The Blog Is Moving

I will be continuing this blog on my website from now on.

All the old posts are there, and I'll start adding new ones as soon as inspiration comes.

Check out the new look at www.jennaristila.com/blog and let me know what you think!

PS. Good ideas for new posts are also welcome...

Audition Tips for Singers (from a Pianist)

Art is happening here.

Many people dislike auditions, and I can't blame them - it's unpleasant business trying to convince others you're great in six minutes or less. To make the experience a bit more pleasant, I thought I'd share some basic insights on how to prepare. I didn't think anyone needed to be told some of these things, but all of this I've lived through. Someone somewhere went to an audition and wasn't aware, so here's to you. Next time you'll know.

0. Make sure you know what you're auditioning for. If they want to hear "newer" repertoire but the advertisement does not include the word "musical", maybe just check what the genre is. Pro tip: contemporary classical music differs somewhat from Let It Go.

1. Choose a selection of songs. They might want to hear excerpts from two or three, so bring more scores than one. It's very likely the pianist isn't a walking jukebox and will not be able to play arias from memory - and even if they could, why should they help you get the job when you've already proved yourself to be an unprepared twat.

2. Usually it's wise to sing basic repertoire. The jury likes to hear stuff they know, and pianists like to play stuff they know. With arias like Pamina (that you should never sing in auditions by the way, I've been told by a prestigious jury member), Mimi and the Count, it's more likely that you'll get many right notes and chords to support you, in approximately the right tempo.

3. Make the selection varied: Different languages, styles, and characters. Three slow Mozarts in Italian is boring - they heard from the first minute what they need to know about you and Mozart, so move on.

4. Vary styles, not fachs: Not a good idea to bring both tenor and mezzosoprano repertoire (though if you're a very flexible countertenor it might make sense to go for the gold). When you're trying to sell yourself in a short amount of time, it's better to make the story simple and memorable. It also helps if you...

5. ...Dress according to your fach. Basically, if you want to sing trouser roles, wear trousers. (Ta-dah!) Most importantly, please do wear clothes that are your size and shoes you can actually walk in. Smart casual is good, luxury escort maybe not so good.

6. Learn the songs by heart. It's really not okay to bring scores or to have the lyrics on your phone screen. Learning three songs by heart is possible, and it really is the minimum requirement - why on earth would they hire you to do a full opera production if you can't remember six minutes of music?

Now you know what songs to bring and what to wear. Let's take a closer look at the sheet music:

7. Always. Bring. The. Music. For. The. Pianist. Bring it in paper form, unless they specifically ask for a pdf. And if you are offered the chance to send them the music beforehand, ALWAYS TAKE IT. You never know, they might actually practice and make your life much easier. NEVER ASSUME THAT THE PIANIST KNOWS THE PIECE, because they may not, and who will be the loser in that equation? The pianist is hired to play through dozens of arias, and they'll be paid no matter how they scramble through them. You, on the other hand, might get seriously lost if you have to sing on top of wrong chords played at the wrong time, and it's your very own job interview you're messing with.

Personal anecdote: I was accompanying a violin masterclass where I got the repertoire list in advance. One violinist sent the first Brahms sonata, and I practiced it. When the course started, the violinist announced that they had switched the sonata, and are playing number two instead. I asked why they didn't let me know, since I'd practiced a whole sonata for no reason, and would now primavista my way through a second one - it was my first violin masterclass, so my repertoire was limited at best. Turned out the violinist had just assumed that since I'm accompanying a violin masterclass, I would know all the basic repertoire by heart.

The moral of the story: Please don't assume pianists are Gods. Many of them are, but also Gods have to start from somewhere. And in the end, you're the one who'll suffer from your assumption - like the violinist who ended up getting rubbish accompaniments to lessons they'd paid a lot of money for.

8. When printing the sheet music, make sure the paper doesn't have anything else printed on it already. I once had to play trough an aria that looked like it was either contemporary art or a very complex secret code. There was some kind of text file printed upside down on the same pages as the music was. Don't do that.

9. Tape the damn scores. One tape up, one tape down. NOT JUST ONE IN THE MIDDLE - when the pianist is turning the pages, it's much harder to avoid turning multiple ones when the bottom of the score is not taped together. Don't save tape, save the pianist's nerves.

