Sebastian Abbott

Da pacem, Domine (or, Dona nobis pacem)
Does God give, or grant, peace? Both ideas were in force this Saturday just gone, when we gave our Bachchor Heidelberg concert Dona Nobis Pacem in the Peterskirche. It was a wonderful, powerful and delicate programme that at times had me struggling to retain control whilst singing. We sang well, the string ensemble was fantastic and the soloists, soprano Johanna Greulich especially, were great, too. When I think back from the first to the last rehearsals and to the concert itself, it was for me a valuable endeavour, which, going from the first emails the choir received, was a meaningful, emotional as well as “enjoyable” event for the audience, too.

Here’s the programme:
- Da pacem (male choir singing the Latin prayer with harp and organ accompaniment, arranged by our conductor Christian Kabitz)
- Da Pacem, Domine by Peteris Vasks
- V_erleih uns Frieden gnädiglich_, by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
- Pie Jesu by Lili Boulanger
- Psalm 22 by Cyrillus Kreek
- Vesper by Ester Mägi
- Gib Frieden, Herr, gib Frieden by Johann Sebastian Bach
- Da Pacem, Domine by Arvo Pärt
- Sanctus & Agnus Dei by Ola Gjeilo
- Prayer to the Mother of God by Hanna Havrylets
- Adonai elohim from the Chichester Psalms by Leonard Bernstein
It had everything I love in music - gritty chords, interesting ideas, shifting tone and strong ideas along with strong ideals and regular resolution into the calm, tranquil, harmonious, and hopeful. I’ll want to remember this concert for a long time to come.
→ 11:02 PM, Mar 3

Some music! Reactiv

I finished a piece of music! It’s as slow as its creation, but the opening section, which I love, has been stable from the start. Just four instruments in total, usually just two playing at a time, 54 bpm, tons of reverb, made in Studio One. It’s called Reactiv, and it’s on Soundcloud

soundcloud.com/halledr/r…

→ 10:26 PM, Dec 21

I did try going to tonight’s rehearsal for the War Requiem, but gave up - it’s simply too loud for my hearing: the Ear (W)Requiem, as it were :-(

→ 8:30 PM, Jul 19

In training

I’m currently in training to play that beast of a trombone solo in Ravel’s Bolero with the Musikfreunde orchestra. It’s not all that long, but it’s very high, and it occurs three times in the piece, plus the even higher bit right at the end. It’s a challenge even for professionals, and pretty daunting for us amateurs.

Our conductor had the decency to ask me if he could add it to this season’s programme, meaning I had time to think and to take up the gauntlet. Since then, I’ve been building up my upper register, practising more frequently than I have in a long time, focussing first on building up my embouchure, and now beginning to get a grip on the music itself.

As Dion Tucker, the jazz trombonist with his YouTube channel, The Chops Shop mentioned in one of his videos, musicians are athletes of the small muscles - and there’s a certain satisfaction in feeling the embouchure muscles firming up and becoming more stable as I continue practising and rehearsing.

→ 10:11 PM, Jun 5

Orchestrated III, choired and tired

Last Friday we played our thankfully final Musikfreunde concert of the season, and on Saturday evening I sang in my first Bachchor concert in an age.

This rapid turnaround between disparate concerts highlighted the contrast in musical depth between the predominantly folk-music based Hungarian-Romanian programme of the Musikfreunde concerts and the deep, varied, admittedly occasionally borderline excessively romantic, though more often incredibly powerful and moving A Sea Symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams, that blowy bellow containing depths and multitudes

At the end of the Sea Symphony concert I felt a warm sense of satisfaction that stemmed from both the largely successful performance and from the music itself, which was in sharp contrast to my distinct lack of any feeling beyond relief that the Musikfreunde concerts were over (even after the first one).

I have to admit that another contrast was apparent: the sheer gulf in quality between the Musikfreunde and the Heidelberg Stadtsorchester was amazing to experience, with their dynamic range from tense pianissimi to overwhelming fortissimi complementing their poise. What really got me, however, was the controlled power of the beautiful, short brass chorale in the 2nd movement, at Section “O” . Its fleetingness was part of its charm (I’m not a great fan of brass bands overall), as was its somehow very British form of pomp and solemn grandeur.

Indeed, the second movement - On The Beach At Night Alone - is my favourite, with its powerfully warm, threatening, quiet introduction matching the contemplation of death, leading to that triumphal recognition of eternity, the universal and salvation.

