London Viola Player, Fiddle Player & Arranger

Martin Ash Grad Dip

Return on originality

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So, last night’s Filthy Spectacula debut gig was pretty darn good performance-wise, though I say so myself. We certainly did a decent job of getting the crowd – previously fairly reserved, though energetic for the act immediately after us – jigging, cossack dancing, toasting and generally making almost as big and sweaty fools of themselves as us. And I think there was only one point where it was obvious I’d got a couple of bars out with the rest of the band …

We also managed to make £120 out of it, which if you’re not familiar with this world is a lot to get out of one set as an originals band. However, the fact that it also happens to be about the going rate for one orchestral pro musician for a concert set me thinking about contrasting income rates in different kinds of music, and some of the likely conclusions look fairly bizarre.

So, sticking to gigging bands for a minute. The higher pay is generally around for covers, function/party bands and tribute acts. Granted they probably play longer sets, but they certainly put in less creative effort than originals-focussed groups. Whether it’s actually easier, or more difficult, to write your own material or learn someone else’s more or less note-for-note is a decidedly equivocal area and I think it must depend on the musician(s) concerned; either way I’ll leave it on one side. What’s evident is that unless you rise very high in the profession, beyond the jobbing musician level entirely, there is effectively a premium on non-creativity. If you write your own stuff, you largely play for the fun of it. If you need or want money out of music, you’re going to have to do stuff that’s popular in a fairly slavish way and obey the whims of the audience.

So far, so reasonably clear, and perhaps not surprising. (Few covers or function bands would be realistically likely to write better songs than Chuck Berry or the Stones, and would presumably not play them quite as well if they had to give more practice time over to writing and arranging.) But where it gets really interesting is if you throw in classical music work.

At almost the bottom end of the orchestral scale, I can get a fee for a concert that is similar to what a good-ish function band might be getting per head for a couple of hours’ entertainment – on New Year’s Eve when prices are up by something like 50%. But it’s not so much that that is striking. Classical concerts are long compared to a lot of band gigs, 90 minutes to two hours of music because (a) there’s only ever one orchestra on the bill and (b) there isn’t backchat between items in the same way – or as much time spent getting on and off and changing things around.

The more important thing is how much unseen work is involved. A gigging band, whether function or originals, is likely to be rehearsing once a week, for a couple of hours or so, to play maybe once a week but for an originals band more likely once or twice a month. If you’re gigging much more than that you’re probably rehearsing more often too. And there will have been an initial build-up period, quite possibly months, of learning repertoire, gelling, getting things ready for the off. So whichever way you cut it, you’re looking at non-classical musicians doing maybe 4 or 6 hours’ rehearsal per hour of gigging, on an ongoing basis, which certainly changes the apparent pay scales.

Most of the classical one-off / dep jobs I do (or even see advertised) have rehearsal on the day only. Probably about 3 hours, though I’ve done less. In other words, at most twice the amount of performance time spent in rehearsal. Admittedly, it’s advisable to have some familiarity with the music before showing up, but it’s fairly rare for practice parts to actually be sent out, and conversely most gigging musicians will spend time away from practices learning songs and parts or tying down what they’re going to do in a new original.

I’m not for a moment suggesting classical musicians are overpaid. I would be willing to suggest that non-classical ones (always thinking of the ‘blue collar’ level, not U2) are generally underpaid. But the whole situation smacks more of being a bad example of free-market economics. There are a lot more competent gigging vocalists and drummers out there than there are competent orchestral bassoonists and violists. Scarcity keeps classical freelance pay high while so many bands have come to accept barely covering their costs that it can be extremely difficult to get any more. Most organisers, in a still-slow economy and a particularly grim period for getting people out of their homes to events of any sort, will probably hire a mediocre band for half the price rather than a really good one for double. It may be a false economy, but it’s an understandable one. The real oddity, of course, is that most people who get paid anything for classical music have taken some form of it up by the age of 12 – and not given up entirely in between, though it’s by no means a given that they’ve pursued academic music, conservatoire training, etc. Guitarists who started at 16 or 20 are fairly common, but seemingly by their teens most people have developed a horror of both the sound of classical music and the idea of reading dots (which is very odd when you think about it). The result is a selection for people with more self-discipline, richer or pushier parents, and quite possibly less adequate social lives, during the ages about 8-21, to be probably able to monetise their musical ability rather more lucratively.

