i'm a Indigenous Canadian and we have powwow music and drum songs as a tradition. i've been singing since i was very young but more recently i started playing the melodies on my guitar. the music is very much centred around the pentatonic scale and the 4165 progressions but is arranged differently. most songs are arranged into phrases that are repeated 4 times. each phrase has a lead in that is sung by the lead singer followed by a repeat by the other singers and then everyone sings the rest of the melody together. half way through the phrase the group will change octaves with the male singers going low and the female singers singing the higher range. great example is the group Northern Cree, they were nominated for a grammy and are champion singers in North America. another example is Jeremy Dutcher, east coast Mi'kmac Nation who is a classical pianist who did archival research on his home community and adapted the drum songs to piano. many people in Canada (western) don't like the sound of powwow music at first because they don't know how to interpret it. when i play the melodies on guitar or ukulele everyone seems to relate to it and understand it.
David Bruce Composer Hey David. I’m in an alt rock band with grunge and punk influences but I personally have funk, soul & Motown influences. We are called Sigma Falls and you can find us on Spotify. On our song ‘Playing with Fire’ I utilised ghost notes in the slap and finger style sections, however the guitars wash them out a bit. Bloody guitarists! Oh and great vids by the way; very informative for us musicians on the contemporary side of the fence.
Also, I think a good song to listen to for bass ghost notes is ‘Dark Necessities’ by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The slap section in the verses is of slow enough tempo for the ghost notes to be fairly obvious.
Another example of bass players using ghost notes is in walking bass type jazz. The bass player will sometimes play a triplet, usually a descending triad or something similar, with the last two notes of the triplet as ghost-notes. One example is on calypso minor by Abdullah Ibrahim. ruclips.net/video/bRTj0_yDRVE/видео.html
Also, Irish and Scottish fiddling, fluting, and piping is incredibly rich in ornaments: grace notes, crans, short rolls, long rolls, syncopated rolls, slides, trebling, double stopping, placing drones above or below melody lines, etc. The book Traditional Scottish Fiddling published by Taight Na Teud goes over many of them, as does The Irish Fiddle Book by Matt Cranitch. For Quebecois techniques, Dance Ce Soir by Laurie Hart is good.
Wonderful wonderful video! Your recommendation for the Indian Melodies book couldn't come at a better time, as I've been exploring more about carnatic ragas and the 22-tone scale, and have been rightfully befuddled.
In the Tango bandoneon there is a percussive style of note where they slam down on their leg creating a percussive blast from the instrument. It's very effective, kind of the opposite of a ghost note.
Interestingly, vibrato seems to be a lot more controversial among musicians than audiences. James Galway is probably the most successful flute virtuoso out there and he uses a lot of vibrato, but audiences love him. Flute players don't, however, because they have often been taught that using that much vibrato is bad. An interesting phenomenon in my opinion.
I’ve seen a Master Class vid of James Galway where he advises a student against continuous vibrato, stating that one has to go for it after the best pure an richest possible tone has been achieved. I find this idea very useful in much of my flute and sax playing.
@@03Venture Interesting! I guess he just always hits the richest possible tone considering he almost always has a lot of vibrato. I do love his playing, don't get me wrong
There's a lot of vocal techniques from around the world that don't get used often, like throat singing and overtone singing, metal yells and growls, or even just changes in timbre from deep and throaty to nasally. I think overtone singing could potentially be notated like string harmonics, with the fundamental pitch at the bottom and diamond note-heads to indicated the overtone.
My favorite non-classical music technique is the wub-wub bassline commonly found in EDM. It's a technique where you take a synthesized bassline and move the cutoff frequency of the low-pass filter around really quickly.
Ghost notes are huge in jazz, especially in faster lines, they're basically notes that are felt but not heard. They are most commonly found in improvised solos but the usual notation either in transcriptions or in actual notated ghost notes (say for big band) as a note with a X head. Any jazz musician knows that this means ghost note.
When I heard of ghost notes, the first thing I thought of is in punk rock, occasionally you lift your fingers off the guitar frets to move to a new chord, slightly allowing the open strings to be heard in between.
I love David's videos. So interesting. I play rock and electronica but everything he talks about is always relevant. It helps that he's forgotten more about music than I've ever known I suppose.
This video is super dope. Personally I feel exploring and learning new things will make a musician better not running over same thing over and over to set some record. Also learning something which he or she haven't tried earlier will challenge him or her which in turn will keep him or her interest. Love this video 😀😎
I've just realized that I already knew you as a composer before discovering your channel because of your piece for the Silk Road Ensemble, Cut the Rug, wich I REALLY love... Thank you for this video and specially for the idea of getting out-of-the-comfy-sofa.
I took a class on Gagaku (Japanese traditional court music) - it was an ensemble class so we played at the end of the semester. My friends also did gamelan music and I went to see their concerts. What struck me is that gagaku has mostly woodwind instruments and the shape of the phrases is the shape of a deep breath. Each phrase rises and falls with a pause at the end, including instrument loudness and tone. Gamelan music is the polar opposite, being almost entirely percussion. There is no need to "breathe" in the music, so it goes on (traditionally for many hours) without pausing. Both of these techniques could be used in composition, and similar ideas reoccur in both classical and jazz - for example, Chick Corea and Gary Burton almost sound gamelanesque to my ears on their duet albums.
One of the most useful traditions in jazz playing I used in a classical setting was jazz-style pizz on a double bass, using ghost notes and two finger, through-the-string technique. I used it in the pieces played by my classical string ensemble with a polka or jazz style bassline, and all the other musicians (non jazz trained) marvelled at how much more driven and lively the music felt, where it hadn't with the much more delicate and open sound of a classical pizz.
Another composer who I've recently found out is Liza Lim. In her work for Cello, Invisibility, she asks the performer to use a modified bow where the hairs have been wrapped around the piece of wood. (She got the idea from south american percussion instrument called a guiro). This creates a second harmonic which changes the body of the note above the actual note being played. It's particuarly a unsettling sound - like a cat softly scratching a blackboard, but it's an alluring sound for a listener.
In Jazz saxophone, ghosted notes are mainly done via articulation: having the tongue halfway covering the reed (so that it is still allowed to vibrate) will create this more muted sound; this is everywhere in Jazz and in bebop especially and if one listens to players like Sonny Stitt or Gene Ammons, ghosted notes are everywhere in the turns of phrases, bottoms of repeated arpeggios, enclosures etc. It creates a natural, speech-like way of playing, indeed when we speak we don't always enunciate every syllable or each consonant and vowel of our sentences. Clarinet has much more influence over the tone holes themselves so I could see why he uses the fingers in ghosting; something new for me!
