Margaret Wacyk

Ultimate Piano Playing video!

2010-10-28T18:55:00.000-07:00

Alas, the first installment of my companion video to my book: Ultimate Piano Playing.

This is about the incredible mystery of 'golden tone'--a sound that seemed lost in a bygone era of 19th century pianism...The secret is being unravelled.

Have a look:

Awe!!

2010-09-22T07:06:00.000-07:00

Today as I practiced the piano, I stopped to think: How incredible is it that these sounds miraculously seem to emerge from the instrument? What magical quality makes an 'A' sound the way it does? What mysteries does the key of F sharp minor contain? Why does a note in pitch sound just so right and if it is out of tune, just so wrong?

How is it that we have such a playground of sound to create with? An infinite array of music can be created with just 12 tones-

If you stop and really think about it, it really is quite a miracle.

It makes me think of the words written by Francis Chan in his book "Crazy Love"--something he calls the "Awe Factor":

"Did you know that a caterpillar has 228 separate and distinct muscles in its head? That's quite a few, for a bug. The average elm tree has approximately 6 million leaves on it. And your own heart generates enough pressure as it pumps blood throughout your body that it could squirt blood up to 30 feet. (I've never tried this, and I don't recommend it.)...The God of the universe is the Creator of nitrogen and pine needles, galaxies and E-minor".

These words inspired me to explore the connection between God and music which is a fascinating and very rich topic. We all know that composers harnessed their creative potential from God and used it to glorify Him. For instance, JS Bach spent his whole life and under difficult circumstances (without much money and hardly any acknowledgement) writing all his music as a gift from God to God. He signed all of his compositions "To God be the Glory". Today it would take someone nearly 50 years just to copy by hand all the music he wrote--and that's just a fraction of it, since a great deal of it was lost after Bach's death in 1750. That type of selfless dedication and discipline is simply jaw dropping. Add to it the factor that this music is so breathtakingly exquisite, intricate and nearly 300 years after the time it was written fresh and utterly modern, well that is really something to marvel at!!

If we can say that this music originates from God, how does the experience of hearing or playing it affect us? Wouldn't this be some sort of transcendent act?

I had a pretty revelatory experience when I was a kid that led me to truly believe that all great classical music from Bach and beyond was simply not of this earth, but from heaven.

When I was 8 years old I received a gift of a recording of Artur Rubinstein playing Chopin--I didn't know much about music yet and was just learning to play the piano, but it had a very strange effect on me. Each time I would listen to it, I became literally immobilized from the beauty of it--It was like a arrow of beauty that pierced the heart. I couldn't move or do anything, just listen and let it wash over me. Inevitably I would always find myself moved to tears and a weird sensation came over me, sort of like someone was rearranging the pieces of my heart.

Click here to watch/listen

As I got older the hypnotizing effect of classical music continued its hold on me, and I never stopped to question the connection between God and music. In fact, the more I studied classical music, the more I became convinced that the composers didn't write the music, but God did, whispering the notes that got translated through their pens. Certainly the the phenomenon of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a shining example of this fact. As he dazzled crowds with his genius at the tender age of 7, his father Leopold boldly declared that "Wolfgang's gifts come from God, so that all may see that His work." Surely, the incredible music that Mozart wrote reflect the Divinity that was planted within. Maybe Mozart was God's 'ghost-writer'?

Are classical composers messengers of God communicating power, hope and otherworldly beauty? Their message is a shrouded one, coded in sound, pattern and rhythm. It is a secret message that when listened to allows you to have a private moment of awe with the Divine.

Bearing this in mind, I think it is no coincidence that people receive not only pleasure from music, but also healing. Studies done on cardiac patients have shown that their recovery time is faster and more complete when classical music is played in their hospital rooms. On a more fantastic level, the vibration of certain notes have even been shown to eradicate certain cancers. Surely, this is potent stuff!!