I’m playing devil’s advocate to some extent of course. Classical musicians are partly paid good wages for one rehearsal and a concert because they are expected to be at performance standard after a couple of hours rehearsing. There is a technique to sight-reading and performing well at little more than second reading, and I don’t think it’s inherently inferior to playing confidently and reliably from memory, though video evidence of myself shows removing the ever-present music stand can make a musician much more engaging to watch and hear and I passively accept the prevalent gigging prejudice against having written prompts of any kind on stage as a result. Nonetheless there’s more to this whole situation than original creative people getting paid better than derivative guitar-thumpers.

Busy busy busy

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Anyone who thinks musicians get paid a lot for a couple of hours on stage really has no idea.

In the course of this week, I’ve been doing festival applications for The Filthy Spectacula; organising gigs for The String Project; catching up on recording and filing music expenses (joys of self-employment); going through my part and the score to Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco with a fine-toothed comb so that I can lead the orchestra for it a week tomorrow; learning new Filthy Spectacula songs so we can go from a half-hour set tomorrow to a one-hour set a fortnight later; keeping a close eye on music job/dep adverts because they won’t stay unfilled till I ‘have time’ to apply; joining the Musicians’ Union; getting a network railcard to reduce travel costs; trying to help keep up band social media/comms presence; going to rehearsals … and somewhere in the middle trying to make sure I sleep, eat, wash and do my desk job, seeing as even with all this hustling the lion’s share of my income doesn’t actually come from music.

The observant among you will have noticed there wasn’t much practice in there. This is an irony I’ve written about before, that trying to get paid to play music in public is a fairly good way to spend less time actually playing (especially in private).

On the plus side, having so much music work to do is at least good excuse for having less time to write about doing music work. Sorry it’s been a while!

Traditional(ist) music

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I think it’s because I’m coming back to doing fairly standard classical (often orchestral) concerts after a period of doing very few, but I was struck again at Friday’s gig by the sheer force of unexplained tradition when it comes to art music performance. I think I’ve written about it before, but it bears some repetition.

Why do audiences clap when performers walk on, having not done anything to be applauded on? Does anyone else get the temptation to bow and walk off, as merely arriving on stage has apparently been an adequately satisfying performance? Equally, why do many audiences applaud the orchestra off stage at the end of the concert as well – when they have usually just been applauding all the performers generally and in as many different permutations as the imagination of the conductor can devise? (Got to love the stand-up, sit-down routine, especially when various wind and brass are clearly not sure whether they are meant at a given point.)

The dress codes. Seriously. I think I’m unusual among male musicians in recent decades in having managed to get some wear out of my black tie gear between the ages of 18 and 28 other than at concerts, largely because of going to an Oxford college where they have black tie balls every 3 years. At least women generally get to wear almost anything black and not too revealing – but if they don’t reckon black suits them, it will still be an essentially unnecessary expense. It’s not like ‘orchestral black’ is the only conceivable way to achieve a smart and reasonably coherent appearance.

OK, this one really gets me. A standard part of an orchestra leader’s job (even if a sometimes quite unnecessary one) is supervising tuning in rehearsals. And yet in concerts, at least the more traditional ones, the leader will delegate this role to their desk partner, and then walk on (to a separate round of applause, of course) after the orchestra have tuned – having presumably either tuned offstage or decided to chance it. Surely this just drags out stage business (which no one came for) at potentially the expense of musical quality?

It was a bit of a relief when Friday’s audience applauded fairly freely between movements. If this is going to be destructive, it’s usually pretty obvious (the players and, most visibly, the conductor won’t relax between movements, but rather carry on more like a long rest than a stop and start of something new). As I’ve more or less written before, if it doesn’t interrupt the musical construct for the players to relax, shuffle, turn pages, stretch their shoulders and possibly even retune, then it won’t interrupt for the audience to clap. And a lot more than a few seconds’ applause separated symphonic movements until into the nineteenth century, after all.

