Helen Bledsoe

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  • Atonal Intonation in Light of Berio’s Sequenzas

    Luciano Berio‘s Sequenza no.1 for flute is one of my favorite pieces. I also love teaching it; it has so much to offer in terms of technique (especially articulation!), style and presentation. There is an unwritten book inside me about this work, but for now I would like to consider one aspect of the work that often gets ignored: Intonation.

    This is one reason it is not my favorite piece to listen to. If you know me, you know I don’t have perfect pitch, or even flawless intonation. Nevertheless, neither you nor I can assume that a work without a traditional tonal center and without traditional harmonic relationships is devoid of centers and relationships entirely. I would argue that in this context, these matters require even more consideration. I’d like to address this generally and specifically, not as a how-to guide, but as food for thought in your own practicing.

    In general, there are rules of thumb for atonal solo works. Here I quote Doris Geller’s “Praktische Intonationslehre“, page 117 (my translation):*

    In free-tonal music there is also a hierarchy of intervals, the most important points of orientation being the prime intervals (octaves, fifths, fourths), especially when they form tones that draw attention to themselves. These could be, for example, long, held-out notes or notes that follow a rest.

    Here she is referring to Debussy‘s Syrinx, and gives specific examples. However,  these words and her further advice to analyze goal notes, high points, low points, and melodic turning points can apply to all solo works. Edgar Varèse‘s Density 21.5 especially offers the same points of consideration.

    Specifically for the Sequenza, I consider the soul of the work to be in the long, held-out notes. If you listen to the other Sequenzas of Berio,  you will hear this particular pattern of drawing the listener in. Often there are rapid, virtuosic passages punctuated by the stillness of a single note, where the quality of sound and the relationship to its environment are of utmost importance.

    *In a previous entry, I write more about Doris Geller and the intonation of melodic intervals.

     

  • Perfection and Procrastination in Daily Practice

    Recently I have spent most of my practice sessions “warming up” and playing exercises. The repertoire I am working on is singularly uninspiring, so this is mostly a maneuver in procrastination.

    But it’s great: taking the time to do and re-do an exercise while focusing your awareness of what’s going on under your skin is never boring. Did I miss that high A? Yes, great, have to do it again. This time keep the air going. The high A takes care of itself. Missed the triplet arpeggio? Good, have to do it again, this time don’t loose connection to left arm. Damn, time to do repertoire….just one more exercise, though.

    I remember Pat Morris, piccolo and Feldenkreis teacher, setting the shoulders of a student to rights. After the student played again she said, “see, you improved without having to practice!”  As followers of the Alexander Technique rightly point out, it is the opposite of “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”. Instead: “If at first you don’t succeed, never try again, at least not in the same way”. That is what I like to think what I am doing with my exercises. Sometimes I play without a mistake, but it is not perfection I am after.

    In know, I know, I should carry this attitude into the repertoire-learning part of my practice. To comfort myself (and further procrastinate) I carry a book with me to practice sessions: Pedro de Alcantara’s “Indirect Procedures – a Musician’s Guide to the Alexander Technique”.

    The objective of daily practice should be to cultivate the best possible use of the self on a general basis, and to apply it correctly on a specific basis …In other words, working on right living should take precedence over working on right playing.

     

     Patanjali (author of the Yoga Sutra) would probably agree, and he would have certainly something to say about my procrastination. Most wisdom traditions teach the concept of non-attachment (which I suck at). What often gets missed is that they also teach one to practice non-aversion (which I have a slightly better chance at). In the end, it might be the approach of the concert date which changes my attitude. So much for wisdom.

    One last quote from Pedro de Alcantara:

    I believe there are four separate but interrelated factors … in achieving truly free action: giving up trying, giving up judging, ridding yourself of hesitation and eagerness, and timing your actions precisely.

    Here I have a chance in hell of making some sort of progress 🙂

     

     

  • Crowd-Source Question, What Are the Difficulties Performing Mircotonal Music?

    This is a bit unusual for me, but I would like to informally survey performer’s thoughts on performing mircotonal music. Not thoughts about microtonal music in general, but the issues, problems, difficulties or joys of actually playing or singing the stuff. Which notations are best? Are the difficulties worth the acoustic result? Are the acoustic results hear-able, worth the effort?

