Did I play that “right?”

ByBret Pimentel

Sometimes my beginner students will play something for me, then ask, “Was that right?” What they generally seem to mean is something like, “Did I use the correct fingerings in the correct order?” A student who is slightly more advanced might ask the same question, but also wonder whether the rhythms were “correct.” A student farther along than that might take into consideration things like accurate observance of marked articulations and dynamics.

Setting aside creative concerns and looking only at technical matters, when is a student’s playing “right?”

I try to impress upon my advancing students that execution of musical passages isn’t really about “right” or “wrong,” but rather about degrees of rightness. To borrow an idea from manufacturing or engineering, we might think in terms of tolerances.

In other words, for a beginner, a half-note rhythm might be “right” if the half notes are roughly twice the length of quarter notes, and a pitch of “D” might be “right” if it is closer to D than it is to D-flat or D-sharp. For a somewhat more advanced student, it might not be “right” until the rhythms can be played without wandering too far afield of a metronome and the pitches trigger the “in tune” light on a cheap electric tuner. For an even more advanced student, those tolerances wouldn’t be fine enough—we might expect the rhythmic ratios to be accurate to within a few percent, and the pitches to be accurate within so many cents.

photo, Lewis Meyer
photo, Lewis Meyer

At the highest levels of musical technique, we question what tolerances are accurate enough for our audiences, or for someone with even more finely-tuned ears—a conductor, perhaps, or an audition panel, or collaborating musicians, or a record producer. Are my rhythms “right” when they are within a tolerance of a hundredth of a second? A thousandth? A ten-thousandth? Who will hear the difference if my pitches are within a tolerance of ten cents? Five cents? The more I think about it, the more I’m certain I can never really be satisfied, because as my execution gets more accurate, my ears get less tolerant.

If your ears are currently “tolerating” your level of accuracy when you play, it may be time to listen more closely and critically. Don’t be satisfied with “right”—go for more right.

Similar Posts

  • Brand snobbery

    ByBret Pimentel
    Photo, Steve Rawley

    I recently met a fellow woodwind player, and the conversation inevitably turned to gear. We had each recently tried out an instrument by a relatively new maker. My new acquaintance found it not to his liking. “I’m a _____ snob,” he proudly explained, naming a very popular and well-established instrument maker.

    I also recently read a woodwind-related message board thread (why do I torture myself?) in which some discussion was taking place about an accessories maker who had recently branched out into a new venture. A commenter scoffed at the new product and at the maker in general, indicating his disinclination even to sample any of their (generally well-regarded) products. He offered no explanation for his strong and seemingly arbitrary opinion.

    Your gear choices are your own. But if you find yourself clinging to brand names, and defending those choices with something besides objective comparisons, then you might be missing out.

  • Things that aren’t jazz

    ByBret Pimentel
    Photo, frawemedia

    Okay, first of all: what I’m talking about here is the “mainstream” jazz tradition, insofar as such a thing exists (you can make a good argument that it doesn’t, really). “Jazz” is a wide net to cast. To flip it around, if I were going to list things that aren’t “classical” music, I might say “use of the electric bass guitar” or even “microtonality.” Are those things really mutually exclusive with classical music? No. But they are not part of the tradition of the Viennese masters, not what your local community orchestra would play, not what most people think of when they think of classical music.

    One misconception that many classical musicians seem to have about jazz is that since it has strong improvisatory elements, it must be very free and unstructured. I think the opposite is true: improvisation, at least in the mainstream-bebop/hard-bop-influenced style, requires fairly strict structural underpinnings. None of the following works well when someone is trying to improvise:

