Phrasing - natural or learned?

[Annie]

How do you learn phrasing? Is it natural, something you're kind of born with? Or is it more a learned ability as you play your instrument?
_________________
~Annie

*I may not be great yet, but I'm working hard on it and one day I'm gonna be there.*

[trumpetmike]

There are probably those players who have had amazing phrasing ability from birth, but I would venture to suggest that these are very rare cases.
My view is that it is a very hard thing to teach (speaking as a teacher!), people tend to acquire it through time.

Experience plays a big part, both on the instrument and in life. As you go through more you develop a wider emotional spectrum to draw your experiences from, this is where (in my view) great phrasing comes from. I have heard some incredible performances which have been technically very impressive, but the emotional content has been minimal, leading to very poor (in my view) phrasing.

Great phrasing comes when one is willing to commit oneself to the music emotionally.

One person's view - probably lots out there who will disagree with it, the joy of these places, lots of views, all of which can be right - unless they aren't

[FreshBrewed]

I totally agree Mike. I even try to get a picture in my head of the piece before I play it. Meaning that I let the music tell me how to feel instead of thinking what a bad day I've had and taking it out on the horn and music. Concentration is a wonderful thing.
_________________
Mike

Those who roll up their sleeves rarely lose their shirts!

Eclipse MHY Bell- Savannah Finish

[Pat]

I think you can learn alot about phrasing by singing (solo or in a choir) and listening to great singers. Herseth says he tries to sing through his instrument the way Frank Sinatra sang. )---Of course Sinatra, in turn, learned alot about phrasing from Tommy Dorsey, a trombone player.) Also, having the words to consider when singing focuses your mind on good phrasing. So join the church choir!

I think phrasing can be learned.----Playing with "feeling" may be another matter.

[Still Trying]

There is a difference between playing notes and playing music. I think the ability to phrase is easier to learn the more one listens to fine musicians-especially vocalists. Music has natural phrasing written into it, if you look for it. But it's hard to describe with words. It's easier to show somebody on an actual piece of music. After you learn to look for the way the notes fit together in logical patterns, the phrasing kind of takes care of itself. I think of notes fitting together the same way words fit together, when we just make simple conversation. Talking is broken down into phrases and then sentances, and then paragraphs. Music works the same way, if you learn to analyze it for the phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. And I'm talking about all music-even etudes and exercises. Like I said, it's easier to demonstrate than it is to explain.

But it's something that can definitely be learned by most musicians. If someone can't learn how to do it, I'm really not sure you can call him a musician. He may be what I call a technician, and be able to play every note on the page double time and backwards. But if he can't put feeling into it, which is where the phrasing comes in, he's not playing music IMHO.

Sorry. This post is probably too vague to be of much help.
_________________
S. T.

What do we have that we did not receive, and if we received it, why do we glory, as if we received it not?

[_Don Herman]

Arban's has a bunch of phrasing studies... Indicates most of us have to learn (to hear) it.
_________________
Don Herman/Monument, CO
"After silence, that which best expresses the inexpressible, is music." - Aldous Huxley

[Tal Katz]

I suggest singing too.
Take a piece you play. look at it and look for the phrases.
Sing it. Get a picture of what you actually want and just sing it.
Then it'll just work right on the trumpet and it'll be much easier.

Tal Katz,
Israel

[badebop]

I ditto the singing. SING! SING! SING! There's an old adage: "If you can say it you can play it." That also could be applied to "If you can sing it you can phrase it." Start singing.

Tom

[ This Message was edited by: badebop on 2004-02-26 11:38 ]

[Derek Reaban]

Annie,

I started a topic called "Don't Drop the Ash Tray" that deals with this exact topic at: http://www.trumpetherald.com/forum/viewtopic.php?topic=14119&forum=4. This is in line with all of the responses that talk about singing. I think you will found some worthwhile ideas in that folder.
_________________
Derek Reaban
Tempe, Arizona
Tempe Winds / Symphony of the Southwest

[Brewblue1]

I would also add to all the above suggestions that you listen, listen, listen!

Imitation is a great way to learn how to play musically. Put in your fav recordings and scrutinize what is going on. How short or long are the notes? How loud/soft is the artist playing? What kind of articulation and tone colors are being employed? How does the player get from one note to the next? One phrase to the next? Immerse yourself in the music. And then try and do it yourself!

You have an enormous amount of music that is considered by many to be 'musical' at your disposal in the multitudes of recordings available these days. Use it!!

Have fun!


John




_________________
Visit the Rafael Mendez Online Library!
http://mendezlibrary.asu.edu
2004 Rafael Mendez Brass Institute:
http://www.colorado.edu/music/Mendez

[ This Message was edited by: Brewblue1 on 2004-02-26 12:56 ]

[Annie]

Thank you for the suggestions on learning how to phrase, they are quite useful - but I still want to know - is phrasing something that must be strived for or is it innate? Do some musicians have an innate feeling of how the music is shaped and 'felt' mixed with complex emotions to form a musical thought? Especially for those who grew up around music - do they have a natural ability to 'feel' music if that is what has surrounded them their entire life? I just noticed that some musicians seem to feel the music as they play it, as if the music is a part of them.
_________________
~Annie

*I may not be great yet, but I'm working hard on it and one day I'm gonna be there.*

[Pat]

Doesn't the answer have to be yes? Maybe a better illustration is to compare a great jazz artist to a legit one. As great and thoughtful a player as Phil Smith is I don't think he has the same feeling for phrasing jazz as Wynton. He grew up steeped in Salvation Army band music, and Wynton grew up with the sights and sounds of New Orleans.

