DO YOU UNDERSTAND FORTISSIMO???
Maybe you do in the space of exciting measures where life announces joyful news, celebrates a win, or even sounds the music of battle and debate.
"I am loved!"
"I won the competition!"
"I'm right.. You're wrong!"
"No, IM RIGHT and YOU ARE A LOSER!!"
"LOVE ME! LOVE ME! LOVE ME!!!"
Fortissimo.
The emotions of happiness and the emotions of anger can also be expressed pianissimo and speak volumes about your gratitude for the blessings you enjoy or your pain that you endure on a prayer.
Fellow toastmasters and honored guests. My name is JNET and I am your music teacher for the evening presenting my 7th speech from the CC manual. My speech tonight is called Composing Life, a Music Lesson in Seven Minutes.
Leonard Bernstein appropriately said that
"To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time."
Can growing your music skills grow "an admirable heart" as the founder of the Suzuki method purposes?
What happens when you combine curiousity and a musical instrument?
[*bring out instrument]
Compare the experience with watching television. One brings about action in doing while the other fosters passivity. It does take a while to grow an admirable heart though.
You'll learn and care about something called technique through study and excercise.
If and only IF, you care to develop discipline and become an athelete that succumbs lots of hurdles... called YOUR MISTAKES. For you left brainers out there, that means you practice and practice to understand these symbols in black and white and terms in French and Italian until you make very little mistakes and make something beautiful. And for you right brainers out there, it means you practice and forgive yourself enjoying being able to learn from mistakes and love learning music for the experience of the moment while striving for accuracy. And isn't it nice that you are not condemned to be a lefty or righty when it comes to studying music. It's a matter of two hands and two sides of your mind creating TOGETHER to a level of craftsmenship.
Why would you want to develop skills in craftsmenship? It doesn't sound cool and hip. Are you making cabinets? It sounds like a lot of WORK and maybe you don't care to be craftsmen or a maestro.
Maybe you want to be a maestro in different ways? You want to be successful in your career or in your personal life?
Well did you know that Music majors are the most likely group of college grads to be admitted to med school? And a study of 7,500 university students revealed that music majors scored the highest reading scores among all majors including English, biology, chemistry and math.
What skills do you think you would gain from knowing what's going on in black and white in front of you? What hobby makes you study the details in black and white and yet gives you space to be creative to demonstrate your mastery? Where do you practice sustained effort in the space of mistakes? Just to express a melody as you imagined in your head?
I think Life will read differently to you if you all learned read and play music. And I wonder if you would enjoy and travel Life differently if you fed your creative and curious side with a musical vehical. I think you would seek out and follow the fine print in a different spirit from how you pursue other "fine print."
Like this...
Bach Prelude in D minor.....
Allegro moderato... medium fast ...non legato... but not connected rather disconnected... loads of stacatto.
Look at all these fast notes... woo hoo.... and all these get quiet and louder things to pay attention too...
So demanding... so specific..
And yet a worthy way to spend one's quiet time perhaps? You are just as demanding and specific as Bach is with your own life and dreams. How's your technique, composition and performance skills?
????
I end your music lesson now with a quote by Mozart.
"To talk well and eloquently is a very great art, but an equally great one is to know the right moment to stop."
See you again next week for your next lesson?
Thank you fellow toastmasters, composers, maestros and honored guests.
JNET
