Where to Begin - Phrasing in Music. Expression & Meaning

Hi, it's Chris with Implied Music. Where to begin? We've been talking about that kind of a lot lately, and today I'd like to talk about phrasing. Phrasing, the animation that sort of brings to life melodies, rhythms, the tiny little details of articulation that make the difference between something sounding mechanical and something sounding like a living, breathing, musical event. Let's talk about it today. I'm not in the studio because I wanted to play the Osmos. I've got this instrument set up out in my main room where my piano is and my guitar, because this instrument is a performance instrument. It's got very articulate keys. So if I strike a key hard, I get one sound. If I strike it soft, something else. A short phrase gives me something different. I can bend notes. That's phrasing. And let's talk a little bit about how phrasing made its way into music. Well, first of all, phrasing, I believe, and I think there's research to support it, arises from the speech centers of the brain. And so it's worth talking a little bit about the language of poetry because it's nice to have sort of words to understand things. Now, here's the thing. In poetry, you've probably heard of metrical feet. Well, a metrical foot in a phrase or a poem is how stresses, accents are organized. We were just talking about pulse and subdivision, and somehow it's sort of the next reasonable thing, isn't it? The phrasing of conversation, of poetry has a direct impact on our phrasing of melody, of rhythm, of music. Well, in the early part of the Western canon, the Western development of music, vocal music really was an enormous part of what made things tick. And we have all these medieval church canons that become the foundation for Baroque music. Now, Baroque is an early form I guess you just would have to call it sort of classical music or Western classical music. And in Baroque music, there frequently would be an absence of any indication of how to phrase things. The notes would just be written out in a straight row. And, you know, the performers were left to their own devices. There was an expectation that they would understand how to phrase things. But beginning at the end of the Baroque period and with composers like Haydn and Mozart, they started to be really, really picky about phrasing. Here's an example of a melody from Mozart where the phrasing is very specific. Mozart is at the forefront really in music history of notating specific phrasing. The composer suddenly wants us to really focus on their desires. So, phrasing like connecting notes or separating them, things that are accented, things that aren't. So, La Ciderem La Mano is from Don Giovanni. Connected, separated, connected. Take a breath because it's all about singing. Separated, connected, take a breath. Connected, separated, separated. All of these things are notated in the music. When you're making your own music, think about phrasing. It's a really important idea. Listen, it goes further. Take this example from Delibes, the pizzicato polka. It's all short notes and it's an enormous part of what makes the music cool, right? If it wasn't for the fact that those notes were short, it wouldn't have the same energy. Delibes makes tiny little, they're called staccato marks, tiny little dots over the note. Play this note short, as short as possible, like the keyboard is so hot you can barely touch it. Now, the opposite, beautiful, long legato lines are also notated for us by composers. For instance, this Camille Saint-Saëns melody from Carnival of the Animals. The name of the piece is The Swan, right? So, everything's very legato. Take a breath. Vibrato. I didn't have the D. I had to play the B. Ran out of notes up at the top of the keyboard. I love playing this instrument. It's so expressive. Okay, so I just used the word expressive, didn't I? Phrasing is about expression. When I'm talking to you, I'm thinking about how I punctuate my speech patterns, right? It would be very boring to listen to a conversation list or a teacher or a TV show with characters where everyone was speaking at the same note and the same rhythm. It's just not interesting. Poetic feet like the iamb or the trochee or the, you know, anapest create rhythmic identities to speech, and they create rhythmic identities to musical phrases as well. Phrasing has everything to do with the vitality of a melodic line, and you can take five different musicians, give them the same melody, and they'll deliver you a slightly different vibe, and that vibe a lot of the time has to do with phrasing. Phrasing is an important element of style. Really hoping that your theoretical pursuits lead you to a personal voice. You must be your own theoretician, as I've said before, and somehow understanding your own voice leads you to understanding your own phrasing and just making better music. That's the plan. That's what I'm hoping for all of us, and I hope this has been useful. Like and subscribe. Ding the bell. You'll be notified when I do my videos, and I'll see you next time.