Another example: I caught the last third of Gershwin's Raphsody (sp?) in Blue on the radio last Saturday and you could tell it wasn't being played by an American orchestra or pianist. Everything was very "square" and didn't have an American feel to it.

We are the sum of our experiences, in music and most other ways.

[thegambler]

There is a great book about phrasing entitled "Note Grouping", by James Morgan Thurmond.

Although it reads like an insurance policy, the book has some good advise, as well as an appendix containing analysis of recordings by wonderful players. The author contends that these players INSTINCTIVELY follow the "note grouping" rules.

The crux of the system lies in the thesis/anacrusis relationship.

It's worth a read.

[Nonsense Eliminator]

First off, I think it is possible to overestimate the relationship between emotion and phrasing. I think that the expression is in the music, and playing it in the proper style with the right articulations and dynamics and with proper phrasing allows that expression to come out. If we needed to experience the emotions in the music in order to convey them, everybody who spent a week preparing and performing a Mahler symphony would be a total wreck!

As for whether or not phrasing is innate, I don't think anybody's born with it, but we all absorb it to different extents. I learned to phrase music by listening to other performers, and through years of having teachers pick nits -- crescendo here, breath here, stress here, vibrato here, and so forth -- until certain things became "innate". Hopefully, I will continue to internalize more and more as I continue to mature. Learning to phrase is a constant process of assimilation, and the only way to do it is to listen and practice.

[Mzony]

I really have to agree with NE.
I would like to throw in a slightly different way of thinking about this though:
I think there is musicianship and then there is musicality.
Musicianship covers the "rules" of music. The "proper" ways of playing certain pieces/phrases. We learn these principals through listening and through teaching. These "rules", I think it is safe to say, are applied by probably every major musician in any field.
However, musicality is what we as performers, we as individuals, bring to the music. It is what seperates all the great musicians from each other. We fall in love with the personalities that our heroes bring to the music. And yes, we are in part influenced by our teachers and other performers, but we have our own experiences and personalities and it has to come through in our performances in part.
I think it is safe to say that there is a narrow margin of "acceptable" ways of performing ANY piece (musicianship). If that is true, what would make Phil Smith's (Just the first performer to come to mind) performance of Parsifal any different than anybody else's performance? Same notes...Same rules...Same HIGH standards. Simply put (in my meager opinion) it is his personality (musicality) that he brings to the music. It is his own association with any given piece, his imagery, experiences, etc, that he is able to ADD to these pieces.
I am sure one could shoot a few holes into my argument. This is just my way of thinking about this topic.

[_gmdean]

I think it was Rubinstein who said something along the lines of, he practiced until he no longer had to think about technique, then he practiced until he didn't have to think about phrasing, emotion, what the composer intended etc. He considered he had become a musician when he sat at the piano and the performance just happened.
I'd echo the singing suggestion, also listen to as many different performances as you can. How many times do we hear a cover version and just think it isn't as good as the original without realy working out why. I'd also suggest you try to look at the whole score not just the trumpet part, how does what you are doing fit into the bigger picture of what the orchestra, band is doing, how many times do we say that the great lead player is the one you don't notice?

Mark

[pair of kings]

Gambler, good to see someone benefitting from this book. Dr. Thurmond was my teacher. The things I learned from him about the art of putting 2 notes together is just where it's at as far as I'm concerned.
I can still hear him talking about dotted eight/sixteenth note rhythm.. With his Texas drawl, " It's not DayTo --- It's ToDAY."
Phrasing can be learned.

[musiclifeline]

I was cruising this thread a while back and was intrigued by the Note Grouping book... so I bought a used copy off Amazon. I received it (finally) this morning, and I've read more than half of it already (slow day at work). This book is excellent. Period. As a jazz player, I've heard and used the term "Rhythmic Forward Motion" a million times--yet I've never been able to describe it without using a series of hand motions that seems to be of very little practical help to students or colleagues. This book lays it out in such a way as to make me slap my forehead and want to call all of my students (current and former) and teachers (current and former) and let them in on it.

Thanks, thegambler, for the suggestion and Pair of Kings for the endorsement.


[ This Message was edited by: musiclifeline on 2004-03-15 17:09 ]

[Strawdoggy]

I, too learned note groupings from a Thurmond student. My old copies of of Bitsch, Charlier, etc. are laden with note grouping markings. At first it was artificial to me, over time it became second nature.

The way I learned phrasing was by sitting or standing next to principal and lead players who were much better than me, and trying to copy their style within the section. I always keep my ears open. I think the reason some players never learn to phrase well is because they :

1) Don't have the technique in their back pocket, so are too worried about playing the correct notes/rhythms.

2) Are lugheads that don't try to listen.

[Annie]

Where could I get the book? And by note groupings, do you mean lyrical phrases? (Sorry, growing up with a parent as a singer I think in singing terms for some musical things.)
_________________
~Annie

*I may not be great yet, but I'm working hard on it and one day I'm gonna be there.*