I find this an ironic contrast with so-called ‘traditional music’ (in Britain). Not least because most of the norms around the latter have sprung up in the last 60 years or so (whereas classical norms, while still very arriviste compared to most of the music they are applied to and certainly more recent than most people expect, were mostly approaching their current form by about 1920). When was the last time you saw a British folk band with no guitar? And yet I am assured by well-researched histories that no-one thought of accompanying British folk songs or tunes with guitar until into the 1950s. Guitar was for jazz, American music of various kinds, or the classical repertoire – using it for folk was no more instinctive than playing folk with drumkit, saxophone or tuba. With that goes the whole notion of approaching folk song (particularly; but also dance tunes) through vertical set harmonies – guitar chords – whereas as far as I understand it most secular folk pre-WW2 was harmonised in a very ‘horizontal’ way with semi-improvised supporting lines that could all be considered counter-melodies to some extent. (There is a separate issue of those musicians, like church band-choirs before the hegemony of the organ, and marching bands, who used sheet music in general but arguably belong more to the folk ‘world/tradition’ than the classical one.) And of course giving ultimate balance and level control to sound engineers has become so prevalent that more folk performances than not are actually fully wired, even while mostly carefully sticking to (electro-)acoustic instruments. But all of this is a rambling coda to the original thought …

Hello Neil Hannon

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Well, I know what’s going to be stuck in my head today. In a couple of hours I’m off to Birmingham for an orchestral concert, and because there’s hardly any money involved, I’m going by National Express. Cue expectations of overpriced crisps and tea sold by a jolly middle-aged woman with a rump the size of Luxembourg, prams and calorie-counting students, all inspired by the Divine Comedy’s biggest hit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3NVPOedkEk

See you tomorrow!

Lead the music

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Organising musicians is said to be like herding cats. Leading musicians is presumably then an effort to repeat the Pied Piper of Hamelin’s trick, but on creatures much less gullible and much more independent-minded than either rats or small children. Nonetheless it is a feat surprisingly often required …

I was a little surprised and highly gratified to be asked to lead the orchestra for #OperaCo’s Giovanna d’Arco, which I’m playing for in a couple of weeks. Now in classical orchestral terms this has a more or less defined meaning, some parts of which make sense and some don’t. For starters, it’s tied up by convention with sitting at the front of the first violins. Now while certainly you want to lead a section, let alone all the strings or notionally the whole orchestra, from where you can be seen, I don’t think there’s any reason why the principal violist or cellist shouldn’t be in just as good a position to head up the string section. And what do you do when you’re there, I hear some of you ask? Well, partly (thanks to convention that orchestral string players playing the same thing are all supposed to move the bow in the same direction at the same time), rule on bowings for the first violins, which are then passed down to the other sections wherever the rhythm is the same, in principle. And with this goes a certain amount of stuff about phrasing and delivery, which ought to be more important than the sacred bowing – but in practice isn’t. Must sharpen my pencil so I can scribble on my part and pass it around the other strings … It’s also common (and, if you can keep your place at least as well as the other string players, often useful) to ‘give’ entries and sometimes some points of rhythm (changes of long held chords for instance) by a sort of minimal conducting with the instrument, shoulders and head – being only able to move above the waist as orchestras almost always play sitting down. This does have potential to look and feel just as strange as it sounds, although it can help keep an under-rehearsed section together a lot. If another section (usually the second violins, being closest in role and position) tries to follow the overall leader and it turns out they’ve lost their place in, say, a fugue, it can of course not help at all!

The slightly more unexpected bit, though, is that quite often (though it depends on the egos of the conductor, leader and where applicable soloists) the leader is also cast as sort of assistant musical director, keeping an ear on the general orchestral sound and advising / flagging things up if necessary. (Here, the question of why this should be done from the first violins expands to why it should not equally well be done from the woodwinds or even the horns – though up until the late Romantic period most writing uses the strings almost all the time and the winds much more sparingly, so that a string player may – only may – have slightly more sense of what’s going on overall. That said, the timpanist or the trumpeters will have much more time to listen without zoning in on playing their own part … ) The obvious performance token of this is the leader usually supervising the orchestra tuning; though (as very often with conductors) whatever real work is involved is done in rehearsal and finished by the start of the performance.

