In music, a masterclass is a session in which an interpreter performs while a teacher discusses the performance. The teacher can motivate the performer and highlight areas of improvement. Those who watch get to benefit from both the performance and the instructor’s expertise.

Maestro CT Fletcher presents us his masterclass. Featuring virtuoso Dana Lynn Bailey.

Back when I was learning how to read a score, meaning to play each written note in the violin, I made a small windows app that displays a random sequence of notes in the 1st and 2nd positions.
You can make it quicker or slower, and it also shows you after a few seconds the name of the note and the string in which it should be played in the given position.
The goal is to keep playing the notes until you can do it quickly enough to play a musical piece at its correct tempo. It aides you in memorizing the basic behaviors of playing in the violin.

Download and unzip from here (for Windows only). No need to install, just run the executable keeping the folder structure.

I saw you dancin’ out the ocean
Runnin’ fast along the sand
A spirit born of earth and water
Fire flyin’ from your hands
(…)
For each man, in his time, is Cain
Until he walks along the beach
And sees his future in the water
A long, lost heart within his reach
(…)

The most interesting feature in this music is how Elton John builds the tension at the points cited above (at the start and middle of the composition).
He does this not by elaborate or powerful lyrics, but by musical means alone (piano and voice).
In my musical education, it is these details that are on top of the pyramid — the small changes and efforts that produce the greater impact.

Coincidentally, those lyrics are about the ocean and the beach, and that is another reason why I like them.

This transcription was made after Elliot Goldenthal’s piece which is part of the Enterview With the Vampire OST (1994).

Images from the city of Lisbon, Portugal, at night.

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This recording is kept for historical reasons since it is not recent and I am practising & improving everyday. It is about the development process, not the actual technique.

I crossed paths with a lady one of these days.
She was working and there was a baby carrier near.
I spotted inside a pair of bright blue little eyes under some blonde hair. It was a boy, around 3 year old.

I asked the woman if that was her child.
She stopped what she was doing and while she answered me with a calm & confident ‘Yes he’s my son’, she assumed a different posture. She looked pleased, proud & tall suddenly, as if adding a ‘And I am quite proud of that fact’.

It got me thinking about her posture.

As a man I will never know exactly how it feels (I would naturally just be acquainted with its male version one way or the other). However, perhaps music can uncover that.

Rumour has it this music is about a mother who lost her son. I would also add that George Michael here showed he had amazing lower tones, which I don’ recall ever having heard in his performances. And that is a shame — for us, that is.

I was practising double stops when I realized it sounded much like a church organ, so I recorded it together with a church mass footage.

I may employ this technique later on for some sacred composition of sorts. In a similar fashion Liszt reproduced the church bells ringing on his Vexilla Regis Prodeunt.

There are a few mistakes on this performance but to my defense, I add that I did not use any additional pressure on the bow other than the usual for a single string (unlike the usual practise for double stops), because I wanted to produce the most pure tone from each string. I believe I achieved my goal at about 1 min from the start.

Images from Eucaristia Dominical in Igreja de Nª Srª dos Remédios in Lamego, Portugal, Feb 20, 2022.

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This recording is kept for historical reasons since it is not recent and I am practising & improving everyday. It is about the development process, not the actual technique.

by Adolphe-William Bouguereau

by Stephen Seymour Thomas

From the movie with the same title by Lucino Visconti (1971).

No more than any other talent, is that for music susceptible of complete enjoyment, where there is no second party to appreciate its exercise. And it is only in common with other talents that it produces effects which may be fully enjoyed in solitude.

Edgar Allan Poe, in The Island of the Fay