music = athletics

I've been taking a vacation from vacation, so to speak, so I've neglected you a little bit *pats imaginary blog mascot on head*.  But being home and hanging with family isn't exactly the most exhilarating, blog-worthy stuff, especially when I don't have to make food for myself. (Thanks, Mommy!)

But I have been dealing with some occupational injuries, so I thought I would write a couple words about that today.  Remember my last post about cramming for that last-minute recital?  Well, those stress-induced knots haven't dissolved themselves yet.  They've pretty much stayed there, lurking and staying low-profile enough that they don't impair everyday activity, but hurting enough that I know they're there.  I haven't done much besides having my brother work on them a little and icing them once.  

Right before dinner today, I tripped on my purse and fell.  As I fell, I felt a jerk of impact in my shoulder and knew I had aggravated the stress knots big time.  Throbbing pain coursed through my upper back every time I moved my left arm in the slightest.  I suffered through dinner, trying to stretch it out at intervals.  No dice.  Further steps needed to be taken.  A massage would have been best, but no one in my family is good enough or patient enough.  Sad but true.  I thought about ice or a hot pad, but suddenly remembered SalonPas.  It's a slightly medicated pad that sticks like a bandage and feels like IcyHot.  As I sit here typing I've got a couple pads stuck on my back and it feels like a fresh shot of ice.  It's got a distinctive scent; my high school piano teacher used to joke that she was wearing a new perfume whenever she used them.  

I'm telling you, music is just as physical as athletics.  There are soooo many injuries you can get because of practicing bad habits, whether while you're actually doing music or even when you're just doing everyday things.  Like sitting.  Sitting with bad posture has a huge effect on your physical health and therefore how you play your instrument.  

Over the years I've struggled with wrist and arm pain, partly due to a snowboarding accident when I was fifteen, and partly because of faulty technique.  I've also had pretty bad tension issues in my upper back since entering college.  Some things I've tried to cure these ills include:

1. Icing: a pretty basic preventative measure that is relatively harmless to employ.  I ice when I over-practice, when things feel like they might start hurting, etc.  I always warm up before playing again, though.

2. SalonPas: again, a preventative measure.  SalonPas is my favorite because it's easy and not messy and works really well.

3. IcyHot: not super helpful and also pretty messy and pungent.  The super cooling feeling is nice though.

4. Hot pads: I don't use these very often.

5. Feldenkrais: a body-awareness method that seeks to correct your body alignment.  This is one of the more helpful things I've done.  I took a class that taught some basic relaxation and awareness techniques, and I found that throughout that semester I had less tension in my body and was able to play more freely.  However, it's something that's pretty hard to keep up on your own, unless you're trained in it.  I might look into taking some more classes.

6. Finally, the most important and helpful thing to do is to build good habits!  It's also the hardest . . .  Good habits including always having good posture, which is a result of knowing your best alignment and keeping everything that way, practicing healthy technique, and not playing through pain.  I'm definitely working on these . . . so I'll keep you posted on how it goes.  

For now . . . I'm gonna go get some more SalonPas for my shoulder, whew!

Thanks for reading.

cheers,

Serfy

how to learn lots of music in very little time

I reached the major accompanist leagues this past weekend.  At least, it felt like I was nearing true collaborative pianist status.  It started with a call on Friday morning from a CSA teacher whom I barely knew.  She had a student, (or did she say former student?) who was playing a recital this Sunday.  He thought he had an accompanist but it turned out he didn't (wait . . . how does that work?  The accompanist was a hoax??)  He was playing a Brahms viola sonata (did she say viola or violin?), she wasn't sure which one, and the Walton.  Did I know those pieces (maybe I've played the Brahms before, if you could tell me which one . . . )?

She kept talking a mile a minute and before I knew it I'd agreed to the gig.  What?  It wasn't like I had anything else going on, since I had finished teaching the week before.  So I ended up learning a whole Brahms sonata (turns out it was the f minor viola, originally for clarinet) and two movements of the Walton viola concerto in about five hours.  We rehearsed on Saturday for two hours, after I had rehearsed a Brahms duo sonata for two hours, so I was dead beat by 2:00 pm.  I knew I'd be in bad shape if I pushed myself too hard after months of low stress semi-playing, so I spent a couple hours icing . . . everything and watching Billy Elliot.*  Then I slow-practiced for another two hours, hoping that slow-practice would cement some of the harder passages.

Go-time was Sunday at 11 am, which was unfortunate because that meant I had to miss church.  I'm still trying to figure out that whole work-on-Sunday thing since it has a different angle for musicians.  The recital did not bomb and I did not collapse from exhaustion.  We won't talk about the number of wrong notes I played, but I just tried to focus on making the experience something worthwhile for the audience and I think we succeeded.  I had been warned that the audience would not be very classical-music-savvy and would therefore be less judgmental, which is one reason I agreed to the gig.  Always a nice change to play for people who are simply appreciative and not critical.  (Though honest critique is the best way to improve!)

