During my 20's I worked as an attendant and group therapist on locked psychiatric units. My primary responsibility was to insure the physical safety of the patients, which meant closely monitoring the emotional state of patients who might become violent with themselves or others. Over time I learned to pay close attention to tone of voice as an indicator of mood, more so than the verbal content of speech. Listening closely to tone of voice was also very important in understanding what was going on under the surface in group therapy sessions.
The flip side of all that attention paid to the voice tone of others was trying to always insure my own tone of voice was not accelerating a volatile situation, but rather helping to keep things relatively calm.
Those experiences led me to be more conscious of something I think we all do on a mostly unconscious level, i.e. make judgments about the personality and state of mind of others based in part on their tone of voice, and that we use our own tone of voice as an underpinning to expressing ourselves through speech.
It's my idea that when the neuroscience gets sophisticated enough, we'll see that the tone quality of your music springs from, and affects the listener in, deeper and more primal parts of the brain than the rhythm, melody and harmony. When you make music, your tone sets the stage for whatever else you do.
(As a side bar to this discussion, there's the question of the tone of piano players. It would seem that, more than wind and string instruments, the tone of a piano resides more in the piano than the player. That's largely true, but the hammer action means that strings can be hit with different amounts of force and at different rates of acceleration (see correction below), exciting the strings in subtlely different ways. Along with that, high level players can control the dynamics and the temporal sequence of every single note to such a high degree that individual styles can be developed and appreciated.)
UPDATE - Jonathan West corrects me in the comments:
By the way, you're wrong about the piano. By the time the hammer hits the string, it is no longer attached to the key and so it is in free movement and has no acceleration due to the key. Being in free movement, the the sound made by the hammer's action on the string varies from one note to the next solely on the speed with which the hammer hits.
What pianists and others think of as tone on a piano is derived from timing and use of pedals, and also from different degrees of force (and hence loudness) applied to different notes of the same chord. To a great extent, the idea of varied tone on the piano is a cognitive illusion fostered by the player - one which the player himself may be unaware of and honestly believe in.
All of what Jonathan says is very well put, especially that last sentence. During my time as a keyboard major in the late 70's I convinced myself that there was something more than simply the speed of the hammer affecting the tone of the note, and had come up with my faulty explanation involving acceleration. There is the acceleration created by gravity as it works to pull the hammer back to its resting position, but that's a constant rate involving the number 32. So maybe what I'm feeling is how that interplay between gravity and the force of the keystroke allows for super fine tuning of the hammer speed.
Jonathan is also absolutely right to mention pedaling, which I'd not included and which has immense effect on a player's tone. Oftentimes a hammer is hitting a string still vibrating anywhere from a little to a lot from a previous hammer stroke, and pedaling controls the amount of that vibration.
I definitely and deliberately use tone of voice as tool in conversation, not to define the content of what I'm saying, but rather to define the emotional context for it. Because I'm basically a fairly calm sort of bloke, that's my normal tone of voice. Anger or other emotions can get injected into it as a deliberate action, in just the same way that "brassiness" can get injected into my horn tone.
ReplyDeleteMany people have little or no idea what tone of voice they use. Some people (e.g. teachers) are trained to use their voices in the context of their work, but often forget to apply the same principles outside work, or even within work when dealing with colleagues rather than children.
But being aware of this allows me to recognise this and to some extent decouple the tone from the content - recognising that the tone exists and is communicating an aspect of the person's state of mind, but not allowing myself to be caught up in it.
By the way, you're wrong about the piano. By the time the hammer hits the string, it is no longer attached to the key and so it is in free movement and has no acceleration due to the key. Being in free movement, the the sound made by the hammer's action on the string varies from one note to the next solely on the speed with which the hammer hits.
What pianists and others think of as tone on a piano is derived from timing and use of pedals, and also from different degrees of force (and hence loudness) applied to different notes of the same chord. To a great extent, the idea of varied tone on the piano is a cognitive illusion fostered by the player - one which the player himself may be unaware of and honestly believe in.
Thanks! Will get back to the voice tone portion of this great comment when I've got a bit more time.
ReplyDeleteJonathan - Thanks so much for the validation on the connection between tone of voice and tone of instrument. It's the sort of thing I sometimes say to music educators and get blank stares or quizzical looks - they take my point but don't seem to see it's real importance compared to all the technique stuff they're so concerned with.
ReplyDeleteParticularly like - "Anger or other emotions can get injected into it as a deliberate action, in just the same way that "brassiness" can get injected into my horn tone." I think that's a great way to measure one's progress on an instrument, to be able to control the tone and get it to conform with everything else you're doing.
One of the thing that baffles me to no end is that none of the band directors we've had for the past six years has ever had us work on tone, it's just mentioned casually from time to time.
And again, I'd encourage you to write more. You have a real gift for stating musical issues very clearly. I'd snap up a memoir of your musical life in a minute.
The details of controlling tone on a wind instrument are different from instrument to instrument. I know how to control tone on the horn. I have a vague idea therefore how to do it on other brass instruments.
ReplyDeleteBut flute, clarinet and the double reed instruments each have their own entirely separate conceptions of tone, and separate sets of techniques for controlling it.
The one thing they all have in common is that the techniques for controlling tone are all pretty much invisible to the observer. They consist of internal matters in terms of control of the pressure and flow rate of the air supply, along with minute and almost imperceptible changes in the embouchure.
And so even the player can't actually see what he is doing, he can only hear the results of it. For this reason, there isn't much a a vocabulary for tone-control techniques in wind instruments, instead we have a vocabulary of the effects we can produce.
