I am amazed at the difficulty I have in convincing people that awareness of time is a fundamental musical skill. People think I must be talking about keeping time, you know--the 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. But that is not it at all.
As a young musician I despised the metronome, if for no other reason than that it showed me (no kidding) how unable I was to agree with it. Gradually I figured out a better use for the metronome.
This simple exercise revealed to children that they have control over their own tempo, that is, their own unconscious involvement with time, and that getting control of it on your own terms is truly rewarding.
Play a piece you find challenging. Play it, then clock your tempo with the metronome and write down the date and the metronomic speed. Set the metronome to the speed you wish to play, which might be slower than what you just played -- slower is actually a more difficult adjustment than faster. Look at the music while this new beat is ticking, but don't play. Next time you sit down to play the piece repeat these steps and you may see a progression toward your desired tempo.
It comes not from the metronome, actually, but from within you.
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Why the Beat May Be a Bad Idea
As a child playing the piano by myself I could not keep "the" beat. The problem persisted into adulthood, baffling many people besides myself. How come the problem vanished when I played other instruments, the organ, for example? Why did I not have the problem when accompanying singers or playing together with others?
The answer, though obvious once you think about it, has taken me years to figure out. It has to do with the difference between vertical and horizontal hearing. Alone at the piano, playing music composed specifically for its acoustics, I was so fascinated by the qualities of mixed vibrations that I simply could not believe that time could be objectified.
Once others joined me in music-making the impetus to move forward blocked the power of those enticing mixes; the beat won.
One important clue to the validity of this observation is the tendency that I and many other pianists have to hold certain sounds too long. Failure to release harmonies on time is a sign that harmonies crave duration. Their vibrations, in order to mesh, must complete a certain number of cycles. Interrupting that process is highly dramatic; takes conscious effort.
Awareness of this phenomenon is heightened by Tonal Refraction. If it is a problem you have ever experienced, get in touch with me. nancygarniez@tonalrefraction.com
The answer, though obvious once you think about it, has taken me years to figure out. It has to do with the difference between vertical and horizontal hearing. Alone at the piano, playing music composed specifically for its acoustics, I was so fascinated by the qualities of mixed vibrations that I simply could not believe that time could be objectified.
Once others joined me in music-making the impetus to move forward blocked the power of those enticing mixes; the beat won.
One important clue to the validity of this observation is the tendency that I and many other pianists have to hold certain sounds too long. Failure to release harmonies on time is a sign that harmonies crave duration. Their vibrations, in order to mesh, must complete a certain number of cycles. Interrupting that process is highly dramatic; takes conscious effort.
Awareness of this phenomenon is heightened by Tonal Refraction. If it is a problem you have ever experienced, get in touch with me. nancygarniez@tonalrefraction.com
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Hearing Harmonically Takes Time, a Very Specific Kind of Time
Hearing harmonically is entirely different from hearing lines contrapuntally. In order to form a true harmony tones must converge with the same note values and the same articulations so that their vibrations may blend for a sufficient number of cycles to allow the essence of the chord to establish and clarify itself.
Linear hearing, on the contrary, is in constant flux; whatever momentary stases occur must not interrupt the flow and may even have to be slightly "out of tune" in order to affirm the fleeting nature of that texture.
We are not conventionally taught to recognize the difference. Especially not if we play the piano. Therefore our articulation is sloppy, our releases non-existent, our sense of line woefully inadequate to the genius of, say, Beethoven, or Mozart -- two composers we do not even think of as contrapuntal.
Try once counting the number of actual chords (as defined in the first paragraph above) in a movement by either of those two masters. I pretty much guarantee you will be shocked. Then make sure when you play that movement that you respect the difference between the one kind of hearing, which tends to be sluggish, and the other, which is anything but.
Linear hearing, on the contrary, is in constant flux; whatever momentary stases occur must not interrupt the flow and may even have to be slightly "out of tune" in order to affirm the fleeting nature of that texture.
We are not conventionally taught to recognize the difference. Especially not if we play the piano. Therefore our articulation is sloppy, our releases non-existent, our sense of line woefully inadequate to the genius of, say, Beethoven, or Mozart -- two composers we do not even think of as contrapuntal.
Try once counting the number of actual chords (as defined in the first paragraph above) in a movement by either of those two masters. I pretty much guarantee you will be shocked. Then make sure when you play that movement that you respect the difference between the one kind of hearing, which tends to be sluggish, and the other, which is anything but.
Monday, November 10, 2014
Boredom, Again, This Time Front Page News
In the Sunday Review section of The New York Times, Sunday November 2, is an Op-Ed piece by Dr. Richard Friedman of the Weill Cornell Medical School, a psychiatrist who is knowledgeable about ADHD. In his view the cause of the "illness" is boredom. A kid has trouble paying attention who is not given something worth attending to. duh...
The thing that gets brushed over in teaching children music is the level of perception which is most real to them: not notes but vibrations. Tonal Refraction puts children in vivid contact with what they hear at a magnified rate of intensity so that they know it is real. Because it is visualized they can also talk about it on a par with the teacher or a parent. The method can also reattach adults to that level of intense perceptual alertness that was mangle-ironed in the process of churning out tons of reliable (i.e., boring) notes in music school.
I have long known that boredom is one of my prime motivators in life. It conceals always the question: "What am I missing here?"
The all-new www.tonalrefraction.com is up and waiting for you to pay a visit.
