Bassoonjedi's LibraryAug
3
2010
Sorry guys, been a bit busy, but I have been writing and blogging and podcasting like a fiend lately. Check out my stuff @ Giggaheim.com.
Here’s what’s you can look forward to in future posts:
iPad/iPhone and the Bassoon
Practice methods for rehabiliotation (Autobiographical)
More Bassoonery 101
Arranging for Bassoon Ensemble – What Not To Do
Mar
11
2010
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Hey all, I just wanted to drop a line and let you know that you can listen to me voice my opinion on comic book reviews, tv shows, movies, video games, geek dating advice, and comment on tech news from the bleeding edge on the Giggaheim.com Podcast, which is now available on iTunes. New episodes are available for free download every Sunday, and we have 2 shows this week with the Orlando Megacon on the horizon. If you are in Orlando for the con, feel free to say hello. I’ll be the geek with the Giggahiem.com podcast shirt on.
Mar
9
2010
Although it has nothing to do with Bassoonery, I am proud to announce that I recorded my first podcast for The Giggaheim.com. The Giggaheim.com Podcast covers comic book reviews, video game news, dating tips for geeks, and the latest tech news from the bleeding edge. If you like one or many of those things, head over to the Giggaheim, and download the episode. We should be on iTunes shortly for you to subscribe to. This week, we’ll be doing a special episode for the Orlando Megacon.
Mar
4
2010
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (March 4, 1678 – July 28, 1741), nicknamed il Prete Rosso ("The Red Priest")
A happy, happy birthday to Antonio Vivaldi. Unless you are living under a rock, or are completely new to Bassoon, Vivaldi composed over 30 Concertos (and counting), and many a bassoon teacher will tell their students that playing Vivaldi on bassoon is comparable to playing Bach on piano. Vivaldi’s music demands a clean technique, focused attention span, and disciplined practice method. They are also fun to play. Happy birthday Tony!
Feb
3
2010
Most students cannot wait to tongue fast. It’s the first step to asserting yourself as a “Serious” bassoonist. Like revving the engine at a stop light. Most performers are initially measured by how fast they can play, and this could be used as a fair measuring stick, I’d prefer to measure a performer by how CLEANLY they perform.
But as the local bassoonist, it became clear to me at an early age that the studs of the band could play fast, and wield their tongues like Eddie Van Halen. I had a taste for heavy metal, and in my college years I decided to break down the barriers between my air-guitar fantasies, and my geeky-bassoon abilities. I decided I was going to play metal, and be the fastest tounguer anyone had ever heard. It didn’t take long in my higher education to learn that faster didn’t mean better, and clean always won competitions.
But where does one start? You can’t just jump into “Fight Fire With Fire”, you have to learn the essentials. Here’s how I sped up my tongue:
1) Start Slow. Sounds stupid right? You have to learn to walk before you can run, and with disciplined practice you can experience measured results quicker with discipline. Again, cleaner players are more valuable, and being able to perfectly tongue notes quickly puts you in the final rounds of the auditions. Play at the speed of perfection.
2) Assuming you already know how to start and stop notes with the tip of your tongue, take your reed with you. If you drive yourself to school or around town take your reed out, and tongue in small groups of 8-16 notes. Naturally, this is a solitary practice, and exposing others to speed drills can cause mass hysteria.
3) Pick your syllables. This was a final hurdle for me, and hopefully I have spared you. Most wind players swear by the “Ducka-ducka”, but I always found that my tongue would seal the air off completely, making a void in my mouth, and bring the music to a screeching halt. So try “tee-kee-tee-kee” It brings the tongue forward, and allows for faster movement.
Coming up: Part-two – Exercises and excuses
Nov
25
2009
One of the first scales I teach any new student is the F Major scale. It’s the keystone (Rosetta stone, touch stone) to a fundamentally sound beginning in bassoon playing. The F Major scale reinforces the base pedagogical 1-2-3, 1-2-3 fingering style that all wood winds base their fingerings off of. It helps the student find the middle range of the instrument, and gives them a base to create a solid foundation of intonation. It helps form the embouchure for middle and low notes, and introduces the second thumb key for the student to become familiar with (the fist being the whisper key). More and more these days, I begin to teach this scale, and find that a band director has assigned the wrong key to use for b-flat. This isn’t the band director’s fault, there are approximately 18 different fingerings per note, but I’m amazed that the fingering most commonly taught is the trill fingering.
