English 102: Intro to poetry

This fall, I took an introduction to poetry class.  I did not choose this course for the subject matter, but for the prof, whom I'd heard was fantastic.  Besides, this was the only English course that fit in my schedule.  I entered the class in September having never willingly read a poem, but by the time I had finished, I was much more enamored with the genre.  For example, I now receive a poem-a-day via email and faithfully read it--either in awe, or absolute confusion.  When talking to my mum about this last month, I still tried to maintain that I don't read, or even particularly like, poetry.  Her quip was that reading one poem every day is way higher than the national average and that I must like poetry if I'm reading it so diligently.  She does have a very valid point.  Perhaps I now like poetry more than I can safely admit to all my linear and logical friends in SFU sciences.

This is my final essay for that English class.  I wrote it on Robert Frost's Desert Places.  Here is a link to the poem itself: http://www.internal.org/Robert_Frost/Desert_Places.  This type of literary analysis based on figurative language, punctuation, and line breaks (lineation) is what I learned to do in this class.  As we were told over and over again "it's not what the words mean, it's how they mean", which is a quote from somebody, but it wasn't testable material so I didn't write it down! 

On Deserts, Desertion, and Desolation

The title of Robert Frost’s poem “Desert Places” might seem like a misnomer, considering how much of the poem describes frozen precipitation.  Snow is the antithesis of the dry and arid landscape that the title seems to be invoking.  However, while “desert” is a noun describing an ecosystem, it is also, as used here, an adjective, “deserted”, which not only denotes an empty place, but one that is abandoned.  The description of the poem’s setting is told from the subjective view of the speaker, in which he links the falling snow to abandonment and desertion.  This physical description of place is a metaphor that likens his internal places, his state of mind, to the desolate landscape.  “Desert Places” not only refers to the setting, but illustrates the metaphor that encompasses the speaker’s own existence. 

The lineation of the two iterations of “Desert Places” (title, 16) conjures imagery of abandoned and desolate places that is reinforced by their spatial isolation in the poem.  As the title, “Desert Places” is isolated by blankness at the top of the page, which physically reiterates its meaning of vacancy.  Since the phrase is the first image we encounter, its connotation colours the rest of the poem.  “Desert places” (16) are also the last words of the poem and are juxtaposed with a page of empty whiteness “with nothing to express” (12).  As the final two words, the phrase encapsulates the poem’s metaphor about desolation that describes the speaker’s own life. 

The imagery in and sound of the poem deepens the meanings of “Desert Places” by emphasizing feelings of loneliness and silence.  The speaker says the snow “smothered the animals” (6) which connotes the suffocation of the animals, after which, the wood will be deserted of life.  The sound of the poem also reinforces this feeling of emptiness by mimicking  the quiet solitude of a snowy evening.  The poem is easier to read silently than aloud due to its surprising punctuation.  For example, lines five and six in the second stanza both end with a period, which is difficult to read, since the lines do not follow the expected pattern of commas established in first stanza.  

The diction and lineation describing the snowfall continue to enrich our understanding of the speaker’s absolute physical isolation.  The snow on the ground, “covered smooth” (3), erases all visible structure and form so that the landscape becomes one-dimensional and featureless.  In line two, “snow” is placed at the end of the line, dangling beyond the other words in a blank expanse of white-as-snow page.  This is also the longest line of the first stanza, isolating the word vertically as well as horizontally.  The absence of enjambment reinforces these images of snowy emptiness.  The line ends with a comma, making the reader pause slightly and contemplate the deserted page and the loneliness of snow. 

The broader descriptions of the scene reinforce the images of desertion and loneliness introduced in the title.  The physical aspects of the poem are set “in a field” (2).  “Field” has connotations of agriculture and human habitation.  However, this is not a tended, productive landscape.  It is covered in “weeds and stubble” (4), indicating that the field is abandoned: a deserted place.  The speaker’s description of the scene gives it an evil hue, despite snow not being inherently evil.  He describes the snow as “benighted” (11), which implies that the snow is morally dark or evil.  The speaker also says the snow has “no expression, nothing to express” (12).  The snow is completely devoid of thoughts and personality.  These twisted imaginings of inanimate objects originate in a mind that is itself a “desert place” (16). 

