Now it’s Eddy’s turn! 😈 Ray Reacts to Twoset Paganini La Campanella 

downloaded!

Will look into tonic I'm 56 play only 3 months violin now I'm about Level 3 in scales ...I play n practice 1 hr n half everyday.... Play guitar since age 4 ...n piano 10 yrs now...PS was playing fmaj On violin and light bulb went off in my head=yesterday Beatle's!.. Was practicing scales only past 3 months...so now this is my 1st Violin song! I won gold meddle 1976 age 9 on guitar competition Playing yesterday?coincidence?

The app does not work for me :( I'm stuck on loading screen :( I already wrote about it on discord, but didn't get any reply. Sounds like a fun app though :) I wish I could practice with people... I'm just 7 months in learning the cello as my first instrument, but I love it and want to play with people :)

I cant hear others when I join the room, not sure if I'm supposed to?

I don't get it. I'm a non-musician. Are Twoset great violinists or not? When they tried out for Curtis, they got rejected. What gives?

LOL most accurate description of Ray’s reviews! That’s why I love watching them!

Gooo violins! 😂

Lmao just the way i like it

I'm a pianist, so can someone tell me what the audience is laughing at here 5:02?

@@Elijah24553 i think it was because Eddy was copying the bell's rhythm with the bow.

Especially as they only decided to perform it two weeks before the show, so he had two weeks to learn the piece to performance standard... He did amazingly well.

@@JustAnotherBuckyLover EXCELLENT POINT I was hoping Ray spoke on as well. 2-weeks to get the piece to performance-ready AND only 1 rehearsal...obviously NOT the best choice on both ends, however it was about the effect in the end, and not the "perfection!" I applauded you 2SV❣️🫶🏼❤️

2 weeks one rehearsal is sick. I think he gave an awesome performance regardless, but especially under those circumstances.

Two Set love to take risks!! That's part of their charm.

I'd say that Eddy in particular likes to take risks. He has a bit of a reactive mood to him that sometimes gets him in trouble, or at the very least puts him into tricky situations like this one. He did very well nevertheless

Ling Ling is proud.

He was also playing on a Strad that he only had about a month or so to get used to playing. I'm not a string player, but I think switching to a totally different violin for a big event on such short notice would be really challenging.

​@@adriad4855 I think Ray also touched on the subject and shared a same sentiment as you.

That's charisma my friend ;)

Me, not being a musician wondering if I can download the app!!

sameee

Same here but he explains things in a way that we can all understand! 🙃

Well didn’t you?

He tours year after year after amazing year. Brett and Eddy performed in front of a symphony once!

They play really greatly! But there are only very few people that can reach Ray’s level of proficiency

That's a pro soloist for ya

I mean its the difference between playing alone in your room vs. in front of thousands of people

not true-- take a better look at his videos. He sweats and grimaces all the way thrugh.

It takes skill to be able to analyze a performance and it’s not the same skill and remembering there’s a human attached. Both are needed

In high school one of my friends reviewed one of my papers and essentially told me to rewrite the whole thing. I was dubious so I asked another friend to review it (the one I usually asked) she gave a few minor tweaks. I turned it in for an A. It helps to trust your own work, and moreover, find your best critic. Sometimes our work really is bad, sometimes it’s a matter of taste-the best we can do is find a few people whose opinion we can trust.

I agree this was good criticism, but disagree that music and art is supposed to be joyful and uplifting. Art is about expression, and negative emotions can be expressed beautifully too

I agree

I totally agree! Just because you've mastered a certain thing doesn't mean you can teach it to others. But Ray's got them both.

Well of course they're friends, he's not going to roast them.

