Laurel Black Music

It's been a busy first half of the month so far. Though summer isn't technically upon us, there's something about the month of June that makes it a month for personal projects. Perhaps it's because my entire life has been attached to an academic calendar, or perhaps it's because it's a month where there's typically more nice than dreary weather - either way, the first half of this selfish month has been a total joy. New Article It's been out for a little while, but you can read "Developing Kinesthetic Awareness: A Guide to Mindset, Explorations, and Wrists - Part 2" in this month's Rhythm! Scene .  Find it on page 14! TAPS East Coast By now there's evidence on social media that TAPS East Coast was a blast, both as a human and as a musician.  Held at the New England Music Camp (NEMC) at Snow Pond, the setting was nothing short of breathtaking.  The faculty were housed in cabins, the students in the new dorm, and our acti...

If there's anything more frustrating than moving a marimba, it's moving a marimba and realizing you've lost a felt or two.  Disappeared - like socks in the dryer.  Though I've been known to use a hair tie in a last-minute situation, I took 20 minutes this morning to make my own felts - 55, to be exact! That's what - less than 30 seconds each?!  Here's how I did it. Supplies - one piece of black felt ($0.40 at Michael's) - ruler - sewing machine (needle and thread works, too, but will take longer)  The brand of felt I found is called Creatology. Here's the label: Instructions 1. Remove a felt from the marimba to take some measurements.  I've found that most are really similar in size, but measure to be sure.   This one is one inch long on the folded edge, 7/8" wide. You'll also want to measure from the fold to the first row of stitching, if there is some visible.  This one is 5/8". You'll want ...

TAPS, ya'll. TAPS made me not hate excerpts. For those that know me, this is a huge deal. Let me explain. My undergraduate education began with assignments of only snare drum, and almost exclusively excerpts.  If you're looking for a way to get rid of a student, I suggest this route.  Not only was I not yet mature enough to have the focus and discipline to learn these, but they were killing my motivation to practice. I wanted  to practice; I was desperate to learn.  Sure, my buzz rolls got pretty good, but I hated the rest of it. I dreaded practice, which as we all know, really sucks. Luckily, my ornery side kicked in and I just started learning marimba pieces in my own time, so the music student was saved!  But that first semester of school has never left me.  Since then, any time a person mentions excerpts, I cringe.  With less self control I'd act like Michael from The Office. In grad school, the quickest way to get me to leave a room wa...

Cool things are in the works, everybody. Publications I'm excited to let you know that I'll have two articles coming out in Rhythm! Scene : one in April, the other in June.  It's a two-parter about developing kinesthetic awareness and applying that knowledge to our wrists.   In the April issue: developing a kinesthetic mindset, discovery exercises for kinesthetic awareness, and discussion of two stabilizing ligaments in the wrist. In the June issue: tendons, common injuries, and a kinesthetic checklist to help avoid them. TAPS - June 6-12, 2016 This June yours truly will be part of the faculty at the Ted Atkatz Percussion Seminar (TAPS) on the East Coast at the Snow Pond Music Festival.  The seminar takes place in beautiful central Maine and it isn't too late to submit an audition tape.  Here are the guidelines .  TAPS is for college students looking to develop excerpts, audition skills, and musicality.  Several TAPS alumni have b...

Chamber music involving marimba is my favorite kind of music to perform. Last December I performed Samuel Adler's Four Dialogues   for euphonium and marimba  with Joel Collier , a doctoral student at James Madison University.  Our video is now live on YouTube , recorded with three mounted GoPro cameras: two on stands, and a third attached to the upper end of the marimba, which provided some really interesting shots! Mallet Choices All mallets are made by Innovative Percussion . Movement 1 Janis Potter series (IP403) and Casey Cangelosi series (CGL3) My Potter mallets are really worn out, which works well for the opening high B tremolo.  That pingy timbre mixed well with the deeper sound of Casey's mallets for later chords. I alternated the mallets in my hands [CC, JP, CC, JP] to facilitate the opening and closing tremolos. Movement 2 Casey Cangelosi series (CGL3) The weight of Casey's mallets complements the euphonium's rich sound, even th...

This essay is all about the muscles of the back, since we talked about the spine in my last segment.  Since I get to talk all about shoulders at PASIC (woohoo!!!) on Friday, I thought a good connection between spine structure and the shoulder joint would be about the muscles of the back that help to protect both. Though I've never experienced it severely first-hand, it seems like there is nothing worse than constant back pain.  Ask anyone who has dealt with it and they will say that you must  protect your back so you never  feel what they do.  Doctors warn their patients that once they have one surgery, chances are they will need more.  (This makes sense, as you can't fix one part of the long spinal structure without later needing to correct other areas.) There's good news, though: keeping the muscles of the back strong, and freely aligning the spine, can help us lead pain and surgery-free lives. Waterfall Muscles source source   ...