These non-specific references to “places” in the title and line 16 are both a physical location and a figurative place.  This duality allows us to interpret “places” as referring to both the landscape and the speaker’s state of mind.  The characteristics of one transfer to the other in a metaphor where the lonely and abandoned field is the source and the speaker is the target.  Furthermore, since “desert places” is plural, it supports the interpretation of the two deserted locations where one is a metaphor for the other.  Thus, “desert places” (title, 16) both describes the speaker and connects the vacant scene to him.

In the third stanza, the speaker describes himself as spiritually empty and further links himself to the physical “desert places”.  In line seven, the speaker calls himself “absent-spirited.”  “Spirit” can connote “soul” and the defining aspects of humanity: sentience and consciousness.  By calling himself “absent-spirited” (7), the speaker implies he has lost these aspects of his humanity..  He is vacant like the snow that smothered the animals and erased the landscape.  He is hollow; the loneliness sweeping through the woods does not recognize him and is “unaware” (8) of his existence.  

With the fourth stanza, the language of the poem switches from depicting the landscape to addressing the speaker’s internal places.  He further describes his fears and personal vacancy in relation to the themes of desolation created earlier in the poem.  He says, “I have it in me” (15), where “it” represents all the imagery of vacancy and death. “It” is “in” him; he is empty.  In the last line, the speaker expresses ownership of the “desert places”, he calls them “my own” (16). 

In this poem, there is a progression from literal imagery to figurative interpretation that links the deserted exterior landscape to the internal emptiness of the speaker.  The speaker is deserted by life and has “nothing to express” (12), as he is vacant, flat snow.  The speaker reveals his emotions by comparing them to a desolate winter scene where everything is uniform and dead.  He is without hope and companionship – a deserted person in a deserted place.  Like a holograph, where each unit of information contains the whole image, “desert places” (16, title) encompasses the whole poem: the speaker, the forest, and how they are connected.  

Work Cited

Frost, Robert. “Desert Places.” 20th-Century Poetry and Poetics. Ed. Gary Geddes. 5th ed. Don

Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2006. 54-55.

Segue Back Home

Bubbles On The Boston Commons

When I walked between my classes during my last week in Boston I saw so many faces I knew. I waved to the bass player who was in my musicianship class and the saxophonist who was in my jazz ensemble. I stopped to give my roommate a hug and to chat with friends from Brazil.  I couldn’t walk anywhere in the Berklee vicinity without seeing people whom I was happy to call my friends. 

Contrast this social butterfly image with the me of five weeks ago – the me who was apprehensive about leaving her dorm room for the fear that she might meet and need to talk to people on the stairs. At the end of the five weeks, although I still preferred to hover on my landing and watch the antics of people three floors below, I became much more confortable with talking to people and initiating conversations. 

Flower Garden on Boylston St

In my last musicianship class, rather than having a test, we all discussed what we had learned in the Berklee Five Week Program.  I said that I had learned how to talk to strangers.  In order to explore a foreign city I needed to ask countless locals for directions.  To enjoy the program, I needed to make friends among my fellow students.  When the Five Week started, if I saw someone I recognized I would have been more likely to walk in the other direction than go say hello.  By the end, I would walk towards someone I knew and then just hope that they liked to talk. 

And, major breakthrough, I once initiated a high five!  I was shocked, but no one else noticed how amazing it was.  The next high five I gave was to my 2-year old cousin the weekend I flew home to Vancouver from Boston. 

Being in Boston this summer was an amazing experience.  It changed the way I interact with people on the street and it taught me so much about music.  I learned a whole textbook of music theory, and, and, and… a bunch of other stuff that would only be interesting to musicians.  Although, if you want to hear some more details let me know in the comments and I’ll happily write your eyes off. 

One of the hardest things since returning to Vancouver is the lack of shared experiences.  The lack of music is hard, being back in Vancouver is trying, but what is worse is that no one I know is as ga-ga over my summer as I was and continue to be.  I have slipped easily back into my normal life here and it is a little depressing.  Sometimes its like Berklee never happened.  I resumed my university education Wednesday with inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, ecology, and intro to poetry.  Its another culture here in science land.  It's not easy.   

