The Integrated String Player
This work in progess is a detailed, practical approach to the fundamental issues in playing bowed instruments (violin, viola, cello, bass, and their cousins). Here you can read my annotated table of contents.
The Integrated String Player
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part I: Coordination, Rhythm & Sound
1. Working to Principle
2. Coordination
3. Rhythm
4. Sound: The Harmonic Series
5. The Acoustic Space
Part II: The Right Side
6. The Bow: Your Soul & Breath
7. The Messa di Voce: Virtuosity of Contact
8. Evenness & Unevenness
9. String Crossings: Who Moves?
10. (Not So) Fast Bow Strokes
Part III: The Left Side
11. The Left Hand: A Lively Animal
12. Articulation
13. Changes of Position
14. The Left Hand as Pianist and Singer
15. On Vibrato
16. The Coherent Hand
17. Thumb Position for Cellists & Bassists
18. The Art of Fingering
Part IV: Integration
19. Practicing Theory
20. The Conversational Approach
21. Improvisation & Composition
22. Complete Integration
Conclusion
Appendix: A brief guide to clefs & open strings
Glossary
Annotated Table of Contents
Introduction
This is a study of the differences between “an exercise” and “a meditation.” Every chapter in the book is centered on a particular meditation, which is alluded to in the table of contents.
Part I: Coordination, Rhythm & Sound
1. Working to Principle
[The Meditation: To Work is to Play]
Every musician embodies many personalities: the Acoustician, expert in sound, resonance, and vibration; the Engineer, expert in the mechanics of both the body and the instrument; the Athlete, Dancer, and Martial Artist, experts in coordination and movement; the Storyteller and Actor, experts in rhythm, conversation, and all aspects of language; and the Demiurge, the intermediary between the “world of common day” and “a region of supernatural wonder,” in Joseph Campbell’s words. The integrated string player fuses all these personalities in a single entity. This chapter introduces these concepts and explains how they can transform string-playing techniques and habits of daily practice.
2. Coordination
[The Meditation: The Body is Everything; the Body Doesn’t Exist]
This chapter provides an overview of basic coordination skills. Readers are encouraged to become familiar with the foundational texts of THE INTEGRATED MUSICIAN series: INDIRECT PROCEDURES: A MUSICIAN’S GUIDE TO THE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE and INTEGRATED PRACTICE: COORDINATION, RHYTHM & SOUND, as well as their websites, which contain video clips pertinent to this chapter.
Instead of providing ready-made answers to players’ questions about coordination, I invite players to develop their own mastery of psychophysical tool—so that they can answer their questions for themselves. I introduce the concepts of the simplified skeleton, a way of perceiving one’s body with an emphasis on three main points of connection (between the neck and the spine, between the back and the shoulders, and between the spine and the pelvis); resistance and mobility, and their mutually beneficial interaction; latency, or the setting into reserve of multiple capabilities that remain permanently at the player’s disposal; convexity and concavity, or two contrasting postures and attitudes; bilateral transfer, or the dialogue between the left and right sides of the body, and quadrilateral transfer, or the dialogue between all four limbs. The chapter highlights and the ever-present connection between all parts of the body. Rather than training their fingers, string players must learn to train the connections between head, neck, back, ribcage, pelvis, legs, feet, shoulders, arms, hands—and fingers. Finally, the chapter covers the ever-present connection between mind and body and the need to react constructively to all forms of stimulation (verbal, physical, emotional, situational, interpersonal, technical, and musical).
3. Rhythm
[The Meditation: Life is Rhythm]
The subject of rhythm is covered at length in INTEGRATED PRACTICE. Its dedicated website has numerous examples and exercises appropriate for all musicians, including string players. This chapter provides an overview of rhythm, with particular emphasis on three kinds of rhythmic energy (preparation, stress, and release) and their interplay in music itself and in a musician’s coordination. The overview includes a study chart for the rhythm-related video clips from INTEGRATED PRACTICE.