“Laurel, your sound stops at your butt.” Ground All hilarious Family Guy -esque mental pictures aside, this interchange, ladies and gentlemen, comes from my first lesson with Dr. Karl Paulnack while at The Boston Conservatory .  Imagine my surprise when one of the most profoundly gifted, insightful, and dear teachers I came to know began a series of comments in my first lesson with that ! He continued: “I’m sitting here listening, and you are so ungrounded that it actually feels like your sound stops at your butt.  You’re only using half of your body to play.  You need to get grounded!” The idea of getting grounded was not new, but it was still a rather elusive concept.  First introduced to me in an acting class, I learned there how important it was to “find your feet” in order to breathe openly (aka properly ) and connect with the objectives of my character.  In my musical training before this lesson with Dr. Paulnack there was only bri...

judge  - to form an authoritative opinion | to form an estimate or evaluation about something discerning  - revealing insight and understanding Last year I listened to the final round of a snare drum competition.  With instruction to play "up to 20 minutes" of music, the most artistic player performed one piece with such depth that I had to remind myself I was listening to  solo   snare   drum . After the round I went up to my husband, who was a judge, and said, "well, this is going to be easy."  Alas, she didn't win because the other judges had issue that she only used 12 of her 20 minutes, and they essentially out-voted him. She came in 3rd, and this was a surprise to everyone, including the competitors that placed above her. I learned an important lesson that day - I learned that though we hope to experience the perfectly fair, artistic, and discerning competition, that's not usually what happens.  It's due to nothing more than human n...

Let me go ahead and say this post has nothing to do with Jim Morrison. Last week I competed in the Great Plains Marimba Competition, an interesting experience and one that I will write about in the coming weeks. (Distance is good in some cases, yes??) Now, I'm by no means a person who has taken many competitions. There is an interesting moment, though, when finalists are announced and your name isn't called. You start to wonder if this sort of playing scenario is meant for you, if a "competition player" is who you are or who you want to be.  And this time, for me, it became very clear that I view competitions as a stepping stone, not the end of some glorious road, but hopefully a little push  to a new adventure.  Those that have won have undoubtedly participated in many.  As Ji Hye Jung said during her concert (and I paraphrase), "How did I win the competitions? Let me tell you -- I only mention the ones I didn't lose ." Last week's day of fina...

What happens to us when we get in front of people? Why do we sometimes get so much   braver and other times totally choke? I've been thinking about this a lot with the marimba competition coming up next week.  Let me say what we're all thinking: competitions are weird.  The entire reason three people in the audience are there is to judge you. Boom. They're not trying to be mean; they're not trying to imply that what you have to say isn't valid, but there's something that happens in your brain when you know you are being weighed against others.  I'm a firm believer that the intention of the music can carry a performer through. What I mean by that is if the performer is focused on nothing but telling the story or sharing the sound of the piece, nothing can go wrong.  Ok, so not literally  nothing, but if the intention is to share truth, then "nothing" could be wrong, as every note is played, and every word is sung, with a correct and true i...

Between visits to our new city to house-hunt and making sad attempts at packing up our home, I'm squeezing in as much practice as my forearms and sanity will let me. There's the part of me that says you should ALWAYS be practicing .  There's also the part that says your practice will be crap if you don't WANT to do work .  Then there's the other part that seems to always remind me that I PRACTICE BETTER when I'm also exercising and taking time for short meditations. There's no shortcut for hard work, for practice so tedious that you want to stab yourself in the eye with the end of your mallet.  But there has to be a balance, right?  It has to be ok that sometimes you have to clean the house before practice so you are able to focus on the notes and not on everything else you have to do. I wonder if other people can prioritize practice to the point that all other things are forgotten and ignored, and can they do that without the creeping anxiety of everyth...

This post is a continuation of my first Musical Arts and Crafts publication, which I have copied as the next entry in this blog. You know, in case you didn't get to read it the first time... ;) Alrighty. Musical arts and crafts is all about mounting scores into a large book that makes reading multiple pages and the resulting page turns manageable for the soloist.  There's something about it that shows a sense of ownership about learning the piece. When I'm fiddling with 20 loose pages I feel like someone who is barely trying to hold on, but when it's mounted in my book, I feel like I have control over my learning experience of the piece. It's very satisfying. What I have to share with you today are some examples of "things getting crazy" in the mounting process. In other words, I just mounted a score that was not pretty, required lots of cutting and folding and taping, and whose pages aren't even in chronological order. That's right, folks, so...