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Black background, Coloured Line: Visual Processing, Autism, and Open Scores For many autistic people, perception is not a neutral backdrop but an active, often intense experience. Visual information arrives with weight, texture, and emotional charge. Where neurotypical design often assumes that white space is calming and clarity lies in brightness, autistic perception frequently responds in the opposite way. High-contrast white backgrounds, dense notation, and visual clutter can overwhelm the nervous system, creating cognitive fatigue before any meaningful engagement begins. Black or dark backgrounds, by contrast, reduce overall luminance. They quiet the visual field. Instead of light flooding the eye, forms emerge gently, with edges that feel contained rather than invasive. For many autistic individuals, this reduction in brightness lowers sensory load, allowing attention to settle rather than scatter. The background recedes, and what remains becomes deliberate. Colour, when used spar...

  From Taught to Self-Directed: A Continuum Approach to Musical Practice The purpose of musical teaching is not permanence. It is passage. Yet much of music education behaves as though the opposite were true: as though the teacher were meant to remain central, visible, directive—an ongoing authority whose presence is required for progress to continue. In such models, practice is assigned, monitored, corrected, and measured. Motivation is managed. Independence is promised later. The Continuum Approach begins from a different assumption: that teaching exists to make itself gradually unnecessary. Practice, in this view, is not a task handed down, but a capacity that must be grown. It is not sustained by supervision, but by understanding. A student who practises only when instructed has not failed; they have simply not yet been taught what practice actually is. Practice and the Problem of Compliance The word practice is often used imprecisely. It is treated as synonymous with r...

  How Scales and Sympathetic Strings Teach the Ear to Play Before we talk about scales, we should talk about listening. Most people are introduced to scales as ladders — up, down, repeat — something to conquer with the fingers. But the original purpose of a scale was never speed or accuracy. It was orientation . A way of placing the body inside a sound world and letting the ear learn where it belongs. When you play slowly inside a scale — especially one built around open strings — something subtle happens. The instrument begins to answer you. Certain notes bloom. Others resist. Some feel inevitable, while others feel like questions. This isn’t theory. It’s acoustics teaching the ear. Sympathetic strings make this process impossible to ignore. Unlike stopped strings, sympathetic strings do not respond to effort or intention. They only respond to truth. When a pitch aligns clearly enough with the harmonic field of the instrument, the sympathetic strings vibrate. When it doesn’t,...

🌿 Continuum Studio — Personalised Online Music Sessions I offer one-to-one online music sessions using the Continuum Method — a personalised, pressure-free approach to learning and creative development. Sessions adapt to individual learning styles, personalities, and creative temperaments, with a strong focus on confidence, curiosity, and long-term musical wellbeing. Alongside teaching, I’m developing this work as part of my wider creative and educational practice, including my books and research-based projects. 📚 Related books and resources are available via my author catalogue. www.sarniadelamare@gmail.com 🌿 Book a Continuum Session (£10) 📅 Choose a time: Google Calendar Sessions are delivered internationally online. Private, supportive, and not recorded. 🌿 Continuum Studio — Online Pilot Session (30 Minutes)  These one-to-one sessions introduce students to the Continuum Method: a personalised, pressure-free approach to learning strings and pi...

  The Undulating Practice Method How Modular Exploration Builds a Lifelong Creative Continuum By Sarnia de la Maré Introduction: Practice as Living Research Across disciplines, serious creative work rarely develops in straight lines. It evolves through cycles of curiosity, immersion, refinement, and return. Within the Continuum Approach, this process can be understood as undulating practice : a method of sustained, modular exploration in which ideas are entered deeply, developed fully, and temporarily set aside — not abandoned, but archived — for future reactivation. This essay outlines how undulating practice functions as a self-directed learning system, a creative research methodology, and a foundation for long-term artistic resilience. 1. The Undulating Cycle Undulating practice moves through recurring phases: Attraction — An idea, material, or question generates sustained interest. Immersion — Focused exploration of technique, language, and context. Expansion — Testing varia...

  Why Strings Wear Out — and How to Make Them Last Longer Every string player reaches the same quiet moment: the instrument is still in tune, technique feels fine — but the sound has lost its sparkle. The string hasn’t broken. It’s simply worn out. Strings don’t fail suddenly. They deteriorate slowly, for very practical reasons. 1. Constant Tension and Metal Fatigue All string instruments rely on metal strings held under continuous high tension . From the moment a string is fitted, it begins ageing. Over time: The metal core stretches microscopically Elasticity decreases The string vibrates less freely This is normal wear, not a fault — even in the most expensive strings. 2. Vibration and Playing Wear Every note flexes the string thousands of times. This repeated movement causes metal fatigue , especially in the core. As this builds up: Overtones disappear first The sound becomes dull or flat Response feels slower and less reliable A string can look fine...