Some Wonderful Notes on Music
🎼 First, a quick plug for our orchestra: we're calling on friends to come learn music with us and form a band.
Location: Shanghai. Requirements: an interesting soul. Time: able to attend class weekly or every other week, for 2 months. Tuition: not expensive.
Content: Professor Zhou Haihong will personally teach the key sessions, a whole series on music appreciation, from reading staff notation to conducting. The rest of the time, under a teacher's guidance, everyone will learn to play a mystery instrument.
Feel free to DM me if you're interested~
On June 17, Professor Haihong taught us "Lesson 05: Conducting Along with the Music and Appreciating Music Through the Score."
To enjoy music under the guidance of a music appreciation expert this witty, funny and passionate about education is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The best part was the nonstop stream of brilliant lines. I never expected a music appreciation class would have me taking notes at lightning speed~ Here's what I'd like to share with you: Why we should enjoy music: Life should be built up from layer upon layer of all kinds of experiences.
After a night of cards and drinking, people are listless; people who have just enjoyed art have eyes that shine and lives full of vitality. If you have the means to live this way, don't miss out. Why people should listen to the classics
The classics never go out of date, because the classics are the ceiling of human wisdom. The difference between gentle and harsh in music: A fast attack sounds harsh, e.g.: "Can I take the day off?" — "No."
A slow attack sounds gentle, e.g.: "Can I take the day off?" — "Why's that? Ah, maybe let's not?" Rhythmic pulse: an even beat with a cycle of strong and weak. Music without a strong-weak pulse is rigid music! Even-numbered meters: a swinging motion
Odd-numbered meters: a circling motion. Pitch and crescendo
Rising with a crescendo means positivity and passion
Rising with a diminuendo means parting
Don't inflict "educational harm" on children
Learn a technique, end up hating an art.
Punish hard so they never make the mistake again, and you destroy their entire motivation to learn.
I don't yet know what education can give a child, but at the very least it shouldn't do harm.
People have an innate, fundamental capacity for experience
Look forward to, and listen for, children's expressive ability in music
"Music: what is the number one foundation of talent? It's 'relaxation.'
So much of our education makes children tense. A great many Chinese kids can't take off, precisely because they're tense; there's a whole range of technique that could have developed, but it can't because of the tension."
So having children practice piano by holding an imaginary egg in their hand is wrong. I started with the egg too. That path is wrong. Even though I did learn the piano, that doesn't mean it's the path you have to take.
1353 piano practice: the experiential order of knowledge and the psychological order in which knowledge is built don't line up.
What exactly is the point of children learning an instrument?
The purpose of learning an instrument is to come to love music through the instrument, to love art through music, and to love life through art. Should children take grading exams?
Today children are taught instruments by the professional standards of professional musicians: the hand position must be exactly right, and so on. But in sports like swimming, tennis or ping-pong, who demands that their own form be textbook perfect? If your form isn't standard, does that mean you can't play, can't enjoy it? A performing musician needs to be someone with an almost religious reverence for every single note.
People who play the piano face one kind of despair: the despair of attention.
Giving every note feeling and attention takes enormous willpower.
Expressing love
Focused gaze: look at them intently, for more than 8 seconds
Closeness (physical proximity): cats and dogs both know that if you come close, it means you like them
Speaking softly and gently: a slow attack
Teasing and play: when repairing a relationship, just talk about play.
Physical touch: loving strokes and hugs
These five steps are what Professor Haihong promotes and practices as the "Five-Step Gradual Method for Repairing Parent-Child Relationships," and the order can't be reversed. Reportedly, when he teaches it to students for finding a partner, it works every time! 😂 Six things to match when finding a partner: Shared values; Emotional preferences; Intellectual level: this determines the cost of communication and the speed of thinking; Energy state; Being considerate of the other person's feelings; A willingness to adjust
Values: the six needs of life: The need for survival; The need for affiliation; The need to excel; The need for achievement; The need for beauty; The need for freedom
Everyone has all of these needs, in different strengths. A music teacher has two abilities: music and teaching. The younger the child, the more teaching ability matters compared with musical ability. You need to meet the child's six needs; the practice pieces you give children should sound good; if a child isn't making obvious progress on a piece, move on quickly; let them feel they're improving, that they're winning. It also has to sound good, and they must be able to feel "obvious" progress. Games have so many designs built around human needs like dopamine, so why don't we design children's education the way software companies do? That's what matters most.
Comparing Chinese and Western art
The sounds humans make naturally don't have a very precise rhythm, and the pitch isn't all that standard either.
Yunwei, that lingering charm: it comes from time, rhythm and pitch being not quite so precise.
Listening to Chinese music feels very relaxed and free. But it has one drawback: it's hard to play as an ensemble.
To keep everyone aligned, European music gave up a sense of freedom. It gained the great civilization of the symphony, and at the same time lost that lingering charm.
Different kinds of music each have their strengths and weaknesses; different peoples have different cultures.
Chinese painting is the same: landscape painting isn't precise, but it has charm
Ink wash is light and delicate; you couldn't paint Father in ink wash. And if you use oil to paint a Chinese painting, no matter how you do it, it's never translucent enough. Watercolor is very light, but compared with ink wash it still doesn't work.
The ambiguity in Chinese culture: when you're on the rise, you're a Confucian; when you're down, you're a Taoist. "When successful, serve the whole world; when in hardship, cultivate yourself alone." A bit Confucian one moment, a bit Taoist the next, so it's not so easy to get depressed. Chinese culture leaves people a way out.
Each appreciates its own beauty, and appreciates the beauty of others; when beauty is shared, the world is in harmony.
Does Chinese music lack anything earth-shattering and soul-stirring? Ancient China wasn't like that: in the Warring States period, orchestras often had more than a thousand musicians.
Did China have no bass instruments? In the Warring States period the "se" zither could be as long as 2 meters,
The Warring States period had the "eight sounds" system for classifying instruments, and orchestras of three thousand; the musical forms couldn't possibly have been simple.
China's ancient music wasn't preserved. With every change of dynasty, nothing was handed down, and everything started over from scratch.
The forms got smaller and smaller, which is a real pity. Folk songs
They have lots of filler syllables: "yi" and "ya" are yang, bright and placed forward; "wu," "ye" and "o" are yin, dark and placed back. That's yin and yang.
Humans have an innate, fundamental pursuit of balance between yin and yang.
Yue Yunchuan: collecting folk music in the field, protecting a whole province's intangible cultural heritage and keeping it safe.
That's all. My biggest takeaway from the day was feeling that real education is "one person lighting up another," and also feeling how sad "educational harm" is. I hope that when I have little ones of my own, I'll still remember these lessons. Let me also share this video, one I shot myself and inexplicably love. After Professor Haihong's music class, I rode through a pouring rainstorm back to Shili Fangfei in Hangzhou. At one in the morning, I boarded a boat at the ferry landing and drifted all the way to Xunmei Islet. Sailing on water far from any lights, the lake was quiet and serene, reflecting the cool moonlight, and in my ears was the "swish~ swish~" of the water as the oars cut through it. In that moment, every thought and every emotion went still. Just like that: a simple love for something, no need for it to be profound.