YouTube Symphony Orchestra Project

A recent article by Daniel J. Wakin in the New York Times, "Getting to Carnegie via YouTube," describes a creative way in which orchestra musicians can collaborate with others through cyberspace.  Performers can upload a video audition to YouTube where a panel of musician-judges from orchestras such as the London Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, and the Berlin Philharmonic, along with YouTube viewers, will vote to select a group of finalists.  The process has been compared to an "American Idol"-type format.  The finalists will be flown to New York City where they will become an orchestra for a Carnegie Hall performance conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas of the San Francisco Symphony.  Google will cover all of the expenses and make arrangements for travel to New York for the winners.

Why create a YouTube Symphony Orchestra? Google hopes to expand business by attracting new viewers who might not ordinarily find YouTube fare particularly appealing.  It is hoped that more advertisers will jump on board with YouTube, drawing in additional revenue.  The voting process is hoped to increase "traffic" on the site.  Michael Tilson Thomas and composer Tan Dun (whose work will be performed by the orchestra) are excited about the project.  They feel that it will bring attention to classical music through modernizing the ways in which people experience it.  They also hope to give an opportunity to musicians all over the world who might not otherwise have the means to be heard, especially in a traditional orchestra audition.

Musicians will find the audition selections through YouTube.  In addition to standard orchestral audition repertoire, one of the excerpts will by a piece by Tan Dun, who offers several videos with suggestions for performance of his work.  Dun describes his piece as something modern that he feels will appeal to young people.  Masterclasses by professional musicians providing tips on performing Dun's music will also be available.

The YouTube Symphony Orchestra Project sounds like an interesting way to make classical music more appealing to people who might not ordinarily attend a concert in a traditional concert hall.  YouTube is a particularly attractive forum for younger viewers who are accustomed to an increasingly technological age.  Classical music is often viewed as elitist - a silent audience sits in a dark auditorium while tuxedo-clad musicians elevated on stage perform in an ambiance of serious decorum.  It is an experience probably distant from the real lives people have outside the concert hall.  In non-classical concerts and informal music-making, audience members are free to react spontaneously throughout the performance, often cheering and clapping.  There is a level of communication between audience and performers that may be less visible in the restrained classical environment where applause is reserved for the end of the piece being performed.  The YouTube Symphony Orchestra Project draws in the world-wide public to view and vote from their own homes, thus personalizing the experience.

From the musician's perspective, having masterclasses and audition materials on the internet is both educational and useful.  Being able to upload one's own video may entice those whose performance anxiety would be crippling in a face-to-face audition situation.  The judges are professionals who can give helpful feedback to the applicants (hopefully in a constructive, positive manner that can be lacking in the sometimes cruel comments on "American Idol").  Professional orchestras are often concerned these days about aging audiences and waning ticket sales.  There is no room for elitism if younger viewers are to become the audience of the future.  Classical music can keep pace with the times if it is presented through new and creative technological media.  The YouTube Symphony Orchestra project sounds like a unique idea, and I think it will be interesting to see how it all rolls out.

www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/arts/music/02orch.html

www.youtube.com/symphony

Masterclasses for String Players at www.violinmasterclass.com

How many young musicians have had the opportunity to take a masterclass with a world-class violinist?  Of the thousands of students who learn to play string instruments, the number is undoubtably quite small.  Thanks to a great website, www.violinmasterclass.com, anyone with a computer and internet access can take advantage of the expert instruction of Kurt Sassmannshaus.  Sassmannshaus is the chair of the string department at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.  In addition to teaching college students, Professor Sassmannshaus founded the Starling Preparatory String Project, a pre-college level program for young string students.  He mentioned his website during a masterclass I attended at Juilliard.