On my last night in Boston I stayed up hanging out with my friends and exchanging last minute emails.  By the time 3:00 am rolled around there was no point in sleeping, the cab was coming at 4:00.  My closest friend from Boston and I stayed up talking, exchanging photos, and promising each other we would write and visit.  Eventually.  She walked me down to my cab and then I was off to the airport.  I slept the whole way home catching up on sleep I hadn’t been getting for the previous five weeks. 

I loved attending Berklee—it was the most fun I have ever had at school.  It was certainly the only time I’ve been happy to wake up for a 9:30 class after going to bed at two AM.  I would love to go back and attend their full time program, be immersed in music again, and be inspired by all the other awesome players. But for the immediate future I will continue my Biology and English degree at SFU.  That way, when I do go to music school, I will have a day job to support myself. 

Final Week in Boston

-->In my last week of the Five-Week music program, there were hundreds of final performances given by all the various classes, ensembles, and special programs.  In one particular evening concert, I watched someone who looked like Barbie grant 17 wishes. 

Many of the best students attending the Berklee Five-Week were in a program called City Music, “a nonprofit education program… that connects Berklee City Music in Boston with like-minded music programs all over the country” (http://berkleecitymusicnetwork.org/about.html).  These “city music” kids were often some of the best in their home city and they all attended this summer program on a full scholarship.  The city music students gave a final awe-inspiring concert on the last Wednesday of the program.  At the end, City Music awarded 17 full-tuition scholarships to Berklee’s four-year degree program.  To give you a scale as to how much money was being handed out, one year’s tuition is $37,586. 

The tension in the concert hall was palpable as the Barbie-esque Emcee read though the list of names.  Anxiety increased as she gave various clues to tease the audience into thinking they knew the identity of each recipient.  People would call out the names of their friends who they thought matched the Emcee’s description.  Then the crowd would become silent as one person stepped forward.  The audience was alive with shouts and alternating screams of joy and quiet despair. 

I knew most of the people called to the stage.  I knew the drummer from New Orleans who gave everyone a big hug and I knew the singer-songwriter who burst into tears when her name was called.  I also knew the people who sobbed afterwards—they didn’t receive a scholarship and now their only option was student loans.

Jazz Ensemble Performance

I also played in final performances corresponding to all my ensembles.  They weren’t nearly as high stress as the concert mentioned above.  All I had to do was concentrate on remembering our arrangements and smile for the camera.  I performed with the Five Week orchestra, a jazz ensemble, and a free-improvisation ensemble.  The video shown above is from my orchestra performance, taken by my roommate Francesca.  They all went about how I expected them to.  We all made the same mistakes we’d made in our practices.  It was fun to put into practice everything I’d been practicing so hard over the previous weeks.  Performing put the music in context—we don’t play jazz to read notes off a page, we play jazz to improvise and either make mistakes or play what we hear in our heads. 

Here are some YouTube links to some of the bigger deal, and better, final concerts held in the Berklee Performance Center.  I can’t find some of my favourites, but if I can find them later, I will post them. 

The Rock Workshop ensemble http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPYr82ru7No (note the guitar solo at 3:17) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7ZH5Ad4NKo

Five-Week Jazz choir http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hacJgWCsk0c

Five-Week vocal night concert http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFiEJD2QZdk

1:35=Balkan and Middle Eastern fusion ensemble

20:00=choir

40:00=musical theatre, music from SMASH

1:10:00

Jazz All star band http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf1dpjMlNoo (auditions were held for this ensemble at the beginning of the first week, some of the best jazz musicians attending Five

 Week are in this ensemble)

WARNING: will be talking about music

1140 Boylston St.

I just finished week four of this fantastic five-week experience.  This was the last week of my normal class schedule, next week I will continue to have some classes, but they will be interspersed with my final performances.  Almost all my classes have a final concert.  My ear training class will sing “Take on Me” (A-Ha) with all the parts in solfege syllables:  La la fa re re so so so te te do re... (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914).  I also have performances in orchestra and from my various other ensembles. 

