Q&A: The big picture

ByBret Pimentel

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

Here are some of the questions readers sent me in celebration of this blog’s 10-year anniversary. I have edited, combined, and otherwise adapted some of them but hopefully there are answers here for those of you who were kind enough to inquire.

Why does music move humanity so profoundly?

My personal belief is that music is divine in origin, and that there is something inherent to humankind that responds to music. Since I believe that everyone is a child of God, I suppose the love of music is a divinely-inherited trait. Leaders in my faith have said, for example, that “Music is given of God to further his purposes,” and observed “Music is truly the universal language, and when it is excellently expressed how deeply it moves our souls.”

If that’s not your style, you may prefer Darwin’s speculation that the earliest attempts at human language were more like musical gestures than like words. An ability to relate to these sounds is at the foundation of language in the more modern sense, and thus underlies virtually all human experience and culture.

In any case, even as a faith-plus-science kind of guy, I’m definitely out of my depth here, so feel free to share your theories in the comments.

Are applied music studios in higher education sustainable considering the supply of music graduates exceeds available employment?

There are issues here for sure. I can only vouch for my own approach:

Most of my university students are music education majors, and where I live this does seem to be sustainable. My graduates for the most part are able to land and keep jobs doing what they are trained for: directing middle school and high school bands.

Many of my students at some point inquire about the degree in performance. If they are interested in that route and have the skill to pursue it, we have a long talk about the career path of a performance major. Essentially, a bachelors degree in performance qualifies you for one thing, entry into an masters program. The masters qualifies you for a doctoral program, and that qualifies you to teach in higher education and perpetuate the cycle. We talk seriously about the prospects for employment in higher ed (slim).

On the other hand, a college or university education isn’t a trade school certificate—it is meant to produce a well-rounded citizen of the world, with literacy in key fields of human thought and skills in areas like communication and critical thinking. If a prospective student wishes to study the art of musical performance for reasons that are not necessarily 100% practical, then I would like to see that opportunity available to them. Schools and students should be clear with each other about their goals, so there isn’t any confusion about, for example, guarantees of employment.

Some of my students have leveraged some of the more general skills developed in their musical education to pursue careers in other fields, which I find to be a perfectly good outcome. There is also at least some anecdotal evidence that college music majors are welcomed by challenging, high-status programs like law and medical schools.

When will woodwind makers deplete resources of grenadilla/mpingo wood?

I don’t know the answer. My understanding is that these woods are not in danger of extinction, exactly. But the culling of the tallest, straightest specimens for products like oboes and clarinets has potential to cause an evolutionary bottleneck, since only trees that are unsuitable for instruments (because they are curvy, for example) are left alone to reproduce.

I think that the inevitable conclusion to this is alternative materials for instruments. This will be a tough sell for some musicians, but will ultimately be for the better. If modern science can develop amazing new materials for everything from mobile phone technology to medicine to space travel, why not for music? I’m confident that the “wood”-wind instruments will continue to exist in materials that are more sustainable, stable, affordable, crack-free, ergonomic, and beautiful-sounding.

Why does the principal oboist tune the orchestra?

Tradition. We have methods of providing a reference pitch that are far more accurate and reliable than even the best oboist. But the ritual is a comfortable one.

There are lots of additional theories. I’ve written previously about why a bunch of these don’t make sense, and that post continues to draw comments largely based on questionable understanding of “overtones.”

Thanks for your questions! These are some tough ones.

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    Not good

    ByBret Pimentel

    I like to use a Socratic-ish method in my private lessons, and ask my students questions. It means that I have this conversation several times per day:

    [Student plays.]

    Me: How did that sound to you?

    Student: Not good.

    Me: What didn’t you like about it?

    Student: It didn’t sound good.

    Me: What aspect of it didn’t sound good to you? The tone? the pitch? the phrasing? the articulation?

    Student: Um, I guess the articulation?

    Me: What didn’t you like about the articulation?

    Student: It wasn’t good?

    It’s an ongoing battle to get my students to listen more deeply than that. Was the articulation “not good” because it started with air noise instead of tone? Because it was accompanied by an unwanted percussive sound? Was the articulation technique perfect but you failed to follow the composer’s markings? Or was it something else?

    Photo, David Bailey
    Photo, David Bailey

    Often the “not good” is a combination of factors, but if my students can identify even one of them, then they can immediately start working in a focused way to improve it. If it’s just “not good,” then they tend to just play it again from the beginning without any clear approach to making it sound better, and repeat until frustrated.