I’ve been gradually settling into a sort of assistant-director role in The String Project for a while now as well. Here, there’s really no perceptible change in rehearsals or gigs at all, although I have run a couple of practice’s when Ben’s been away and we’ve had a gig coming up or new people learning parts. The significant differences are being much more involved in practical planning and organising (sometimes in collaboration and gradually slipping off the leash), and arranging a lot more music for the group, where until fairly recently Ben would compose or supply everything. (I haven’t set myself the job of writing anything from scratch yet, though it’s an appealing idea … ) With the first half, of course, goes needing to get the rest of the band-cum-collective to respond to diary emails and the like from me as efficiently as ones from Ben.

Actually, that’s not saying much. We’re back at herding cats again. And perhaps if ‘leaders’ are chiefly deputy organisers, then that makes me the sheepdog in the metaphor, trying to corral and direct animals not naturally given to herding together, but not in charge of creating the strategy or even direction. You know what, this might be a good point to drop this image.

Filthy lucre

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Taken from an advert for an extra band member:

Unpaid at start. Once we get some money, we’ll split.

Of course I know what they mean. But a significant number of musicians alone, let alone anyone else concerned with musical organisation, seem to think it’s terrible to want, or need, to make, or indeed make at all, money out of playing music. Recently someone left a Facebook group for dep/session musician adverts in a bit of a huff, after being told the group was there for paid gigs rather than seeking extra members for his amateur orchestra (which I think is a fair distinction, and there is not a shortage of facebook groups where unpaid gigs and amateur orchestras can be advertised), with the wonderful words:

In that case I’ll leave. I enjoy playing whether I’m paid or not.

Now I enjoy playing whether I’m paid or not. But I have yet to find that bus and train companies will accept my enjoyment in lieu of hard cash when I wish to buy tickets to, say, travel to a rehearsal or concert I’m playing. And I have yet to find that enjoyment will enable me to do without food for protracted periods of time (in fact, being type 1 diabetic, if I tried to do without food for more than a day or so I would probably be in a coma not enjoying anything).

Of course this is partly the English embarrassment about talking money being vulgar. But it’s also to do with some vague notion (actively supported by people that want musicians to play for free) that practising an ‘art’ is its own reward and therefore there is no need to pay for it. I asked a showcase organiser recently (whose ad was a bit vague) ‘Any fee?’; he replied ‘No, no fee, just the chance to play your music in front of a great audience for free!’. It is frankly bizarre that any performer or craftsperson should be interpreted as meaning ‘Will I be charged to do what I do?’ rather than ‘Will I be paid?’

I don’t say this often, but I do somewhat respect hip-hop culture for not pretending its artistic ideals (somewhat odd as they may be) are compromised by earning high incomes from music or considering commercial considerations when creating. If you’re minded to argue that this is not the pure flow of the art that compels you to create whether you wish to or not and that nothing should detract from absolute godlike creativity, please consider that the vast majority of Mozart’s entire collected works were commissioned (and he miserably failed to make a living without some kind of musical day job); and that Bach was always employed as master of music to one aristocrat and his chapel or another, even the Brandenburg concertos being written as an application portfolio (he wasn’t hired).

Give us a break here. Lots of people have hobbies that look similar to jobs, from builder-like DIY on upwards. It doesn’t usually compromise the expectation that if you get a skilled, experienced professional to do work for you, you pay them as a professional not a hobbyist. Most of the explanation for why it’s difficult to get paid as a musician is down to market economics in a crazy imbalance of supply and demand (which is why, if you want to make money, learn the viola); but let’s none of us try and pretend that’s justified by late-Romantic ideas about music being different to any other craft or trade that can also be a pastime.

By the way, ‘filthy lucre’ is also what we’re going to call the Filthy Spectacula merch stall. Of course …

A Modest Proposal

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– for the making of life easier for chronically anxious lonely young adults:

Do you remember the media furore when it turned out Prince William wasn’t going to wear a wedding ring? If you’re not from the UK this probably passed you by completely. Anyway, for collectors of legal trivia, it is a necessary part of a British wedding ceremony for the groom to give the bride a ring; the other way round is optional, but increasingly heavily enshrined in tradition.

Conversely, a few male celebrities (Johnny Depp, I think?) have recently popped up wearing engagement rings, traditionally confined to the other side of the relationship.