Currently, I am most anxious about my jazz ensemble performance.  I volunteered to solo on a song called Ornithology, which is notoriously difficult, partly because it is played at tempos that make the speed of light look relaxed.  It is also one of those jazz songs that changes keys every couple of bars.  If one tends to get lost (ahem) then there is very high chance the note that sounded perfectly fine half a second ago just became the worst possible note to be playing.  I am expending so much energy on learning this song that it is starting to crop up in my dreams. 

Strand Theatre, where we heard some Jazz

People from home keep asking me if I’ve improved.  I truly can’t tell, I think partly because everyone else here is so amazing.  Yesterday before my orchestra performance, I sat and watched all the other string players cavort around me.  Most people had congregated in groups and were trying to out play each other.  People played impressive presto classical pieces from memory, or laid down a groove and traded solos.  I watched and listened and thought, “There is such incredible talent in this room”.  All that being said, I do know that I can play songs now that I would never have attempted 4 weeks ago, ornithology being a great example of that.  I also know that when I go back and play songs that I knew really well before the Five Week, I can barely recognize my playing.  But I can’t tell if I’m different better, or different weird. 

Another example of my skillset shifting is how I think of playing scales.  I used to think that playing all 12 major scales was too many scales to practice in one day, partly because it was time consuming and too difficult for me.  Now, the first thing I do when I take out my violin is to play through my major scales.  I start in the key of F and continue through the cycle of fourths, extending the scale to encompass all the relevant notes in the first position fingerboard.  The funny thing is that this only takes a couple of minutes, if that.  I don’t know why I thought it was so difficult. 

Hallway in the 1140 Building

I recently learned that the Berklee level one proficiency test requires the ability to be able to play all the modes of the major scale, in all of the 12 keys.  Non-musicians can think of modes as weird derivations of the major scale that can sometimes sound really strange.  There are seven modes per key, each mode based off a note in the major scale.  This level one proficiency test requires students to know, and therefore practice, 84 different patterns. 

The level two proficiency test is to play all the modes of the three minor scales… in all 12 minor keys.  So that’s 3 x 12 x 7 different things to play through.  I can’t even contemplate learning all of those, let alone practicing them every day.  I do practice my modes diligently, but I can only do my mode exercises in three keys.  Only 9 more to go!

Last night, I found the musical jam I’ve been looking for since I got here.  I was hanging out in a friend’s room when I heard some music wafting down the stairwell.  Two guitarists, perched on stairs, were playing a beautiful gypsy jazz style duet from the film Midnight in Paris.  After listening in awe, I ran to get my violin.  After I pulled out my fiddle, a bass player and a couple more guitarists joined us.  We played some jazz standards, some original compositions, and a little Stevie Wonder just because he’s awesome.  And I had an epiphany.  Jams like this must occur about 5 hours later than I’ve been searching for them.  I need to become nocturnal and then I will find jams like this every night. 

Nostalgic Before Leaving

The Entrance to 133 Beacon St

Let me paint a picture for you.  The four flights of stairs leading up to my dorm room are so old that they have been broken in by the countless inhabitants of 133 Beacon St.  The stairs are slope gently inward giving the whole staircase the slight feeling that it is peeling away from the wall and listing inwards.  White faux Corinthian columns provide support at the corners each landing and dark wooden banisters contrast with the pale walls.  There is an old fashioned mirror on the ceiling above the fifth floor of the type that normally graces expensive hotel lobby’s, but ours looks like it has black mould growing on it. 

As I climb the flight to my room, I get a musical snapshot of each floor and its inhabitants.  Funky electric guitar pours out of the door on the first floor as well as gales of girly laughter (only of note because it’s a guys room).  A woman sings on the second, there is flute wafting out

Where I Can Spy on my Peers

from the room across the landing.  The next floor up the door is always open, letting me steal a glance at room that looks like it has a resident tornado.  Then there’s my floor.  Above me, there is a Brazilian bass player who I can hear playing groovy lines late into the night as I lay on my bed. 

 

Music just floats around here.  Everywhere I go I am either hearing or imagining music.  If I go out into the real world, I analyze chord

progressions in restaurants or figure out the melody in solfege while walking to the T.  Today I decided that the elevator chime was an F#, based on its relationship to the song that was playing in my head. 

