Tag: music

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JackTrip – The Modern-Day Paper Cup Phone

Post updated 5/24: Added information about repeating the process later

What is JackTrip?

The people best equipped to tell you about JackTrip are the creators at Stanford University: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/docs/common/JackTrip.html

But basically, the title is pretty apropos. JackTrip allows you to make a (relatively) direct connection between users
without the overhead of middlemen servers or special processing.

JackTrip runs on top of JACK, which stands for Jack Audio Connection Kit. What JACK does, among other things, is to
allow you to pipe audio around different software.

*Warning* For best results don’t do this with WiFi. It might work, but it might buzz a lot, and
then you have to increase the latency, which makes it less instantaneous.

Less dire warning: This post has a lot of information to understand if you’re just reading it, but I promise if you go
through and follow it step by step, you won’t have any problems. And it’s mostly repeated twice for differences between
Windows and Mac.

Table of Contents

Before you read on, even though Important Notes are at the end, I would read through them first,
ignoring things you don’t understand, but keeping in mind things you do.

  1. Open UDP port 4464 (if Hosting)
  2. Install Jack and JackTrip: Windows | Mac OSX
  3. Start Jack Server: Windows | Mac OSX
  4. Start/Connect JackTrip: Windows | Mac OSX
  5. Profit
  6. Important Notes

Get Set Up

If you’re hosting, then read this part. If you’re running the client, you can skip to “Installing Jack.” It doesn’t really matter who’s server and who’s client, but one person
has to be the server, preferably the one who knows how to forward their firewall ports.

Opening Ports and Finding Public IP: Hosts Only

JackTrip by default uses UDP port 4464 for quick communication. If you know what this means and how to get your ports
open, skip this section. If not, read on.

This is the most difficult section to write, because opening ports depends on what router, internet provider, and
operating system you have. The unfortunate thing is that this means you probably won’t be able to JackTrip behind a
school or office network.

Finding your local IP and Gateway address

You’re most likely behind a router. You’ll need to find both the local IP address of your computer and of the router.
We’re looking for IP addresses that are in the range of

  • 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255
  • 172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255
  • 10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255

Yours is most likely in the first range.

I’m giving you two different ways to check on each OS. If you’ve never used cmd or terminal before, I suggest you
try it.

Method Windows Mac
Cmd/Terminal Right-click on the start menu (or press Win-X) and click on “Command Prompt”. In the
window that pops up, type ipconfig and press enter.

Look for the longest section, and look for IPv4 Address and Default Gateway. Write those down.

 In spotlight search (the search icon in the top right) type Terminal and press enter.
In the window that appears, type IP: ifconfig | grep inet and press enter.
Look for “inet 192.168.X.X”

Gateway: in the Terminal, type
netstat -r | grep default and Enter
GUI On the bottom menu bar, right click the network icon (either a WiFi symbol or a connected monitor
symbol), and click on “Open Network & Settings”. Then click on “View your network properties”
and look for “IPv4 address” and “Default gateway”.		 Click on the WiFi icon in the top bar, click “Advanced” near the bottom, then click on “TCP/IP” tab.
Write down “IPv4 Address” and “Router”.

For reference, IPv4 addresses are most commonly 192.168.X.X. The router or default gateway (same thing) usually
occupies a low address in this range, so 192.168.1.1 or something, whereas your computer’s local IP might be
something like 192.168.1.135.

Accessing the Router Administration Interface

If you’ve never logged into your router’s administration panel, this is a good time to try it. Go to your browser
and type in the router address into the address bar and press enter. With any luck, you’ll be greeted with a log-in.
A sure bet is user: admin, pass: admin, but you might look on the sticker of your router
to see if the credentials are there.

To find the page where we can open/forward ports, you should look for menus that are something like:

Network -> Security/Firewall -> Port Forwarding

In the Port Forwarding section, you will be able to open ports – you tell it what protocol to use: TCP, UDP, or both
– in this case UDP, what port number – in this case 4464, and the computer to forward it to – in this case, they
usually have a dropdown list, so look for your IP address that we found in the previous part. Apply the changes, and
we should be good to go.