I am glad you experimented Indian/Nepalese style. So did Beatles band, Mahler etc. Raga, qawali, etc are the complicated stuff to copy by western instruments.
As a percussionist, I saw all sorts of weird instructions in scores: dropping boxes of hardware, breaking glass bottles, striking gongs then dipping them in tubs of water. Nothing was really off limits. These aren't really "exotic techniques", but what has always fascinated me are the sounds instruments make that musicians are taught to minimize: fingers squeaking across strings, stings popping against fingerboards, the clack of worn-out pads on woodwinds, the pop of valves on brass when you finger them without blowing, the sound of a spit valve being emptied. I'd like to hear music that emphasizes these sounds. I feel like these are the sorts of sounds that really characterize an instrument. They connect the abstract "timbre" to the mechanism that produces them.
Great video! One thing to note is the great freedom that Indian classical violinists achieve is partly due to the way they hold their instruments. They sit cross-legged on the floor with their scrolls of their instruments resting on their feet, freeing the left hand of any responsibility to support the violin. When I first heard Indian classical violin (L. Shankar in Shakti), I thought that that was one style that I would never learn. Your book recommendation is good starting point to reinvestigate.
Hi David! Love all your videos and this one does not stray from the pack! I'm primarily a saxophonist who plays both jazz and classical and I definitely concur with the vibrato controversy haha. I find that my jazz habits will sometimes bleed into the classical (but more often than not, it's the sound in my head and what I liked) and usually vibrato is the first thing anyone will call out. Even within Jazz, vibrato is a very definite choice with big implications. The rapid & wide vibrato of Sidney Bechet and Coleman Hawkins went out with bebop and really the only player post-bop who really used vibrato as a sonic tool was Albert Ayler. While he functions within the Free/avant garde idiom, his music is a distillation or a deconstruction of pre-Jazz and trad. Jazz by using marches and folk melodies as a starting ground for his free improvisations; he occupies both the past and future. His use of wide vibrato is key to this time warp effect in his music; the vibrato is so wide and so inflated that it becomes distorted and perfectly lends itself to the free jazz sound. This of course was controversial but, as you put it, slowly got people out of a rut. John Coltrane, who many would argue is the primary reason for modern straight-tone saxophone playing, was hugely influenced by Ayler and the direction he was going. Trane's avant garde music is largely an extension of Ayler; Trane became more free and his melodies more spiritual and reminiscent of old hymns and beyond that Trane even used more wide vibrato. Thank you so much, David!!!!
Great video as always. I was reminded, as a shakuhachi player, that I once casually stated that you never hear western flautists use the rough airy tone that shakuhachi players refer to as muraiki and provides such an effective contrast in the traditional shakuhachi repertoire, to which I was promptly corrected ( I should have remembered about Robert Dick !).
Insightful and articulate video as always David! At 3:20 you mean tremolo don't you? It's important to articulate the difference between vibrato and tremolo; many people still mix this up and is a point of confusion for many. Vibrato = pitch modulation. Tremolo = volume modulation
There's one technique that, as a composer of mostly classical music, I've always been a bit apprehensive to use whenever I'm not writing a classical work for myself: sections of improvisation. I've had an instance or two where performers flat out refuse to play a work of mine unless I fully notate the passage in question. This particular response baffles me, as most of them would be ready and willing to play, say, a solo in a Mozart concerto, and might not realize the transcribed solo they're reading from probably wasn't played with those exact same notes each time.
Thanks for another very interesting video. As a Composer I know much contemporary Music wich often uses extended playing techniques, but they not allways sound so natural as in folk Music and rock. So we have much to learn from it. I find also all the "wrong" pitched notes in blues and of Jimi Hendrix and his distortion more thrilling than the use of "microtones"" within contemporary classical Music. It is a matter of being spontaneous and have a musical feeling to it I think. Me I use much of my experience of listening to folk Music and playing in a rock band in my compositions. The use of non vibrato for the strings I also would recommend, I use it often, the impact is very magic.
A wonderful video. FYI a couple of years ago I was looking for information on Klezmer and it was disappointing to that, to date, the most complete source I have found was Wikipedia. That includes the 1980-edition of the Grove dictionary! Thank you for this video, very inspiring.
Hi David, as a self taught amateur, I watch your videos with great interest. The thing that struck me while you were talking here, was that as far as I know, up to around 1900, classical music used a lot of folk music as raw material , my own country's Grieg is a prime example. I find it fascinating that as modernism set in around 1900, this was largely abandoned. However, modernist music introduced a whole new set of playing techniques for the trained musician. A lot of these have been featured in your own videos: scraping, knocking, playing beneath the bridge etc. How strange it is then, that classical musicians - and composers - have abandoned techniques that derive from folk idioms, of which I would say Klezmer is one, and not accepted jazz techniques as part of the arsenal. Has contemporary classical music simply replaced classical dos and dont's with a set of its own? Why wouldn't ANY composer or musician use any tool available at his or her command? (I can understand that a sense of aesthetics play into this - I was never fond of the opera style singing vibrato, and I also understand that you can't master everything.)
Thanks for this video. Each tradition has its ruts, and it's good to borrow from other traditions, just to think about music in different ways. But classical music cannot escape its attachment to the written page, I think. It's a huge advantage at the same time that it is a chain.
Irish penny whistlers use grace notes several steps above the melody note by quickly lifting the second or fourth finger above each lower note. The technique called 'cranning'
Thank you, i play classical music but just started to listen jazz music, really lovely. I think with jazz you can vary lots of playing and not strict like classical music. Have a lot of imagination is the key to play jazz
On a separate note, higher interval grace notes are also a common feature when playing pentatonic Native American flutes. For some reason it just comes naturally when you play them even if you're not part of the musical tradition or have listened to much music played on them before. It just sounds right.
The blues guitarist Albert King used to use a very wide, slow vibrato which was very specific and very expressive. Since he played guitar which is fretted the vibrato was always oscillating above the note. By contrast BB King was famous for a very fast, light, narrow vibrato produced by shaking his entire hand. In North Indian classical (your example is of South Indian Carnatic system) there are many types of vibrato of varying widths and speeds depending on the raga and seriousness there of. These are not based on artists preference but are very specifically prescribed by North Indian performance practice. When I was learning from sitar legend Nikhil Banerjee in 1970s he said "There is no shaking in Indian music" The extreme example is the very serious night raga Darbari Kanhra which uses very wide, slow oscillations on the specific notes the flat 6th and flat 3rd. When I was learning this raga form Ali Akbar Khan he told me to play the note and he took my hand and moved it up and down to the proper microtones. In this raga on the flat 6th there are about 2 and a half microtones involved. On a fretted instrument like sitar one has to pluck from the fret below the note guestimating and move the string above and below the note. We notate it with just wavy lines around the note and flat and sharp symbols around it. One has to be familiar with Darbari Kanhra to get the idea and know how to execute the proper vibrato already.
