Why Some Notes Matter More Than Others
1. Reasoning
Learning a piece of music comes with many challenges. Pressing the correct notes and trying to include all of the different dynamics, performance markings and other features of the music can take up quite a lot of brain space.
Yet, unbeknown to many players, much of what makes a piece of music interesting is actually the things that aren’t written in the music at all.
I remember when I was 17 years old, I was having a piano lesson with a teacher of mine who specifically helped me polish pieces for competitions and auditions. She once said to me, “there are so many decisions that you have to make about the music you are playing that you aren’t making at the moment”. At the time I thought, “how can there possibly be decisions to make when I can only play at a certain volume, with a certain rhythm, certain notes, a certain style and with certain performance markings?!”.
Well now, nearly 14 years later, as a (somewhat) functioning adult who has been through the process of learning many different pieces, I understand exactly what she meant.
If I can summarise what I believe she meant, it would be this: every note is not equal. If every note were equal, nothing stands out. The importance given to each note and the physical way in which you play those notes is not solely dictated by the sheet music, but by a combination of the abstract idea of what the music is trying to say, along with a great deal of storytelling and personal interpretation.
For many players, learning a piece of music is an attempt at replicating what is written in the music onto the piano. But this would be the same as reading a children’s story to a group of children in a monotone voice, with no intonation or emphasis on any of the words.
2. Importance
The interesting thing is, when reading a story to a group of children, we have some experience that dictates how we might want to interpret that story. We understand the story and the characters, and we know that when the big bad wolf is blowing your house down or eating your granny, it’s not a good thing. So we change the way we read it to make the wolf sound more sinister or scary, to characterise the story.
However, with music, we have to learn from the ground up how to interpret the piece of music and how to articulate that on the piano.
Melody vs Accompaniment
This is one of the most evident demonstrations of how the music doesn’t explicitly tell you how to play. Music is generally made up of melodies and chords. The melody provides the narrative of the story that we listen to, and the chords provide the colour, the feeling and the scene behind that narrative. The sheet music never tells us which notes are melody notes and which are notes from the chord, and it also doesn’t tell us to make the melody stand out from the chords. But generally, melodies do want to be a little more present so that a listener can follow the story you are trying to tell.
Top Notes of a Chord
Typically, if you are playing something that makes use of a lot of chords, you will have the melody at the top of those chords. Trying to balance your hands so that the top note of a chord stands out is a physical challenge that we aren’t really explicitly told about.
Tension vs Resolution
When we are playing a piece of music, tension and release are used a lot to build anticipation. This most often comes in the form of a chord and then notes that don’t belong to that chord clashing against it. If you have a tension like this, leaning into those tensions so that they feel even more satisfying when resolved is a great way of showing conflict and resolution. Very much in the same way that you would make the wolf sound scary so that the resolution is satisfying when he is inevitably caught and jailed for his murderous habits.
Notes that Change Key or Harmony
When playing a piece of music that changes key, there will always be specific moments where a note is introduced that shifts the harmony and sounds new and interesting. Bringing a little more emphasis to these notes can help guide a listener through those moments and make them feel like they are entering a new landscape too.
3. Decisions
These are just a few of the decisions that you need to make in a piece of music that aren’t explicitly given in the sheet music. They are moments where some notes are more important than others, and where you decide where to bring the listener’s attention, and how.
When discussing this topic, one of the most common questions I get asked is: “but what if the dynamic is ‘p’, don’t you have to stay at that volume?”.
The answer is that dynamics are not a static volume, but a relative one. “p” in one piece is different from “p” in another piece depending on what is happening and the sentiment you are trying to convey. This is why dynamics are best thought of as “sentiments” rather than “volume”. If a composer has intentionally written “p”, they are often not doing so because they care about the music being quiet, they care about creating a particular feeling.
So the key is to find what that feeling is and focus on that. Then the way that you express the notes, bring attention and importance to certain notes, and physically press the key becomes dictated by more than just volume.
An example of how this might change how you physically press the key is whether you use a sharper attack (pressing the key down quickly) or a softer attack (pressing the key down more gradually).
So, when my teacher told me that I needed to make decisions, what I believe she was trying to help me understand is:
“the notes may all be written the same, yet they’re not meant to be heard the same.”
Matt
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