Perfection or Passion?

There’s an internet meme going around my social media network at the moment, and it’s being shared by musicians from all backgrounds and interests. It’s common thread seems to touch us all at the root of a nerve:

This one hits right in at me. My performing life has been defined through the suffering of performance anxiety because of the expectation to play correctly always. Now, I gleefully remind myself that it doesn’t matter if I play a wrong note because it’s my own music, and I can (as the saying goes) play it again three more times and it will be correct. Oh - that’s jazz. Well, same thing.

There’s something deeper at play here, though. Audiences want to FEEL - and in a way they can’t otherwise. Music forges a superhighway to the heart strings and can bring to light submerged feelings and thoughts we would otherwise be unawares of. We all know this - and is one of the reasons we love music.

But when I play my original music, my perfection brain is in full control. I judge my own performance based on my ability to recreate a song perfectly as I intended it. I acknowledge that my training as a classical violinist has established this framework for me, and it is a tricky one to change.

I was shocked recently when I gave an average performance and yet a friend had to leave the room full of emotion. What a contradiction - that the music I was delivering in ’reproduction’ mode had enough power on its own to affect someone so deeply. There is clearly as much transference into the performance from the audience as the performer, which we feel as performers when we really smash a passage or note, the audience’s excitement is almost tangible.

So, how can performers get their audience to always feel when they perform? We’ve seen it done badly or in poor taste (the scantily clad violinists that flaunt their wares while playing Paganini), and appealing to basic instinct is the cheapest way to get your message across. Is your message worth getting across if that’s what you are appealing to?

I think the answer lies in being as genuine as you can be - telling the absolute, raw truth of your own emotions and life in a broad way that can be understood by a crowd. Let them escape in your story, your emotion and your unique perspective on life.

Leonard’s Cohen ‘Anthem’ does this for me. I covered it for my #recomposed series last week and just loved singing it. I love the line 'There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in' - a live performance may never be perfect, but it will be filled with light, love and truth.

What do you think?

-AV

Gear Update - Live looping

I started at very humble beginnings - a $5 plug microphone bought on Ebay and a little JamMan looper pedal. This was only 6 months ago - it got me out and performing in front of audiences, testing out my looped viola sound on audiences, despite my ears cringing at the lack of tone coming out of the PA.

It's incredibly loud up there!

Fast forward to now, and the gear upgrades I made are as follows, in the order I made them:

1. Barcus Berry pickup: this is attached to the bout of my viola and allows a good quality instrument cable to be plugged in without movement or vibration.

2. Firewood Acoustic preamp: this brings my viola signal to life. Without this on, I sound like a small, muted cow-like animal. With this on, my sound has power - tone and depth, that I can tweak (low, mid + high) according to the system I am being run through.

3. Boss RC-300 Looper: instead of doing a balancing act with my JamMan to double-tap a loop to stop, I have three loop channels at my feet with seperate on and off pedals to trigger and stop loops. The possibilities are endless with three channels, plus a whole lot of programmable options that can quantize loops together or keep them separate.

4. OC-3 bass pedal: this is my most recent purchase and it allows me to create wonderful bass pizzicato sounds at the register of a cello. I can set it to transform only my C-string notes which create a cleaner, crisper bass sound than the octave option in the RC-300.

Judge for yourselves: here are the clips from my most recent performance with this rig. What do you think?

-AV

Holy Morning

Recorded live @ Agrestic Grocer for 'Generations' Thursday 6th September 2018

27 Years

Recorded live @ Agrestic Grocer for 'Generations' Thursday 6th September 2018

Alive

Recorded live @ Agrestic Grocer for 'Generations' Thursday 6th September 2018

At Christmas Time

Recorded live @ Agrestic Grocer for 'Generations' Thursday 6th September 2018

Reach Out (instrumental)

Recorded live @ Agrestic Grocer for 'Generations' Thursday 6th September 2018

How I wrote 3 songs in 3 days

Recently, I had a huge surge of inspiration and wrote three songs in three days. The timing was right - I was processing some heavy personal stuff and had taken myself away to a meditation retreat to have some quiet time to catch up on the inside. In the silence of it all, I found the space to air some deeply felt emotions that I had been avoiding. We hide from these emotions for a reason, and it sometimes feel like standing at the edge of a vast crevasse, terrified of what’s inside but going in anyway.

I focused my mind and heart on what felt like the core of my emotion. I had only my guitar, which limited my accompaniment capacity, but that in itself seemed assist the process. I started to visualise the feeling of the song that would underline my story, and the feeling I would want my listeners to feel when experiencing it live. From that feeling I found a rhythm, or groove, that aligned with the song's purpose. I chose a chord, in a register that suited the song, and started to pick out a melody in my vocal register.

Neither the music or lyrics came first. It was an organic oscillation between the two, where I relied on my intuitive self to judge what came next. Using words and phrases that I had previously spilled out on the page, I rearranged them into lyrics that felt like an unfolding of the situation deep within me. The chords and melody both followed and led, each part seeming to have an equal importance in the process. I was aware of being a story teller, and from that role I took a back seat as the story seemed to take on its own life.

Recognise these handwritten lyrics?

What struck me as extraordinary during this process, however, was the frame of mind I found myself in while writing. I had previously over the years attempted to write, and found myself over-thinking and over-analysing the process. My new process is heavily intuitive and I seem to rely on a subconscious awareness that taps into the body of music I’ve listened to over the many years. My subconscious pulls out sounds, feelings and rhythms in that moment and spills them into something that sounds original, but still rooted in a clear genre or sound.

My writing process is now about:

—> finding a personal ‘vacuum’ where I can hear what's inside

—> relaxing and letting either the music or words appear and gently shifting them about

—> letting my subconscious intuition rule the process, and walking away if it’s not speaking

Now I see the future of my creative process as primarily a shift in my consciousness during the writing stage. I work to inform my subconscious by listening widely and intently, letting it absorb new music naturally. Then, I retreat to a vacuum where I let myself be still and listen to what’s inside.

Those three songs I wrote during that time have morphed into many versions as I’ve aired them out in numerous live settings. I’ve discovered that the ‘live performance test’ is a powerful one. In front of a live audience, a song’s strengths and weaknesses seem to be magnified. Another trick that works is when I leave a song for a few months and ‘forget’ most of what it’s about. What I remember from the song when I pick it up again feels like the real ‘essence’ of it and what is worth retaining - the rest can be tinkered and played with, so to speak.

Here is a clip of one of these songs, called 'At Christmas Time':

What's your creative process?

AV

Amy is a musician, composer and educator living in Australia. Her new songwriting project ‘Amy Viola’ is a uniquely crafted, soulful and raw account of her life as a gypsy musician told amidst sweet vocals and looped layers of deep, rich viola. Find out more at www.amyviola.com