I think life would be easier for people with massive neuroses about the footings on which knowing someone are started, about failing to read hints and signals, and about confirming negative stereotypes of single heterosexual men (so, like me then), if the following became normal:

  • Engagement rings for both sexes. It’s just equal and progressive frankly.
  • Relationship rings. These might have to be worn on a different finger, as the options for differentiation are getting booked up otherwise, and could be abandoned if and when you chose to proceed to something more formal, but would be a useful indicator on about the same level as listing yourself as ‘in a relationship’ on Facebook, and for everyone who objects in one way or another to the institution of marriage (or just doesn’t want to go there themselves).
  • Similar or possibly identical to the above, what I think of as the ‘bugger off’ ring. This might be worn regardless of actual relationship status, but indicates without having to actually discuss the matter that being chatted up, flirted with, asked out on a date, attempted to be had a one night stand with, etc. etc., is completely off the table and any interest shown in you is purely friendly (or feigned for professional or networking purposes, to avoid falling out with your friends’ friends, or to keep the peace).

Wouldn’t life be so much better if people with clever ideas could legislate for the instant and uniform changing of social norms and behaviour? Umm …

Hebdomadal complexities

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To some extent, yes, I’m belatedly bandwagon-jumping as everyone else in the blogosphere has already written about the Charlie Hebdo shootings, apparently. But, there are some things that appear to a mind like mine a few days after the initial shocking event as further information emerges, events caused by or linked to the original continue and people start to reflect beyond knee-jerk emotion. The really important one of these, I think, is that the situation that briefly crystallised in twelve deaths a few days ago is very much more complex than it has been made to appear, perhaps particularly concerning whether being destroyed by evil people with an immoral goal makes you or your actions good. By way of response, I don’t think a unified argument essay like most blog posts (including mine) and opinion/comment articles will do; anything I could produce would only oversimplify and I think the situation is too important to make hack writing fodder out of. Here, instead, are some individual reflections, roughly ordered, that may or may not be coherent or consistent – like pretty much any position about Paris’s still ongoing crisis.

  • I do not think killing civilians has ever been either an ethical or an effective response to anything.
  • It is part of the essential makeup of what is known as something like Western liberal democracy that if people choose to make and distribute cartoons mocking pretty much anything, then they are allowed to do so; they cannot be punished for doing so, though the material may be restricted on age grounds and other parties may seek to insist on apologies or even withdrawal of the material on grounds of their being misrepresented or upset.
  • The right to freedom of expression is primarily about the freedom to state the truth, however inconvenient, and opinions, however eccentric, without fear of punishment or retribution. It will need to end up covering indiscriminate mockery that does not present a point of view or critique as such, because it is not feasible to draw a line between the two, but it is not primarily a statement about the latter.
  • Charlie Hebdo specialised in indiscriminate mockery of anything in the news, from funerals of French ex-presidents to the girls abducted by Boko Haram. It does not, and does not aim to, produce credible political, ethical or religious viewpoints or critiques. It constitutes an unlikely martyr to freedom of speech; more to freedom of frequently insensitive ridicule.
  • Multicultural societies, or probably in fact all societies, require means of negotiating accommodation between conflicting desires about what is and is not done in the public sphere and differing standards of what is and is not permissible. Shooting cartoonists certainly does not constitute an adequate means of such negotiation, though I rather think neither does banning all large or overt religious symbols (including religiously-sanctioned dress codes) in the public sphere including state educational establishments.
  • Arguing from the Charlie Hebdo attack to the ‘inherently violent’ nature of Islam is as inaccurate, logically bankrupt and counterproductive as arguing from the Breivik killings to the inherently violent nature of the Norwegian people, from George W Bush to the inherently imperialist nature of Christianity, or from the Crusades to the inherently violent nature of all religion.
  • Crime suspects being shot in a gun battle with police is never a victory for justice. The only victory for justice as we (I) understand it is the finding of suspects guilty by fair and open trial and their proportionate and legal punishment. The next best approach to that is the finding of suspects innocent by fair and open trial and their unconditional release.
  • Declaring war upon Muslims, or even specifically upon jihadists, is exactly the sort of polarisation that terrorists want to achieve. If they are dignified by being treated as opponents rather than merely criminals, they can crystallise the world into those for them and those against, and rally ‘their side’ to ever more open conflict.
  • Vigilante justice is an oxymoron, particularly when the vigilantes wear masks. Yes Anonymous I’m looking at you.
  • The discussion cannot and must not end here. Or anywhere.

Working weeks

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So, this is stacking up to be a fairly busy month for weekend music jobs.

