Thinking like a musician
Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2020 7:13 am
Had more thoughts this morning while driving around doing various errands, and I didn't want to hijack Joe's thread on musicality. So here's a second thread!
Relevant background:
I've spent more time playing lute in the past 2-3 years than tuba. So my had has been more into renaissance/baroque music, and I have been thinking in voicing a lot more than I do when I play tuba. There is always a mid-point in learning a piece on lute where you separate out the various voices you are playing to ensure that you are allowing the voices to actually exist as independent voices. Part of that is figuring out where the voices are implied, rather than written, because of the physical limitations of only having 4 fingers to fret.
Second, in spending a lot of time in that period of music, I started following Sarah Jeffries's YouTube channel about the recorder. One of her recent videos is her analyzing Telemann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgaU1B6T8Us
Finally, I just listened to Roger Bobo's recording of the Penderecki Capriccio this morning in the car and listened to it with all of the above rolling around in my head.
Now onto my thoughts.
Joe's thread about musicality got me thinking yet again about musicality. I know. Big surprise. But one of the limitations we have as musicians is we don't teach or talk about music on the same level as many other instrumentalists. Now, it may be my own experience, but I have never heard the Penderecki taught in the way I thought about it this morning while hearing Roger play it. It very clearly has three voices. And to play it really effectively, the way Roger does, it needs to be played with a sensitivity to those three voices and ensuring that they are all very clear and distinct.
That brings into play having a technical mastery of tone, articulation, volume control, flexibility, etc...The recorder videos do a great job of teaching this because it's an instrument with the tuba's limitation - Playing multi-voice music when you only are able to play one tone at once (I know...multiphonics...I'm ignoring that because it's an effect).
I know when I performed the Penderecki back in college, I was just happy to get from the beginning to the end. That was a successful performance to me. And I know I thought about it as a single line (one voice) throughout. I had and have never heard it analyzed as three voices, but hearing Roger play it, that's what is going on.
He is able to do that because his ability to start one note is in no way dependent on the note preceding it (i.e., prodigious flexibility). So each voice sounds like it exists on its own, without being affected by the other voices.
Now this becomes a cart and horse question, or just a bootstrapping question: Would tuba players become more technically proficient in a nuanced way (not louder, faster, higher) if we focused on that sort of subtlety and demanded it from ourselves all the time, the way many other instrumentalists do? Do we need to develop the technique and THEN bring it to the music? I think the answer to both is yes. But we need to first understand the music with that subtlety and demand it from ourselves before any of that can happen.
Thank you again for everyone who made this new forum happen so that I have a place to put down all my ramblings. It's useful to me to have to write them out to an audience. And I hope someone else finds them useful? Or interesting? Or at least diverting?
Relevant background:
I've spent more time playing lute in the past 2-3 years than tuba. So my had has been more into renaissance/baroque music, and I have been thinking in voicing a lot more than I do when I play tuba. There is always a mid-point in learning a piece on lute where you separate out the various voices you are playing to ensure that you are allowing the voices to actually exist as independent voices. Part of that is figuring out where the voices are implied, rather than written, because of the physical limitations of only having 4 fingers to fret.
Second, in spending a lot of time in that period of music, I started following Sarah Jeffries's YouTube channel about the recorder. One of her recent videos is her analyzing Telemann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgaU1B6T8Us
Finally, I just listened to Roger Bobo's recording of the Penderecki Capriccio this morning in the car and listened to it with all of the above rolling around in my head.
Now onto my thoughts.
Joe's thread about musicality got me thinking yet again about musicality. I know. Big surprise. But one of the limitations we have as musicians is we don't teach or talk about music on the same level as many other instrumentalists. Now, it may be my own experience, but I have never heard the Penderecki taught in the way I thought about it this morning while hearing Roger play it. It very clearly has three voices. And to play it really effectively, the way Roger does, it needs to be played with a sensitivity to those three voices and ensuring that they are all very clear and distinct.
That brings into play having a technical mastery of tone, articulation, volume control, flexibility, etc...The recorder videos do a great job of teaching this because it's an instrument with the tuba's limitation - Playing multi-voice music when you only are able to play one tone at once (I know...multiphonics...I'm ignoring that because it's an effect).
I know when I performed the Penderecki back in college, I was just happy to get from the beginning to the end. That was a successful performance to me. And I know I thought about it as a single line (one voice) throughout. I had and have never heard it analyzed as three voices, but hearing Roger play it, that's what is going on.
He is able to do that because his ability to start one note is in no way dependent on the note preceding it (i.e., prodigious flexibility). So each voice sounds like it exists on its own, without being affected by the other voices.
Now this becomes a cart and horse question, or just a bootstrapping question: Would tuba players become more technically proficient in a nuanced way (not louder, faster, higher) if we focused on that sort of subtlety and demanded it from ourselves all the time, the way many other instrumentalists do? Do we need to develop the technique and THEN bring it to the music? I think the answer to both is yes. But we need to first understand the music with that subtlety and demand it from ourselves before any of that can happen.
Thank you again for everyone who made this new forum happen so that I have a place to put down all my ramblings. It's useful to me to have to write them out to an audience. And I hope someone else finds them useful? Or interesting? Or at least diverting?
