10 ways to improve your musicianship with a computer

ByBret Pimentel

laptopIt seems like there’s very little I do these days without a computer. Here are some ways I have used a laptop to boost my practice sessions.

  1. Listen

    With hard drives large and cheap, there’s no reason not to have your music collection with you anywhere you can take your instrument and your laptop. Absorb the music of your old or new favorite artists, borrow or steal their best ideas, and find inspiration for your own creations. With iTunes (free), you can even use the Store feature to search for short previews of music you don’t own, and buy it inexpensively for instant gratification. Check out YouTube, too, for lots of free music (and then support the artists by buying a nice legal copy of the stuff you like).

  2. Record yourself

    A built-in microphone or an under-$10 add-on is enough to reveal perhaps more than you want to know about what you really sound like. To really get every painful detail, pay a little more for a quality mic. I have one of these, which works well for me because it’s a standalone recording device and can also be used as a computer microphone. Free (or bundled) software like Garage Band or Audacity gives you a quick and easy way to hear yourself, plus tons more features for power users.

    Also, try using a webcam and bundled software to get a look at things like your posture, technique, and facial expressions while playing.

  3. Make goals

    After you’ve listened to yourself recorded in digital clarity, you may have a few ideas of what needs improving. Fire up your word processor of choice, and make a list of what needs fixing and what you can do about it. Goals that don’t get documented don’t get done: “if you think it, ink it” (or, even better, type it). Make specific, measurable goals, and refer back to your list often.

  4. Track your progress

    Spreadsheets like Excel are perfect for keeping track of measurable goals. Use them to keep track of your speed at something, or how many measures or lines or pieces you have learned, or which days you practiced a certain skill. If you want to get really fancy, make a chart to show your rate of progress, or to reveal when you’ve hit a plateau and need to rethink your practice strategy.

  5. Play along

    Play along with favorite recordings to try out performance tempi, get a feel for accompaniment parts, and do an overall reality check. Or try various kinds of playalong software, like Band-in-a-Box or SmartMusic. Or, just have your favorite playalong products like Aebersold recordings or the Tuning CD right at your fingertips.

  6. Use notation or sequencing software

    Used in combination with a MIDI keyboard, notation software can be a quick and convenient way to transpose or arrange parts, or even to check out what complicated rhythms sound like. (With most software, you can do it without a MIDI keyboard, too, but it’s more work.)

    Or try creating your own playalong recordings. These can be as complicated as complete orchestral accompaniments in your favorite key and tempo, or as simple as long tones that you can play along with in unison to check your intonation. Or how about a custom click track with your preferred tempo changes?

  7. Use analysis tools

    Try the freeware Spectrogram for visualization of your sound. Only your ears can tell you if it sounds right, but a look at a spectrogram may tell you something interesting about the harmonic content or amplitude of one note compared to another. The simpler amplitude visualization provided by software like Audacity can also help you recognize when, for example, there are unwanted bumps in your phrases.

  8. Use online texts

    There’s a wealth of valuable information online on how to improve your playing. One of the best examples of this is the online archives of the Double Reed, the International Double Reed Society’s journal—decades’ worth of solid gold articles by the world’s best oboists and bassoonists. There’s sheet music to be found, too—see my recent post about the IMSLP.

  9. Communicate

    There are lots of excellent message boards and discussion forums devoted to playing musical instruments. The Clarinet Bulletin Board is an example of a discussion board that is well-established, frequented by genuine experts, and generally polite. One of the benefits/dangers of these fora is that anyone can contribute, so you’ll have to use your best judgment to sort the good ideas from the bad.

    Or, if you’re feeling bold, look up the website of one of your favorite players, and send him or her a polite email expressing your admiration and asking for a suggestion on something you’ve been trying to improve in your playing. They are busy people, so be patient and understanding if they don’t respond right away, or even if your email seems to have slipped through the cracks permanently.

  10. Control distractions

    Use your computer to enhance your practicing, but when games or favorite websites become a temptation, turn it off! If your willpower needs a boost, try the LeechBlock Firefox extension or the Mac program Self Control.

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  • This week in airline travel with musical instruments

    ByBret Pimentel
    Photo, caruba

    A couple of blog posts related to airline travel with musical instruments have caught my eye so far this week:

    Saxophonist Greg Vail had a bad experience checking his horn. Yes, he did check it—sent it to be stowed in the airplane’s cargo hold rather than carrying it on himself. But it wasn’t the baggage handlers who caused a problem. It was security inspectors who opened the strong custom flight case, damaged the key clamps, broke some reeds, and couldn’t get everything packed up properly again.

    I know I need to carry this case because they have done this before, but the real question is why?? I feel like these goofballs would riffle thru my medicine cabinet given the chance just because they are noisy and idiots, but I digress.

