Master Class- Maria Joao-Pires

[N E Y]

This is one of the few transcendent classical pianists..a legend spanning now two centuries.......

She is showing much of the exact stuff I write about on my articles and a part of what I do on workshops and my own masterclasses...no difference . This is not just for the "advanced" it applies to "Wild Thing" as much as to Mozart. Watch many times.... and then go make some music!





http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... t44_q73SGs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu1aWSCM ... re=related





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[chefrusso]

These videos are very inspirational Ney and get to the heart of the matter. I think we as students become so obsessed with looking at time as a specific measurement, that we need to be shown that time is actually a space. It is a three-dimensional room to fill with our musical ideas, or even like a river or stream making its way back to the ocean, not a linear construct that we have boxed it into. Rather than looking at notes as having a specific duration that start and end at specific intervals, you should instead feel the space that these notes occupy as they meander from one to another. Otherwise, your guitar playing loses its soul and sounds more like a nickelodeon than an actual emotional communication, like it should. If you can't feel the music, you're doing something wrong!

[N E Y]

Yes, Christian,

It can be boiled down to art and no to formulas. For example in rock , jazz, boss nova , merengue ,flamenco , rumba.....You cannot play out of time (dragging or speeding inconsistently etc) But within that basic demand one has to phrase rhythmically while staying in time. That is part of the identity of each style.

In this type of classical repertoire the time feel is not as steadily delineated, but it IS there and has to be felt. Random time won't cut it. Affected rubato won't cut it. One is forced to go within and meet the music and then if it all goes well one realizes that one IS music itself and then one plays it or lets it play itself through oneself.. One absolutely cannot stay in the safety of the intellect's playpen. One cannot be a cynical spiritual coward or smugly noncommittal technocrat.

As long as there is the belief of separation between music and player . That player is not an artist and his playing is in reality worthless as a musical experience, even if all his notes are impeccably articulated and his time is metronomically matched to the manuscript. And the listener knows it because in this case he /she feels nothing in the presence of this pseudo music.

That is one of the reasons why so few are artists. Because very few people are ready to even begin to consider the reality that there is no difference between music and themselves at all, and that music is a very real part of them, not something they do , but something they ARE.





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[Stan]

I tend to think of chords in terms of moods/emotions. Majors are "happy", minors are "sad", 7s are "bluesy"... Some are "hopeful"... some are "giving up"... For the most part I do it because I don't know what they are called (I cannot name or identify a chord outside of Minors / Majors / 7s).

The net effect is - when I freeplay I try to go with sort of where the tune should emotionally go next... Dunno if explain myself well enough there...

[N E Y]

.


While Albert Einstein's special relativity theory perstulates that it is impossible to travel past the speed of light, it has been proved already to be incorrect, in absolute terms , but it still holds true in contextextualised terms, just like Newtonian physics are incorrect in absolute terns but quite correct in their operative context.

So it is with chord impressions or harmonic effect. A minor chord will seem very cheerful if played after a series of very dissonant tritones and note clusters.

Go to your piano and play a major scale as a cluster (all notes at the same time) an then play a minor triad.......

Additionally you will have noticed that the other wise quite sensualist major scale ( ionian mode) sounds like a massive noise if played all a once. It will make any sybaritic glutton vomit his feast immediately at the table right into in the dismayed hostess's décolleté


All this points to the relativistic nature of music theory and to it's ultimately quantum-like nature.

Nevertheless it is quite effective and a helpful organizer (vide: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) at the fundamental levels.

A relatively inexperienced musician thinks of music only in terms of emotion and emoting.

An experienced musician thinks of music in terms of emotion , physical motion ( rhythm) and philosophically descriptive content as well a impressionistic content.

A master musician thinks of music in terms of all of the above and additionally : everything that exists in all dimensions of being culminating in the direct experience of all that exists and all that does not exist and can be experienced including oneself.

The last stage frightens most people to death and they drop guitar or whatever instrument and run away for good! because of the fear of the unknown factor that will paralyze all except those who truly love music. However one does not have to leave the first stage to play guitar and feel awesome! The experience will be incomplete but still very pleasing and fun.

But in reality the last stage is like swimming...it looks terrifying but it is easy to be part of the ocean of music once the fear is let go. Like wise outer space is an ocean with all the galaxies floating around. If one "gets real and gets with the program" one can keep oneself aligned with whatever reality is at hand and live in it quite well when immersed in it. Just like a dream is real when one dreams and not when one is awake.

