When my kids were young and they had to write “poems” or other writings to fill up a page for a school assignment, I often suggested they write a word down the left side of the page and use the first letter for the first word of that line and the text should somehow relate to the word that is written down the side. It ended up making for a easy way to fill a page and got them over the blank page block that was stopping them from starting to write anything. As I try to write things to fill my blog regularly, I am sometimes faced with the blank page problem. How to start writing something. I am writing more for practice of writing and exercise for my brain than I am for people reading and in fact don’t expect that anyone but me is reading this so I will amuse myself by occasionally doing what I suggested for my kids so that I can fill the page. Sounds so soothing, simply sweet sax sounds. Adolphe Sax invented the saxophone in the 1840 for facility of playing and loudness of sound; intended for both band and orchestra. Xylophones are not saxophone. Often played in marching band since the beginning of its invention, it never was really accepted in the orchestra. Poor little saxophone, no one wanted to add it to orchestra but it has done well everywhere else. Actually a few composers did include it including Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Bizet, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Ibert, Britten, Debussy and George Gershwin. In fact the Mi-Bémol Saxophone Ensemble has taken Prokofiev's piece a little further featuring all parts on saxophone. Human voice is sometimes imitated by the sound of the saxophone. One of the original saxophones played by Adolphe Sax was a bass which was used in performance to provide a low bass voice-like sound. Once you hear the sound of a sax, you’re going to want to hear it more. Not only did Sax invent the saxophone, he invented the Saxotromba, the Saxhorn and the Saxtuba. He obviously was trying to invent a new "Sax-latin" language too. Saxbut, saxit saxnever saxcaught saxon. Ernst (Roy) founded the New Horizons band which has afforded me the chance to play my saxophone in a band.
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I’ve often heard that learning to play an instrument is good for brain health and memory. I will probably read and write more about this in the future. Part of the theory is that playing music in a group helps to keep you focused which in turn exercises your brain. It has been posited by Roy Ernst, founder of New Horizons International, that as you age, playing an instrument is particularly good at helping to keep focus. With the overwhelming amount of information that is bombarded at you each day, distraction is a problem. Being able to stay focused on a task takes a considerable amount of mental energy. Playing music in a group not only forces focus on playing notes on a page, translating the information into articulated movements of you fingers on your instrument but also listening to others around you so that you can play when others are playing. If you have ever played in a group you will know that it really does take a considerable amount of energy and focus to play in a band and it often leaves me feeling invigorated. Like it has warmed up my brain to continue with challenging endeavors after. I often get more creative just after playing. So one of my New Year Resolutions is obviously to continue to play in the NHB and NHO but I also want to challenge myself musically and learn a little more about music theory. I want to know why I am playing the notes and how they fit into the larger sound of the group. I would also like to learn more about the style of music that we play and maybe about the composers that write the music. Now New Year Resolutions for me don’t always last much beyond the first day of the year, but learning more about music can be a lifelong journey so I figured even if I don’t become an expert on music theory, just going to class will force me and remind me to learn little by little over time. My son was born with earworms. That sounds gross, but I’ve mentioned these before and no, they are not physical creatures that inhabit the ears of humans. They are musical interludes that play endlessly in our heads. My son, for as long as I can remember, has had rhythms in his head. He would beat out rhythms on the rail of his crib. He pounded on walls. This was before he was walking. He is the one that lead me back to my discovery of music when we started more formal music classes with him. He has an amazing musical talent, though, he rarely likes to show it but the music is in him. I think he has infected me with his ear worms now. When I first joined the New Horizons Band, I would leave practice with whatever song we were playing looping in my head. It is difficult to stop the earworms. Even if I get distracted, I find that without warning later in the day, I will be humming a melody. Fortunately, the earworm usually dies out before the next day or is replaced by the next song of the day. Recently in band we were sight-reading a medley of classic Italian style songs . Later in the day I also heard some more Italian classics on a television show and between the two exposures that day, I now seem to have picked up a particularly stubborn earworm because Funiculì, Funiculà, has now been looping in my head for the past 3 days. I woke up yesterday morning at 2 am humming the melody. It won’t stop. My son claims that he hates music and that he doesn’t want to play anymore. But as soon as he says it, he starts humming songs. I still see him tapping rhythms on the table when he gets frustrated with homework or if he is nervous before a test. He is my encyclopedia when I hear a movie song but don’t remember which movie it came from, he knows. Music is a part of who he is and I know he doesn’t hate it, it is just something that takes up time from him doing other things he likes. For me, I've grown to "hate" the Funiculì, Funiculà song. It was apparently written as a joke about the construction of the first funicular on Mount Vesuvius and became an instant hit and has been recorded many times since. Fortunately, after three long days I went to a concert and replaced that song with another earworm called Bluegrass Medley arranged and conducted by NHO director Mikaela Vanator and her new middle school group "Ovation Strings". One of the nice things about playing in an ensemble is the blended sound from a group playing multiple parts. While it is nice to sometimes have a lead part with the melody, if everyone played that, it would be boring to play and to listen to. I was thinking of this the other day when I heard a beginning student band play a piece and every part was the same. It makes it easier to learn to play when everyone plays the same thing because you can often match the sound of your neighbors. But unless it is my child playing in the band, I don’t want to listen to a whole concert of unison playing. So how do you decide who gets the first part and who plays the second (or third). In some bands, the best players play the first part, and the second or third part go to the lower ranking members. But what if your band doesn’t have a chair ranking. If it is a good band, you get to share the lead parts. But some people really like to play second or third part. They want to be part of the ensemble sound but don’t want to take the lead. Or maybe they like the challenge of not playing a melody part. Some people