Why Quiet Playing Is So Difficult
1. Assumption
Many players will eventually come across a section in a piece of music where it requires them to play “quietly”. You might see a “p” or even a “pp” in the music. Yet many players also struggle to play deliberately quietly while still getting the notes to sound.
One of the most common “rite of passage” problems that I see is players trying to play quietly by barely pressing the key. It stands to reason that the obvious way to play quietly is to only lightly touch the key. However, the problem with this is that it causes us to limit our movement and can not only create tension by overly restricting movement, but also risks not getting the note to sound at all.
However, the way that we approach dynamics should really be built from first principles. What exactly is the point of the dynamic in the first place?
Well, dynamics are there to help us tell a story and understand the character of the piece of music. This is a much more useful and freeing way of framing what dynamics are supposed to do. If dynamics are not just volumes that you play the music at, but instead are characters, then “p” or “pp” no longer simply means “play quietly” or “barely press the key”, but instead becomes a signal telling you that the music needs to feel a particular way or that, at this moment in the story, the music is introverted, calm, sad, relaxed or any number of other characters that the dynamic could represent in a given context.
If we see the dynamic “pp” in a piece of music, while before this simply meant “very quiet”, now you might instead view it as “shy”. This means that you no longer need to barely press the key, but instead it suggests a much wider range of expressive details. You might play a little more hesitantly, you might move your fingers slightly slower. This kind of thinking naturally results in a softer sound, but the volume becomes a byproduct of the character rather than the other way around.
Of course, we don’t want to completely disconnect “pp” from “very quiet”, but looking behind why that dynamic was written allows you to think of these dynamics as ranges that are relative to what is happening in the rest of the music.
2. Control
So what does this mean physically?
Well…once players try to deliberately hold back the sound, tension increases, movement becomes much less efficient, fingers become much less reliable and you stop thinking about why the music is important.
While good quiet playing does require more control, it also requires you to fully connect with the key. What really makes a note quiet is not how much you press the key, but the speed of the attack. The best way to begin refining this is to always play right through the key, no matter what volume you are hoping to achieve.
You will notice that if you are trying to create a louder, more extroverted sound, then you will press the key down much quicker and with more weight, whereas a more introverted sound requires placing the note more gently, resulting in a slower key depression and less weight. However, both still require you to fully play the key.
A great way of testing this feeling is to play a simple one handed scale and try to press the keys down very slowly, all the way to the bottom. You will find that the notes still sound, but it’s also nearly impossible to do this loudly. Then try playing the same scale while pressing the keys down as quickly as possible. Trying to do that quietly suddenly becomes much more difficult. This is essentially the difference between the movements we are trying to create.
The difficulty is that, in a real piece of music where there are rhythms, tempo and notes to think about, focusing directly on the speed of the key depression is not particularly helpful. However, this demonstrates that barely pressing the key is not really what creates dynamics.
3. Awareness
The control itself comes from allowing yourself the freedom to search for meaning within the music and refine it through experimentation. Earlier, I said that “dynamics are there to help us tell a story and understand the character of the piece of music.”
Naturally, as humans, we already understand and express emotion. We can often tell how someone feels simply from their body language. We don’t necessarily need to intensely focus on pressing a key quickly or slowly, hard or soft, in order to create dynamics. What we really need to do is embody and express the feeling that we believe the dynamic was written to represent.
Dynamics have underlying sentiments that they are trying to communicate and, if we can interpret these, we can translate them into something human that we can physically express more naturally.
Thinking of “pp” as introverted means that we suddenly have a character we can embody. From this, we will naturally move our hands with a slower attack and a more timid nature. If “ff” feels angry, we will naturally express that with more erratic, quick attack movements.
Playing quietly can feel difficult because it seems like we have a much more restricted range of movement. But if you translate the music into something human and still fully play the key, you will likely find it much easier to express those quieter moments in the music.
Matt
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