    • Free forms. Form in jazz is much stricter than in classical music. Most common jazz tunes have one of two forms. The first is precisely 32 bars in 4/4 time, with four eight-bar sections: AABA. The second is precisely twelve 4/4 bars, a “blues” form. Anything that doesn’t fit exactly into one of these categories is most likely very closely related to one of them.
    • Free harmony. Bebop and hard-bop jazz are extremely tonal. While improvisers may play pitches that fall “outside” the chords, it is almost always within a tonal framework: the notes function as upper extensions of the chords, or at least they are used in a sort of polychordal way that has reference to the underlying harmony and will ultimately resolve back to it. The idea that “there are no wrong notes” isn’t exactly true; notes can definitely sound very wrong if they aren’t properly contextualized with regard to the harmony.
    • Free or changing meter. Jazz makes frequent use of polymeter and syncopation, which can give the impression of shifting meter, but most jazz doesn’t actually change meters, especially in improvisatory sections. The polyrhythms and syncopations work because they are overlaid on an unchanging metric pulse, and resolve to it.
    • Rubato. Tempi also tend to quite strict in jazz playing. A musician might “lay back” in the beat or stretch a rhythm, but the underlying pulse doesn’t change. (In my experience, jazz players generally have much steadier internal metronomes than classical musicians.)
    The freedom that improvisers do have is to create melodies over these fairly rigid structures. The rigidity gives the improviser a predictable framework to work with (or perhaps against). At a more detailed level, there are certain melodic characteristics that classical musicians tend to associate with jazz, that I don’t hear when I listen to jazz or play with fine jazz musicians: Read More “Things that aren’t jazz”

  • Recommending gear for beginners

    ByBret Pimentel
    Photo, sekihan

    A beginning instrumentalist needs good equipment. For young woodwind players that means instruments, mouthpieces, reeds, and probably a few other accessories. They aren’t cheap, and the array of options is bewildering. Where can students and their parents turn for solid recommendations?

    The ideal situation is for the student to connect with a qualified, conscientious private instructor before making any purchases or signing any rental agreements. In my private teaching experience, this has happened exactly 0% of the time. It’s a nice dream.

    For many young beginners, the best counsel they’ve got is the school band director. But what, exactly, do school band directors know about, say, clarinet mouthpieces? I have the greatest respect for school band directors. But I think that scenarios like this probably happen pretty often:

    • A fine, talented, studious young man or woman, who plays, let’s say, the trombone, signs up for the woodwind methods class required for their music education degree.
    • The brilliant and respected professor, who plays, let’s say, the flute, and who is doing his or her level best to teach several instruments in which he or she does not have any specific training, puts in phone calls to some colleagues and picks their brains for their best recommendations for clarinet mouthpieces. Several of them mention one particular model. The professor types up a class handout, listing that specific mouthpiece as an affordable and high-quality option, suitable to most beginners.
    • The young aspiring music educator accepts the handout, studies it, successfully answers a test question about good student clarinet mouthpieces, and files the handout away for future reference.
    • Ten years into the educator’s career, the mouthpiece company merges with another company. Decisions are made by non-clarinetists wearing expensive suits in a well-appointed conference room. The mouthpiece makers are laid off, and mouthpiece production moves to an overseas factory. The mouthpieces look much the same as before and bear the same brand name and model number, but the quality drops significantly, as does the manufacturing cost. The suit-wearing non-clarinetists get large bonuses. Read More “Recommending gear for beginners”

  • Counting rhythms with a non-quarter-note pulse

    ByBret Pimentel

    Sometimes my students are stymied by rhythms like this:

    subdivisions

    These rhythms are really not at all difficult to play—to actually execute—for an intermediate-level student. The problem is just one of unfamiliar notation. It is usually related to the all-too-common misconception that the rhythmic pulse is always equal to a quarter note. If you approach this example with a quarter-note pulse in mind, the rhythms are indeed rather complex.

    But even an intermediate student should be quite at ease playing subdivisions of a beat into twos, threes, and fours. For a student with the pulse-is-always-a-quarter-note mentality, that means this specifically:

    subdivisions-1

    So the key is to reframe the “difficult” rhythm so that it breaks down into subdivisions of two, three, and four. One way would be to rewrite it like this, using more familiar notation:

    subdivisions-2

    But often it’s enough for my students just to mark up the original to show an eighth-note rhythmic pulse:

    subdivisions-3

    If I walk them through marking the first few measures, they can often finish the project without much additional help. At that point, they are surprised to discover that the rhythms are really much simpler than they first appeared (and that 32nd notes are not necessarily “fast”).

    For me this issue comes up most often in the Romantic-period etudes I have my students play, most especially the oboe etudes by Ferling (which my saxophonists also play) and the 32 clarinet etudes by Rose (which are mostly based on the Ferling etudes), but also some of the Milde bassoon etudes and Andersen flute etudes.

