Hearing the music in your head while playing

gtr1023 · Regular Member Joined: 07 Jan 2023 Posts: 22

Hey there!

I am wondering if there are any opinions on this topic:

My question is about WHEN you hear the music on the page. Do you hear one note in advance, or are you hearing a whole phrase ahead of where you're actually playing?

Let me know what you think. Thanks!

kehaulani · Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2023 8:29 am Post subject:

Never thought about. Just let it happen as it will.

I think, if it's something I know well, I am concentrating on the music in real time. If I'm sight-reading, I am looking ahead while letting the present music automatically take care of itself.

In either case, I have my listening radar out.
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poketrum · Veteran Member Joined: 04 Mar 2023 Posts: 160

In sync as it plays - as if I’m singing along.

OldSchoolEuph · Heavyweight Member Joined: 07 Apr 2012 Posts: 2458

I am hearing it, and feeling it - I play by feel as much as anything. To produce what the paper shows, in the context of what my ears hear, I know what that will feel like. If I lose that awareness, it goes south fast.
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JoseLindE4 · Heavyweight Member Joined: 18 Apr 2003 Posts: 791

On Roger Rocco's blog, he talks about how his students suddenly sound better if he's singing along in lessons. I've tried this in lessons as well. I'm NOT a good singer, but can make a student sound significantly better if I sing along.

The lesson from Mr. Rocco as well as my experience is to sing along. Cultivate a vivid (loud and detailed) idealized sound in your imagination and sing in your head as you play. If a bad singer like me can make someone sound better, how much better can the ideal trumpet sound in your imagination help?

I just try to sing along in my head like we're playing together -- not early, just right together.

abontrumpet · Heavyweight Member Joined: 08 May 2009 Posts: 1821

It's a good question!

Basically what poketrum said. Basically "in-sync."

But as with most automated responses, there's a spectrum. If you go and sing "Mary had a Little Lamb" there's not much thought that goes into things, it's automated and requires little brain power. New things that you've never heard before, most trumpeters kind of learn the "tune" as they learn the piece. i.e., they are practicing the singing and the trumpeting concurrently. In an ideal world, you can sing (internally aka audiation) the entirety of what you are about to play as fast as you are about to play it. The test if we can sing it internally is generally if we can sing it externally (so do your singing!). Then its just a matter of putting the trumpet conditioning on top of that.

Now, if we play things slower, we can make it so you audiate the pitch, then play and while playing you can audiate the next one. But like i said, ideally you have the tune in your head before you pick up the trumpet.

TrumpetMD

PH · Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2023 1:08 pm Post subject:

rdotson102 · Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2023 11:17 am Post subject:

Have you ever been to a restaurant and ordered a Coke, but they gave you tea instead? If you didn't realize it before taking that first sip, there's a little bit of shock when you take first taste it, right? There's nothing wrong with tea, you just weren't expecting it. It's not like you were consciously imagining the taste beforehand, but subconsciously you were. The same thing happens on trumpet when we expect something to come of the horn and it's different. Normally it's just a missed note, but how many times have you been sight-reading a chart, heard the wrong note in your head but played the right note? You're at least surprised. As we get better and better as musicians, we tend to read music as sounds more so than notes, if you know what I mean. Hearing a note ahead is good, but hearing the phrase, or at least where you are in the phrase, is better. It's rarely the note itself that matters as much as how it's connected to the others. Chances are, you'll notice that you have the whole phrase in your head as your playing a song that you've played before. Most of this is subconscious, but using Bill Adam type techniques with creating as detailed a mental image of the sound in your head consciously as you play is massively beneficial.