Friday, June 28, 2013

Does it Go Up or Does it Go Down?

Direction is everything--much more important than notes.  Going up feels completely different from going down.  The anticipation of rise or fall reveals a lot about the return player will get for daring to make those initial sounds.  

Is it a real rise or is it just pretending to move?   A real rise is continuous for more than two consecutive notes.  If the line reverses direction after the second note it is clearly not committed to rise.  Then what is it?

Turns are always a possibility.  Often they are used deceptively, to trick us into thinking we are going either up or down, only to find that we ended up where we started.

Everything about these distinctions is expressed immediately in the hand even when the player has very primitive finger skills.