Time Keeping

In a post of Kyle Gann's, one of his regular commenters, a composer, says:

There is also the problem with timing. I once formed an ensemble with classical, jazz and rock musicians: the classical musicians were slightly behind the beat, the jazz musicians slightly ahead, and the rock musicians dead centre, almost like a computer sequencer. This is changing now, I did a session with classical string players a few years ago who were as dead on the beat as any rock player.

Rhythm and Language

This article from the BBC talks about research suggesting rhythmic motor ability correlates with language ability.

"It turns out that kids who are poor readers have a lot of difficulty doing this motor task and following the beat. In both speech and music, rhythm provides a temporal map with signposts to the most likely locations of meaningful input," . . . 

. . . "This study adds another piece to the puzzle in the emerging story suggesting that musical-rhythmic abilities are correlated with improved performance in non-music areas, particularly language,"

The Oxford Companion to Music

I've had a copy of the tenth edition of The Oxford Companion to Music close at hand for thirty some years. It's the best single resource for information and insight into "classical" music I've ever come across, and is delightfully entertaining as well, due to the wonderful writing of Percy A. Scholes.

This opening paragraph of the entry on tempo is a great example of what is, to me, some of the best writing on music there is.

Tempo usually means 'speed'. Upon the choice of the best speed the effect of music greatly depends. Every composition may be said to have its correct tempo, but this is not capable of being minutely fixed without scope or variation, as to some extent circumstantial factors enter, such as the character of the instrument used (e.g. organs may greatly differ in their effect), and the size and reverberation of the room (a very reverberant room requiring a slower tempo if the music is to 'tell'). Moreover, the general character of the interpretation decided upon may affect the tempo: one performer may consider that a particular piece will be most effective if every detail be made clear (calling for a slower tempo) and another that it will be most effective if treated in a 'broad' style calling for a quicker tempo; and both these interpretations may be good ones. Further, a highly rhythmic performance at a slower tempo may give the impression of being quicker than a really quicker one with less rhythmic life. In fact, what matters is not the tempo the performer actually adopts but the tempo that the listener is led to imagine he is hearing, for whilst in science things are what they are, in art things are what they seem.

Understand Music

This video just popped up on Boing Boing.


And they recently linked to an iPad app that looks interesting.

Music(al) Stretches

Sound and time are the two primal ingredients of music, and a word we use for each is rooted in the act of physically stretching something. 

Tone comes from Middle English: from Old French ton, from Latin tonus, from Greek tonos 'tension, tone, from teinein 'to stretch" -  Oxford American Dictionary.

Pace comes from Middle English: from Old French pas, from Latin passus "stretch (of the leg)', from pandere "to stretch'. -  Oxford American Dictionary.

Stretching is something the human body does all the time, from waking in the morning to standing on tiptoes reaching for a top shelf, so we all have a built in somatic sense of some stretches being easy and others being extreme and everything in between. 

The most deep seated stretching we do is extending and relaxing the diaphragm with every breath. We do it one way when we're relaxed, and another when we're anxious. 

Since it's my contention that a lot of music's power to move us is due it its encoding physical gestures (and associated feelings), I feel the ways in which music can mimic physical stretches (and associated feelings) has a lot to do with the feelings a piece of music might evoke. It's so easy to get caught up in the surface issues of music making, we can sometimes forget there's this deeper gestural substrate that's communicating to an audience in a mostly non-conscious way.

A key component of physical stretches is that they always have an arc from not being stretched to being fully stretched and back again. You can't make yourself stop breathing and you can't hold a body stretch forever. So besides the degree of a stretch at it's fullest, from barely stretched to full or over extension, there's the way each stretch builds to a peak and then relaxes.

"Tension and release" is a phrase often used in talking about music, and for me, understanding that in the context just laid out gives it a richer meaning. 

"Balance" is another word often used in talking about music making, but I've never really liked it because I always get the extremely two dimensional image of scales tipping one way or another, whereas stretching is complex and our sense of it springs directly from our proprioception.

I often ask students if they've ever been around someone who has lots of interesting things to say, but whose voice is so off putting it's hard to pay full attention, -  that's the substrate I'm talking about. If their voice tone suggests either a string stretched to the breaking point or barely tuned up to pitch, and if the pacing is either to fast or too slow, the words they say will may not register as well as they might. 

On the other hand, if the gestural substrate of your music making matches up well with what you're trying to express, there's a much better chance of connecting with an audience.

Good Time Banjo & Thumb Piano

Music Listening and Brain Networks

This article on research carried out in Finland talks about how new research methods are giving us more detail on what's going on in the brain when we listen to music.

