A Dramamine…Please

Recently, a violinist came to play for me, and I almost had to leave the room due to motion sickness.

Now, before I go further, let me just say that what I am going to describe is more common in players today than white tails on a rabbit farm. Well, that might be a slight exaggeration, but its no exaggeration to say that this unfortunate mannerism has reached epidemic proportions.

The most prominent symptom is what I can best describe as an unsightly bulge in the middle of each bow stroke.

The perpetrator begins each note with mouse-like timidity. Once he or she has ascertained that it is in tune a lion roars forth in full voice.

The whole drama is then repeated on the next stroke.

It’s like driving with a two-footed driver. You know, the type who is either pressing on the gas pedal or pressing on the brake. From a side view, passengers in the car sway forward and backward like those little bobbing ornaments you see mounted behind the back seats of some older cars.

Oh yes, there is another component to this sorry tale that must be told.

The ‘testing-the-waters’ phase of the stroke will usually display a conspicuous lack of left hand movement. Once the green light is given, however, and the bow surges down or up the string, the left hand looses all restraint and behaves like the guest at a party who’s had a few too many.

OK, OK, I am having a wee bit o’ fun here. But there is a serious point to be made. I see – hear, really – much playing that displays much of what I have described.

Your vigilance against this tendency must be ever present. Especially when you are feeling at all uncomfortable or nervous.

One of the best ways of beating this habit, if you find yourself so afflicted, is to practice using my counting method.

All the best,
Clayton Haslop

P.S. Given that this mannerism manifests itself more prominently in pressure situations, it is almost a given for it to be accompanied by tension. My DVD course will show you how to rid your body of unwanted tension, permanently.

Shine A Bright Light On Your Shifts

This morning I received an email from a fellow by the name of Jordan. He had a question about rapid shifting. Here’s what I had to say to him.

Jordan,
Visualization, maintaining your hand position, being ‘present’, and staying relaxed are key to successful shifting. When we are faced with difficult moves on the violin, we tend to avoid dealing with them on a subconscious level. Milstein used to call it ‘running away’.

So, play the passage slowly but execute the shift fast, as you would do it at tempo.

Now, you have to be vigilant and honest with yourself. When you play the note before the shift, ask yourself a few questions. Can I ‘see’ the next note; can I ‘feel’ and hear it; am I relaxed and breathing?

Now, shift.

Do you avert your eyes, at the moment of your shift; are you absolutely relaxed on the note you have shifted to; is your hand position exactly as it was before the shift; did you arrive where your ‘vision’ told you to arrive; does your ‘image’ need adjustment?

I concluded by recommending that he spend some quality time with nos. 11 and 12 on my Kreutzer course.

All the best,
Clayton Haslop

P.S. Remember, a shift is an arm movement. An extension is a hand movement. Know the difference by seeing some moving pictures worth a 1,000 words.

Goin’ Slow, Goin’ Fast

The other day I received an email from a very trusted source on physical fitness. He talked of the importance of training slow, and training fast. Same principles apply in violin training.

The secret is knowing when and how to do both.

First, slow practice. Most violinists don’t spend enough quality time playing slowly, it’s that simple. Well, not quite that simple. Notice I said ‘quality time’.

You add quality to your slow practice time when you engage with your vision of the final result as you do it. If you visualize yourself playing with velocity it will give you clues to finger pressure, string crossing and shifting efficiency. It will help you ‘red flag’ essential data, the stuff that will be crucial to have in your conscious mind when you play fast. Then, your slow practice allows your mind the space to catalogue, absorb, and get the ‘feel’ of that information.

Now let’s talk about the other side, training fast.

While you are still in the learning phase of a new piece, ‘up tempo’ playing can be very helpful for a couple of reasons. If you are using my counting method, you will quickly expose problem areas, even those that used to surprise you later on in the learning process. You know what I’m talkin’ about. The, ‘that never used to be a problem’ type places.

If you are using my breathing technique, you will be building the habit of playing relaxed, no matter the velocity of tempo.

What I have given you are a few essentials of productive practicing. Thankfully – wouldn’t it get boring otherwise – there is more to know. To ‘strike it rich’ where intelligent practice is concerned, I suggest you hop over and grab my ”Kreutzer for Violin Mastery, Vol. 1” now.

All the best,
Clayton Haslop

P.S. Remember, keep your head in the game when you practice slowly. Once the ‘autopilot’ gets switched on, you’re cruisin’ for a bruisin’.