If one is not very intelligent, or perhaps if intellectually fragile, one will get swept away and become insane or deluded . Hence the function of the intellect to organize multiple realities and contexts. An unintelligent human being cannot go very far in that respect and cannot comprehend art past a certain level of complexity.

The good news is that intelligence can be cultivated to the point of development of a higher intelligence. Upon doing so one is able to appreciate more an more the many artistic manifestations,wheter structurally simple or structurally complex or intricate.

I mention these basics, because the study of music, art and science without this awareness is just a comical carnival of fools and a personal embarrassment for all concerned






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[chefrusso]

It can be boiled down to art and no to formulas. For example in rock , jazz, boss nova , merengue ,flamenco , rumba.....You cannot play out of time (dragging or speeding inconsistently etc) But within that basic demand one has to phrase rhythmically while staying in time. That is part of the identity of each style.

Totally true Ney, and I didn't mean that you can completely ignore time and rhythm, but I also think you can't be so concerned with it that you lose your connection to the music. It's like she said to have a "less organized" approach to the music, and what you suggested for me to consider with my performance of Stairway. It's like anything else - too organized and your music sounds mechanical, too un-organized and your music sounds disjointed and chaotic. As musicians and especially as apprentices (which is where I find myself at the moment) it is our job to find out where that space is exactly.

It's like the example of the first pianist in the video. His technical prowess of the instrument was excellent. He could play all the notes in time and with great ability, except his music sounded disconnected and lifeless. Once he started to find that space and really connect to the music, you could not only hear it, you could feel the tension and sorrow of the piece he was playing. I was most impressed with the French speaking girl who played later on and listening to her play actually made me feel sad. It was as if she was so deeply connected to the music that I was drawn right in there with her.

Of course, you have given me much to contemplate for the next stage in my journey on guitar with these videos and your responses, so I'll just keep digging deeper in my understandings!

[N E Y]

Yes Christian,

It is a perennial growth process that flows throughout our awareness like a river all our lives. I know that once one opens oneself to it one will be educated by music itself and by those who have come to embody music .


I also have noticed that the central act of listening is often not present in musicians. In reality they are merely hearing pitches and time at a superficial level of cognition, just enough to supervise clarity of execution .

They forsake listening in favor of focussing intently on tactile sensualism and energetic action, as in sports. At this level of awareness only the sensual pleasure of a great technique as it were ( meaning the physical bliss of effortless facility ) is allowed to distract the player from listening to the music. The craving for physical energy releases using music as an agent also distracts so many performers from focussing on embodying music itself. Music is very effectively ignored in these particular scenarios.

The artist will experience all of the above as parts of the process of musical embodiment. He will not simply stop at the physical experience levels, even as he experiences them fully.




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[alcoyot]

[i].
A master musician thinks of music in terms of all of the above and additionally : everything that exists in all dimensions of being culminating in the direct experience of all that exists and all that does not exist and can be experienced including oneself.

The last stage frightens most people to death and they drop guitar or whatever instrument and run away for good! because of the fear of the unknown factor that will paralyze all except those who truly love music. However one does not have to leave the first stage to play guitar and feel awesome! The experience will be incomplete but still very pleasing and fun.

But in reality the last stage is like swimming...it looks terrifying but it is easy to be part of the ocean of music once the fear is let go. Like wise outer space is an ocean with all the galaxies floating around. If one "gets real and gets with the program" one can keep oneself aligned with whatever reality is at hand and live in it quite well when immersed in it. Just like a dream is real when one dreams and not when one is awake.

I have experienced this or something similar a few times I think, and it is possibly the major reason I'm hooked. Its very hard to put it into words, but that is an truly amazing description! An amazing quote as usual, thank you Ney! I read something super similar to what you just wrote in an old science fiction novel, unfortunately I can't find the book or I'd share that quote. What I've found when I did experience that was that it was interrupted by "ego thoughts" like for example.
1. Uh oh, I hope the audience liked that song lyric/chord/note
2. I wonder how I look on stage right now.

Yeah so that's definitely a challenge when playing live. I'd say the one thing in relation to that experience is that I've accepted the fact that there will always be higher levels of playing that I'm not even conscious of yet.
Another kind of abstract description that came to mind is sending a message to the audience in a way that is far more genuine than if I were to just have a regular conversation with them. In other words the message being sent is the very stripped down essence of both the music and myself.

Compared to musical expression or communication, talking just often feels like parroting a bunch of repeated cliches and mannerisms learned from our western culture. Maybe that's why all the serenading ladies men from the past who would play outside the noblewoman's balcony were so successful.