Tag: dynamics

How to Play with Emotion

Being able to play with emotion is necessary. Being able to fake it is necessary, too. It’s not ideal, but it’s a good skill to know.

Some days you just can’t access that particular emotion, so you need to fake it. Sometimes you haven’t been through enough life to bring the idea across. These are good examples of learning the mechanics behind playing with emotion and learning how to do it on demand.

I’ll talk today about playing with emotion for real and how to fake it. I’ll also talk about how to put emotion into the most bland things in order to make them sparkle.

How to Play with Emotion for Real

Before you start playing, take a minute to bring up old memories or current situations that make you feel the way that this music is trying to emote. Holding that picture in your mind, begin playing the piece.

Allow the part of your mind that holds memories to wander as you play. The piece will hold you in the emotion(s) that the composer wants you to feel. You’ll feel the emotions ebbing and flowing through your body, out your instrument, and into the air.

When you hit the last chord, you will feel free, like everything that your memories were working through were resolved with that last resolution in the last chord.

Notice I only said to allow part of your mind to wander. You still need to concentrate on the notes.

How to Fake Play with Emotion

You’re having a hard time conveying the emotion in this piece. Maybe you haven’t gone through enough in your life so you can’t access those emotions. This is a good thing – it means you have had a good life.

Maybe you’re not an emotional person so you can’t access those emotions. Don’t beat yourself up over that. It’s just not how you’re built. Usually those who are in your boat, though, are really good at following directions. Here they are, step-by-step.

I find that I have to teach 3rd and 4th graders how to fake play with emotion because they just can’t access their emotions on demand, but they’re starting to get into music that requires it.

Step 1: Analyze

Take a moment to analyze each phrase. Each phrase has a sunshine moment. This is usually where the melody goes up, but it can be other things. You get to decide where the sunshine moment is in each phrase because you’re the artist. Draw a sun over each sunshine moment.

Step 2: Dynamics

The piece will crescendo to each sunshine moment and diminuendo away from it. If there are a ton of dynamics already written into the music, these dynamics will be very slight. Same with if it was written before the Romantic Era.

If it’s a piece that doesn’t have much written in there, and it was written after the Classical Era, let her rip. Bring your own dynamics out.

Step 3: Rubato

General rule: Crescendo = faster. Diminuendo = slower.

Rubato should only be used after the Classical Era.

Keep it in good taste, though. It’s all supposed to equal out to the same amount of time in the end.

Adding Emotion to the Mundane and Boring Music

Wait, I’m admitting there are boring things to play? Yup. They’re called scales and technical studies. Sometimes etudes, too.

Scales are a necessary evil – I go into that more here. Technical studies might be even more boring than scales, but they’re also necessary. I go into that more here.

I’ve heard it said that if you don’t play everything musically, then you’re wasting your time. How do you play scales and technical studies musically? Add emotion. You can even make a game of it. Make a list of emotions and alternate between them while you’re practicing your warm-ups.

If you’re having a hard time playing warm-ups with emotion, try faking it, using my directions. It will give you good practice for having to fake your emotions with other pieces.

Conclusion

It’s a wonderful experience to play your instrument with emotion, but sometimes we have to develop that skill. It’s good to have a step-by-step plan to add emotion to anything. It helps with your overall musicianship and adds some sparkle to your music.

Using Different Sounds as a Practice Motivator

Using different sounds is a great motivator for anyone who needs to run through something multiple times, but can’t get themselves to play something more than once. I know that I’m guilty of only playing through everything once!

What do I mean by using different sounds?

Depending on the instrument, you could think about it as experimenting with different ways of playing it – 8va, different tone colors, play loud, play quiet, etc.

I will give examples below for each instrument that I teach.

Electric Piano

It’s probably the easiest to change the sound on an electric piano. You just push a button and it sounds like an organ, a harpsichord, or even a brass band.

You should see the way kids light up when I tell them that they need to use their pieces to help them decide which sound effect they like the best. When they come back the next week, the parents tell me that they went through their pieces 3-7 times per day. Woohoo! Grown-ups can have that fun experience, too.

Acoustic Piano

When my oldest daughter started playing the piano, she loved to practice every piece in every octave on the keyboard.

She started with the bottom octave, moved up to the next octave and played the same piece. Moved up to the next octave. So on and so forth until she got to the top octave, then started over on the process with the next piece.

I’m not saying you have to be that meticulous, but you could do it a couple octaves down or a couple octaves up, just to hear the tone color change. That would be a grand total of three times through.

Flute

When I was in college, I was the piccolo player. I would practice everything on both instruments. My fingers were faster on the piccolo, so sometimes I’d work things out on that instrument then switch to the flute. That would be one option for using a different sound, if you have a piccolo. 🙂

Flutes can change our tone color at the drop of a hat. I wrote about that more in detail here. Why not use that to our advantage? You could try that rhaspy, airy tone that the Irish use on the flute for almost a percussive instrument. Try playing the piece in every tone color of the rainbow, one at a time, and decide which one you like.

All Instruments

Using different sounds as a practice motivator has a lot of different applications for any instrument. Here is a short list of different options, feel free to add to the list.

  • Volume – ff, f, mf, mp, p, pp
  • Emotion – try playing it sad, happy, angry, etc.
  • Articulation – staccato, legato, marcato, accented, etc.

Seriously

I’ve mentioned a few things that serious musicians do to create their own interpretation of the music – dynamics, tone color, emotion, and articulation. They experiment with how they want to play a phrase to get their message across in the best way.

Using different sounds might be a great practice motivator because it’s fun. It’s also serious work. If fun doesn’t motivate you, maybe discovering your interpretation of a piece will be motivating for you.

Conclusion

Everyone likes to experiment with different sounds on different pieces. It not only makes kids light up, it also has a really good purpose. Sometimes that purpose is to convince yourself to, “Play it again, Sam.” Sometimes it helps with your interpretation of the piece. However it helps, don’t be afraid to experiment. 🙂