I’ve consolidated a list of guides for different ISPs and routers, in case you need more specific guidance:

Google Fiber: https://support.google.com/fiber/answer/4650342

AT&T Uverse: https://www.att.com/support/article/u-verse-high-speed-internet/KM1123072/

Xfinity: https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/port-forwarding-xfinity-wireless-gateway

Linksys Routers: https://www.linksys.com/us/support-article?articleNum=136711

Netgear: https://kb.netgear.com/24290/How-do-I-add-a-custom-port-forwarding-service-on-my-Nighthawk-router

In general, you can Google “port forwarding” and then your device or ISP.

Public IP

Go to https://api.ipify.org/ in your
browser and copy down the address. This is what you will give your clients for them to connect to you.

From here, go to the section for your operating system: Windows | Mac OSX

Windows

You can follow this guide: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/software/jacktrip/windows/index.html
but I couldn’t get it to work using Jack Control, so I’ve written what worked for me.

Helpful Prereq: Install ASIO4ALL

Download and install from here: http://www.asio4all.org/

Install JACK2

  1. Download the JACK2 installer: https://jackaudio.org/downloads/#windows
    1. Select the correct bit version. To check, in your start menu type “System
      Information”, and then look for the entry “System Type” – if it says x64, then I would install both
      the 32 bit and 64 bit versions. If it says x86, then you can only install the 32 bit version.
  2. Double click the downloaded file to install JACK2.
  3. Reboot computer if it asks after installation.

Install JackTrip

  1. Download the JackTrip: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/software/jacktrip/windows/Jack_v1.9.10_64_setup.exe
  2. Double click to install, and use default settings.

Start JACK Server

Here’s where I differ from the previously referenced page. We’re going to run the server from the command line.

  1. Right-click on the start menu (or press Win-X) and click on “Command Prompt”.
  2. If you installed the 64-bit version earlier, type cd 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Jack\', otherwise,
    type cd 'C:\Program Files\Jack\'. cd is a command that stands for “change
    directory.”
  3. Then, type .\jackd.exe -d portaudio -r 44100 -p 128 -d "ASIO::ASIO4ALL v2" and press enter.

You will then see a bunch of output, but if it doesn’t say “Failed to start Jack” or something along those lines,
then you are good to continue. This is what my window looks like:

Check that your audio devices are correct in ASIO4All

  1. Find the notification area:
  2. Click on the ASIO4ALL icon (if you followed the above command, it should say “128 Samples @44100 Hz”
    instead):

  3. Make sure the devices that you want to use are selected. I want to use Realtek HD Audio, so it is selected.
    Adjust as appropriate. I also moved the slider on the bottom to where the blue line is to correspond with
    the 128 samples we choose. Note that, if you switch audio
    devices, you might have to close the window and restart JACK. To do that, go to your command window and type
    Ctrl C (as if you were copying something) which will stop the Jack server.
    Then do the previous section over. Another pro-tip is that you can press the Up Arrow Key
    repetitively to cycle through your previous commands, so you don’t have to retype it. Just press enter.

Run JackTrip

  1. Open another command window, as above (don’t close that one).
  2. This time, ‘cd’ to the JackTrip installation location. So for mine, it would be
    cd C:\Users\USERNAME\jacktrip1.2 where USERNAME is my username, and the 1.2 after jacktrip
    could be different in the future. A pro-tip is just to type all the way up until “jacktrip” and then
    press the Tab key; the command line will auto-complete the folder name for you.

For Hosts (must run this first before client):

  1. Type .\jacktrip.exe -s

This is what mine looks like:
When the client successfully connects, you’ll see this:

Because I’m bad and a hypocrite, I used WiFi… so you see the UDP waiting too long warnings. No worries, it
works.

For Clients (must wait for host to run first):

  1. Type .\jacktrip.exe -c IP_ADDRESS

IP_ADDRESS is what your host will give you (the one the he or she should have looked up if they followed the Open Ports section. Note that I am using a local IP address because I’m connecting
within my network for demo purposes, but the number you put in will most definitely NOT be 192.168.X.X. You
should see a bunch of stuff, but important to see is “Received Connection for Peer!”

At this point, you should be all connected and ready to do virtually-lagless audio communication! From here, see
the Notes section for tips and warnings. Once you’re done with your jam sesh, stop
everything by going to each command window and pressing Ctrl C (as if you were copying something).
This kills the process, and you can close the windows.

Mac OSX

You can follow this guide: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/software/jacktrip/osx/index.html
but I couldn’t get it to work using Jack Control, so I’ve written what worked for me.

