Because it’s Hard

Last week I got really upset in my lesson.  Truth be told, I was probably a bit sleep deprived, and I tend towards the weepy side when I am tired.  But I had had a string of good lessons, and then all of a sudden, this one was terrible!  I was so frustrated, and finally I pulled the bassoon out of my mouth and in my fit of rage yelled “Why is this so damn hard?”  Ms. Reynolds just smiled at me for an instant and said, “Because it is  hard, Jolene.”

I had never had a teacher say that to me before.  Not, “Well, you aren’t practicing enough, that’s why you can’t play it,”  or “Because you don’t have the skills or focus to play this.”  Just–”It’s hard.”  For some reason (perhaps it was the way she said it), it was probably the most comforting thing I had heard in a while.  It wasn’t an indictment, or an accusatory statement of how well or how much I was practicing.  Yet somehow, contained in that same statement was a sense that she too, knew it was hard, and that I, like my teacher would overcome the obstacle (in this case, it was Piard….damn him).

As I walked away from that lesson, I began to think about my practice time, and my past lessons with various teachers.  Perhaps I had never admitted to myself that sometimes, music was  just hard. The bassoon is…. Just. Hard.  For some reason, it just took a load off of my shoulders.  Not to say that this gives me a free pass to not play well, that’s not what I mean.  But that, if something takes a little more time than I think it should, it just means that I have to work a little bit more.  It’s hard.  Not insurmountable.

I could go on about how the harder it is, the sweeter the victory…blah blah blah.  But I’ll spare you the trite cheerleading of an overworked student musician.

Flue Politics?

Pulled from my friend, Marisa Kelegian’s Facebook Status:

Favorite teaching moment for today:
Me: Why do you have Ron Paul written on your music?
Student: My band director told me to listen to him
Me: Do you mean Rampal?

I laughed so hard, I cried.  Marisa is a Flute teacher and musician in the North Texas area

Walking the line

I feel like all musicians have a little bit of psychological baggage.  Whether we are afraid of success, failure, or just have severe anxiety in general, I have yet to meet someone who is really great at their instrument, and also completely unaffected by the job we do.

I have OCD.  It’s true.  I’ve learned to control it over the years, but mine tends to come out in strange ways.  While I don’t think this makes me insane, I feel like sometimes, I could be walking that line between genius and insanity (not to say I’m a genius, either)  but sometimes, I feel like I have the propensity to be a hoarder.

Sometimes, when I have nothing else to think about (which comes in the late night, when I’m trying to fall asleep) I think about the psychotic break it would take for me to actually become a hoarder.  What gargantuan, ridiculous thing could happen to me, to make me begin keeping anything and everything I own in crazy, yet organized piles, around my apartment?

Then the practical side of me takes over, and I begin to see the ridiculousness of my late night envisages.  I’m not really the type to keep stuff, anyway.  I hate doing laundry so much, that if I could just wear something, and throw it away, knowing I could get something new the next day, and not be wasteful, I totally would.  Also, I never keep things like greeting cards, class notes, or anything remotely sentimental in any superficial way.  I do have a ridiculous amount of stuffed animals, but they are all at home, in Colorado, in my mom’s shed.  If anyone has the propensity to be the hoarder, its my mother.  Also, you can’t really be a hoarder in an apartment.  Pretty soon, they do an inspection, and evict you.  Which means I would have to move all of my precious junk someplace else, or throw it away, which would be devastating to my fragile, hoarding, psyche.

But every time I go to a professor’s home, I feel like I’m invading the crazy side of them.  Like the professor that has all the cats, or the professor that had piles of paper crafts stored in her closet “just in case”.  Just in case what?  Is there an instance in which you might have to throw together a quinceanera in an hour or two? I felt like it was a big fire hazard….but I digress.  I think most of my professors throughout the years are at least a little crazy, and I feel like the more academic they get, the more crazed they become.  Perhaps it’s because they become comfortable in the crazy academic setting they are in.  Always dealing with all the paperwork, the politics, and the issues that go along with being a professor.  Not to mention their actual professional lives in which they play or write music or research for years to write one article that will get published in journals only their peers will read.

Wait…why do I want to do this to myself?

Oh yeah….I’m a little insane too

I Wanna Be A Rock Star

But,  I play the bassoon.

It’s a problem sometimes.  Playing  bassoon isn’t really conducive to being a rock star.  Lady Gaga is not surrounded by bassoonists.  Though, in my own little wish-world, she totally would be.  But I want to wear ridiculous clothes, hop around stage, and play to a crowd of hundreds.  Orchestral playing just doesn’t do it for me.