The researchers found that music listening recruits not only the auditory areas of the brain, but also employs large-scale neural networks. For instance, they discovered that the processing of musical pulse recruits motor areas in the brain, supporting the idea that music and movement are closely intertwined. Limbic areas of the brain, known to be associated with emotions, were found to be involved in rhythm and tonality processing. Processing of timbre was associated with activations in the so-called default mode network, which is assumed to be associated with mind-wandering and creativity.

Proprioception

Proprioception is a vital component of music making, but rarely expressly mentioned. Here are some snips from the current Wikipedia entry:

Proprioception . . . from Latin proprius, meaning "one's own" and perception, is the sense of the relative position of neighbouring parts of the body. . . a . . .  distinct sensory modality that provides feedback solely on the status of the body internally. It is the sense that indicates whether the body is moving with the required effort, as well as where the various parts of the body are located in relation to each other. . . 

. . . Kinesthesia is another term that is often used interchangeably with proprioception, though use of the term "kinesthesia" can place a greater emphasis on motion. Some differentiate the kinesthetic sense from proprioception by excluding the sense of equilibrium or balance from kinesthesia. An inner ear infection, for example, might degrade the sense of balance. This would degrade the proprioceptive sense, but not the kinesthetic sense. The affected individual would be able to walk, but only by using the sense of sight to maintain balance; the person would be unable to walk with eyes closed. . . .

 . . .The proprioceptive sense is believed to be composed of information from sensory neurons located in the inner ear (motion and orientation) and in the stretch receptors located in the muscles and the joint-supporting ligaments (stance). There are specific nerve receptors for this form of perception termed "proprioreceptors," just as there are specific receptors for pressure, light, temperature, sound, and other sensory experiences. . . .

. . . Proprioception is what allows someone to learn to walk in complete darkness without losing balance. During the learning of any new skill, sport, or art, it is usually necessary to become familiar with some proprioceptive tasks specific to that activity. Without the appropriate integration of proprioceptive input, an artist would not be able to brush paint onto a canvas without looking at the hand as it moved the brush over the canvas; it would be impossible to drive an automobile because a motorist would not be able to steer or use the foot pedals while looking at the road ahead; a person could not touch type or perform ballet; and people would not even be able to walk without watching where they put their feet.

One thing about music making is that there is really no end to how much we can develop and deepen our ability to do so. Part of that is our becoming more and more proprioceptively aware of how we play our instrument. One reason for this post is for it to be here as foundation for a flute diary post on how an advancement in technique was based on increased proprioceptive awareness in my fingers.

Advances in technique can lead to advances in our more fully inhabiting the music, and our growing interpretive sense can lead to advances in technique. Nurturing that interplay can keep music making fresh and rewarding for a lifetime.

I also have the intuitive sense that there's an overlap between our proprioceptive sense of balance and the ways we can feel "balance" in music making and in music we listen to, particularly in rhythm, but in all the other elements of music as well. How well and in what ways music is "balanced" is sort of a primal gesture to which all the others contribute.

In Praise of Technique

As a music therapist I tend to let working with clients' musicality lead the work on technique. The idea is that as they become more engaged in music making, the more they'll appreciate how empowering technique can be, and the more motivated they'll be to do the work involved to improve it. Too much technique too soon and you're going to lose a client.

For educators, technique is much more central, and in the last generation or two there's been a huge payoff. In this post Kyle Gann talks about a piece of very difficult music written by John Halle that can only be played these days because the, "rhythmic complexity standards have risen miraculously among the younger generation".

As Kyle always offers audio examples of music he's talking about, there's a link in the post to an mp3 of the first movement of the piece. It's astonishingly beautiful, takes me to places I've never been before, and I can't even begin to get my mind around the technique needed to achieve it. 

V.S. Odds and Ends

I've gotten a minute's worth of music that, as of last night, seems to work. This post just to mention a few ancillary things.

Finale - I love it because it allows for my various non-standard ways of doing music notation, but that very complexity can be a problem when I can't remember how to do something, either because the latest update changes something, or because I simply forgot due to not doing that task for a year or so. Case in point is the time signature. When I was going back over Timepiece to make parts for a local quintet to read through (they liked it), noticed that I'd figured out how to have something like 3+3+2+2 all over a single 8 below back in 1996 and just had to look to see how I'd done it.

Resolution - Visually it's how many pixels per square inch. In audio it's something about how many bits per something. On tv when they pixel-ate something to obscure it, we notice the boundary of the high and low resolution. In writing music I try not to have any boundaries like that in the rhythm (no bursts of 32nd notes in a stately half note/ quarter note melody) or harmony (no sudden shifts out of key/mode. I think it also applies to other ways I judge the music I write that are tougher to write about, like gesture.