10. Decide where you want to begin, and mark it extremely clearly. Preferably in colour. You do not want to spend four out of your six audition minutes trying to find a suitable spot for the pianist to begin. Even if there's a traditional place where Everybody Knows It Should Begin, just draw a mark. If the aria doesn't have a clear ending, mark that too. AND JUMPS - do not be vague with jumps. Sometimes singers draw just a slightly thicker black line on top of the barline, and then I'm trying to guess - while playing - whether I should be searching for a similar line somewhere or not. Make it red or green or whatever, but make it stand out! Use "VI-DE" or "CUT" and cross out the beginning of the cut big time. Basically mark things in a way that a 5-year-old would understand. Because what's the worst thing that could happen? Will the pianist refuse to play because your markings are too clear?

Last but not least:

11. Greet the pianist. It's weird when the singer makes no eye contact. A bit of basic kindness goes a long way - just look at the pianist, say hello, and after you've sung your stuff say thank you.

And that's it. You got the job.

How a Pianist Cheats

I cheat a lot. (There, I've said it.) Especially in Wagner, because Wagner piano scores are meant for something else than piano playing entirely. I know there are those pianists who play all the notes because they can, they have the time to learn them properly or their prima vista is just that amazing. This post isn't for them. It's for all the rest of us who need a couple of tricks to do recordings on a short notice.

My basic idea in this is that when recording with a singer, I should be as reliable as possible. I should minimize the possibility of playing wrong chords, muddling the pulse, not following - because usually studio time is expensive, the singer only has so many takes they can do until the voice is affected, and you as the helping hand don't want to be the reason for an otherwise perfect take ending in a discard bin.

Here I've dissected Fricka's aria from The Valkyrie: what shortcuts I use and where. I'm thinking of doing a couple of this kind of posts in the future, so please let me know what was helpful and what wasn't. If you have any questions or things to add, I'd be happy to hear from you! Feel free to suggest other dissectable arias as well.

Fricka: So ist es denn aus

The beginning I play just as it is. It's simple enough, and everything is within reach. The piano introduction is very short, which is a blessing.
 

Then I start not playing things. Because the tempo is quite fast, I keep just one line per hand. (When things could be played legato, playing wrong notes is less likely. The more you have to lift your hands from the keyboard, the more risky it becomes.) I do play the first interval on the right hand though, I don't know why I coloured that. It is necessary for the harmony.

 

Then it's just chords that need to be sharp. I can't reach all of them, so I've changed some notes around to be able to play them without breaking them. I wouldn't break chords in a place like this, because I think it doesn't suit the character of the music.

Ok this I'm not proud of. I basically only play the yellow stuff, and add some random D major stuff around it. If I'm not alert here, I might also skip the fanfare chords to be on the safe side. But I swear that when I listened to recordings of this, that was basically all you could hear - a strong horn melody and a big D major chord surrounding it. So sorry Wagner. (From the piano bar onwards I play as written.)

   

At the end of the first line I skip the yellow stuff for clarity (and because that's not so important), but the next bar I try to play as it is. Except the very last triplet octaves - there I tend to leave the lower octave out (B & C sharp) for legato's sake. And here I don't do the grace notes. For that there's no other reason than that I only noticed them now. They're so small I missed them. (Oops.)
When the singer comes in, I skip the middle part because it's a hassle to combine it to the melody. From here on I take quite a few shortcuts with the rhythm, because when this is played in tempo on a piano all those little notes easily start sounding very busy. On an orchestra the feeling is forward going but relatively calm, and I say to myself that I'm just trying to project that. Also I add an octave here and there for sound.

It's quite straightforward from then on. I leave the higher octaves out from the left hand to keep the dynamic lower and to make my life easier, skip the rhythm like before, and leave a note out of the left hand because I can't reach it.

Now we arrive to a beautiful B major section. I simplify the left a lot: Always keeping the bass even though I forgot to color it (always, always keep the bass!), I just play something chord-related in the middle. Here's one version in red of what I might play. To add sound, and to compensate for the left, I fill out some chords in the right hand. The yellow stuff I still leave out.

Then I cheat even more. I don't know why the middle stuff is so hard to play, but I leave out a lot (most) of it. Then in the last bar shit starts to happen. It's supposed to be very quiet, and what you can hear from the orchestra is the sharp ta-taa -rhythm in the yellow box. So. From there on I'm playing only that with the right hand, even though that rhythm isn't exactly anywhere in the score. I've added a third on top of the first right hand chord, to make both chords the same. (I'm playing C double sharp & E sharp in the fist box, and the second half of the bar would be D sharp & F sharp, possibly adding the lower note written or leaving it out, and I continue like this until the next page.)

Here I've skipped two rows, as they're uneventful from cheating perspective. Now the last climax starts building up, and I start making shortcuts again. I play the chord in red, and bring out the left more (plus the half-note B in the right hand), same when it modulates. Then I cut some corners in the left.