Here's an example of me playing Raga Darbari Kahra. Note the oscillations on the flat 6 and flat 3 scale degrees ruclips.net/video/V_Cjpa8nK7c/видео.html
Growling. When you sing a different note into a wind or brass instrument, while playing. Should be easily notated. Also. A rolling r while blowing flutes. Qartertone (or smaller) pitches and pitch bends a la blues. A bit difficult for harp players and pianists.😋 Subharmonic playing for bowed instruments and subharmonic singing. Adds a pitch an octave below. Writing improvise using this or that scale for a few bars or something alike. Asking to hold but not sound a few notes on the piano as resonators a la many folk instruments, like the key fiddle for example. Using those rubber mutes actively for brass. Detuning violins to be able to play other double stops. Chops a la bluegrass (it's a percussive sound by bowing hard an sometimes along the string) on string instruments. Risset scales and tones (ever rising or falling but not arriving) Google it. Most likely hard to notate and even harder to perform. I think that the Eric Ericsson choir did that once. Tuplets over barlines.
You need to do Teespring merchandise one day: "More of a Wave than a Particle if you want to get Quantum about it" would make a great t-shirt. Incidentally I wrote a piece called "Wave vs Particle" a few years ago, but there it's the melody that alternately moves like a wave, or as a particle with note repetitions, sometimes letting the particles form a wave too, first separately, and then together. It was one of those few concept melodies I've done where I had the idea first and then tried making a melody and chord progression to fit the idea.
I use a lot of these techniques in my improvisatory work. My pet peeve is constant vibrato, common among classical violinists (though becomeing rarer).
Very interesting video! I was drawn to watch as a jazz player with a classical degree. One thought - I've always imagined the fast, wide vibrato of the New Orleans clarinet tradition (exemplified by Johnny Dodds) was heavily influenced by the French vocal tradition. Sidney Bechet also practises this, and you only have to look across the pond at Edith Piaf, Charles Aznavour et al. Manhattan Transfer assumed the style beautifully for 'Chanson d'Amour'.
I did a string quartet once that was all based upon the South Indian Carnatic style, and the players kind of rejected it for being “too weird.” Anyways, I had tried to reflect the Carnatic style rhythmic organisation in the beaming, grouping etc, which the players had trouble with. So I went home and redid the whole thing in four with normal beaming and never heard another complaint. Just goes to show how much our expectations shape our view of something like that.
Great video! The paradox? that at the same time vibrato was vanishing from classic instrumental playing, it was growing in classic singing? I remember to have readen somewhere that the current big vibrato was not always the norm, prior to XIX century it could have been a lot less intense
Quebecois fiddling also has ghost notes produced by [barely] bowing a note so it's almost like a down bow, a rest, another down bow, but the rest is actually a scarce up bow. Very difficult technique.
„Ghost notes“ Or „Grace notes“ are fairly common among drummers in many genres. Wether they are used for comping in jazz or to fill the gaps between accented notes to create a String of 16th (or other subdivisions) notes. Most obvious in Funk or modern prog Metal Songs. Another technique i have Never seen with classical percussionists are rimshots, rimclicks and any kind of foot techniques, because they Never use Pedals.
As a trombonist, I'm often frustrated by the interpretation of classical solo literature for trombone compared to almost any other idiom's writing for trombone. The trombone has a slide, and like all other brass instruments, a huge range of articulations, yet in almost all classical music nowadays, the slide is hidden and the articulation is choked off to match the mass-effect entrances of strings. There are notable exceptions, like Christian Lindberg, but they are rare. Speaking of Lindberg, I also find it very surprising how few trombonists emulate him given how successful he's been.
Great video. Extended techniques definitely create a different sound. Recently, I've been looking at mixed meters, particularly ones where the math doesn't make sence. This was caused by looking at Bernsteins Candide, where in the act 1 finale, while everyone is singing in 9/4, one part is singing 3/2 (& is notated in 3/2). Literally did my head in, working out why he notated it that way, until i realised that they both have the same pulse & everything goes together. I've since found out that other composers have done something similar such as Prokofiev's 2nd piano concerto. It starts off in the piano with 4/4 in the left hand, and 12/8 in the right hand, thus creating a constant hemiola for a good couple of minutes.
I played a piece by Ned Rorem called Lions (A Dream) for orchestra and jazz combo. In one section the combo plays 32 bars. At the same time, the orchestra does a slow accelerando so that they play 48 bars in the same time so that they start together and end together, but in between it's very exciting. (All this is subject to my 35 yr old memory of the performance.)
You say that traditional clarinet vibrato only affects the pitch, where as the embouchure vibrato affects the pitch as well. Is it really as clearly demarcated as that, or does the embouchure vibrato just affect the pitch far more? The sensitivity and graphic display of modern tuning apps such as Tunable has allowed me to see pitch variations in my oboe vibrato, which, like traditional clarinet vibrato, is an air-column rather than an embouchure effect. What was especially interesting to me is that when I bought a thicker-walled Lorée Royal, the pitch fluctuations for a vibrato for a given amount of volume fluctuation was less than for my older Lorée AK model. I don't know how much of this was just random instrumental difference or a direct effect of the bore wall thickness, but other folks on the Oboe BBoard have mentioned pitch stability as a function of air pressure as something that does vary from instrument to instrument.
The "large interval grace notes" happen in lots of cultures. I think I've seen them in Irish, Native American, Bulgarian and Japanese Shakuhachi music. One un-classical technique that drives me up the wall is closing finger holes not by the pads on your fingers but by somehow draping your fingers over the holes. Definitely used in Ney, Kaval, and Bansuri technique. However, since there is no audible effect it's less relevant to your story.
Bulgarian music does have some wide interval stuff but it's mostly more chromatic than classical music. Especially in the very virtuosic accordion players, almost every note is often separated by a semitone ornamentation.
