this icon was me at the beginning of the Tschaikowsky fourth movement today
"Play this movement like ghosts. Like phantasms. Like a dream. Like something that's too real-- something that shouldn't exist but oh, god! it does! Play like you're waking up in a coffin - and for a second you think it's a dream, but it isn't. It's not a dream. Play not as though you are blowing into your instrument, but as though it's sucking the air out of you."
(Tschaikowsky's Symphony No. 4, mvt. 3: xxxHolic in musical form?)
Rehearsed on the stage today. First three movements went swimmingly. Then the conductor decided that he was going to cut the time between the third and fourth movements in half. So the last row of cellos was totally zoning out when suddenly we were smacked in the face with:
I have never seen four people leap that high in the air in such perfect unison. |D
sidenote: Shames told us to make up words for the music we play, to give it a story so we can feel it properly. My lyrics for the above movement are "OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK."
So I am still completely enamored of taiko. Went to practice last night; we played outside, some distance from the school, under twisty pine trees and a glorious near-full moon. I finally memorized Matsuri and BAMFed it up on Kiyari, and my technique is improving wonderfully considering I've only been doing this two weeks. I beat the shit out of the shime-taiko and it was stress-relieving and great!
The most difficult thing about it so far has been adjusting to playing music with people who aren't musicians. Don't get me wrong, it's a damn good group, and I'm definitely one of the weakest players there; but the way we learn the music is so different. My first day, I asked Brian (who runs the outfit) if I could see the written music. He paused, considered, and then cried, "Oh yeah! I think I do have that, actually! Maybe you can make more sense out of it than I can." Well, no, because there is no legit written taiko music for our pieces. There's RL--LRLRLR--RLRL--L--LR (etc.) handwritten on a piece of printer paper. That doesn't sound like it looks - the LRLRLR in the middle might in reality be syncopated, the L--LR is actually connected though the dashes made me think of measure breaks at first, and basically you can't learn anything about what the music sounds like looking at the sheet music. The most it will do is help you coordinate your striking hands.
Well, okay, I can learn this stuff by ear and repetition. Everybody learns it that way. But I've found out I do that differently, too. My mind divides it up into measures as I hear it. I memorize it one "measure" at a time. One--two--three--and-a-four-and; one-and--and-three-and-a-four-and... But I'm the only one who does that. I realized this when one of our best drummers (seriously, he is a BAMF) ran through Matsuri with me. He remembers the entire piece as a whole. I think he divides it into three "stanzas" in his head; but the entire ten-minute piece is just one long, long run of muscle memory for him. I noticed it when I asked him to run what I think of as the fourth phrase (second stanza to him) once more - he had to go from the beginning, quickly, because he couldn't remember one part without the context of the rest of the piece.
This actually works for him in performance better than my method does for me. Each phrase runs more separately for me, so I constantly play the wrong phrase at the wrong time, or don't repeat the right number of times; he will never, ever forget one part, because the entire damn piece is one part to him.
It does make communication difficult when I'm trying to ask a question, though, and I do wish those who don't have Orhan's absolutely ridiculous ability to muscle-memorize could somehow be given the rudiments of subdivision. No, this ensemble isn't nearly that srs bzns, and I like it that way, but it wouldn't be difficult to teach, I think - just enough to make the sound a little cleaner, maybe?
Buuuuuuuut I also don't want to harsh anyone's mellow, so I will continue to attend practice and love taiko drumming without being an elitist bitch about it. It's about fun and beating beautiful booming things with heavy sticks. ALSO this club is where the minorities hang out. Seriously, only, like a third of us are white, and not a single one of us is Japanese. We are so damn excellent.
Final note: OU Daily, never change. Your opinion columnists might all have scrambled eggs for gray matter, but the glorious online discourse you generate makes it all worth it. I leave you with this gem, culled from the discussion of this article:
"At the end "Robo Cop II", Robo Cop shots the evil robot with an artillery rifle blowing away it's body and leaving just it's legs walking around. That is what the Democrat party is today, just a pair of legs walking around. In this case the damage was all self -inflicted."