I am looking forward to the summer break from live music, to give my overloaded ears a rest, hopefully to let the tinnitus recede at least a little - and to get back into my small electronic music and 3D printing projects. More on those soon, I hope…

→ 7:26 PM, Jul 25

Orchestrated II

Last night was the second and final of our Heidelberg concerts, like the night before in the Johannes-Brahms-Saal in the Musikschule. It was at least significantly cooler (though still hot enough to sweat copiously whilst playing), and the air blowers kept running, but I had some concentration and energy issues.

These were no doubt associated with me going directly from a three-hour choir rehearsal to the setup rehearsal and then concert, with only a Bretzel and a few vegetables to keep me going. Healthy eating, perhaps, for someone enjoying a leisurely day in a sun lounger, but for playing… insufficient. I was glad of the availability of “Hungarian” biscuits to get my sugar levels up during the interval.

I mentioned yesterday how I didn’t really get on too well with this semester’s programme. There’s one piece - OK, I’ll name it, the Rhapsodie Romaine by Georges Enescu - that grates more the more I play it, and another - all right, it’s the Verbunkos Suite by Rezsö Kókai - that I don’t play in, but find dull, pointless and repetitive beyond belief to listen to. There are no doubt some aspects of it that make it theoretically interesting, such as a general build up of orchestration as a story becomes more complex… but the piece doesn’t work for me.

It’s this sort of thing that makes me pity and respect the professional concert musician all the more: surviving the repetition of concert after concert playing the same thing, whilst maintaining the control and pride to keep the standards high (no doubt tinged by fear of losing the gig (aka, job)).

My last trombone teacher did say how he envied me being able to play the instrument as a hobby: I could cycle up and down levels of playing as required, whereas he needs to maintain a high standard almost permanently, whatever the temperatures.

→ 10:32 PM, Jul 17

Orchestrated I

Last night I took part in the first of two concerts with the [Musikfreunde Heidelberg](Programme – Musikfreunde Heidelberg (musikfreunde-heidelberg.de)) in the Johannes-Brahms-Saal of the Musikschule in Heidelberg. Our conductor has long maintained a cycle of focussing on a conductor in the winter semester (last winter was Rachmaninov), and a country or a region in the summer: this summer’s theme is Hungarica!, which includes Hungary and Romania, with composers like Bartók, Kolály, Farkas - and lots of dances.

Whilst some of the music (Bartók’s Romanian Dances, with their genuinely cool baselines, especially) is genuinely appealing, I admit I do find a lot of the music rather tiresome, especially with all the repeats! Yes, those are perfect for dances, but for listening and playing, it’s a bit much, and gets a bit samey.

In the overheated concert hall last night (the passive air cooling system broke down, and apparently the technician measured temperatures of 48 °C in the hall), it was sapping. At least the cycle home in the edges of a thunderstorm was refreshing.

Hopefully tonight’s concert will be more bearable: we have another outing next weekend in Bad Rappenau, but I’m at the point now where I’ll be happy to have the concerts behind me, so I can return to my own music as Halledr, at my own pace…

… yes, with repeats.

→ 11:57 AM, Jul 16

OP1-2PO

My second OP1-field track is up on SoundCloud:

soundcloud.com/halledr/o…

Some decent chords, but a bit of a mess in the end. Next one should be cleaner!

→ 9:39 PM, Jun 18

Simply creating, creating simply

Uploaded my first track to SoundCloud in an absolute age: wanting to simplify my music making, and to master a new instrument, the OP-1 Field from Teenage Engineering. Here it is!

on.soundcloud.com/dMEqk

→ 12:16 PM, Jun 11

Danzemos! (and the other, upside-down exclamation mark before it): a rhythmical, lyrical semester of music

This has been an interesting semester of music with the Musikfreunde Heidelberg Symphony Orchesta. When I first came across the programme, my heart sank a little: we were in for a crowd-pleasing semester of cheesy dancy Latin American stuff with minimal musical merit.

Well, it certainly pleased the crowds - and, I am glad to say, it won me over, too.

We played seven pieces in all, ranging from Ravel's contemplative Pavane pour un enfant défunt (a Pavane being a dance), through to the highlight of the evening, Danzon 2 by Arthuro Marquéz, all kicked off by Gershwin's inimitable Cuban Overture.