CBS News Plays To A New Tune

As I sit writing this to you I am at 35,000’ and being jetted through the sky at 500 mph. No, unfortunately I am not on my own private aircraft, at least not yet.

I’m on my way back from LA, though, and I thought you might enjoy one insider’s view of the music scoring process in Hollywood.

On this trip I played for two projects that couldn’t have been more different. On Thursday I spent quite a long day recording the theme and incidental music for CBS News.

Many of you will know, by this time, that Katie Couric will become the anchor of ‘CBS Nightly News’ next month. And for the first time in 20 years CBS is replacing all of the music that accompanies their national news coverage.

They selected one of this country’s finest cinematic composers to do the music, James Horner. As I have served as his concertmaster for the past 11 years I was not about to miss this historic recording event.

The music, though packaged in small segments ranging from a few seconds to around 2 minutes, covered a wide range of feeling and tempo. After all, they need a triumphant, important sounding theme for the Intro; some tense, brooding music for war stories, busy, fast paced music for campaign coverage, ‘pastoral’ music for coverage of ‘American life’, and so forth.

Some of it was literally recorded in one take. The show ‘theme music’ was afforded more time to tweak balances and adjust the orchestration. Violinistically, none of it was very challenging, just a couple of high passages with large interval leaps to negotiate. Otherwise it was just a matter of keeping the energy level high throughout the entire 7 1/2 hour day.

The next day, yesterday, I spent a day on ‘Bobby’, a star studded film which I believe is being directed by Emilio Estevez.

What a contrast. Marc Isham, another well-known film composer, comes from a jazz background. His string writing is almost purely textual; long pads of sound over which he spins out jazz informed, steam-of-consciousness melodies on piano, sax, or trumpet.

Such days go by very slowly for string players. Essentially we are taking what sounds good on a ‘synth’ and just giving it a bit more depth.

So that’s the long and short of it in ‘A Musician’s Hollywood’ for this week, folks. Now get the long and short of ’A Violinist’s Kreutzer’ for the low down on some great violin techniques.

All the best,
Clayton Haslop

P.S. For some really cool musical bits out of Hollywood, wait until you hear the scoring for ‘All the Kings Men’. The haunting violin solos will inhabit your ears for months. Meanwhile allow my finger strengthening, relaxation building, bow straightening, tone enhancing techniques loose on all the weak areas of your violin playing.

Getting the FUN Into Your Practice

In its broadest sense, ‘fun’ can cover a lot of ground. It can refer to spontaneous moments of delight, the experience of exhilaration, a growing expectation of reward, the feeling of achievement, or just basic physical pleasures.

Simply put, however, the more fun you have, and the more types of fun you have in your life, the more successful your life will be.

Now, there is an art to manifesting fun. Here are my thoughts on cultivating it and nourishing it, specifically as it pertains to setting and realizing goals in your violin practice.

Get yourself in the habit of setting and achieving goals. Not just big, sweeping goals, like mastering all 42 Kreutzer Etudes, but little, immediate goals as well. An example of an immediate goal could be to play through the first 8 measures of Kreutzer #2 while counting, breathing and imaging.

Keep track of your victories. For some, like myself, this is something of a goal itself.

By keeping track of victories, I am not talking about empty praise. I am saying that when you have stretched for something, there should be acknowledgement that is in proportion to the effort expended.

Some of you may be surprised to hear this, but on a ‘bad playing day’, when even the thought of taking the violin out is an effort to me, I will give myself a good dose of credit for just getting the violin out of the case and beginning to play. Often that is enough of a boost to get me to the next goal, on such a day – warming up.

Recognize that occasionally you must be flexible with your goals, but, at the same time, don’t surrender them without good cause.

Sometimes even the simplest aim cannot be met. In the above example, if I were physically ill on my ‘bad playing day’ I might be doing my body a great disservice by attempting to play. In other words, have compassion with yourself when a goal you have set proves unattainable, and let it go.

So here is the bottom line.

Take 15 minutes of your day to set goals and review those you have met. Soon your life will have the focus of a laser beam. And, if you have goals that run through a range of time frames and degrees of challenge, you will also have a rolling waves of good feeling passing through you continuously.

What could be more ‘fun’ than that?

All the best,
Clayton Haslop

P.S. Don’t forget to integrate my Kreutzer course into your goal setting lifestyle. The dividends will be awesome!

Singing With Our Hands

Yesterday my wife, 4 year old daughter and I attended a performance at an international festival of folk music and dance. It was a remarkable event. Ten groups performed representing all seven continents – and the festival is based right here in Western North Carolina.