Writing for particular players/instruments - Listening to the local group read through Timepiece reminded me that I'm always thinking of what the individual players are doing, and whether or not it's interesting. Dr. Andy told me once that in the Bach B Minor Mass, in one section the cellos have the same repeated quarter note for measures on end. When I'm writing for ensembles, in my mind it's however many soloists coming together for the piece, and everyone gets some time high in the mix. In this piece it's trying to keep the harpist interested and to see just how many ways the harp (for which I've never written before) can make music.

Computer Playback - Besides not being able to write music without a keyboard, having the computer play back what I've done is essential. I don't have theory mind and simply cannot manifest the music in my head by reading a score. I've always thought the computer playback is sort of like an X-ray that clearly shows the interior structure of the piece, but that the true nature of the piece is revealed only by performance. That's part of the reason my hearing first performances of things I've written is such an amazing experience.

Attention - One of my complaints about the concert band repertoire is that most of it seems an early incarnation of the MTV gimmick of constantly shifting the image to hold the attention of an audience. I keep thinking the arrangers decide on what transitions of speed and tonality and articulation they what to teach the kids and then forage about for bits of music to put between them ;-) But I've come to realize I do the same thing, just without the shifts of speed/meter and tonality. Once I write something that seems to work for a few bars I'll often try to extend it for longer than it wants, not catching at first that it's becoming boring. Many of my deletions of the last several measures and starting over are due to this. The other deletions are, of course, trying where to go instead. It really is like some sort of glass bead game, and when it works there's a wonderful feeling being connected to something outside myself.

V.S. Time Signature

Here are a couple of sketches in the time signature I'm thinking of using, having beats in two groups of three followed by a group of four. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10. To get Finale to automatically beam the notes in a way that shows that grouping I have to use a compound time signature of 3/8+3/8+1/2. To avoid making things look needlessly complicated I'll probably hide that numeric time signature and let the beamed notes (and dotted and undotted quarters) speak for themselves.

I like using the rhythms that can spring from unusual time signatures. Trying to get something that works is almost game like, as there's that feeling of things falling into place when you get it right. I've used this beat grouping before and like it a lot, both in the third movement of Timepiece, and before that in a solo piano piece called Soaring. 

So that's the starting point. Having set the basic parameters as laid out in these posts, the next step is to write 16 measures or so that are interesting and solid enough they can be extended into a whole piece. While I think about structural stuff at this point, once I get going it's written note by note by, measure by measure, straight until the end. I recently fired up an old computer to find a piece I'd forgotten I'd written and found it, along with numerous discards that never took off. The hardest thing is when you work on something for hours and come to realize you need to toss it and use that experience to do something much better.

(Should add that the key signature went to F minor from F major due to those extra flats just coming naturally to my fingers when doodling around with this time signature and thinking about what melody to give the flute that would show off that quality of tone Susan can generate in the middle to low range.)

Practice Time

Since talking about practicing the flute with the metronome at slightly different speeds so as to help feel the rhythm of the phrase itself, had the realization that what I was trying to get at has to do with that recent link to the article saying that we keep time in different ways in different parts of the brain. Just as music, our sense of time is not localized in a single area or two, as are most of our activities.

This is also what I was trying to get at saying Kyle Gann's The Planets refreshes our ears to rhythm shapes outside of repetitive triple and duple meters.

For me it's a given that music and physical gesture are deeply connected, and unless we're doing something like dancing, we don't count off to create a rigid time line when we nod, wink, use our hands when talking or any of the other thousands of physical gestures we make every day.

In ensemble playing we have to keep time in the metronome part of our brain so that we are, in fact, an ensemble. But for the music to trigger emotional responses in the audience, our sense of time needs to register in the other parts of the brain that perceive time as well.

photo - over in Echo Valley last year. John's wall; Kate's flowers.

Bring Em All In

Rob Halligan and Gareth Davies-Jones perform Mike Scott's song "Bring Em All In" which Daniel Levitin gives pride of place as the last song discussed in the final chapter ("Love") of his The World In Six Songs. He says it, "is to my ears among the most perfect love songs ever written".

Here is a YouTube with audio of Mike Scott performing the song himself. And here's another with him performing it live less than a year ago with an Irish fiddle wailing in the background.

It's almost like a mantra with the repetitive rhythms and lyrics, and the idea behind the words suggests the Buddhist prayers for "all sentient beings". Scott has connections to and performs at Findhorn, which I didn't realize was still a going concern.

Besides the song itself, I really like the performance in the embedded video up above. 

* The guitar player gets a groove going immediately and sustains it until the end. His sound with the acoustic guitar with internal mike fed to the monitor speakers in front of him has a great fullness. An electric guitar just wouldn't have that crispness, and without the monitors the sound would be thin. That full sound enhances the immersion in the rhythm.