4. Sound: The Harmonic Series
[The Meditation: Sound is Vibration]
The phenomenon of the harmonic series is at the heart of nearly every acoustic event. It determines such aspects of music as resonance, consonance, dissonance, and intonation. On account of resonance and sympathetic vibrations, a thorough understanding of the harmonic series can lead string players to produce big, beautiful, and free sounds with little muscular effort. Further, the harmonic series makes it possible for a musician to sense sound as vibration (which is perceived by the whole person) as opposed to sound as noise (which is perceived by the ear). To experience music as vibration is to connect to something universal and timeless. In short, the harmonic series is a portal to the divine. This chapter includes a detailed practical and analytical study of the harmonic series, with an emphasis on string players’ need to open up their field of perception and become literally attuned to the vibrations of music; and a series of exercises and meditations applying vibrational skills to all aspects of string playing, including improvisation and repertory.
5. The Acoustic Space
[The Meditation: You Are the Space that You Create]
The voice, the body, and the mind are so intimately connected that to work on your voice is to work on the whole of your self. There exists a way of working with the voice that is especially suited to string players. The basic exercise (which is the starting point for a rich exploration, covered in detail in this chapter) consists in playing an open string and singing one of its partials at the same time. For instance, play the G string and sing its third partial: the D a twelfth above it. If you sing exactly in tune using just intonation, and if you listen closely to both the string and the voice, and if you use your voice with some flexibility, and if you draw your bow with maximum freedom, and if you choose a good vowel with which to sing your D, then you put your voice and your whole self in synch with the instrument. In other words, you “tune yourself” to your cello or violin. Your voice and your instrument will start vibrating in sympathy, and sound waves will propagate from you to the world in every direction.
The sensations of doing so are remarkably agreeable, which in itself is a good reason to perform the exercise. But the sensations point toward something more than agreeable, and in fact extremely powerful. Sympathetic vibrations are multiplicative rather than additive: the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Becoming aware of sympathetic vibrations will teach you that you have, at your disposal, a source of energy you’ve never tapped before in your life. Subsequently, even if you don’t sing at all, you may feel that you’re permanently in synch with your instrument. You’ll listen differently to the vibrations you produce; you’ll alter aspects of your technique, better to optimize your vibrations; you’ll project your sound differently, better to create the feeling that vibrations propagate from you to the world in every direction; you’ll listen differently to chamber music partners, to the piano, or to an orchestra accompanying you. The exercises and meditations in this chapter will help you perceive, understand, and build the energy field or “acoustic space” that surrounds you.
Part II: The Right Side
6. The Bow: Your Soul & Breath
[The Meditation: Find Your Voice]
String playing contains many apparently ordinary elements that open the door to an extraordinary world. The bow and the bowing arm together comprise one such element. How can a stick of wood and a bunch of horsehair create sounds that are utterly divine? The chapter develops the concept of the bow as a physical, psychological, and metaphysical extension of the player’s inner core—or, to put it differently, as the player’s voice and soul.
Long notes sounded by the bow are similar to vowels sustained by a singer. The chapter looks at the singerly possibilities of the bow, and it includes an exercise that leads a player to connect his or her breath with bowing. The start of every note played on a string instrument can be likened to a vowel or a consonant. The bow, then, is “like a singer,” in that it can hold long vowel-like notes, but also “like a speaker,” since it can articulate and inflect notes so that they become like syllables in a discourse.
The chapter also looks at the bow as an object from which the player can learn many lessons about coordination, timing, and sound. The bow itself tells you how best to use your fingers, hand, and arm to initiate and sustain action. Needless to say, you’ll only learn these lessons if you’re an attentive receptor of information. This chapter introduces the concept of the triple roles we all play in every situation as actors, receptors, and witnesses.
7. The Messa di Voce: Virtuosity of Contact
[The Meditation: Mechanics or Energy?]
The term “messa di voce” was used in the Baroque era to indicate an ornament that consisted of a crescendo and a decrescendo on a long note. To execute it perfectly—and, more broadly, to have at your disposal complete control of dynamics on every point along the bow—is extremely difficult. Many things will go wrong as you try to change your dynamics: you’ll choke the instrument’s vibrations on the crescendo, run out of bow before you get to the tip (on the down-bow) or the frog (on the up-bow), lose the focus of the sound on the decrescendo, and so on. Conversely, if you master your dynamics you’ll have mastered most of everything related to the bow, and indirectly the left hand as well. The messa di voce is the most important and difficult of all exercises, and you should study it every day without exception. In this chapter we’ll look at exercises for the mastery of contact and friction; the art of “spinning your sound” as opposed to using mechanical leverage to produce sound; the relationship between vowel-like long notes and their consonant-like articulations; and the relationship between the messa di voce and the harmonic series—in other words, the relationship between physical gesture and vibration.