This is difficult to explain - here on the first row I come back to the ta-taa -rhythm that I've already used in the right hand. And on the second row I've highlighted the important stuff in red. I add the same rhythm to the right hand chords (my beautiful drawings), and add notes to the chords to fill them up. The same system applies to the beginning of the next page.

In the orchestra - at least in the recordings I heard - the right hand stuff doesn't sound as high as it's written here - so I play the yellow box an octave lower. Then I leave out octaves again (I do not completely hate octaves, guys, I promise!) and then the piece pretty much ends.

So that was Wagner's Fricka, cheated.

COVIDiaries 4 - Stay Positive! ...!!

Napoleon's Grave, my favourite patience. Helps me stay sane.

This is the time for self-discovery. We all have this amazing opportunity to take a step back, evaluate our lives and truly see what's important. What have you always wanted to do but never had the time for? Running a marathon, creating cutting-edge sculpture, writing a collection of short stories, baking artisan bread? Now's the time to make those dreams come true! Fulfill your inner longings.

This society is way too focused on consumerism - now we can all change those toxic thought patterns and start living a more meaningful life. Go outside, go to the forest, breathe in the fresh air. Look at the spring happening around you and feel the mother nature wrap you in it's primeval embrace. Or walk to the sea shore and feel the sand under your feet. Listen to the singing of the waves. Who really needs those shops anyway? You can live without new shoes. Aren't you much happier here, in nature's own museum, than in Louvre? And the movies are streamed in Netflix - much cheaper than in the cinema. Enjoy this opportunity to rebuild your relationship with nature, and start your consumerism detox right here, right now.

Connect with your home. Your home is your haven. Make sure it's zen, so your energies can flow free and undisturbed by the underlying fear of, but never mind that now, take your yoga mat out and start breathing conscious, full deep breaths as you move through a vinyasa or two. Then eat a well-balanced meal you cooked with mindful love, because you have all this time for yourself now.

All of this tries so very desperately to hide the fact that we're all really scared. At least I am, and if you're not you're probably fooling yourself. We're trapped in this time of not-knowing - When will the vaccine be discovered, how many people will die before that, will I lose someone I love, when will we work again as normal, will there be work to return to, what will the economy look like in a year's time, what is going to happen? What about my work, my family, my friends, my hobbies, my life? And when can we go to the libraries again???????????? It's also a problem of choices. How to live through the days so that I don't unnecessarily put anyone in danger, but on the other hand, won't go mad myself? Can I go to the store? Can I meet this person? Is it okay, is it responsible? Should I delay cutting my hair, having a massage? Can I go to other people's houses? Visit my parents? Should I wear a mask? What's the right thing to do?

There are days when I have the energy to make bread, not artisanal, but very normal bread, and I have the energy to tidy something that has needed tidying for quite some time. There are days when I sit on the sofa and stare at nothing and think that it is not possible to live like this. There are days when me and the person I live with spend meaningful time together now that there's plenty of it available, and then there are days when we think this virus will bring our cohabitation to an end. Some days the online teaching gives sudden nuggets of joy and elation, and then there are many days when after teaching it feels like it's drained all my will to live, I feel so exhausted after. Sometimes it feels like I can breathe, and sometimes it feels like I can't. 

These are weird, stressful, unknown times. I'm not saying you shouldn't think positive - on the contrary, I definitely think you should, if you possibly can. But if your vinyasa flow isn't quite working and you still haven't made any bread, if you go cry in the shower so as not to worry people living with you and you play computer games for hours on end to obliterate thoughts for a while, well, that's okay too. Someone somewhere said that this too shall pass, and that sounds very clever. While we're waiting for that to happen, though, remember that fear makes people behave in strange ways. (I knit socks, hate them, unravel them, and start all over again. Also I play patience and scream at people I love.) As odd or stupid as someone's behaviour might seem, have compassion. They might be annoyingly positive, evasive, depressed - but they're just coping as well as they can in a shitty situation, just like you. 

