I love Itunes and youtube. Sorta. I think they are both great. I love that I can carry my little ipod and have my entire CD collection on one small device. It's great how I can make a playlists and make CD's for students. I love how easy it is for me to listen to a concert that I have downloaded and listen to it as I walk the dog or do the dishes. On youtube I love how I can see tons of videos of great players like Timofei Dokshizer and Maurice Andre that I was never able to see before the existence of youtube. I have see concerts of all types, free of charge, anytime I want.
So why the hate?
Because they are easy to access. And because they are easy to access we, and especially students, take them for granted. Thanks to Itunes the trip to Tower Records to find the latest release, or a hidden gem is gone. So are the little things like how really cool cover art or a great photo give some kind of mystique to the recording you are listening to. As to the latter point I can think of a great picture on the album cover of Richard Strauss's Alpine Symphony with Herbert Von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic of the sunrise behind the snowy Alps or the painting of the siege of Leningrad on the cover of the great Leonard Bernstein/Chicago Symphony Orchestra recording of Shostakovich Symphonies 1 and 7. Both of these album covers gave me a firm extra musical idea that made the recording even more meaningful.
When I used to take a long trip I would carefully pick a few CD's to listen to. Because I could only take so many I would listen to the same recordings over and over. This repetition firmly put the sounds from these recordings in my head. With the Ipod I am less likely to listen with as much repetition because I have so many choices.
Also listening is less of an event. We pay less attention to what we listen to because it is so easy to have music constantly playing. Of course live music will always be the best way to absorb music but in the age of CD's, cassettes and records it took more effort to change what you were listening to. Now with the Ipod just scroll with your fingers and you have made a switch.
And youtube? When I ask a student to listen to a particular piece they are more likely to find what the youtube search engine comes up with rather than the ensemble or soloist I am trying to get them to listen to. The importance of the quality of the performance and the quality of the performer becomes less important. I have even had students, after some small form of the Spanish Inquisition, confess that they listened to some other students senior recital at Middle of Nowhere Music Technical College as their reference for a piece. Did this happen with CD's before? Of course it did. But not as much. Bad recordings were a bit harder to find in comparison to the amount that you can now easily find on the web.
Love them or hate them Itunes and Youtube are here for good. And as soon as I finish this post I am downloading something.....because it's easy.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Saturday, May 14, 2011
My Newest Project: The Vincent Cichowicz Long Tone Studies
Last July I finally decided to take some action on a project that had gone through my head several times over the years. I called Michael Cichowicz, son of the legendary trumpeter Vincent Cichowicz, and discussed with him the possibility of publishing his father's Long Tone Studies in a book. Michael was very open to the idea. We talked for a while about how this could happen, what would be in the book and who would publish it. Finally I am happy to say we are finished with this project and we think the trumpet community world wide will be pleased with the results. I wanted to take the time here to explain how and why we did this book and the issues we dealt with in putting it together.
For me these long tone studies have been the cornerstone of my fundamentals practice ever since I studied with John Rommel at Indiana University in the 1990's. For years, decades actually, they have floated around in photo copy form. But to my knowledge both sets of Mr. Cichowicz's studies (VC I and VC II) had never been published in a book where they were written out in all keys. My intention with this idea was to preserve these studies for today's players as well as for future generations the same way that Arban, Clarke, Schlossberg and Stamp have been.
Several issues had to be dealt with when putting these studies together. The first being that Mr. Cichowicz is no longer with us. So in order to try to stay true to his concepts we went to the next best thing, his students. We contacted several of his former students and they all responded with great enthusiasm about the project. The all spoke of Mr. Cichowicz with the highest respect. They spoke of his sharp mind, his patient approach and his insistence that the fundamentals of trumpet playing be in place in order to be come a great artist on the trumpet. 14 of his former students wrote commentaries in this book about the exercises. As well as forewards by Barbara Butler, Charlie Geyer and John Hagstrom. It also contains an article that Mr. Cichowicz himself wrote in the Instrumentalist in 1996.
The next issue was that I personally never studied with Mr. Cichowicz. I met him a few times and heard a few masterclasses. I would not change anything about with whom or where I studied the trumpet, but I always had wanted to seek Mr. Cichowicz's guidance. Perhaps for me this was one way of getting as close to that as I could. Because I didn't study with Mr. Cichowicz I didn't want to seem like an opportunist. I just wanted to get it right and do a good job on the book.
The third issue was by far the easiest to deal with. Who would we get to publish this book? Rob Roy McGregor, formerly of the LA Philharmonic and owner of Balquhidder Music was an obvious choice. Although this book is not a Balquhidder publication, Rob did help us put the book together. He has given great advice and guidance throughout the entire process. Rob also published the first book I put together Thomas Morely's Complete Canzonets for Two Trumpets (Balquhidder Music).
This book should not be seen as a Cichowicz "Method". He had no formal method. But what we hope to do with this book is to preserve Mr. Cichowicz's ideas, exercises and concepts. Although there is no way to know, we hope this is a book that Mr. Cichowicz would be pleased with.
The book will be available at the International Trumpet Guild Conference in Minneapolis this month.
For me these long tone studies have been the cornerstone of my fundamentals practice ever since I studied with John Rommel at Indiana University in the 1990's. For years, decades actually, they have floated around in photo copy form. But to my knowledge both sets of Mr. Cichowicz's studies (VC I and VC II) had never been published in a book where they were written out in all keys. My intention with this idea was to preserve these studies for today's players as well as for future generations the same way that Arban, Clarke, Schlossberg and Stamp have been.
Several issues had to be dealt with when putting these studies together. The first being that Mr. Cichowicz is no longer with us. So in order to try to stay true to his concepts we went to the next best thing, his students. We contacted several of his former students and they all responded with great enthusiasm about the project. The all spoke of Mr. Cichowicz with the highest respect. They spoke of his sharp mind, his patient approach and his insistence that the fundamentals of trumpet playing be in place in order to be come a great artist on the trumpet. 14 of his former students wrote commentaries in this book about the exercises. As well as forewards by Barbara Butler, Charlie Geyer and John Hagstrom. It also contains an article that Mr. Cichowicz himself wrote in the Instrumentalist in 1996.
The next issue was that I personally never studied with Mr. Cichowicz. I met him a few times and heard a few masterclasses. I would not change anything about with whom or where I studied the trumpet, but I always had wanted to seek Mr. Cichowicz's guidance. Perhaps for me this was one way of getting as close to that as I could. Because I didn't study with Mr. Cichowicz I didn't want to seem like an opportunist. I just wanted to get it right and do a good job on the book.
The third issue was by far the easiest to deal with. Who would we get to publish this book? Rob Roy McGregor, formerly of the LA Philharmonic and owner of Balquhidder Music was an obvious choice. Although this book is not a Balquhidder publication, Rob did help us put the book together. He has given great advice and guidance throughout the entire process. Rob also published the first book I put together Thomas Morely's Complete Canzonets for Two Trumpets (Balquhidder Music).
This book should not be seen as a Cichowicz "Method". He had no formal method. But what we hope to do with this book is to preserve Mr. Cichowicz's ideas, exercises and concepts. Although there is no way to know, we hope this is a book that Mr. Cichowicz would be pleased with.
The book will be available at the International Trumpet Guild Conference in Minneapolis this month.
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