How to Hang Music on a Beat

This morning I did some interesting training. After my practice I hopped on my unicycle and, quite literally, waltzed up a mesa behind our house.

Now, let me tell you something about unicycle riding. It’s one thing to be able to mount the thing and stay on it as you beat a drunken path down the street. It’s quite another to have the precise control required to dance on it.

I’ve got my sights set on the latter.

Eventually, perhaps even tomorrow, I will venture out with a violin under chin to see if I can hold the basic waltz step pattern whilst playing Fritz’s ‘Liebesfreud.’ If I can, I’ll begin the next phase; coming up with some real choreography to make a show out of it.

Yet the real point of all this, other than exercise and good ole horse-play, is to increase my physical relationship with time.

As the famous saw goes, ‘timing is everything.’

Now you don’t really need to ride a unicycle to become a musical master of time. And the real keys to acquiring a keen sense of time, as I counsel in all my courses, are relaxation and the ability to live in the present moment.

Those of you working with my courses will recall how I always make a point about ‘labeling’ the beats, when you first begin to get your hands around a piece of music. When you’re doing this you’re associating a given physical move with a specific point in time. And, as you well know, at first I do not care whether the time is strictly kept or not. I just want the movements and the call of the beats to be a matched pair.

It’s the old ‘Body and Mind as one’ thing.

Only after that crucial link is established can real mastery evolve.

Whoops, I almost forgot one thing; Form. Yes, form is important, especially for a classical violinist. Without form one’s technical potential is limited. So when I speak of physical movement, as I did above, I’m talking about well-formed movement. Movements that will set you free, and allow the fire of your passion to burn its brightest.

Sometimes good form has to be reached for. And for the thinking violinist the mind plays an exquisite role in leading the body, through visualization, to that higher level of function.

Mind you, it doesn’t necessarily happen over night. After all, there is another old saw that goes, ‘the spirit is willing; the body is weak.’ Yet I firmly believe that those with serious intentions, and a willingness to stretch forth their creativity, will win the day in the end.

Yes, it’s a lot.

Or rather, yes, it is Rich; as indeed the violin IS.

Hopefully this has given you a pause for reflection, a little inspiration, and a good dose of motivation. It is certainly my wish for you.

All the best,

Clayton Haslop

P.S. You know, I do have a little gem of a DVD here called Dynamic Breath Control for Violinists. If you don’t have it in your possession today, you could have it in your possession real soon. And I know good things would come of it.