Picking a piece to play can be a prickly proposition. I like alliteration. It has a sing-song quality that makes it easy to read and speak. When my kids were small, I used to read poetry or sing nursery rhymes to them. As they got older, I continued to read aloud but many of the authors did not intend for the stories to be read aloud. Though they were written for an age when children are not quite able to read by themselves, their lack of the sing-song flow made them impossible to speak. I tried, but often spent more time stumbling over the words with a twisted tongue and the flow of the story would get lost. Oddly, some of the rhymes I would tell them included older tongue twisters that maintained the quality of a poem that should be spoken and thus were easier to say aloud.
Music often has the same issues as prose. There are some songs that are meant to be played and listened to, and they flow. Other music is a challenge to listen to, it can be difficult to play and takes a long time to learn. I like to listen to the songs that flow. I like the sensation of hearing in my head the flowing notes written on a page or how the notes align under my fingers when I play. Don’t be confused though with the idea that a flowing song is an easy song or not a challenge to play. They often have a complex structure. The nursery rhymes often told complex stories that many have forgotten but they are there just below the surface. The sing-song quality, the allure of alliteration, the attention to intention to speak aloud the musical notes, determines my interests in a piece. Fortunately, many of the pieces we play in our band contain at least parts that bring with it a flow. My individual part may not speak to me but usually when we play as a group, I can hear the song patterns. There are a few that tie my tongue and I think that of others, and often, maybe not surprisingly, those are the ones that the group rejects. It is interesting how my favorite songs, my favorite books and poetry all sing. They are all just notes or words on a page, but they have in them a quality that speaks.
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AuthorDaniel Zarka Archives
March 2019
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