As you might guess, there was a lot of rhythm to play, with all the precision and control that that implies. It's very easy to think too much about rhythm, but I certainly had to clarify things in my own mind about how long to play a note, how loudly and with which accents - along, of course, with the basic question of when to play each note.

There was a section in Danzon 2, for example, that required the trombones to play syncopated stabs against the trumpet melody. A 4/4 bar was followed by 6/8, then 7/8 and then we had to come in on the first quaver offbeat of the next 4/4 bar. Whilst we certainly needed to figure out what we should be playing (and when), it soon became a question of feeling the rhythm, not counting it - and certainly not thinking about it.

All the while, confidence grew and I worked on improving my openness of sound as the necessary base.

The trombone writing in this programme was all about presence and poise. As I mentioned above, it was about precision accompanied by the ability to give each note, no matter how short, its best. For me, this was another semester of rediscovery of coolness whilst playing. I am slowly learning to relax whilst playing - especially in the throat, which I have always tended to tense up, thereby constricting the flow of air, and wasting energy. The concert was certainly energetic, but I feel I succeeded in playing with a rounder tone than before, and with a more relaxed concentration than I would have achieved in the past.

We had some personnel difficulties within the section, with the second trombone not really fitting in. He's a young guy and could very well learn the lessons that I've been learning myself - but he didn't manage to give the impression that he was aware of any lessons needing to be learned at all. In addition, he missed both rehearsal weekends, without giving any notice to us at all. That was the final straw. Our conductor and I took the decision to ask him not to play - and, despite my own need to try and avoid conflict, our relief at the decision having been taken was palpable.

Once that was cleared up, it was a case of hiring a pro to get us through the concerts - and what a pleasure it was, having him and the student tubist on board (our own tame tubist having had to skip this semester). We organised a sectional rehearsal on the Saturday before our set of concerts, and it was a revelation. Suddenly, we were all in tune, suddenly I felt that the musical messages that the conductor had spent the semester of rehearsals trying to get across, got across - albeit through my imperfect translations. Suddenly, we were a low brass section. Suddenly, it felt great to play in an orchestra again.

As always with the Musikfreunde, the orchestra got tighter and more lyrical over the course of the three concerts. The first was - as usual - a blast, as we hacked our way through most of the repertoire at a school concert, where we had to finish on time so that everybody could get home in time to watch the Germany - Brazil semi-final at the world cup.

The concert in Neustadt an der Weinstraße was better - less raucous, more controlled, but still somewhat overexcited. Finally, the Stadthalle concert went better than I had hoped for. My Mum, who also came along, noted the ultimate praise: nobody around her in the audience could keep still.

We had them dancing, and that's what it was all about.

→ 9:08 PM, Jul 22

Musikfreunde: Russian Romantics without a hint of snow

Another semester of orchestral music has drawn to a close with Saturday night's concert of the Musikfreunde Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra in the Stadthalle. The hall was packed, we played with passion and precision (though not always both at the same time), and the audience was by all accounts happy.

It was an unexpectedly relaxed end to an otherwise hectic term - for me, at least. It was presumably much less relaxing for our principal conductor, who was ill over the last few weeks leading up to the main concert and is still reuperating. He had to limit himself to the concerts (in Gernsbach and Leutershausen as well as the Stadhalle itself), so a couple of final rehearsals were cancelled. With those "pre-concerts" being two weeks before the main one, the final weeks were much less packed than usual. Given that the final result was so good, perhaps the timing was just right to "depressurise" things, keeping us keen and fresh rather than jaded and exhausted.

The pressure built up before term had even started. We had struggled to find trombonists to fill one position, and the term had started badly with various of us not being able to attend rehearsals regularly. I, for example, had taken all the music home with me one week, but didn't attend the following week's rehearsal, when other players turned up. It was all a bit frustrating, especially when our conductor sent a few ratty emails to us, and to me in particular as de facto lead trombonist.

I had skipped last summer's concerts to move house, which turned out to be a welcome break from the hustle and bustle in the build up to the main concerts. With the rather stressful start to this term, I did wonder why I was putting myself through all this.

As term went on and the programme began taking shape, we uncovered some difficulties with integrating the new trombonist, a young student who tended to get overexcited and to pull us out of shape, both in terms of rhythm and tuning. We had to have a few chats - in one sense to remind him that it was he who needed to adapt to us rather than the other way around. I hadn't expected to have to use some middle-management techniques in an orchestral situation, and I was a little nervous prior to asking him aside for a portion of contructive criticism - but he took the event calmly and seemed to understand that he needed to develop. He still has a lot to learn in terms of breathing and body control: sitting next to a someone trying both to play and to nod to the beat was rather distracting, especially as the length of the trombone tends to amplify movement - but all of that can come with time.