Don’t get me wrong–  I love the orchestra.  I love Brahms, Mozart, and All The Rest.  I try my best to play Weber like a champ, and hope to god that my Mozart Bassoon Concerto doesn’t sound like trash when I play it.  I like to play the cute little French pieces with all of their wit and charm.  Francaix puts a smile on my face almost every time I hear it.

But I wanna be a rock star.  And this is why I play new music.

When NPR published it’s list of the top 100 Composers under 40, I jumped on it.  I pulled every composer up into my computer screen and prayed for a piece for bassoon.  Wished fervently for a piece that would blow my mind.  A piece I just had to get my hands on.  I type in “avant garde classical composers” into google every once in a while, just to see what comes up.

But people don’t get it.  Peers, Teachers, my mother….they don’t understand why I get so excited over this stuff.   My favorite quote is from my mother (who is not musical in almost any way), “Why can’t you play something we’ve heard before?”  lol   That’s just it though.  Why would I want to play something people have heard before?  It’s like yelling out “Freebird” at a rock concert all night.  This artist has done something new, and exciting, and you want me to play Mozart all night?

I just want to stand on stage, and make you rife with feeling.  I want to put you on edge, and make your soul blaze.  I want to feel just as uncomfortable playing as you do listening.

I had a little undergraduate student tell me today that playing new music was useless.  It broke my heart.  I wanted to say something witty and soul-crushing back to him, but held my tongue.  It’s such a privilege  to play, period.  But to have the composer sitting in the audience, listening to your interpretation of their thoughts…..why wouldn’t anyone want to experience that?   Composers have as much right to be heard as we have to play.

And that’s why I wanna be a rock star.  I don’t want to play covers all night!  I want to play new things, with new people, and see the looks on people’s faces, when the first note out of the box is the ugliest multiphonics the composer can think of.  I want to play jazz, klezmer, or bulgarian ocarina and bassoon ballads, and do it while kicking a balloon into the air!  I want to challenge people.  I want to challenge myself.  I want to rock out!  Now….go write me a piece!

The Practice Slump

Writers and composers have writer’s block, and painters have slumps of their own, but what about a musician who can’t practice?  What kind of block is that?

I feel like I’ve almost lost my love of practicing.  Yes….I know….we all have days….but it’s been several months, and I just can’t focus.  I sit down, and I have a plan.  I’m going to practice this passage.  I’m going to do it this many times, with this many variations, until I get it even and up to so-and-so speed, etc.  Yet, pretty soon, about 20 minutes in, I take a small break, and all of a sudden, I find myself thinking about something else, and I become distracted, and I sit for 30 minutes doing inane tasks.  40 minutes after that, I look around myself, and realize I have put down the bassoon, and wasted whatever practice time I had set aside for myself.

My teacher always says “You’ll be surprised what you can do in 10 minutes”, but by the end of the day, I just feel unaccomplished and unfocused, which makes it harder to pick up the bassoon the next day and start all over again.

Maybe I just feel unfocused in life, or maybe I’m just doing too many things at once.  That’s no excuse.  What is funny about the whole thing, is I used to be incredibly unhappy with my life, and practice all the time.  Now, I’m quite content with my existence, but I have no focus or motivation to practice.  Where’s the drive I used to have?  Where’s the ambition and motivation?

I’ve also noticed a lack of fire when it comes to the music I’m playing.  My first recital is in June, and I like the pieces I’m playing, but nothing really strikes me.  Nothing excites me.  This isn’t like me, but I don’t really know what to do about it.  lol.  I’m at a loss.  Anyone have any advice?

Germs are Everywhere!!: My first bassoon <3

Tonight, on my facebook wall, from Paul Barrett,  appeared this post on how school instruments carry large amounts of germs.

This got me to thinking about my first bassoon. I’m willing to bet that they didn’t check the U-tube of a bassoon, as, I, myself, have experienced what can lurk in the dark depths of a school-owned instrument.

I’m sure we have all played a school bassoon at one time or another. In fact, I’m willing to bet most of you bassoonists started on a school-owned bassoon. Mine was a black plastic Linton, with a broken whisper key, and no cork on the tenor joint. We found out, shortly after getting it fixed for the first time, that the instrument was 45 years old.

The person who started me on this instrument was none other than the first bassoonist in the wind ensemble at school.  Not only was she the first bassoonist and a senior, but she was the drum major. So, of course, she was super cool, and me playing the same instrument as her also made me super cool.  Right?  Totally.

