Why You Can’t Add Expression Later
Order
A trap that many players fall into is learning pieces of music in two stages, firstly learning the notes and then afterwards attempting to make those notes sound more musical. This is often the case because notes look like something objective, something that you can get right or wrong, whereas the dynamics, the shaping, the way the music sounds, feels subjective. Almost like a cake being the notes and the rhythm, and the expression being the decoration.
It’s also very much how we are taught to learn the piano when we first start learning. You have to be able to play the notes on the piano and play them for the right amount of time in order to then do anything else. However, to actually become a good player and get past a lower intermediate level, there is a shift that needs to take place. A piece of music isn’t really made up mostly of notes and rhythm, with expression being the decoration. Expression is the purpose, and the notes and rhythm are the means. If you ignore the dynamics, shaping, voicing and sentiment, you may not miss half of the ink on the page, but you will be missing more than half of the music.
But why is it an issue to take a piece of music in these two halves; first, learning the notes, and then adding the expression?
Expectation
Well, when you hear yourself play a piece of music, that becomes the way that you expect the music to be. If you hear a piece of music being played in one way many times, then you are fighting against that version that’s already in your head. Some people try to combat this by listening to recordings of a performance. However, this itself comes with its problems. If you implant someone else’s interpretation of a piece, then it robs you of the need to learn how to come to those conclusions yourself. Very much like if you try to learn reading notes by writing all the letters above the notes on the page, you read the note the first time, but every subsequent attempt, you no longer read the notes and therefore rob yourself of needing to learn what those notes mean.
And that expectation of the expressionless version of a piece that you build becomes your intuition. It becomes the way that you understand subsequent pieces of music and approach practicing them. As with everything in music, the more you play something in one way, the more difficult it is to play in another way. So adding dynamics in later, for example, isn’t simply a case of just suddenly changing, but you have to relearn the piece of music until that becomes your new intuition. At that point, you’re fighting against your previous intuition, and each time that you accidentally play it incorrectly, there comes one more time that you’re going to have to deliberately re-practice it correctly.
Essentially, the first time you learn a piece, musicality costs you nothing extra to add (besides some consideration for how it should be played). However, adding musicality afterwards not only costs you the time taken to relearn the entire piece, drilling in the new way of playing, but also extra time for your intuition fighting against you.
This also means that when you get to the end of a piece, it can become very difficult to make yourself go through the process of adding the expression, having already learned all of the notes, and many players will end up coming to the determination that it’s better to just move on to another piece. Then the cycle continues.
Intention
So, how should you actually learn?
Well, if expression is the purpose behind the piece, then it should be the first consideration. The notes and the rhythm are the means, and therefore they are the execution of that purpose. Before playing any notes, take a second to look at the dynamics, the slurs, the phrasing, the chords, performance markings, or anything else that can help you understand the intention of the music at that moment, then use that to shape how you go about learning the notes. If there is a moment where there is a crescendo, avoid learning the notes and then adding the crescendo afterwards, but learn smaller sections and try and include the crescendo in your initial understanding of how that section of the music should be.
For melodies, you can even try singing the phrase. It’s very difficult to sing phrases without intention because of the way we use our voice when we speak and also our natural need to project as notes get higher (like piano music often does too).
It’s important to remember that your first play of a section of music is your initial impression and will become how you expect that piece to go. So if the expression is a part of what you learn, then it’s something that doesn’t need to be deliberately thought about later.
That’s not to say that adding some expression afterwards that you may have missed, or listening to a piece, is always a bad thing. But often learning slowly with intention and ensuring that you make a piece of music sound like you want it to from the outset is the fastest way of making progress, even though in the moment it feels like there’s more resistance.
Matt