COVIDiaries 3 - Easter Edition

The Baroque Babes (and me) 

Two singer colleagues asked me to join them to make music in the time of corona, and yesterday we recorded Stabat mater by Pergolesi. We're publishing it on YouTube as an Easter offering. I'd never heard this Stabat mater before we started rehearsing (shocking, I know) and I thought it would be fun. It was. Here's what I learned in the process:

• When living through a crisis - this pandemic is arguably the biggest one so far in my lifetime - making music together becomes an act of hope, defiance, prayer even. Working on Stabat mater with Johanna and Elli has yet again reminded me of how much I love what I do. (Listen to 'Thank you for the music' by ABBA now and be grateful. Then continue reading.) 
• Stabat mater is an insanely beautiful piece when played by a baroque ensemble.
• A piano is not a baroque ensemble. It's important to understand all the implications of this - I didn't. I listened to recordings of ensembles, did my best to imitate them, and quickly discovered that things that sound good with a continuo aren't necessarily applicable to piano playing. Steady, heavy pulse? A robot playing slightly too slow. Walking bass all portato? Directionless shit. Trills together with singers? Not great.
• I understood just how little I had studied baroque - I have played the harpsichord, but pitiably little. I have basically learned enough to know how much out of my depth I am - and knowing this mainly helps in making me aware of how much I'm offending the baroque gods. Whatever I do, it's probably somehow wrong, and who plays baroque music on a piano anyway?
• When you have to baroque as a pianist, however, you've got to pay attention to staccatos. I always end up using them too much and too sharp everywhere, making everything sound light, bright and cheerful. Sometimes it works, but just as often the line and drama disappear, taking the oomph out of the music.
• Trills are hard. "Relax," you tell your fingers, "you've known how to do this since you were ten", but your muscles have already frozen, refusing to co-operate.
• Taping scores is even harder than the trills. This time I copied just some of the pages to avoid page turns, and taped the copies to the score. Well. Not only once but twice I actually managed to tape the upper and lower half of the same paper to different pages. Trying to detach the tape I tore some of the pages and essentially made a huge mess. Finally I managed to tape page 29 next to page 41. I have two masters degrees.
• Recording is energy-consuming business, so bring food. Bananas are the best.
• Buy new tights. If you think the old ones won't break when you start manouvering yourself into them, you're very much mistaken. Counting on a small tear not showing in the video? Of course it will. Forgot to check the colour? No worries, surely no-one will notice how weird your orange legs look compared to the deathlike white of your arms.
• It really is possible to cry so tragically over wrong notes and badly formed phrases that the person who you live with thinks someone has died. (In my defence, I was very tired and hungry, and that's when things get tragic.)
• Things might not sound as shit as they feel like when you play them. We're professionals, so in the end all the music we make sounds quite alright, even if it's not the greatest performance ever. All the embarrassing mistakes I bumbled through in this particular recording are just mistakes, after all. While they make me cringe, they will not destroy all the pleasure another listener gets from the performance. A messed up trill here, an ugly forte there - turns out I'm just human. Who would've thought.
• Looking at the video afterwards I realised that I still have the same mannerism I've had for years now - I tend to rotate in a circle, always counter-clockwise, with varying speed throughout a performance. There I was playing, going round and round. A couple of times I managed to pause the movement and sit still for a phrase or two before continuing my rounds, and that felt like a small victory. Baby steps.
• Concerts are fun. Okay, there was no audience and we didn't actually get paid, but who cares when the piece and the people you work with are awesome. Returning to ABBA I'm saying thank you for the music and wishing you all a happy Easter, while we wait for better times to come.

COVIDiaries 2 - Teaching

The perfect reason to Netflix.

I've never used so much whatsapp in my life. Finland has been shut down, and all music schools have moved their teaching into Internet World. The past week has been a crash course on online teaching, and the biggest surprise for me has been just how much time it takes. "Normal" teaching doesn't actually require that much planning - of course you have to have a plan, find material etc, but it also very often happens that you just improvise on the lesson based on your gut instincts. For me, most of the ideas for a particular student come from being in the same space with them, talking, noticing what's going on. You might sense that the student is not really into a particular piece and you change it, you might notice that now we need something that is lighter, something that challenges the left hand, now we really should compose something, or maybe we need to sit down and draw some notes today. You're alive at the moment and try to sense how the student is reacting to what you throw at them. Figuratively. You should never throw objects at students, just so you know.

Online you Really Have To Have A Plan. You have to have all the material, so many videos, recordings, work sheets, ideas, and you have to explain everything without touching the student or guiding their movement in any way - often the connection is a bit late, so that's an extra concern - and the student should be getting something out of all this. Also, if you teach via whatsapp like me, you have to hold your damn phone in your hand All The Time, and look at the stupid little picture of your own face in the corner. One embarrassing detail I realised was that I don't have the books the students play from. I've just always looked at their books, so I never really had the need to buy them for myself - and now I found myself mumbling something about the song with the picture of the person with the thing on page something at the kind of end of the book, or maybe halfway, it was called cat something or maybe it was a mouse? Somehow I remember all the songs, but not their names or the pages they're on. Not great. Also I'm very used to writing instructions down to the students' notebooks, and stopping them while they play and showing something from the score. Now all the stopping amounts to is "what? what did you say? oh this bar? no that? what note? what?" - so helpful and productive.