But Candice gave me one piece of information I will never forget.  ”If you hear that crackling sound in the instrument, just suck out the spit from your bocal.”  Easy enough advice, right?  Well, what I didn’t know, and what no one told me was, that for 45 years, students (stupid, cootie-ridden, gross students) had been using my bassoon, with no swab, and oh yeah….that bassoon had been collecting dust, and other particles for 45 years.  Let’s review that again….45 YEARS.

So, shortly after I learned to play the bassoon, and I was really cooking on the instrument, I had the chance to play in a local honor band.  And, as in most honor bands, you play for long amounts of time, with no breaks.  Well, playing for a long time, with lots of spit running through the instrument must have dislodged something, because, the next time I decided to clear my bocal of that horrible crackling sound, my bassoon decided to give me a little snack,  for all of my hard work.

All of a sudden, I realized I had something squishy that tasted salty with a hint of slug, in my mouth.  When I pulled it off of my tongue, I realized it was greenish/black and in a semi coagulated state.  If you are gagging, simply at the image I am presenting you, think about how I felt!  After running my bocal  through with warm water in the sink, (which produced various sizes of clots that I had sucked up into the bocal) I realized I needed this “swab” everyone was talking about, and fast.  As soon as I jumped into my mother’s car, I begged for a swab in which to take away the traumatizing toxic ooze that had come so quickly to the surface of my tenor joint.

After swabbing out my instrument, at least twice, I swore on all that was holy that I would never suck the spit out of my instrument ever again.  I do it every once in a while, but at least now, I am the proud owner of a Fox 201, and I swab my instrument out after every play.

But this story, I tell to every student, as a precautionary tale of why we use swabs.  45 years of goo was enough of a one time lesson for me.

What do you call 100 mediocre band directors at the bottom of the ocean?

A damn good start.

I despise mediocrity in general, but for some reason (maybe it’s because I have a degree in music ed?), I hate mediocre band directors most of all.  Maybe it is because I have to fix their mistakes?  Perhaps it is because a truly good band director is almost like a diamond —  Fine, precious, and polished.  Even a decent band director with good intentions can win me over.  I mean, at least they are trying hard.

This thought process began two weeks ago…….

I received an email from a student’s parent looking for a bassoon teacher to teach her young child.

Facts you need to know:

1) The student played clarinet and trumpet, but now was very excited to play the bassoon (hooray?  hooray!)

2) The student had the bassoon in her possession for 2 months.

3) Read #2 again….just do it

It was an in-home lesson, so I drove to their place.  When I came into the house, the student was sitting on a drum stool with the bassoon in their hands.  I said hello and sat down next to them on the couch.   No chairs without arms, except for this percussion stool….alright…I guess we’ll deal for now…..

I then took her bassoon from her.  ”Where’s the seat strap?” I asked.  ”What’s a seat strap?”  I then held mine up. “Something that looks a bit like this.  It hooks to the bottom of the bassoon.”   “Ohhhhhh….I have something like that….you want me to get it?”  I smiled a little, “Yes please.”  The student then brings me back a seat strap with a ring on it.  Not my favorite, but I can deal.

It then occurs to me…. What was she using to hold up the bassoon?  I then asked.  Her answer….”Oh, I didn’t know how to use it, so I was just holding it up.”  Ladies and Gentlemen, this is what I like to call Red Flag #1.

So, I place the seat strap on the bassoon for her, and show her how to use it.  I then tell her to sit down, and put the bassoon in playing position.  She then places the bassoon on her left side with the bassoon facing the opposite direction (holes facing the body).  For those of you who do not play bassoon, or can’t look up a picture on the internet…the bassoon belongs on the right of the body, with the holes pointing out away from the body, so that they can be played by the fingers.  Just in case you can’t look up a picture on the internet, or you know, youtube video, or a book….or even a Degas painting.  Red Flag #2

Now, by this time, I am wondering if the student has even tried the bassoon in the two months that she has had the instrument.  Her mother clearly told me that she had the bassoon for a while.   I then begin to correct her placement of the bassoon.  (Red Flag #3)  She then makes the blessed mistake of handing me her bocal……..