Today I was talking to someone about my probable university degree (biology and English, if you don’t know).  I was saying that it is hard for me to juggle my three loves, music, science, and English.  My friend sympathized, but only to a point.  He’s one of those enviable people who has always known that he wanted to play music. He had taken AP Chemistry and Physics in high school and really enjoyed it, but now he said he was “happy it was over so that he could focus on music”.  When I expressed my envy, he asked why I couldn’t just pick one thing and do only that.  I said I would probably go crazy.  Then I thought, would I?  I haven’t these past four weeks...

It Don't Mean a Thing

I’ve been thinking about elusive concept of "swing".  The best music textbooks skirt around directly defining “swing”, yet “swing” is an integral part of jazz*.  It is a rhythm and a musical era—which both have concrete definitions.  It is when swing is used as a verb that is becomes so difficult to define, as in “that person really swings”.  For me, “swing” is the feel in music that makes me want to tap my foot, lean forward in my chair, and grin like a maniac.  “Swinging” is feel and a way of playing.  When I listen to one of the jazz greats, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker or Cannonball Adderley, I can instantly say that they swing. 

The other night I met a bunch of fellow Five-Weekers at a pizza parlour down the street.  I had a fantastic philosophical conversation about jazz harmony with a couple of guys.  One of the guys was complaining about how the jazz he listens to gets repetitive.  A guy from New Orleans and I verbally jumped on him and said that he was listening to “bad” jazz if it ever got boring, or sounded the same way twice.  We kept trying to describe various ways that one could tell if the jazz was worth listening to when I said, “you have to listen to jazz that swings, or else it’s not real jazz”.  The other guy agreed with me, and then we launched into a conversation about which jazz cats swing the most.

 As an aside, I love being here, I can talk to people and get misty eyed about the beauty of jazz and then we can have a 45-minute conversation about how awesome jazz theory is.

We’ve also been talking about “swing” in some of my classes.  In my “Survey of String Styles” class we've been listening to great pioneers of jazz violin and describing their individual styles.  One descriptive verb that always comes up is whether or not they “swing”.  We said yes to Joe Venuti, no to Eddie South, and Stuff Smith got the ultimate compliment, “he swings really hard”.  Modern violin players “swing” too, any jazz musician that I want to listen to “swings”. 

After this class, I was listening to some of my fellow string classmates improvise. Some of the most technically advanced players don’t/can’t swing at all.  While they play good notes while soloing, there is no swing and they sound like classical musicians playing notes from a blues scale.  Some who are novice players swing so hard that I want to simultaneously get up and dance and go cry in a corner.  So clearly, how much someone swings is not necessarily correlated to skill level. 

However, most of the horn players who can play their instrument swing, regardless of their level.  Are horns more conducive to swinging?  Or is swing beaten (metaphorically) out of violinists in the classical tradition?  I love classical music, but it is undeniable that many classically trained violinists can’t swing. 

I hope I fall into the classically trained but still swinging category.  I think I do... in my first private lesson here my teacher said, "You swing pretty hard for not knowing the correct bowing pattern".  !!!!  Thank you?  I think?  

While I am totally enamoured with jazz, there is one thing that really bothers me about the genre. When I’m playing jazz, I’m never allowed to sound like a violin.  I’m always mimicking the sound of a guitar pick strumming a guitar, or trying to phrase like a vocalist.  And I am always supposed to be recreating the staccato punches of a trumpet, or the ornaments that come so easily to saxophones.  When do I get to sound like a violin?  When do I get to play long gooey bows with lots of vibrato in the key of G or D?  Please don’t tell me I can only find that in the orchestra! 

*Interestingly, some non-jazz swings as well, blues, some bluegrass and fusion all come immediately to mind. 

International Students

I love how international this program is.  I love meeting all the American students with their different American accents, slang, and mannerisms.  I love watching the ways the South Americans greet each other.  I love hearing French, Portuguese, and Danish flying around the halls at school. 

