In particular, I stress a concept of analyzing a piece of music even prior to playing it for the first time.  Time that should be spend away from the instrument and devoted to studying that piece with a pencil in hand; identifying challenging music passages, notes and places in music that might be difficult to tackle based on the knowledge of your own music skills.  It is just as important to do the above process as it is actually playing the instrument.  By analyzing music prior to playing it a student will learn it in a much shorter time, since he/she has already identified and marked difficult places in music that would need more focus.  A piece of music is like a puzzle: some pieces fit easily together, the ones that are obvious, the others – are much harder to fit.  No piece of music is ALL hard – which makes it useless to practice the entire piece from start to finish at once. Identify/isolate problem spots and focus on those for a few days. Later, “piece” them together with the rest of the music and you will have a final product well learned. 

Whether it is a music piece, a math problem or any other challenge – mental analysis of the problem prior to execution of the solution is a key.  This approach will make learning easier, more efficient, hence faster and will provide a confidence booster when a student realizes that he/she is capable of surmounting any challenge. The inner knowledge “I can learn anything” will motivate a child’s desire to learn more on many different subjects, expanding his/her horizon and enjoying life in the process of learning. 

I have had many parents commenting that their children have taken analytical approach from music lessons and applied to school studies.  It worked wonders to many of them, students as young as six and seven year old.  Bottom line – children need to be taught  how  to learn, learning is not a natural skill but has to be obtain via others.

Below are photos of music that show how some of my students go about studying their pieces by marking challenging notes, measures, etc… That time DOES count as practicing, in case if you were wondering…

Groom’s mother – Trumpet Voluntary

Bride’s mother – Amazing Grace

Pastor and bridesmaids – Canon in D

Ring Bearer, flower girl – Arioso

Bride and Father – Bridal Chorus by Wagner

    At a first glance, the choices seem to be excellent, providing plenty of processional music for the wedding party walking down the aisle. However, here are a few negative points on the above music selections that might not be obvious at first.
 One:
Having that many wedding music pieces for the processional IS quite unusual and can be overwhelming, not for musicians but for guests. For musicians the only issue might be is changing pages from piece to piece, leaving “gaps” between the music as a bridal party is walking down the aisle.
Two:
A very obvious contrast between the two wedding music pieces for mothers: Trumpet Voluntary is a happy, upbeat  wedding music piece, whereas Amazing Grace is a mournful, solemn piece, most commonly played at funerals, not weddings. Hence, it might not be a good idea to play them side by side, they might sound odd.  
Three: 
Another issue with Trumpet Voluntary is its’ style.  The most “prominent”, spectacular piece of music during the wedding ceremony processional should be reserved for the entrance of the bride, not the bridal party.  Trumpet Voluntary IS very bright, loud, attention-attractive piece, used very often as a bride’s processional piece. Even though Bridal Chorus for the bride is a perfect choice, it clashes with Trumpet Voluntary.  Either one or the other, but not both.
Here is the solution we came up with for the bride in this case, altering the wedding music choices as follows:

Groom’s mother and bride’s mother – Arioso (same piece for both, gentle yet very pleasant piece of music, easy to fade as needed)
Pastor,bridesmaids and the rest of the bridal party – Canon in D(very beautiful, well known piece, and long enough for a large wedding party)
Bride and Father – Bridal Chorus by Wagner (as in the original selection; very appropriate choice of a wedding music piece that will especially stand out after softer sounding Canon in D)

Unlike for weddings, string quartet musicians for this gala put together a music program that somewhat strayed away from classical music, leaning towards a different genre – oldies and pop style music.  The musicians played selections from Beatles, Volare, In a Sentimental Mood, On Top of the World..

As far as the place itself – a hidden paradise in Pittsburgh! Who would have thought of having a fish pond in the lobby of a hotel and surround it with a picturesque jungle, adding quite a bit of magic to the place?!  The staff working with the musicians and the police was amazing, accommodating any need, however small it was. What a fantastic place and a crew of workers!

Clients who have decided to hire two wedding musicians will often consider to get only one even after their decision has been made about hiring a duo.  The obvious question here “ Is one musician better than two?”.  Money wise – yes. It is cheaper since you are paying for only one.  Sound wise – it is up to your taste. However, if anyone has a budget to hire two musicians – we strongly recommend to do so. Imagine a soloist singing with a chorus backing him up throughout a song, verses a soloist singing the same song without “ a back up”.  In this case the soloist can only sing the melody line – not the “decorative”, additional lines which in music terminology are called alto- tenor – bass.  As I mentioned in other posts, many wedding music pieces simply don’t sound right when performed by one musicians.     The “richness” of the sound is not present with just a violin, viola, or a cello.  With an addition of even one instrument – the sound picture changes completely.  That is, our opinion based on many years of experience and playing the same wedding music with different combinations of string instruments.  Another good judgment of that opinion is public.  We are yet to play at an event as a group where people don’t come up to us with some sort of a praise and compliments for performances.  However, there were a couple of weddings where a bride decided to get only one violin and the reaction from her guests was not what we expected – the violinist was barely heard and noticed.  It was one of our musicians with over thirty years of performing throughout the country, and even he didn’t like the set up.  It was even harder due to the music selections that the bride asked for her wedding.  The famous Canon in D simply does not work with one instrument! All of the above are the reasons why we try to promote at the minimum two musicians so that your event, especially a wedding has a comfortable and a pleasant music setting which leaves both, our client and his/her guests with good memories after hearing our performance.      

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