I cannot, dear reader, describe to you the overwhelming disgust and rage I suddenly had for this young student’s band director.  The bocal had this rubber eraser-like substance wrapped haphazardly around the end of the bocal where the cork would normally be.  Barely glued to the bocal, this rubbery monstrosity stopped the bocal from going even a third of the way into the bassoon.  It made a seal, but the bocal was so high above the whisper key, that it wasn’t going to work.  I unceremoniously ripped it off of the bocal, and placed my spare bocal in her bassoon for the rest of the lesson.  when I said “Go tell your band director this needs to be recorked,”  what I really wanted to say was “Go tell your terrible band director that his inattention to detail has caused this atrocity to your education.  I’m very sorry….tell him it needs to be recorked.”  Red Flag #4

So I then asked the student what kind of books they were working out of in band.  I had already talked to her mom about other books, but I wanted to know what method books they were using, so I could help her catch up a little.  She then hands me a flute book.  That’s right, readers….. Red Flag #5!  Instead of taking the time to teach her to at least decipher bass clef, which I would now have to do….this band director had decided to just hand this poor student a flute book, because, of course, she could already read treble clef.

By the end of this lesson, I could hardly speak for the anger I felt towards this poor student’s TERRIBLE band director!!!  Let’s recap, shall we?  This student has spent two months holding up the instrument with no support, backwards, with a defunct bocal, and reading treble clef.

HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?!?!  How does a student sit in your band, right in front of you for two months and not play a note that sounds like anything?  HOW??  I will be the first person to say that a band director’s job is hard….but there is no excuse for this.  None at all.

I have taught plenty of students with bad habits produced by well meaning, but misinformed band directors.  Bad habits I can handle.  My band director gave me a good start, and my band director was a trumpet player!  I had a crazy tonguing thing that wasn’t fixed until I was 17, but I could make a beautiful sound, and play in tune.  Am I really asking too much as a musician?  Am I really expecting too much from someone who potentially teaches 60 kids in one sitting?

Nope…that’s what you signed up for….do your job.

Ahead of the Curve

My apartment is a mess.

No really…this is like, the messiest it has ever been in my life…..and I’m not the tidiest person in the world, but it’s never been this messy.  It’s reaching the point of critical mass.  Pretty soon my mind will implode and I begin wondering where my life went to, and what made my entire apartment look like the inside of a hoarders episode. Then I fall into this ridiculous pit of apartment despair, where I can no longer face the mess incurring on my floor and all other flat surfaces.  I then begin to conjure, in my mind, ways that I could get rid of the mess the quickest.

I then lie on the only clean spot on my bed, and imagine the arson that it would take to demolish my apartment completely, leaving me with nothing but cinders that I could simply sweep away…..

But that might effect the other people in other apartments around me, or you know….the dude under me.  That wouldn’t be good…..

A SMALL BULLDOZER!!!  You know, one of those little bobcats they use at the city dump?  YES!  YEEESSSSS…..

But getting it up the stairs, and through the door might be a challenge….and then there’s the whole cost of renting it….. too much work…..

A really large shopvac….. something with like, super sucking power……

Can’t do that….too much stuff I actually might need…..

 

Then I begin to imagine the most unimaginable things….

 

If I could get a giant goat…or maybe just a set of small goats….perhaps two….no….three….yeah….

 

They could eat stuff, and I could pick up some things I might actually want to keep, while they eat things.  It would be amazing…..they would eat everything I wanted them to!

 

And then I suddenly wake up from my power hungry, hoarders-induced dream….

 

My floor is still a mess….there is reed equipment all over my bed…..and I still hate my apartment.  And then I do what my mother always told me to do, and start at one corner of the room, and move my way through the house….one room at a time.  Ugh….this is so much less fun.

My Love Affair

I love the bassoon

 

I love my instrument with all the love an instrumentalist could have for one’s instrument.  I love the way it sounds when I play one long tone, with just a touch of vibrato. The middle register is vocal and full of resonance; the meat and sustenance of my instrument.  I love the way the high notes sound when played with a straight tone.  They sound cold, and slight, like a breezy winter morning just as the sun rises.  The low notes have a thick chocolate tone that make me smile when another bassoonist plays them.

I love the weight of the instrument in my hand.  The way the joints feel when I push the pieces together, like they aren’t just pieces of wood, shaped to be that way, but that, that particular tree was destined to be made into this beautiful work of art that just happens to make a sound.  I sometimes forget to oil my keys, because I love the way they sound when I run through a fast passage, and I can hear the larger keys snap shut against the bore.  When I hold the bassoon in my hands, it’s not like an old friend coming to sit next to me, but like a familiar lover.  All the curves in just the right places, and my hands always going to the same spots; the keys reacting in the same, familiar ways I always knew they would. The way I learned long ago that they would.  The craftsmanship is exquisite, and I can see the light dance off the keys at every angle.  The sheen of the lacquer is deep and the finish is a beautiful shade, with tiger marks,  like scars on a lover’s hand: memorized, unique, and yours alone.