8. Evenness & Unevenness
[The Meditation: Be Even Before Becoming Uneven]
All string instruments are uneven in construction, mechanism, and sonority. For instance, on a cello the C string is thick and sluggish, the A string thin and brilliant. If you apply the same degree of pressure to play on both strings, you’ll either crush the A string (too much pressure) or skim above the C string (not enough pressure). Another example is the difference between the frog and the tip. At the frog, the weight of the arm and hand (and of the bow itself) can all be released directly onto the string. This is an advantage and also a disadvantage, as the weight thus released risks being excessive and difficult to control. At the tip, the weight of the arm has to be projected along a totally different path. Unless you adjust your technique, the instrument will sound much stronger at the frog than at the tip. Paradoxically, ideal string playing is uneven in sound, articulation, dynamics, and timing—ideal that is, as long as the unevenness is at the service of musical expression. In this chapter we study a simple exercise (consisting of a slow one- or two-octave scale with a pattern of two, four, six, or more short notes followed by a long note) to open up your awareness to the merits and demerits of both evenness and unevenness.
9. String Crossings: Who Moves?
[The Meditation: Fixity & Mobility]
To move in space requires the use of one or more bodily articulations. For instance, when you turn your head or nod you use articulations in the neck. When you open or close your mouth, you use the articulation between the jaw and the skull. When you walk, you bring into play the hip, knee, and ankle joints. When you cross strings, you must employ the shoulder, elbow, wrist, and finger joints to varying degrees. In daily life and in string playing, the difficulty lies in employing the joints needed for each gesture without stiffening, slackening, or otherwise misusing all the other joints. In this chapter we’ll study pronation and supination; clock- and counterclockwise rotations; multiple relationships of joints and movements; and the complex interaction between physical movement and musical expression.
10. (Not So) Fast Bow Strokes
[The Meditation: Hurry Up, Take Your Time!]
If the most important thing for all string players is the messa di voce—the ability to control changes of dynamic over long, slow bows—the fact remains that a string player’s technique will be incomplete if it doesn’t include a degree of comfort with playing fast notes. This chapter focuses on two aspects of fast notes: the fact that every note, however quickly played, has a linguistic component (each note being akin to a letter, syllable, or word in a phrase); and the paradox that fast notes, when well played, feel to the player as if they’re slow.
Part III: The Left Side
11. The Left Hand: A Lively Animal
[The Meditation: Unity in Diversity]
The left hand has multiple functions in string playing: articulating, plucking, and vibrating notes up and down the fingerboard; changing positions and playing various kinds of slides and glissandi; playing double, triple, and quadruple stops, extensions, harmonics, and so on. In an integrated technique, all functions collaborate with one another. For instance, the ideal articulation of any one note contains a latent, reflex vibrato at the player’s immediate disposal. This chapter gives an overview of all the functions of the left hand, and introduces an exercise called the Cat’s Leap that integrates four of these functions in a single gesture and creates the conditions for the left hand to become physically comfortable and charged with musical energy.
12. Articulation
[The Meditation: Strong Fingers are Dependent Fingers]
Ideal coordination contains many paradoxes, one of which is that your fingers become agile only if they work in perfect collaboration with the hands, arms, shoulders, back, pelvis, and legs. When a finger becomes connected to the entire body, you’ll have the feeling that the finger itself is terrifically strong—in fact, so strong as to be independent and autonomous. The risk, then, is for you to pursue the fingers’ independence as a goal in itself—which would be self-defeating since the fingers can only “feel” independent if in fact they become dependent upon the whole body. In this chapter we learn to articulate notes on the fingerboard by first investing the fingers with the strength of the arm and then taking the arm’s strength from the foreground to the background, making the arm a latent collaborator in the work of the fingers. The chapter includes a practical, informal study of “mechanical engineering for musicians,” covering the concepts of fulcrum, pivot, leverage, mechanical advantage, rebound, and recoil.
