Monthly Masterclass Series, class 11, Odd and Curious Techniques for Brass Players 11/27/21

Hi everyone! Happy Thanksgiving for all those who celebrate this day. I'm grateful for the opportunity to offer some of my life's work to those who are interested. Thank you to all! Technology is born out of need and this masterclass on Odd and Curious Techniques for Brass Players will hopefully offer some techniques and technologies which you may have not encountered. Some of what we will look into (PLEASE BRING YOUR INSTRUMENTS AND A VERY OPEN MIND), will be some techniques and technologies on: 1. breathing in specific rhythmic sequences and more 2. mouthpiece playing (you haven't done this before!) 3. Tone - embouchure conditioners 4. work with colors and anatomy 5. Posture (not your usual!) 6. energy work (some new brain coordination movements) 7. Playing with symbols Lots of experimenting the entire time of the masterclass. Don't worry, everyone will be on mute so you can feel totally free so PLEASE BRING YOUR INSTRUMENTS 😃 If time runs out we will have a continuation of this class at another time. The Monthly Masterclass Series, class 11, Odd and Curious for Brass Players, will be this Saturday, November 27th from 11am to 12:30pm EST. A holiday donation discount will be $5 for students and $10 for all others working and out of school is required. If there is a real hardship with this price for some of you, please get in touch with me soon. Those who are interested in attending, whom I don’t know yet and have never participated in any of my offerings, please send me an email as soon as you are able. Please send your donations to paypal.me/vierabolter. There is a place to mark down what you are paying for. Please put Bolter Masterclass in that area.Thank you in advance. Also feel free to pass this email along to all those that might be interested .If you are sending this email to others whom I might not have emails for, please have them send me an email so they can get a Zoom link and get on the email list. Please have your donation in by Friday, November 26th by the end of the evening. If you are late, please send in your donation as soon as possible on Saturday November 27th and email me at normtobe@gmail.com or text me 617-759-1620 by 10:30am EST. If you have not received an email from me by 10:30am EST 10/30, and have already paid, PLEASE get in touch with me asap. Only those that have sent in the donation will get the Zoom link. Hope to see some of you this Saturday 11/27/21 for an odd and curious time together! To your well being!

Companion Notes to Video 2, "What is Music" from Integrating Technique and Music Making

It is very easy to get stuck in our default habit life and it takes some motivation to get us to look at things fresh. One way to help that process along is being a ‘detective’ looking for clues and evidence. On the video, as I’ve said many times before, rhythm, pitch and timbre, RPT, is the three limbed body of music’s appearance here in the physical worlds. The contemplation here is doing some detective work and seeing (hearing), where they appear in various aspects of our lives, inside and outside of ourselves. This is one of the gateways to connect to music as a living thing. Here is a simple outline to assist you on your journey: 1. get a notebook and divide it into three sections or get three small notebooks- one for rhythm, one for pitch and one for timbre. 2. every day for a week, jot down where you hear rhythm, pitch and timbre. You can for example follow rhythm for a day, pitch on another day and timbre for another day. This can keep you very tuned to each one with singularity and focus. You can also find other ways to do it. 3. At the end of each day, you can see what you have come up with. 4. You might find that you resonate more with one of these three than the other two. That is fine. That will help you learn more about you. From knowing that one more fully, the others might start to come into more clearly. 5. Get into the spirit of being a detective! You will be amazed at what you discover outside yourself and inside yourself. Your attitude and interest are key. Collect evidence, don’t judge it.

Companion notes to video 1 of Integrating Technique and Music Making

Oftentimes I hear brass players talking about improving their fundamentals. This usually means getting more control over evenness of sound and articulation, greater accuracy percision, improved range etc. This of course is a vital ingredient to the development of skill and dependability which also increases confidence in the player mentally. If the approach to working on the basics gets increasingly stiff and sterile, this can develop in creating a division between technique and music making. Part of my goal in this video series is to take some of the worry and anxiety out of working on the basics by integrating musical shapes and feeling into them. This was done by using the example of blowing out birthday candles as opposed to blowing bubbles since each of them requires a different use of the air. From this example, it tells you there is a technique for each one of those activities. Now, when we have an interest in something (interest anagrams to enters it), we are naturally drawn to be with that something. We actually want to work with that something, find out more about that something, play with that something. With this need of wanting to be with this something, we discover more about it. We start to enter(enters it), the very life of that something. Children do this all the time when they are playing with toys they really love. Sometimes, (I know this well!), it can get pretty frustrating when it seems to be more difficult to be with that something than other times when we can’t get the results we are going for. Some people give up at that point, others get more determined even in the midst of their frustration. It all depends on the potency of the cause that drives you. I always loved to work on the fundamentals. I found it grounding and when done with care, it made my playing feel much better. I didn’t mind working on them for hours, really trying to go after what I could feel and hear in my mind and heart and then have it make its way through the horn. Isn’t it a marvelous feeling when this happens?! This video, which was inspired by the interest of Don Lukas (thanks Don for your support!), gives very simple ways to encourage the integration process of technique and music making by using mental and emotional connections to help energize the concepts you want to materialize into a living reality through your horn. The practice room is your sanctuary and laboratory to experiment and find your living science with your instrument. What a wonderful opportunity! The next video in this series “What is Music and What is Music Making?” will shed more light on the relationship between music and technique, helping to see that they are actually part of the same family. Here is the link to to the video on YouTube: http://frequencybone.blogspot.com/2021/11/companion-notes-to-video-1-of.html