I've discovered that I can't faultlessly play everything my students play, at least on the first attempt of recording, and I decided to embrace that. Let the students hear the Unedited Truth of "whoops, what was that". I'm very proud of myself for not swearing, not even once. And now I have an extensive collection of practicing tapes for all kinds of hands, with or without accompaniments, to completely random songs. My poor neighbours.

What's been fun to see is all the pianos of all the students. Most of them I've never seen before, and many were proud to introduce me to their home companions. Also a great opportunity to check how they sit - most of them too low. All in all it's weird, staring at the phone and the laptop, hoping your good intentions travel through bits and pixels.

Other things I've done apart from online teaching:

• Cooked food from an actual cookbook and expected praise from others living in the house. What they really said was "well, I'd never make this again".
• Tried to explain to a neighbour why they would have to protest play their electric guitar a bit less loud while I'm recording Itzy bitsy spider and Mary had a little lamb.
• Bought a long and complicated boardgame to take this relationship stress test to a whole new level.
• Looked at the intellectual books I borrowed from the library before it closed. Couldn't be bothered to openany of them.
• Almost finished knitting a sock.

COVIDiaries 1

Keeping busy...

In the beginning there was something weird in China. Well, nothing that concerns us. Then yesterday the Finnish government announced that everything will be closed from now until forever. It happened pretty fast. A week ago I was rehearsing Turandot - the premiere would have been the upcoming Saturday. Then they cancelled all performances of more than 500 people. Alright, we thought, we can still go through with this, no need to panic. Other people panicked, however, and the supermarkets ran out of toilet paper, pasta, and crushed tomatoes. (Apparently this is what Finnish people need in case of emergency. Also pea soup cans were popular.) The other person who lives in this house fell into this ruse and also bought the pasta and tomatoes. We can now comfortably feed ten people for a week, but with a very limited diet.

Then on Saturday things started to happen. Suddenly everything was cancelled. My whole Spring - luckily not hundreds of gigs but enough to put butter on my toast - just cancelled. No butter, then. At least there was the toast, the teaching, that would continue as normal because surely they wouldn't shut down the schools?! Come Monday - schools closed. Alright. Most music schools in Finland continue teaching online, which is a new and frightful thing for us all. 

So, after a brief meltdown and panic about lost income, it was time to come up with solutions. Most of my Monday and Tuesday have been spent on informing students about this minor change to their lesson routine, and on planning the actual execution of the fact that I've promised to do this. There's a facebook group that shares thoughts and tips on online teaching, which is immensely helpful. It's going to be great, I'm sure (, she said, not looking exactly confident.)

Apart from coming up with online platforms and assignments for teaching, what can you do to weather the storm? Here's my unabridged advice from week No. 1:

• Clean house, clean mind. Already on Saturday I started to compulsively polish everything. It really helps to make me feel like I'm doing something useful, and it helps me feel like I'm in control, and after it's nicer to think about just how desperate I am in a spotless house.
• Buy wine and spirits. If Alko closes (Finland has a state monopoly on shops that sell strong alcohol), we're fucked. So yesterday we went to buy necessities, aka. gin and red wine, and immediately I was able to breathe a bit more freely.
• Since there's a significantly reduced amount of money coming in, reduce what's going out. I canceled what subscriptions I could, and applied for pause in my student loan payments. At least in Finland you can apply for this for some months if your financial situation gets shaky. Now might be the time to contact your union, too - are there any benefits you're entitled to?
• Make sure you have books. The libraries were open today for the last time in who knows how long, so I filled my bag with books. I recommend a variety - some poetry, something that makes you feel intelligent, and something easy.
• Puzzles help. They calm the mind and give you something to do when there's not much to do.
• If there are more than one of you in your house, make sure at least someone has noise-canceling headphones. They will save your sanity and the relationship.
• You will think this is a great chance to exercise, start yoga and jogging, and build a new you. It won't take you that many days to discover that the new you looks pretty much exactly like the old you who mainly watches netflix and takes naps on the couch. Remember that it's all about taking care of yourself - isn't that what everyone's been saying these past few days? Stay safe and all that jazz. Well. Where am I safer than on my own couch?!
• Follow the news with cynical, noncommittal interest. This too shall pass.

On Neighbors

A musician is not always a pleasant thing to their neighbors, but we can try. Here's how.

1. Soundproofing

There's not that much one can do to a piano - if you're rich, you can "float" the room, making it completely soundproof, or you can buy a detached house and take neighbors out of the equation. If you exist on a (musician's) normal income, however, your options are a bit more limited.

