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Carl,
I’m an adult who’s been playing 3-5 years. I mostly play for myself at home, but I also might like to someday play in a community band or orchestra. The kind that plays fairly light repertoire with a casual schedule, not the hardcore kind where most of the members have studied since childhood. And casual chamber music, perhaps playing in church every now and then (I currently don’t attend any church, but if I did I’d probably want to play for them – I used to play in church orchestra and had a good time until the pastor forgot we were volunteers and started committing us to evening concerts and special post-service services without asking — come to think of it he committed the paid organist and pianist to without asking and without paying them extra, but I digress).
My goals vary a bit, mostly on whether to stick with lever harp music or get a pedal harp. This is because I have other goals, mostly financial such as saving for a home downpayment and keeping a decent reserve for emergencies, that aren’t completely in line with the goal of owning a pedal harp, at least in the short term. But basically I want to continue improving, playing interesting and challening music, while maybe finding some opportunities to socialize and play with others= musicians in a casual setting. And I want to do work a bit on improvisation and reading lead sheets, both to play popular standards (Cole Porter etc.) and because flexibility can help when playing in small groups with whatever music is handy.
I’ve had two teachers (due to a move – both were great in case any are reading!). I was pretty clear up front with my goals, and I think both understood pretty well and did a good job of teaching with those goals in mind.
Carl,
I’m an adult who’s been playing 3-5 years. I mostly play for myself at home, but I also might like to someday play in a community band or orchestra. The kind that plays fairly light repertoire with a casual schedule, not the hardcore kind where most of the members have studied since childhood. And casual chamber music, perhaps playing in church every now and then (I currently don’t attend any church, but if I did I’d probably want to play for them – I used to play in church orchestra and had a good time until the pastor forgot we were volunteers and started committing us to evening concerts and special post-service services without asking — come to think of it he committed the paid organist and pianist to without asking and without paying them extra, but I digress).
My goals vary a bit, mostly on whether to stick with lever harp music or get a pedal harp. This is because I have other goals, mostly financial such as saving for a home downpayment and keeping a decent reserve for emergencies, that aren’t completely in line with the goal of owning a pedal harp, at least in the short term. But basically I want to continue improving, playing interesting and challening music, while maybe finding some opportunities to socialize and play with others= musicians in a casual setting. And I want to do work a bit on improvisation and reading lead sheets, both to play popular standards (Cole Porter etc.) and because flexibility can help when playing in small groups with whatever music is handy.
I’ve had two teachers (due to a move – both were great in case any are reading!). I was pretty clear up front with my goals, and I think both understood pretty well and did a good job of teaching with those goals in mind.
Yes, $2,000 for a cello is nothing compared to old instruments or those from well-known makers, but it can
If you don’t really want to make money on it, there would probably be cheaper ways to publish it. You could create an electronic version and put it on your professional page, or your Facebook etc. if you have one.
If you want to have some hard copies for posterity’s sake, you could look into a print-on-demand publisher that will produce however many copies you want for a fee, then keep them or give them away or whatever you want to do.
I liked the movie, though it was about 20-30 minutes too long. Just one trick too many — if they’d ended it at the obvious place they should have, and not gone into “Are we done yet? Not again!” territory, I would have been happy.
Another question on this piece: Does anyone know if the usual English title is one Salzedo also used for it, or did he only call it by its French title? “Ancient Style” sounds like it’s based on some ancient Greek or Roman theme. I always thought a better translation would be “Old Style” or “Old Fashion.”
Just curious, since I have no power to rename the thing.
What a great idea to do on a large scale. Back in Atlanta, I once subbed in a friend’s string quartet that met once a month to read through a quartet and eat a home-cooked dinner at someone’s home. It was so much fun I was sad their violist was out of town only one week.
Hmmm, looks like a DC area chamber music group does something similar. I bet I know somebody who plays with them I could ask about it.
Geri, those are absolutely not the actual lyrics, but an example of goes through my head when I hear that song.
I think the real lyrics are something like “wrapped up like a deuce, another runner in the night.”
Maybe you could play songs that are harder to sing, like “Take On Me” with that falsetto screech in the chorus.
Follow it up by “Blinded by the Light,” where you know they’ll botch the lyrics nobody can ever make out. “Wrapped up like a dude another rotor on the right…”
Then work in a song completely inappropriate for the singer, so that a burly 300-pound fellow has to belt out “I Feel Pretty,” assuming you’re not in a venue where that would be a normal thing, in which case you pull our your heavy metal fakebook.
Finally, you can play lots of songs that are duets, and hope they don’t have a buddy ready to join in.
By no means should you charge them to enroll in the certification. You’ll make it up in royalties on their students’ method book sales!
Mr. S. – Suzuki method isn’t a method for playing like the Salzedo method would be. It’s a method for learning an instrument, pretty much any instrument. Too simplify it a great deal, it emphasizes playing by repeating the teacher, playing by ear, and parents observing their children’s lessons and playing with their children.
I think there are pros and cons, and teachers who blend methods a little might be on the right track. But if forced to choose, I’m more keen on Suzuki because it tends to get students playing interesting music sooner, which probably means students practicing more and staying with the instrument. Students need to learn fundamentals (not to mention read music) to advance and become well-rounded musicians, but they won’t learn any fundamentals if they get tired of grinding basics without a musical payoff. And playing by ear is also part of being a well-rounded musician, and that is somewhat neglected by many teachers.
As an addendum for anybody doing research, here’s a lovely group of research and information links put together by the librarians at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.
As a professional research librarian, I’d suggest students start by going into their library and asking a reference librarian. If they’re in a conservatory, they should have a library loaded with information, but even general libraries will have some resources. For example, my public library has the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians online, and this is a good starting point for a lot of research, particularly if the student knows very little about a topic and needs an introduction.
If they come here asking for “where to find out” type of information, they’re doing alright. But if they come here asking for the answer to their question, then they’re asking the members here to do their homework. And if they do that, I hope they’re at least putting a footnote in their paper saying where the information came from. If they put credit where credit is due, at least they’re not engaging in dishonest research, just sloppy research.
You should be able to play pentatonic scales with regular diatonic tuning, just by only playing the strings that are in the scale. So if you tune to C, remember only to play CDEGA for a C major / A minor pentatonic scale.
Are you wanting to tune it so that all the strings are in the pentatonic scale, with no repeating notes and without having to skip any strings? If your harp was made for a diatonic scale, I don’t think you could do that without having the top strings too tight and breaking, and/or the bottom strings so loose they’d sound awful if they played at all.
