The Method, 2023
The Method is a text in which I explore memory of learning violin through the Suzuki method as a child in Lowestoft and being part of a Suzuki violin group. It considers the autistic perception of the body in space and sensory memory as well as individual and collective iterations of experience and action. I performed a reading of this text with violin and metronome at Imaginary Wines in 2023.
Script for performed reading
WRAPS THE METRONOME in a *sheet or duvet* TO DAMPEN THE SOUND
Barely audible metronome at 52
A pace throughout (like a heartbeat) – related to the womb, the body and an external measure, a rhythm to fit within.
3 bars (4/4)
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In many ways I learned how to feel as moving through a repertoire
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Listening,
Learning
Practising positioning, posture
Rehearsing.
Performing.
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A system of perception
formed of lines and boundaries
Where are the edges?
Memorised as ones and twos,
Things and not things.
A continuation in the body
Repetitions
hearing and forming
Memorised and compacted
Knowing through sensing
and sensing as knowing
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- - Sound on A - - slow - occasional plucking like a drone
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In a Line
Down the sloping left aisle of the Methodist Church, a group of children walks in a line in height order, bowing in unison as they play the same tune, walking towards the stage. Filing into ascending rows, they play until the end of the piece, by which time they are standing in lines facing the front; stretched taut postures, pairs of feet slotted heel to arch at identical angles. You will notice that the youngest stand on self-made *cardboard mats* with coloured-in outlines of their drawn-round feet to correctly align their posture from the base up.
For the duration of the concert the group will work through the repertoire they have accumulatively learnt by ear and repetition over months and years, numbers of players lessening with the advancement of the music.
At the end of the concert they begin to file out from the front, the youngest leading and the rows following as they play ‘Perpetual Motion’ (or ‘down-up, down-up’) to exit the hall.
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- - Rustling - - on strings
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Posture
Starting with nothing; with listening, with imagining;
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End Sound
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a small, shallow box and a ruler as an instrument to play on. Standing with it under your chin whilst others play, to get the feel of the instrument; have it feel familiar; part of you; a registration with your own physicality.
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Pluck open G like bullet points
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Stand, feet together
Box tucked under the right arm, bow loops over the index finger
Feet fan outwards, heel slots into the arch of the right foot.
Left hand takes the shoulder of the box
Left arm holds the box out ahead
Chin lifts and head turns to the left, reaching far round over the left shoulder
Left arm places box on the left shoulder
Left hand rests on (their own) right shoulder
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Stop plucking
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In time, the box is replaced by a small violin
Right arm brings the bow to rest on its strings.
Begin by bowing rhythms and changing strings between the A and the E.
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(sound A and E, roughly in time with metronome)
Stop playing
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In time, left arm joins the neck of the violin to bring fingers to the strings and add the memorised notes.
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over A and E - -
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Markings
Electrical tape when you begin.
*Chalk, dots*;
boundaries to move between.
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Gradually pluck occasionally, not intentionally, play with violin as movement.
Body is rocking, like a metronome, like an embrace.
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Thinly cut lines of stretchy plastic tape mark out the finger positions for the four fingers across the four strings, when you’re starting, perhaps on a 1/16th size, or an 1/8th. Cut with scissors from a roll, pulling against the cutting blade and slid under the strings from the bridge over the fingerboard where later, warmth from gripping causes the wrapped around edges to slide or rumple slightly, leaving a sticky grey residue, felt still in the fold of your thumb and index finger.
These train your fingers to memorise the intervals they need to form so that eventually the tape can be removed and you can feel the correct positions even with your eyes closed.
On the bow, the place for your right hand to form a hold is shown with coloured sticky dots. A place for the pad of the index finger to pull back towards itself, a space for the little finger to sit curled up over the screw that tightens and loosens the bow’s tension. A piece of shammy leather has recently been sewn like a little coat around the base part of the bow for the middle fingers to rest over without slipping, and the thumb to pinch with pressure into the flat sliver of mother of pearl, scratching against it with the right corner of the thumb nail and sometimes scraping into the adjoining coarser hair, compacted with roisin which gets under the nail, making the space feel bigger than it should, lifted with residue; bringing awareness to an unfamiliar location on the body.
Chalk markings along the bow show an area to keep within, towards but not at the bottom, a setting out point to keep returning to. The ‘balance point’ can be found by laying the wooden side of the bow across your out-turned index finger so that, without tipping, it rests level. At the tip of the bow, sometimes *a silver star* has been placed so that when you need to play with whole bows, your eyes trace right to the top, which is always either further, or less far than you think. An illusive distance between two fixed points.
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Plucking on A and D together rhythmically
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The end of the violin should be tilted up (so the notes don’t all fall out of it), your nose angled towards it and the eyes fixed on the bridge which the bow should remain parallel and close to, optimising sound. These are the perimeters within which to play, made up of horizontal and vertical directions of movement and visual guides.
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- - Sound on G - -
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What felt stretched and awkward became automatic and then the markings could be taken away, leaving *infinite stretches of darkness* to intuitively find your way on.
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Continues
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Upside-down
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Playing stops
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Sometimes we were asked to turn our bows upside-down, holding them at the thinner, tapered end so that the sense of gravity shifted from bottom to top. Or with *a peg placed on the tip*, adding additional weight. This created a feeling of buoyancy,
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Buoyant playing, G, E, A, G, E, A, G, E, A…..
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lifting the bow-holding wrist. An upward bounce rather than downward pressure.
