 in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, 272 musicians set out to create the world’s largest theremin ensemble. For those who don’t know, the theremin is an electronic instrument that is played by manually manipulating (in the air around the […]
I ran across this infographic about music and the brain, and it reminded me that one of my goals in taking up an instrument just shy of forty is maintaining my gray matter. As we age our brains stagnate – it’s just a fact of nature. Keeping it active is important – all sorts of […]
Aside from my violin practice, musical exploits for me as a participant are few and far between. Yesterday afternoon, however, I was fortunate enough to get to broaden my horizons both musically and martially in a special martial arts workshop at my school. Capoeira is a Brazilian martial art I’ve written about before, and I’ve […]
Technical feedback is one of the biggest things teachers have to offer that students need, of course, and like any good teacher mine metes it out in measured doses. But in the past two lessons there’s no getting around I’ve gotten lots of it – last week it was the bow hold – bend the […]
I was at a Greek Orthodox funeral this past week for the father of a colleague, who passed at age 86. I’ve been inside a couple of Greek Orthodox churches, so I knew about the elaborate ornamentation common to the cathedrals, but until Wednesday I had never attended a service. I arrived early, to an […]
Ryan Libel 