    I realize there are as many uses of microtonality as there are composers who use it, but if there are especially good or bad examples, I would be interested in knowing who and why.

     

  • Notating New Sounds – Rewrite?

    I love it when a composer takes the flute in hand and explores its sounds while writing for flute. It shows more dedication and curiosity than just looking up techniques in a book (not to disparage the good books about writing for flute).  Sometimes, it can produce an original sound, but sometimes it re-invents the wheel. Which is fine, but the wheel may come with a new symbol and complicated instructions. I have seen this cause frustration, esp. when the instructions are lengthy and not in your language. Once you reach understanding: “ah ha, so it is ____(fill in known technique)” it may be easy to adjust to a new notation. If not, then I am faced with the question, do I spend time re-notating, or visually re-adjusting to the score? This is something I will come back to.

    In no way do I wish to discourage composers from exploring flute sounds themselves. However, be aware that today there are not only books, but a rash of flutist composers out there who have spent decades thinking about how to write new sounds in ways that flutists can easily understand. So if you really want to delve into the world of new sounds, check out these composers and their written scores: (Feel free to add to this list in the comments, but please keep it to composers who use extended sounds.)

    It might interest you to look at the late flute works of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Thanks to his collaborator, Kathinka Pasveer, everything is 100 % playable and extremely well notated. Xi, Flautina and Kathinka’s Gesang are several examples of pieces with well-notated techniques.

    You will see that even among flutist composers there is no standardization of extended techniques. However if you study them, you get a feel for what is accepted and what the players are used to reading. So take your pick; if the player has questions, you can always refer back to the piece or composer from which you took the notation.

    Now, about re-writing, or rather, re-notating. When the question comes whether to spend my time re-notating or to spend time learning a tricky or non-intuitive (for me) notation, I almost always choose to re-notate. This might be to more easily read the notation of an extended technique, microtones, or rhythm, etc. Please note this is a last-resort solution. I am already comfortable with many variations of key-click, tongue pizz, air sound, and multiphonic notations. However, when the score presents a real visual problem for me, I decide to re-notate. This has the following advantages:

    • I get to know the music really well away from the instrument
    • While practicing, I can easily and more directly process the composer’s intent (i.e. the music)
    • In concert, I feel more secure. When under pressure, there is enough extraneous sensory information and certainly there are enough extraneous emotions to deal with. If you are not playing from memory, the score is your anchor. It has to be solid.

    In the olden days, copying scores was one way students learned music. There is a lot to be said for this method, but I don’t recommend subjecting 21st century ensemble players to it. Solo pieces are different matter. However, if your piece requires the performer to re-notate and is being work-shopped along with six other pieces in the course of one day, your piece will stand out, but not in the way you hoped 🙂

     

  • Are intervals born of air or lips? Let the leopard decide.

    Are intervals born of air or lips? Let the leopard decide.

    On forums and in masterclasses there has been a lot of discussion about which element plays a more important role in producing intervals on the flute. Aside from the change of fingering, do we change more with the lips, with the air speed, or with air volume?

    Take the fingering element out of the equation and try playing through the harmonic series on low C or D. How do you produce the upper partials?

    The trend these days is to say the air makes the changes. Emily Beynon makes a good example and case for air speed:

    In this (long) masterclass series, Phillipe Bernold has a student start the day on a rising dominant 7 chord. Here he suggests the most important thing to start the day is to wake up the air column. There should be a natural increase of both volume and speed of air as you ascend. The lips stay neutral. This is very important for legato.

    Here is why I agree that the air, either volume or speed, rather than the lips should play the major role in interval moving. Please note I do not deny that the lips must remain flexible, and that exercises for suppleness also include playing intervals and harmonics (at least some of mine do).

    As humans, which is more necessary for survival, fast reflexes of our breathing apparatus, or of our facial muscles? Imagine a pre-historic flutist out strolling, searching for good material to build the perfect bone or wood flute. She is set upon by a leopard. She screams and runs. The lightning-quick reflexes of that sharp intake of breath to make sound and to get enough oxygen for the muscles to run is what saves her life. Fast-talking a leopard has been a known fail.