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Playing stops on E
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Movement
In a different concert, a child comes forward and stands facing the group. All playing the same tune, this leader takes the players in their lines through a physical range of positions, the object for each player is to retain an even-ness of tone and rhythm, going further into outer movement to detach the thinking brain and letting it do its thing whilst connecting inward with the image of the sound.
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A, D, A, D, A, D….
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A range of mirrored movements as a sequence unfolds, determined by the pull of the leader’s body towards decisive positions
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Stroke strings lengthways
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standing on one leg - hold - leg down - standing on the other leg - hold - leg down. Turn around in a circle. Turn around the other way. Kneel on one knee. Kneel on two knees. Lie down. Get up. Turn around in a circle. Stand on one leg. Down on one knee. Up. Kneel on one knee. Lie down. Stand up. Walk around…until the end of the piece.
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E, E,
E, A
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Joining the *floor* and connected to the ceiling via different verticals.
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Buoyant plucking - G, E, A, D, E, A, D, E, A
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Feet splay out and rock in and out with the effort of playing. Arms without the usual gravitational pull of standing feel like they’re jigging upwards rather than down wards, up bows become down bows and bent elbows lift as though on lively water.
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Playing stops
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By Ear
Learning by ear they have tuned into an inner form of listening which enables them to develop outward aptitudes with a greater ease and quickness.
Learning by ear trains the listening body in stillness. Memorising over time, pieces fill up the inside;
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D, D, D, D…
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it swells with them and ignites an inner spark that, when guided and nurtured is enabling and strengthens an inner connection.
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Playing stops
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Tone
At the start of every lesson and practice, we perform the same exercise to develop tone. Tone is the individual song of the instrument and the player - it is the nurtured sense of musicality. It is the inner resounding, finding form as vibration.
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D, D, D, D…..
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‘Tonalisation’ is the place at the start where you become enveloped in a seeping resonance that the listening ear opens up to, the bones rattling comfortably in this intuitive space. Your body and instrument become swathed together; feeling out an even distribution, maintaining even pressure, producing a penetrating sphere that felt like your own place and of you, where you could bend time and move with it.
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Sharing
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Slowly introduce Everybody down up G, G, G, G, G, G, D, D, D, D, D, D
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Some weeks we would do different activities so that the rows were broken up and we would find partners a different height from ourselves. When I was younger, but not one of the youngest; maybe on the second row, I was put with one of the bigger ones who would kneel to my height and hold their violin under their chin and, resting a hand on their opposite shoulder I could bow their strings to ‘Everybody Down Up’, working through the ‘Twinkle Variations’ to ‘Ticker-Tacker’ and ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’, accompanied by the piano, which contained this collective sound. As one of the older ones, I knelt holding my violin upwards and pointing out towards the bowing hand of a younger child,
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A, A, E, E, F, F, E, D
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smiling with my lips pressed and uttering occasional encouraging or undirected sounds in a way that caused the *chin rest* to feel unusual and rub against my *jaw bone* and the neck to wave around.
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Thrum DG, DG, DG, DG, DG, DG…..
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Ticker-tacker
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Tapping on G, G, G, G, G, G…..cont.
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If it was slightly loose the chin rest would start slipping - I would be tipping my head slightly to the side to reassure my partner, and in that case my chin holding the violin in position with my hand doing the fingers and my other steadying me instead of bowing created a lop sided, divided situation in which the job of one was split in two.
Trying to position myself in relation to the spare arm at a suitable angle and the shake-through the violin of them scrubbing on the strings at a pace, ‘ticker-tacker-ticker-tacker’, themselves wiggling and twisting at the waist without being tethered by each of our own other arms and grounded through our feet.
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Slide fingers over strings
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Our weight was off centre, all collapsing into the unsupported *gap* in the middle, over which the meeting violin and bow hung. And the feeling in my jawbone extended up towards my conjoined ear, where I can still feel the ebony plate rubbing as I press my lower teeth.
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A to E, to A, to E
Tapping out across strings nr bridge
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A and E together, …..
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Bridge
Every year at Easter we would perform this lopsided duet with the ritual addition of balancing a foil wrapped chocolate egg between the A and D string as a test of our posture.
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D, A -
D, A -
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The trick is, with a comfortable grip under the chin, to raise the violin high enough that the egg doesn’t fall. But the bowing partner is always there to dash after and catch the tumbling egg and reposition it between the strings.
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End pulling on open E string – (a D as retuned)
And play with open D
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D, A together, D/A, D/A, D/A
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In Tune
Being ‘in tune’, is achieved by extending the bones beyond where they’re comfortable, fingers extending and bending awkwardly onto their flattening tips and squashing almost into each other’s places (into the corners of the tuning).
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D, A
D, A
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And this feeling then becomes newly comfortable when rehearsing, or resting, tapping out the pieces into the palm’s fleshy base – these distances now feel right.
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Stops, metronome more prominent, at 52
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In Time
As we got older, we learnt to read music and new measuring devices were introduced, like metronomes and exams.
Before this, we learnt timing by physically bouncing *a ball* to a partner on the first beat of the bar so that the sound of the ball hitting the floor landed in perfect time with the first beat of the bar,
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Strike G (left thumb) and E (right index finger), (G and A alternatively) strings in opposite directions to resound on the first beat of the bar (1/4), tapping to contain.
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a registration of two elements.
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Metronome to end at 52, 6 bars, 4/4
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Ends.