Hello
I thought I’d write something to document how amazing was the weekend I have just had: last night I returned from a weekend in Croydon: weekend number 11 of 16 of my 2-year Dalcroze Eurhythmics certificate course.
This weekend we did a lot of work about unequal beats – learning how to recognise, step, clap and move freely in 5/8, 7/8, 8/8, showing the beat groupings in our bodies: we did a lot of quick reaction games – responding to what we heard on piano by tapping and stepping different combinations of rhythms. I suppose at this point, to anyone who hasn’t done Dalcroze, my description must seem quite vague! But I suppose Dalcroze is such an experiential process that even a great description (such as this one by Kris) wouldn’t convey what was actually done and what it feels like.
For those of you still curious, I’ll provide an example of a game we did in our Rhythmics class to help us perceive two lines of music at once: we got into pairs, one person had two small hand drums. The teacher played a piece of music with two very separate bass and treble parts. The person with the drums had to move the drums every time there was a bass note, and the other person had to hit the drums every time there was a treble note. After a while we started to notice a pattern in the music and were able to pre-empt the changes, moving fluidly and tapping rhythmically. Imagine, ‘move move tap tap move tap‘… I suppose to an outsider it might’ve looked quite dance-like, although we weren’t trying to dance at all!
In improvisation we played a game where the teacher, Karin Greenhead played an accompaniment on one piano. She decided on a particular key and time signature. Then each of us in turn played melodies on another piano, responding to what Karin played. Karin changed keys (without warning us) and we had to continue to melodize fluently without panicking or falling to pieces! There was a fair bit of laughter during the class. It was fun, but quite challenging too: by doing this, we’re learning (notice present tense) to recognise particular modulations and to develop a deeper more intuitive understanding of keys and chords. Being daringly (and perhaps blindly or even stupidly!) ambitious with my piano playing, I ended up trying out chromatic modulations… which I have to say, I can’t do at the moment! But it’s given me lots of ideas to practise.
I’ve decided to try keeping an improvisation video diary online. I admit shamelessly that I am a performer and communicator – I thrive on dialogue with other people and it really is useful and inspiring to hear any suggestions others might have to help me improve, or to know that others enjoy or are inspired by what I play. So, I figured making videos would be a good way of motivating myself and documenting my progress. As I’ve touched on before, I don’t think people should wait til they’ve mastered something before they share it with others – the whole journey itself is something for any learner to be proud of. Perfectionism is not always a bad thing but it certainly can hold people back. In the interest of innovation, creativity and making breakthroughs I think it is more important to aim towards being expressive and spontaneous, to keep one’s attention in the present, rather than strive towards an ultimate goal of being perfect. Let’s face is, perfection is just not natural. (Here I could go on about examples of art, music and nature we may consider beautiful and how imperfections are essential for that…but, forgive me for trying not to spend my ENTIRE morning composing this post!)
So, my video diary is not there for others to make judgements on my general piano-playing: most of the pieces will be improvisations as opposed to rehearsed, finished performances (I already have videos online for that purpose). I am still learning how to do all this, so my intention is not to be fantastic or entertaining! If you like what you see or have any ideas about it, do let me know.
Here’s the link to the playlist for November’s videos (I’m optimistically thinking I should have a separate playlist for each month. ha..)
That’s all for now!