This website offers many masterclass videos divided into several topics: Stance & Violin Position; Right Hand; Left Hand; Scales, Arpeggios, & Double Stops; Intonation, and Putting It All Together.  Each topic is divided into a number of subtopics.  For example, if you click on Right Hand, you will find masterclasses on the following topics: Bow Grip; Bow Speed, Pressure and Sounding Point; Detache; Legato; Bow Changes; Colle; Martele; Staccato; Spiccato; Sautille; Ricochet; Chords.  Then, each subtopic is divided into video masterclasses demonstrating Definition of the technique; Exercises at various levels; Master Classes; and Performances.  Each video is concise and specific, showing Sassmannshaus working with a student who demonstrates the technique clearly and proficiently.  Recommended practice strategies are offered in each video so viewers can come away with valuable tips.

Sassmannshaus' affable, fatherly manner is endearing, as is his classic bowtie which is worn in each video.  The videos are brief and instruction is limited to one topic at a time.  Since the demonstrations show close-ups of students working on each technique, viewers can take what they see and apply it readily to their own playing.  The masterclasses go from very basic beginner techniques to advanced artistic nuances and skills.  The website includes performance files of numerous pieces in the violin repertoire, performed beautifully by Sassmannshaus' students of various ages.  Some of the performances are accompanied by piano, and some by chamber or full orchestra.

The site provides advice for practicing, including worksheets that may be useful to students and teachers, as well as graded repertoire lists, which include violin methods and etudes, repertoire for violin and orchestra, violin and piano, and violin solos.  A section on the site called Masterclass Kids! is geared especially toward beginning string players.

Violinmasterclass.com is funded through the non-profit Dorothy Richard Starling Foundation, which hosts the site free of charge.  The site is available in English, Chinese, and German.  If you are a string player, parent, or enthusiast, you will find plenty of useful information at www.violinmasterclass.com.  I recommend this site to my students as a reference, and have gained some helpful teaching tips through viewing Kurt Sassmannshaus working with his students.  Take a look for yourself!

http://www.violinmasterclass.com

Texting vs. Research-Sometimes It's Okay to Break the Rules

Teenagers love to text message their friends and it's common for high schools to have rules related to cell phone use during class.  The other day, one of my guitar students was holding his phone down low (in the manner in which students hold their phones when they are trying to do some clandestine texting).  I peered over his shoulder, and to my surprise, Mark had found guitar tabs on the internet using his iPhone.  He was trying to decipher a song he wanted to learn, since he had already completed the assigned traditional notation and chord work that period.  I had Mark place his iPhone on his music stand so he could see it better and we went over some of the tablature together.  The internet has been a great resource for years, in terms of having all kinds of information available to anyone who has a computer and an internet connection.  Since computer devices continue becoming smaller in size, people have the option of carrying access to resources and information in their pockets.  Having a palm-sized computer increases the spontaneity of the moment for checking information and for doing research quickly.  Mark has been using his iPhone regularly in class and he is making excellent progress on several songs he is trying to learn.  He is not limited to the books and music that is available in the classroom, and his motivation and interest are bringing his skills to a whole new level of musicianship.

When I was in elementary school, I remember going to visit my dad's office at Bell Labs, especially around holiday time.  My dad was a computer programmer and Bell Labs had the newest, most modern technology of the time.  I recall being thrilled to be handed a stack of binary code punch cards and thinking how amazing it was that a machine could read them and complete a calculation.  The computers themselves were immense, taking up the space of entire rooms from wall to wall.  No one owned a home computer in the '70's (or a digital cordless telephone for that matter!)  By the time I was in the fourth grade, Bell Labs had a new device - a special pad that one could "write" on with a pen-shaped object connected by a cord to a computer.  It was like magic!  Whatever was drawn on the pad appeared on the monitor.  Now, people are accustomed to using touch screens on tiny computers that they carry in their pockets (and phones they wear on their ear).

Today's students have been surrounded by technology from the day they were born.  They have a wealth of information at their fingertips.  Kids are naturally curious; they like technology and teachers can nurture their students' interest by using current technology for spontaneous research ... as long as their students are not losing focus by texting during class!

Technology, Music, and Flow

What is it about technology that makes it so obsessive?

I've worked on several different kinds of projects recently that have become almost addictive.  In working on these projects, getting to the point of having a finished product has been the result of hours of thinking, rethinking, and "tinkering". 