Contrast this with the strings, who have a detailed vocabulary of techniques, play with the heal or tip, pizzicato, spiccato, all sorts of variations in vibrato, pressure, bow speed, playing nearer the bridge or the fingerboard. The thing is that these things can be described because they are visible, and conductors can tell the strings to play this way or that, because they know that, even if an individual player's tone isn't all that good, if they collectively use the technique requested, the combined tone of the section will be more towards what the conductor is looking for. And all the string have essentially the same techniques available.
So it is understandable that a conductor shies away from dictating tone to wind players. He probably doesn't know the techniques needs to ask for, and it is quite likely that the players haven't the conscious control over the tone of their instruments that is necessary to actually do what the conductor might ask for.
I've found that it is quite rare for a player to have a high degree of conscious control over tone colour, such that on the horn for instance you can vary the volume and the brassiness independently of each other.
In wind playing, this is something which divides professionals and amateurs. professionals can do this, amateurs generally haven't progressed to the point where they have the technique necessary to control the tone in this way, and often aren't aware of the musical need.
In general, the tone colour changes as one plays louder, but that happens without players having independent control over tone & volume.
Jonathan - You say "the conductor shies away from dictating tone to wind players." I just want them to mention tone as a vital component of musicality, point out exceptionally good of bad tone, and to encourage the players to nurture and cultivate good tone. I find unpleasant tone much harder to tolerate than a staccato that's not quite short enough.
ReplyDeleteMore to come on tone - next post (in the fulness of time) on how to develop it.
The point I was making is that the conductor shies away from mentioning it for two reasons. One is that he doesn't have the vocabulary for it, and the other is that in amateur groups the players don't have control over their tone (independent of their control over their volume) and so for the conductor to talk much about it is likely in practice to be a waste of breath.
ReplyDeleteJonathan - I take your points, both of them, and would say your views are pretty much unanimous among music educators - and that I'm not trying to change your mind, only to clarify my views as a therapist. Also, these 2.0 posts are a beginning point on these subjects, and that without the ones I hope will follow, they probably come across as overly broad.
ReplyDeleteMusic educators (band directors especially) generally like to micromanage what the student is doing so that it fits what the group is doing, and since the students have passed an audition, they're probably going to do well with this approach.
Your view seems to assume that good tone will come over time once everything else is worked out. My view is that those who might not be able to pass an audition might not even be aware (consciously) that good tone is even an issue. Given my posts on mindfulness, I'm of the opinion that you at least need to be aware of what you're trying to do to make any real progress.
I do realize how hard it is to say exactly what to do to get good tone, but that does not mean you can't point out when the student has it and when not (relatively speaking) and then ask them to assess what they're doing to make the difference. Mostly at first this can be worked with when they're playing smack dab in the middle of their range compared to notes out on the edge of it.
While it may not be the case, thinking, "to talk much about it is likely in practice to be a waste of breath", has a whiff of self-fulfilling prophecy about it, at least with my kind of clientele.
Underlying all this, for me, is that if the client doesn't enjoy making music and finds it in some way fulfills them, they're not going to stick with it. Since I feel tone quality is the central element of the endeavor, leaving it to chance and time feels dicey.
Thanks so much for pushing me to better verbalize what I'm trying to get at.
Ah, I think I've also not been making myself adequately clear. I'm not suggesting that the band leader of a school or amateur group shouldn't concern himself with tone, just that trying to tackle it directly may not be the best approach
ReplyDeleteMaking specific requests for tone from players who don't have the technique to deliver what is being asked for is going to lead to frustration and disillusion. It's not going to help. Improvements in tone have to be achieved more gradually, and to a certain extent by stealth.
For instance, the conductor can ask people to listen to recordings of the pieces being rehearsed. The immediate objective would be to familiarise the players with the piece, so they are less likely to get lost in rehearsals. But if they are listening to a recording of a performance by a professional group, the kind of tone being produced is bound to register to some degree.
And the conductor can also ask players to listen carefully to each other. Again, the immediate objective isn't tone, it might be ensuring balance, so that the player with the tune is heard over the accompaniment, or it might be to ensure that the rhythm is coordinated properly. But the mere act of having to listen carefully will cause players to listen to each other's tone, and to a certain extent to mimic it.
I've spoken about mimicry in the context of musicality, and also mentioned that I quite unconsciously modelled my tone on the Denis Brain recordings of the Mozart horn concertos I listened to as a child. The fact that you don't talk about tone much doesn't mean that no work on tone is being done in a group.
Thanks again for a great comment. Two things that come to mind are:
ReplyDelete1. What you're talking about is sometimes referred to in psych circles as having a "hidden agenda". There are pluses and minuses to that, but I see more the minuses. As a therapist I want to help people teach themselves by helping them become more self aware as music makers, particularly about something so central to the effort as tone quality.
People who can pass the audition and get inside the gated community are probably going to have more of an overall sense of what's going on on music making than those not allowed in. Whereas a band instructor can assume all the students will have a sensitivity to tone quality right from the start, as a therapist I can make no similar assumptions.
But more important to me is establishing a completely honest and above board connection with the client. For me, the way in which good music making is achieved is at least as important as the good music making. Educators seem to care less as long as everyone does what they're supposed to. (Cue abusive educator rant ;-)
2. I've already typed myself out here, but there's at least as much to say about recordings. Through nature and nurture we could not be more different in our early years. Besides church organ, I never heard live music as a child, and in high school just other piano players.
I've heard a couple of people who've lost a lot of hearing say that they can recognize songs they knew way back when, but that new things don't make sense - their brain is supplying the missing details. I think with your background your brain supplied the missing details on recordings and you heard more nearly what the real sound was. For me recordings are very thin, and I really only hear good tone, which I think can be nearly tactile, in live performance.