Vandrare

hi infidels.

i have just recently had a lot of revelations about myself and the way i think, and have come to an idea that i was hoping others here (particularly musicians) could comment on or agree or disagree with....

my idea is this: that music and people are in many ways the same to us, the way that we interpret, respond, and are affected by them. this is because music is like a person in the way that it has a character, moods and feelings.

i came to this idea as i was thinking about memory in general and memorising music. from a personal example - i realised that if i try to picture in my mind the face of someone i know very well, i just cant do it! i can get a general hazy idea with lots of feelings and emotions, and the idea of their personality, but i cant see details of the face. if i try to focus in on these details i lose the whole bigger picture entirely. now with music i memorise i remember in exactly the same way. i find memorising music easy, but when i play from memory i go by the big overall picture, getting lost in the emotions, feelings and character of the piece. if i try to focus in on details of the piece such as what note that actually is or (if on piano) the fingerings for this passage, i lose the entire piece. even on pieces that i know well from memory.

so in this way the manner in which i relate to music, and how i respond to it is the same as people. i'm someone who doesn't see physical details in people really, instead i see their personality, and i music i dont see the details of the piece rather than the idea and overall big picture.
this in particular could be really helpful for students trying to memorise music, to know how they memorise so they use the right techniques to make music stick.

i also have many more similarities myself with the way i see music\people but this was the main idea.

but any comments by others on this new idea would be greatly appreciated.

hhmmmm..... i guess i'm giving away the fact that i'm a bit of a gestalt girl

ebolamonger

hey, that's weird, i thought i was the only one who could not recall the faces of people close to me. i always knew when i really liked someone when i could not remember his/her face. i decided i was freakish, but that it always worked. it's not that all i felt was an emotion...it's just that all i remembered was conversation, things that person liked, what was going on in the room at the time i was with them.

Vandrare

yes... thats pretty much what i mean. it always used to bother me when on crime shows the police would ask a witness to work with a sketch artist and they always came up with an almost identical match. i dont think i could even do that with my family. i though perhaps i had some memory deficiency or something too.

orpheus last chant

You know, i'm a piano player myself. And i would have said the same thing some months ago. But i read a piece about how the brain works, and how we remember. You see, the brain stores memory files by the emotions attached to them. A person that you feel something for, will remind you of a song, let's say, you've danced on. you bring back those memories by remembering first the feelings you've experienced.

The fact that no one should focus on notes instead of the big picture is simple to me. Music is a temporal art, it showes itself in time, and not all at once (like a painting would). It is also guverned (partially) by reflexes. The fact that I can play my Chopin study with my eyes closed is because a lot of what I used to perform consciously is now a reflex. When it is all reflex it sounds like a midi file.

You can't play even those pieces you know so well because, by focusing on every little note, you are trying to bring it entirely in the stream of consciousness, and that is like overloading your computer. Too much data to process at once, when you can let other programs work in a hide mode.

Now if a lot of what we play is reflex what is the rest? What makes a piece be artistical? That is a really hard question.

I usually talk to my teacher about sending messages though music, or connecting to the audience. But what do I do exactly? It works but I don't know what it is.

gcameron

I think there are different types of musical experience. I am a piano player, but not a very good one. I'm a lousy sightreader and have minimal understanding of music theory/harmony etc. When I play a piece, I am operating primarily by tactile feedback. (Also some visual, but I'm getting better at being able to play without looking at the keys.) To learn a piece of music, I must translate my intellectual understanding of the notes on the page into a tactile sequence that my fingers can execute on the keys. For me, it's a painstakingly slow process and I must allow days before I've really absorbed even simple pieces. For a great sightreader, I suppose, the two processes are more closely intertwined.