Two of the most recent projects have been using iMovie to make a movie about Nova Scotia and making a Music Concrete project using Audacity.  In each project, at first there is a learning period where time is spent trying to navigate the program and to see how it works.  There is plenty of trial and error during this period.  It is a time of experimentation and intent thought where frustration is eventually replaced with excitement over small successes.  Frustration makes me even more determined to figure out how to get the results I want.  Fortunately, in the programs I've been using it has been easy to go back and restore my work if the results are not what I intended (which happens a lot!)  And, with the Music Concrete project it has been very helpful to save the project under different names if I'm not sure which version of my project I like the best.  I can always open a former version and modify it.  There are plenty of surprises during the experimentation period, some of which are very useful.

As I get more familiar with how the program works, I feel more competent and that is when the project becomes most addictive.  Viewing and listening to the project over and over and making changes, sometimes very slight ones, become a seemingly endless pursuit.  I find myself enjoying the feeling of being engrossed in the process.  It seems as if only ten or fifteen minutes have elapsed, but when I look at the clock several hours have flown by.  It is as if time has been suspended.  I often realize, when I have reached this stage of competence, that there is an easy and efficient way to do something that I spent a lot of time on.  (For example, when I was adding music to my movie, I realized that I could have used the manual fade in/fade out for each track I included instead of working on trimming the clips to start and end in exact places. After trimming the clips for timing, I used the fade in/out features and got the results I wanted.)  

I am conscious of the fact that my projects will be viewed by others once I have uploaded them to my website.

I'd like to make an analogy between the addictive nature of using technology and the life of a musician.  When I start working on a new piece of music, especially one in a style that is less familiar, there is a learning period during which I'm navigating through the music and experimenting.  Deciding on the mood, character, and sound I want to project take time and mental focus.  Fingerings and bowings change, I revise, sometimes revisiting former versions.  Once a level of competence has been reached, the practice becomes more sophisticated with even more experimentation as the piece is shaped and brought to a place where it is ready to perform.  I lose myself in the music and time is suspended.

I am conscious of the audience that will eventually view and hear my performance.

Csikszentmihalyi [1991] describes the state of being engrossed in one's activity as "flow".  A state of flow is attainable when a balance exists between the challenge of a task and one's skill level.  If the task is too easy for the individual, boredom results.  If the task is too difficult, then a person becomes anxious and frustrated.  Obsession with a technology project and making music are activities in which one can lose the feeling of time elapsing.  In both pursuits, one can enter the state of flow that Csikszentmihalyi describes when competence and the challenge are in balance - that is when the addiction of the process is at it's height.

See the following source for more information on flow:

Cszikszentmihaly, M.  1991.  Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.  New York: Harper & Row.

Thoughts on Technology Troubleshooting

My last blog gave an example of how technology can enhance student learning in music classes.  When technology is working, it can be a real asset.  What happens when technology doesn't work?  Reliability and consistency are definite issues (for example, when your internet connection is slow or off or when someone changed your settings).  We have become accustomed to incorporating technology into various scenarios and we have expectations that technology will be useful to our work.  A couple of recent situations demonstrated how technology could help or hinder depending on whether it is functioning as expected.

I had a dress rehearsal last Wednesday with the community orchestra I conduct.  Our rehearsals take place on stage in the new fine arts center, which is outfitted with state-of-the art audio and lighting.  The sound room is completely computerized with pre-sets for different types of events that are activated with touch screens.  On this particular evening, the stage was rather dark and shadowy with seemingly random lighting.  Much of the light was coming from spotlights throughout the house.  Some of the musicians on stage were in dark areas and others had lights blaring in their eyes.  The normal pre-sets had been turned on, but the lighting was completely different from usual.  Somehow the settings must have been changed.  (Perhaps altered for drama rehearsals?)  We tried to change the light settings to no avail.  So, we all made the best of the situation and had a good rehearsal in spite of the poor lighting.

Prior to the computerization of auditorium lighting, it would have been easy to flip on a row of lights with a simple switch.  And, back in the day, candlelight and daylight streaming through windows may have sufficed.

