Hey guys - thought I’d repost this FB post that @Corky_Music just shared with me:
This is probably the most important sharing about music performance that I have ever posted here.
All my life I would hear so many pat non-answers from the experts to deep questions about music performance like. “Play it from the heart.” Well fine, but what do you mean by that and how do you do it? I’ve never heard a reasonable practical answer. Or they would say; “It’s a feel thing.” Fine, but what can I do specifically to make that happen? “Well, it’s a feel thing.” LOL!
I didn’t accept that. I wanted to know what practical physical mechanical steps one could follow to at least open the door to attain the goal of “heart,” and “feel.”
Don’t ask me how, but I did stumble on the answer. This set me on a mission (now 50 years) of sharing this secret. The results I experienced at the workshops I conducted that focused on this discovery were so consistently mind-blowing for me and the participants that I was compelled to write a book on the subject and continued offering masterclasses as much as possible.
My first masterclass where I made this discovery was in 1973. It was a two week class at Columbia College that I took over for William Russo. It became a big and important part of my life since then. I’ve spent as many hours developing this as anything else in my life. More than my performances, my songwriting, my chamber and symphonic compositions and even more than Symphonic Blues No. 6, these masterclasses are the most profound offering I have left behind for the world and yet the idea appeared to me by sheer happenstance.
The foundation of the approach I call; “Intensity Variation.” (Intensity variation causes dynamic variation). The physical dance of touch, motion, pressure, that we perform with our musical instruments and voice are the controlling factors in music performance and ideally should be the focus … not so much the sound. The performer’s experience of expression comes from the physical dance not so much the resulting sound. Think “Air-Guitar.” The idea is to allow the dance to be multi-dimensional by including a full range of touch sensitivities from extremely delicate to forceful. So we don’t talk about “loud and soft” in the workshop. It’s always about the physical approach of delicate to forceful.
The surprise here is that It will open the door to the heart, to the zone, to more musicality, to more power, to better technique, to more fun and excitement. The effects are usually immediate. People don’t believe it until they’ve tried it.
“It’s the most powerful musicianship tool I’ve ever found.” —Mark Gray, Jazz bassist, Music Educator, Aspen CO
You don’t need to take the masterclass (which you can find on the NOW page of my site) or read the book (Which you can find in the shop or on the masterclass page) to pull this off. But to fully understand what’s going on, to make it your own, and to breakthrough some serious psychological warriors, you need the guy with the beard who has some very extensive and deep understanding of this process. But at least read this post and try it.
The importance of this for me and why I need to keep offering it, is that it offers the performer a magical and simple point of focus (like the ball in tennis) which helps get them and keep them in the zone. And from there the miracles begin pouring in immediately and they are more musical, more exciting, having fun and fulfillment, and playing from the heart.
The world needs our musicians to be the happiest and most fulfilled versions of themselves to turn out the most expressive and powerful messages to cover this world in joy at a time it is especially needed. - Cousin Corky.