Bassoontrainer.com has this offending key as the “b-flat key”, and I couldn’t disagree more. Has anyone ever played this fingering for an entire rehearsal before? This is an alternate fingering used for soft entrances and trills. If a student were to try an perform the Mozart Concerto with this key, proudly playing on stage and using enough air to project to the cheap seats the failings of this fingering would be readily apparent. If you are trying to gently pull a b-flat from the ethers of silence, much like the beginning of the Rhapsody for Bassoon (1952) by Osborne, then I would highly recommend it. But a bright and clear b-flat should always be performed with the b-flat thumb key.
I will admit fully that I am biased, but then again, one of my favorite professors when I attended West Virginia University was Dr. Terry Ewell, and he is a master of bassoon fingerings. If his 30+ years of bassoon fingering research has concluded that this key is indeed a trill key, then I will yield to that wisdom. In earnest, I beg all of you out there reading this and instructing beginning students: Do them a favor, do your band a favor, do your studio a favor, and teach the b-flat fingering with the proper b-flat thumb key. What seems so trivial can save a lifetime of work.
Nov
19
2009
My Comic Book Reviews have been moved to The Giggaheim.com. The Giggaheim is my little project to gather all my geekyness into one area, and now I can focus all the bassoonery into one place here.
Aug
20
2009
Earlier in the blog, I wrote about Self-Critique and instilling this process in young students. I usually reserve today’s method for advanced students. Once they have reached a level of comprehension where they are focused
on breath control, dynamics, and clean fingering to reach a top speed of perfection, I like to make their world even more intricate and introduce the idea of time traveling.
This is a method that I discovered after reading The Watchmen by Alan Moore. Near the center of the book, Dr. Manhattan reflects on time on the surface of Mars. The key sentence to me was “All we ever see of stars are their old photographs.” as Moore explains how the light traveling to us is so old that we don’t get to see the stars as they are. This thought married my comic book geek world with my musical world, and opened a portal of musical conscious to me that allowed me to relate the process to my students as a side effect of self critique.
An advanced musician can exist simultaneously in 3 main temporal states as they perform. The first being the present as they perform their music, they move through time as the notes are dictated to them. The second is the past. The musician catalogs all the aspects of their performance, good and bad to reflect on later for analysis and improvement. The third is the future, where student should look ahead to anticipate key changes in meter, dynamic, and problem areas.
Most musicians will say, “Well duh! We ALL do that.”, but at what depth? Explaining this to a student is usually the first hurdle, and I usually pull this out of my bag of tricks once a student has reached a plateau so they will be inspired to move forward. I usually explain that the human brain moves at the speed of light (usually I pepper in a lot of Flash comments. I’m a comic book geek, can you blame me?), and the brain can handle the load of processing three different states of being at once if properly nurtured. They are usually examining their performance and taking mental notes on mistakes as they perform, so they have already achieved a state of duality. One of the first advanced techniques introduced is anticipation. Reading ahead, and adjusting performance which is another dual reality. The key element that marries these states of being is the music. It is the constant moving through time. Its steady march from beginning to end is the anchor through this temporal journey, and will help keep you focused as you flex your consciousness through the past, and look into the future at the same time.
Again the mastery of this technique takes a while as you train your brain to focus on different temporal states at once. Then it is a matter of how far in the past and future you are willing to travel while in the present, and eventually how wide your focus can be. My main goal is to reach the middle of the piece and see not only how the rest of the performance will transpire, but also look all the way to the beginning and see how it went. Some pieces are easier than others due to duration and difficulty, but with a discipline to focus forward and backwards simultaneously, you can reach exponential growth.
All good things in time I guess.
Aug
20
2009
Blackest Night: Superman#1
Written by James Robinson;
Art & cover by Eddy Barrows and Ruy Jose
Variant cover by Shane Davis and Sandra Hope
I think what sums up this book the best is a bit from Bill Cosby’s “Himself” album:
What is it about cocaine?
Well…it intensifies your personality.