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  • Interpreting wind articulation markings

    ByBret Pimentel

    It’s easy to think of articulation markings as being black and white (and not just literally). But sometimes the instructions aren’t completely clear.

    For example, I think most people would see this marking…

    …and understand it to mean that the D gets some extra length, perhaps so much that there’s no silence between the D and the following C. And there’s an implication that the other notes shouldn’t be that way, so perhaps they should have a bit more space by comparison.

    But how about this? (I ran into this marking in a piece I am working on this week, by an experienced composer.)

    The slur seems to preclude any space between the notes, so how does the tenuto work? You can’t reduce the space if it’s already zero, right?

    I think most experienced musicians would say that in this case the tenuto gets some other kind of stress, like a little extra volume, or a slight stretching of the beat, or maybe more intensity in the vibrato. But those are substantially different from the first interpretation. And if I do interpret the tenuto as some kind of stress, how is it different from, say, this:

    To interpret the markings, you have to take them in context. Musical notation is an expressive language, not a set of precise instructions for note-playing robots.

    And sometimes the markings are bad. There might simply be mistakes, or maybe the composer or editor isn’t entirely familiar with how wind players interpret articulations. How about this one?

    Wind players tend to think in terms of slurred or not slurred, and map this directly to a technique. When the slurs are doubled up like this, it doesn’t quite compute—I’m already slurring, I can’t make it any more slurred.

    So often the go-to explanation is that the larger slur is some kind of phrase marking, to show that those notes belong together, and the smaller one is an actual slur. Or, I guess, maybe another smaller phrase marking? And why do I need a phrase marking anyway—shouldn’t I already be playing phrases? And, if I decide to take out the smaller slur, then does the larger one still remain a “phrase marking,” or does it transform back into a slur?

    Here are some things I try to keep in mind as I try to interpret articulation markings:

    • If the composer put it on the page, she or he wants to hear it. How can I make the marking audible? What is the composer’s likely intention?
    • Why did the composer pick that particular marking? If there is ambiguity, is it intentional, or at least knowing?
    • Do similar markings appear elsewhere in the piece, or even in the composer’s other works? Does that shed any light? For example, if the composer uses both tenuto marks under slurs and accents under slurs, the composer probably wants them to sound different from each other.
    • Is there a tradition surrounding this piece? Sometimes frequently-performed pieces begin to develop a sort of standard practice for how certain markings are interpreted. Sometimes these are reasonably reliable, such as if a recording was made with the composer’s input, but sometimes they are just popular guesses. If you have a better guess, you can use it, but it would be wise at least to know what the tradition suggests.

    We are used to thinking of music itself as an expressive thing, that hopefully causes our audience to respond in some way. But the art of music notation is also expressive—the composer/editor/copyist is trying to get some kind of response from the musician. (Which in turn gets the response from the audience.)

    If you have been reading articulations like a robot—or ignoring them—return to the score again and listen to what the composer is telling you.

  • “Next” steps in preparing repertoire

    ByBret Pimentel

    I think many aspiring musicians pass through a phase in their development where they have “learned” fingerings, music reading skills, and other fundamentals at a basic degree of mastery, and turn their attention to developing sufficiently fluent technique (mostly finger technique) to tackle the instrument’s standard literature. Once they acquire that fluency and tackle that repertoire, they will begin to deal with the nuances of interpretation.

    Whether this is the best way to do things is a subject for another post (or book), but the reality is that a lot of advancing music students, including many of my university students, are at a point where they are very focused on playing notes in time in tempo, and when they achieve that level with an étude or repertoire piece, sometimes they don’t have a clear idea of what else needs to be done to bring the assignment to a performance level.

    Photo, S. Parker
    Photo, S. Parker

    If you or your students find yourself in that holding pattern, here are just a few ideas of what to “add” to your technical preparation:

    • Are you following all the composer’s marked articulations? dynamics? tempo changes?
    • In the places between the dynamic markings, are you giving the phrases appropriate shaping?
    • Is each note in tune? Does each note have a characteristic, pleasing, and consistent tone? Does each note respond precisely when and how you intend it to?
    • Have you familiarized yourself with all of the composer’s textual indications, and translated them if necessary? Are you making them audible?
    • Are you using vibrato (if applicable) in a purposeful and expressive way?
    • Are you taking a purposeful approach to performance practice? For example, are you using historically-informed approaches to ornamentation, dynamics, tempo, articulation, etc.? Or, alternatively, have you made a conscious and well-informed decision to break from these?
    • Have you studied live performances and recordings of this work by the finest musicians, compared their interpretations, and made careful choices about which ideas to incorporate or adapt into your own performance?
    • Have you thoroughly studied the full score, and do you understand how your part fits into the whole?
    • Do you have opinions about the formal structure, and are you using those to shape your overall interpretation?

