As a performing-composer who also coaches musicians, my life is always shifting within this spectrum: composing, performing, coaching — and each impacts the others. The interaction was very strong this week because I was teaching performance skills and improvisation and using one of my own compositions as the basis.
The students are in my online course “Baroque Flamenco Bootcamp” and it’s time for their Final Projects – which are really beginning projects because it’s nearing the end of the COURSE but it is the beginning of their relationship with this piece of music.
And we always do it the same way: First they videotape a 90-second distilled version of the piece we call the “Half-Baked.” I give them feedback on it, and they use that feedback to help them create their Final Beginning Project.
“Half-baked” is a term my coaching partner Karen Montanaro, created for sharing work that is still in the ‘idea’ phase.
We discovered that if we share half-baked work and give only positive feedback about what IS there instead of what’s wrong, we could move very quickly from “idea” to “thing.”
So I ask my students to do the same thing: to create a half-baked.
If we share half-baked work & give positive feedback, we move quickly from 'idea' to 'thing.' Click To TweetThis half-baked is a miniature so they can focus in on performance skills. So I ask them to distill it from a full-length piece to 90 seconds. When you distill it, it helps you understand the structure and the piece becomes much stronger. Then when you re-expand it, it maintains all that strength.
It’s also great to have a 90-second piece – you never know when it’ll come in handy.
But my students didn’t believe it was possible to get this piece down to 90 seconds, so I had to try to prove it to them.
There’s 3 videos, because I performed it first the way I might personally do it. Then I did it like an advanced beginner – and finally I reinvented as a meditative piece because some of the students in the course want to use the piece in hospice and they way didn’t believe you could slow it down, make it introspective and still keep it to 90 seconds.
Some of the students in the course want to use the piece in hospice #BaroqueFlamenco Click To Tweet
I really love the meditative version. You could go on forever in that vein.
It was so fun to do those videos, Kate – and yes, absolutely – you could really go on forever with this piece!
i loved it too, and as a student I was working on my version at the same time you were doing this. NEVER in my dreams did I think you could use the CADENZA, BUT…. you did and it sounded beautifully calming.
Ha ha! I love reinventing things and especially love reinventing them in ways that seem completely out of character, and LOVE exploring the whole idea of character as separate from underlying structure!
THANKS a million for posting these, DHC. They are like little gems, each in its own category!!! You demonstrate how we can personalize your piece, tailoring it to our individual musical abilities and sensibilities. KUDOS to YOU for giving us that freedom!!!!
We are on the road to El Paso Texas, I here your music and I find it great. I’m looking foreward to practice it when I’ ll be home at the end of Juni. We’ll also visit Boston, Can we meet you? Claudia
Just brilliant.
Ah Ha! Thank you!