Like all languages, music is one that also needs to be explained and understood, especially classical music, which is lies on the outskirts of our modern world. To access the Divine within it, we need certain tools:

"If you honor and give thanks to God with your spirit in sounds nobody understands, how can others honor and give thanks also if they do not know what you are saying?" (I Corinthians 14:16)

When we apply a little study, focus and open our heart to it, the rewards are plentiful. Classical music is back, baby!

I will be starting a series of postings on my blog beginning next week specifically about composers and the miracles of their music--going beyond the notes to the core. I will be calling it "Getting to the Core of the 'Score'." What will be revealed is that we all share in the same struggles, hope and passion of humanity and that this music reflects all that we are, all we hope to be--

...and it is AWEsome!!

Getting real

2010-08-27T09:28:00.000-07:00

There has been so much emphasis recently in our society about getting 'real'--getting rid of what is non-essential and paring things down to what is truly authentic.

Eating organic, buying local, going 'green'--these are just some of the ways that this idea has impacted our choices especially as consumers.

But what about in the realm of our artistic lives-not to mention our spiritual well-being?

These are areas in our life that also demand a reevaluation--Perhaps we also need to strip away the things that just obstruct the contact we have with the deepest part of our soul, in order to arrive at greater truth...

This is the main driver of my book called Ultimate Piano Playing: The Wave Method for Beautiful Tone and Effortless Technique. In this book I aim to bring readers to experience the piano in a higher realm--to hear and have the power to produce a beautiful tone. This magical key will unlock a treasure of hidden benefits: greater virtuosity, ease of executing even the most demanding pianistic passages, being free of any physical tension, and releasing a magnificent array of artistic expression.

It took me 20 years of research, study and personal experiences to arrive at this book. The journey has not been an easy one--but it certainly required me to 'get real'. While in my early 20's as all my peers from conservatory were embarking onto concert stages, I had to undo the bad training of my youth which nearly rendered me unable to play the piano. Starting at square one again with simple one finger exercises, I had to rebuild my arsenal. This was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I figured I had 'missed the boat'--that I would never be able to play on concert stages because of this huge detour--on the other hand, I started to understand the fundamental principles of what accounts for efficiency and beauty in piano playing. I had no time to lose and so each stage of my relearning was as focussed on the essentials as could be.

What were these basic essentials? The realization that great form (the physical choreography we administer on each note we play) begets our results. Great form= great tone and physical ease. Bad form=tension and metallic 'tone'.

Now here comes the final distillation: the idea of a 'wave' is at the essence of all great piano playing.

Waves affect every important aspect of our musical endeavors. There are 3 essential components:

1- Physical:

The wave is the most efficient vehicle for energy transfer. To play the piano, we need energy. For the needed energy to depress the keys on our piano we make the obvious choice of recruiting the muscles of our forearms, hands and fingers. The problem is that these are small muscles groups and not able to withstand the strain over time. This is why there is such an abundance of problems with carpal tunnel, repetitive stress disorder and tendonitis with pianists today.

By studying the physics of a wave, one can use these principles at the piano. This will lead to incredible power and ease--not to mention beauty. Sounds odd? Well, it is the secret to that the greatest athletes incorporate: soaring golfers' swings, seering karate chops, stellar baseball bat swings--these all rely on the principles of the wave.

2- Mechanics:

How many pianists are familiar with the intrinsic parts of their instrument? Do the words, 'jack', 'knuckle', 'keybed' or 'escapement point' make you want to do just that--escape from this conversation? Have no fear, because here lies the formula to the magic. By knowing the critical parts of our piano mechanism (or 'action') and understanding that it also behaves as a wave, a predictable sequence of events, we instantly acquire some powerful pianistic currency to be unleashed at our command.

3- Tone:

The DNA, or calling card of pianists since the 19th century has always been their tone--the particular aura of sound that makes an indelible impression on the listener. Tone is at it's essence made of sound waves. The sound waves we produce and their quality is a product of the first two criterial listed above.

Simple! I dare say, revolutionary: It boils down to this:

The secret of the wave is energy transfer from an area of larger mass to small mass, lightness and speed.

Welcome to the Wave Method!! I write about all these concepts in my book Ultimate Piano Playing and give step-by-step instructions on how to unleash this powerful secret in your piano playing.