On Friday 30 January, I’m playing for a concert performance of Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco. If, like me, you struggle with the way Italian transmogrifies names, it’s about Joan of Arc; and apparently rarely performed (which I always wonder about as a description: does it mean you need some exorbitant stage gear (like the helicopter in Miss Saigon); or that it’s hard to cast (like the large number of principals in Utopia Limited); or just that it’s not actually that good? I guess I’ll find out). So this outing in a church in Clapham might be something of an event if you’re a Romantic opera aficionado.

The Friday before that, it’s the gig debut of The Filthy Spectacula, at the Good Ship in Kilburn. Still possible to buy advance tickets here for cheaper than on the door, and all of it counts towards how much we actually get paid! A fair bit of this week has also been spent finalising merch details (well, the first batch – who knows where it might run to?), besides hustling for other gigs of which more later …

And just a week today, 16 January, I’m popping up to Birmingham to play for this:

concert poster 150116

Which should be fun too, though the National Express journeys (no budget to cover train fares) there and back may be less so.

After that it might slow down, although of course I’d rather be working every week at least. Though there is a question over how much any of these three jobs will actually make me, which I’ll go into when I’m less tired …

Practice practices

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No one denies the importance of practice. Including me. I do quite a lot and I try to keep it varied to reflect the performance I’m doing – I need to keep my folk fiddle in shape as well as my Romantic rich vibrato and projection and my classical cleanness of line. If I was properly dedicated I’d practise with the pickup and an amp, and practise rock soloing over riffs as well as jazz improv over changes. Haven’t quite got there yet, though I do try and do some improvising on a regular basis – whatever you practise at, you improve, and that includes the ability to make it up as you go along! Actually, the freer your compositional structures are, the more you probably need to practise and rehearse individually and together, so that you can produce a good result without having to tie down material note-for-note.

But I digress. Returning to music with more or less fixed notes, there is a great emphasis in most advice about practice and effectiveness on breaking down very small units. Don’t play what you can play, just pick out the bits you can’t; don’t play through whole movements in one go, focus on the eight bars, four bars, whatever that trip you up and work on them slowly and in detail till you’ve mastered them; don’t try to learn a whole piece if it’s hard by your standards, set targets to do bits at a time.

Well, yes. That works. Particularly for getting over very much technical hurdles. But it can leave you buried in a morass of individual notes, four-bar chunks and technical hurdles, having mastered producing the right notes in the right places – but not with any idea of how the whole thing fits together or is art. I would suggest that if the performer doesn’t have an integral artistic overview of what they play, the odds of a listener achieving one are almost nil, and if they do so they will be frustrated with the performer for obstructing it.

So, here’s my B-side to breaking music down for technical practice: yes, do it, do it rigorously, use small units and focus points to untie the bits that leave your fingers (lungs/tongue/whatever you play with (whaay!)) in knots. But both before and alongside doing that, play the whole movement. Even if it’s badly. If you can manage to, play it with the other parts (if it’s not a solo). If you can’t do that, try and find a recording – though don’t be a slave to the style and interpretation of that version.

And shocking as it sounds, you may need to do this quite a lot. You may need to keep coming back to it as you gradually get on top of (whaay!) the difficult passages if at first you can’t see the wood for the trees. You may have to spend weeks, seriously, on getting the hang of what a piece does, where it’s going, its musical outline and character. And it is possible to thoroughly misjudge those things first time round!

Some people like to sit down and make notes, even mark up their copy, concerning themes and who’s leading at what point and what’s tune as opposed to accompanying figuration that happens to be sharing the same instrument … I’ve tried that approach and it tends to leave me more bewildered than I was before. I know a fair amount of theory for someone without a music degree, but in order to grasp, comprehend a piece I usually end up applying it only after having listened and played repeatedly and ‘felt’ what’s going on; then I can go ‘oh yes: introduction; exposition; second subject in the dominant; development; recapitulation’ or whatever it may be, but also have a less theoretical and more ‘gut’ grasp of the flow and narrative of what I’m playing.

I don’t think it matters how you achieve this as long as your method works for you. What I say in all seriousness is that it may be as much effort to learn and master the overall aesthetics and architectonics of a piece as its most technically demanding passages; and there is as little point performing without having succeeded in the one as in the other.