Passion For Practice Musings From Music Masters Illustrations Explained, Cont. Pg 2
(continued from here), pg. 2
6. Picture 4.0, Economy of Motion: I have been glad to hear that this is a favorite picture from many students because I had so much fun dreaming it up. It has been a lifelong bad habit of mine to lift my fingers too far from the keys because I never learned differently (when I was young). If you lift your fingers too far away from the keys it becomes hard to play faster phrases when you become advanced. So, in my painting shows birds riding the keys, as an airplane in economy class. When the fingers are lifted too high, the bird falls off, and is caught by the predator cats!
7. Picture 5.0, Listen to Yourself for Tone and Intonation: In this picture, the notes are coming out of the oboe, and bouncing off the turtle. With the help of the busy bees, they are lifted up and blown aided by the fan, into the ear of the player listening on high alert to her own notes with a megaphone. There is so much to concentrate on while playing, it can be easily overlooked that one needs to critically listen to yourself.
Rhythm Patterns - Click Picture to Purchase card or Print. Inquire to purchase originals.
8. Picture 6.0, Tackling Difficult Note Patterns: Without repeating the book discussion, the painting has (some hard for me) note patterns from a 1902 composition, a flute show piece by Cecil Chaminade, written for the Paris Conservatory by a woman composer! There are 3 instruments in the painting, Violin, Baritone and Saxophone, making the other odd patterns such as the black areas, the green filling and the brown hoof-like shape on the left. This kind of goes with the message of change up your (practice) patterns. The technique to design this painting (a very early painting of mine) was created with directions from a teacher to connect 3 objects to each other, with each object touching two different edges of the page. I originally did this with other objects, and made it into a card with a summer poem. That card quickly sold out, and I made this painting to add to my music collection. I should do it again because it was a fun assignement.
9. Pictue 7.0, Use Your Metronome, It Can Be Fun: This painting again has the flute concerto by Chaminade in the background. When I gave music lessons as a high school student, I used to ruffle thru sheet music in the music store. I purchased a book of Flute Music by French Composers with showy tunes written for the Paris Music Conservatory. This is what is in the back ground of this painting. I finally purchased a quality (semi-professional) flute as an adult that enabled me to learn and play this music, thanks to a fantastic music teacher that I was taking lessons from. I need to relearn it again to play it more maturely. Back to the painting, if you approach using a metronome like a game, it can be such a fun challange. Thus, the fascinator party hats and balloons. And that is Father Time conducting. Note that in my paintings with small groups of people, I more often than not have the same race together. idon’t see a lot wrong with this. I do make an effort to make other colors of hands and faces when there are larger groups, but I have often struggle with getting a good enough skin tone, and also with having the darker hands lost in the pictures. I will work on improving this in the future.
10. Picture 8.0, Shape Your Phrases: I just had to do a picture with lots of tiny musicians shaping the words. The apples and bananas, frankly remind me of the old Barney the dinosaur song, “Apples and Bananas”.
11. Picture 8.b , “You can do a lot of things with the same notes; Make the piece interesting” said my community band director. I think band and orchestra condutors must be people bursting at the seams to have an audience. So many of them through my youth and in front of adult community groups are so hilarious. At the time the conductor said this, I was taking private music lessons and was learning the Copland Flute and Piano Sonata. so I had recently learned that Copland likes using the term agogic. I had to put my new word to good use. The rest of the terms just followed.