To summarize, who would have thought that my disappointments and the detour I had to take 20 years ago would lead to the realization of a new approach to piano playing--one coincidentally steeped in the practices of 19th century pianism.

But to quote the great Robert Frost: "...the road not taken---has made all the difference"....

And now I want to share with you the things I learned on this journey.

Ultimate Piano Playing is here!!

2010-08-15T16:17:00.000-07:00

I am so happy to announce that my book is now available!

It has been a labor of intense work and love which has taken the better part of the last year.

This book is a guide that will help all pianists unlock their greatest potential at the piano, using a system which is steeped in a 19th century tradition of great tone production. The results? Greater power, virtuosity, artistry and the elimination of all muscular tension.

I will be submitting more details about the book and the process of writing it to come! Also stay tuned for some video demos which I will be posting.

Cheers!
Margaret

Nectar Amist the Percussive Weeds

2009-08-24T17:04:00.000-07:00

Nectar Amid the Percussive Weeds

After two weeks away on vacation, I was struck and somewhat horrified to see just how overgrown my garden had become with weeds. Weeds in all shapes and sizes. Weeds that just seemed to spring out of nowhere and usurp their territory without any consult or apologies.

After spending the previous months tending to the garden and trying with painstaking effort to grow a few roses, shrubs and even applying my paltry skills in the current sentiment of ecological self-sufficiency to planting a modest 'Victory' vegetable Garden (...which ended up being more of a defeat, but that's another story)--I was more than a little aghast to see just how the weeds had taken up residence in so aggressive a manner.

It led me to think of the nature of things...For instance, a beautiful garden left unchecked, will quickly evaporate and be taken over by weeds. It is the natural state.

Although, is it the most beautiful?

I will take flowers over weeds any day of the week--but it seems that despite nature, producing a flower takes much more effort, attention and nurturing. One has to override the stronger tendency for weeds to invade and to suppress them at all costs.

I am going to try to make an analogy now between weeds and the nature of a musical instrument which I love and have spent my life with--the piano. It may be a stretch, but here it goes:

The piano is an anomaly as far as instruments go, because it is tricky to classify. The basic classifications, or families of instruments are: string, woodwind, brass, and percussion. With this system it makes it straightforward to classify a violin under the string category; the trombone under the brass family and the clarinet under the woodwind family, just to name a few obvious examples.

But with the piano, we run into a hermaphroditic problem: Due to its more complex nature it is considered both a String instrument AND a Percussion instrument.

Because of the strings which vibrate and hence produce the piano sound, it is classified in the string category--However, because of the hammers inside the piano
(part of the component known as the 'action') which are thrown into flight when a key is pressed down, this act of the hammer hitting the string gives the piano also the classification as a percussion instrument.(A percussion instrument is defined as one where the act of striking produces tone, such as a drum or timpani).

As any pianist will attest, the quest to draw a beautiful tone from the piano is among the most challenging of aspects in mastering the pianistic art. It requires apt listening, a perfect harmony between the player and the instrument and a true choreography in physically applying the correct 'touch' in order for this aesthetic magic of tone to happen. In pursuit of this, the player must dodge the easy to attain, overwhelmingly percussive aspect of the piano, for when one strikes the keys with an undue amount of force, it will easily destroy the tone so that it becomes shrill, glassy and harsh. Under these conditions, it aborts the ability for the instrument to sing and for the hidden lyrical beauty to shine forth.

This is the nectar--the elusive flower of tonal beauty which is only attained by extracting it amist the garden of percussive weeds that form the basic landscape of this instrument.

In life, I think it is often necessary to rise above what is the natural tendency. It is refinement in the highest sense of the word.

But why should we make the extra effort? Why NOT take the easy way out? After all, sound is sound...Who will notice?

In art and in life the extra effort required to extract the beauty within the weeds will not only lead to finer results--it will open a channel for communing in the aesthetic Garden of Paradise where blossoms the Divine.

