Tag: Harmonics

Harmonics

Harmonics are something that you learn about in physics class. They’re also practical in the music world. The more, better in tune, and stronger harmonics your tone has, the better it sounds.

What are Harmonics?

Harmonics are the overtones that your ear percieves, but can’t hear.

If you cut a string in half, it’s an octave higher. If you cut it in half again, it sounds a Perfect 5th higher. Here’s a list of the harmonic progressions below.

  1. Octave
  2. Perfect 5th
  3. Perfect 4th
  4. Major 3rd
  5. Minor 3rd
  6. Major 2nd
  7. Minor 2nd

The math and science behind this is here.

How Do Harmonics Affect Me as a Musician?

The stronger, better in-tune, and more various the harmonics, the better the sound.

Pianists

Pianists may have checked out by now, thinking harmonics don’t affect us. They do.

You know how sometimes you have to hold down a note long past it has finished making a sound? The composer is using resonance by having you play other notes from the harmonic series, which activates that string.

You can use the harmonic series to double-check and make sure that a piano is in tune. Hold down the keys for each note in the harmonic series. Play the bottom note. If you can hear the higher sounds, the piano is decently in tune. This only works on an acoustic piano.

These two things happen because of the laws of physics involving resonance. I talk a lot about resonance here.

Flutists

We use harmonics as part of our tone studies. The way we do that is by changing the air direction, pointing it higher with our lips. This causes a higher tone to come out – a harmonic. We can practice tuning the harmonics because when they’re in tune our sound is better, we can practice strengthening them, and we can practice adding them.

Here are some nice, easy, free studies to practice them. These ones are really good for helping you to tune your harmonics.

The first page of this book has harmonic studies that are a little bit harder. They’re more about aiming your air and helping you get a good sound and a large amount of harmonics on each note. The more harmonics you have on each note, the better your sound overall.

Bonus: Being able to play high harmonics also helps you hit the high notes with better sound and intonation.

Sometimes it’s fun to make up a harmonic exercise, too.

Extended Techniques

Every once in awhile, a piece will ask you to play a harmonic. It looks like a diamond over the top of two notes, like this.

Picture of a harmonic on the staff
This is the notation for a harmonic.

This technique is done for effect. The sound from a harmonic has less overtones and undertones, so the sound is a little bit different. I usually see it in pieces from the Romantic era.

Conclusion

You can use harmonics as a parlor trick, but they have a real usefulness about them. They’re especially useful in a winds, but they’re good to know about with every instrument.

The Dreaded Page Turn!

The page turn can be a scary thing in music. It can be simple, but it can get really complicated fast. Here are some suggestions.

I was going to talk about the page turn in a simple Facebook post, but when I turned the corner on the second paragraph, I realized that I needed to talk about it more in-depth.

Who would have thought how complicated turning pages can be. However, when music is involved, almost everything is more complicated. So, I’ll go through some ideas to make page turning easier.

The Basics of Page Turns

Okay, someone is saying, “It’s not that complicated.” I’m saying that it can be complicated, but here are the two most basic ways to turn a page while playing music:

  1. Stop playing with one hand and turn the page.
  2. Get a page turner.

Now I’m going to tell you how you’re taking your life in your hands with each one of those tactics.

1: Only Play with One Hand

You can dog-ear the pages and hope and pray that they turn easily. I get nervous when I play, so this doesn’t work well for me. I grab more than one page, or go to grab the page and the whole book falls on the floor. Not fun.

Another issue is that sometimes you have two-handed notes at the page turn (flute) or part of the piece where it would sound funny if you stopped playing with one hand on the piano. There are solutions for this – memorize before or after the page turn where there is a good spot to turn the page (both my instruments), or on flute play the two-handed notes with a harmonic that’s on one hand so you can use your other hand. I talk about harmonics a little bit here, but that’s a subject that I’ll touch on more in-depth soon.

2: Get a Page Turner

There are great page turners out there. Some page turners need to be trained in with more than one practice session. Some page turners are hopeless and can’t turn at the correct time or in the correct manner, no matter how hard they try. Depending on the day, I can be each one of these, and so can your page turner.

Other Page Turn Options

1. High Tech

The best way to turn pages is the high tech way – have some kind of a tablet and a blue tooth pedal that turns pages. As with all technology, it’s great as long as it works.

I was playing at a gig and one of my fellow musicians had that set-up. It was flawless, but she said she always has a paper copy along because paper doesn’t crash.

2. Cardboard and Bull Clips

This one’s good for if your music is past copyright so you can make copies, or is the download and print kind of music. I hope this picture is blurry enough that I didn’t break copyright!

Page Turn Alternative
Cardboard and bull clips. Note: I still had to have a page turner with two pieces of cardboard because there were so many pages.

3. Paperclips

Page Turn Tool
Look at all those paperclips. They help you grip the page.

I have a hard time getting a hold of a single page at a time, but if there’s a paperclip, it works as a handle for me to grab. Bonus: they weigh things down.

4. Bending the Binding

Binding Helps with Page Turning
I used an evenly distributed weight to hold the book open, adjusting it once a day until it laid right.

This one works well for if you’re allowed to use music in a competition or accompanying. Usually there are strict rules about not copying for page turns, even if the music is out of copyright. It allows you to keep the book open without using weights to hold the pages open.

5. Binding

A Binding Idea
This book fell out of its binding, so I 3-hole punched it. After I did that, it was so much easier to handle!
A Binding Idea
They can do this really inexpensively at an office store.

I like to re-bind things when I have a book that I use heavily, such as a Christmas book or a scale book.

These are both different ways to bind things – stick something in a binder that fell out of its binding, or take it to an office store, have the binding shaved off, and either spiral or comb-bound.

When books lay flat, it’s easier to turn pages. You also don’t have as many problems when you don’t have to worry about your book falling closed or falling to the floor because it snapped closed. As you can see, I use paperclips as handles along with changing the binding.

Conclusion

It’s okay to have a page turn malfunction. Everyone has them, and they’re understandable.

If you can prevent them, do it. It’s unprofessional. I hope these preventions help you as much as they’ve helped me. Do you have any ideas that aren’t on here?