Definitely not an expert, but I've been attempting to learn Irish-style flute & whistle playing lately (as my first wind instruments), and every resource I've found mentions large-gap grace notes as a way of separating notes from one another. In that tradition, at least, it comes from instruments like bagpipes where you can't use tonguing at all, so to separate two notes you have to intersperse a blip of something else. You choose another note based on both how it sounds and how it relates to fingering. Similarly the pad-draping thing (which I've heard called "piper's grip", again from bagpipe culture in that case) is from keyless instruments, where the gap between the RH2 and RH3 notes is just shy of 2" on a flute tuned to D4, and I've seen bigger on bansuris with a fundamental down at G3. Using the flesh of the middle joints of RH 1 and 2 and the pad of 3 puts those three things in a line spaced a lot like the RH finger holes. I've been trying to get better at doing that grip, because it really does make keyless flutes a lot more comfortable; I'm using it on whistle now too because I've gotten used to keeping flat fingers and articulating at the 1st knuckle.
I think your explanation of the gap-grace-notes is right on. Your analysis of the finger overhang is interesting. You're right that hole spacing can get quite big. On my low D whistle I actually use my pinky and skip the ring finger. That's strange because there are plenty of tenor recorders that should have the same design (they go to low C, but they have an explicit pinky hole) and are relatively easy to play. Bansuri: yeah. I have a low G that I can play but no one I've ever given it to has managed. I should really experiment with the "real" Indian grip, which uses your thumb and little finger to sort of brace the instrument.
I once thought of rewriting a Bach Partita to reflect the way it sounds when I attempt to play it, including false notes, hesitations, muttered curses, etc. It would be interesting to watch a professional musician try to perform my version! 😊
On "ghost notes"-that works very well on the piano (because of the resonating open strings). Ligeti used this effect in a piece, I think (and, if you take it to the extreme, you get the technique used in Zappa's Lumpy Gravy, where actors were speaking near a piano with its pedal depressed (so all notes essentially acted as ghost notes). On the Indian embellishment-wouldn't this be notated as a glissando?
One place where the question of "wrong" vibrato is quite relevant (and that could have easily been in this video) in my opinion is Bartók's folklorist work. I have heard many violinists play it with an extremely wide vibrato imitating a lot of the gypsy players of the region. Gypsies traditionally were the musicians of most of the central-european region in all but the highest parts of society. The wide, dramatic vibrato was (and is) a hallmark of the style used by musicians in cities imitating opera singers. The gypsy players who played the music of all ethnicities in Transylvania use very little vibrato and usually use three note trills. The vibrato they use tends to be quite moderate. I grew up listening to the traditional music so the giant vibrato always bugged me.
David, you should study and then write some music for shakuhachi (Japanese five holes bamboo flute) and use a daruma doll properly next time (just pulling your leg!) =D
i noticed the title "Piosenki" it might be the same word in different languages, but have you been to Poland lately? I thought for a moment that I saw you when I was playing hide-and-seek with my daughter on the roof of university library. ;)
It has always seemed weirdly arbitrary to me how, among the instruments physically capable of producing vibrato, some are expected to essentially never use it and some to essentially always use it, in the classical tradition. My flute professor always discouraged me from playing without vibrato when I did so in what I thought was an expressively appropriate context. As I see it, an instrument that can play with or without it shouldn't have a default vibrato approach any more than it has a default dynamic - it should always depend on the context.
I tried writing in some ghost notes in a big band arrangement and ran into your problem of people just not getting the idea or being able to play it. I thought at the time that it was accepted and ordinary jazz notation. I didn't factor in that our musicians were mostly drawn from a community orchestra with limited exposure to actual jazz.
Great videos. One thought for a discussion is about jazz time or "swing". I know it when I hear it, but how does it work, and can you use it in your music?
Those are very similar techniques used by traditional Native American flute players! If you haven't already, I'd recommend looking into it and maybe using one in your pieces!
I performed a Brandenburg 4 on recorder and heard a comment: "what an indulgence to have those two mime musicians up there" Now those would be ghost notes
I don't write or play anything musical but tell me something. When string instruments "wiggle" their hand to roll their finger on a note, isn't that a form of vibrato?
Thanks - here's a couple of links: signumrecords.com/product/david-bruce-gumboots/SIGCD448/ signumrecords.com/product/the-north-wind-was-a-woman/SIGCD599/ - there are also more on spotify
Vibrato is a really mixed bag. Classical flutes, oboes, saxophones, violins, and violas use it as a rule. Bassoons, trumpets, trombones, cellos, and basses use it depending on the passage.
As a classical violinist, I have done all the techniques you mentioned in this video. I don't think that there's any possible musical technique that doesn't have value of some sort
People who are not interested in basically ALL and any kind of music, are the way you distinguish people who are real musicians versus those who are just think of it as a profession or an academic endeavor
Similar to the large interval ornamentations of klezmer are the almost exclusively chromatic notations of Bulgarian music. It seems to me that most classical music uses diatonic ornamentation.
I feel there's some kind of humor in your personality that is present in you pieces
Flávio Giannini: agree 100%.
i'm a Indigenous Canadian and we have powwow music and drum songs as a tradition. i've been singing since i was very young but more recently i started playing the melodies on my guitar. the music is very much centred around the pentatonic scale and the 4165 progressions but is arranged differently. most songs are arranged into phrases that are repeated 4 times. each phrase has a lead in that is sung by the lead singer followed by a repeat by the other singers and then everyone sings the rest of the melody together. half way through the phrase the group will change octaves with the male singers going low and the female singers singing the higher range. great example is the group Northern Cree, they were nominated for a grammy and are champion singers in North America. another example is Jeremy Dutcher, east coast Mi'kmac Nation who is a classical pianist who did archival research on his home community and adapted the drum songs to piano. many people in Canada (western) don't like the sound of powwow music at first because they don't know how to interpret it. when i play the melodies on guitar or ukulele everyone seems to relate to it and understand it.
I’m a bass player. We are the kings of ghost-notes.
Any examples you can point me to? What genre do you play?
David Bruce Composer Hey David. I’m in an alt rock band with grunge and punk influences but I personally have funk, soul & Motown influences. We are called Sigma Falls and you can find us on Spotify. On our song ‘Playing with Fire’ I utilised ghost notes in the slap and finger style sections, however the guitars wash them out a bit. Bloody guitarists! Oh and great vids by the way; very informative for us musicians on the contemporary side of the fence.
Also, I think a good song to listen to for bass ghost notes is ‘Dark Necessities’ by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The slap section in the verses is of slow enough tempo for the ghost notes to be fairly obvious.