I honestly enjoyed this experience a bit more than the usual way of spending months working on an hour's program.  I've always worked well under pressure, and with my short attention span sometimes the quicker something is over the better.  Funny then that I'm a musician, because musicians often spend hundreds of hours over the course of years working towards sixty minutes of performance.

A couple things that I learned or that were reinforced from this experience.
- It's better to learn music slowly and well than to learn it quickly and sloppily.
- S - L - O - W practice is always always helpful.
- must. take. things. in. chunks.
- Doing music is just like doing sports: you need to take good care of your body so you can perform well.  For me that meant taking breaks every half hour, spacing out my practice sessions, icing things in between sessions, resting well the night before.
- Towards the end of Saturday night, I started to get really tense, so I took a quiet half hour to do some Feldenkrais relaxation exercises.  They really helped!
- I develop tension really quickly.  And it is always stress-related and bad posture-related.
- Phrasing covers a multitude of technical sins, in a pinch.  ;)  Of course in the long run I don't want to do that, but for quick turnarounds like this, it really helped to focus on making musical sense rather than getting all the notes in a run perfect.

And now I've basically got two staples of the viola repertoire under my belt!  Anyone want to perform them again?  :)

Thanks for reading!

cheers,
Serfy

*Funny story about Billy Elliot: I first watched it when I was about thirteen, when I was, let's say, a little more innocent.  That is, I didn't know what the F word was.  Plus, the thick Irish brogues masked half of what they were saying anyway.  So I watched that movie that has a TON of profanity in it without realizing it.  Now I know.  And yes, there's a lot of swearing.  So don't watch it if you can't handle that type of thing.  But it is a seriously inspirational movie, so if you can handle it, it is totally worth it.

fudge pops: IKEA pt. 1

IKEA is a dangerous place.  You step inside and are immediately overcome by emotions such as wonder, envy, and covetousness.  Or, you just stand there, overwhelmed by the enormity of the place.  The danger I refer to, however, is not that of getting lost or confused, but of picking up too many random semi-useful small items.

You see, IKEA is of course primarily known for its furniture - clean lines, modern aesthetics, affordable price points, equally at home in space-saving studios and large houses.  That's one way I know IKEA; I mean, it's pretty much my childhood, because half the furniture in my house is from IKEA.  But I also know IKEA as the place with the best Swedish meatballs, coffee, and $1 breakfasts and a view of the Newark Liberty International Airport (IKEA Elizabeth); the awesome play place that I tried to cheat to get into (they have a height requirement and I may have cried when I passed the height requirement); and one of the most fascinating catalogs (no link because you need to see it in paper form.)  Growing up, I went there periodically with my family, and while I'm sure my parents always had some agenda, I just thought it was the coolest place ever!

I recently went to IKEA Schaumburg on my first alone visit, as a real adult.  Well, I was really tagging along with a friend who needed furniture for her new apartment, so I guess I haven't really grown up yet after all!  And so I encountered IKEA as a dangerous place.

I didn't need furniture so I wandered around admiring the model spaces they have laid out; the 200 sq. ft. apartments and the crazy color-coordinated closets (seriously, even all the clothes in the closets are in the same color scheme . . . )  We got to the kitchen section and I lost it.  The gist of it is that I picked up a bunch of semi-useful items I didn't really need.  Here is numero uno and what I did with it!

Popsicle molds!  So I made fudge pops, naturally.  Fudge pops are just as much a part of my childhood as IKEA is.  That makes sense, right?  Fudge pops + IKEA = my childhood.  My dad is a math instructor so that must be right.

 Here it is in its frozen form.  I guess you can't see through it . . . but there is fudgey goodness in there.  (Yes, that's Piano Adventures in the background . . . yay for multi-tasking!)

To remove it from its encasing, dip it in lukewarm water . . . or run it under the lukewarm tap.  I didn't use hot water because I was afraid it would melt things too quickly.

Voila!  Homemade fudge pops.  The air bubbles just add to the not-store-bought quality, y'know?  You might think 2 oz. is tiny, compared the gargantuan ice cream treats you can get today, but with the real chocolate and everything, these are rich enough that 2 oz. is just right.

fudge pops

makes 6 2-oz. pops

ingredients:

1 cup milk

1/4 cup heavy cream

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa

1/2 tbsp cornstarch

pinch of salt

1 large egg yolk

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped

directions:

1. Combine milk, heavy cream, sugar, cocoa, cornstarch, salt, and egg yolk in small saucepan.  Heat over medium-high heat for about 8 minutes, whisking constantly.

2. Remove from heat and add vanilla and chocolate.

3. Transfer mixture to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and cool completely.  Put it in an ice bath to speed things up.

4. Once completely cool, fill molds and freeze for at least 4 hours.  They can stay yummy for quite a while - I finished mine in about 8 days.  

