Peeling Back Those Layers

Just put down my violin, after one heck of a practice session. For the past couple of days I’ve begun focusing on repertoire that will be played at my Sedona Masterclass/Seminar, beginning on Friday.

One of the pieces is ‘Tzigane’, by Maurice Ravel – quite a knuckle-buster. If you don’t have it in your CD library you owe it to yourself to pick it up. It’s quite a bag of tricks.

Now, ‘Tzigane’ is not normally a piece one picks up and puts together in 6 days. Especially if you studied it at 19, performed it once in the interim, and then left the piece dormant for a few decades. As I have done.

And as time seems to allow just 90 minutes of practice a day now, I’m working fast.

Which isn’t to say I’m doing a lot of fast playing, either.

No way.

I’m spending most of my time in contemplative, slow motion. I go so slow that I’m able to zoom in on every pitch location, string change, shift, dynamic, beat name, fingering; in short on event in the music and in my body.

All simultaneously.

Now, the ‘saving Grace’ is this. I realize that there is a finite amount of information for me to know about any one piece.

It’s simply a matter of my taking the time to discovery it, and to percolate it into my mind and body.

OK, so your body is stiff, sore, tight and resistant. It doesn’t mean you’re condemned to remain that way. I can assure you of this through personal experience.

Much of the time your body is conforming to pain boundaries you’ve set for yourself. And Most of those boundaries get left unchallenged and are deemed permanent.

You see, we often stop short, as a result of our body fearing pain; we forget we have the power of breath, which fosters relaxation, and awakens the body to healing.

This doesn’t just concern physical pain. At times there is a kind of ‘intellectual’ pain that we shrink from. Yes, getting the mind around some things can be uncomfortable. In many cases this is so merely because outside ‘authorities’ have told us so.

Well, it’s time to question that authority. No, not necessarily in a headlong rush to judgment. Rather in a calm, curious, and persistent manner. Pushing a little away here, a little more over there.

Go as slowly as necessary.

Practice is about cultivating an ongoing epiphany. It is what real Artistic Vision is about.

I can’t imagine a better way to spend time.

On Friday a number of players are either going to experience this blessed state for the first time or they are going to Deepen the experience they’ve enjoyed with it. If they don’t I’ll send them home with their money back.

Life, and violin practice, are all about peeling back layers, until you finally expose the truth lying behind layers. That’s all it is.

Verify that statement in every practice session and you will be a great artist.

All the best,

Clayton Haslop

P.S. Recently I completed my 12 month program Violin Mastery Beginners Circle. Now it is available in its entirety; 13 DVDs, 4 CDs, music, and some 60 pages of written notes. It’s a program for those folks that want a real, up front and personal experience with the violin.