Starting up an orchestra.

I'm not the one starting up an orchestra.

Since I'm working up in Portland I thought it would be fun to see what's going on in the local music scene. At work I saw a couple flyers for a string orchestra centered around employees and emailed the conductor.

A couple weeks later, I started attending rehearsals. Though the music is really easy, its nice to keep playing my violin on a regular basis. The biggest change since then is that we're becoming some sort of dual entity. Because we don't have enough players in general, the conductor has navigated lots of obstacles to turn the orchestra into a combined work-affiliated orchestra and a youth symphony.

Last week, we did an exhibition and had local kids come in and rehearse with us. It'll be interesting to see if there is any decent local talent. It also takes me back to a previous college symphony orchestras I've been in.

I'd always come late to rehearsal because of work. I end up walking in looking like a bum and sit in the back of the 1st violin section. Because attendance at rehearsals always varied, I'd always sit with different people and then figure out who my stand partner was right before the concert. It would also turn out that my standpartner would sometimes need help.

If you're not familiar with the organization of orchestra seating...there are several different sections composed of different instrument parts. For string instruments, you usually have 1st and 2nd violins, violas, cellos, and basses. I have played in 1st and 2nd violin and viola sections before.

Typical 1st violin mentality: "I have a solo...all the time. It's not me that's rushing...it's everyone else that's lagging."

Typical 2nd violin mentality: "Damn 1st violins are rushing again."

Since I'm primarily a violinist...it's not that fair for me to project upon violists. When I play viola I think: "Love the mellow sound...wish I had more solos."

My imagination of the mentality of a cellist: "Man...another boring rhythm section. When that section solo comes I'm going to wail away on my cello with a tortured look and break the heart of that cute guy/girl in the 3rd row."

My imagination of the mentality of a bassist: "Wassssssssssuuuuuuuuuuup. Hear me rumble on my basssssssssssssssssssssssssssss."

Sections are usually laid out in order of ability. Better players in the front, closer to the conductor...lesser players in the back. This can be detrimental if there is a wide range of talent in the orchestra. Having played in the back of several sections due to my lateness, I can safely say that a common mentality of players in the back of a section is:

"I don't want to come in at the wrong time so I'm going to start playing after see people in front of me start playing."

What happens then is that there is a lag between the front and back of a section. For a section to minimize that lag, it is even more important for players in the back to start playing on time because it takes a little longer for their sound to travel to the audience.

Anyway, when I would sit in the back of a section and come in on our cue at the right time, it helped other people around me come in on time too. Some of my 2nd violin friends used to say that they'd listen for me to figure out when to come in because they knew I was reliable. Or at least...not afraid to screw up. Since I didn't depend on the section leader to for cues and did my own counting...I'd come in when I thought it was the right time. Invariably, I'd mess up my counting sometimes and have my own solo before the rest of the section would start playing.

In any case, I used to coach my standpartners a little bit and so I'm looking forward to helping out high school and middle school kids. Mentoring can be a big responsibility and time commitment. Doing in orchestra is less of a commitment and seems like a good way to get my feet wet with teaching. I'll probably try teaching kids someday but have declined all inquiries thus far because it is too much of a responsibility in my eyes. Why?

When I give pointers to adults, I can talk in their language and they typically have a desire to get better. When people teach kids, they typically have to turn things in games in order to encourage and motivate them. This is something I need to learn how to do because I was not like this as a kid. I remember enjoying music and wanting to play more songs rather than having to be motivated to play games. I remember my parents playing music CDs and tapes all the time and wanting to play more difficult pieces. All those things that teachers do for their students, like putting tape markers to mark where the fingers go...I bypassed that stage pretty fast. I wonder if the biggest difference between my family and other families at that time was...somehow we were encouraged by a love of music from a young age.

Rather than having to make up games to motivate kids to play, I'd rather figure how to inspire a love of music in kids.

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If you're interesting in partnering up with me in my trip to South Africa...please refer to my Prayer & Funding Request:

http://divingcatch.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html

Miracles, standards, and authentication

Being an engineer, I often try to verify things I see and hear. When you work with different types of people, you realize that everyone has a different definition of a task being done. As a musician, I realize that my standard of playing a piece of music is different than that of other people. My musical standards for myself are a result of all the hard work I put into violin practice when I was younger...sometimes practicing 5-6 hours a day during summers when I would visit a younger brother at a music camp. I practiced like crazy during those days because I was motivated by all the younger kids around me playing circles around me.

I am reminded of a passage from Barack Obama's Dreams of my Father:
“In 1983, I decided to become a community organizer.

There wasn’t much detail to the idea; I didn’t know anyone making a living that way. When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn’t answer them directly. Instead, I’d pronounce on the need for change.

Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds. Change in the Congress, compliant and corrupt. Change in the mood of the country, manic and self-absorbed. Change won’t come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.

That’s what I’ll do, I’ll organize black folks. At the grass roots. For change.

And my friends, black and white, would heartily commend me for my ideals before heading toward the post office to mail in their graduate school applications.

I couldn’t really blame them for being skeptical. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I can construct a certain logic to my decision, show how becoming an organizer was a part of that larger narrative, starting with my father and his father before him, my mother and her parents, my memories of Indonesia with its beggars and farmers and the loss of Lolo to power, on through Ray and Frank, Marcus and Regina; my move to New York; my father’s death. I can see that my choices were never truly mine alone—and that that is how it should be, that to assert otherwise is to chase after a sorry sort of freedom.”

Similarly, I can see that my need for authentication and my standards are in part based upon my experiences and environment. Yet, the need for authentication is also due in part, to the world in which we now live. Science has given us much, in that we now have a more dependable way to observe God's creation. Still, no matter how much we delve into the nature of the universe, we are still making observations and creating models to explain how everything works. We do not have the ability to explicitly prove how things came into existence. And so in everyday we have to make decisions using data that is second hand, probable, or merely plausible.

Nonetheless, when it comes to miracles, I am a skeptic. I do not personally feel the need for a major miracle in my life nor do I want to depend on them. However, I can see that a miracle at the right place and time would transform a person's faith for the rest of their lives. I can also see that many miracles in one's life might have a negative effect in making one too dependent on future miracles and inhibit personal growth. It all depends on the person.

How does this relate to helping people in South Africa? For one thing, my missions trainers have said that miracles occur during every venture. One example that was brought up relates to a car dealership in India. The average sales for this dealership amounted to ~5 cars/month. The REP consultant went to the dealership and prayed with the client over the dealership. New idea for me...I have never really prayed over a workplace before. No salespeople were in that day. What happened?

11 cars were sold that day. Only the accountant was around to do all the paperwork. Miracle? Random luck? I maintain some slight skepticism especially because I was not there and I do not know the full details. However, what I like about REP is that they have a defined process for documenting miracles they see on a venture. Like any scientific experiment, you need to have a control or baseline. In this case, the baseline was an average of 5 sales/month. While the sales on that particular day could be a statistical outlier, no such observed variability had ever been observed before. As a reliability engineer, I do look for data at work to be statistically significant (a measurement difference that is larger than noise). That said, almost by definition, miracles will be statistical outliers...things that defy repeatability and predictability. So if an event like that at a car dealership falls way outside of the known experiences of my client, I am at least willing to believe in the probability that it was indeed a miracle.

The most important thing in a miracle is not the numbers. In order for a miracle to be "authenticated" on a venture, the client must believe it was a miracle and be willing to back it up with testimony. It would be great if this happened to my client...but I don't need a miracle for myself. The most important thing is that they have been transformed inwardly by the miracle. The most important thing is that they now believe.