The music itself was a very appealing mix of humour, drama, pathos and grandeur. As a result of some difficulties in ordering music from Russia (we had planned to play Khatchaturian's Triumphal Poem, but the publisher failed to collect a full orchestra's worth of notes, it had been so seldom played), we resorted to one piece that I had played with the Musikfreunde a few years previously, Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead, which I have grown to love as a piece. Its depth and the sheer skill in its composition completely knocked any anti-romantic snobbery in me.

I had never come across Glasunov before, and his 2nd Symphony was an enjoyable blast. It felt almost simple at first, but that simplicity hid a playful inventiveness that made this work much more than (for me) an unknown oddity played more for its rarity than any intrinsic value - no, it paid its way musically, too!

So, this term was one to remember as a learning as well as a musical experience. The weather was rather less memorable - Russian Romantics in the rain.

The weather in Heidelberg around concert time

→ 5:43 AM, Feb 17

Random Ambivalent Listenings

The “Albums of the Year” articles are trickling in, including this one from the Guardian on Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories. In it, there’s a wonderful quote that really hits the mark on how I feel about the album - originally from Sasha Frere-Jones in the NYT:

“The duo has become so good at making records that I replay parts of Random Access Memories repeatedly while simultaneously thinking it is some of the worst music I’ve ever heard … This record raises a radical question: does good music need to be good?"

This hits home on the interplay between composition and production / performance, a wonderfully delicate balance. Of course, a terrible performance can wreck even the best composition - but for me, it’s better to find nuggets of a great composition in the rubble of a poor performance than to be able to appreciate an amazing performance of dross.

André Rieu and Daft Punk on the same side of the spectrum? Harsh, but one to think about.

→ 11:15 PM, Dec 18

Looking at things to listen to

Timing in music, comedy and writing is of the essence, so it is ironic that I should appear to be posting this in such a timely fashion after the announcement that a team has managed to reconstruct the sound from the wax disc that recorded Alexander Graham Bell's voice from 1885. All of a sudden, I have a relevant segué to present my old news in a new, refreshed light.

Over the Easter holidays, oh so long ago now, but at least this year still, we managed to park the children with the Großeltern for a happy few hours and to drive to the wholly unremarkable Black Forest town of St. Georgen near Villingen.

The town is, sorry to say, not much to look at. But it was the centre of two key industries as they rose and fell in waves; clock making, and record players. I'm not that much of a watch connoisseur, but I have always enjoyed audio and hifi, so when I saw the signs for the Deutsches Phonographisches Museum in St. Georgen, it was always going to be a place to visit.

The famous Dual logo (from Wikipedia)

Perhaps the most famous brand to come out of the St. Georgen is Dual, with their wonderfully stark logo and great record players. The name stems from their technique of combining a clock-maker's spring (from which the company sprang) with an electric motor, creating their signature dual motor system (I suppose we would call it a hybrid these days). Dual and its related competitor, Perpetuum Ebner, were the hight of hifi for several decades, but neither survived the switch to CDs. Dual tried a spot of badge-engineering via Rotel - but that's rarely a forward thinking strategy and, after a rather demeaning round of sales to ever less relevant groups, they folded.

A couple of ex-employees got together and put together a German phonographic museum in the St. Georgen town hall. It's a pleasant, light space on two floors, full of a record players from the very beginnings in the USA and France (Edison and Pathé), via the dominance of the German and Dutch manufacturers and through to the demise of Dual. Whilst the collection is ordered chronologically, we still felt that there was a lack of a "story" behind the industry. What helped its massive expansion, how it withered on the branch here in Germany and - for me, notably - how it continues to this day. There was no mention of current high-end record player production from the likes of Linn or Pro-Ject, and there was only a passing mention of new music formats (with no sign of an iPod at all).

The strangest thing for me from the collection was the sound. The main hall, with reception, is also the location of a small stage where a video of how records and music developed. This then booms across the whole collection, which I found rather distracting. Secondly, there was also a random selection of old LPs and singles with some rickety looking turntables - but no instructions as to whether playing them was permitted or not. We had the possibility of paying 1 Euro to watch a 1980s high-end turntable play and to spin around in its gyroscopic gimbal, but by that stage I didn't feel like I really wanted to.