13. Changes of Position
[The Meditation: Timing & Trust]
In music there are two elements that together ensure that a particular aspect of technique is successful: mechanism and timing. By mechanism I mean everything having to do with coordination: relative position of body parts, tension and relaxation, perception and intention, flesh and bones. By timing I mean everything having to do with rhythm: length, speed, frequency, and intensity.
There exist several shifting mechanisms. You can shift on an unchanging finger that stays on the string, for instance by playing note X with the second finger and shifting upwards or downwards on it until you arrive at the intended note Y. You can play note X with one finger, shift using the initial finger, and articulate note Y with a different finger. Or you can play note X with the second, third, or fourth finger; start shifting on the initial finger; substitute another finger during the shift; and articulate note Y with the initial finger. We might call these mechanisms articulating, sliding, and substituting.
In shifting, timing is as important as mechanism. Shifts can be either anticipated or delayed. In an anticipated shift, the time you need to go from note X to note Y is subtracted from note X; in a delayed shift, it’s subtracted from note Y. The subtraction can be so subtle as to appear inexistent, but since some time is needed to travel from position to position, at least one of the notes must be shortened—even if infinitesimally.
Anticipated and delayed shifts produce different sounds and aesthetic results. The glissando of a delayed shift is nearly impossible to hide, but the slide of an anticipated shift can be hidden with relatively little effort. In passages with many changes of position coming quickly one after the other, anticipated shifts are dependably easier to coordinate. In other contexts, delayed shifts may be easier to execute, for instance over a large interval in which the delayed glissando offers an aural guide for the distance covered by the left hand.
This chapter looks at the basic mechanisms, how to develop and internalize a sense of timing in shifting, and how to integrate mechanism and timing in varying musical contexts.
14. The Left Hand as Pianist and Singer
[The Meditation: Fixed Points & Flowing Lines]
A pianist can find each note on the keyboard easily and without equivocation. On the keyboard, it’s easy to locate a C sharp, a B flat, or any other note, and to strike it with a simple and reliable gesture. A string player should develop the same ease as regards the fingerboard. Unlike a pianist, a singer can slide continuously up and down the vocal range, either bypassing precise pitches or connecting precise pitches with an elastic portamento. A string player can do the same, and must in fact be able to do so for technical and musical reasons. The exercise in this chapter invites you to develop a pianist’s assuredness in finding notes (or “fixed points”) with a singer’s flexibility in moving from note to note (or “flowing lines”). Simply described, the exercise consists in chromatic scales alternating with shifts up to a natural harmonic. Finding the notes along the chromatic scale and articulating them with a reliable gesture is the pianistic challenge; sliding up and down the fingerboard in a musical manner is the singerly challenge; integrating both aspects in actual music-making is the ultimate challenge.
15. On Vibrato
[The Meditation: To Do & to Allow]
While practicing vibrato, your main meditation is to balance out two apparently contradictory realities. You are the driving force behind all your gestures—that is, you “do” all that you do, including the movements of your left arm as you vibrate. And yet, when your coordination becomes ideal you may have the feeling that “things do themselves” without the interference of your conscious control. A draft of this chapter is included in this proposal.
16. The Coherent Hand
[The Meditation: Many Streams, a Single Source]
The Cat’s Leap (an exercise developed in chapter 11) integrates four functions of the left hand: articulation, vibrato, pizzicato, and changes of position. In the healthy hand, each of these functions contains the latent energies needed for the other functions. A healthy articulation, for instance, contains a latent vibrato, latent pizzicato, and latent change of position. Besides the four basic functions that the Cat’s Leap brings together, the string player’s left hand has capabilities such as playing double, triple, and quadruple stops; trilling; playing harmonics; playing extensions; and combining many functions in a single gesture or a single note. The healthy hand contains all latencies: as it executes any one function, it remains capable of executing all other functions. In this chapter we study these further functions of the left hand in the same spirit as in the Cat’s Leap.