    Those are just a few, but probably enough to keep most of us busy for a lifetime of study. Feel free to add some more in the comments.

  • Written jazz articulation problems

    ByBret Pimentel

    Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no cost to you.

    Stylistically-appropriate articulation has long been under-taught in jazz education. (Or waved away with a “ya gotta listen”) . But that is changing , with some recent guides and method books starting to find some consensus about best practices. Concepts like which notes to accent, or how long to sustain certain notes, apply to all jazz instrumentalists. But wind-instrument players have the extra complication of which notes to tongue or slur. This distinction is critical to good jazz style.

    In classical music, wind players usually perform articulation markings with accuracy. But printed jazz music can take varied approaches to articulation markings.

    Some charts for experienced players have sparing articulation markings or none at all. The composer, arranger, and/or editor trust the performers to apply appropriate style:

    Jazz tune with no articulation

    Others, particularly more recent ones, use markings that reflect the crystallizing best practices:

    Jazz tune with best-practice articulation

    But may otherwise well-written charts, bafflingly, use markings that are not stylistically appropriate:

    Jazz tune with poor articulation

    Some red flags include long slurs and staccato markings. Experienced jazz players instinctively ignore these bad markings and use better articulation practices. (Long slurs can in some cases be explained away as “phrase” markings. But since they are visually indistinguishable from slurs, it’s better to omit them.)

    Occasionally a good jazz composer or arranger will use an articulation marking in a surprising or unusual context. It’s up to the performers to determine whether this is an intentional break from typical jazz style, or an editing error.

    In some cases, a composer/arranger might even choose a particularly anti-swing articulation as a kind of joke. This is usually followed by a figure that should be played with exaggerated, correct swing and articulation. This heightens the contrast between “good” and “joke” style:

    Jazz tune with "joke" articulation

    Jazz players and educators are responsible to know and apply correct articulation, using their best musical judgment to override the written parts when appropriate.

  • Answering equipment questions

    ByBret Pimentel

    I attended a small jazz festival a number of years ago, which included student workshops with some of the festival’s headline artists. Unsurprisingly, some of the first questions asked in these workshops were about the artists’ equipment choices.

    The responses varied widely. A few of the artists were excited to talk about their instruments, mouthpieces, and so forth, and to offer glowing testimonials.

    Others responded less enthusiastically. One of the festival’s biggest-name artists mocked a student for even asking the question. The student slumped down into his seat as one of his idols berated him in front of everyone.

    But I was especially impressed by one artist in particular, whose equipment choices are well-known and widely-imitated. “Well, I use _____, _____, and _____,” he explained, “but there are a lot of really good options out there, and what works for me doesn’t work for everybody. Plus, you should know that lots of music stores sell equipment with this brand name, but it’s not really the same product anymore as the one I bought decades ago.” Then he moved onto another question.

    Photo, Laurie Samet
    Photo, Laurie Samet

    I thought this was a very effective, responsible, and respectful way to answer the question: he didn’t make the student feel bad for asking, and he didn’t encourage the student to buy something specific that might not really be a fit. I also admired the brevity and matter-of-factness of his answer—it cast the question as what it ought to be: a curiosity, rather than something of great importance.

  • The wallpaper effect

    ByBret Pimentel

    Sometimes I see “challenges” similar to this posted on social media sites: can you find the letter J in the image below?

    Of course you can. It’s not at all difficult. (But if someone online can convince you that it is, and that you’re one of the “special” few who can do it, then maybe you will “share” or “like” or whatever.)

    Human brains are highly attuned to patterns. I’m not a brain scientist, but I suspect that’s why we like nice steady tempos so much. Dance music (from the Western Classical tradition to Country and Western to EDM) tends to have rock-solid pulses that make us want to move our bodies. Unsteady or inconsistent tempos? Not so much.

    Have you ever been in a room with badly-hung wallpaper? A little gap or crookedness is immediately noticeable, and annoying.

    In musical performance, little inconsistencies in patterns can be similarly distracting. Whether it’s a bebop tune or a baroque sonata, a tempo that varies when it shouldn’t is bad news. So is an unsteady trill, an uneven run, or off-kilter vibrato. An imperfection in the pattern breaks the spell.

    While most kinds of music do place value on organic, human, dynamic elements, those need to be balanced against consistent, steady technique. For most of us, that means some long hours with the metronome, training our bodies to move predictably and unerringly.

    To help your performance feel good, and get your audience tapping their feet, make sure the wallpaper is hung with care and precision.

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