What struck me, as a violinist, is that the best dancers are actually singing with their body. All of them got the rhythm of the music. After all, that’s as essential to a dancer as water to a fish. The basic step patterns and moves communicate it. What I’m talking about is something beyond the basics.

The standouts were tuned like vibrating crystals to a higher form of communication. When their bodies moved, the vibrations penetrated right through to the core of my being. The complexity of the steps, the athleticism of the dance, these were all superfluous. It was the vision they carried within themselves and radiated outward to their audience that moved.

That should be your mission as a violinist, as well.

To do it, to really ‘get it’ and communicate it, you must do two things.
You must form a vision of the musical message, and then carry it with you as you master the technical issues.

There is no better way to develop both abilities than by studying etudes/caprices written by a master violinist/composer such a Rudolphe Kreutzer. I urge you to do it with the insights I provide by going ordering you copy of ”Kreutzer for Violin Mastery, Vol. 1” now.

All the best,
Clayton Haslop

P.S. Those of you waiting for orders will be pleased to know that they ship today. I apologize for the delay, and wish you great success with the course. Those of you not waiting for an order should be. Click here to receive your copy now.

Practice Sessions That Change Your Life

Many people today, and there may be a few of you reading this email, are feeling that life is passing them by, and that few of their dreams are being realized. If this is not you, then you needn’t read further.

Now then, if you are still with me, let’s talk. Last night I was reminded of three pillars that are absolutely essential for a successful life. They are: VISION, BREATH, and COUNTING. Are you surprised? For the uninitiated you may well be, let me explain.

When I talk about VISION I am not talking about the service your eyes perform for you. No, I am talking about a very advanced brain function that we share with precious few species on this planet. I am talking about what some refer to as ‘the theatre of your mind.’

Does that give you an image? It should. Creating goals and then visualizing them in your ‘mind’s eye’ creates a target, a clear and present target, toward which you will move like a bee to a blossom.

By BREATH I mean something considerably more than the shallow, minimal-for-life type breaths most of us take in the course of a mediocre day.

I am talking about conscious breath, the breath that comes from your belly and is infused with intention. These are the breaths that activate the deeper parts, the creative parts, the parts of your brain that will problem solve and strategize for you.

And the great news is that those areas, once activated, will provide you with inspirations and ideas, free of charge! It is merely their purpose in life to help you succeed. In return they require only one thing.

They require that you to COUNT; that you keep track. You must tell your higher brain how far you have come. How far you have to go. You must tabulate for it everything that can be tabulated, everything that can be measured, in short everything that has any bearing whatsoever on the goal(s) you have set for yourself. This data is the grist for the mill that is your activated higher brain.

Do these three things and you will change your life.

Do these three things in your violin practice, and your playing will take off like a rocket headed for the moon. The beautiful thing is, you can use the same techniques you use to practice most effectively to live most effectively.

”Kreutzer for Violin Mastery, Vol. 1” will teach you how to do all three of the things I just talked about. Don’t you think you had better jump over and grab one?

All the best,
Clayton Haslop

P.S. While you are there, click on the link to my Kreutzer Masterclass, indicate your interest in coming, and then make it one of your lesser life goals to perform all the etudes on Vol.1.

Getting the Notes But Missing the Music

As many of you know, I do a lot of recording for films. Maybe 80% of the time it’s pretty easy stuff – read it and get it down on tape. It’s the other 20% I want to talk to you about today.

You see, it’s in the challenging music that the priorities of a musician are unmasked.

Many of my colleagues, fine players that they are, suffer from a confusion of musical priorities. When the music is too challenging to simultaneously get all the components (notes, dynamics, rhythm, time, articulation) they go for the notes, before anything else.

Take a moment to think about this. Let’s say the music is so difficult it is only possible to get 1 component, and it is the notes. The result will be chaos. The same is true of all else except one – TIME.

If everybody places time first, at least there will be basic ensemble. You start together, you make tempo changes together, you finish together.

Keep thinking. Can notes be next? No, they can’t. If there are notes, but no dynamics there is cacophony. DYNAMICS must be read next, for they give the sound a basic shape.

And guess what, notes are still not next. RHYTHM is your next priority. Again, this gives the aural proceedings coherence. Notes without a duration attached to them, will not.

Even ARTICULATION will communicate the composer’s intentions better than notes, if one or other is to be sacrificed.

So there you have it. Because the NOTES are usually regarded as the most difficult component, they are mistakenly given the most importance. Bottom line is, the music suffers.