(Tschaikowsky's Symphony No. 4, mvt. 3: xxxHolic in musical form?)
Rehearsed on the stage today. First three movements went swimmingly. Then the conductor decided that he was going to cut the time between the third and fourth movements in half. So the last row of cellos was totally zoning out when suddenly we were smacked in the face with:
Click to viewI have never seen four people leap that high in the air in such perfect unison. |D
sidenote: Shames told us to make up words for the music we play, to give it a story so we can feel it properly. My lyrics for the above movement are "OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK."
So I am still completely enamored of taiko. Went to practice last night; we played outside, some distance from the school, under twisty pine trees and a glorious near-full moon. I finally memorized Matsuri and BAMFed it up on Kiyari, and my technique is improving wonderfully considering I've only been doing this two weeks. I beat the shit out of the shime-taiko and it was stress-relieving and great!
The most difficult thing about it so far has been adjusting to playing music with people who aren't musicians. Don't get me wrong, it's a damn good group, and I'm definitely one of the weakest players there; but the way we learn the music is so different. My first day, I asked Brian (who runs the outfit) if I could see the written music. He paused, considered, and then cried, "Oh yeah! I think I do have that, actually! Maybe you can make more sense out of it than I can." Well, no, because there is no legit written taiko music for our pieces. There's RL--LRLRLR--RLRL--L--LR (etc.) handwritten on a piece of printer paper. That doesn't sound like it looks - the LRLRLR in the middle might in reality be syncopated, the L--LR is actually connected though the dashes made me think of measure breaks at first, and basically you can't learn anything about what the music sounds like looking at the sheet music. The most it will do is help you coordinate your striking hands.
Well, okay, I can learn this stuff by ear and repetition. Everybody learns it that way. But I've found out I do that differently, too. My mind divides it up into measures as I hear it. I memorize it one "measure" at a time. One--two--three--and-a-four-and; one-and--and-three-and-a-four-and... But I'm the only one who does that. I realized this when one of our best drummers (seriously, he is a BAMF) ran through Matsuri with me. He remembers the entire piece as a whole. I think he divides it into three "stanzas" in his head; but the entire ten-minute piece is just one long, long run of muscle memory for him. I noticed it when I asked him to run what I think of as the fourth phrase (second stanza to him) once more - he had to go from the beginning, quickly, because he couldn't remember one part without the context of the rest of the piece.
This actually works for him in performance better than my method does for me. Each phrase runs more separately for me, so I constantly play the wrong phrase at the wrong time, or don't repeat the right number of times; he will never, ever forget one part, because the entire damn piece is one part to him.
It does make communication difficult when I'm trying to ask a question, though, and I do wish those who don't have Orhan's absolutely ridiculous ability to muscle-memorize could somehow be given the rudiments of subdivision. No, this ensemble isn't nearly that srs bzns, and I like it that way, but it wouldn't be difficult to teach, I think - just enough to make the sound a little cleaner, maybe?
Buuuuuuuut I also don't want to harsh anyone's mellow, so I will continue to attend practice and love taiko drumming without being an elitist bitch about it. It's about fun and beating beautiful booming things with heavy sticks. ALSO this club is where the minorities hang out. Seriously, only, like a third of us are white, and not a single one of us is Japanese. We are so damn excellent.
Final note: OU Daily, never change. Your opinion columnists might all have scrambled eggs for gray matter, but the glorious online discourse you generate makes it all worth it. I leave you with this gem, culled from the discussion of this article:
"At the end "Robo Cop II", Robo Cop shots the evil robot with an artillery rifle blowing away it's body and leaving just it's legs walking around. That is what the Democrat party is today, just a pair of legs walking around. In this case the damage was all self -inflicted."