This morning I saw the film MusicWood (2012), as part of the Environmental Film Festival that occurs at Augustana. I mentioned I would see it in yesterday's post, and I discussed wood there as well, but never in any of my previous posts have I been affected about wood and nature than I have been today!
The film began by discussing acoustic guitars (and every time I heard “guitar”, I would substitute “violin”, since both instruments use spruce for their tops and ebony for their fingerboards, although the focus was acoustic guitars and the specific type of spruce used) and how important music in general is for us. It mainly took place in Alaska in the largest rainforest area filled with trees (although Madagascar houses rosewood and ebony), but also filled with stumps, and places where the wood was cut down and possibly disposed of. There were three battling corporations: the Greenpeace organization, who sought to protect the forest from all costs; the Sealaskan group, who was just cutting several sections of forest and wanting to keep it as their property, and the guitar organization (I forgot which company), who wanted the cutting down of trees to be more controlled. Basically, in Alaska was where they got all the spruce, so I presume some violin-makers from America (maybe with my violin!) used some of the spruce trees. And they discussed if you look at the spruce and count the rings, you can tell these trees were 300-600 years old before they were cut to make these instruments, which shows, as they said in the video, these instruments are like living things in their own respect, ancient even if they were just now made. So even a violin made just yesterday can be looked at in a brand-new light from this perspective. I think this shows a brand-new respect for all musical instruments, specifically for us stringed instruments, violins, violas, even guitars. When I pick it up to play or practice it, I might now see my violin in a completely new light than before, by counting these tree rings and seeing the beauty just on how ancient the wood itself is. Keep reading...
This weekend, thousands of musicians around the world have conspired to fill subway stations and public places with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, in celebration of the composer's 331st birthday on Monday.
The events, taking place March 19-21, are all part of Bach in the Subways, a movement that has spread like wildfire over the past six years.
It all started in 2010, when a cellist named Dale Henderson went on a mission to spread the music of Bach. He started by performing solo Bach Suites in various New York City subway stations. Instead of accepting money, Henderson gave away free postcards that invited his audience to continue to explore the music of Bach and classical music in general. The following year, Henderson invited other musicians to join him on Bach's birthday, March 21, 2011, and that was the beginning of an annual tradition, Bach in the Subways. Keep reading...
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When it comes to the musical concept of quick tempo, we all remember the hotshot players in high school who had an innate sense of virtuosic, daredevil speed. It seemed like every fiber in their being contributed to such breakneck playing: their personality, knowledge of the fingerboard, and mastery of memorization.
The flip-side of such an impressive demonstration was that their slow playing didn’t necessarily have the same persuasiveness. Some players are naturally fast and others are methodically, and carefully, slow. Music is constantly seeking the middle ground, and that’s why it’s both fascinating and endlessly challenging.
The component to rhythm that provides balance is called inertia. It makes certain that all cycles - the tiny phrases, the groups of sixteenth notes, the allowance for dynamic presence, etc. – have time to complete themselves. According to Wikipedia, “inertia is the resistance of any physical object to any change in its state of motion (this includes changes to its speed, direction or state of rest.) It is the tendency of objects to move in a straight line at constant velocity.” It’s not laziness, but the person who called laziness "inertia" was very clever. Inertia, for musicians, is the ballast that makes potential chaos run smoothly. Keep reading...
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