My life is encompassed by this beautiful piece of artwork, designed to create some of the most beautiful music I will ever try my best to create.  Yet, there are times when I can’t help but resent this thing that has a hold on my physical, as well as mental, being.  I resent the fact that sometimes, my bassoon is hard to woo, and shuns my best efforts.

Sometimes we fight and I have to walk away, giving up for the night.  I go to sleep angry and restless, wondering if tomorrow will be better. Sometimes, I completely ignore the bassoon, and spend too much time with my friends, or too much time on homework.  I come back the next day, and the bassoon and I do this dance of silent frustration and brilliant understanding.

But when we get along….when we become the thing we are supposed to be….this…..this art,  I loose myself in the sounds we make together.  Without me, this thing I hold in my hands is nothing.  To someone else, someone less willing, it may be just an instrument used to get from the beginning of a piece, to the end.  But for me….for us…..we take a journey together, appreciating every subtle curve, sound, and move both of us make to lure one out of the other.  My instrument has a voice of it’s own, it just takes it’s time, and the right touch to make itself heard.  My instrument rules and dominates me as much as it succumbs to my will.

My love affair with the bassoon is strong, ruling, and everlasting.  Torturous and tumultuous it may be, I will never leave it’s side.  Opting to be kept in chains rather than true freedom, I live in it’s unrelenting mastery, waiting to be deemed worthy.

If you’re Gonna Play in Texas, You Gotta Have a Fiddle in the Band

Ok, ok, ok.  I promise I will stop with the Texas song titles after this one……maybe.

I’m actually really liking it here!  I’ve only been here, what, a month?   However, its been SUCH a good time, I can’t even tell you all how much fun I am having!

I was placed in Concert Orchestra this year, and our first concert is Dvorak 9!  While I’ve played it before, can it really ever get old?  It’s such a great piece, and my section is so nice, how could I not enjoy it?    The orchestra is medium sized and has some young players in it, but I’m enjoying the company so much, and the conductor is so competent, I can’t tell you all how happy I am to be there on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

I was also placed in the UNT Wind Symphony.  Corporon is great –so gracious and full of energy, its just amazing.   And my section is full of great players.  Well, the whole ensemble is full of really great players.  lol

However, I was also, on agreement of a scholarship, placed in Baroque Orchestra.  (dum dum duuuuuuuum!)

For those of you who know me well (and some who don’t),  you would know that I don’t particularly favor baroque music.  I’ve never really been very good at realizing it in any way or another, and my ornaments always sound like empty fills in the middle of a very awkward jazz quartet.  Even when I was a pianist, I avoided Bach with all the extremity of a child avoiding bedtime.  Essentially, I was a giant brat about it.  And now, here I am, ironically enough in Baroque Orchestra with a baroque bassoon in my hand.

Baroque bassoon……oh baroque bassoon (BB).  Today was my first day actually trying to play the thing.  Now, I do not own an actual BB reed….I was playing on a modified contra reed (yes. you read that correctly) that was still a bit too heavy for the lightness of the BB, but it was all I had.   I also did not have a fingering chart until three minutes into rehearsal.  So, while having a basic knowledge of how the BB works, I was lucky enough to be playing a Vivaldi work in C major.  Otherwise, I would have been in huge trouble.  In the first movement, we modulated, of course, to G major, at which time, I simply dropped out, as I had not yet worked out the fingering for F#.  All of my articulations were far too heavy for the instrument (partly because of the reed) and my jaw hurt afterward from trying to bend the pitch of the contra reed up on an instrument that was not meant for that reed.  Needless to say….I sounded stupid.

It’s really hard to go from one second of playing your instrument at a really high level, something you worked hard for all your life, and now you are back in 6th grade, staring at the fingering chart, trying to figure out where to put your thumbs!  Needless to say, I had a strong lesson in humility and gratefulness to a wonderfully understanding conductor.  Also, I have to give props to the wonderful bassoonist sitting next to me.  While I was dying of laughter at the sheer ridiculousness of my predicament, he was telling me how great I was doing, and showing me fingerings.

I have never liked a place so immediately as I am liking it here.  The teachers are really amazing and quite practical, the conductors are competent and well mannered, and the students have done nothing but impress me with their kindness and the desire to just play music really well.

I hope I continue to like it here.  In the mean time, I’m going to enjoy this experience.