fiddlerpianist wrote:
ToughDiamond wrote:
have a hard time knowing how good I am.....audiences and individuals don't often give accurate feedback, though often folks approach me to say they liked my stuff, which can't all be sycophantic drivel.
I make the music that I do primarily for myself. If there are people out there who like what I'm doing, then that means that I'm good enough for them.
I honestly don't care (or even know how to begin accounting for) how good I am on a broad perspective. In fact, I think the whole question is invalid. It all depends on what you value.
Classical music has a tendency to value intonation first, technique second, and artistry third. That is, however, definitely not a universal standard. There are fiddle masters out there who are exceptional musicians, yet those who would apply the classical version of "good" to their playing would run screaming (i.e., they can't get past less-than-perfect intonation). In some fiddle traditions, in fact, if you play in "perfect" intonation (from a classical music perspective), you are actually playing the tune with less aptitude.
To put this into a little context... I recently had a huge spat with a relatively famous violin player over the internet. At every turn, he threw his credentials in my face (that he had played for multiple presidents, that all kinds of well-respected musicians thought he was the best violinist in the world) and that, conversely, I had neither talent nor musical career to judge what he was doing. What a thing to say about someone you've never heard nor met! His arguments proceeded to get even worse and more ridiculous, and I actually had to block him from contacting me.
The thing with intonation is that if your intonation is too far off, nobody wants to listen to you! I briefly taught violin for a while (I'm a clarinetist but taught violin because there was no one around at the time willing to do it) and I was always scared to death because of the difficulties of perfect intonation on violin opposed to a keyed or woodwind instrument. What really made me feel much better about it was that my last violin student before I stopped teaching it was just starting to develop a good ear for the instrument.
"Perfect" intonation on clarinet is a little bit easier than violin because you can "voice" harmonics more easily in the upper registers. It has taken me SEVERAL years, even after grad school, to really just start to get it, but it has inhibited neither my aptitude nor my technique. I can't make the same claim for my violin-playing because the fingers must be placed PRECISELY for the first note. But it's easy to tell classical violinists apart between those who have had the years of professional experience and those who don't (poor intonation). I'd much rather hear someone with good intonation and knows how to use the bow correctly for beauty of tone, all at the expense of florid technique, than someone who can play a lot of rapid scales and arpeggios at the expense of playing long notes off-pitch.
I once taught a band class that only had 9 players. When I took that group to concert festival, I got very positive remarks on intonation (I'd written some transcriptions of Chopin and Schumann). I can't count the hours we spent practicing Bach chorales and chord progressions, not to mention finding the occasional alternate fingering, to pull that off. Intonation isn't something you really worry about with large ensembles. But 9? We got superior ratings for making something that people WANT to hear. Play fast and you'll impress a lot of people, sure. But for slow, chordal, lyrical passages? People are going to know instantly if intonation is less than spot on--the fewer performers, the worse it is--and that's not how you want to represent yourself or your small ensemble.
Contests and ratings festivals are GREAT if they're the kind that gives feedback. Even though I don't do the whole band thing anymore, I still rely on any kind of professional feedback I can get if I do public performances.
07 May 2010, 10:03 am
