1/12/23 Are You Wearing a Classical Collar?

I used to have a german shepherd named Wolfgang. I moved to a new place and wanted to make sure he didn’t wander off into traffic, so I installed an electric fence and put the electric collar on him. Whenever he got close to that wire buried underground, he’d get a little zing from the collar. He was very intelligent and quickly learned to avoid the pain, and never left his designated territory again. 

In fact, I was able to turn off the electricity and take the batteries out of the collar, and as long as he had that collar on, he believed there was a painful boundary to his territory. 

He was trained.

I bring this up because I was teaching an advanced classical student how to chop this week and we kept hitting a roadblock.

I was asking him to straighten his thumb and turn the hair out, the opposite from the way we are all taught in classical playing, so that the bow skids slightly on the string--it’s the secret to getting the “chop” sound.  

But he just couldn’t straighten that thumb.

For years, since he was a child, his teachers had drilled in the “Bend Your Thumb!” rule and by now it was a law of nature. It was not something he could voluntarily change.  

Classical players, like Olympic athletes, are the result of years of disciplined and focused training. This kind of deep conditioning is incredibly powerful, from the physical muscle memory to the intellectual concepts of style and performance traditions that we absorb.

Even though I repeatedly make a point of telling students that “There are different rules for classical and non-classical playing,” students typically underestimate how important and challenging it is to step away from your training in order to expand your musical horizons.

So, I remind them that there is no invisible fence. There are no batteries in the collar. 

They can march right over into the neighbor’s yard--you know, that jazz/rock/pop neighbor where you’re free to bend notes and straighten your thumb--and no one will mind. 

Different yard, different rules.

And once they break the spell and defy the imaginary fence, they quickly realize that they are now free to do all kinds of naughty things, like not using vibrato! Making noisy sounds! Ghosting notes so you barely hear them!

Rollover Beethoven!

Rock and jazz have their own rules, of course, but for many classical students, there’s something even more significant to learn:

You can’t fully see your own house when you’re standing right next to it. Sometimes you have to walk over that imaginary fence into the neighbor’s yard so you can get a better perspective on your own classical property.

And that new appreciation for your classical playing may be the most profound thing you will learn from Strum Bowing and non-classical lessons.

Alright, that's it for now. Go on, get your groove on!

--Tracy