Spirited Wind Playing

Kim Walker

Description

Peppered with tips, helpful hints, and personal anecdotes to illustrate real-life application, this performance guide is essential for any wind player interested in taking his or her virtuosity to the next level. Internationally renowned bassoonist Kim Walker has compiled into one book the teachings and exercises that have made her known as an expert on bassoon performance, practice, and instruction. From basics like posture, breathing techniques, and articulation to a survey of the performance practices of key woodwind and brass masters, Walker includes an analysis of each technique along with images and exercises that present the mechanics of each method.

Foreword, by Peter J. Schoenbach
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Seven Core Essentials
Section 1: On the Air
1. Stand Tall: Posture and Balance
2. The Centered Performance
3. Breathing On The Air
4. Magnetic Tone Production: Head and Body Resonance
Section 2: Spirited Wind Playing
5. Embouchure and Powerful Projection
6. Get On With It! Warm-Up and Practice Routine
7. Deft Articulation: An Integral Art of Wind Playing
8. Vibrato: The Great Debate
9. Virtuosity: Dancing Fingers Lead the Way
Section 3: The Performance Dimension
10. Memory Made Simple
11. Winning Auditions
12. The Performance Dimension
Conclusion: Why is it So Easy to Put All This Together?
Key Resources

Sujets

• Musique
• Technique musicale
• Technique musicale
• Techniques musicales
• Music
• Performance
• Instruction
• General
• Woodwind instrument
• General officer
• Pedagogy
• Study
• Multiple signal classification
• Kim Walker
• Wind instrument
• Musical instrument
• Musical Instruments
• Woodwinds