Zen and the Art of Surviving a Rip Tide

2009-08-17T20:04:00.001-07:00

Walking along the beach in beautiful Long Beach Island, NJ at night, stars glowing over head and hypnotized by the waves metronomically crashing along the shore, I started to think about rip tides.

I am not a good swimmer and am fairy uncomfortable in the ocean--In fact my level of discomfort got heightened yesterday when I took my two daughters, ages 6 and 8 in for a dip. Boy, was I really taken aback by how deceivingly calm the waters seemed. In no time we seemed to be bombarded by waves and taken further and further away from the shore line. It wasn't a rip tide, because we managed to get out of it with relative ease...but the experience was so disconcerting that I started to think about the phenomenon of rip tides and how they relate to our lives.

Here's what I learned about rip tides: (some of these facts are taken from popularmechanics.com...funny--but true)

Riptides, or rip currents, are long, narrow bands of water that quickly pull any objects in them away from shore and out to sea. They are dangerous but are relatively easy to escape if you stay calm.

Do not struggle against the current.

Life: How often do difficult and confusing situations bombard us. Sometimes it's in such a profusion that the old saying "when it rains, it pours" seems quite apropos. How often do we feel the need to change the current of unwelcome events--In our effort to control things and get out of the turmoil, we often not only make things worse and aggravate the situation, but also we exhaust ourselves in the process.

Most riptide deaths are not caused by the tides themselves. People often become exhausted struggling against the current, and cannot make it back to shore.

Life: I think sometimes no matter how uncomfortable the place is that we are carried away to by the unwelcome current--it just seems that the best solution is to ride it out and not fight it.

Do not swim toward shore.
You will be fighting the current, and you will lose.

Life: Can we ever really return to square one--? No matter how we might want to go back, we could never retrace our steps in life. We can't get back to the same place on the shore we started from.

Swim parallel to shore, across the current.
Generally speaking, a riptide is less than 100 ft. wide, so swimming beyond it should not be too difficult.

Life: What is interesting about this is how small a riptide is--only a 100 ft, but in the hysteria of the moment, it might as well be 100,000 ft! Just as when we experience the 'emotional riptides' of our lives--they sometimes feel just endless, but really for all we know they are also minuscule--and the bright side maybe just moments away, around the corner--But in the heat of the moment, it's hard to see--We deceive ourselves into thinking that it will last infinitely long.

If you cannot swim out of the riptide, float on your back and allow the riptide to take you away from shore until you are beyond the pull of the current.

Now here's one that completely makes me aghast...Can you imagine--there's a monstrous riptide, pulling you out into the deepest parts of the ocean with nothing to hold onto--its power is overcoming you and depleting your resources;frantically you attempt to fight it-it's a full blown struggle for life or death--

And now in the midst of it all the high-pitched anxiety you're supposed to just nonchalantly flip over on your back--and FLOAT????!!!

It seems impossible, but strangely it's the favored option--To have the Faith that it will work out--To submit to the current....and it will effortlessly drift you back to safety...

...Funny, I always thought that being called a 'drifter' was a bad thing...

Widget

2009-08-15T06:12:00.001-07:00

Golden Sound

2009-02-27T01:48:00.000-08:00

Frederick Chopin, the great composer who elevated music for the piano, was said to have possessed the remarkable ability to imitate the human singing voice at the piano...Franz Liszt, the ultimate virtuoso was said to make the piano sound like a full range orchestra, blending and shading nuances to a high degree. Indeed, audience members in the packed concert halls would often swoon from the intoxication of these heavenly strains that emerged from the instrument...In the 1960's eager fans would brave the cold uninviting streets of Manhattan and wait on line through the night, wrapped around 57th Street hoping for a chance to score a ticket to a concert of Vladimir Horowitz...

What was the magic that all these geniuses of the piano possessed in such abundance? It was, among other things, their ability to draw from the piano a richly beautiful tone...a tone that translated into a vehicle of communicating musical and para-musical ideas in the most compelling way. This manner of playing would draw the audience to a rapt, nearly hypnotic state of attention--This was clearly a time to receive a message, and through the purity of the tone, each audience member was made pliant and receptive. There would be no 'dozers-offers' in the hall...and no background snores to compete with the music at hand.