I used to diminish the sound by having a big blanket between the wall and the piano, but it didn't look all that elegant. So last week I devoted some time to a craft project: I bought foam sheets usually used in cars and glued them together to form one large sheet. Then I taped it to the backside of the piano with two-sided tape and that was that. Basically it reduces the sound about as much as a thick blanket would, but it's a much tidier-looking thing and doesn't gather all that dust. If you're interested, you can find these sheets from Biltema, for instance (thanks for the tip, piano tuner Tuomas Sievänen - his page www.sievanen.fi has a lot of good advice on soundproofing in Finnish).

Foam, two-sided tape, and the yellow felt meant to be under the piano.

Messy business, gluing the thing.

End result: barely noticeable 

The biggest issue is the noise going straight to the house structure from the wheels or the base of the piano. That carries very well and it's difficult to do anything about it. I've tried the solution recommended by F-musiikki: I have plastic cups under the wheels, and they have two extra tricks: a piece of felt under them, and a piece of rubber on them to block the sound.

Ta-dah!

Last but not least you can put a thick carpet under the piano, or use noise reducing felt - I already bought some, but that redecorating is still under progress.

Made to measure? Not quite...

2. Communication

Whenever I move to a new flat, I try to introduce myself to at least the closest neighbors - the ones I'm most likely to annoy. I tell them I'm a pianist and practice at home, and I ask them to come let me know if my playing disturbs them at some point. I've learned that people react to noise (aka. music) much better when they know what it's about: who's making it and why, and how to make it stop if necessary (by ringing the doorbell). One particularly adorable example of the latter is from a couple of years back.
I was practicing on a Monday morning when my doorbell rang. My downstairs neighbor had come to say hi looking really quite hungover. He told me that he'd been partying the previous night and the piano was not making him feel any better about himself, so he was going to go for a walk. He then politely asked how long his walk would have to be so that he could return to a quiet home. We agreed on half an hour, and everyone was happy. Not all the neighbors are as kind as he was - I have had some very loud rock music played on top of my more classical soundscape, which turned into a long and nasty argument about who has a right to play what and when, and what is just plain bullying.

The truth is that you can't please everyone and someone is going to get upset whatever you do, but you can still try to do the polite thing. I practice only at daytime when most people are at work, and I keep the amounts small. If I have to play a lot, I go to a rented space elsewhere or I switch to a keyboard with headphones. But as much as I'm taking others into account, it's important to remember that as a musician I have a right to practice at home. I'm being as considerate as I can, but that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to play and practice my profession at home. Communicating with neighbors is key, but if they're insisting you're a disturbance, bullying you somehow, or you just can't agree on what's decent, you can contact the housing manager (isännöitsijä) and the board of the housing company (taloyhtiön hallitus) to settle the matter. If you're renting, your landlord should be made aware of what's going on, too, and he might be able to help you. You have rights, too.

Hopefully you'll never have to act on my advice. It could be that all your neighbors now and forever passionately love listening to music being practiced (a whole different thing from music being played). One neighbor of mine told me, when I went to talk to her about my playing and asking if she minds it, that she really likes to listen, and the only thing that bothers her is that she doesn't know what the pieces are. That was such a lovely thing to say.
May all your future neighbors think like that.

The Pianist's ABC (Or A Random List Of Things Trying To Appear Meaningful Because It's Based On The Alphabet)

Analysis, Schenkerian. Structurally important tonic? Urlinje? Drawing complicated graphs? Love it. Don't understand half of it, but love it. 

Bench, wrist-friendly. Know the ones where you can just turn a handle and the bench automatically goes up and down? Magic. (Very expensive magic.) Then how about the ones with which you kill your wrists trying to roll, roll, roll away and the bench refuses to get any higher or lower? Especially delightful in a recital where pianists alternate.

Collaborative pianist, the term. Much cooler than "accompanist". Means exactly the same thing, but in a politically correct way.

Damp chaser, otherwise known as the piano life saver. These are the weird blinking lights under the keys that fool people into thinking you've got an electric piano. The damp chaser helps the piano stay in tune for much longer, and keeps piano tuners from earning the money that used to be rightfully theirs. Also I amuse myself by telling young students I'm watering the piano to make it grow into a grand and they buy it, dear hearts. 

Earplugs. Working with singers in practicing venues that are always just a little bit smaller than their voice? Good quality earplugs are indispensable to keeping your ears intact and thus keeping your career going. Yes, I know Beethoven was deaf. He wasn't a collaborative pianist anyway.

