Going beyond open strings

Today was my second violin lesson. My, how the time flew! I was pleased that my practice on open strings had paid off, as I was able to demonstrate a much better and more consistent sound than last week.

We did a bunch of string-crossing exercises, which involve switching between the four strings without any messy intermediate noises or scritches from the bow. This requires decoupling the sweeping bowing motion from the angle at which you hold your arm, when intuitively your body wants to do it all together in one fluid movement. Therefore, you have to practice by bowing on one string, stopping, changing the arm angle, then bowing again, etc. It’s definitely baby steps, but I can already see that it’s the right path to increased control.

One of the most unexpectedly fun parts of this lesson was playing with another person. We played G-D-A-E-A-D-G which is about as boring as it gets, and it was still fun, making music together.

Right at the end of the lesson, my teacher (re-)introduced me to fingering. I now get to practice playing G-A, D-E, A-B, and E-F#. That is, going from an open string to a whole step up by dropping my index finger down at the magic spot on the fingerboard. This is all sorts of stressful. For some reason, mechanically executing bowing and arm position is fine, but when I now need the ability to not only hear the right pitch but be able to reproduce it, I freeze up. I think in my head the ability to hear and interpret pitch seems like this magical skill to see the invisible that some people have and some don’t. Intimidating! I’ll have to work on giving myself permission to be horribly out of tune and gradually work up to in-tune.

My teacher also noted that it’s important not to put the finger down and then roll it forward or back to correct the pitch (tempting), as instead the goal is to get to the point where it comes down, smack, at exactly the right point the first time.

She recommended these books:

And listening to my Suzuki method CDs will help with the ear sensitivity.

Word Magic

“Is That a Fish in Your Ear?” asks the title of a book I am currently reading. This book delves into the whats, whys, and hows of translation. Along the way, it raises fundamental questions about what we want, need, or can expect from a translation. I’m only in chapter 5 and already have encountered several thought-provoking ideas.

One such idea is that of “Word Magic.” This is the phenomenon that we tend to ascribe some sort of reality to something just because we have a word for it. Examples given in the book include “levitation,” “real existing socialism,” and “safe investment.” The dangerous aspect of word magic is that it can make us forget or ignore hidden assumptions and fail to notice when the world of words departs from the world of reality. This isn’t (just) about oxymorons, for dubbing a word as an oxymoron indicates an acknowledgment of its unreal nature (usually through self-contradiction). Word magic happens when we talk about something that need not be self-contradictory, but does not exist, while we don’t notice or don’t care about its unreality. What a powerful concept! (Which concept, by the way, originates from C. K. Ogden in his book The Meaning of Meaning, which I now would also like to investigate.)

I don’t think that having words to describe things that are not “real” is itself a problem. Much of science fiction (or speculative fiction) is founded upon describing worlds and things that do not exist in our current reality. Our power of imagination makes this kind of creativity both inevitable and something to admire and appreciate. It is only when word magic is employed to manipulate minds that it creates a problem. Now I’m trying to think of other word magic examples and having a hard time with it—perhaps exactly because it’s a phenomenon below usual conscious notice.

I am reminded of this quote by Dale Spender:

“Language is not neutral. It is not merely a vehicle which carries ideas. It is itself a shaper of ideas.”

But of course, I’m the one who’s avoided using my serrated bread knife to slice tomatoes for years, simply because it is a “bread knife.” Somehow I had it in my head that a paring knife was supposed to be the right tool. Wrong! It’s good to be alerted to these quirks, caused by the necessary reduction of an entire thing’s essence, purpose, and potential down to a mere word or two.

From the Fish book’s table of contents, I see that future chapters will also discuss machine translation, and perhaps the limits of what can be automated. I can’t wait to read more.