This afternoon was the last day of the Christmas holidays, unexpectedly sunny, crisp and breezy. After the departure of some visitors, Robert and I were about to go out for a walk and some tea and cake, when he suddenly pointed to a patch of light on the wall behind me. The reflections from the garden of waving branches and the wrought iron of a clothes post were casting flickering shadows onto the wall in an astonishing fashion, almost like a silent movie. Robert grabbed his iPhone and captured some video. “You could use that for a poem-film, “ I remarked, thinking about the beautiful short videos some friends had made recently.

When we got home from our walk, I began improvising to the footage on the piano, while Robert listened and wrote.  Within twenty minutes we both had something. Remarkably, when Robert read his poem aloud, it was exactly the right length. He recorded it, synchronized it with the video, and then I recorded my part on top onto a different track so that we could experiment with individual volume and colour.

I’m not a recording engineer, but I know what works when I hear it. In this case, I knew we needed to take the ‘edge’ off the sound on both tracks. It took a little whole to find the right effect for the piano part. It wasn’t until Robert added a little reverb that it harmonized with the imagery. It sounded as if it had been recorded many years ago in a dusty, cavernous ballet studio on a slightly tinny upright. Perfect.

We both could hear that Robert’s voice was also cutting through the texture in a way that sounded too immediate, modern and dynamic. When he equalized it, using an effect called RCA Victor 1947, it all came together.

Result: a film-poem in one evening. If only making art could be this easy and graceful every time.

I just blogged about one of my passions– traditional Christmas carols–over at Music Teachers’ Helper , complete with audio excerpts of the best recordings. Enjoy!

However, I’d love to point you to a couple of posts I wrote for the Music Teachers blog: one on how to develop effective communication with your students, and one on how to manage your energy in relation to your students. I’m enjoying focusing on the psychological side of teaching and communicating in posts for this particular blog, as I feel it’s a way to contribute what I know, both from study and from experience.

My new blog post over at Music Teachers Blog is about boosting your creative energy. It’s primarily aimed at musicians, but there are some ideas anyone with a creative bent can enjoy too. I’d love to hear your ideas…

He knows what’s important— the purity, the essence of the music. There’s nothing like not being able to play the piano for forty years to make one appreciate each sound. Each opportunity to create beauty. There’s no excuse, no need for artifice. Each moment has purpose.

Years of absence and silence have refined the desire to create sound. Decades of trying and failing to regain health, prestige, career have bruised and beaten the ego to a pulp. Only the heart of the music remains, as only the soul of man survives.

Now he wants to play Bach, Chopin, Schubert. Why play music that is purely virtuosic? He learned long ago that maximum notes per second are not where it’s at.

“Before, I was just a two-handed piano player,” he says. “What happened to me has expanded my life, my awareness, my humanity.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xgyz0XqDEEA

So it was a revelation to me the other day when I sat down with a book of Beethoven sonatas and began to play, so that a student could choose which one to study. I really enjoyed myself! I experienced the deep and compact bass chords as colorful and fun to play, rather than coarse or ugly. The sudden shifts in mood, key, dynamic and tempo were exhilarating rather than unsettling. The palpable sense of aggression was immensely satisfying….. and there, I believe, was the key to my change of perspective.

Growing up, I came from a family where certain emotions were taboo- particularly anger, aggression and its soft underbelly, depression. We were encouraged to remain cheerful, polite and to ‘make the best of things’at all times. I was a sensitive child and soon began to find anger in others threatening, not to say frightening. It is not a surprise therefore that I would mistrust Beethoven!

Over the years, I have done a lot of ‘inner work’ and now discover that I have aggression and anger, like everyone else, and that finding ways to release it and express it in responsible ways does me good. My inner tiger has been unleashed… so now… bring it on, Beethoven, I’m ready for you!