Install JACK2

  1. Download the JACK2 installer: https://jackaudio.org/downloads/#os-x
    1. Download the JACK2 Binaries link (JackOSX 0.92_b3 as of this writing).
  2. Because of some Mac OSX security thing, you have to install this by going to Finder, the downloads
    folder, Ctrl-click on the .pkg file, and then click “Open”. Then you can install it.
  3. Reboot computer if it asks after installation.

Install JackTrip

  1. Download the JackTrip: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/software/jacktrip/osx/JackTrip.pkg
  2. Same as above, go to downloads folder in Finder, Ctrl-click and click “Open”.
  3. Shouldn’t need to reboot, but do it if it asks.

Start JACK Server

Here’s where I differ from the previously referenced page. We’re going to run the server from the command
line.

  1. Open Terminal. If you don’t know where to find it, go to Spotlight search (search icon on the top bar)
    and type “Terminal”, then Enter.
  2. A little user-interface change I like to do is enable visible tab bar on Terminal: On the top click on
    View -> Show tab bar.
  3. Go back to the Terminal window and type jackd -d coreaudio -r 44100 -p 128 and press enter.

You will then see a bunch of output, but if it doesn’t say “Failed to start Jack” or something along those
lines, then you are good to continue. This is what my window looks like:

[Optional] If you want to use non-default devices, you’ll have to specify them with -C and -P at the end. To
show what devices exist, use jackd -d coreaudio -l. You’ll see for each entry something that says
“internal name.” Don’t worry about the “Failed to open server” because in this case that’s what we wanted – just
to list the devices but not start the server. Now that we know the internal names of the devices, we can put the
input after -C, and output after -P:
jackd -d coreaudio -r 44100 -p 128 -C "InputDeviceName" -P "OutputDeviceName"
See the next image for sample of what I have.

Run JackTrip

  1. In Terminal, open a new Tab either by Ctrl-T or clicking the plus in the tab bar.

    2. For Hosts (must run this first before client):

    1. Type jacktrip.exe -s

    This is what mine looks like:
    When the client successfully connects, you’ll see this:

    You might see UDP waiting too long warnings. No worries, it works.

    For Clients (must wait for host to run first):

    1. Type jacktrip.exe -c IP_ADDRESS

    IP_ADDRESS is what your host will give you (the one the he or she should have looked up if they followed the
    Open Ports section. Note that I am using a local IP address because I’m connecting
    within my network for demo purposes, but the number you put in will most definitely NOT be 192.168.X.X. You
    should see a bunch of stuff, but important to see is “Received Connection for Peer!”

    At this point, you should be all connected and ready to do virtually-lagless audio communication! From here,
    see the Notes section for tips and warnings. Once you’re done with your jam sesh, stop
    everything by going to each command window and pressing Ctrl C (as if you were
    copying something). This kills the process, and you can close the windows.

Notes

  • I don’t think it needs to be said, but I’ll mention it anyways: after you’ve got it working once,
    all you need to do for the next time is to run JACK and JackTrip – no need to reinstall everything.
  • All parties must use the same sample rate (-r) and buffer size (-p) parameters, or else JackTrip
    will fail to connect!!
  • Use headphones! Because there isn’t any sound processing, there’s no noise- or echo-cancellation.
    Using it without headphones, however, is a good way to see how good the latency is, since you can
    hear your own echo from the other person’s speakers.
  • Ctrl C on both Windows and Mac stops the program. Sometimes, you need to spam it. If
    one person does Ctrl C on their Jack Server, everything will start buzzing, so just
    mash Ctrl C when you hear incessant buzzing.
  • To save your sanity, most command lines have some nice features:

    • Pressing Arrow Up Key goes back in time through your command history. So, if
      you want to edit your previous command, press Up, and then start deleting/typing.
      Arrow Down Key goes forward in time, up until the current time, duh.
    • If you’re not quite sure if you’re typing the correct path to some folder or file, you can
      always press Tab to cycle through auto-complete. For example, in the Windows example, you
      can type cd C:\Progr and then press Tab, and it should automatically fill in
      cd 'C:\Program Files\'
  • I chose the jackd parameters from experience; a 128 buffer size had latency that was barely
    perceptible. If you can sort of hear the other person, but there’s quite a bit of buzzing noise on
    top of it, then you might need to increase your latency. In the jackd command, instead of
    -r 44100 -p 128 try -r 44100 -p 256. Then restart JackTrip as well. Again,
    all parties involved need to be using the same -r (sample rate) and -p (buffer size).
  • DON’T USE WIFI. Locally, with Betty’s Macbook on WiFi, and my computer on ethernet, we could do -p
    256, but the latency isn’t as good, and you won’t have as good of an experience.