What I wanted was something like an audio room, where we could hear how the old horn record players sounded, how a 1970's Dual turntable with the amplifiers of the day sounded, and how a modern system might sound. After all, that's what they were built for.

I fully understand the difficulties surrounding that - how to organise and to protect such systems from the grasping public - but perhaps the old chestnut of a bank of good quality headphones would be a start. (Update: I see from their website that they're holding a record playing evening on 11th May 2013. I'm not sure I can go, but it's exactly what I'd love to see - and to hear!)

I'd love to go back again in a few years, to see how and if they develop the collection. In the meantime, here are a few more smartphone photos for you to peruse whilst I try not to buy myself a Pro-Ject Debut Carbon...

→ 3:35 PM, Apr 28

Bruckner's Marvellous Eighth

In the spirit of catching up on some drafts, I felt I had to get this one out sooner rather than even later. The impressions left upon me by Bruckner's Eighth Symphony, though very much attenuated by time, still resonate, amplified a little by completing this post - which is, of course, one of the key points of a blog.

It was on the 22nd May 2012 that we left our daughters in the capable hands of Oma and Opa and cycled down to the Stadthalle in the warm evening sunshine to (watch? Hear?) experience the symphony played by the Heidelberg Philharmoniker under the baton (and hair) of Cornelius Meister in his final series of concerts before leaving for the richer delights of Vienna.

The symphony is an enormous, programme-filling late romantic beast of a piece, very much on the cusp of a new era. Written between 1884 and 1887, when Mahler was hitting his stride and starting to redefine symphonic performance, with Stockhausen and his ilk were not far behind, it feels like the final roar of a romantic classical alpha-stag. It uses many idioms that are well known in Romantic music, all of which I find unbearably cheesy: I was ready to despise the piece, yet, one or two slight excesses aside, it all made wonderful sense, like a language newly understood (now, in November, barely remembered).

The ninety minutes of symphony went by without the faintest hint of impatience stirring within me. The drama and the pathos felt sincere rather than overblown and only the repeats in the third (slow) movement were noticeable as musical devices rather than being in my mind integral to the narrative arc. And yes, Bruckner could write for brass (as well as for toffee).

The concert, while of course being about the music, was almost principally about the conductor. It was his final hurrah with the orchestra in Heidelberg and a bold choice from an aptly arrogant young conducting talent. Much can be said of Meister's fluid conducting style, which I at times found rather distracting, but he did achieve a very strong sound from the orchestra. This can't be put down solely to the brass section, which carried so much weight both musically and physically, adding such warmth and power to the palette: the whole mix was very convincing and felt utterly appropriate for the music being performed. My only critique of the performance was that I too often felt a lack of pulse, a slight unsteadiness with the beat. From the audience, I found it hard to discern a beat, it has to be said.

But those were the most minor of quibbles pitted against an overwhelmingly excellent evening of music. We left the concert hall impressed, filled with a renewed love for symphonic music - and ready for sharing a bottle of wine with the Großeltern back home rather than finding a noisy bar somewhere.

As an aside, I spoke with the cor anglais player in my own orchestra a few days after that performance. She is married to one of the oboists in the Heidelberger Philharmoniker and told me how he would get back home after each of the three concerts and simply slump exhausted onto the couch. The symphony is certainly extremely taxing physically - but I can imagine those players having invested significant amounts of emotional energy into the performances, too.

As a final aside; in perhaps a rather unfair comparison with my own orchestra, it was wonderful to be able to listen to the string section without any sense of unease, expectation of disaster or simply dread... Long may professional orchestras continue!

I am grateful for having had and taken the opportunity to experience (yes!) that piece live and look forward to living music more often. (Are you listening, kids?)

Ah, no. Not yet.

→ 10:20 PM, Nov 9

The Musikfreunde and me: Ravel, Grieg and co keep us together

It’s the end of another series of concerts with the Musikfreunde Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra; one I was very close to skipping entirely. At the end of the previous concert, I’d had enough of orchestra for a while, and overall I was feeling uncomfortably stretched. Orchestra had become another stress raiser rather than reliever and I needed to give myself some breathing space for other things in life (like composing, biking and “just” family, for example). In the end (of the beginning of term), a lack of alternative trombonists meant that I stuck with MFH for this programme, too.

Through house searches, potential job offers, overloaded drudgery at work and general family life, I managed to attend most rehearsals - and the three concerts this semester made it all worthwhile.