The thing that gets brushed over in teaching children music is the level of perception which is most real to them: not notes but vibrations. Tonal Refraction puts children in vivid contact with what they hear at a magnified rate of intensity so that they know it is real. Because it is visualized they can also talk about it on a par with the teacher or a parent. The method can also reattach adults to that level of intense perceptual alertness that was mangle-ironed in the process of churning out tons of reliable (i.e., boring) notes in music school.
I have long known that boredom is one of my prime motivators in life. It conceals always the question: "What am I missing here?"
The all-new www.tonalrefraction.com is up and waiting for you to pay a visit.
Sunday, November 9, 2014
Vertical vs. Linear Hearing, Again
It is a rich topic, one that does not receive enough attention in our training - we are saving time, after all.
In the tension between the two modes of hearing one experiences the liveness of sound, if I may call it that. It is as if sounds teeter on the brink of stability, longing to be stable but not quite "knowing how." What pulls the tones higher or lower is sometimes acoustical, a function of the instrument's mechanics, sometimes the feeling of the singer or instrumentalist.
Sometimes it is the composer's skill that exposes this quality where we least expect it, on the piano, for example. This morning I heard it happen in the Minuet of Beethoven's Op. 10, No. 2. Combine Ds and C#s in just the right octaves and proportions and, voila! the sound moves.
In the tension between the two modes of hearing one experiences the liveness of sound, if I may call it that. It is as if sounds teeter on the brink of stability, longing to be stable but not quite "knowing how." What pulls the tones higher or lower is sometimes acoustical, a function of the instrument's mechanics, sometimes the feeling of the singer or instrumentalist.
Sometimes it is the composer's skill that exposes this quality where we least expect it, on the piano, for example. This morning I heard it happen in the Minuet of Beethoven's Op. 10, No. 2. Combine Ds and C#s in just the right octaves and proportions and, voila! the sound moves.
Saturday, November 8, 2014
Vertical and Linear Hearing
Most of us learn music theory in relation to vertical, i.e., harmonic hearing. Tones are identified by their function within scales as borne out or expressed in chord progressions. A lot is left unaccounted for by this method.
For one thing, it does not account for the tension inherent between tones that do not want to move beyond their position of stability in the scale: 5 notoriously not wanting to rise to 6, for example. Nor does it account for the tremendous upheaval when a given scale degree in one tonality (say 1 in B minor) becomes a different scale degree in another tonality (say 3 in G major). This is especially problematic in the absence of perfect fifths to stabilize the tonic, whether that tonic is expressed or merely implied.
This is Beethoven at his most subtle: the first natural horn tones of the Fourth Piano Concerto, Op. 58. Incredibly difficult to play as the players are hearing one set of stabilizing tones coming from the orchestra though their entrance in no way conforms to that set of tones, but to one as yet unexpressed and foreign to their own overtone series.
This is just one instance in which players and conductors must have been overjoyed at the invention of the modern horn: the note was suddenly easy. Of course, the meaning was lost. But we are still involved in saving the time that was saved!
For one thing, it does not account for the tension inherent between tones that do not want to move beyond their position of stability in the scale: 5 notoriously not wanting to rise to 6, for example. Nor does it account for the tremendous upheaval when a given scale degree in one tonality (say 1 in B minor) becomes a different scale degree in another tonality (say 3 in G major). This is especially problematic in the absence of perfect fifths to stabilize the tonic, whether that tonic is expressed or merely implied.
This is Beethoven at his most subtle: the first natural horn tones of the Fourth Piano Concerto, Op. 58. Incredibly difficult to play as the players are hearing one set of stabilizing tones coming from the orchestra though their entrance in no way conforms to that set of tones, but to one as yet unexpressed and foreign to their own overtone series.
This is just one instance in which players and conductors must have been overjoyed at the invention of the modern horn: the note was suddenly easy. Of course, the meaning was lost. But we are still involved in saving the time that was saved!
Friday, November 7, 2014
Introspection
Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, which I heard from the row of the same number the other evening, furnishes a beautiful model for introspection in the slow movement. Deceptively simple, demanding nothing short of the most refined lyrical ear and touch, it pulls the listener into the most personal level of piano playing after the vertiginous chromatic romp through many keys in all dynamics of the first movement, and before the riotous rhythmic play of the last movement which gave me the feeling that nobody wanted it to end--not the player, not the orchestra, not Beethoven himself.
Music students do not learn about introspection as a positive statement. We are encouraged to project as if we play only in Carnegie Hall's main auditorium. But the greatest players who do play there are capable of reaching us at an almost inaudible level of sound way up in the top balcony. So what is the problem with introspection?
I think it makes too great a demand on teachers. It concerns almost imperceptible movement within a small range of dynamic. Teachers are busy, time is limited, they feel responsible for "results". Introspection takes time and may yield a result that becomes conscious only tomorrow or five years from now.
What's the rush?
Music students do not learn about introspection as a positive statement. We are encouraged to project as if we play only in Carnegie Hall's main auditorium. But the greatest players who do play there are capable of reaching us at an almost inaudible level of sound way up in the top balcony. So what is the problem with introspection?
I think it makes too great a demand on teachers. It concerns almost imperceptible movement within a small range of dynamic. Teachers are busy, time is limited, they feel responsible for "results". Introspection takes time and may yield a result that becomes conscious only tomorrow or five years from now.
What's the rush?
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