Yes, but what if you’re an asshole?
Of all the tie-in titles to Blackest Night, this was the book I was looking forward to the least. I’m not much of a Superman fan, and have never felt any suspense for a character who is super at everything, but after reaching the end of this book I was happy I read it. As I previously stated in my review of Blackest Night: Batman, these tie-in issues are painfully developed with a first issue that will drag the pacing in order to get the reader “up to speed”. Thankfully, Robinson assumes that a reader who is picking up this book is also reading the main event book, and jumps right to the story at hand. With exposition taken out of a typical quiet-town-horror-film we are taken on a journey that reinforces the ideas that the Black Lanterns are merciless, single-minded in purpose, but they also retain their senses to know how to inflict the most pain they can on their targets. Their vicious tenacity to kill everyone they come in contact becomes more intensified as this damned power of the Black Lanterns corrupts E2 Superman, and for once, it looks like the Superman “family” is no longer impervious to the threats of the DC universe. The danger is real as Kal-L creates a conflict reminiscent of a Star Wars light saber Battle as Conner and Clark fight against a darker version of themselves.
The art in this book illustrates the story well, catching the right beats and emotions, but the coloring is the star if this book. The variations of the emotional spectrum through the eyes of the Black Lanterns stand out more than in the main title, and make this book a keeper. The main idea behind a tie-in for me is to illustrate the outer fringes of the main story, and this book continues to reinforce the curiosity I have for this entire event.
How will they get out of this one?
Story: 4/5
Art: 4.5/5
Invincible #65
Invincible #65
Story Robert Kirkman
Art & cover by Ryan Ottley & Fco Plascencia
Once again, a large event passes by in the Invincible Universe, and Kirkman deftly sweeps up the remains while setting up the next story. Kirkman crafts a story with his strengths of writing personal loss and interaction as the world dusts itself off from the events of the past 6 issues. The art in this book was just as solid handling the quiet interactions as it was with the intense fighting scenes that preceded it. The coloring and shading were well done as every character had just as much depth to them physically as Kirkman wrote them emotionally.
I’m going to be sad to see Ottley leave the book for the next exciting story, but happy to see this book come to a close worthy of the weight that was called for. As always, the highlight of every issue for me was the letters column where in this particular book, the vicious nature of irate fan boys was put on full display. At this point in his career, I have come to expect a good issue from Kirkman on all his endeavors. What catches my attention now, is his patience for handling these crazed loonies who buy his books every month, and are emotionally invested enough to write what they do in response to his stories.
Story: 4/5
Art: 4/5
Aug
14
2009
SPOILER WARNING: If you haven’t read these books yet do so before proceeding.
I got quite a few books this week, but haven’t been able to get through the whole stack yet. In the meantime, here are the Blackest night books that came out this week:
Blackest Night: Batman #1 - Kalimaaaaaaaah
Blackest Night : Batman #1
Written by: Peter Tomasi
Art by: Syaf, Dell, Cifuentes
From the solicits a few months ago, I knew that Blackest Night would be the comic book cross over event that I would actually pull every book. Batman? Pull it. Wonder Woman? Pull it. Feo Boy? Eeehhhh….Pull it. I’m not normally a Batman reader, but I have always liked the Graysons, and I knew that Tim Drake’s family had to play into this. The Bat-Family has suffered some grievous blows the past few months with the death of Bruce, Damien being Robin, Tim taking the Red Robin Mantle, and Jason finally leaving. Well, the last one was a good thing. But, with such loss and mortal endings, Blackest Night should really resonate with these underpowered vigilantes.
However, the first issue of this book suffers from the same Cross-Over problems that all side books suffer from. The first issue of a cruddy tie-in always makes the same mistake of having these characters take 22 pages to get YOU caught up on the action. Frankly, if you aren’t reading the main event, then why are you pulling the tie-in? Wouldn’t you know what’s going on? Skip to the good stuff man! “Final Crisis: Rogues Revenge” worked on two levels for being a good tie-in to a major event.
1) The first issue didn’t spend 22 pages getting you caught up on what’s happening. It just leapt into the action and meat of the story.
