AN INTERVIEW BY RUPERT CHEEK ABOUT THE BRAINARM
“Most of the people don’t think they have any musical idea, but yes, they have a lot inside lying idle in their unconscious, awaiting to be awaken. And we can say for sure that everyone has great ideas, since all of us have an experience of life and we all have the capability of reasoning it which automatically generates feelings, leading to a personal poetics of life… Also, we all have a common experience of sounds and their meaning (some are limited to our own ethnicity, some others are collective), as we all are surrounded by sound and music since we were born. And if we are able to understand music, this is because unconsciously we have learned its rules, thus we all are able to create music as well. So, the aim of Brainarm is to connect people with their own unconscious music and make it become conscious and alive.”
Guido Mallardi told me about his composition coaching practice
“Well, it was 2002 when I [Guido Mallardi] started teaching at school. I was 25 and very soon I got bored of teaching children and teenagers in a traditional way, particularly because the great majority of them didn’t practise enough to progress to such level that allows a teacher to tell “music secrets” that makes the piano a great instrument. I mean those discoveries (that we can generically call ART) which are worth 7 or more hours a day spent at piano and make a big difference between a performer and a musician…
So I was looking for something that, at the same time was a great deal to me and my students, something to let them express at a high level straightaway. And of course this was not possible on a pianistic level… That’s why I tried with composition, as it gives everyone the chance to try again and again after making mistakes and find something soon or later, not the same as performance…
The point is: I wanted them to have at least one chance in their lives to express at their best with music, even if their best was a very simple music written (as most of them were at grade 1 level or total beginners)…
But I was absolutely wrong about results. In facts, little by little refining my technique and giving them more and more freedom in term of note range, rhythm, style (and… allow chance to have a chance), I started realizing how beautiful and complex people’s music can be, despite they are not aware of their own potential at first.
Parnassus should be accessible to everybody, so that even one’s neighbour who is tone-deaf, one day may come up with a 1st mov of piano sonata.
As a coach, it’s all a matter of using the right tools, be impartial in questions and above all having faith in people.”
I asked Guido “Why is it not possible as a pianist?”
“For some this is possible of course, and today there are many great pianists (one of my favourite is Ramin Bahrami, which is a great interpreter of Bach). But for most of the people who are trained pianists, even if technically well trained, art is inaccessible. They will never have a career, they will not record for labels. So many years and sacrifices and that’s a real shame… Their hands work perfectly on the keyboard, but they have not been able to find that “link” between their heart and their hands, that means being able to take their deepest emotions and transfer them completely into the instrument. The same applies to any instrumentalist basically… It’s really hard to “play oneself”…
That’s why I was looking for an alternative medium other than music performance to let people fully express themselves through music, and I have found something that unexpectedly even worked with non-musicians too…
While playing at a high level straightaway without being a trained musician would be a miracle, composing at a high level straightaway without being a trained musician is possible. It only requires the mind and the hands of an expert coach as an interface, and this lets anybody fully express themselves without need of any piano or theory lesson at all. And that’s why I have called this innovative praxis Brainarm Full Compositional Coaching.
Helping common people become aware they have great music inside, despite they think they don’t have any musical talent or idea, and that their music is worth to be widely performed, recorded and distributed. Camille was 6 year old non-musician when she composed this wonderful piece via Brainarm.”
Read the same interview on Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/brainarm-composition-coaching-rupert-cheek/
Awesome post! Keep up the great work! 🙂
Thank you very much!
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Thanks a lot!