Longest hiatus, back with a bang :)

So I didn't post for two long month--I wrote sometime ago that I was alone in Paris last summer while being an resident at IRCAM, when I had all the time to myself, thanks to my French in-laws who kept my children.  Back in NYC, with  daily life of the mother of two (7 and 10 year olds) plus everything else that I do, prevents me from low-priority activities such as blogging :)

So here it is, the New York Times feature just came out today, a wonderful effort by one of the best journalists I had the privilege working with, Matthew Gurewitsch.  I really don't know how he managed to put this kind of thorough efforts, taking on such an esoteric artist like myself.  Matthew really is an artist himself, whose integrity I truly respect.  He asked so many good questions that also helped me define what I do, as "disseminating" and "publicizing" have never been my strong points.  He managed to explain correctly two very difficult and different areas of my creative activities accessibly to the public, one in Subharmonics and anther in interactive computer.

One thing he breezed through, which he stated in the article, that I have now Subharmonic Octave, Second, Third and the FIFTH.  It is this FIFTH that I have been working on and off for several years, for those of you who read my previous enigmatic posts about it probably knew :)  Yes, the elusive 5th is here.  Actually I also do have diminish 5th and 4th, as a deviation from the 5th, which is my latest of the latest, but didn't make it into the article :)  I am still curious if there is a FOURTH as it stands alone, not a deviation of the 5th; what I mean 'deviation', is that I slightly move my bow towards the fingerboard while I play Subharmonic Fifth, then I get these two: diminish 5th and perfect fourth.

Oh well, that is still to come.... :)  For those of you violinists who are trying my technique, try the fifth!  :)  It came very difficult to me but everyone's arm is different, and I suspect it comes quite easy for some of you.

When life stops

As most of you know Japan suffered one of the biggest earthquake in history today.  I happened to wake up in the middle of the night in New York, and found someone posting on Facebook and tried to call my parents.  All phones and cellphones were out, but eventually my mother emailed me, and my family is all fine.  It turns out, internet was the lifeline.

After finding out my family's safety I tried to resume my work and life, practicing my Subharmonics again. I kept watching Japanese realtime internet TV and couldn't really focus.  But life goes on, but I am rethinking our family's preparedness; I should beef up our emergency kits....

I did practice almost 2 hours on Subharmonics, and got other work done.  It was relieving to know my parents were safe.  The disturbing thing about my last note, the one that I'm so struggling to get, is that there is almost no sign of it!  Others are getting better and better, and now I'm trying to artificially put a pressure on myself, to make sure I can produce them under any circumstances :)

Life goes on, work goes on.

Déjà vu

For the past month and a half, I'm intensely working on the new Subharmonics that I am finally getting.  A few weeks ago we took our kids on vacation but I even took my practice violin along so that I won't forget it.  If I let go for more than a day, I'm afraid I lose it.

This is purely a kinetic exercise that intellectually speaking, quite boring.  I just have to repeat my motions over, and over, and over again until I have it.   These days, every morning for solid one hour and half, I am doing only one thing and one thing only. Practicing this new Subharmonics.   It is getting quite reliable now, and as said in my previous entries I need SEVEN semitones, of which I already have six.  The last one, the open G string, is the most difficult to control.  I am "inching towards it" quite literally.  That is to say, I am putting my left hand finger very very close to the end of the fingerboard so it is almost open G, but not quite.  I am trying to get used to the feeling on my right arm how it would feel like on the open G, although I still can't do it.  I am seeing the day is coming very close.  I can already do it about 60% of the time with this "cheat mode" with stopping the left hand finger very close to the open G.

This exercise is oh so boring, so much so that I need some entertainment.  CNN these days is too disturbing about the news about Libya, so I'm watching movies that I have watched many times before, so I don't really have to watch it.   With occasional resting of my right arm, I can watch "Apollo 13", "The Young Victoria", "My Cousin Vinny". "Analyze That" (or "This"), etc.  I need to occupy my mind but not so much so that I need to pay attention to the film.  When I work, I usually need some kind of distraction.  If the TV or movie is on, I usually don't remember much, which my husband laughs about.  I can watch the same movies over and over again since I'm not really watching :)

Setting up

This morning, I went to the home of Muneko Otani, the 1st violinists of the Cassatt Quartet.  I'm writing a new work for them for quartet and interactive computer, and they just got all the gear -- programs, microphones and audio interface -- so I went there to set up and check everything.

