Click Track

 I had an interesting first for myself this week which is worth writing about.  I shall begin with the setting.

Last week, the kids had off from school and we had off from teaching, so we had several glorious uncommitted days in the spacious Oregon home and land of Jared's parents.  We came back Wednesday so that starting Thursday, Jared and I could play the set with Symphony Tacoma.  It was a really fun concert with both the choir and trumpet soloist- an old school chum.  Two works by Brahms, one by Artiunian, and one by Debussy.  

Monday was the back-to-school/back-to-teaching turn around, which I started off with a NOCCO rehearsal, for which I was was somewhat underprepared.  We worked on Mendelssohn's first symphony,  written when he was a likely-not-level-headed 15 year old.  And we worked on a rhythmically difficult but intriguing newish work by Cindy Cox, inspired by a photography exhibition she saw of some of the last wild places on earth.  It was definitely a first rehearsal situation with lots of "sausage making", working out the ensemble issues in changing meters with frequent 7/8, all conductorless.  Cindy was in town for the rehearsal to give us some musical guidance and inspiration.  And as luck had it, my final student of Monday had to reschedule, so I got to watch the last 20 minutes of Laurel's gymnastics class - a rare treat for me.

Tuesday through Thursday is where the click track story comes in.   I had been contracted to play a show with the Seattle Symphony called Elden Ring Symphonic Adventure.   I had not heard of Elden Ring before I was asked, but my eldest kid filled me in.  For those others of you not in the know, it is a role-playing adventure video game, set in the medival/fantasy genre.  There are kings and knights and dragons and elven women and monsters, and lots of battles and fires and ruins and sacrifices and spells, I think.  There was a whole screen play with some voice overs and sound effects and subtitles, divided into 12 separate segments.  This came with a touring conductor, a click track,  and an extra screen for the conductor which had countdowns to different cues and such.  

The violin 2 part was mostly sight readable - pages of tremolo and rests and long notes, interspersed with a few pages of Sevcik op. 3 type music, occasional very fast passages with an unpredictable mix of chromatics, which were basically background noise for the brass and choir, and the occasional really fast 7/4, conducted in an uneven 3 that I sometimes nailed and sometimes did not.  The music in general was either soft and magically atmospheric or it was the intensest moments from Carmina Burana.  It was fine, bit by bit, but overall, it didn't add up to anything.  It was a wandering pastiche, which makes sense given the context.  

The conductor I would better describe as a technology coordinator.  We got no instructions about dynamics, balance, phrasing, articulation, or anything of that nature.  We got lots of instructions about how we would come off of the grand pauses (which were dedicated strictly to cinematics) with a bar of clicks, followed by a second bar of clicks plus his providing the beat pattern.  And information about tempo changes.  The tempo changes were all written in the parts with precise metronome markings, e.g. quarter = 69, quarter =71, eighth = 135.  The marking were that precise, because it was all timed on the click track to match the action on the screen.  Also, sometimes when the music was very peaceful,  his conducting was rather... groovy.  He was low-key dancing to the click track, as opposed to the more traditional method of communicating the moods and gestures he wanted from the orchestra with his hands or facial expressions. 

Each stand had a stand light and a radio-controlled box clipped on.  The box had a radio antenna to connect it to the A/V booth, and it had two long wires with an ear bud and over-ear clip on the end.  The wire got in the way, and the ear bud was an OK fit, but the over-ear clip was a generic size for a person with much larger ears than I possess, so I did have to keep working to keep it attached.  My left ear held the click track, and my right ear held a foam ear plug.  I was sitting directly in front of the horn section, and some of the sound effects that came with the cinematics were... bone rattling.

My stand partner and I were sight reading at the Tuesday rehearsal, because that's where we were both in life.  We got along quite well, and I hope we will get to play together on the same stand again under more inspiring circumstances. 

At the Wednesday night show, I tried to watch the screen behind me, when feasible,  to get a sense of what the show was about.  It ended up being super overstimulating.  For tbe Thursday show, I very studiously looked only at my part, the conductor, the audience, and my fellow musicians, and it was *somewhat* easier to recover from.  The show started at 7:30 and didn't end until after 10:00.  The video game audience was pretty enthusiastic, and the second night, my stand partner and I spotted a group in the second box on the violin side in full costume with prop weapons and all.

Violin

 In the last two days of December I came into the long-term loan of a violin, an incredible gift.  It is owned by a close relative whose aunt and uncle bought it for her long ago. 

The story about the violin maker himself is quite interesting....