We played in the Neubausaal in Schwäbisch Hall, then at a school concert in the Gymnasium in Neckargemünd and finally in our standard main venue, the Stadthalle in Heidelberg. There was something about the programme, especially the Ravel and the Grieg that reminded me of the joy to be found in music.

The Grieg in particular is too easy to dismiss as one of the standards these days (and, judging by the audience in the Stadthalle on Saturday evening, it can still pull the crowds). However, it’s still simply wonderful music to be part of and, at the hands of a decent pianist, as we had in Randolf Stöck, it has everything: lyricism and a positive dynamism that are hard to match. Ravel’s La Valse is witty and very difficult to pull off for an amateur orchestra - I think we did a decent job of it.

It was also rewarding for me personally to get to a relatively decent playing quality again. I didn’t feel too outgunned by the hired hand, a trombone student from the Mannheim Musikhochschule, who helped out on bass. As always, the psychology of performing is tricky to master: everybody’s pumped up and tends to play on the edge in terms of volume, losing control in the process. I certainly fall into that trap, but I am at least becoming more aware of it. As always, though, “negative” corrections are difficult: if only one person plays more quietly, he’ll still be swamped by the mass, whereas if one plays more loudly, he’ll stand out and can pull the orchestra along with him. It’s something our principal conductor, René Schuh tries to remind us of each time - we still forget.

So, we’ll see if I end up taking a break for the winter semester instead (it’s more conducive to evenings in, anyway). There’s plenty of time to decide upon that, however, with rehearsals starting again in October. In the meantime, hopefully I’ll get some duet or trio playing in, to keep the trombone chops in half-way respectable working order…

→ 12:41 PM, Jul 16

Mixing the senses

There was an article in the Economist this week that strongly resonated with me. It concerned the "condition" of synaethsesia, whereby the signal from one sense is interpreted by another. The most famous example is that of seeing sound in colours. The Economist article reported a study into how people link taste with sound.

This is something that I have long experienced. Whilst I could never claim to be a good taster, whenever I try to describe a taste, it is usually in terms of a graphic equaliser or in the choir voices - soprano, alto, tenor, bass. The research described in the Economist article ascribes particular taste sensations to types of musical sound - bitterness with the higher strings (I can agree with that on so many levels!), vanilla was most associated with the woodwinds - and brass? Well, they got musk, which I don't fully understand.

Photo from Thara M Flickr page, Creative commons license

Not only that, it worked the other way around too, in that sounds could affect the way people tasted things. They ran the experiment of people eating toffee with varying high or low pitched music playing in the background. Indeed, that led to different descriptions of the taste, even though it was always the same toffee variety in all cases.

I cannot claim that there is any direct link betwen their findings and my own experiences, but it was a great feeling to see it all confirmed in print. I spoke about it with my wife that evening and found her questions personally enlightening. I had always felt that I had a very poor taste memory. I can't even imagine a Chardonnay wine "taste". Yet when she asked me about how I would describe various foods (or drink, especially this Madog's Ale I had recently) directly in terms of sound, I found it astoundingly easy to recall them (apart from water).

So for 2012 I will try to be more active in "saving" my impressions in those terms. In particular I want to see if I can recall the wines that we'll be drinking this year, or at least the archetypes. Let's see / taste / hear how I get on...

→ 11:43 PM, Feb 6

The wonderful world of the PPAP

There is an intriguing little phrase I came across in a trombone technique book that hovers in a limbo between right and wrong: "It's not what you play but how you play it"

There is a lot to be said for giving your best at all times, no matter what music you have been asked to play. It is a matter of pride, of professionalism, of maturity - of character, too. I can certainly say that I gave my best to (and received a lot back from) playing in a Shropshire brass band, even though I really do not like much of the music we played.

However, one cannot really be expected to be able to find one's best when playing the wrong sort of music for you. The talent isn't there, the fluency goes, the "Selbstverständlichkeit" is lost. Asking a striker to play in defence can work, but, if it goes on for too long, his motivation will drop to the extent that he becomes a liability, or he will ask to leave the team.

