On Tue, 2006-11-07 at 12:03 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > <By nuances I mean more the phrasing and the length of notes, i.e. > holding a > note just that tiniest fraction longer or shorter than would be > written. > > These, together with attack, are in my view among the most basic > elements of style and illustrate how, in many ways, style is > inseparable from technique. I'm mainly a string player and these > things really boil down to how to use the bow. I'm sure everyone who > has attempted to teach a string instrument will have come across the > "i'll worry about those details when I can play better" attitude from > otherwise intelligent pupils who fail to realise (or refuse to > believe) that concerning yourself with such "details" is how you get > to play better in the first place. With the brass and wind, the > equivalent is how to use the tongue, lips and breath. On nsp it > probably boils down simply to how short or long the notes are (and of > course in 99.9% or more of cases, notes on nsp sound better separated > - which is what "staccatto" means (it doesn't mean "short")) and > whether slides or gracenotes are used (I confess to being quite fond > of the odd choyte here and there.)
Which is exactly why my recorder teacher is very fussy about phrasing, articulation and appropriate ornamentation, as once you've got the idea of playing the right notes in tune out of the way, it's how you turn your performance from dull to good to excellent. And, at least with me, she's doing the ornamentation thing at the same time as trying to get me to play in tune consistently. The details are important on any instrument, and this is probably a big reason why it can be very hard to learn to play well without a teacher. > <I just find that taking the played note and writing it down is like > translating something from one language into another, and wondered if > other > people have had a similar struggle. > > As a professional translator, I can assure you that the correspondence > between music and the notation that has developed for representing it > visually on a more or less one-to-one basis is much closer than the > correspondence between any two languages. Languages are, after all, > not code forms of each other - which is one of the reasons why we > translators still haven't been put out of a job by computers. I can > attest to the struggle though. Oops, way off topic!!! That doesn't mean we computer scientists aren't getting closer to putting you out of a job though... -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
