While other senses are localized in the brain, time is woven into everything we perceive – it is ‘metasensory’, and rides on top of all the others. Perhaps this is part of the reason music-making – which is a way of shaping time – lights up so many portions of the brain.

One hallmark of time’s elasticity is the way it slows when danger threatens.

In such situations, people overestimate the passing of time by about 36%! Last April there was a fascinating article in the New Yorker about time and perception. The article mentioned that time and memory are tightly intertwined, and that one of the seats of emotion and memory is the amygdala. It goes into overdrive when something threatens and records every last detail of the experience.

So – how does this apply to us as performers?

What happens when our attention is heightened by such an expanded existence within time? After a bout of stage fright, I have often heard students complain that they didn’t even recognize their own sound, that they never sounded like that. I beg to differ – they just don’t listen with the same intensity when they practice.

One remedy – SLOW practice. With deliberate FOCUS. Give yourself the time to notice every last little thing…. And I mean slow. I remember reading that it took Rachmaninoff a full minute to get through one measure while practicing. That immediately ranks him as one of my heroes.

Two other people arrived during our first session yesterday, a young film maker from Georgia, and a wood worker/experimental instrument builder from Vancouver.

I got the oddest sensation that this project is like a loadstone – a pinpoint center of some alternate universe… If we stayed here long enough, the entire church would fill with a congregation of seekers, past and present…. can’t quite shake the feeling.

More thoughts on meaning in music:

“Music stands quite alone. It is cut off from all the other arts…. It does not express a particular and definite joy, sorrow, anguish, horror, delight, or mood of peace, but joy, sorrow, anguish, horror, delight, peace of mind themselves, in the abstract, in their essential nature, without accessories, and therefore without their customary motives. Yet it enables us to grasp and share them fully in this quintessence.”

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER (1788 – 1860)

“Does or should the meaning(of a phrase) change from listener to listener or is there some universal that we must aspire to? (or a combo)”

Meaning must change from person to person, as it is in large part subjective. As we process any information or stimulus, we make associations peculiar to our own, unique life experience. These personal schemata (mental images and constructs) provide the cognitive framework by which we perceive, understand, and respond to stimuli – in this case, music.

When approaching a piece of music, perhaps the ‘universal’ is music’s uncanny ability to connect a listener to her humanity. In broaching the subject of meaning in music, I was thinking about the way we use our voices to convey emotional content beyond the actual words we are saying.

I hear a great deal of playing that is ‘correct’, but deadpan – without expression. Boring. As performers, we can be most effective by understanding the content of a given score – structurally (harmonic, melodic) and historically (performance practice, etc.). Then we can make informed personal choices in creating and shaping the music.

And so I have asked him to join the blog in an official capacity. From now on he will be a regular contributor. We are launching a new catagory called Conversations With Randy.

This should be fun!

Time present and time past


Are both perhaps present in time future


And time future contained in time past.

How stunningly appropriate that a collection of poems with a musically evocative title – Quartets – begins with an expression of the circularity of time. These words perfectly encapsulate what I was saying about rhythmic integrity.

What we are able to do expressively with rhythm flows from what already happened. What we are doing in the moment holds the possibility of a blossoming to come.

When we consider ourselves as time artists, the importance of rhythmic integrity becomes evident. Without it, expressivity becomes an amorphous morass. Rhythmic integrity sets up a pulse that gives sensibility context, and thereby, meaning. It gives something to push and pull against.

When the listener has a strong expectation of pulse, you can affect them by hurrying them along, or making..  them…   wait……

THE THOUSAND-STRINGED INSTRUMENT

The heart is

The thousand-stringed instrument.

Our sadness and fear come from being

Out of tune with love.

All day long God coaxes my lips

To speak,

So that your tears will not stain

His green dress.

It is not that the Friend is vain,

It is just your life we care about.

Sometimes the beloved

Takes my pen in hand,

For Hafiz is just a simple man.

The other day the Old One

Wrote on the Tavern wall:

“The heart is

The thousand-stringed instrument

That can only be tuned with

Love.”

I am a musician, but also dabble in visual art and dance. Even as a child, I had the feeling (or suspicion) that while I was indulging in one of these pursuits, I was simultaneously doing the others. It’s like looking at a complex structure from different angles; from one side you get music, from another dance, over here drawing and painting and so on.

 Each art form has its particular equation in this game. Visual artists capture, or crystallize, a moment of time in space. Dancers shape space using their bodies while moving through time. We musicians use sound to shape time itself (affecting space to create that sound). We are time sculptors.

With so much emphasis on community engagement, speaking with the audience is part of the deal. But don’t talk just to hear the sound of your own voice. Just talking for the sake of talking can get in the way and be counter productive. The aim is to affect the audience’s listening experience.

A piece of music doesn’t necessarily reveal itself automatically; it must be ‘achieved’. We, as teachers, can lead the audience into avenues of attending. 

A single underlying idea will create a coherent unified presentation. Here are some things you can think about. What about the music speaks to you, the performer? How do you live inside a particular piece – attend to it cognitively and emotionally? What is the process by which you release yourself into the work?

When it come time to create your presentation, the avenue you choose might be one of the above, or something completely different. It might be linking the work to the listeners own life (see Make It Personal, Part II). 

I like to  combine this personalizing with elucidating musical structure. Musical form is easy to hear if you know what to look for. Once you get it, you automatically recognize it the next time. (This is good! See my earlier post).

For example, most aspects of our lives are cyclical. Any recurring event, whether daily or yearly, can be related to a rondo theme. The episodes between the rondo themes can be linked to what occurs between times. Those between times will change the way one feels about the recurring event. A child has a first day at school every year. But their feeling on entering 5th grade will be different than those on the first day as a senoir.