I think my favourite new slang is the greeting “s’up”.  As you probably all know, it’s a shortening of the phrase “what’s up?” which can then be translated anywhere from “How are you” to “I see you but I don’t really want to have a whole conversation with you right now”.  My brother says “s’up” to me all the time, but he says it ironically, so the first time someone said “s’up” to me here, I nearly fell over; I had never heard it used in everyday conversation before.  I thought my brother pulled it from some tv or internet thing and I didn’t know people actually said it.  (I realize this says something about how sheltered my life is perched at the far western edge of North America.)

I have a personal space bubble (perhaps it’s a Canadian thing?), but when I hang out with my friends from Brazil and Mexico, my bubble collapses.  They rub shoulders standing closer together than I ever would, lean across each other, and give random high fives.  The lack of space is very weird for me and I constantly have to watch myself so I don’t edge away.  I have given more high fives in the last couple weeks than I have since I was about five years old.  Every time I see one of these guys they want to give me a high five.  I truly don’t understand it; what is so compelling about hands touching?  Guy, girl, it doesn’t seem to matter.  No se.  I don’t know if this is a type of modified more “modern” handshake that is common in South America, or if they do it because they think this is how Americans greet each other.  

This same group of people is a lot warmer and friendlier than I am used to among my peers in Canada.  Whenever I sit alone at breakfast someone always wanders over and asks why I’m sitting alone.  I think they think I’m weird.  I think I’m shy.  Maybe I have that famous reserve for which Canadians are infamous. Today I was talking with saxophone player from Toronto and he has noticed the same lack of reserve here that I am.  We both think its strange and nicely refreshing to be in a world where strangers notice us.  I think I like how friendly people are here, although it still takes me by surprise.

I also have made some friends from Europe and they bring their own culture to the Five Week Program.  First of all, they mostly have the nicest clothes (naturally).  But my favourite cultural difference is the greeting—the kiss/cheek touch.  I love it and I’ve even been included in that greeting ritual.  Do I have honorary Italian status because I room with one?  Also, and I think I like this even better than “s’up”, is the hat tip.  Now twice I’ve seen friends tip their hat to me in passing.  It makes me giggle. 

I am still, in my third week here, surprised by all the culture differences.  These observations and surprises are ongoing, some happened today.  I think I get lulled into a fall sense of the mundane because I hear English around me, but then I have another conversation with my peers.  Being here is like simultaneously traveling in multiple countries at once and having global culture shock.  I love it. 

Music Theory 101

Handy Chart of Tritone Subs

One of my homework assignments this past week was to determine the tritone substitutions in all 12 keys for the V⁷/V, V⁷/IV, and V⁷/VI and their related IImin⁷.  Was that gibberish to you?  It’s Martian to most people.  This type of music theory is pure fun for me and I don’t have a way to share it with 90% of my family and friends.  I would like to explain in detail all the theory that I’m learning, but most people don’t understand it and don’t want to.  I would love to explain how cool it is, but from experience, I know eyes will glaze over.  Instead I’m going to try and explain why music theory is like math.   Then those who enjoy math, or any logical thought process, will have a closer understanding of why music theory is so awesome. 

Chord Analysis!

For me, music and math are similar in the way I think about the questions.  When I am working through musical mind puzzles, I use the same mental techniques that I would to solve a calculus question.  When I am doing a math question, I need to approach it in a systematic way that allows me to think of all the different variations possible to solve the question.  Figuring out a chord substitution uses a very similar mental process.  I see the chord, and if I can’t “solve” it in a glance, I figure out all the possibilities of where it’s going, where it came from, and why might it be there.  To do this, I need to keep all the different possibilities in my mind until I select the right version.  It’s like doing a Sudoku puzzle, but better, because then I can play the song and hear what I’ve just worked through conceptually. 

My Notes from Class

Even the method of being tested on this type of chord analysis is like writing a calculus exam.  My teacher was telling us how fussy the marking of these assignments would be in the normal school semester.  Everything he was saying seemed totally reasonable to me, it was like he was describing the picky marking of a calculus exam.  The prof kept saying that a systematic approach to this type of chord analysis is the only way to do it without missing details.  It sounded to me like he was quoting my math profs from this past year at SFU. 