  • On Windows, you might run into an error starting up certain audio programs after you
    install JACK2.

    There’s some critical bug that hasn’t been fixed. For example, my Sibelius
    software crashed upon opening every time. There is a workaround, and involves disabling Address
    Space Layout Randomization. It’s a small security decrease, but it’ll prevent your audio
    applications from crashing. If you want to read about the bug, go here: https://github.com/jackaudio/jack2/issues/332. Otherwise, to fix
    it:

    1. Go to your start menu, and type “Windows Security” and launch the app.
    2. Then go to “App & browser control” and then scroll down to “Exploit Protection”. Click on
      “Exploit protection settings”.
    3. Go down to to “Randomized memory allocations (Bottom-up ASLR)” and change it to “Off by
      default”.
    4. You might have to restart. Everything should work now.
  • In case you want to pipe audio around to, for example, record all the audio streams, the easiest way
    would be to use qjackctl (type in Spotlight or Windows Start Menu – the program is called Jack
    Control, but qjackctl also brings it up) after you’ve connected JackTrip between host and clients
    and opened up whatever software you need to use (OBS, Reaper, etc.). Click on the “Connect” button,
    and you’ll see the connections window. You can drag inputs from the left side to outputs on the
    right side. This will require some experimentation on your part, because I won’t be able to cover
    all the cases. Here’s an image from QJackCtl’s screenshot page:

Hopefully this has been helpful. It’s a lot to parse if you’re just reading it, but I promise if you go
through and follow it step by step, you won’t have any problems. I hope this can allow many more
musicians to collaborate, especially realtime, because, let’s face it, syncing audio and video or
recording with yourself is fun and all, but it’s a pain in the butt. Happy Music Making!

If you found this post helpful, please consider donating! https://www.paypal.me/seanchenpiano

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Learning How to Learn

I was originally going to dedicate an article on Hamelin’s Toccata, talking about the technical and musical challenges, and what is unusual or particular about the piece from a pianistic standpoint. After looking at the piece a bit, I’ve concluded that it is a fairly standard virtuosic work, relatively conservative in the context of Hamelin’s other pieces. To be fair, I have not practiced this piece, only read through it a couple of times and listened to some of the performers play it. But, there are no striking registrations, crazy fugues, strange figurations, or near-impossible runs. Just fast and exciting.

Furthermore, I don’t want these posts to really be music-theoretical, unless the topic is specifically about that. I think we would benefit more talking about stuff more piano-related, instead of things like how he uses polychords, hemiolas, augmentation, chromatic build-up over a pedal-tone – things that are very intuitive that I just end up having to make up terms for. We shall leave that for the theorists.

So, I am going to be talking about how to learn new repertoire, new in both the sense of it being something not of the common practice era, and also in the sense that it is a new piece that you may not have known previously. As always, this is from my point of view and my experiences. Other pianists might have developed other techniques or take things in a different order with different priorities. However, I hope that some of these ideas will inspire you to discover other ways to learn music efficiently and deeply. And, if you’re not a musician, I hope my suggestions can stimulate analogous ideas in other fields.

A borrowed title

No, I did not come up with the title of this article myself. In fact, there is a course on coursera.org called “Learning How to Learn” that I highly recommend (no I’m not being paid for this suggestion, I promise). All of the concepts they present on learning and test-taking are applicable to us as musicians and performers. Furthermore, all of the information is from research on how the mind works, and it is great for people of all ages. I highly recommend watching the videos, even if you think you are an efficient learner. It’s sometimes good to have those ideas told to you explicitly.

Getting it in the ear

I would argue that atonal or less-tonal modern music is harder to learn not because the non-tonality is factually harder to learn, but because it is not in our ear. The ear plays such an important role in sight-reading and learning music (at least for me). When I decide to start practicing a piece from the common-practice era, I’ve usually heard the piece at least once, if not dozens of times, and have probably read it a few times as well. Even in this Hamelin Toccata, when progressions and patterns are more similar to passages from some common-practice pieces, I find myself being able to read faster and assume more of the notes aurally.