    In each of these cases, by far the most common occurrence of a non-quarter pulse is the eighth note pulse, and some editions of these indicate an eighth-note based metronome marking (which should be a big hint to a student). In general, my students handle this less-familiar notation with ease once they learn to watch out for etudes or repertoire movements that have 32nd-note rhythms, and to count those with an eighth-note pulse. (The clarinetists run into this early in the Rose 32, as the first and third etudes begin with seeming quarter-note-pulse rhythms, then surprise the student with 32nd-note passages later.)

    A 16th-note pulse is also not unheard of (I run across this most often in Baroque repertoire), and certainly others are possible. “Cut time” (2/2) time signatures also fall into this category, though they seem to alarm my students less because they are generally easy enough to count in 4/4; they do sound much more poised if I can convince them to use a true half-note pulse.

    In summary:

    • If an etude or repertoire piece has 32nd-note rhythms, try counting with an eighth-note pulse. If it has 64th notes, try a sixteenth-note pulse, and so on.
    • If the composer or editor provides a metronome marking, notice what note duration is suggested (for ♩ = 50, count in quarters, but for ♪ = 100, count in eighths).
    • If it helps, mark in the pulse to reveal the familar two, three, and four subdivisions.
    • Don’t panic!
  • |

    Becoming a professional musician

    ByBret Pimentel

    Sometimes when my students get paying engagements for the first time, I joke with them that they are now “professional” musicians. That’s true in a sense, but I think there’s more that goes into being a true professional.

    If you are a college student aspiring to be a professional musician, here are some things you might ask yourself:

    • Am I reliably on time to things?
    • Do I always have a pencil? Extra reeds? Whatever else is needed?
    • Do I show up to rehearsals with my parts learned and ready?
    • Am I self-motivating when it comes to practicing?
    • Am I pleasant and cooperative on a gig or in a rehearsal?
    • Am I easy to contact, and prompt about replying?
    • Is my closet stocked with clean, sharp gig apparel?
    • Do I keep my instruments well-maintained?
    • Do I have a sense of what my time and talents are worth, and a firm but polite way of expressing that?
    • Do I meet and exceed my teachers’ expectations?
    • Am I willing to play any part, including the less-prestigious ones? Am I willing to put my best into supporting someone else’s solo moment, even if I think that opportunity should have been mine?
    • Have I recorded myself lately? Did I come away from it with some ideas of what needs improvement?
    • What are the most common issues my teachers or ensemble directors mention about my playing? Am I addressing those in a focused way?
    • Am I responsive to useful criticism, thick-skinned against non-useful criticism, and able to tell the difference?
    • Is there anything about my playing or demeanor that would cause stress to someone who hired me for a gig? Am I currently stressing out my teachers, directors, or fellow students?

    Graduation from college doesn’t guarantee you any gigs. Become the person that other musicians want to work with.

  • A troublemaker in the octet: A hermeneutical approach to Beethoven’s op. 103

    ByBret Pimentel

    Introduction

    In the opening “Allegro” movement of his Wind Octet in E-flat major, Op. 103, Beethoven perpetrates a bit of mischief at the expense of the listener—and the analyst. In this paper, we will examine some analytical puzzles of this movement, then attempt to solve them by exploring a possible hermeneutical interpretation and applying Schenkerian techniques.

    The hermeneutical narrative that we will attempt to apply here represents only one possible interpretation, but it is useful because it provides an accessible context for dealing with problematic elements (we will deal with an oddly recurring melodic motive, some unexpected harmonic turns, and a formal deformation). The Schenkerian techniques are effective here for identifying and explicating the essential harmonic motion.

    A motivic troublemaker

    Troublemaker motive
    "Troublemaker" motive

    The first riddle of the Allegro is a trill-like motive (example 1) that dominates the opening of the movement. It appears in the first oboe, repeated in each of the first four measures. We will investigate a possible hermeneutic role of this motive: the impish troublemaker. (The troublemaker motive remains closely associated with the first oboe, though the first oboe also plays a part as a fully cooperative member of the ensemble. The oboe isn’t the troublemaker; the motive itself gets the blame.) Read More “A troublemaker in the octet: A hermeneutical approach to Beethoven’s op. 103”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comments that take a negative or confrontational tone are subject to email and name verification before being approved. In other words: no anonymous trolls allowed—take responsibility for your words.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.