Why Good Phrasing Feels So Unnatural
1. Language
Phrasing and shaping a piece of music is integral to the way that we (as listeners) understand it. As humans, we naturally communicate through phrasing and the way that we say something can greatly change its meaning. We group words into ideas, we emphasise words for effect or to show importance and, when we tell a story, we build anticipation towards and away from particular moments.
I think that this is largely why music is so appealing, because it replicates the way that we communicate with each other.
So why does it feel more difficult and less natural to phrase and shape music if it is built into us?
Well, music itself may be natural, but producing music on an instrument creates a barrier between how we might naturally express something and our capabilities to express that thing. Learning an instrument also creates an unintentional hierarchy of priorities. For many players, they fall into the “get the notes right and then make it sound nice” trap.
If we take babies as an example; they are much more limited in their ability to express, yet they don’t think “I’ll just learn the words really well and then I’ll express what I want”. Instead, they express themselves in a messy but effective way, typically crying rather loudly until you work out what they want.
So why does that ability seem to disappear the moment we sit at the piano?
2. Reading
Well, it can feel like we are just doing the bare minimum for survival. You might think that there is no point in expressing if you can’t play the notes, rhythms, use the right fingers or play the dynamics. Yet interestingly, it is focussing on these things that can make it more difficult to remember how to naturally express.
Imagine for a moment a baby paused before crying to think “when I express that I’m hungry I need to make sure I hit the right pitch and I hold my crying sound for long enough”, no doubt that baby would be much more restrained and sound weird (I realise this is a bizarre example). My point is that, to naturally express, we can use our natural instincts rather than producing expression through mechanical actions.
When we read a piece of music in particular, this is actually much more difficult to do because the process of learning the piece can feel somewhat like a procedural process. However, if you think about the procedure first, then eventually every note begins to sound equally as important, pauses disappear and phrases (musical sentences) become long streams of notes rather than tapered sections.
A beginner will typically see a series of keys to press (e.g. C D E F G), whereas an experienced player sees a sense of direction and purpose. So, reading notes and understanding music are not the same skill at all. One of these is a learned skill and the other is grounded in how we naturally communicate and express ourselves.
3. Direction
So what should you do?
Well, flip the process around. Before we become inhibited by the procedural process of physically playing the notes, it’s important to use our natural communication skills to work out how we should play those notes. Music that means something has a sense of hierarchy, destinations to work towards and tension and release. Very much like when we tell a story or express something to someone.
So there are three questions that you can ask yourself when reading notes:
Why are those notes there?
What does that mean for the story?
How does that change how I play and learn the notes?
Here’s an example for you. Let’s say I have a piece of music in the key of G major. In bar 1 there is a G major chord in the left hand and an ascending series of notes in the right hand (G A B C D).
A G major chord is “home”; it is there to establish the key and what home feels like. The melody is ascending, maybe that’s asking a question with rising intonation like we do in speech, maybe it’s showing positivity as it lifts.
Now we know where home is, everything after this bar will feel like it’s moving away from or back to this place. Maybe it’s positive now so that it can show negativity later. Maybe it’s asking a question and therefore the next phrase will answer that question.
I want to make the chord feel safe and secure, so maybe I sink into the notes and I want to play a small crescendo through the ascending notes to make it feel more like it’s lifting.
Now, I’m thinking about how the music is going to be expressed rather than simply which notes to press.
Many players think about the notes first and the expression afterwards (if at all) and this can make phrasing, shaping and expressing the music feel unnatural. The reality is that expressing is very natural to us, but pressing keys is not and this can be why expressing music feels difficult. If we lead with expression first and let our note learning facilitate that expression, then shaping music and producing a relatable and understandable story can become something that feels very natural to you.
Matt
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