Music theory is also a bit like physics.  It explains how music works they same ways that the kinematic equations describe how objects accelerate.  This also means that music theory and physics are cool in the same way, they both explain how different aspects of the universe work. 

The biggest difference to me between the math and music theory is that math happens on paper, but I can hear the music theory any time I listen to a piece of music.  Math is individual and happens in rooms, but music theory comes alive any time I play or listen to a piece of music.  If I were a better mathematician, perhaps math would jump off the page for me as well, but I’m content with math remaining paperbound.

Venturing Outside the Music

Anahita. Flight of the Night. By William Morris Hunt

This last week has flown by.  It seems like I blinked and the week happened without my knowledge or permission.  I have been so busy with Berklee stuff I have had hardly time to sleep.  All my classes started getting difficult this week, its like they’re trying to project our learning curve onto an exponential growth model.  It has gotten so intense.  I am eating, sleeping, and dreaming music. 

The Jukebox

On Wednesday evening I took a rare break from practicing and a group of us went to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.  The museum was pretty nice, but I wandered around in a daze trying to ground myself in an evening without music.  I was happiest in the music exhibit looking at period instruments (a violin with frets was the my favourite).  But other than that, I almost felt like I was in a new country where everyone spoke a different language.  A language where people did not care about scales, or how to play polyrhythms.  I was singing solfege under my breath and thinking about chords while other tourists and locals walked past oblivious.  I couldn’t stay in the moment, I wanted to get back home so I could play some more violin. 

One exhibit snapped me out of my musical reverie.  The “hippie chic” exhibit displayed a jukebox in one corner of the gallery.  I raced over to it and read the song selection avidly and listened to some of the tunes.  I promptly started singing along, switching between the base line, chords and melody.  Oddly, I didn’t catch anyone staring.

VW Vans, a Part of the Hippie Chic Exhibit

Earlier this week I was walking past the café’s lining the street outside Berklee and I heard someone say, “Is there a music school around here, or something”?  I presume he was saying this in reference to all people walking past carrying instruments.  But my initial reaction was one of intense sadness.  I felt so sorry for him that he didn’t know Berklee was there.  Not the physical actuality of the buildings, but the intense musical world they represent.  A world in which I am totally immersed.  And a world that I love. 

Redefining "Good"

 

Being at Berklee seems to be about redefining my horizons.  Before I came here I thought that I had a pretty good command of the jazz language (for my age anyway).  I knew how I sounded and I knew who I wanted to sound like.  I was curious to see what other players my age were doing, as I’ve never really had a chance to interact with jazz musicians my own age. 

The Sunset View of Boston

The second night I was here, I attended a jazz jam that was more like a jazz open mic.  Small ensembles signed up and then they performed their songs.  Throughout the night, I was alternately elated by the spectacular music that was being created on stage and crushed by how astoundingly good they were.  Totally fulfilling the jazz stereotype, the amazing kids were mostly African-American, male, and horn players (with the exception of one Asian girl).  They were playing songs like Cherokee, Blue Monk, and Anthropology at astronomical speeds.  Their note choices were to die for.  And they had beautiful phrasing.  Their songs sounded like they had come right from the Bluenote label. 

Since then, how I think of my own playing has shifted dramatically.  First, I was pretty blue that there were some young kids who could play stuff that I wouldn’t even attempt.  My self-confidence fell and continued to drop.  Now, however, my feelings have shifted, turning from despair and envy into a sort of, “I want to be a black saxophone player” mentality.  The real world expression of feeling is that those kids have become my role models.  I want to sound like them.  So when I practice, I’m (hopefully) thinking like a saxophone.  I’m trying to recreate their lines.  So far though, I still sound like a violin player, albeit one playing triplets.

The Berklee Gospel Choir (at the same festival)

Tonight though, I attended a music festival held in the Boston Commons.  I heard the Smithsonian Jazz Ensemble performing a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald.  Their singer said, “this is a tribute to Ella but we are not trying to imitate her.  This is a love letter to how inspirational she was and is”.  They proceeded to play arrangements of various different songs Ella had made famous.  In other words, they played many of my favourite swing era tunes.  I knew all the songs they played and could sing along with many, like Cheek to Cheek and A-Tisket A-Tasket. 