Where can I read about this

@@M_SC Good point. Here's a long answer. I don't have time to cut it down atm. I hope you find it interesting! TLDR: There are things you can learn about how the brain works that enable you to jump ahead in learning and performing music. Ray calls these "Life hacks". In terms of your literal question "Where can I read about this", I'll be on the lookout for something relevant and try to remember to post it here if I find it. This is close to my professional field and I have a pile of books in front of me, and experimental results from my own studies, but all not in a form I can readily direct you to. I'm piecing together a lot of findings and applying them to playing instruments. The basic principle I'm trying to convey is that humans are FAR less psychological than Classical music musicians often believe. In most cases they try to use their brains in a way that cannot work, and when it doesn't work they blame their nerves, or lack of practice, or whatever, and keep doing the same thing as before even though it didnt work. Here are some basic examples of how undertanding the brain can help succeed as a musician: • If you learn multiple ways of playing something, they will compete to happen during performance. On the piano this can manifest as a seemingly random wrong note. The pianist will likely think they positioned their finger incorrectly and mess with repetition and millimetre adjustments when actually the cause was two competing ways of playing that note. I first noticed this when I saw fingers striking the gap between two notes. That is a gigantic distance error and so not NOT a simple positional accuracy error! It's competing ideas of what to do. (Another example: messy handwriting can be superimposed words e.g. the next word and the current word. Practicing writing neartly does not solve this. Clear calm thinking does). • It is impossible to delete something from your brain. So don't learn anything wrong in the first place. (This is relevant to the point above). • Repetition does NOT work. So DO NOT do it. It simply reeforces errors. Perlman has said something like this IIRC. • Problem solving DOES work. Do it ALL THE TIME! • And relevant to Ray's point: Brains work in CONTEXTS. If you learn something in one context, you will likely not be able to do it in another context. Ray's point is that you will be performing in front of an audience so you must learn in front of an audience. CORRECT! You cannot learn in a practice room on your own and then perform successfully in front of an audience (unless you have someway of not including them in your context in which case you have not connected with your audience => bad performance). When it fails, classical musicians usually blame nerves when actually they were attempting to do something that brains cannot do. A single practice performance with an audicence followed by a sleep can be enough for your brain to adjust to the new context. Imagining well the audience situation may work with sufficient experience. • This is also why your teacher never gets to hear how well you played the piece at home! Again, not nerves. The nerves follow the event (or previous similar events). (BTW: You can solve this one simply by recording yourself at home and playing it to your teacher). • However well you learn a concerto, it will always go wrong when you play it with an orchestra, because the context is different (it's a superset context). (I've heard that some concert pianists can basically ignore the orchestra and do their own thing and hence keep their learning context, but I don't like that approach). • If you fear part of the piece, your brain will model it as something to be feared and will likely go wrong during the performance [I've omitted details here - amygdala etc]. If you see it as your best friend, your brain will model it somewhere else in your brain - somwhere with far greater capacity incidentally. You will then look forward to learning it and playing, just like you look forward to meeting a best friend. • If you only play one piano when you learn, even to virtuoso level, you won't be able to play another piano that's slightly different (action etc). If you do this in public, you might incorrectly blame the situation for the fact you can't play the new (to you) piano. Learning to play several different pianos at that point will be very painful, but after than you'll be able to play a wide range of pianos with ease. It's about your brain building a model of a general piano and learning to control it. The book "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins might help I think. He's made some surprising observations that are obvious in hindsight. For example, having learned something, and then something similar, you have to re-learn the first thing. It's to do with our ability to do abstraction / analogies (apply what you learn in one situation to another situation that is essentially the same but ostensibly different). When we have to re-learn the first thing we often think we're stupid. We're not. It's necessary. I am involved in understanding the brain AND classical music / musicians. ALL the top musicians I know (mostly concert pianists, concert organists, and various violinists) operate their brains in a way that is consistent with [my understanding of] how the brain works. Many/most amateur musicians and uni music students I've known do not! - and usually fail to become good and often give up. There are a lot of myths around, some of which can ruin your chance of success. Since I am involved in both fields, I may write one or more books myself. I very nearly wrote one of memorization in 2021 and may still do that. Crucially, look out for what ACTUALLY works. Ignore reasoning - totally ignore it! What "should" work is no use to you. You need evidence that an idea / method / strategy DOES work. A good way of testing an idea is to put it to a top musician. If they react with a strong negative emotion, it's a bad idea. Pianist Charles Owen had a strong negative emotion when I suggested evolving fingerings. *Everything I've heard Ray Chen say is 100% spot on IMO (i.e. consistent with my understanding of how the brain works). Hence why he's so good. He's also a great communicator, and he communicates what actually works for him not some myths he's picked up along the way, so there's much good stuff to learn from him.* Finally, when you do that pre-performance in front of a pre-audience DO NOT see whether you can succeed, or hope to succeed. You will never succeed 100% so brain will register the event has having failed. Instead, say to yourself and your audience that you are doing this to find out what you don't know. There's always something you don't know so you'll always succeed. Which is necessary. I hope there's something here of value / interest to you.

@@JSB2500 This comment is gold 🙏🏼

​@@JSB2500 "I'm doing this to find out what I don't know... That's a beautiful message. Thank you so much for sharing all these gems

Wow, that's absolutely true. My teacher (not knowing anything about brain work) always told me the same!🤯 especially about error remembering and playing it again at performance. Very interesting and useful insight. 🙏

second this

They are massively superb artists.

brett doesn't have perfect pitch

@@brickman2718 Eddy. Not Brett.

One more similarity: their surname!!! 😂

I've come to that conclusion too and actually nice to see someone was also thinking along those lines :D I think that Eddy has a great sense of musicality in general, not only when it comes to playing the violin. When he composes, plays the piano, interprets the music or transcribes it. At least from my perspective it really seems this way. Eddy & Ray - I can definitely agree there are some similarities in how they react and listen. Though ofc Eddy's synergy with Brett is well established :)

@@meysician7117 I never would have spotted that one! 😆

💯

And only knowing he was going to do this 2 weeks before 😄

I'm sure he knew the piece the whole time. Especially since Sell Out - he spilled some pretty great solos for that song... But practicing a full piece for the purpose of a live performance is a different level

@@souldancersbyjennifer ye tru they don't perform often as ray said having the balls to do this surprise, fr big ups either way

You can do any instrument, there may not be animation for it yet. But they’re adding instruments.