Another example of bass players using ghost notes is in walking bass type jazz. The bass player will sometimes play a triplet, usually a descending triad or something similar, with the last two notes of the triplet as ghost-notes. One example is on calypso minor by Abdullah Ibrahim.
ruclips.net/video/bRTj0_yDRVE/видео.html
Sir Blue Footed Booby I think those are a different kind of ghost notes, towards a percussive sound rather than a small note to grace a melody
Also, Irish and Scottish fiddling, fluting, and piping is incredibly rich in ornaments: grace notes, crans, short rolls, long rolls, syncopated rolls, slides, trebling, double stopping, placing drones above or below melody lines, etc. The book Traditional Scottish Fiddling published by Taight Na Teud goes over many of them, as does The Irish Fiddle Book by Matt Cranitch. For Quebecois techniques, Dance Ce Soir by Laurie Hart is good.
hmm, David Bruce composer i wonder what he does?
David: hi, i'm David Bruce and i'm a composer
me: that clears up a lot
Wonderful wonderful video! Your recommendation for the Indian Melodies book couldn't come at a better time, as I've been exploring more about carnatic ragas and the 22-tone scale, and have been rightfully befuddled.
Heya, nice to see you here!
Wow, two of my favorite channels overlapping. I'm not sure if I should be happy or disturbed.
In the Tango bandoneon there is a percussive style of note where they slam down on their leg creating a percussive blast from the instrument. It's very effective, kind of the opposite of a ghost note.
Interestingly, vibrato seems to be a lot more controversial among musicians than audiences. James Galway is probably the most successful flute virtuoso out there and he uses a lot of vibrato, but audiences love him. Flute players don't, however, because they have often been taught that using that much vibrato is bad. An interesting phenomenon in my opinion.
I’ve seen a Master Class vid of James Galway where he advises a student against continuous vibrato, stating that one has to go for it after the best pure an richest possible tone has been achieved.
I find this idea very useful in much of my flute and sax playing.
@@03Venture Interesting! I guess he just always hits the richest possible tone considering he almost always has a lot of vibrato. I do love his playing, don't get me wrong
There's a lot of vocal techniques from around the world that don't get used often, like throat singing and overtone singing, metal yells and growls, or even just changes in timbre from deep and throaty to nasally. I think overtone singing could potentially be notated like string harmonics, with the fundamental pitch at the bottom and diamond note-heads to indicated the overtone.
My favorite non-classical music technique is the wub-wub bassline commonly found in EDM. It's a technique where you take a synthesized bassline and move the cutoff frequency of the low-pass filter around really quickly.
Ghost notes are huge in jazz, especially in faster lines, they're basically notes that are felt but not heard.
They are most commonly found in improvised solos but the usual notation either in transcriptions or in actual notated ghost notes (say for big band) as a note with a X head. Any jazz musician knows that this means ghost note.
When I heard of ghost notes, the first thing I thought of is in punk rock, occasionally you lift your fingers off the guitar frets to move to a new chord, slightly allowing the open strings to be heard in between.
This is one of my favorite videos you've ever made. Really love your stuff
I love David's videos. So interesting. I play rock and electronica but everything he talks about is always relevant. It helps that he's forgotten more about music than I've ever known I suppose.
you're right, forgetting stuff about music is one of my areas of expertise ;-)
This video is super dope. Personally I feel exploring and learning new things will make a musician better not running over same thing over and over to set some record. Also learning something which he or she haven't tried earlier will challenge him or her which in turn will keep him or her interest.
Love this video 😀😎
I've just realized that I already knew you as a composer before discovering your channel because of your piece for the Silk Road Ensemble, Cut the Rug, wich I REALLY love... Thank you for this video and specially for the idea of getting out-of-the-comfy-sofa.
I took a class on Gagaku (Japanese traditional court music) - it was an ensemble class so we played at the end of the semester. My friends also did gamelan music and I went to see their concerts. What struck me is that gagaku has mostly woodwind instruments and the shape of the phrases is the shape of a deep breath. Each phrase rises and falls with a pause at the end, including instrument loudness and tone. Gamelan music is the polar opposite, being almost entirely percussion. There is no need to "breathe" in the music, so it goes on (traditionally for many hours) without pausing. Both of these techniques could be used in composition, and similar ideas reoccur in both classical and jazz - for example, Chick Corea and Gary Burton almost sound gamelanesque to my ears on their duet albums.
One of the most useful traditions in jazz playing I used in a classical setting was jazz-style pizz on a double bass, using ghost notes and two finger, through-the-string technique. I used it in the pieces played by my classical string ensemble with a polka or jazz style bassline, and all the other musicians (non jazz trained) marvelled at how much more driven and lively the music felt, where it hadn't with the much more delicate and open sound of a classical pizz.
Jazz musician here. What's the difference between classical and jazz pizz?
Another composer who I've recently found out is Liza Lim. In her work for Cello, Invisibility, she asks the performer to use a modified bow where the hairs have been wrapped around the piece of wood. (She got the idea from south american percussion instrument called a guiro). This creates a second harmonic which changes the body of the note above the actual note being played. It's particuarly a unsettling sound - like a cat softly scratching a blackboard, but it's an alluring sound for a listener.
In Jazz saxophone, ghosted notes are mainly done via articulation: having the tongue halfway covering the reed (so that it is still allowed to vibrate) will create this more muted sound; this is everywhere in Jazz and in bebop especially and if one listens to players like Sonny Stitt or Gene Ammons, ghosted notes are everywhere in the turns of phrases, bottoms of repeated arpeggios, enclosures etc. It creates a natural, speech-like way of playing, indeed when we speak we don't always enunciate every syllable or each consonant and vowel of our sentences.
Clarinet has much more influence over the tone holes themselves so I could see why he uses the fingers in ghosting; something new for me!
I am glad you experimented Indian/Nepalese style. So did Beatles band, Mahler etc. Raga, qawali, etc are the complicated stuff to copy by western instruments.
Crumb uses all sorts of sounds - sostenuto pedal, bottles, whistling, scraping, stroking strings, tapping the boards..it's fun, absorbing and captivating.
Such a lovely, generous and fair minded presentation. Love your work!
As a percussionist, I saw all sorts of weird instructions in scores: dropping boxes of hardware, breaking glass bottles, striking gongs then dipping them in tubs of water. Nothing was really off limits.
These aren't really "exotic techniques", but what has always fascinated me are the sounds instruments make that musicians are taught to minimize: fingers squeaking across strings, stings popping against fingerboards, the clack of worn-out pads on woodwinds, the pop of valves on brass when you finger them without blowing, the sound of a spit valve being emptied.
I'd like to hear music that emphasizes these sounds. I feel like these are the sorts of sounds that really characterize an instrument. They connect the abstract "timbre" to the mechanism that produces them.
you should hear "lachenmann" ;)
May I recommend John Zorn's Classic Guide To Strategy? It's pretty much a masterclass on the sounds you can get out of alto sax.