    A Cro Magnon Bone Kingma-System, gimme gimme!!
    “A Cro Magnon Bone Kingma-System, gimme gimme!!”

    So it is my unscientific opinion that the muscles controlling the breathing apparatus, including the diaphragm, have much quicker reflexes, thus can make quicker adjustments than the facial muscles used in the embouchure. Of course, we all know some fast talkers, but they are a scientific law unto themselves!

    Wildlife disclaimer: when stalked by a predator in real life, do not act like a prey animal and run. You will be chased. And caught. Unless they are bees.

    Photo: bigkitten.com

  • Scale Practice – Superlocrian!

    If you are a diligent scale and arpeggio practicer, you might get tired of the major-minor-chromatic (and seconds, thirds, fourths, etc) routine. I want to share my enthusiasm for my scale of choice this week: the Superlocrian. If you have studied jazz, it won’t be new to you. This scale goes my many names. I actually prefer the term Diminished-Whole Tone, because that is what it is (see below). According to the Wikipedia entry, other names for it are Altered, Dominant Whole-Tone and Locrian flat four.

    First you take the melodic minor scale but don’t alter it coming down. (Yes, you are allowed to do that in jazz!) The modes of this scale are a gold mine for other jazz scales, but that will be another post.

    DWT1a

    Now, start on the 7th degree of the scale, and presto:DWTb

    The first 4 notes are a diminished scale (alternating half and whole steps), the remaining notes form a whole tone scale. How cool is that? Plug this in to Taffanel-Gaubert no. 4 and you have a new flavor for your routine and scale games. There are a number of books for jazz flutists that may have other exercises, but I have not surveyed this literature yet. Any suggestions?

    For more information on the web, especially about the chords that this scale generates, here are some links.

    How to use the diminished whole tone scale by Pete Swiderski

    Reverse engineering our dominant scales by Anton Schwartz (great graphics)

    A diminished whole tone lick by Bob Hartig

     

  • Inharmonicity of hearing

    Inharmonicity of hearing

    In a previous post on flutonation I admitted my tendency to play melodic octaves too wide. Re-reading Doris Geller‘s super book Praktische Intonationslehre  I realize this is a universal phenomenon, which she describes as the “inharmonicity of hearing” or perhaps “inharmonicity of the ear”. (original: Inharmonizität des Gehörs).

    Doris Geller
    Doris Geller

    Here is my paraphrased translation of what she has to say (original German below):

    The ear seems to naturally favor tones whose harmonics are spread, as those of a piano are. [Read about this in my previous blog entry here.] This preference is most strongly expressed when we hear successive tones: we find jumps of octaves, fifths, and fourths ideal when they are slightly wider than  justly tuned.

    And not only these intervals! In a small-scale study she shows the range and average of what students and teachers considered to be an ideal-sounding melodic, linear interval (as opposed to a chordal, vertical interval) relative to equal temperment:geller

    The vertical lines for each interval show the range in which the test subjects found the interval to be ideal. The short horizontal dashes (which may look more like a dots in this picture) through these lines show the average. The 0 line is the interval at equal temperment. The intervals are referred to by number (8= Octave), “kl.” means minor, “gr.” means major.

    This really shows how subjective listening can be.  3rds, 6ths, 2nds and 7ths can bear a fairly wide range of variation: they are often context-dependent on their environment. It is no surprise that, out of context, listeners will find their own comfort zone.

    I paraphrase from page 84:

    The largest diversions at 5.6 cents are quite small, but this can add up. If for example you play these wide fifths or fourths in succession, the third note will produce an octave 8 cents too wide. A whole tone scale with these “ideal” seconds would produce and octave 30 cents too high! However, in solo playing, our pitch memory keeps us from making these mistakes, since temporary overall pitch relationships and the relation to the tonic of the key keep us in line.

    Hopefully, when playing an unaccompanied, tonal solo piece, your intonational “snap to grid” function is checked!