2) It had nothing to do with Final Crisis. Frankly, No one knew what the hell was going on in Final Crisis anyway, so a boring summary wasn’t possible.
The artists did a fantastic job of illustrating the story as Deadman leaps from one body to another, but the way the acrobatics were illustrated, such as Brand/Damian back flipping onto the hood of the batmobile seemed a little too ethereal, and used the same convention for illustrating ghosts, rather than sequences of acrobatic maneuvers. Story-wise, I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out. Tomasi is doing a great job plate-spinning with Green Lantern Corps, and I’m sure that the story of our heroes confronting their dead relatives will be both heart-wrenching, and exciting to witness. Unfortunately, you just don’t get to the heart of the story until the last 2 pages of this issue.
Story: 3/5
Art: 3/5
Green Lantern Corps #39
Green Lantern Corps #39
Story by: Peter Tomasi
Art by: Gleason, Buchman, Nguyen
Blackest Night continues as we catch-up with our favorite honor guard. I really admire Tomasi’s ability to write in such a large scope, and keep the book interesting. He is writing a buddy-cop adventure that is infused with a cosmic war and romance without getting bogged down in cheap dialogue, and slow pacing. The art illustrates the story well as we change scenery from the dead of space, to crypts, to cityscapes. The black rings breaking through the lantern constructs was especially nice, and I don’t envy anyone that has to illustrate Kyle Rainer’s mask without making it look like a cornball 1990’s cartoon.
My gripe with this book is that the editing team didn’t accelerate this book’s publishing schedule to compensate for the story’s timing. Green Lantern #36 followed Blackest Night #1 one week after with a seamless story that never dropped a beat. In Green Lantern Corps #39, we are basically treated to the same scenes we saw in Blackest Night #1, and not much else. Frankly I was expecting to see a massive fight between the GL corps as they fight their honored dead, more scenes with the Guardians, and more scenes from the War of Light that is raging across the galaxy.
I’ll have to wait for next month to see all that I guess.
Story: 2/5
Art: 3/5
Blackest Night #2
Blackest Night #2
Story by: Geoff Johns
Art by: Ivan Reis
Going from “meh” to “Yeah!”, we finally reach Blackest Night #2. Johns puts the story in drive and keeps accelerating as DC’s Zombie Comic unfolds. This book has several things going for it, and this issue has quite a few moments that will stick in my mind for a long while. I’m glad no one else was in the house Wednesday night because I actually yelled “Hells Yes!”, and “Take it bitch!” a few times without even realizing I did so.
Firstly, I have NEVER liked Aquaman much. Like the majority of the comic book population, I just don’t really care. Be it Aquaman or Namor, I don’t care if there’s a guy who has sea-powers. When you bring in writing’s greatest cheat of magic into the mix, I can’t be bothered. However, seeing the sea king rise from his grave and use his telepathy to rip apart the Atlantian soldiers was a hundred time better than seeing him “Save the day” on Superfriends. My favorite part of the panel with the sharks erupting out of the water to rip the royal escort apart was the cuddly Sea Lion that was ripping off a soldier’s lips. You are a sick man Ivan Reis.
The second moment that got me was when Barry and Hal team up to take out J’onn. The words “Flash Fact” ALWAYS get me, and in that moment, I was ecstatic. Unfortunately for our heroes, their creativity was met with disappointing results, which brings me to the greatest strength of this book. The “How the hell will they get out of this one?” story that Johns is writing is fantastic. Most events, such as Infinite Crisis, Secret invasion, and Final Crisis have some dark moments, but as a reader I always knew that the heroes will save the day. In this book, I’m not so sure. With the powers and resiliency that the Black Lanterns exhibit, I don’t have an inkling of how our heroes will save the day, or even survive.
The only way this book could get any better is if they would double the size of each issue, and give us more scenes about the Guardians and the War of Light. This week’s Blackest Night stories are very self-contained and small in scope as we are Earth-bound and reading about the same fights from issue #1. The only thing I fear about this series isn’t a zombie Justice League, but the story collapsing under the weight of such a massive scope. The personal character development needed to address the weight of sorrow and loss is a stark contrast to the great galactic disaster that is spreading across the stars. Still, I’m eagerly looking forward to more.
Story: 4/5
Art: 4/5
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