My new pieces are in different stages of development, one in particular, in connection to my *new* Subharmonics is especially interesting to me.  I need to compose at the same time I'm just finding out how to control this new technique.   The new Subharmonics arrive to me by accident.  One day I hear something and I go, "Oh no, you've got to be kidding me!", which turns out, it isn't.  I try to repeat the *accident*, and give up when I'm unable to do so.  Then, when I do get to repeat the sound production I go "Ah ha!", try to hang onto that repeated *accident* and remember how I felt.   Then I forget.  Then I try again.   It has been like this for the last several years to get this new Subharmonics.   Finally, it is no longer an accident, but still quite unstable.   In order (for me) to use it in a composition, I have to be able to play it 200% of the time - well, 100% of the time...  i.e. I cannot afford NOT to be able to play it.  It has to be on demand, and that is the hardest thing about Subharmonics.   ANYBODY can play Subharmonics.  But to control it, you need a very precise bowing technique.

I still don't have my last, 7th note... I got six out of seven.  But I'm inching towards it.

Listening to Pictures

Right now, I'm involved intensely in several projects that are totally different.   One in particular is very different from my usual creative process.  It is an interactive graphics work, where I'm interacting with a short movie.  I started this project inspired by the complex and imaginative beauty of this visuals, created by my friend Ken Perlin at NYU.

I have worked in collaboration with the visuals in the past, but this particular one, seems to dictate the music.  I look at it, and each section or frame evoke sounds to me.  I am "listening" to the pictures.

Not much can be said at this point, and I will follow up later.

The new Subharmonics is still stalled at six out of seven notes I need.  One more note to go still, but it's still not coming.

Today is my father's 78th birthday.   His name is Ken-ichi Kimura, and he is a Professor Emeritus at Waseda University in Architecture.  He is the Japanese pioneer of Solar Energy.  If you go to his page I linked here, and see "Japanese Vernacular Houses with a focus to energy conserving technologies" you can see how Japanese old houses used natural energy to be ECO-friendly.   I grew up in a solar house, one of the first experimental house in Japan called "Kimura Solar House".   He studied at MIT where he married my mother who was at Radcliff at the time.  Both of them were on Fullbright Fellowship, and I have to say, that I know I was conceived in Boston!  :)

Hunting New Subharmonics in a Cave :)

So I have taken the longest hiatus on my blog in a long time, only posting once in February.   Those of you who have been reading this blog maybe wondering what has been happening :)   Well, it's multiple of things, but mainly it is my vanity that I wanted to come out with a BANG!    While ago, I hinted that I have a new Subharmonics interval; I so far have Subharmonic Octave (I play a note and I can get an octave below without changing the tuning or moving my left hand finger).   I also have Subharmonic 3rd (I play a note and I get minor third below the note I play, again without moving a finger on the fingerboard).  I have minor 2nd, which is just F#, a half semitone below open G, by slightly modifying the way I play.

For the longest time, I wished I had this new interval I'm working on, since musically it is significant.   I really don't mean to be secretive, and I WILL introduce it in my concert in May.   It has been a looooong time coming, several years in fact, that I tried, stopped, tried and come back to it yet again.  Last summer, while at IRCAM, I allocated a bit of my time trying to work on it again, quite seriously.  I have in fact, documented my progress (or non-progress... I couldn't quite do it), by video taping myself.

Just about a month+ ago, I took it up again.   This time, I have been absolutely determined to get it.  And, I DID.   I am not quite yelling out on the top of the mountain yet, since I still don't have it quite under control.  I have been practicing very hard, just doing the exercise.  It reminds me very much when I first came up with the Subharmonic Octave in 1992 (I didn't publicly introduce it in a concert until 1994, when I was absolutely solid and was good enough for performance).   In 1992, I was a student at Juilliard, and that winter, I remember it was cold like what we had this year in NYC, and I had no social life.  I didn't have a boyfriend (or maybe he was far away :)  and I had my time all to myself.   I sat in my small studio on West 70th at Broadway, practicing Subharmonics over and over again like a maniac.   I was in a CAVE :)

Now so many years later, I am finding myself in a cave again, in the same obsessive mode, with a bit more experience and knowledge about how to produce Subharmonics.  I wake up in the morning, I try for half an hour--my arm gets tired and I stop before it gets tired.   Usually my concentration is shot after 30-40 minutes anyway, so I take a break.  My children demand my attention, which is not exactly an unwelcome distraction.   ("Mommy can you peel me more apples, pleeeese, NOW?!")  Sometimes my exercise gets so boring I listen to CNN while I do it, or have Google Earth and roll the mouse so I fly over the world, like Sahara desert slowly (I know it sounds sick... :)  I repeat this in the afternoon a few times, then in the evening.  Repeat the next day.

There are seven semitones I need to get for this particular Subharmonics (if you are so inclined and so savvy and have nothing else to do, you know by now what this interval is :)   But anyway, I have SEVEN notes I need.  As of today, I have SIX.  One more to go.   And I started to use my husband as a guinea pig; I catch him when he comes from work and say, "So watch, see?" and try to play my six notes.  Of course I play a lot less better than in my privacy. Although it is *just* my husband, I do get nervous when I try to do this in front of people.   There is some attention or projection element in my violin playing that changes the way I play, so I need to practice this Subharmonics, really, in front of people.  My poor husband happens to be the most immediate "other people" I have.