    Part of my job is to help them identify and verbalize the desirable and undesirable phenomena in their playing, and to teach them the techniques for manipulating the variables involved (breath support, voicing, embouchure, finger technique, and tongue technique, to name the most obvious ones). But it’s up to them to take that information and run with it. For my students to become independently-functional musicians, they need to learn to listen critically to themselves and troubleshoot.

    For yourself and for your students, don’t be satisfied with bland value judgments (it sounded “good” or “bad”). Be factual and descriptive about what you hear, and tackle problems in a methodical way. Practice smart!

  • Getting the most out of practicing your scales

    ByBret Pimentel

    When you practice scales (or arpeggios or, really, any other technical material) it’s not really about the scales. Nobody wants to buy tickets to hear you play scales.

    Scale and technical practice develop the fundamental technique you need for doing more interesting things. You don’t learn multiplication tables or French verb conjugations so you can recite multiplication tables or French verb conjugations. You learn them so you can file your taxes or build a Mars rover, or order pastries or read Proust.

    The habits you develop when practicing scales—the building blocks of your technique—will be with you in everything you play. So take them very seriously:

    • Go slowly, and be as precise and controlled as you can. You will work on scales for your whole life as a musician, so there’s no rush to get them up to a certain tempo. Don’t waste time playing them sloppily.
    • Listen deeply to the sound of each note. Scales are a great chance to understand and map the tone, pitch, and response nuances of your instrument. Get in the habit of playing with your most beautiful sound even on technical material.
    • Solidify your best practices. Choose the perfect fingering for each and every note (don’t just fall back on what is already comfortable). Program your fingers to move in the most efficient and precise ways. Stabilize your breath support, voicing, and embouchure.
    • Be expressive. No need to go overboard—just give a subtle crescendo as you ascend and diminuendo as you descend. Add a little vibrato to warm things up. Make it automatic to find and express phrases.

    Whatever habits you solidify in your scale practice will be infused into everything else you play. A little carelessness with your multiplication tables or verb conjugations can result in a severe fault with your Mars rover’s circuits or a profound misunderstanding of French literature. Get the little things right.

  • Five things to do before starting a new school year as a college music major

    ByBret Pimentel

    Most colleges and universities will be starting classes again within the next month or two. If you are a music student, now might be a good time to make some preparations that will set you up for success in the new school year.

    photo, KosmoKarlos Photography
    photo, KosmoKarlos Photography

    1. Get your instrument ready. After a year of hard playing in ensembles, lessons, solo recitals, and the practice rooms, your (woodwind) instrument is most likely in need of a little maintenance. Take (or ship) your instrument to your teacher’s recommended technician for some care and you will be glad you did—a well-maintained instrument is fun to play, and makes you sound better with less effort. High-quality woodwind instruments played daily probably ought to have a full overhaul at least every 5-10 years; this is a bit expensive and includes things like replacing all the pads and corks, making sure the keywork fits precisely, removing dents or bends, and thorough cleaning and lubrication. In between overhauls, get your instrument checked out at least annually for what some shops call “playing condition”—a cheaper service, replacing or repairing just what is necessary to fix the most immediate issues.
    2. Get in shape. If you can feel a case of “summer chops” setting in, then now is the time to start getting back into fighting shape. If your summer days are long and unstructured, it can be easy to procrastinate, so set up a routine. Make a practicing schedule and stick to it. I recommend doing it first thing in the morning, before you get distracted by other things.
    3. Get a jump on lesson preparation. If you are a returning music major, you probably have a good idea what you will be assigned in that first lesson (let me guess: scales and/or technical exercises, etudes, and repertoire?). How pleased would your teacher be if you showed up to the first lesson of the semester with a week’s worth (or more) ready to go? What kind of momentum would that give you for the semester? You might not know yet exactly what repertoire your teacher will want you to tackle in the fall, but this could be a great chance to get started on a piece you would really like to play. (I, for one, am usually happy to accommodate students who show that kind of initiative.) If you are a new music major or aren’t sure what to expect, your teacher may or may not be answering email or phone calls over the summer, but it wouldn’t hurt to try.
    4. Clean up and stock up. Take a few minutes to clean out your instrument case, reed case, backpack, sheet music filing system, etc. and get rid of the clutter. If you have been working at a summer job or saving rent by living at home, now might be a good time to provision yourself for the coming months (reeds, cleaning swabs, cork grease, pencils). If you have been saving money toward a new instrument or mouthpiece, hold onto it and get your teacher to advise and assist you with that purchase after the semester starts.
    5. Choose some new, positive habits. Times of changing routine (such as the start of a new semester) are great times to insert new habits. Ask yourself what habits a really excellent music student would have: increased practice? better recital attendance? instrument care? reedmaking? listening to recordings? Make a list, commit to some plans, and hit the ground running from day one.