    Since we get more than the lion’s share of melodic roles, and we have a fantastic body of unaccompanied literature, the expressive and tasteful use of intonation is an important tool for flutists. I am fascinated by the possibilities, and the different practices of vertical (chordal) and linear (melodic) intonation. You will probably be hearing more from me about this as I continue to re-read. It is a pity that Ms. Geller’s book has not been translated into English.

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    original German from page 83:

    Das Gehör scheint von Natur aus Klänge zu bevorzugen, deren Teiltöne als etwas gespreizt liegen, änlich wie es beim Klavierton der Fall ist. … Noch stärker äußert siche diese Vorliebe aber bei nacheinander erklingenden Tönen. Wir empfinden einen Oktav-, Quint- oder Quartsprung erst dann als ideal, wenn er im Vergleich zur reinen Stimmung etwas zu weit ist.

    page 84:

    Die Abweichungen sind mit maximal 5,6c zwar gering, doch können sie sich bei Aneinanderreihung in einer Richtung erheblich aufsummieren. Wenn man z.B. Quinte und Quarte in ihrer erweiterten Form in einer Richtung hintereinander spielt, gelangt man beim dritten Ton zu einer um 8c erweiterten Oktave. Und würde man eine Ganztonleiter ausschließlich aus “Idealsekunden” spielen, so wäre die Oktave am Schluß um 30c zu hoch! …In der Einstimmigkeit bewahrt unsunser Tonhöhengedächtnis vor derartigen Intonationsfehlern, denn auch die zeitlich übergreifenden Tonbeziehungen sowie die Beziehungen zum Grundton der gerade herrschenden Tonart werden zur Intonationskontrolle mit herangezogen.

  • You can’t escape yourself

    You can’t escape yourself

    moonI made myself laugh while doing Moon Salutations (yoga exercises similar to the Sun Salutations) last night. The thought came to me: if I were to suddenly become an enlightened being, I would frighten myself. The thought really amused me and I got to thinking about the idea of self, escape, and whether there is a separate self from which we can escape. These questions are not within the scope of my flute blog.

    But wait, if there is no escape, can’t we at least as artists live in ways which allow growth and re-definition?

    Yes, to a degree. I have “escaped” the person I could have been, had I not become a musician. However, there are basic formats I can’t escape, reminders of which never cease. In a post from 2009, I recounted the sexist attitudes of an old-world, now-deceased teacher who, by his own admission, gave more professional attention his male students. Later that same year, I met a teacher of my own generation who, in front of his class of female students, said he would take any male student no matter how he played just to escape drowning in a sea of estrogen. OK, the drowning-in-estrogen part I made up, but he may as well have said it.

    This is not going to be a feminist rant, I promise, but allow me one more example, hopefully more universal. A student of mine played brilliantly for a final exam. During the critique and pep-talk, one professor, who I have long known to be a decent person, said to her: you are a great player, but you need to project yourself, your musical presence (not meaning the sound, it was huge) more strongly on stage if you want to get anywhere because you are a small Asian woman. I thought of what might happen if this were an American institution, the hue and cry of sexism and racism it would incite. However, I know this person, he was sincerely trying to be helpful. He was just very direct and personal, which Germans tend to be (although the Russians certainly give them a run for their money).

    Two deductions I can make of all this: 1) Flutistic reality can be seen as liberating. When I was younger, I thought ability and accomplishment were the answers to everything, and I was a prisoner to the idea that I was my flute playing. When it comes to being in the profession, though, any flutist in the running is awesome, so it is you, your musicianship, your attitudes, your person, who ends up with the job. Or not. However, if you were in the running, you are still awesome and still you, if you have ever taken time to cultivate a you. Perhaps not everyone’s idea of liberty, but for me works.

    2) There is no escape from who you are, neither should there be a need for escape. In a perfect world. The world does need changing, but I am not a fan of revolution, it usually brings back the same mess in a different guise. I believe more in the permanent, although maddeningly slow, changes that evolution brings. What can one do except work towards being a kick-ass flutist and kick-ass person? Many things, I suppose, but those are the things I have chosen.
    Photo credit: Maxim Senin