How to Get Hip-Hop

Friday afternoons I can be found in the outdoor eating area of my daughter’s school. Nope, we aren’t dining out together. The benches have been pushed away, and 28 kids and a hand full of parents are learning a little ‘attitude’, which, according to our teach, is synonymous with hip-hop.

But hang on, what’s the definition of Waltz, if not attitude. Or Tarantella, or Scherzo, or Allegro, ma non troppo, for that matter.

Now, I acquaint attitude with posture, in hip-hop they call it ‘pose.’ ‘You gotta have a pose,’ they say.

So what if you haven’t got much of a pose. You need a little help getting posed up. Or, suppose you have a surfeit of pose, but you need a little beef to settle it down and shape it up.

Well, this is what you do. You get a course of mine, if you don’t already have 2 or 3. Then you start watching and doing all you see there.

You ingest some beef, and you slip on some pose.

And then you come strut your stuff at my masterclass. You put it out there. Don’t matter if you’re doing the open string exercise, or Paganini #24. There will be a platform for you here, and you will be the better for standing on it and radiating out what’s inside of you.

Yes, the room will get warm, and so will everybody in it; with the fire of INSIGHT, PASSION, and SATISFACTION it gets warm.

In the master classes I lead, two things are important.

One, that you get a good, well-understood solution to every challenge you have in your playing right now. I answer YOUR questions, and we don’t move on ‘til you’re ready to move on.

And two that I take you beyond where you’ve been in new, unexpected ways. This could involve some ‘pose,’ or it could be an aspect of technique or sound you’d given up on yet only lacked for some fresh insight.

And yes, I want you to prepare repertoire. In fact, you can contact me ahead of time to get my input. A very good idea.

Yet anyone working with one of my courses will have plenty of material available. And that’s another thing.

I only accept people into the master class who have invested in one of my courses, even if it only be ‘Dynamic Breath Control for Violinists.’

There’s no point coming here to learn how to breathe properly and verbalize a beat when these basic and essential skills are available to you for what you’d invest in a tank of gas.

This is not to say that there won’t be more to learn about breathing and counting. Refinements will certainly be talked about at the class.

I just don’t care for the idea of anyone coming to this opportunity without a real clue of what’s coming. Oh yes, and as helpful as they may be, reading the newsletters just isn’t enough preparation to get full advantage from your time here.

With this said, I look forward to seeing you in June. There are yet a couple of places available at the highly reduced rate I spoke of previously.

All the best, Clayton Haslop

P.S. In short, the master class is for those with questions AND those who’ve been practicin’ hard and just want to come show off. I’d sure like you to be one of them.