17. Thumb Position for Cellists & Bassists
[The Meditation: The Whole is a Friendship of Parts]
Violin, viola, cello, and double-bass techniques have more things in common than they have apart. Nevertheless, the cello and the double bass are different from the violin and the viola in one important aspect: the use of the thumb as a playing finger. This chapter covers an exercise that gives cellists and bassists the basic information they need to become comfortable with the thumb position. But violinists and violists will learn something from studying the chapter, since the most important information in it is of universal interest: the integration of each part into a whole. The thumb becomes comfortable and agile only if its work is supported by the whole arm and shoulder; by the back and the legs; by the bowing arm; and by the player’s commitment to rhythmic impetus.
18. The Art of Fingering
[The Meditation: Fingers Can Feel, Think & Speak]
The question of fingering for string players (and, in fact, for many other musicians such as pianists, guitarists, and flutists) is far richer than it seems from the outset. Fingerings organize a string player’s physical gestures, creating comfort or discomfort as the case may be. Every fingering is also an aesthetic choice. Good fingerings are in synch with a passage’s linguistic and emotional structure. Fingerings, then, can help you “play well” and “play beautifully.”
The traditional approach has long been that the teacher “gives” the student fingerings for a piece, oftentimes writing the fingerings directly on the student’s score, without explanation. This means that the student doesn’t get to learn the logic of fingerings, and instead becomes dependent on the teacher to guide him or her. Further, the teacher’s fingerings may well be idiosyncratic to begin with. Scores also come with pre-set fingerings chosen by famous performers or anonymous players who act as these performers’ “ghost writers.” This tradition is so strong that strange absurdities go unnoticed. For instance, the Henle edition of Beethoven’s sonatas for piano and cello presents itself as an Urtext—that is, the composer’s original text unaltered by an editor. But the cello part is thoroughly annotated by a concert artist, complete with fingerings and bowings. Admittedly the cello line on the piano score remains unedited, but most cellists ignore it and only use the separate, edited cello part. Cellists who grow up with the Henle edition might be disturbed if they switch to the Bärenreiter edition, which is properly unmarked as an Urtext should be. It’s “shocking” not to see any fingerings, and yet what ought to be shocking is to have fingerings more or less imposed upon the score (and the player) from an outside authority.
There exist laws of fingering with rules, exceptions, contradictions, and compromises that require conscious choice. It takes time and effort to master these laws, but they’re so integral to the mastery of string playing that players of all levels ought to explore them. This chapter covers the logic of fingerings from both technical and musical points of view.
Part IV: Integration
19. Practicing Theory
[The Meditation: The Ears Lead, the Fingers Follow]
Many players tend to think of music theory as a foreign, threatening, and useless concept—and, above all, as something completely divorced from the actual practice of their instruments and from performance. It’s true that there exist strands of theory that are purely abstract, speculative, or downright absurd, but there also exist ways of integrating meaningful theoretical and analytical concepts into practical realities with sensorial and aural results. The integrated musician not only knows what the words “dominant of the subdominant” mean analytically, he or she can feel in body, mind, ear, and soul what it means to play the dominant of the subdominant.
This chapter takes simple exercises that most players would consider purely technical and develops them into an intricate psychophysical, musical, and analytical meditation. The exercises consist of one-, two-, three-, and four-octave arpeggios with lower neighboring tones; arpeggios with higher neighboring tones; arpeggios with gruppetti; and two-octave scales with gruppetti. These arpeggios and scales use neighboring tones and gruppetti to bring together the left hand’s ability to “speak” and the right hand’s ability to create consonants and vowels. The exercises are constructed rhythmically so that the linguistic energy of neighboring tones and gruppetti enliven the left hand and prepare changes of positions.
Neighboring tones and gruppetti can be exclusively diatonic or partially chromatic. For instance, you can play an arpeggio with lower neighboring tones that are all half steps, in which case some tones will be diatonic and other chromatic; or you can play an arpeggio with diatonic lower neighboring tones, in which case some of the tones will be a half step lower than the main note, others a whole tone. This creates the opportunity to think about constant and variable elements in music making. If all neighboring tones are diatonic, the element {diatonic} is constant and the element {interval} is variable, since some intervals will be minor seconds, other major seconds. If all neighboring tones are half steps, the element {interval} is constant, the element {diatonic/chromatic} variable. The mixture of constancy and variability applies to all areas of music making, and it’s useful for a player to sense and understand their interaction.