Try reading a tonal piece that you have not heard before – like a Medtner sonata or the Scriabin 8th, or even something like the Mompou Variations on a theme by Chopin – you’ll find it surprisingly hard to sight-read because, though it is tonal, you don’t know how it goes and you need to actually read each note. Contrast that to reading a Beethoven sonata you’ve heard. You don’t actually need to read all of the notes because you can fill most of it in by assumption (and be correct when doing so).

Of course, this is assuming a general level of complexity in the piece – I’m sure you would be able to sight-read a Soler piece that you have not heard before relatively easily. If that’s not the case, get on it! You can get better only by doing it more.

So, one of the first things we as pianists have to do when learning a new piece is to get it in our ears. I would advocate for reading through the piece frequently when starting off. You may also speed up the process by listening to recordings, though then you run the risk of getting an interpretation stuck in your head if you only listen to one rendition over and over. Reading and listening not only puts the sound world into your head, but also gives you a good idea of the large-scale structure of the piece. It allows you to subconsciously prep your later practice plan: you begin to have an idea of what parts are more difficult than others, what parts fit your hand relatively well, and what parts are just plain confusing and will cause problems later when trying to memorize it.

Caveat: reading is not quite possible on the hardest of pieces, like a Ligeti etude or a Xenakis piece.

Let it grow on you

Many pianists have pieces they really don’t like. But I don’t think many of them have pieces that they know really well AND they don’t like. Personally, whenever I’ve started a piece that I disliked for whatever reason, I find myself saying, “This piece is actually not bad” after I get to know it and actually learn it. So, give it a chance. I’m not particularly fond of this Hamelin piece that has been commissioned, but I don’t know it well, and who knows? Ask me again in a few years and my opinions on it might very well have changed!

The Metronome is your friend

I’ve heard my teacher say it, you’ve heard your teacher say it, we all know we should use it, but, but, but…

Just use the metronome. I’ll talk about the metronome more thoroughly in the next article, but don’t just do slow practice, and definitely don’t just play fast. Mix it up a bit.

Survey the Land

I mentioned it briefly, but I want to cover more in-depth the concept of having a good idea of the general structure of the piece. Identifying different sections of the piece, whether that be a character change, a key change, a meter change, contour change, or just even a page-turn, can help you organize your practice. It can also help with memory. We will talk about memory more in-depth in a later article as well, but for now, know that having these goal-posts are a good technique for memorizing and dealing with memory-slips. (Hey, this sounds like building repertoire by moving outwards from the must-have pieces!)

You can even start seeing patterns in the structure – maybe there are two passages that are similar, or the same but transposed, or maybe there are passages that are easy and you don’t need to worry about them so much. An example:

Prokofiev 2nd Concerto, first movement. You know the cadenza is going to be the hardest and most problematic part. That means you would probably work on that first, so you can get a head-start on it. It doesn’t mean you won’t practice the other parts. You realize that the first section has two statements of the theme, and that the two statements share a chunk of the material. That means you don’t have to explicitly learn the two parts, but you have to make sure that you know the differences between the statements – that they end in different dynamics and go onto different versions of the “second theme,” etc.

The second section is sort of like variations (and modulations) on a new theme. You identify to yourself the characteristics of the variations: first is piano solo in A minor – nothing too bad besides maybe articulation considerations. Second variation is piano accompaniment in A minor. Those hand crossing and bass jumps seem kind of nasty; I would make a note to really know those notes and the changes in the harmony. Then there is a sort of bridge/development variations which leads to the next variation of piano solo in D minor – there are some unison runs, but all-in-all not bad. The runs continue into the last variation where the orchestra again has the theme. Those weird scales can be problematic, so I would sit down and really internalize those accidentals.

This is just an example of surveying the piece to really make practicing efficient – once it is clear in the mind, it will be clear for your body.

Back to the Basics

Sometimes, you there’s just no way around learning pieces like your teacher first taught you: hands separately, measure by measure, line by line, page by page. This method is great for thorny pieces like Carter’s Caténaires or any Ligeti etude because they’re basically impossible to read. I remember trying to read through these pieces, and even after a week, it still felt like I was reading them for the first time. Things would sound different every day – I would go, “wait was that accidental there yesterday? I also don’t remember that treble clef being there, and could have sworn that that was a fourth and not a fifth.”

