This past Summer two of our assistant faculty members spent 6 weeks interning in the office learning the ins and outs of Eleos. In addition to the administrative, accounting, and corporate work they were doing, they got to spend some time in our production studio where they wrote, performed, recorded, and for the most part produced two short singles. I was finally able to finish mixing and mastering them (our studio has been extraordinarily busy this Fall).

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 ”This Little Bag”

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 ”Loser”

Amanda Roberts wrote a short piece based on Jane Austen’s poem “This Little Bag.” Julia Geber wrote a short piece based on Shel Silverstein’s poem “Loser.”

It’s a great representation of how powerful a great musician can be in the contemporary music world. What struck me about the pieces is how drastically different they are, and how well they reflect Julia and Amanda’s different personalities. If ever there was a pair of works that demonstrated the benefit of music as an expressive medium, these are the two. Enjoy!

- Alexander Tseitlin

by Alexander Tseitlin

Well, I suppose there are more than two ways in most situations. But before I digress:

I suppose some of our students’ parents wonder what goes on in our heads when we design our program. Every week I do a number of observations on my assistant faculty. I’ll slip in (hopefully) discreetly, watch for a few minutes, and slip out with a few notes to help them improve their teaching. This month, one particular idea stood out in my observations:

There’s a moment when a student just learns a piece: they’ve put all the notes together, and stand back to look at it. And the feeling is usually a mix between “I finally learned it,” and “I still don’t feel like I can play it all that well.” The latter feeling is expected (it’s a freshly painted product, after all).

Then comes the teacher’s next task: improvement. There really are primarily two ways to do this:

1. Drill said piece relentlessly for weeks.
2. Trust that technique and musicianship are concepts, and will improve with exposure to more music. Move on to the next piece and keep the current one in rotation.

With method 1, it may take 6 weeks to fully refine the piece. Method 2 may take 8 weeks, or 10. But at the end of those 10 weeks you will have a polished 1st piece, headway into the next one, AND a more refined playing ability because obviously the next piece is more technically advanced than the first.

And there lies the true issue: the student using method 1 did not actually progress in those 6 weeks, only refined; the student using method 2 refined and progressed.

Brahms Waltz in B Major, Allison Miner
Brahms Intermezzo in A Major, McKenna Coker
Giuliani La Chasse, Becca Turner
Bach Sonata in g minor, McKenna Coker
Beethoven Sonata in f minor, Amanda Roberts
Bach Minuet in G Major, Ariana Greenidge
Haydn Sonata in C Major, Kerria Pang
Nursery Rhyme Suite, Victor Matthews
Bach Chromatic Fantasie, Ranya Stover
Seitz Concerto in g minor, Liam Pang
Bach Chromatic Fantasie, Liam Pang

I remember sitting in a composition class at USC and watching a professor effortlessly explain the harmonic movement of a passage of Brahms. That’s when it occurred to me that it’s not only your breadth and depth of knowledge that’s important, it’s the fluency. My professor clearly had a knowledge of this depth for at least a decade, and can speak and understand it as if it was a native tongue. No matter how much I understood about harmony, I wouldn’t be able to practically use it for a while. It’d be like having the keys to an aircraft carrier with a rudder of a sailboat.

I have to admit I’m growing a little envious of these young students who so freely grasp these complex elements of harmony and composition. It would be an understatement to say that by the time they get to their teens, they’ll be fluent composers and intelligent musicians. They’re working on things you wouldn’t normally see outside of a college classroom (sometimes even in graduate school). To the left, Becca calls out scale-degree analysis with the technical notations of inversions from the Bach Minuet in G Major. In the video below, I explain and demonstrate the concept of tonicization (moving to another key area) as seen from the perspective of an ant on the table.

 
We’ve decided to start posting a few recital and studio class highlights each month! This month’s highlights come to you from our Conejo Valley campus. Enjoy!