Of course the horn solos were amazing, right in the groove and stylistically appropriate.  It was a great reminder that solos must match the song.  If their lead sax player had played a fast bebop era solo of like with which I am so infatuated right now, he would have been booed off the stage (probably not literally).  Instead, he played something tasteful and appropriate to the swing era.  The concert, which I very much enjoyed, served as a reminder that there isn’t one jazz style to rule them all.  I am not inherently a worse musician because I can’t/don’t play bebop.  While I still want to learn how to sound like a horn, this evening’s concert was a reminder to relax.  I don’t need to play like 17 year old virtuosos. 

A Day in the Life

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My days here continue to be awesome. At a first cursory glance at my schedule, it appears that I don’t have enough to do.  And I do have large gaps in my schedule, it is true.  The first couple of days of classes, I was quite worried that I wouldn’t be able to fill my time.  This was a really stupid thing to worry about.  Here is a short description of what I did on Friday—a day when I had relatively few classes. 

My Schedule

My classes started at eleven, so I got to sleep in.  Since I got to sleep-in, I knew I could stay up late the previous night.  So I played music until midnight.  Back on Friday morning, I had a leisurely extra hour in bed where I wrote down some thoughts and practiced clapping some rhythms.  Then I realized I was late, and ran to the T at 10:30, so I could get to Berklee by 11:00. 

I had my musicianship class first, which is basically ear training.  I love this class, as it is very interactive and the teacher is fantastic.  She makes the most mundane exercise seem fun.  We sing, clap and write down rhythms.  It is very fun, and often funny.  On Friday we had a short quiz, which meant that each of us sight sang and sight clapped a couple of bars from our workbook.  We went around in a circle, everyone singing/clapping different bars.  Each person got a moment in the spotlight… certainly not my favourite activity. 

From there I raced off to my ensemble class, something for which I was really excited.  All week I had heard other ensembles practicing, the horn players swinging and the drums pounding out an awesome groove.  But alas, my class wasn’t like that. The class was 2 hours long and we didn’t play any music.  The guitar players were nice, hopefully I will get to jam with them later.  Since the group wasn’t a good match for me, I went and talked to the Five-Week office.  The people there were so great.  They were very sympathetic and gave me a new jazz ensemble to replace the bad one and also put me in a funk-fusion band.  Those people are awesome. 

Then that was it for my classes on Friday.  I was done at 2:00pm.  Except then I met two other violin players and we practiced for a little while… one and a half hours.  We worked on the songs we are playing in the Five-Week orchestra.  We practiced chops (the rhythmic way of dropping the bow on the strings to produce sounds like a quiet drum).  Then we jammed on a blues.  It was pretty awesome to play with other fiddle players like this.  I only have experience doing this type of thing with my dad, so it was pretty cool to hear their different playing styles and to be able to trade solos three different ways. 

While we were practicing, I noticed people traipsing past the window in the door to our practice room (more like a practice closet).  Each person would peer inside, staring at the three violins making odd chunking sounds.  Then they would walk on. I presume they were prospective students on a tour.  I felt like I was in a zoo, everyone coming to look at the exotic fiddle players.  This image amused me so much, and then my friends when I told them, that we laughed until we cried.  One of my friends pointed out that we were even displaying like animals in a zoo—which of course made us laugh harder. 

Poly-rhythms in a Pizza Parlour

Afterwards, I took a half hour break to eat some lunch, and then I went back to the practice rooms to practice my own assignments.  I’m mostly working on modes and movable finger patterns based on the mode arpeggios.  Then you can move the finger patterns and play them over different chords to get entirely different sounds.  I can’t describe how much fun it is to learn this stuff.  It’s kind of like learning how to use different spices when you are cooking.  Each spice gives the same dish a really different flavour. 

I was pretty tired at 5:30, so I packed up and went back home, to Fisher College.  Where, after a short rest I did… can you guess?  I practiced some more!  This type of day seems to be what my routine is settling in to, and it is the best thing ever.  I don’t need to do anything but play music, so music is all I’m doing.  If I’m not careful, I’m going to leave Boston without ever having been a normal tourist here.