    Have a great year!

  • 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”

  • Improving habits: use a timer

    ByBret Pimentel

    Bill Plake wrote a nice blog post earlier this week, sharing a simple tip about using sticky notes to break bad habits. (Bill’s posts are excellent—make sure you subscribe in your favorite feed reader.)

    The tip he shares is similar to something I do during final performance preparations: I jot two or three key reminders on a sticky note (“Take your time and breathe,” “Keep fingers relaxed,” etc.) and stick them at the top of the page, covering the first few notes. That way when I get on stage I can make myself remember and focus on those few key items, rather than stressing myself over all of the details, and I give myself an extra moment to think and relax while I move the sticky note out of the way.

    I wanted to share an additional idea that I have used many times myself, and have had students use. I find it good for dealing with the really stubborn, ingrained habits: poor posture, excess tension, ignoring dynamic markings, using insufficient breath support, being inconsistent about vibrato (anything ringing a bell yet?), and so forth. These are the things that you can fix immediately, as long as you remember, but which somehow persist anyway. Have you had this experience, either as the student or as the teacher?:

    Teacher: Play it again from measure 12, this time with better posture.

    Student: [Corrects posture, begins to play, then slouches again.]

    Teacher: Remember posture!

    Student: [Corrects posture, continues playing, then slouches.]

    Teacher: Posture! [Glances at clock.]

    Something that has worked well for me when I find myself in this situation is to use a repeating timer. This can be a gadget, or, increasingly commonly, a smartphone app, that just beeps at you every few minutes. (I’ve been using Elapsed for iPhone [update: link dead], which is free and supports multiple simultaneous timers, but there are many, many options available.) At first I might set a timer as short as 30 seconds, and choose a single habit to focus on. Depending on the habit, I might stop playing to readjust what I’m doing each time the timer beeps, or I might readjust on the fly and continue. When I’m consistently making it through 30-second intervals without having to fix something on each beep, I can adjust the timer for longer intervals.

    It’s surprising how easy it is to let my mind wander—even within a minute or less—and go into auto-pilot mode, losing track of what I’m trying to accomplish and further calcifying bad habits. The timer technique is a nice aid for me to keep myself focused on a specific improvement I want to make in my playing.

  • Professional-sounding ornaments

    ByBret Pimentel

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

    When I’m working with new or prospective college music students, one thing that I often hear in their auditions or early lessons is awkward ornamentation. Here are some common pitfalls:

    • Aggressive grace notes. Notice how grace notes are printed smaller on the page? They aren’t there to call attention to themselves. They are usually adding weight or importance to the following note. Give that note a little extra volume/tenuto/stretch/stress, rather than accenting the grace notes themselves.
    • Weak trills. Don’t let your breath support sag. Blow through the trill like it’s part of the phrase (because it is). Every note of the trill, no matter how fast it goes by, needs a full, clear, in-tune sound.
    • Short trills that aren’t short enough. If you don’t have an exit plan for your trill, it’s easy to get stuck in it and be late for the next note. It’s especially a problem for shorter trills, like on a quarter note. To make sure your trills aren’t interrupting the rhythmic pulse, decide exactly how many notes they should have. The shortest version (for trills starting on the lower pitch) is three notes—the starting note, the upper note, and back to the starting note. Five or seven notes (hitting the upper note two or three times) makes it sound more convincingly like a trill, if there’s time. Decide what number makes sense for the style and tempo, and practice it slowly and deliberately with a metronome so you can land on the following note right on time.
    • Missed accidentals or key signatures. Even within ornaments, key signatures still apply, and accidentals still carry through the measure. Check carefully and mark in any sharps or flats that will help your accuracy.
    • Uninformed interpretation. Ornamentation is an art, and takes into account musical style, historical context, harmonic context, rhythm and meter, and a lot more. If you possibly can, listen to lots of recordings by professional players and see how they approach the ornaments. Listen for note choices, rhythms, emphasis, and articulation. While you’re still accumulating the knowledge and background you need to make good ornamentation choices on your own, there’s nothing wrong with stealing some ideas from musicians you admire. Also: a surprising number of Baroque composers wrote books on how to play ornaments, so if you’re playing something in that style it may be worth checking to see what the composer themself had in mind! (Quantz‘s chapters on appoggiaturas and “shakes” are a good example for woodwind players.)

    Graceful ornaments raise the maturity level of your playing, and audition judges notice. Don’t wing it!

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