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 31 octobre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253024992
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Spirited Wind Playing
Spirited Wind Playing
THE PERFORMANCE DIMENSION
Kim Walker
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2017 by Kim Walker
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Walker, Kim (Bassoonist), author.
Title: Spirited wind playing : the performance dimension / Kim Walker.
Description: Bloomington ; Indianapolis : Indiana University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016032877 (print) | LCCN 2016033975 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253024848 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253024992 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH : Wind instruments-Instruction and study. | Music-Performance-Physiological aspects. | Music-Performance-Psychological aspects.
Classification: LCC MT 339 .W3 2017 (print) | LCC MT 339 (ebook) | DDC 788/.193-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016032877
1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19 18 17 16
Dedicated to Sol Schoenbach, con amore.
Contents
FOREWORD BY PETER J. SCHOENBACH
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION: SEVEN CORE ESSENTIALS
My New World History
Five Centuries of Wind Playing
The Seven Core Essentials
P ART 1. O N THE A IR
1 - S TAND T ALL : P OSTURE AND B ALANCE
Posture: Rise Up from the Ground
The Foundation of Your Roots: Feet and Legs
Your Tree Trunk: Spine, Pelvic and Shoulder Girdles, Arms, Hands, and Fingers
Your Tree Top: Head, Neck, Eyes, and Ears
Playing On the Air and Pain Free
Solving Problems
Movement
Ready to Dance?
Mastery: Posture and Balance
2 - T HE C ENTERED P ERFORMANCE
Eliminating Distraction
Centering
Shiatsu and D -In: Aids in Centering and Breathing
Eyes and Ears: Our Portals
Energy Centers and the Chakras
The Nervous System
Mastery: Centered Performance
3 - B REATHING O N THE A IR
What Is in This Chapter?
Section 1. Where We Breathe: Breathing and Physiology
Mastery: Breathing On the Air -Where We Breathe
Section 2. Leave Them Breathless
Mastery: Breathing On the Air -Leave Them Breathless
Section 3. Moving Air and Energy
Section 4. Common Faults and Concerns
Mastery: Breathing On the Air -Common Faults and Concerns
Section 5. Advanced Breathing
Mastery: Breathing On the Air -Advanced Breathing
4 - M AGNETIC T ONE P RODUCTION : H EAD AND B ODY R ESONANCE
Tone in the Eighteenth Century
Harmonics and Overtone Resonance
What Singers Have to Teach Us
Mastery: Magnetic Resonance
P ART 2. S PIRITED W IND P LAYING
5 - E MBOUCHURE AND P OWERFUL P ROJECTION
The Four Facets of Embouchure
Mastering Embouchure
Mastery: Embouchure and Powerful Projection
6 - G ET O N WITH I T! W ARM -U P AND P RACTICE R OUTINE
Practicing for Spirited Winds
The Rule of Threes
Two Basic Skill Sets
What Type of Learner Are You?
Aspects of a Well-Rounded Practice Routine
Practicing for Success
Make a Practice Plan
Motivation
Mastery: Warm-Up and Practice
7 - D EFT A RTICULATION : A N I NTEGRAL A RT OF W IND P LAYING
Breathe into the Space between the Notes
Historical Perspectives
The Physical Position of Your Tongue and Throat
Focus the Tone Just under Your Nose above Your Top Lip
Consonants and Vowels
Contemporary Articulation
Mastery: Deft Articulation-Playfully Perfect Practice
8 - V IBRATO : T HE G REAT D EBATE
Vibrato: When and Where?
Vibrato through History
What I Was Taught
Using Vibrato Today
Mastery: Vibrato
9 - V IRTUOSITY : D ANCING F INGERS L EAD THE W AY
Finger Choices and Clear Leadership
NLT Patterns
Happy Hands Fly Free
Scale Practice: Walk and Fly
Lead with Your Instinct
Mastery: Virtuosity
P ART 3. T HE P ERFORMANCE D IMENSION
10 - M EMORY M ADE S IMPLE
What We Know about Memory
Where Is Your Memory?
How to Memorize
Memory in Performance
Fear: The Antifreedom State
Stress Leaves You Gasping for Air
11 - W INNING A UDITIONS
A Timeline for Preparing Excerpts
Scheduling Your Daily Practices for the Twelve Excerpts
Short-Term Preparation
Auditions Past and Present
Preparing for a Specific Audition
The Night before Your Audition
Nine Breaths
Just Before Taking the Stage
12 - T HE P ERFORMANCE D IMENSION
How Do You Know You re There?
Balancing the Visible and Invisible Worlds
Using Both Sides of Your Brain
Emotional Fitness in the Performance Dimension
Using Awareness and Choice
Fear
Practice as the Antidote to Fear
Using Imagination
Mastery: The Performance Dimension
C ONCLUSION : W HY I S I T S O E ASY TO P UT A LL T HIS T OGETHER?
Be Open to New Ideas
Feel the Music
One New Perspective in New Realities Is Worth Twenty of Those We Already Know
Enjoy Legendary Colleagues
Creativity Is a Birthright, One of Life s Main Purposes and Pathways to Fulfillment
Hold Your Space
Mistakes Can Be Worth Their Weight in Gold
Move Effort into Flow and Sense the Music
If Your Mind, Heart, and Body Are Aligned with Energetic Flow That Is Unambiguous, You Are Congruent-No Energy Is Wasted on Conflict
Am I Centered?
Resistance: Who, Me?
Powerfully Attractive Performers Use Focus and Precision
Speed is the Devil -Sol Schoenbach
Mastery
Personal Victory
K EY R ESOURCES
Early Tutors
Music
Specialists
Books
Articles
Recording
Foreword
W HEN KIM FIRST asked me to write this foreword, I was unclear what to expect from her book. At first, I thought perhaps it would be a book based on the teaching of my father, Sol Schoenbach, her principal (but far from only) bassoon teacher. What she has achieved is far more than that in every sense. Her findings and suggestions not only are for bassoonists but will benefit any musician, instrumental or vocal. The book emphasizes a rich combination of factors that determine the preparation for a musical performer to succeed in a lifelong career: psychological, physiological, spiritual, intellectual, mechanical, and, above all, artistic.
Kim has benefited from a long and distinguished international career, which gave her the chance to live and work in Italy, Switzerland, and Australia and to travel extensively. She has performed as an orchestral, chamber, and solo performer on an instrument that offers a remarkable palette to the imaginative individual who is open to questioning the barriers that have traditionally limited its scope.
Her subtext, on the air , cited so often throughout, speaks to the healthful and expressive manner of addressing the artistic powers of the bassoon. She indicates a plethora of ways of avoiding the impedimenta that can constrain delivering the musical message, including posture, balance, and other issues, down to the use of memorization to remove the music and stand.
She has drawn from many philosophies, Eastern and Western, such as Alexander Technique, modern and historical dance, Shiatsu massage, and hara and D -In exercises, and sources in a multiplicity of languages. She varies her sources from Native American wisdom to TED talks, alternating between the yin, or meditative, and the yang, or active, approaches. Periods and styles are also addressed, with special attention to the relation of dances in early music.
Like the superb pedagogue that she is (with a long and distinguished career at Indiana University before assuming her most recent position as dean and principal in Australia at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music), Kim utilizes numerous illustrations, anecdotes, and quotations to assist the reader in understanding her recommendations. You have to appreciate the simile she uses, for instance, that our complex activity in concert is as exhilarating as the near terror of driving the AutoRoute into Genoa and the Cinque Terra just as the summer season begins. She does not shy away from trying to capture some of the ineffable qualities of chance taking in artistic collaboration that can achieve a greater whole than the sum of the parts.
She also uses analogies from the visual arts (citing my mother, Bertha) creating varied, inimitable colors, just as in nature. As a painter re-creates colors, Sol would vary the sound with more or less boldness or warmth, according to what he wished to express.
Kim spends a significant amount of time citing singers as a model for wind players in the use and support of air, using laminar (smooth) flow as the operative word. She stresses the balance between the steady airflow, supported from the diaphragm while consciously relaxing the throat, and correct embouchure to create a true on-pitch sound. Then the vibrato can be added judiciously to embellish the phrase, using head and body resonance. Thus a total awareness of the interrelated elements of performance results in a superior musical product.
It is not a coincidence that she stresses singing, including harmonic singing, using vowels, or making up words to match the notes of a musical phrase. Like many wind players who attended the master classes of the great French flutist Marcel Moyse at the Marlboro Music Festival, she espouses the approach of playing the great opera arias on an instrument. The challenge of attaining the freedom, range, and expressiveness of the human voice is ever our model. I especially loved the example