This method shouldn’t be used blindly, either. Don’t just start from the beginning and do measure by measure by measure by measure. Group them. Do the first measure, then the next. Then maybe try putting the two measures together. Then do the next two measures, and then the four measures all together. Maybe try to build the whole line now. After you have two lines you can put them together, but you also need to spend some extra time on the measure before and after the line-break because you have yet to practice those measures together. Same thing with the lines before and after the page turns. Again, it is important to mix it up with large and small sections so you can both concentrate on details as well as get into the flow of it.

When I was learning Ligeti’s L’escalier du diable, I had to do this entire process twice: once to be able to play through with the score, and a second time for actually memorizing it.

Spaced Repetition

Don’t procrastinate. It is better that you start the piece earlier on (so you can get it in your ear), and read it once in a while before you really start diving into it, than it is to plunge straight into a week-long cram session. I believe this is why pieces that you learned when you were young stick better in your head than more recent pieces. Those old pieces you probably have brought back a dozen times throughout your educational and performing career, whereas those new pieces you probably played them 5 times in a span of two months, and haven’t touched since. The spaced repetition over years allows your brain to marinate the information, and every time you bring it back it is reinforced.

So, it is a good idea to read new pieces earlier on, even if you don’t have the time to dedicate to working on it in detail. Just let your ears soak it up slowly.

Convince Them

The hardest thing about new works isn’t their technical difficulty, it is how to perform them convincingly. Playing the notes well and accurately is relatively easy (most of the time), and with a lot of new music, that probably is enough to sell it to the audience. But, as musicians, we don’t let ourselves get away with the minimum – we always strive to find meaning, interesting things, expression, colors, or stories in the music we play.

Part of accomplishing this is to make sure you are practicing the musicality while you are doing your slow practice. You should never practice the notes devoid of expression, whether that expression is coming from articulation, dynamics, phrasing, or something else. If you practice robotically, you will play robotically, or end up spending a lot of time undoing that and adding musicality to it. And the worst thing you can do is play like a robot. (Well, you could play like a robot and miss all the notes. But we’re assuming a level of competence here.)

Many people have trouble with the atonality of pieces, and if you play it like it’s a dissonant piece, you’ll never get the audience on board. Rather, it is important to find musical interest in the piece – it can mean tracing how the dissonances “resolve” relative to one another. Or maybe the dissonance is a product of individual lines that can be brought out at different times to make more sense. Or perhaps the dissonance is secondary to the registration shifts. Sometimes, the rhythm is more important. I’m not saying that we must fit music into common-practice boxes that we feel familiar with, but it can provide a good basis for understanding newer music. You also have to remember that music does not exist in a vacuum; there is always something of the old in the new.

Play it Through

For your friends; for your girl/boy-friend(s); for your parents, your stuffed animals, your neighbors, your cat. The more experience you have going through the piece in an environment that is more stressful than your normal practice routine, the better. You find out how much stamina you need and where you are liable to lose focus. Sometimes memory issues or technical challenges don’t show themselves until a run-through.

I really love recording as a technique. I feel like my mental state changes the moment I press record. Not only does it force you to go through the whole piece without stopping, hopefully without making any huge mistakes, but it also results in a product that you can listen to afterwards. And there’s no better teacher than listening to yourself, realizing your habits and hearing how the piece comes across as a whole. Sometimes you’ll find yourself cringing at certain things, but then concluding that, “eh, it wasn’t as bad as I thought.” Other times you’ll say, “All the notes are there, but somehow the feeling wasn’t quite right.” It gives you direction for how to guide your future practice sessions, and informs of what you need to fix and where.

Sit down with a score and headphones and really be your own teacher. Mark it up, and you’ll even find yourself saying the exact same things your teachers say. “Why did you rush here? Don’t play these downbeats so vertically. Can you not throw away the last note of each group of sixteenths?” And, you can be as nasty or nice to yourself as you want!

No such thing

There are lots of sayings of “There’s no such thing as a bad ____, only a bad ____.” We can put “piece” and “performance” in there and get a sentiment that I mostly agree with. Though, I think it is more that we as performers can make a bad piece good by delivering it well – in the right context and with the right conviction. I think this “how do I make this work” attitude is applicable even to the most commonly played piece. After all, people are always asking musicians to perform with fresh ideas. Hey, maybe it isn’t a bad idea to treat old music like new music sometimes!