Bach: Menuets I & II

In G Major and g minor

My keyboard got a new "firmware" update and with it they threw in a piano sample that is blowing my mind!  Not only does it sound really good to me but after you've already paid for the device, the company goes ahead and makes it even better - completely for free!

Anyway, piano is really hard because playing faster usually makes you play harder which is very detectable given the wide spectrum of volume that a piano can make (the full name for the piano is piano-forte.... or maybe forte-piano which means "loud soft").  You want to keep it light while being quick and accurate and peppering in little musical accoutrements at the same time.  All of these things become more difficult when you're trying to record as well.  Why do I try to play more than one instrument?  Isn't one enough for a lifetime?

Its fun also because I got a new German backpack for Christmas from my girlfriend, and the brand name is Bach.

Also, it turns out the first melody which is really famous wasn't even written by Bach at all!  Apparently, it was written by a guy called Christian Petzold so wtf?


Bach: Cello Suite No. 1

For days I've been trying to capture the whole suite played in one take from memory, but I learned that this is extremely difficult. 

Technically a lot of new discoveries have been made - beginning with string tension.  In college, I would play high tension classical guitar strings because thats what my teacher used.  Tension is governed by the diameter of the string, and I think the material used measured by how many pounds of pressure it can sustain.  Harder tension strings are harder to push down with the left hand but "yield" a louder or richer sound in the end.  Ever since my college days 90% of the struggle was in the left hand - trying to shift form bar chords to far stretching intervals and quick scales.  Because I was always so preoccupied with the LH I never really thought about focusing on the Right hand besides making sure my fingernails were pretty long. 

Then I switched to low tension strings and wow what a difference!  Because I didn't have to push down so hard, it wouldn't stress me out as badly and I could dedicate mind share to the right hand pulling the strings consistently and accurately.  This is when I realized how little I thought about the RH all along.  When I got to a difficult part that was still stressful even with low tension strings, I took the idea further and detuned the whole guitar using a clip on tuner (that are so popular and convenient these days), and this made it even easier.  Then as the whole piece from start to finish became easier you tune back up.  Across all the pieces of the suite I did this until I was detuning, retuning, and then upgrading strings until I found myself back at Very Hard tension strings again. 

Pro tip - If your left hand is working too hard, try switching to low tension, if its still too hard go ahead and detune high A from 440 down to 430 and see how that feels.

Then I started playing the whole work all the way thru for the first time since I began playing the individual pieces in college, and it felt good.  But when the recorder is on its like a whole different league.  Its a weird place between concentrating and not thinking about anything at all.  As soon as a complete thought enters your head, you're going to crash.  I'd usually be doing Ok thinking about people's faces or TV shows, but as soon as I comment to myself "that was a good landing"  Boom its over, and I'd have to start back over at the beginning. 

In the end, I just had to read the music because maintaining that kind of lucid dreaming is just too .... too maddening.  Oh well the goal was to capture the entire set anyway - unfortunately reading from the music sounds how it sounds - like someone reading from a piece of paper.  I think I have a new understanding now why some classical players can be hostile to those who have no idea the degree of preparation and concentration it takes.  And then to top it off you do all this work and no one even cares about classical music!  Oh well.




Bach: Little Prelude in D minor BWV 926

Bach
Bach is truly a brutal dictator.  Just kidding I didn't mean that...ok maybe I did.  Its just hard as hell and this is one of his easier pieces!  First I chose a short piece from my book, but I quickly realized it was too easy, so I tried another one and thought I could play them consecutively, but I still thought they'd be too easy even together.  Then I started this prelude foolishly thinking, "I can just play these three all together!"  and Bach LoL'd in my face - this one alone wound up taking almost twice as long as my posts usually take to record.   

You could spend your entire life studying Bach and still have your mind blown regularly I think.  In fact, Pablo Casals the famous Spanish cellist who played the Cello Suites internationally said when he was around 80 years old that he was still only scratching the surface.  My favorite Bach player of all time is Glenn Gould and you just have to imagine the ecstasy he must have felt by having such a command of the repertoire.  Then I imagine someone looking at my playing who maybe has tried playing piano a few times and he or she says "wow it must be amazing to play and understand music." but I am in the exact same position!  And it never ends - going on forever!  The more you practice the more you realize "merciful Jesus I'm only learning how little I know and how much farther there is to go!"  I guess it is pretty profound though that works like Bach even exist on planet earth.  My counterpoint teacher in college said that if aliens ever came to earth and for whatever reason needed proof as to why we deserve to even exist in the first place, that all we'd need to do is submit the Musical Offering by Bach (another collection that was composed for a local prince) and we'd be safe case closed. 