And so I come to PPAPs. PPAPs are the scourge of the auto industry, a chain of disinterest ending in a dark pool of valuelessness. Nominally, it is an acronym; Production Parts Approval Process. Its meaning and raison d'être lies in ensuring that each and every part that goes onto a car is tested, approved and well managed. A noble pursuit, naturally - and of course impossible to argue against. Even when every single type of screw in a vehicle has a 20 MByte PPAP file associated with it. Each car has around 30000 parts, maybe 10000 unique part numbers; so perhaps each model of car has a 200 GByte file associated with it that nobody uses. (Except when something goes wrong and the lawyers start crawling around, which is the reason for the whole PPAP escalation)

So when I was working on managing fittings for my company, and PPAPs were a major part of this, I swiftly found myself playing the wrong sort of music. Each and every PPAP had to be exhaustively inspected; are test results all present and complete (usually not); all dimensions understood and properly measured (ditto); control plans, process flow plans, material data sheets all present...? It was very rare for a PPAP to be completed in a single sitting, so I ended up with a backlog of semi-complete, interim-approved files awaiting further information from their suppliers (who were sometimes less keen than me on getting things done properly). It was - and is - a never-ending controlling position in a company; one that requires a Kafkaesque, bureaucratic mind, a mind I categorically do not possess.

Alas, those that do possess such minds, and (is that 'and' necessary?) the lawyers, also own the process, so that it has embedded itself deeply into its own work groove; a record that only a small clique would find cool. Similarly a shame, the process does not seem to be enough of a financial burden on each and every supplier in the industry for there to be a concerted effort to remove it, or at least streamline it.

Every industry has its administrative and proofing methods, but few outside of the medical industry seem as fat as the auto industry's. If you're the type of person who enjoys being the controller, or can simply accept such a role, then fine. If you're not - then avoid at all costs; PPAPs and their ilk will ruin your day, every day.

→ 9:57 PM, Oct 3

Repetition

Music purists will tell you that electronic notation in general, and copy-paste in particular, is the scourge of music. Hit the Cntrl-C / Cntrl-V combinations (or their Mac equivalents) and you’ve increased the length of your piece at no extra cost. Most people would probably want to hear that riff again, anyway.

Composers of old didn’t have software to facilitate it, so perhaps they had to invest more thought into repetition; but they could equally well pencil in the double bar lines with bracketed ends, likewise at little cost and to the same effect: play that bit again (I think it’s cool).

Everybody has done it, from Bach (whatever his variant of ‘cool’ was) to Burt Bacharach. Used by master and novice alike, repetition is not necessarily a reflection of competence; indeed, repetition is a nearly inescapable component of music. Like most of music, though, it is incredibly difficult to do right and at the right time.

Context is a key component in any decision to utilise repetition: a Scottish reel is impossibly dull to listen to, but dancing to a symphony never made it big as a pastime. A listener’s mood is the other component. Some evenings I can listen to Underworld in their pomp (Second Toughest in the Infants) and really delve into their soundscapes, enjoying the timelessness of each piece. At other times, I’m scrambling for alternatives within seconds.

There are some very frustrating examples of repetition. The album “Rhythm” from Like Vibert has some great and rather inventive riffs that break the mould in terms of electronic / dance music. But he overuses them each and every time. Most annoying for me is his use of the frog trombones sample from the The Mole / Der kleine Maulwurf / Krteček in the episode with the transistor radio. This is a brilliant little effect that deserves many listens… But… 15 times in one piece is both excessive and leads to depreciation. The album is strewn with excessive repetitions.

I cannot do repetition. When creating my electronic pieces, copy-paste is the foundation of their construction. However, I quickly feel the need for development - however small - in order to maintain my own interest; variations on a theme. I also tend to generate larger leaps in each piece that then try to find their way back home.

There is always an element of musical development (exposition - transition - development - retransition - recapitulation) in my pieces, even as I stray from whatever theory or initial idea I had during the actual creation process.

Electronic notation opens up composing to dilettantes like me who cannot quite envision or 'hear' the music that they want to create before it is played. This is a great thing for hobbyists the world over. Whilst it may open up the composing game to a greater number of players, the sheer fact and necessity of quality rising to the top still applies. Let me and my ilk paddle about in our pools; let's see which great monsters of composition today inhabit the oceans now.

→ 10:24 PM, Aug 2

Learning to love Dvorak in Heidelberg

I play trombone with the Musikfreunde Symphony orchestra in Heidelberg. We rehearse and perform along the university semester cycle, which leads to some intense periods of music; a welcome insight into the world of the musician, without having to be one.