Thanks for reading!

cheers,

Serfy

{This is Part 1 of IKEA is a Dangerous Place.}

coffee shop characters

I visited a new coffee shop in hopes of finding inspiration to do work instead of bum on the internets.  It's really easy to get lost on the web when I'm at home by myself.  I've found that I'm usually most productive in a space that has a decent amount of people and noise, but not people I know or noise I need to pay attention to.  That rules out libraries, the cafeteria or student center, anywhere really crowded, or any space where I'm with friends.  So visiting coffee shops by myself is usually quite successful!  There's a nice amount of ambient noise, though I usually plug in headphones, and there's just enough social pressure that I don't feel like I should sit there just browsing BuzzFeed.  That's just the way I am!

Today I visited Arcedium Coffeehouse in Geneva.  I got a pourover of their Tulawesi -- I sound like a coffee snob but I am not.  It tasted like . . . coffee to me.  I was just curious if pourovers really are all they're cracked up to be.  I suppose if you are a coffee connoisseur you can taste a clear difference but to me it was just coffee.  Arcedium is pretty fancy; they roast their own beans and have about twenty different blends available.  Okay cool.

The real reason I was there was to do work.  And I did; I wrote a blog post, studied eleven Duparc songs, and did some job app stuff.  But I also spent snippets of time people-watching, one of my favorite pastimes.  I saw some pretty interesting characters today!

The Unspoken Friend
She sat next to me the whole time I was there and we had a mutual pact to watch each other's stuff whenever we had to get up and/or use the restroom.

The Kindred Spirit
He was writing and people-watching just like me.

The Flirt Pretending to Study
She sat at the bar with open notebook and textbook, but was more often than not glancing around and checking her phone.  Every movement was calculated to subtly attract attention.  She not-so-subtly checked out the new guy that sat down next to her.

The Wandering Musician
He carried a guitar in a travel case and wandered back and forth through the length of the store, smiling at other people and looking about.  He must have passed me at least five times.

The Slightly Creepy Regular
I overheard him saying he always came here and here they had the best coffee.  He tried to hit on The Unspoken Friend - "You're really beautiful, too."  Actually it was kind of smooth - she had just made a comment about what a beautiful state Washington was.  Smooth and kinda creepy.

Then there was Are They Together or Not.  Girl sat down at a high table with an open book, guy sauntered over and stood there leaning against another chair, chatting her up.  Her salad arrived, and he still stood there.  He wandered a couple steps away and came back to say something.  She looked pretty focused on her salad and book.  Eventually he sauntered away and out.  Another guy trying to hit on random girls?  It's cool to see people interacting in a coffee shop, but not if they're consistently guys hitting on pretty girls . . .

A very successful afternoon, I'd say. :)

Thanks for reading.

cheers,
Serfy

end of summer session

(Not very good at posting, am I?  Nope.  Oh well.  This is mostly for my own edification anyway.)

The 26th marked the end of my studio's summer session!  I'm done with my first prolonged, dedicated time of teaching.  And *newsflash* I still enjoy it.  This is big for me, because I have always bristled at the "Are you gonna be a teacher?" question whenever people find out I study piano.  But I've actually learned a lot already and am coming to see the importance and difficulty of being a beginning piano teacher.

Here are some things that I've learned I need to work on!

1. Learn how to simplify concepts: whether it's using smaller words or including tons of relatable analogies, how do I explain something very abstract?

2. Sequenced learning: an example of this is teaching hand position.  With beginning students I stress using a curved hand position and strong fingers, but eventually the student will need to play passages with flattened fingers or a higher wrist.  I have a tendency to try to qualify my statements instead of understanding that I can't overload the student with the future.

3. Teaching five year old beginners vs. 6th grader transfers: I recently taught a trial lesson to a rising 6th grader who had had five years of piano lessons already.  I have a feeling that's gonna be way harder than teaching my easily distracted five year old twins.  This transfer has a plethora of bad habits, not to mention that middle school is such a treacherous season to navigate.  I'll have to work really hard to be have clear and strong expectations without crushing her love for music.

4. Speak less: more succinct, less verbose.  I am just so . . . wordy!

5. Get to know more early rep: I can't rely on what I grew up with because a lot of that is outdated.  I need to learn all my options now and become familiar with them.  At a recent meeting with our ISMTA mentor, the "Snell Repertoire" kept coming up.  I had never used or heard of that series before so I was mighty confused.  Apparently it's the standardest of the standard!

6. Manage lesson time better: I have yet to learn the secret of balance.  I run way over, spend too much time going over assignments and send the kid home with all new stuff . . . you get the idea.

7. Communicate more clearly with parents: I think I just have to be more up front and ask them, especially those of younger students, to do certain things or to help little Johnny when he's practicing at him.  Just being clearer with expectations and the parents' role in piano lessons.

8. Develop expectations and goals for each student (and/or parent): it's been a little tough to do this for summer session because it's so short, but I know come fall, this will be essential to help me track each student's progress.

Those are just a couple things.  As I go into my August break, hopefully I'll be able to spend some time researching, studying, and preparing for the fall.

Thanks for reading!

cheers,
Serfy