Keyboard
I used to think that Piano was more accessible than guitar because a single piano key is wider than a guitar string, so you have a greater change of hitting the note - more room for error.  But now I think its equally as hard.  You must be precise in terms of where on the piano key you are landing else the neighboring key walls trip you up as your wrist moves in new direction.  Its audible on a recording when your mind is consumed with trying to navigate obstacles instead of proactively landing on the right spot and triggering the note you want.  What you gotta do is eliminate a step by practicing precise landings instead of landing on a key and then worrying how to get off it a millisecond later.  Accuracy eliminates the second step of getting off it smoothly. 

The Harpsichord
Considered an early instrument, the harpsichord was a popular piece of furniture in the homes of wealthy European families, and often daughters were taught how to play in hopes of rounding out their candidacy for marriage to the son of another neighboring wealthy family.  If you press a key down, a trigger in the body plucks a single string creating a tone at a fixed volume.  If you had a "double manual" harpsichord, the second keyboard would trigger the plucking of 2 or 3 strings which would make the tone 2 or 3 times louder - so you had a softer manual and a louder manual.  Unfortunately, when the Piano was invented and mass produced for purchase, everyone quickly upgraded to the Piano because the technology allowed the force applied by the finger tips to be directly transferred to a hammer inside therefore creating a relative volume proportionate to the force applied which suddenly made the keyboard much more like a violin or wind instrument or voice because you could produce a whole range of volumes for dramatic effect.  The harpsichord reached its peak in popular during the early / mid 1700s - to put the timing in perspective Thomas Jefferson played the Harpsichord (and other keyboard instruments).




Bach: Cello Suite No. 1 mvts 1-4

I just don't have much to say about this one maybe because my brain is fried from Bach.

The Courante was rough but luckily I recovered in the Sarabande - ironically I spent the entire week working on the Courante and it ended up having the most problems.  But if it weren't for mistakes / tension I guess there would be no drama.  The point was to record a live multimovement piece and survive to the end. 

By the way this is the "hall" setting on my Roland 1980's reverb unit and I think it sounds awesome.  Reverb really does add depth in my opinion. 


This is on vimeo.  Lets see how it goes.




Bach: Little Prelude BWV 934

I think, to my benefit, that I've had an extraordinary number of "Why am I even here?" moments where I felt like I was so far out of my depth that I thought someone must have made a huge mistake that would be soon corrected.  Lets see, when I was promoted to a new team in San Francisco at the where bank I worked, when I was moved out of the office answering emails to teaching kids how to ski in Japan, and my second guitar lesson with my teacher in college.  My first lesson was fine, but my second lesson ended after 10 minutes with my teacher Allen Krantz saying "So you tried to learn it but you don't have any specific questions?  Sounds to me like you didn't try at all."  My only thought at 18 was wtf!

But by far though the most outrageous ability gap was when my piano teacher during my sophomore year at Temple.  My teacher's name was Alexander Panku, and he still lives over in the Philly area teaching piano.  I knew he was from Romania, and although he did speak English the bulk of our lessons consisted of him inevitably saying:

"No no no no - let me.  Like this.  You know what I mean?" - Alexander Panku

Here's his picture



I would try playing my Bach or my sonatina, and he would stop me and take the bench and just play a mini concert where I could watch his hands right in front of me, and it was just the best.  He also would always write and circle things and draw arrows in my books in pen, which is just something you're not supposed to do!  I honestly hated piano lessons because I just didn't want to learn this extra stuff when I had all these other things to deal with - there were other things like choir, ear training, keyboard theory, and ugh renaissance music notation like what the hell I didn't come here to learn all that!  Maybe it was the gravitas of his accent or just how he would pound the little grand piano in the practice room where he would teach me, but he turned me right around, and I started practicing a lot of piano. 

Anyway, this is a Bach prelude I learned for my jury, which is like a final exam, and I remember being really let down at 20 years old because he didn't make it because of scheduling.  I always called him Dr. Panku, but in writing it has to be Alexander, because when he saw his name on a folder of mine he said "No no no no - Alex is my nickname.  My name is Alexander."  and fixed it. 