Franz Schubert. I've never met a pianist who didn't like Schubert. There are people who don't like Mozart (too cheerful), Chopin (too cheesy), Liszt (too many notes), or Bach (who remembers fugues by heart anyway), but Schubert? Loved by everyone. If you don't like him, please say so - I'd love to get to know you.

Grants. Money rich people and societies give to poor musicians who have a knack for making their artistic aspirations sound convincing on paper.

Harpsichord. Basically an electric piano from hundreds of years ago. When I was a child I loved electric pianos because you could change the sounds (sadly I never had one), and now I love harpsichords for the same reason. You can change the sounds by pulling and twisting things, even mid-piece. How exciting is that?! Also many of the sounds are much nicer than what a modern piano makes. But then, alas, you'll have to...

Improvise. Playing harpsichord means making a lot of stuff up based on numbers you were supposed to learn during theory lessons. 476+? 529-8? Then add a million trills and things, and do it differently every time. It's soooooooooooooooooooooooooo hard.

Jovial. That's what you need to be in order to make it in today's work environment - no suffering artists needed anymore. Unless you are a cursed genius who is so superbly superb that you'll be celebrated and revered wherever you condescend to go - then you probably can be as much of a twat as you like. The rest of us must remain friendly and cheery to keep our jobs.

Knitting. Literally the only interesting thing I could think of starting with K.

Legato, the concept of. An endless source of frustration for pianists, since our instrument is all about pressing buttons. "Imagine you're playing the cello", yes yes, but I'm not, am I? I'm pressing these damn buttons and trying to trick you all into believing they create a continuous melodic line.

Metronome, device or app. When I was a child I had a metronome that had an actual stick-thingy swaying from one side to the other. It was so cool. These days I have an app on my phone that blip, blip, blips away mercilessly. Still helps me practice whenever I bother to use it, though.

Nerves. The ones that make you sweat and tremble before a concert.

Opera. The king of artforms, claimed Kierkegaard. Dozens and dozens of people coming together to create a spectacle of a piece with flashy clothes, hours of singing, orchestra playing their souls away in a black pit where no-one can see them, and stories about love conquering all and about whores dying. It's quite awesome.

Piano, the instrument. Grand, upright, electric, they're all frenemies of sorts. Every time you perform somewhere new it's a voyage of discovery - one piano is soft and gentle, one has a menacing metallic sound, one has pedals so low you break your ankle trying to press them when in heels, one is missing three keys, one is an electric piano that cannot do a glissando but rather stops sounding completely, one has a pedal that is supersensitive and reacts to the slightest foot movement, another has the pedal completely broken or missing... Such adventures!

Question, is "pianist" really your profession? Love it. Yes, yes it is. I live in this elitist cultural bubble where my biggest problems are whether Brahms intended the crescendo to begin from the middle or the end of the bar, and am I going to die of poverty and malnutrition this year or the next.

Rehearse, aka. practice. Something you should do quite a lot if you ever want to do anything well. You know this, at least in theory, because your parents told you so years ago.

Singers. Pianists love them. We also loooove to complain about them, much as old married couples love to complain about each other. Honestly our musical lives would be miserable and meaningless without singers, but we mustn't let them find out we need them! Never!

Tape. A pianist's best friends are (after singers, of course) scotch tape and a pair of scissors. Finding the perfect brand of tape takes time and effot, but it's worth it.

Una corda, the pedal. You press it to make the piano sound a tad softer and quieter. In some pianos it works only for some of the keys, which is awkward to notice mid-concert, let me tell you... Personally I have a very distant relationship with this pedal. I rarely use it and find its existence slightly baffling. So I'd be happy to hear your views on this.

Vivace, meaning of. When I was a child I was told it means I need to play super fast, but later I found it means "lively". So basically whatever tempo I'd like. Thinking about it further I realised it applies to all tempo markings ever written, whether they include the metronome numbers or not - I could choose for myself, and the dead folks could not stop me. What freedom I felt, what joy.

Wagner, Richard. Everyone has an opinion about HIM - unless you're a pianist and you don't actually have to have one since he didn't really write anything to piano anyway.

Xylophone. I've literally got nothing more to add.

Y...

Z.

On What Pianists Don't Like

Nope, don't like!

1) New Bärenreiter opera scores

The score wants to be closed. It has absolutely no interest in being open for you to see the notes inside, so you'll have to hold the score with one hand and play only with the other. That's a meaningful contribution to music, right? Don Giovanni, the left hand version? Bärenreiter folk, a friendly tip: do start developing new score technology - an EasyToTurn page system and an EasyToKeepOpen pianist edition of all your operas. And if you could deliver them before I get any more gray hairs that would be great. Thanks.

