Day Two: Workshop Uwe Kropinski
The second day the Twenthe Conservatory (presently called Artez Conservatory) the place to be for workshops and masterclasses.
When I entered the building, I was surprised at first sight. If you had told me that this place was a technical school rather than a conservatory, it would not have surprised me. Everything was tight, dead straight an quite grey. I found out that most students shared my opinion: amongst them the building has the popular nickname The Bunker. Just some scant comfort, the practicing rooms are bomb-free, so you can go out of your mind without problems.
We had our guitars with us for our masterclasses and we were allowed to use one of these bomb-free rooms for warming up. It was a perfect final rehearsal! (A bad sign, maybe?)
Unfortunately we lost some sight on the clock and got five minutes late for Uwe Kropinski's workshop. Sorry!
Uwe Kropinski turned out to be a natural teacher with an individual philosophy concerning music. "Music", so he said, "is sound in the first place. Then it is time, and only then come notes, technique and interpretation."
The remainder of the workshop dealt with the concept of time in music. Is time close on your heels, or are you chasing time during playing, with considerate effort? Or are you in perfect synchronisation with time, whose laws apply to both sound and rests?
Time is a quite useful subject for a player like me, who is at times a bit careless with timing. Sometimes I find it difficult to bring out the swing of e.g. a complicated syncopated samba rhythm spot on. Well, of all things the swing is what the listener recognizes even more than the tones! So that makes or breaks the piece.
Kropinski used a fine little device for this purpose: the Maelzel's Metronome, also called The Student's Terror. I remember playing with it, with the strange impression that time seemed to be variable in my mind: sometimes it runs faster, sometimes slower. For some mechanical metronomes, this is actually true, but with my electronic metronome it must have been imagination. However, ever heard about the Theorem of Relativity? Time Warps? Beam us Up, Scotty?
He explained that concentrating on a time reference outside yourself makes you more aware of the time for your music, without hurry or lost ground. It gives you the opportunity to train your internal timing. As a matter of fact it is very useful to know how much time you have got for e.g. a tricky fingering, even if the tempo is high.
It was a bit tricky for me to include the metronome in my concentration on the music (I felt hurried a bit), but after some time I found out that it actually helped me, the Samba rhythm was straight with swing. I guess I'll put some batteries again in my metronome at home.
My Little Friend, my guitar teacher Robert calls the metronome, and I guess he is right!