This is a valuable lesson. If you haven’t exactly seen things this way, and you’re open to new ways of approaching music and the instrument you love, you ought to jump right over and pick up your copy of Kreutzer for Violin Mastery, Vol. 1
now.

All the best,
Clayton Haslop

P.S. The mastery of ‘time’ is every musician’s first priority. click here to become that ‘solid as a rock’ player that everyone else tunes into.

Turn a Light On Stage Fright

There are indeed few of us who have no fear of performing in front of people, especially if those people are sitting in judgment, as, say, at an audition or competition.

By the way, when I told Nathan Milstein of my intention to play at the Flesch competition he shook his head in disgust and said, “Why waste your time, it would be better to take a vacation.” And he was right. But let’s save that for another day.

Getting back to ‘nerves.’ Take a moment to give thanks that we have them. Yes, I mean that. When nervous energy becomes excited energy and is brought under control, you have a powerful source of ‘high octane’ fuel that can boost performance beyond anything you have done in your practice room.

The raw, uncontrolled energy of nerves is ‘fight or flight’ energy. The adrenaline is pulling blood from your extremities, and preparing you for a sudden, explosive burst of activity – either fighting for your life, or running like hell to save it.

Once you have ‘given thanks’ for this energy source your next order of business is to get control of it.

As you contemplate an approaching concert, audition, or competition, feel your level of nervous anxiety. That gives you an indication of how much energy converting you will be doing on the day of.

Once you have a sense of that you can lay a little strategy to handle it. The ‘fight or flight’ response is going to pull blood from you extremities. You are going to experience a loss of fine motor control. The more anxiety you feel over an event the more adrenaline you will need to process.

You will process that adrenaline by showing up as early as your anxiety sense tells you to show up. The more anxiety the earlier you will arrive.

Now it’s the day of.

You begin warming up. At first you will feel the effects of adrenaline. Relax about it. Move the bow back and forth, vigorously. Focus on making a full, rich tone; begin to enjoy the sensation of movement.

Do not start with the most difficult passage you will have to play!

Now you are ready to engage your mind. Slowly begin downloading into you consciousness all of the rich detail you have stored there during practice sessions – the feelings, the visualizations, the musical intentions.

I have begun this process up to 11/2 hours before a performance.

What is essential is that you have secured in your practice sessions all the knowledge and feeling that you will need to put on a great show.

Knowing that you are as prepared as you can possibly be is a wonderful feeling in and of itself. Don’t settle for anything less.

To unlock your potential for preparation I highly recommend you take advantage of my learning methods now. They will give you the confidence of a tiger in hot pursuit of prey.

All the best,
Clayton Haslop

Beware the Violinist’s ‘Autopilot’

You have done it, I have certainly done it, virtually all of us have done it at one time or another.

You know what I am talking about. Picking up the fiddle and playing through something with no conscious thought whatsoever. The fingers and bow moving as if by magic; muscle memory at the helm.

Well, let me tell you something. I had some rude awakenings trying to rely on that process in the past, and now I practice and perform with the ‘autopilot’ off.

Just to drive the point home, let me tell you a little story at my own expense.

I was about 11 years old, at the time, and I had come out to play the Bach ‘A Minor Concerto’ at one of my teacher’s recitals. I put the violin up to my chin, and then, I just stood there, frozen. I could not for the life of me think of the first note.

I laugh now, but I can tell you I was not laughing then. Especially as I walked to the piano, my face as red as the embers in a Boy Scout camp fire.

You see, I had played that piece by rote – brain off – so many times in the no pressure environment of my bedroom that when a little pressure was put on me, and I stopped to think, I came up with nada, zip.

Now, maybe nothing that extreme has happened to you. I certainly hope not.

The point is, really, that if you are not conscious of, and feeling each note, shift, bow stroke, musical gesture, etc., then you are leaving something on the table when it comes to being creative.

You are also missing a good deal of fun.

How you attain the highest level of body/mind consciousness when you practice and perform is an art and a science. The things you need to know to do this may be found in a new, groundbreaking course.

You will be delighted at how quickly you can adopt new habits that keep your head ‘in the game’ for the whole game.

All the best,
Clayton Haslop

P.S. In case you think what I have said today might help with ‘stage fright’, you’re right. But just to make sure, my next newsletter will tell you how to deal with that annoyance once and for all. Meanwhile, get over to ”Kreutzer for Violin Mastery, Vol. 1” and switch your autopilot off, permanently.