This semester we have been working on Dvorak's 9th Symphony, "From the New World", alongside Mussorgsky's "Night on Bare Mountain" and Bruch's Violin Concerto (no use putting any numbers there; he doesn't seem to have written anything else worth performing). We recently had a rehearsal weekend, immersing ourselves in music, and our first two concerts, successfully dispatched in Langenselbold (no, I had no idea, either) and Freiburg. Tomorrow night is our final, crowning concert in the Heidelberg Stadthalle.

I want to write a little bit about the Dvorak. For me, it's easy to dismiss - it's popular, for a start, which always makes me suspicious - and even as I tried to disregard its popularity, the piece never seemed to have anything of interest to say to me. It has its famous tunes and that's it; a pretty face with not much behind it. However, sitting at the back of the orchestra alongside the other trombonists and the poor tuba (who only has 14 notes to play in the whole piece), I have been learning to appreciate the piece, certainly to admire it, possibly, at times, conditionally, to love it.

That word 'learning' implies a process and indeed it took a while for me to feel at all involved in the piece during rehearsals, even though there's enough for the trombones to play (except in the third movement, where the trombones are inexplicably tacet - perhaps Anton didn't trust us to be sufficiently fleet of foot; or perhaps he simply didn't trust us to successfully find all of those repeats).

How could I not be involved in a piece that I am playing? It's a good question and the answer has two components - the physical / technical aspect of playing, and the emotional.

Physically, of course I was involved. There are several themes that the trombones play and - more difficult - lots of stabs to hit successfully. I was working on my technique, getting the breathing right, tweaking the tuning, trying to listen in to my colleagues to make sure we were playing as a section. Oh - and of course trying to play the right notes most of the time.

Through all of this, I didn't really have time to experience the piece. It had some tunes and some trombones.

Emotionally, we didn't connect for a long time, the piece and I. Maybe it was the overall lack of dissonance in the overall outlook, the almost saccharine positivity in the piece that discouraged me from investigating further. I certainly identified more strongly with the Kabalewsky and the Roussel that we played in previous winter concerts. Whilst the Dvorak certainly contains many little clashing details embedded throughout the piece to give it that certain frisson every piece of music needs, the overall impression was of musical platitudes that have become somewhat cliched.

Historically, Dvorak wrote the piece during a three year long sojourn in America (1892-1895), where he encountered and revelled in its musical and natural diversity. He was inspired to write a classical symphony that whilst not specifically including American elements, certainly painted a picture of a voyage, wide open plains, dance and returns to source. There is a human element in there that is American-tinged, leading to the critics' and theorists discussions about the nature of the songs - American or slavic.

Dvorak himself denied the presence of any American idiom in the piece, but I feel it does bubble forth with a visitor's joie de vivre. The perennial problem with incorporating traditional songs of whichever background is that those songs were meant to be sung, those rhythms danced to, not stuffed into a symphonic wad of cotton.

The significance of Dvorak's sojourn in New York stems from his assertion that the Americans should really develop their own classical language. The Americans we're hungry for confirmation of their place in the world, Europeans were thirsty for impressions of this New World, so its success was guaranteed and justified.

So - after that slight interlude, how did I begin to appreciate the piece? The interesting devil is in the details. Burrow underneath the tunes and you will find so much activity going on behind the scenes. The scherzo third movement in particular has so much going on. There are rhythms that rejoice in syncopation, there are for me unfathomable chords (the shimmering echoes between strings and woodwind are wonderful), there is a spark of excitement that is not lost in the repeats. It was in not playing that I could 'shut up and listen'.

As with people, so with music; give yourself some time to get beyond the superficial and you will find much to admire. Such listening is hard work, and requires practice. I currently do not listen to nearly enough classical music, mostly, I suspect, because I do not train myself to do so, nor grant myself the time to do so. Time to try again, I think!

So - do I really love the Dvorak? Actually, no. But I can admire it and that's a step foreward.

ps, boredom in music is of course not an uncommon problem, but the reasons behind what makes a piece dull are still remarkably difficult to describe.

→ 1:00 PM, Jul 8

I wish...(trombone version)

I wish...

somebody had taught me how to breath much earlier; how important the body is to playing; that the lips are the gateway to the trombone, but that the work is done much earlier; how important the mind is to playing; how important relaxation is to playing; that the instrument should be brought up to my posture, not the other way around.

These things I now realise and know intellectually, but they are not innate.

Does it matter? Well, I am where I am with orchestra, and I don't necessarily need to be at a higher level... But I do dream of it sometimes. We can all dream.

→ 3:21 PM, Jun 2