Anyway, I thought I start up the blog again, since I can no longer pretend I am going to come out with a BANG!  and this blog entitled "Extended violin DIARY" should really be a diary that documents my progress, to help those who want to attempt something new, and to show the creative process (or struggle) or what I'm doing  :)

Just so that I put an extra pressure on myself, I am already writing a new piece using this new Subharmonic interval, which I am planning to premiere in May.  So it MUST be done :)  And at the same time I get to explore the way this new interval can be musically incorporated into the violin playing and phrasing, which is essentially, the ultimate purpose of my developing Subharmonics in the first place.

I am very, very close.  This is by far, the most difficult one for me to control, compared to Subharmonic Octave, 3rd or 2nd.   And I'm not quite good enough yet to officially announce it.  It is hard to imagine anyone else gets so excited about it, but in fact, from my point of view, in the history of violin playing this is pretty historic :)  Or so I tell myself :)

How to get to the Soul of it

I have taken a long hiatus from my blog.  About 10 days ago, I had an emergency room visit for corneal abrasion.  I damaged my eye by taking off a contact lens in a wrong way.  That was Saturday a week ago, and on Sunday morning, I think I scrubbed my eye waking up.  The following few hours, I was in excruciating pain on my right eye.  I was going to *tough it out*, but tears were streaming down non-stop, and the pharmacist on the phone said to go to the emergency room, so I did.    At the ER, doctors came in to look one by one saying "wow, that's impressive!".   A doctor friend said later, "it's not great when doctors are impressed"  :)  They told me it was quite large, 3mm x 3mm abrasion in the center of the eye.

It healed very fast but the pain medicine, Vicodin made me quite sick and slowed me down, which resulted in everything piling up.   I'm slowly picking up and catching up!

I went to see a Flamenco dance performance recently.   My husband is taking Flamenco guitar lessons quite seriously so friends call and we go out for these things.  I love Flamenco guitar, but in doses--it is just so intense, and if I listen to it, I will have to stop everything and it becomes very emotionally draining.  My husband plays Flamenco CDs all day while he works, and I have absolutely no idea how he can do that!

At the concert, the dancers were marvelous, well rehearsed, technically superb, and I just love the sheer energy of these fierce women.  The band: singers, drummer, guitarist were sitting in almost a semi-circle behind the dancers and I had this strange out-of-body or  out-of-context feeling: as if we were transported near a beach somewhere in the south of Spain, near a camp fire, or in a drinking place gathering and watching our neighbors sing and dance late into the night.  It was a strange feeling--on stage there is Malaga, and we the audience, Manhattan crowd peeking into the world ages and places away.  I see other more ethnic performances so to speak, but this Flamenco performance gave me this strange surreal feeling.

The top-billed dancer was obviously fantastic, and all three women gave great performances.  After the curtain call, all musicians and dancers came in front and formed a semi-circle clapping in interlocking rhythms as they do, and one by one they took turns giving short encore dances with only singing and clapping.  Even musicians and singers danced, which doesn't happen in classical setting;  how many violinist can drop the violin and join dancing the Nutcracker?  :)

Anyway, as much as the program "proper" was impressive, what I really felt for, was one of the singers who sang throughout the show.  She became a dancer for the moment during this encore, and gave her short solo dance.  She probably didn't have the fancy footwork that the dancers showed all evening, but I was moved by her, in just a few minutes of her dancing.  I felt she had the soul of it, and I don't know how I know it.   She didn't have more tragic or intense facial expression than others; she didn't move faster or slower than others.  But her dance spoke to me as a whole expression.   I try to think why this happened.

When your performance is rehearsed, choreographed, executed according to plan, one must do so until it becomes a second nature, where everything feels as if it was never planned.  I must confess that is quite a difficult state to achieve, as I find myself usually almost out of time, just enough to fulfill the planned execution.  I usually barely have one or two days of *non-involvement* that is to say, I don't have to think about specific execution of the performance before the concert.   You can put yourself a bit outside of the performance, which frees you.   As I mentioned in my previous entry, when I am not "all there", the audience seems to respond better than when I'm completely aware of every single things I'm doing during the performance.

This Flamenco singer-dancer had it---she wasn't thinking of the dance, nor choreography, but she was on the Magic Carpet expressing the soul of it.   It looked as if everything came naturally to her and it was her second-nature.  And that is what put everything into place--her facial expressions, her movements, everything.  When this happens, communicating with audience is completely effortless.  Now let's wish us good luck for our own performance next time, that we will get to the Soul of it  :)