Matthew Hardie, of Edinborough, born in the 1700s, learned to make violins somewhere, perhaps London, but that bit of his life seems lost to history.  A well known French violinist, Alday, who had toured extensively with the still-remembered Viotti, found himself living in the British Isles after escaping the French Revolution.   He spent a handful of years in Edinborough, where it appears he hired Hardie to do some repairs on his Stradavarius violin around 1800.  Hardie apparently was quite taken with the instrument and began modeling his own builds after the Strad.  He was made two grades of instruments, as there was a split market for his products.  Better materials for the one, cheaper materials for the other, but both, apparently with the same fine craftsmanship.  The instrument on loan to me was part of his higher grade series, built in 1810.  I have wondered how many lives it has lived and where in its 216 years.

I knew when it was first offered to me that it was objectively a better instrument than the 1930 Paravinci I have been playing on for 26 years. 

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The Parravicini, though,  has become my entire violin personality and closest musical friend in that more-than-quarter of a century.  It is the one who has taught me how to create sound and has shaped my ear to what is possible.  Over the years I have considered replacing it with an upgrade (a formidable task, given the price of the tools of the trade!), yet I could never think too hard about it.  Contemplation felt like the sad and unfair task of replacing a dear friend.  And yet, I have run up against the Parravicini's musical edges many times,  not able to find more color, more clarity, and more sonority in its frame on many occasions....

The first couple of weeks after the package arrived, I alternated violins - the Parravicini feeling familiar, civilized,  and manageable - and the Hardie feeling vast, expanseful, and foreign, like a wild, untamable animal.  It was like trying to drive a very fancy sports car with touchy controls after a lifetime of tooling about in a dependable Ford.  My ears were so accustomed to gaging the reactions of the Parravicini that I didn't know at all what to listen for with the Hardie.

I played the instruments back to back for some family members in the first days, and the resonance and clarity of the Hardie stood out in the room.  One person, who is not himself a musician at all, described the sound of the Hardie as having "a deeper barrel" - very apt.

I knew the Hardie needed a bit of work.  The strings were high, meaning my left hand had to work much harder, and surely if nothing else, it would need a soundpost adjustment as it settled into its new climate and surroundings.   I had that work done in Seattle, while I played the Parravicini exclusively a couple of weeks.  The Hardie came back to me much clearer and easier to play, and ever more voluminous and resonant.

Since then I have been playing exclusively on the Hardie, because I wanted to give myself a good run in learning how to play such a different instrument.   I know there is more in it than I have yet accessed, but I am starting to feel comfortable with it.  I have listened to a recording of myself playing a bit of chamber music on it now, and I heard in my playing more color and nuance than I could hear when I played the same music on the Parravicini. 

I played a concert a week and a half ago (the one with the rats) - my first "professional" outting with the Hardie.  As it was, my standpartner's fiddle was in the shop, and she didn't much care for the loaner she was having to use.  I lent her the Parravinci for the set, and it was so fun to hear someone else playing it next to me.  She sounded quite nice on it.  I am missing the Parravicini a little bit and am thinking that I should set up an instrument rotation like what Jared does.  He has three cellos, and he plays each of them nearly every day to keep them in shape and keep himself learning and flexible. 

Musical Rats

 You might start by reading my story of nearly four years ago titled Calling All Vet Techs...

Tonight in a rehearsal with a small orchestra in a hundred-year-old church, our Boccherini was suddenly interrupted by shrill squeaking.  Two large, dark grey rats appeared on a cornice just below the rafters, apparently having come through a small hole in the wall.  The rat who was being chased fell twelve feet to the floor of the sanctuary, and began running wildly under the pews.  The rat who was doing the chasing scurried back and forth just a bit atop the cornice, then disappeared back into the wall.

All eyes in the now silent orchestra were attempting to track the loose rodent on the floor. One of the musicians, who is used to living in the country, walked toward it to try to chase it away from the rest of us.  The orchestra took to its feet, and some of the more city folk took to standing atop their chairs in panic.  

After a couple of minutes, the young, athletic, and panicked rat in question came dashing towards the orchestra.  The second violins, who were positioned on stage left, evacuated to the first violin side with an unceremonious shrieking stampede, followed shortly by the cello and bass section, who moved with more calm and decorum, as the rat ran up the steps of the platform.  The intrepid country pianist followed our furry neighbor through the door to the common area behind the sanctuary, and shut the door behind it so it would not bother us any further.  

It did reappear in our space from underneath another door with a larger gap when the rehearsal was shrunk at the very end to three players...

I was not remotely phased - see previous story.  I tried to help country pianist corner it to see if we could coax it out an exterior door, but it gave us the slip.