The sound the Yamaha Motif grand piano with a Line 6 guitar pedal with Reverb set to Hall.


Ishida



Bach: Menuet in G

In case you didn't know: I am a pretty big Bach fan.  This is the first piece of music in a new Bach book I got at the Fukuoka shopping mall - only 1,000 yen and its printed on legit music paper. 

This was recorded on my new (to me) Yamaha Motif keyboard, and I just can't get over how mind-blowing the sounds are that are built in.  For a long time I've always wanted to play the organ, and by that I mean play keyboard that can make organ sounds - not learn to use your feet and monkey around with all the stops and play three manuals all at once.  Although maybe eventually I could get one of those digital dual-manual organs...  Anyway, I like this sound because it reminds me of a small organ that was in the jury room of Rock Hall when I went to Temple to study music.  Here's a picture of what it looked like. 


It turns out this is called a Baroque Continuo Organ and the housing and all the pipes are made of wood - you can buy one online for $43,900.  The convenient thing about organ is that all the notes create the exact same level of volume - like the harpsichord and virginal and clavier, so you don' t have to pay attention to the dynamic markings like 'forte' and 'piano' - although those markings aren't original anyway and have been added in by the editor.  But it is a student book and you gotta learn to do that if you're playing piano so thats why they're there.  Thats why organs have stops and multiple sets of keyboards because each one would make different sounds or different volume levels.  The way to convey dynamics without a second manual is with a volume pedal - which I actually have, so uh I guess I should have paid attention to those markings afterall...  It wasn't until the 'fortepiano' was invented that people could play all kinds of different degrees of volume and intensity depending on how hard you smashed the keys.  This caused other instruments to quickly go out of style because rich parents now wanted their kids to learn to play the fortepiano at home instead of harpsichord and guitar. 

I'm getting back into keyboard because I'm pretty sure if you want to have a smooth workflow for songwriting you have to be at least a little bit proficient. 


Ishida

Bach Allemande (Casals)

So this piece is hard as hell because of all the trills, and Casals even adds more than are included in my guitar sheet music, but oh well lets go for it.  Trills are really damn hard because to do one you usually have to: hold down one string, then "gently" close the note directly above it, and then "swiftly" pull off the string at an angle so it activates the note below - and then do it a second time really fast.  The Baroque trill is always 2 pulls, so it sounds like "Dee da dee da".  Its even harder when the other two LH fingers are holding down two other strings, so you have 3 fingers firmly closing 3 notes whilst your last finger (usually the wimpy pinky dammit) has to do this gentle / swift thing!  It makes your forearm burn!  I do trill warm ups every day now, and I'd honestly rather do bicep curls than trills because your whole arm becomes fatigued, but I'm definitely stronger compared to a few weeks ago.  Its schizophrenic because the quality of a trill is supposed to be light and ornamental but the execution actually requires a lot of strength in the LH - if you squeeze too hard, you might hit the neighboring strings on accident and that really screws up the whole momentum of the piece.

So Pablo Casals was a Spanish cellist who really is the main reason Bach's Cello Suites are famous today.  There are so many versions that I've heard on YouTube, but I went with Casals again because his version is so fast and soo...under stress!  The other versions are usually slower and...pretentious sounding?  ...at least compared to Pablo Casals.  This could be because the Allemande is originally a German dance that reached its popular height during the 17th century and is almost always the 2nd movement of a dance suite.  Historians use words like "serious" and "grave" to describe both the music and the dance, so I guess that could result in a slower tempo in hopes of triggering emotions like solemnity, heaviness, and just again making a listener sit thru the tired sentiment of profound loftiness that classical music should have.  But what the hell it used to be a dance, and I like Casals' version best.  

Before really practicing this one I used to hate repeats because Arrrgh you just made it to the finish line and now you have to go all the way back to the beginning and risk screwing something up?  Plus the 2nd time thru is always what people remember because it pretty much replaces what might have been a perfect A+!  But now I like repeats a lot because rehearsing this one was so difficult and there was always something that just wasn't nailed completely, and the repeat becomes your second chance.  It isn't always better the second time, but that chance at redemption is a funny kind of motivation where you're distracted in real time after you've made a mistake.  For a few seconds your mind is preoccupied with both the the recent past and fast approaching future and you're not at all thinking about the present.

Ishida