Tech Support for Mona Lisa Sound ROCK String Quartets

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Toner on March 12, 2009 at 11:32am

I ordered a while back, one of your quartet pieces"Over the hills and far away" I used to play it on guitar, and now I play cello, but haven't been able to find a group of people who appreciate Led Zep..and play strings..to perform it. That would be my technical question. (more of a statement). However, my new cello instructor was enamored with the composition as well as the quality of the printed piece, and she has not only a love of early music, but very dissonant atonal modern music. I saw a gleam in her eye!

I think it's cool you're in this forum and amateur players like myself can actually exchange conversations with you. Thanks for what you do..its very cool!

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Permalink Reply by John Reed on March 12, 2009 at 12:07pm

I'm not sure I hear a question in here, but thank your teacher for her compliments. "Over The Hills" is one of our favorites and used to be a regular on all of our concerts. I always found that the most difficult part of this piece on cello was making sure the D and G were absolutely perfectly in tune for the opening and playing the triplets evenly. Have fun.

Jonathan Toner said:

I ordered a while back, one of your quartet pieces"Over the hills and far away" I used to play it on guitar, and now I play cello, but haven't been able to find a group of people who appreciate Led Zep..and play strings..to perform it. That would be my technical question. (more of a statement). However, my new cello instructor was enamored with the composition as well as the quality of the printed piece, and she has not only a love of early music, but very dissonant atonal modern music. I saw a gleam in her eye!

I think it's cool you're in this forum and amateur players like myself can actually exchange conversations with you. Thanks for what you do..its very cool!

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Permalink Reply by Kelly Torosian on October 16, 2009 at 10:27am

I've got a question about your arrangements in general. I'm trying to get a quartet together from kids in my youth orchestra, but most of them are really young. There's myself and my friend who are in high school, but we're the exceptions; most of our group are a lot younger than us. Everyone's idea of "easy" or "challenging" is different, and although your ratings online of each piece are helpful, I think they're still a little bit vague. So, using "Foxey Lady" as an example, would they need to be familiar with key changes, or are there sections where one would have to shift into a higher position? What skills would be necessary to work on your moderate-level arrangements? Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by John Reed on October 16, 2009 at 11:10am

Foxey Lady is dead easy for all but the viola. It's the violist's arrangement so...he gave himself major solos. In regards to your question about difficulty levels, I too am unsatisfied as to how to communicate that. I've tried a variety of methods and the bottom line is that there are so many factors effecting what makes a piece easy or hard, that it just isn't practical to list them all. I have broken down the difficulty levels by instrument so at least there is some recognition that although a piece, such as Foxey Lady may be overall easy, there is a harder viola part. All of our ratings are RELATIVE. There is no absolute rating. Our easy is in general harder than the standard Suzuki easy and I can't promise no fourth position for all easy pieces unless I made a study of each and decided to publish that information which I think would be overload. If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to give us a call. Foxey's a fun piece and it was designed to seque into Purple Haze, so you might consider both - they're a good pair (both Hendrix).

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Permalink Reply by Kelly Torosian on October 18, 2009 at 12:30pm

Aha, I wondered why the viola part was so much more difficult than the others! That's okay, I'll just play viola for that part, if I can persuade people to get in a group with me. (I tried to over the summer, and all three people were willing to do it, but then they never replied to my messages about rehearsing.) I usually play first violin in my youth orchestra, but if they need me to I switch to viola-a less popular instrument here, for some reason. Last year that's how it went; besides me there's one viola player, so my director was like "Hey, come sit over here and help Christian."
Anyway, thanks man. I'm gonna try so hard to get us some more interesting music this year, and I'm starting with Mona Lisa.

John Reed said:

Foxey Lady is dead easy for all but the viola. It's the violist's arrangement so...he gave himself major solos. In regards to your question about difficulty levels, I too am unsatisfied as to how to communicate that. I've tried a variety of methods and the bottom line is that there are so many factors effecting what makes a piece easy or hard, that it just isn't practical to list them all. I have broken down the difficulty levels by instrument so at least there is some recognition that although a piece, such as Foxey Lady may be overall easy, there is a harder viola part. All of our ratings are RELATIVE. There is no absolute rating. Our easy is in general harder than the standard Suzuki easy and I can't promise no fourth position for all easy pieces unless I made a study of each and decided to publish that information which I think would be overload. If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to give us a call. Foxey's a fun piece and it was designed to seque into Purple Haze, so you might consider both - they're a good pair (both Hendrix).

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Permalink Reply by Alison MacGregor on October 27, 2009 at 7:15pm

Hi John,
Thanks for joining this site. Wow!
A while back i looked through your listed arrangements on the web and wondered if I would ever play them. I think I'm close now, because my trio has at last gained a violist to become a quartet. Yay! Meanwhile I've also now got four teenage students who are ready to play quartets. What piece would you recommend four teenage girls to start with? They range in standard around (Australian) AMEB Grades 5 to 7? The cellist is the best player. I cant guarantee they will recognise any of the music - wrong generation - but I want them to get a range of experiences with modern stuff not just limited to 'Explosive' by Bond. Can you suggest a couple of your arrangements that would go down really well with teenage girls at that standard?
Alison

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Permalink Reply by John Reed on October 28, 2009 at 6:57am

I have a brand new arrangement and it's our new favorite. We just played it down in Orlando, Fl for 1300 heavy hitter execs and, together with 5 or 6 jumbo Trinitron screens, was a major hit. It is very strong and very rock. Nice tie in for your all-girl quartet is the fact that the original is by the most famous female rock duo - "Heart". The arrangement is, "Crazy On You". A few caveats - the opening cello solo is hard, so it's good that your cellist is the strongest. If she has problems, you can either leave out all of the double stops or just start at letter 'A', skipping the entire intro (although, if she feels inspired, she can write her own). The rest is pretty straight forward. There are a number of double stops for the inner voices also, but they should be relatively easy ones. If you want to thin the harmony to remove the double stops, just make sure you don't remove the 3rds and 5ths (especially the 5ths).

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Permalink Reply by Alison MacGregor on October 29, 2009 at 6:02pm

Fantastic. Presuming its uploaded onto your site, I'll get it. Cant wait. Thanks so much.

John Reed said:

I have a brand new arrangement and it's our new favorite. We just played it down in Orlando, Fl for 1300 heavy hitter execs and, together with 5 or 6 jumbo Trinitron screens, was a major hit. It is very strong and very rock. Nice tie in for your all-girl quartet is the fact that the original is by the most famous female rock duo - "Heart". The arrangement is, "Crazy On You". A few caveats - the opening cello solo is hard, so it's good that your cellist is the strongest. If she has problems, you can either leave out all of the double stops or just start at letter 'A', skipping the entire intro (although, if she feels inspired, she can write her own). The rest is pretty straight forward. There are a number of double stops for the inner voices also, but they should be relatively easy ones. If you want to thin the harmony to remove the double stops, just make sure you don't remove the 3rds and 5ths (especially the 5ths).

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