2) Being told how difficult a piece is

The scale starts from somewhere like "It's super easy, you'll sight read it in no time" and continues all the way to "This is very, very hard. It's better that someone else plays this, someone who already knows the stuff". It can put a pianist in a tricky situation - if you're told it's not that hard and for you it is, can you admit it? Or should you just smile and nod and try to hide the panic rising to your throat? And if you're told it's way too hard for you, should you try to prove them wrong or smile and nod and only burst into tears when you get home?

Singers are notoriously bad at estimating what is easy and what is not for a pianist, but this applies to pianists themselves, too. So many times I've been told how difficult a piece is to learn or sight read just to find that for me it's much easier or harder than what I've been led to believe. The truth is, and this should be obvious to everyone, that different things are difficult for different people. I'm really good at sightreading stuff, leaving out whatever I don't have time to deal with and bringing out the harmonies and the basic form of the piece. What I'm not so great at is accompanying with chords. I know how to read a score, but to invent something out of thin air using only my imagination? Let's set something straight here: I don't have an imagination, so please don't expect me to improvise on the spot just because the other pianist had no trouble with it. I'll work on it, ask friends for help and come back later with a tolerable version, but that's that. Also, I hate playing from handwritten scores and French editions with their minuscule print.

This works both ways now: pianists, do not believe any assesments of a piece but rather make your own, and you non-pianists expecting us all to be God knows what kind of monster geniuses - remember we're all individuals with different personalities and skillsets, just like barbies or cats.

3) Conducting and finger snapping

Snap at dogs, not at pianists, and if you're not an actual conductor, don't conduct. Don't wave your arms or try to guide the poor player into the correct tempo with any sort of gesticulating, thank you very much. It is seriously annoying and won't make you any friends. So what is a poor singer to do when the pianist has a wrong tempo? Either sing faster or slower and let them follow you, or just tell the pianist. With words. They'll love you for it.

I was performing once with a teacher turning the pages, and they started to conduct my intro to an aria because they felt my tempo was too slow. We were onstage and there was an actual spotlight on us so the whole audience could see the teacher's displeasure with my choice. Did I change the tempo accordingly? Hell no. Did I seriously contemplate setting their car on fire? Oh yes.

4) Not getting attention

Let's be honest here: pianists working with singers don't get their equal share of the limelight. Singers are interesting to the general public, and pianists - not so. This manifests itself in so many ways it would take a couple of blogposts to do justice to them all, but shortly and simply: it's not nice to hear that your contribution to a concert is irrelevant or uninteresting. Of course we know that a vocal recital with just the singer would in most cases be found wanting, but it's sad that we have to defend ourselves by pointing this out. No picture in the advertisement, no name in the program, requests to work for free or significantly cheaper than the vocal expert because it's "just accompanying" - I've encountered all of these and more. And why did we perform again? Because we're attention-seeking narcissists who want to be in the spotlight in fancy clothing. So you, singer, yes, I'm talking to you! - next time you're working with a pianist, make sure their name is out there and praise them a little. Tell them they are indeed important to you. And look, you've acquired an obedient, adoring piano slave who'll stay with you for life.

5) Badly copied scores and untaped ones

Scores that have the vocal line and plenty of space above but with most of the bass line missing from the lowest staff? Scores with the last bar missing from every line? Yay! How am I supposed to know what The Great Composer was thinking there? As mentioned above, pianists aren't evil monster geniuses that possess a hidden mental vault that includes all music ever written, so they cannot dip into that reserve when notes are missing from the page. Of course one can make an educated guess of what might logically come next, but that kind of exercise was aplenty on my theory lessons back in the days, and personally I'd rather not go back to that sorry time. I completed the courses and now I have zero interest in guessing what Schubert / Strauss / Grand Something had in mind for this particular passage. I'd rather be tempted to believe the composer had a brief Schönbergian period on that particular gap, and fill it with accordingly delightful sounds.

Untaped scores, however - let's see, how many here like taping scores? How many of you can't wait for the next intense session of you, sheets of paper and scotch tape? If there are any people passionate about this, please contact me at once; your passion will not go to waste. The rest of us just have to deal with it the best we can. On singing lessons these flyabout papers are a particular annoyance, because they will fall and they will be in the wrong order at some point and there will be chaos, wasted time, and tears of frustration. This could be avoided, I'm told, by buying an ipad - an expensive digital item that can contain all your scores forevermore. Well I don't trust machines. There has to be something deeply wrong with playing music from a screen instead of paper. I'd much rather tape and rant instead.

6) C sharp major

What can I say. It's a shit key.