Playing two-, three-, and four-octave arpeggios with neighboring tones and gruppetti in all 24 major and minor keys is an excellent way of exploring and conquering the instrument’s geography. The exercise brings together ear training and technique. Most players are intimidated by keys such as e-flat minor and b-flat minor, and attempt to deal with their psychological discomfort by calculating the numbers of flats and sharps in each note grouping and by calculating the fingerings needed to produce the necessary intervals. In truth, once the ear accepts the intervallic structure of an arpeggio with neighboring tones or gruppetti, all keys become equally easy to play—as long as the player trusts the ear to guide the hands. Instead of dealing with the problem through analytical and mathematical calculations, the player can use sensorial and aural elements—in other words, sound and feeling, rather than number.
Nevertheless, it’s important for all players to understand tonal relationships intellectually. The integrated string player won’t panic when listening to the following paragraph:
The key of a-flat minor is the relative minor of C-flat Major. In equal temperament, C-flat Major is the enharmonic equivalent of B Major, and a-flat minor is the enharmonic equivalent of g-sharp minor. By the way, what is the subdominant of a-flat minor? Don’t tell me in words; instead, demonstrate it by playing an arpeggio with diatonic gruppetti in a-flat minor and modulating to the subdominant after a couple of octaves!
The chapter will include a discussion of the circle of fifths, leading the reader to understand parallel major and minor keys; relative major and minor keys; dominant and subdominant relationships; diatonic and chromatic elements; enharmonic equivalences; and the distinction between secondary progressions, modulations, and non-modulatory changes of keys. Every aspect of the discussion lends itself to being illustrated, demonstrated, practiced, learned, understood, felt, and memorized through the arpeggios and scales with neighboring tones and gruppetti.
20. The Conversational Approach
[The Meditation: To Make Music is to Tell Stories]
You can conceive of music in two different ways: as a series of physical gestures that create sounds, or as a series of syllables, words, and phrases that, to be rendered audible, require certain physical gestures. Each conception leads to a different way of practicing, studying, and performing. With anecdotes from the movies and the theater, I invite string players to acquire an appreciation of storytelling as an art and as a series of technical skills they can apply to all repertory. I use Hamlet’s famous exhortation to his troupe of players (“Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue . . .”) as an aesthetic and technical manifesto, “translating” his advice into words that young string players of today can understand and apply in practice. The chapter contains musical examples from many different periods and aesthetics, showing that the storytelling, conversational aspect of music is universal.
21. Improvisation & Composition
[The Meditation: Music Comes from Within]
Performing used to be very close to improvising and composing. Average players and singers in the Baroque and Classical eras ornamented passages and transitions, improvised cadenzas and interludes, realized figured basses, and composed quick nothings for specific occasions. Some of these performers may have been lousy improvisers and composers, or plain lousy musicians. Nevertheless, they made music from within (as creators) rather from without (as re-creators). They spoke the musical language as autonomous speakers with minds of their own, rather than parrots who imitate other people’s sounds without necessarily understanding the relationship between sound and meaning. The tradition of making music from within lost its strength over the decades and centuries, and the average player trained in the second half of the 20th century became totally divorced from improvising and composing—with disastrous results. In this chapter I suggest ways for all players to make music from within, as if they were in fact permanently improvising and composing everything they play, including the canonic repertory.
22. Complete Integration
[The Meditation: Become the Demiurge]
This is an extended practical analysis of “Schelomo: A Hebraic Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra” by Ernst Bloch, applying the principles and exercises from the whole book. What are the piece’s difficulties, and how to dissolve them? What is the piece’s core, and how to connect with it? Use everything you know about coordination, rhythm, sound, storytelling, improvisation, and composition. Make up new exercises and procedures, as needed. “Become yourself, become Ernst Bloch, become Schelomo. Become the Demiurge.”
Conclusion
Appendix: A brief guide to clefs & open strings
Glossary