I also feel that on those rare occasions when I *do* understand the musical/harmonic aspects of a section of music, I can play it more securely. For instance, if I can think to myself "well this is just an Alberti bass on a C major chord," then I am less likely to get "lost" -- even if my tactile feedback falters briefly, my musical awareness will keep me from screwing up, and I can even re-finger on the fly if necessary. If it's a more harmonically difficult section (or a section where the passagework is rapid), I rely solely on tactile feedback, and if my fingering slips up even a little bit, I'm doomed.

This is also why it can be very difficult for me to "pick up" in the middle of a piece of music after I've made a mistake -- I have to start at the beginning again. (Though I'm trying to improve on that front too.)

AJ113

As musicians, the tool that we use to learn is repetition. After large amounts of repetition our motor memories take over, and we play a piece of music on auto-pilot.

This allows us to divorce ourselves from the technicalities of the performance to enjoy the music as though we were the listener, not the player.

Moving on from this, we can then impute our own emotions into the performance of the piece, thus allowing us to "listen" to it in the exact way that we would prefer to hear it played.

That's just my take on the subject.

gcameron

When I play a piece, I think I instinctively work in ritardandos at important harmonic cadences. It's just a point of emphasis, or punctuation. I'm not sure how I approach dynamics, it's been so long since I've had a real piano and right now I'm just playing Bach on a Yamaha keyboard. Obviously I would want to start my dynamics by following the indications on the score, though that can sometimes be difficult to execute.

Tempo can vary for other than expressive reasons. If I get to a section of a piece that is easy to play (i.e., the passagework fits my hand particularly well), I have a tendency to unconsciously increase the tempo, to let my fingers "run away with me" as it were. This is a bad habit I must work to avoid.

I would like to learn more about how professional musicians approach interpretation of a piece. I assume it is more carefully thought out -- they plan their moments of tempo alteration, dynamic change, pedaling, etc., and practice accordingly. I doubt most pros allow their feelings to run away with them when they are in concert or in a recording studio. That, I suspect, is a luxury of the amateur.

Vandrare

thanks for the reply's. just before i get into interpretation stuff, AJ113 and gcameron: how does your musical memory relate to say remembering peoples faces? do you see whole faces in detail or more of an impression? (i'm just curious about the actual relationship here in memory operation).

as to the actual musical intepretation of a piece, after looking at whats written such as dynamics, articulation, and tempo's etc it becomes difficult to explain how i interpret after that. so much of what i do is because of all the things i've learn't about music through (well, about 18 years of playing and studying) such as generally accepted stylistic concepts (particularly in earlier music such as baroque, classical and romantic), and then studying a piece and seeing what (for instance accordingly to the period the piece is from) the composer did that was perhaps unusual for the period and bring out these aspects, and then all the general things such as making great contrasts (for interest etc) and bringing out melody lines.....
after that i think it mostly comes down to personality and what you like/dislike. for example i love darker richer tones (which is a large part of why i now learn viola) and choose fingerings which may get that timbre i'm looking for. ofcourse with each instrument there's different and unique techniques for making a whole range of sounds. so basically i guess i decide what a particular bit of music is expressing and go about changing my playing to make that happen.

AJ113

Much of my musical work has been as a producer in a recording studio. I believe that the best musicians are the ones that DO allow their feelings to influence the performance.

Playing a piece "on the edge" i.e. risking the technical integrity of the piece by taking emotional chances in the delivery of it is the hallmark of a good musician.

eg You are nearing the end of a four-minute take which has gone to perfection so far, and suddenly you are inspired with something that you want to try for the delivery of those final three bars, are you going to play it safe and give the expected version, or take the chance and go for it? A pro would not only go for it, but probably pull it off, too.

Xeluan

I think this is true. I have been listening recently to a lot by Tal Farlow who was a brilliant jazz guitarist. On many pieces you can hear him go for a line and not quite make it. It doesn't matter as he recovers quickly and moves on.

Good live bands (in many genres) have that quality.

I don't have that much experience in the studio (a few demos here and there) but I find that I'd rather do one or two takes of a solo than get anal over it all. It can be ragged but the payoff are the moments where it all clicks.