Monday YouTube Fix: Arnold Jacobs on Solfege

This short clip perfectly sums up why solfege is so important for brass players.

And as an added bonus you get to enjoy a little 1984 fashion!

Monday YouTube Fix: Tank And The Bangas - NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

The musical storytelling is SCREAMING LOUD in this performance. That’s all I’m going to say.

Make music with as much conviction as this and you will get traction and find an audience. Guaranteed.

Enjoy!

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Monday YouTube Fix: Mahler 2 with The Cleveland Orchestra and Leonard Bernstein

I was today years old when I learned that Leonard Bernstein only conducted the Cleveland Orchestra once in his career! At least it was a phenomenal performance…

Here he is conducting them in 1970, filling in for George Szell who was in the hospital.

The story goes that Bernstein went to the hospital to visit Szell and that Mrs. Szell wouldn’t let him in because he was wearing a white leisure suite and told him he looked like an ice cream cone.

This is one of those stories that may not be true but I choose to believe it is because it is awesome!

Enjoy!

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Monday YouTube Fix: Philip Glass

If you want to be transported to another place, close your eyes, take some slow, deep breaths through your nose and listen to this.

Pure brilliance.

The musical storytelling is off the charts with this piece and with this performance. There is so much intent behind it. Exactly what was intended is up to the listener to ultimately decide but you can tell that he desperately needs you to hear it.

And that’s the kind of playing and writing that changes people. This is the kind of music that makes you feel like your soul is on fire.

Enjoy!

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Monday YouTube Fix: Dale Clevenger on Audtion Preparation

What a find this video recent addition to YouTube is!

We recently lost one of the greatest horn players to ever live, former Principal Horn of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Dale Clevenger.

This video from 1983 is an almost hour-long deep dive into preparing for an audition. He also plays examples throughout.

It is a gift to be able to hear someone at this level talk at such length about something this specific in 1983. Videos like this were not commonplace back then!

Here is his breakdown of topics with the sub-headers used in the video:

1. Tone Quality

• Consistency

• Steadiness

• Beauty

2. Rhythm

• Pulse

• Inner Rhythm

• Tempo

3. Intonation

• Key you are playing in

• Scale degree in that key

• Placement in diatonic intonation

• Tendencies of your instrument

4. Instrumental Technique

• Articulation

• Bowing

• Tonguing

• Breathing

5. Style and Phrasing

• Poetic and dramatic expression

• Personality

• Listener interest

6. Technical Prowess

7. Control

• Extreme dynamics

• Extreme registers

8. Ensemble Technique

• Projection

• Balance

9. Experience

• Knowledge of standard repertoire

10. Requirements of position

• Doubling

• Specialized literature

• Special effects or techniques

11. Interpretive style

• Flexibility

• Tone color

• Vibrato

• Timbre

There’s an awful lot to unpack in this one.

Enjoy!

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Monday YouTube Fix: How to Master Transcribing in Three Simple Steps

This is a fantastic video on how to master transcribing in three easy steps.

(Spoiler Alert: It doesn’t involve your instrument at first!)

Really good stuff here from Cole Davis.

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Two Ways to Cook an Omelette

Okay, if I were you I would probably be asking myself why the hell there’s a video on the Hitz Academy blog of two different ways to cook an omelette!

The truth is I’m not particularly interested in omelette technique and while I enjoy cooking, my YouTube history is not exactly riddled with a bunch of cooking videos.

So why share this video with you?

Because it’s a wonderful example of the beauty of simplicity and of how much an outcome can change with just a slight tweak to our technique.

I see a lot of parallels between these things and the creative process.

First, let’s talk about beauty in simplicity.

Our tendency as musicians is to add things to the music in order to make it more exciting.

When in doubt, a young improviser will almost always add more notes to their solo. Composers will often make the orchestration thicker. Singers of the national anthem almost always add embellishments and melismas (as well as popping octaves!)

But sometimes less is more.

When that same young improviser learns to add space and utilize longer notes, the magic starts to happen. My favorite composers know that one way to create excitement and tension is by utilizing unusual instrument combinations and not just writing higher/louder/faster. And the best singers of the national anthem, for my taste, are the ones who embellish like Paul McCartney singing Hey Jude (when he waits until halfway through the song to add a sing embellishment and just lets that incredible melody do the work!) rather than using it to show off their technique.

This video is also a perfect example of how small changes in a process can produce big differences in results. It features one of the best chefs in history making two different traditional omelettes using only three ingredients.

These two omelettes are quite different in appearance, consistency and taste. And they use virtually the same ingredients! As you can see in this short video, there are just a handful of minor differences between the two techniques and each produces a very different result.

This inspired me to think about how this could be applied to my playing.

One minor tweak that can make a huge difference is note endings. In my experience, both performers and teachers tend to focus much more on the beginnings of notes than the ends of notes.

And yet the best players in the world have a lot of ways to end notes at their disposal.

The exact same phrase can sound quite different when changing one, some or all of the note endings. Listen to multiple recordings of any solo piece and listen for how the soloist ends their notes. If you listen close enough, you will hear differences and you will have a preference.

Note endings are just one of countless ways to change some small aspect of your playing that can produce a big difference on the musical storytelling front. You just have to spend the time to experiment enough to find them.

Hopefully you’ll find this short, random omelette video as inspiring as I did!

Monday YouTube Fix: Yo-Yo Ma Masterclass

I recently stumbled onto this very cool concert/master class with Yo-Yo Ma. The first 25 minutes is him performing Schelomo by Ernest Bloch with the Tel Aviv University Orchestra. The performance is predictably wonderful.

But he then puts the cello down and conducts a master class that lasts well over an hour. He touches on some very thought-provoking stuff like which spots in the music were the most emotional and gets the students to put into words why they thought so.

I love finding things like this on YouTube! Enjoy!

An Example of Stunning Musical Storytelling

If you’ve ever seen me give a clinic or taken a lesson with me there is a very good chance you’ve heard me talk about storytelling. The whole reason we put in thousands of hours in the practice room is so we can better tell our story.

Every once in a while you come across a performance that is so good that it makes you a better musician just by listening to it. Like something transfers from that performance into your playing on the spot like some kind of magic.

Those performances are quite rare.

Here is one in case you haven’t heard it before. Prince’s While Guitar Gently Weeps solo during the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony has been the stuff of legend for the last 17 years.

This newly produced clip just surfaced for the first time last week and it is stunning.

Even if you don’t like the Beatles or Prince or his interpretation of this solo you will be blown away by the conviction. He commands a room full of superstars like few in the history of the music business have ever been able to do.

I’m going to go practice now…

Monday YouTube Fix: Empire Brass Live in Japan in 1984

A big thank you to Rob Singer of the President’s Own Marine Band for hipping me to this video surfacing on YouTube!

This performance is a master class in so many things: Style, pitch, phrasing, matching articulations, note releases, dynamics, storytelling. So good!

Enjoy!