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.

A Ranting Pianists Christmas Wish List

Dear Santa, would you please send me... 

• The energy to Google whether it's pianists or pianist's... Bloody grammar...

• Finnish Tax System for Dummies and Freelancers. (Audiobook with free form-filling tutorials would be lovely.) 

• A nice long holiday, with the ability to enjoy it. (After two free days the thoughts start coming: Free means no money - Holiday means nobody needs you - Time off really is just a fancy way of saying unemployed - Aren't you such a failure and a disgrace.)

• A left hand technique improving night cream. (Apply a thick layer to clean skin, leave for the night. Play Chopin etudes in the morning with the ease and velocity of an Asian child prodigy, no practicing required.)

• A grant or two, or three. Preferably ones I don't have to apply for, or write reports about. (So if you'd just send me money, basically, that would be great. Or a millionaire sugar daddy could also work.) 

• A magic potion that erases stress from my life. (Feeling anxious, panicky, stressed, freaked out? No worries! Just take a sip of this and all of it magically goes away! Sounds a lot like alcoholism, doesn't it? Probably not a good idea to publish this one.) 

• The motivation to complete the Yoga with Adrienne 30 days of yoga challenge. (Last time I tried I managed to do five of them, and that took me four weeks or so. I know I'm better than this.) 

• Work, work, work, but not all at the same time. Could you spread it evenly throughout the year this time? With that stress-free holiday in the middle, thank you! 

• Joy and gratitude. About things big and small, every day. 

• 12 new blog post ideas. Please send the first one asap.

On Doing Great

"I. Said. I'm. Fine."

Hi! How are you?

Hi! I'm doing great! Super busy right now, so many interesting projects going on that I hardly have time to sleep! So inspiring!

(...and when I would have time to sleep I just can't because my to-do list keeps spinning around in my head getting longer and longer, I have no clean socks anymore and no time to wash them and every new work request makes me want to vomit the lunch I forgot to eat because it's just all too much and I want to die on a desert island with a book and a bottle of wine and never hear a second of music ever again.)

Hi! How are you?

I'm great, thanks! I'm working less nowadays and it feels awesome. I have so much more time to enjoy life and take care of myself. It's really important for a musician to have other things in their life as well, not just their career.

(I'm having a dry spell. Very little work coming this way, and I lie awake at night worrying about next month's rent and whether I should retrain as a shop assistant. I'm having so much me-time that I'm starting to thoroughly despise myself, and I'd pay to get a gig.)

Hi! How are you?

I'm good! So busy applying for all these grants that are due now - I've got such a cool concert idea I'm looking forward to creating!

(...but I'm pretty sure other people will get all the money I would've deserved. My confidence in the idea sails from high to low - one day I'm booking Carnegie Hall sure that the different foundations are dying to pour money into my brilliant scheme, and the next I'm burning my application papers because the idea is commonplace, outdated, and hopelessly naive.)

Hi! How are you?

Couldn't be better - I'm teaching so much these days, and my students give me so much energy. It's so inspiring to watch them learn!

(I have hand problems but I really don't want to talk about it. I'm afraid I'll never perform again if this doesn't heal, and I feel like I've lost half of my identity. Without my students I'd starve in a ditch. My cheeks hurt from all the encouraging smiling and my head is full of recent pop tunes spiced with some Für Elises and Walking in the airs, and the next time someone tells me they simply forgot to practice I'll retire for good.)

Hi! How are you?

Awesome, just awesome. I have more concerts than I can fit in my calendar, but I'm loving every minute of it.

(I would really love performing if I'd had the time to practice the stuff properly, which I now don't since there are all the other concerts and so many different programs and so much music and so little time. My performing outfit reeks of sweat, I have trouble sleeping and my personal life is falling apart. The apartment is full of dying flowers stuck in random bottles since the landlady refuses to accept grand flower arrangements as rent, and the fridge is empty since shops don't want the damn flowers either.)

Hi! How are you?

I'm great! I'm a freelancer, so my life is a permanent mess of either too much or too little work - I'm trying to keep either a burnout or financial ruin at bay. But as I'm a professional musician I market myself as a thriving, busy artist with heaps of confidence, gigs, plans, hope, and creative potential. A professional musician is not desperate or insecure, and they certainly don't have physical problems, injuries, or any mental issues for that matter.

Hi! How are you?

What if next time I really answered the question instead of responding with marketing talk?