Great video! One thing to note is the great freedom that Indian classical violinists achieve is partly due to the way they hold their instruments. They sit cross-legged on the floor with their scrolls of their instruments resting on their feet, freeing the left hand of any responsibility to support the violin. When I first heard Indian classical violin (L. Shankar in Shakti), I thought that that was one style that I would never learn. Your book recommendation is good starting point to reinvestigate.
Hi David! Love all your videos and this one does not stray from the pack!
I'm primarily a saxophonist who plays both jazz and classical and I definitely concur with the vibrato controversy haha. I find that my jazz habits will sometimes bleed into the classical (but more often than not, it's the sound in my head and what I liked) and usually vibrato is the first thing anyone will call out.
Even within Jazz, vibrato is a very definite choice with big implications. The rapid & wide vibrato of Sidney Bechet and Coleman Hawkins went out with bebop and really the only player post-bop who really used vibrato as a sonic tool was Albert Ayler. While he functions within the Free/avant garde idiom, his music is a distillation or a deconstruction of pre-Jazz and trad. Jazz by using marches and folk melodies as a starting ground for his free improvisations; he occupies both the past and future. His use of wide vibrato is key to this time warp effect in his music; the vibrato is so wide and so inflated that it becomes distorted and perfectly lends itself to the free jazz sound. This of course was controversial but, as you put it, slowly got people out of a rut. John Coltrane, who many would argue is the primary reason for modern straight-tone saxophone playing, was hugely influenced by Ayler and the direction he was going. Trane's avant garde music is largely an extension of Ayler; Trane became more free and his melodies more spiritual and reminiscent of old hymns and beyond that Trane even used more wide vibrato.
Thank you so much, David!!!!
Really interesting, thanks!
thanks, David. I'm still learning the possibilities of how music can be expressed.
"Music can be performed to express sentiments", actually
Great video as always. I was reminded, as a shakuhachi player, that I once casually stated that you never hear western flautists use the rough airy tone that shakuhachi players refer to as muraiki and provides such an effective contrast in the traditional shakuhachi repertoire, to which I was promptly corrected ( I should have remembered about Robert Dick !).
Insightful and articulate video as always David! At 3:20 you mean tremolo don't you? It's important to articulate the difference between vibrato and tremolo; many people still mix this up and is a point of confusion for many. Vibrato = pitch modulation. Tremolo = volume modulation
There's one technique that, as a composer of mostly classical music, I've always been a bit apprehensive to use whenever I'm not writing a classical work for myself: sections of improvisation. I've had an instance or two where performers flat out refuse to play a work of mine unless I fully notate the passage in question. This particular response baffles me, as most of them would be ready and willing to play, say, a solo in a Mozart concerto, and might not realize the transcribed solo they're reading from probably wasn't played with those exact same notes each time.
Thanks for another very interesting video. As a Composer I know much contemporary Music wich often uses extended playing techniques, but they not allways sound so natural as in folk Music and rock. So we have much to learn from it. I find also all the "wrong" pitched notes in blues and of Jimi Hendrix and his distortion more thrilling than the use of "microtones"" within contemporary classical Music. It is a matter of being spontaneous and have a musical feeling to it I think. Me I use much of my experience of listening to folk Music and playing in a rock band in my compositions. The use of non vibrato for the strings I also would recommend, I use it often, the impact is very magic.
A most brilliant and accessible exposition of an interesting and important subject. Thanks !
The Eye of Night is gorgeous, love it
David thanks for being one of my inspiring music teachers . Great channel, brilliant content!
No instrument sounds more like the human voice than the klezmer clarinet properly played! Bravo for this video!
Oh my gosh, I was watching the exact Verdi requiem video yesterday including that section!
Thank you so much for your content, Bruce! Very wonderful exploration of SOUND and cultivation (not tradition, common practice, or academic rigor).
A wonderful video. FYI a couple of years ago I was looking for information on Klezmer and it was disappointing to that, to date, the most complete source I have found was Wikipedia. That includes the 1980-edition of the Grove dictionary! Thank you for this video, very inspiring.
Thank you so much! Your work is beautiful!
Very insightful
Great music and knowledge David. I really enjoyed listening :-)
Hi David, as a self taught amateur, I watch your videos with great interest. The thing that struck me while you were talking here, was that as far as I know, up to around 1900, classical music used a lot of folk music as raw material , my own country's Grieg is a prime example. I find it fascinating that as modernism set in around 1900, this was largely abandoned. However, modernist music introduced a whole new set of playing techniques for the trained musician. A lot of these have been featured in your own videos: scraping, knocking, playing beneath the bridge etc. How strange it is then, that classical musicians - and composers - have abandoned techniques that derive from folk idioms, of which I would say Klezmer is one, and not accepted jazz techniques as part of the arsenal. Has contemporary classical music simply replaced classical dos and dont's with a set of its own? Why wouldn't ANY composer or musician use any tool available at his or her command? (I can understand that a sense of aesthetics play into this - I was never fond of the opera style singing vibrato, and I also understand that you can't master everything.)
Thanks for this video. Each tradition has its ruts, and it's good to borrow from other traditions, just to think about music in different ways. But classical music cannot escape its attachment to the written page, I think. It's a huge advantage at the same time that it is a chain.
Irish penny whistlers use grace notes several steps above the melody note by quickly lifting the second or fourth finger above each lower note. The technique called 'cranning'
Humans in general need this message. People are too complacent.
Thank you, i play classical music but just started to listen jazz music, really lovely. I think with jazz you can vary lots of playing and not strict like classical music. Have a lot of imagination is the key to play jazz
Very interesting. I find it particularly nice if you put your own music as a closure of the video.
On a separate note, higher interval grace notes are also a common feature when playing pentatonic Native American flutes. For some reason it just comes naturally when you play them even if you're not part of the musical tradition or have listened to much music played on them before. It just sounds right.
Interesting approach to ghost notes
The blues guitarist Albert King used to use a very wide, slow vibrato which was very specific and very expressive. Since he played guitar which is fretted the vibrato was always oscillating above the note. By contrast BB King was famous for a very fast, light, narrow vibrato produced by shaking his entire hand. In North Indian classical (your example is of South Indian Carnatic system) there are many types of vibrato of varying widths and speeds depending on the raga and seriousness there of. These are not based on artists preference but are very specifically prescribed by North Indian performance practice. When I was learning from sitar legend Nikhil Banerjee in 1970s he said "There is no shaking in Indian music" The extreme example is the very serious night raga Darbari Kanhra which uses very wide, slow oscillations on the specific notes the flat 6th and flat 3rd. When I was learning this raga form Ali Akbar Khan he told me to play the note and he took my hand and moved it up and down to the proper microtones. In this raga on the flat 6th there are about 2 and a half microtones involved. On a fretted instrument like sitar one has to pluck from the fret below the note guestimating and move the string above and below the note. We notate it with just wavy lines around the note and flat and sharp symbols around it. One has to be familiar with Darbari Kanhra to get the idea and know how to execute the proper vibrato already.