In another situation, I was planning on playing an excerpt from a piece of music through iTunes on the class computer for one of my high school music classes.  I had played the exact same excerpt just the day before for a different class.  Somehow the file had become corrupted and it would not open and play for the second class.  Many students and several music teachers share the computer.  Since the plan was not possible, I ended up going a different direction with the class that day.

Perhaps educational programs should provide more training for future educators in setting up, maintaining, and troubleshooting hardware and software.  The use of audio equipment, such as microphones, computerized recording systems, and soundboards is very different from what was in use ten years ago.  Lighting is often operated and manipulated through computer systems.  Some schools may have an engineer who oversees lighting and audio needs in the auditorium.  In many cases, though, the music teacher may be on his or her own.  Technology training and troubleshooting would be really useful skills for the modern music teacher.  No one wants to have a surprise at the concert or dress rehearsal!

Do Shared Audio Libraries Make CD Technology Obsolete?

Situation:  It's 7:25 AM in the orchestra rehearsal room.  I planned on playing an excerpt from Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espanol today.   As the students come in and get set up for our 7:40 AM rehearsal,  I walk over to the stereo cabinet and feed it my CD on which the movements of Capriccio Espanol are not tracked.  I search for the fast-forward button -- what? no fast-forward button??!! how old is this machine??  Completely unwilling to waste class time, I reach for the mouse of the donated Apple G3 on top of the stereo cabinet.  Click, I'm on iTunes.  I attempt to import the CD, but I discover that the G3 in our classroom has a tiny amount of memory and it won't be able to handle many more imports.  Thankfully, my MacBook Pro is in the music office just steps away.  I open iTunes on my Mac and click "Preferences", then "Sharing".  I make sure my library is shared on the network.  I walk back into the orchestra room and, sure enough, my library has appeared on the G3!  I quickly find the excerpt I wanted to play for the students and begin playing it.  Let's see - setting it up and playing the music took just about as long as it probably took you to read this anecdote.

Not long ago, I was pretty intimidated by technology.  Lately, I've been expanding my techno-skills by leaps and bounds and I'm finding that technology is not only useful - it can also be fun.  I have to admit, I felt a bit proud of myself for solving my morning conundrum.

It's so important for students to hear great recordings in music classes and over the years, the CD player in the stereo cabinet seemed adequate.  Today, that technology definitely showed its limitations.  Students tend to lose their focus fairly quickly - they are used to having the sounds they want to hear right at hand.  It seems as if every student comes to school with one ear plugged into an iPod and the other ear connected to a cell phone.  They are fascinated by technology, and putting "old music" on iTunes through a wireless connection makes it seem more hip and relevant to their age group.  Sometimes I hear people say that classical music is for old people, and that makes me sad.  I'm finding, though, that technology enhances the experience for high school students in unexpected and amusing ways.  It's not too unusual for my high school orchestra to sightread a piece (like an arrangement of Mozart's Symphony No. 40) and to have at least one student exclaim "Hey! That's my ringtone!!  Check it out!"  The sounds of classical music can come from acoustic instruments that been played for hundreds of years, but it can also come in recorded form through a laptop, an iPod, or a cell phone.  I think it's really important for teachers to understand the world that today's students are growing up in.  (It's really different from the world I grew up in at their age!)  Making connections to the past and to the future are keys to understanding an ever-changing present.

Blog beginning...

I'm entering the blogging universe today for the first time.  I'm sitting at the kitchen table thinking about what to write, and as I look out the window I see my husband in the backyard looking intently into the sky with a violin in his hands.  He makes violins and violas and ultraviolet light will cure the varnish he applied to the instrument this morning.  The sun was out a moment ago, but a dark cloud just came overhead - will it rain?  He's bringing the violin back indoors for now.  I'm a violinist and violist, and music is thoroughly woven into my life.  As a musician and educator, I play and teach instruments that have been around for hundreds of years.  Yet, our world today is very different from a time before technology became such an integral part of everyday life.  In this blog I'll be reflecting on music and technology, and since I love orchestra I decided to name my blog "Orchtekker Musings".