NEW MUSIC
New music is not everyone’s favorite. It is not the reason I wanted to become a musician. However, it is a really great opportunity to engage with your basic musicianship skills.
The task of any player is to “interpret” the music in front of them. What is interpretation? As a child, I thought it was an opportunity for me to show people my favorite parts of the music—a climactic note here or there, something that really grooved rhythmically—and share my feelings. You will notice in your professional life that nobody really needs you to feel anything about something they are paying you to play. In fact, sometimes your feelings about the music are your greatest obstacle. Consider setting them aside in the professional arena and allow yourself to become a true professional interpreter; apply Bob Vernon’s 5 [1/2] principles to any music you play:
Consistent Articulation
Great Rhythm
Great Intonation
Great Sound
Long Musical Line
[Gesture]
If you happen to hate contemporary music, go deeper! Look for opportunities to engage what you enjoy about playing your instrument. The laws of physics do not change for classical music, romantic music, and new music. Home notes feel like home notes, certain kinds of intervals have certain kinds of leaning feelings forwards or backwards, and tough rhythms still need to be clear to your audience and maintain a long musical arc, even when they are highly vertical. Even the great sound you bring to your instrument is part of the many colors of new music. Go deep on the physics of sound and you will learn to intuit these very basic relationships with rhythm, intonation (intervals!), articulation, musical lines, and a colorful palate. You may encounter subdivisions you don’t intuit, you may encounter sounds you don’t like (I HATE PONTICELLO!), you may experience (uncomfortable) personal growth that you don’t like. The skills you build will make your conventional playing much better and I’m guessing you will like that. You will get better at lining up your eyes and brain for processing music at the right speed and sight-reading. You will develop a greater understanding of when you need to write something in your part or take something out so you can process the information at the exact right speed. You will sometimes have nowhere to hide and you will have to clean up your playing. Seize this opportunity!
I hope you can learn to love the wonder of the unknown in music. There might be a critical mass of music you have already embraced and find satisfying to engage on repeat, but all that music was new to you at some point and you opened your mind and ears to allow yourself to hear it. There is nothing like hearing something for the first time, over time. There is nothing like music. Hearing something new, learning something new, makes this life more interesting. Someone thought it was worth spending time on; maybe your dynamic experience will involve you disagreeing. But it is a more interesting life to continue to wonder what other people are thinking about than to stop wondering. Hear and play new music. Wonder.