Here's an example of me playing Raga Darbari Kahra. Note the oscillations on the flat 6 and flat 3 scale degrees ruclips.net/video/V_Cjpa8nK7c/видео.html
They are called Krekhts, the ornamental sobs in Klezmer music. Nice video.
Growling. When you sing a different note into a wind or brass instrument, while playing. Should be easily notated.
Also. A rolling r while blowing flutes.
Qartertone (or smaller) pitches and pitch bends a la blues. A bit difficult for harp players and pianists.😋
Subharmonic playing for bowed instruments and subharmonic singing. Adds a pitch an octave below.
Writing improvise using this or that scale for a few bars or something alike.
Asking to hold but not sound a few notes on the piano as resonators a la many folk instruments, like the key fiddle for example.
Using those rubber mutes actively for brass.
Detuning violins to be able to play other double stops.
Chops a la bluegrass (it's a percussive sound by bowing hard an sometimes along the string) on string instruments.
Risset scales and tones (ever rising or falling but not arriving) Google it. Most likely hard to notate and even harder to perform. I think that the Eric Ericsson choir did that once.
Tuplets over barlines.
Great video, as always ! John Adams also did beautifuly incorporate Indian techniques in his piece "the Dharma a Big Sur", for electric violin.
love that piece
You need to do Teespring merchandise one day: "More of a Wave than a Particle if you want to get Quantum about it" would make a great t-shirt.
Incidentally I wrote a piece called "Wave vs Particle" a few years ago, but there it's the melody that alternately moves like a wave, or as a particle with note repetitions, sometimes letting the particles form a wave too, first separately, and then together. It was one of those few concept melodies I've done where I had the idea first and then tried making a melody and chord progression to fit the idea.
WARNING: Jump Scare at 0:03
Thanks
Awesome and very interesting video David! Another technique might be microtonal singing?
I use a lot of these techniques in my improvisatory work. My pet peeve is constant vibrato, common among classical violinists (though becomeing rarer).
Wouldn't the example in which a woodwinds player varies air pressure to change volume be an example of tremolo not vibrato?
Very interesting video! I was drawn to watch as a jazz player with a classical degree. One thought - I've always imagined the fast, wide vibrato of the New Orleans clarinet tradition (exemplified by Johnny Dodds) was heavily influenced by the French vocal tradition. Sidney Bechet also practises this, and you only have to look across the pond at Edith Piaf, Charles Aznavour et al. Manhattan Transfer assumed the style beautifully for 'Chanson d'Amour'.
Polemic !! (Brilliant!)..
I did a string quartet once that was all based upon the South Indian Carnatic style, and the players kind of rejected it for being “too weird.”
Anyways, I had tried to reflect the Carnatic style rhythmic organisation in the beaming, grouping etc, which the players had trouble with. So I went home and redid the whole thing in four with normal beaming and never heard another complaint. Just goes to show how much our expectations shape our view of something like that.
Great video!
The paradox? that at the same time vibrato was vanishing from classic instrumental playing, it was growing in classic singing? I remember to have readen somewhere that the current big vibrato was not always the norm, prior to XIX century it could have been a lot less intense
Hmm, ''The Eye of Night'' (or at least the fragments you've shown here) would work GREAT in a progressive metal ( / prog rock) situation :D
wow love those trombones!!!
For classical clarinet vibrato...I go with air vibrato...like flute, bassoon, and oboe
Wish you'd do a segment on Louis Andriessen, if you haven't already.
Quebecois fiddling also has ghost notes produced by [barely] bowing a note so it's almost like a down bow, a rest, another down bow, but the rest is actually a scarce up bow. Very difficult technique.
„Ghost notes“ Or „Grace notes“ are fairly common among drummers in many genres. Wether they are used for comping in jazz or to fill the gaps between accented notes to create a String of 16th (or other subdivisions) notes. Most obvious in Funk or modern prog Metal Songs. Another technique i have Never seen with classical percussionists are rimshots, rimclicks and any kind of foot techniques, because they Never use Pedals.
Great video, thx for that
As a trombonist, I'm often frustrated by the interpretation of classical solo literature for trombone compared to almost any other idiom's writing for trombone. The trombone has a slide, and like all other brass instruments, a huge range of articulations, yet in almost all classical music nowadays, the slide is hidden and the articulation is choked off to match the mass-effect entrances of strings. There are notable exceptions, like Christian Lindberg, but they are rare. Speaking of Lindberg, I also find it very surprising how few trombonists emulate him given how successful he's been.
Love the eye of night
Great video. Extended techniques definitely create a different sound.
Recently, I've been looking at mixed meters, particularly ones where the math doesn't make sence. This was caused by looking at Bernsteins Candide, where in the act 1 finale, while everyone is singing in 9/4, one part is singing 3/2 (& is notated in 3/2). Literally did my head in, working out why he notated it that way, until i realised that they both have the same pulse & everything goes together. I've since found out that other composers have done something similar such as Prokofiev's 2nd piano concerto. It starts off in the piano with 4/4 in the left hand, and 12/8 in the right hand, thus creating a constant hemiola for a good couple of minutes.
I played a piece by Ned Rorem called Lions (A Dream) for orchestra and jazz combo. In one section the combo plays 32 bars. At the same time, the orchestra does a slow accelerando so that they play 48 bars in the same time so that they start together and end together, but in between it's very exciting. (All this is subject to my 35 yr old memory of the performance.)
You say that traditional clarinet vibrato only affects the pitch, where as the embouchure vibrato affects the pitch as well. Is it really as clearly demarcated as that, or does the embouchure vibrato just affect the pitch far more? The sensitivity and graphic display of modern tuning apps such as Tunable has allowed me to see pitch variations in my oboe vibrato, which, like traditional clarinet vibrato, is an air-column rather than an embouchure effect. What was especially interesting to me is that when I bought a thicker-walled Lorée Royal, the pitch fluctuations for a vibrato for a given amount of volume fluctuation was less than for my older Lorée AK model. I don't know how much of this was just random instrumental difference or a direct effect of the bore wall thickness, but other folks on the Oboe BBoard have mentioned pitch stability as a function of air pressure as something that does vary from instrument to instrument.
i am working on a piece inspired by zelda breath of the wild gerudo town and this video gives me tons of ideas!! thanks so much
The "large interval grace notes" happen in lots of cultures. I think I've seen them in Irish, Native American, Bulgarian and Japanese Shakuhachi music.