I have always been a big fan of historical recordings. Legendary pianists of the past such as Cortot, Paderewski, Hoffman, Rachmaninoff and more recent pianists such as Rubinstein and Horowitz would always be the ones I would turn to for inspiration. I was around 13 years old at the time, and didn't yet have the analytical skills to be able to pinpoint what it was about these performances that drew me in, but yet any comparison to a modern approach always justified my preference. The funny thing was, in my mind I was hoping that in the live concerts I would attend, this kind of playing would automatically be found, but it was not so.

It began to dawn on me that this kind of tone, which I later found out was referred to as the 'golden tone' of piano playing, possessed by the descendants of the schools primarily of Chopin, Liszt and Leschetizky seemed to only be an aural fossil of the past.

But in 1990 I struck pianistic jackpot. It was then that I did for the first and only time in my 30+ years of life hear this 'golden tone' in a live concert. The concert was given in NYC by a pianist named Mordecai Shehori (www.cembaldamour.com) I sat in the balcony of Carnegie Hall, the lights dimmed and the first notes that emerged from the piano were so compelling, so vibrant, so crystalline pure--It was absolute magic and I must say with each passing note the effect was made even more intoxicating.

I had the good fortune to study for over ten years with this musical titan...Through stroke of fate, the technique required to produce this kind of 'golden sound' was imparted to him painstakingly and tirelessly from his teacher Mindru Katz. And as he transmitted these invaluable lessons to me, I became aware of the level of commitment required to achieve it. It was not a simple quick fix--To be able to produce even a small iota of this kind of sound would require a complete relearning and recalibration of approach--one that would span many years.

Tone used to be a pianist's biggest prerequisite at the end of the 19th and into the mid 20th century. It was commonplace to be able just on the hearing of a few notes to identify the performer instantly. Somehow from the 1950's and beyond, virtuous tone got replaced with other considerations--speed, percussiveness are just two that come to mind. To boot, the knowledge of how to produce the golden tone was also getting more distant, like a xerox copy that is generations away from the source.

Is tone important? Especially for an instrument that is at it's essence mechanical like the piano? I obviously think, yes, even more so because pianists have to reach beyond the limitations of the mechanics to produce the sound. Other instrumentalists, for instance, violinists have the advantage of having direct contact with the string and bow which produces the tone--as for pianists, they have a intermediary to contend with, that is the 'key' which is depressed by the finger and through which an intricate array of parts called the 'piano action' is set into motion. This chain reaction of events finally gets to the conclusive heart of the matter when tone is produced: the hammer hits the string.

Because the pianist never gets an opportunity to directly feel the string or the hammer as the sound happens, there is a lot of focus on the part of the process that the pianist can actually control--that is the approach of the finger to the key. This being an indirect approach having very direct consequences, I can attest there are many schools of thought on the subject and sadly many misconceptions that have arisen, preventing people from achieving the tone that their inner ear and heart longs for.

Piano...or Death!!

2009-02-20T04:44:00.002-08:00

Growing up, there has always been one element of holidays and family get-togethers that I have always cherished. It would happen at the dinner table, usually when the main meal has been cleared and in the interim until dessert that my father would start his storytelling. A big personality, with a remarkable ability to spin a good yarn, he would start in with his carefully measured words and heavy Polish accent, while the rest of us listened, always attentive and often amused.

Recently at one of these post-dinner wrap-ups I requested to hear the 'piano story' again. It is one that I've heard many times, but always the details are so worth hearing time after time. And it is always a hard ticket to get--as these stories always depend on my father's mood and requests could often be rejected...But last Christmas, I got lucky.

This is a true story and it happened in an area of Poland called Przemysl which is very close to the Russian border. The time was just after World War II and at that point the border was constantly being switched--from Russian territory to German territory. As a result, families were forced to relocate all the time, depending on which flag was being waved in their front yard.