really like the lead part. I find that the lead part is often a little easier to play, especially if I am familiar with a song. If I know the song but I am playing the second part, it can be challenging because while I can read the notes, it doesn’t always sound the way I think it should in my head because my head is thinking melody. It also forces me to listen more to the sound of the ensemble. I listen for other instruments playing similar parts so that I can play with them. But an ensemble is a living organism that relies upon all the parts to do their particular job for the whole to function properly. Most of the time, the parts are divided among members for each song so that everyone gets a chance at playing the different parts. And that is fine because we are not competing for first chair. We are playing because we want to learn, challenge our brains and we like to play the music - we like the sound of an ensemble. I was listening to someone play an instrument the other day and it had an interesting sound. At first, I was intrigued and thought that was a unique sound that you could do a lot with. After a short while though, the sound started to annoy me and I thought how someone could pick an instrument like that to play, it would drive me crazy. But obviously that sound spoke to the person that was playing it and they played it well, but it didn’t speak to me. We all have instruments that speak to us. I play saxophone in band because it spoke to me. Way back when I was in junior high school, I heard someone playing the saxophone and I just loved the sound. Before that I had never really listened to music that featured the sax like that. The person was playing a piece on the sax and it had a range of sounds and styles that appealed to me. It could be soft and soothing or loud and raucous. I started listening more and more to different players on the radio. Finally, when I graduated from High School, I decided to buy my first sax and took lessons. Unfortunately, after a couple of years life got in the way of my playing and I put it away for several decades. But finally, I’ve found a group that lets me play again. And I still like the sound of the saxophone, even when I am playing it. Now I’m sure there are some that say, “how can you love the sound of such a hideously sounding instrument?” I guess to each his own, that is the point, and that is how you pick your instrument. Can a piece be too easy to play. Sometimes music can appear very simple on the page but have a very harmonious sound. Harmonious is the key term. I’ve been listening to a musical group lately called “First Aid Kit”. At first I couldn’t quite place the type of music that they played. I had just stumbled upon them watch an ad for something completely different on TV but it had two lead singers that sang harmonies together which I liked but I don’t hear very often in most modern popular songs. My daughter suggested maybe indie folk. I thought some of the songs also had a country sound to them and when I figured out who they were they were described as modern folk.
When we warm up in the band, we often play “boring” scales or chords, but sometimes we stop and one of the directors will have us just hold onto a chord. They then often comment on how nice that chord sounds. How nice a single chord sounds? Actually yes. We don’t have to play super fast complicated melodies to enjoy the sound of music. Sometimes a single note can leave an impression or bring back a memory. That is what is fun about playing music. Taste, smell or sound can all bring back the sensation of a “comfort food” and sometimes the simple songs resonate the most. Picking a piece to play can be a prickly proposition. I like alliteration. It has a sing-song quality that makes it easy to read and speak. When my kids were small, I used to read poetry or sing nursery rhymes to them. As they got older, I continued to read aloud but many of the authors did not intend for the stories to be read aloud. Though they were written for an age when children are not quite able to read by themselves, their lack of the sing-song flow made them impossible to speak. I tried, but often spent more time stumbling over the words with a twisted tongue and the flow of the story would get lost. Oddly, some of the rhymes I would tell them included older tongue twisters that maintained the quality of a poem that should be spoken and thus were easier to say aloud.
Music often has the same issues as prose. There are some songs that are meant to be played and listened to, and they flow. Other music is a challenge to listen to, it can be difficult to play and takes a long time to learn. I like to listen to the songs that flow. I like the sensation of hearing in my head the flowing notes written on a page or how the notes align under my fingers when I play. Don’t be confused though with the idea that a flowing song is an easy song or not a challenge to play. They often have a complex structure. The nursery rhymes often told complex stories that many have forgotten but they are there just below the surface. The sing-song quality, the allure of alliteration, the attention to intention to speak aloud the musical notes, determines my interests in a piece. Fortunately, many of the pieces we play in our band contain at least parts that bring with it a flow. My individual part may not speak to me but usually when we play as a group, I can hear the song patterns. There are a few that tie my tongue and I think that of others, and often, maybe not surprisingly, those are the ones that the group rejects. It is interesting how my favorite songs, my favorite books and poetry all sing. They are all just notes or words on a page, but they have in them a quality that speaks. I’ve heard it several times before. After we perform a concert and then suggest to the audience that anyone can join our group, that you don’t have to be seasoned musician to play in the New Horizons Band, the comment that seems to keep coming back is “I’m not good enough to play in your band”.
I don’t want to sound too negative about my own group but if you heard us in rehearsals, you might understand why we all laugh at comments like that. It is not that we are bad in rehearsal but you will see that we are not professional musicians. You will see that we are all learning as we go. As we learn we get better and finally by the time we do a concert, we have been practicing for several week, and we do sound pretty good. The music is fun to play but it is music that has been written so that musicians with a wide range of skills might all be able to participate. If you are an absolute beginner, it may take a little time to be able to play an entire piece, but that is where the New Horizons group and philosophy has the advantage. If you only play one note, you are contributing to the group sound. One thing we do practice more than anything else, is the beginnings and ends of songs. So if you are new, concentrate on how a song ends. How the song ends will determine the impression the audience leaves with after your performance. If we end well, most people will not even remember if we missed notes in the middle somewhere. And that is probably what happened for you if you have heard us before and felt that we were too good for you to be able to join. So if you have ever dreamed of playing in a band or orchestra, visit us at a rehearsal and see how bad, or good we can be. |
AuthorDaniel Zarka Archives
March 2019
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