* The way the guitarist moves, his gestures, gives the music a physical reality. I'll never forget seeing Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review two consecutive nights, in San Antonio and then Austin, back in the mid 70's. Sometimes the way he moved with the music made it seem the music was a force field and it was moving him rather than he creating it.

* The singing is a lot of the time almost conversational, and because it's almost masked by the guitar it "brings in" the listener so as to hear the words.

* The other singer with the egg shaker and box percussion adds a lot to the performance, and the two of them really connect with each other and the audience making that rhythm together. 

* I really like that the only staging is just the various instruments and the mixer, so all the focus is on the music itself. 

* Currently Mike Scott is in Dublin where he's going to present a number of  W. B. Yeats poems he's put to music. I read through the complete Yeats several times as an undergraduate years ago and was entranced. And Celtic music has always been a favorite of mine. So part of why I like this song so much probably has to do with its Celtic feel.

Many thanks to our Vermont readership for finding this video and insisting I take the time for a dial-up download of it.

Loud Music

This article doesn't link back to the original research, but the notion makes sense. Apparently there's a primitive part of the inner ear, the sacculus, that can respond to the rhythm of music louder than 90 decibels by triggering the release of endorphins. This would explain why volume can be such an intensifier of the effects of rhythm, but not so much the other elements of music. 

>>Neil Todd, an expert in the scientific study of music, explains that the sacculus seems to be part of a primitive hearing mechanism that has slowly been lost as humans have evolved. He said it has a connection to the part of the brain responsible for drives such as hunger, sex and hedonistic responses.<<

Rural Music

I live on a farm, and this video has been making the rounds of the community. Music for the rest of us ;-)

Synesthetic Gesture

Just came across this over on Boing Boing, a post about a book on synesthesia has this quote form the author:

For example, sight, sound, and movement normally map to one another so closely that even bad ventriloquists convince us that whatever moves is doing the talking. Likewise, cinema convinces us that dialogue comes from the actors' mouths rather than the surrounding speakers. Dance is another example of cross-sensory mapping in which body rhythms imitate sound rhythms kinetically and visually. We so take these similarities for granted that we never question them the way we might doubt colored hearing.

Slip Rhythms

As a hospice volunteer, since last fall I've been visiting a client in the final stages of Alzheimer's disease. I go by his home every Wednesday and do 30 minutes of music with him. Like every hospice client I've worked with, he's taught me a lot about music and taken me in directions I'd never gone in before.

But today was extra special. Ideas that have been sort of on the periphery of my consciousness popped onto center stage. My client's wife says he's always had a great sense of rhythm, and he sometimes plays the maraca I gave him in perfect time, but I've never quite figured out how the best way to "get traction" with him. Sometimes my guitar playing and singing will engage him, and sometimes it won't. 

I'd always thought that maybe tempo was the key, but today realized that the rhythm itself is far more important. After a lackluster start to the session I did "Eliza Jane", really working that I-IV chord change between the first and second beat of some four beat measures. Because of the afternoon with Dave last week, I've really been able to get a "groove" on that rhythm. Every so often when it's really going well I get flashes of being caught up in Mardi Gras parades (Crewe of Zulu, maybe?) back when I lived in New Orleans. There's something sinuous and trance inducing about that slip time groove. (And I learned "Eliza Jane" going to Preservation Hall back then.)

When I hit on trying "Eliza Jane" today, my client just flipped channels and was totally engaged for a while. Went on to do "She Belongs To Me", "All Along the Watchtower", and "One More Cup of Coffee for the Road" - all Dylan favorites of mine I've done for years and have some slip rhythm type strumming, and he connected with them as well.

Of course, every day is different in situations like that, but I intuitively feel I've hit on something that could have great value.

Ratios

Being a mathphobe, ratios have always been off-putting, but they're integral to music and music making, so they've got to be talked about somehow in the materials. The 2:3 ratio is both the hemiola in rhythm, the two against three, while in harmonic frequencies it's the Perfect Fifth, the same thing, just a lot faster. If one string is vibrating 200 times a second and another at 300, then we hear a fifth.

Space and Rhythm

In band rehearsal yesterday we prepared a few numbers for the Veterans Day ceremony on Tuesday. At one point maestro said that when playing marches, leave plenty of space between the notes as that brings out the rhythm. It's one of those things that makes perfect sense once you've realized it.

On Top of The Beat

One issue maestro keeps returning to in rehearsals is that of our sounding heavy footed and slowing down during passages that should crackle with forward moving energy. Several times he has talked about our using a "lighter" sound. Yesterday he said to not give quarter notes their full value and we played with that lighter sound he's been wanting. We played more "on top of the beat".

It is sort of a forest/trees issue. Our focus on individual notes as they came along was preventing our feeling the overall rhythmic drive. So in music making, heavy/light is a secondary range that overlaps fast/slow.