During World War II, it was commonplace for Polish families to receive a knock at the door from German soldiers who would enter forcibly and rifle through the contents of the home removing anything of particular value. My father, age 9 lived in a small house with his mother and grandmother when this knock came. Although they didn't have much in terms of valuables, there was one piece that for my grandmother was her greatest treasure and it was her upright piano.

So in the Germans went and of course out the piano went with them. For my grandmother, this was devastating as she was passionate about music and it was the one source of escape that she had during this bleak time. She was an accomplished pianist and also composed...When it was impossible to buy sheet music, she would make her own manuscript paper and write down by ear the pieces that she would hear. One of my treasures now is a big box of these music papers that she wrote, yellowed in time all bearing the signature of the years from 1937-1945.

Eventually the war ended and as the Germans were pulling out they had huge caravans standing on the street filled with all the booty they had collected from the citizens. As my grandmother and father passed by these caravans she scanned the contents, always on the lookout for what was stolen from her. Finally as they passed the tail end of this caravan, she stopped in amazement--jetting out from one of these wagons was her beloved piano.

She surveyed the scene and saw that there was only one lazy soldier who was charged with guarding the caravan. With the war over, there was a more relaxed 'work ethic' which she instantly recognized as an opportunity for herself. She called on the help of a friend who was a kind of 'village superman'- a muscular hulk of a guy who from spending years in hard farm labor was able to lift astounding amounts of weight, and then she, the 'hulk' and her 9 year old son set out to right the wrong done to them.

Somehow they managed to extract the piano from the wagon of this caravan and the three of them were pushing this instrument down the street back to their home. Passers-by were looking in amazement, but undaunted they continued on, growing bolder with each step. Suddenly a blast was heard in the sky--Looking up they saw a plane looming above them. They realized that this was either a Russian or German surveillance plane and that the pilot had spotted them in this act. As they pushed on frantically, this plane suddenly full throttle started to descend down on them. They tried to hide, my father cramming his small body underneath the piano as far as he could and the others sidling as close as they could to the side of the instrument...They got lucky; the plan flew off. They continued to push, shaking in fear. My father wanted to leave the instrument behind and flee home. But my grandmother wouldn't hear of it. She had to get this piano back into the home, even if it meant death.

The plane re-emerged a few minutes later--the angry sound of the engine overhead and now fueled with even more aggression--This time the speed and intensity of the swoop down was so frightful that all three thought that their life was over. And as the plane came closer, they prayed frantically for mercy.

Of course, because I am sitting here today writing this story, one could guess the outcome--They lived. The ominous plane flew off in the distance and they made it safely home, piano in tow.

But the question remains--Why? Why to risk their lives so flagrantly, all for the sake of this piano. Was it a valuable instrument? Absolutely not--just your run of the mill upright; it wouldn't command very much money on the open market, especially after having been beaten up from this war. Was it a family heirloom, passed down through the years? No. Was there something stashed away in the interior of the case, like a big wad of cash wrapped up? Wishful thinking, but no.

The reason my grandmother risked her life and the life of her son was exactly to have life. The war with all its suffering was not life--it was survival. Life was in the music. Life was on this alternate plane. This was the place where souls were kind and loving and gentle; imparting spiritual nourishment and hope through the symbols of notes and rests and staffs...This was the place where humanity could be lifted up from the depth of sorrow that it had inflicted on one another. This was the place where one could find repose.

Music has this power. It always has and always will. But, wait, there's a catch: We have to take personal responsibility for our musical choices. We have to seek out great music and take possession of it...Just as this brave lady sought out and reclaimed her treasure, we must do the same.

In these modern times, where media is blaring at us 24-7 it is more critical than ever that we make conscious decisions in what we chose to let in. There are two types of music: the kind that drags us down, with it's negative subtext and simplistic content or the kind that uplifts us.

How do we know the difference? Simple--As all things of quality, the music that uplifts us requires participation from us. It requires--it directs us to stop all we are doing and be attentive only to it. Like a sermon, it will move our heart and rewire our internal networks in such a positive way--but again, we must make the choice and we must carve out quality time for it.

Piano or death?...Music or death?....Starving the soul or nourishing it with inspiration? That is our choice to make!