One un-classical technique that drives me up the wall is closing finger holes not by the pads on your fingers but by somehow draping your fingers over the holes. Definitely used in Ney, Kaval, and Bansuri technique. However, since there is no audible effect it's less relevant to your story.
Bulgarian music does have some wide interval stuff but it's mostly more chromatic than classical music. Especially in the very virtuosic accordion players, almost every note is often separated by a semitone ornamentation.
Definitely not an expert, but I've been attempting to learn Irish-style flute & whistle playing lately (as my first wind instruments), and every resource I've found mentions large-gap grace notes as a way of separating notes from one another. In that tradition, at least, it comes from instruments like bagpipes where you can't use tonguing at all, so to separate two notes you have to intersperse a blip of something else. You choose another note based on both how it sounds and how it relates to fingering. Similarly the pad-draping thing (which I've heard called "piper's grip", again from bagpipe culture in that case) is from keyless instruments, where the gap between the RH2 and RH3 notes is just shy of 2" on a flute tuned to D4, and I've seen bigger on bansuris with a fundamental down at G3. Using the flesh of the middle joints of RH 1 and 2 and the pad of 3 puts those three things in a line spaced a lot like the RH finger holes. I've been trying to get better at doing that grip, because it really does make keyless flutes a lot more comfortable; I'm using it on whistle now too because I've gotten used to keeping flat fingers and articulating at the 1st knuckle.
I think your explanation of the gap-grace-notes is right on. Your analysis of the finger overhang is interesting. You're right that hole spacing can get quite big. On my low D whistle I actually use my pinky and skip the ring finger. That's strange because there are plenty of tenor recorders that should have the same design (they go to low C, but they have an explicit pinky hole) and are relatively easy to play. Bansuri: yeah. I have a low G that I can play but no one I've ever given it to has managed. I should really experiment with the "real" Indian grip, which uses your thumb and little finger to sort of brace the instrument.
Hi David ! Like Very much of your vids And music ! can you share some of your scores for study? Thanks!!
In music with groove (Klezmer/Jazz etc) vibrato just matches the groove rhythmically as one of the harmonics of the groove. Then it makes sense&
I once thought of rewriting a Bach Partita to reflect the way it sounds when I attempt to play it, including false notes, hesitations, muttered curses, etc. It would be interesting to watch a professional musician try to perform my version! 😊
I can totally relate to this. I wish to hear an excellent musician playing Bach like I do and think well, I'm not actually that bad 😂
Those Ghostnotes are used effectively by Evan Parker
On "ghost notes"-that works very well on the piano (because of the resonating open strings). Ligeti used this effect in a piece, I think (and, if you take it to the extreme, you get the technique used in Zappa's Lumpy Gravy, where actors were speaking near a piano with its pedal depressed (so all notes essentially acted as ghost notes).
On the Indian embellishment-wouldn't this be notated as a glissando?
yes if you look at the examples in my music I did use a gliss line, but glissing up and down melodically is very unfamiliar to classical musicians
Vibrato
Ghost notes
wider intervals
Indian style playing with movement within the notes
One place where the question of "wrong" vibrato is quite relevant (and that could have easily been in this video) in my opinion is Bartók's folklorist work. I have heard many violinists play it with an extremely wide vibrato imitating a lot of the gypsy players of the region. Gypsies traditionally were the musicians of most of the central-european region in all but the highest parts of society. The wide, dramatic vibrato was (and is) a hallmark of the style used by musicians in cities imitating opera singers. The gypsy players who played the music of all ethnicities in Transylvania use very little vibrato and usually use three note trills. The vibrato they use tends to be quite moderate. I grew up listening to the traditional music so the giant vibrato always bugged me.
David, you should study and then write some music for shakuhachi (Japanese five holes bamboo flute) and use a daruma doll properly next time (just pulling your leg!) =D
i noticed the title "Piosenki" it might be the same word in different languages, but have you been to Poland lately? I thought for a moment that I saw you when I was playing hide-and-seek with my daughter on the roof of university library. ;)
What do you think about the 2 types of classical saxophone vibratos, the Marcel Mule one and the Sigurn Rascher one?
It has always seemed weirdly arbitrary to me how, among the instruments physically capable of producing vibrato, some are expected to essentially never use it and some to essentially always use it, in the classical tradition. My flute professor always discouraged me from playing without vibrato when I did so in what I thought was an expressively appropriate context. As I see it, an instrument that can play with or without it shouldn't have a default vibrato approach any more than it has a default dynamic - it should always depend on the context.
I tried writing in some ghost notes in a big band arrangement and ran into your problem of people just not getting the idea or being able to play it. I thought at the time that it was accepted and ordinary jazz notation. I didn't factor in that our musicians were mostly drawn from a community orchestra with limited exposure to actual jazz.
Great videos. One thought for a discussion is about jazz time or "swing". I know it when I hear it, but how does it work, and can you use it in your music?
He already made a great video on swing, look for it!
Those are very similar techniques used by traditional Native American flute players! If you haven't already, I'd recommend looking into it and maybe using one in your pieces!
thanks , hey it is excelente , thanks
i am a romanian myself, and i can tell that the composition at 2:02 is almost romanian
I performed a Brandenburg 4 on recorder and heard a comment: "what an indulgence to have those two mime musicians up there" Now those would be ghost notes
I don't write or play anything musical but tell me something. When string instruments "wiggle" their hand to roll their finger on a note, isn't that a form of vibrato?
Hi David, I really want to get or buy your recordings, do you have some album?
Thanks - here's a couple of links: signumrecords.com/product/david-bruce-gumboots/SIGCD448/ signumrecords.com/product/the-north-wind-was-a-woman/SIGCD599/ - there are also more on spotify
Vibrato is a really mixed bag. Classical flutes, oboes, saxophones, violins, and violas use it as a rule. Bassoons, trumpets, trombones, cellos, and basses use it depending on the passage.
just curious David, Have you got perfect pitch?
1:38 That statement did not seem to apply to the opera singer you showed just before... xD
As a classical violinist, I have done all the techniques you mentioned in this video. I don't think that there's any possible musical technique that doesn't have value of some sort
People who are not interested in basically ALL and any kind of music, are the way you distinguish people who are real musicians versus those who are just think of it as a profession or an academic endeavor
Similar to the large interval ornamentations of klezmer are the almost exclusively chromatic notations of Bulgarian music. It seems to me that most classical music uses diatonic ornamentation.
Can you give me a link to some recording?