Dead Beat

"All things entail rising and falling timing. You must be able to discern this." Miyamoto Musashi (1584? - 1645)

Flexible Tempo (leading on from Spot The Difference )

One of the first things beginners learn is the necessity of staying with the beat in order to stay in time with the group. Having mastered this, they begin to realise that playing all the right notes, for the right duration, in the right order, sounds merely correct and not necessarily musical. Dynamics and articulation go a long way towards humanising a performance, but a rigidly steady tempo can, in certain styles, sound robotic.

Getting used to a more flexible tempo is the aural equivalent of finding your sea legs. You know where the floor is – it’s just that, by the time your foot reaches it – it may no longer be there. Flexibility in tempo is not about making music sound more emotional but rather more natural. It is employed mainly at junctions in the music – the end of a phrase, section or piece – and sounds natural if treated like all other junctions. If you were traveling along a country road at 60 mph, an approaching 90-degree turn could not be negotiated (more than once) at that speed. When pupils first come across this idea, they have little problem applying the brakes, but seem to be in possession of vehicles which immediately find them themselves at back 60 mph when only a few millimeters round the corner. Maybe I missed a few editions of Tomorrow’s World, but this seems ambitious. Easing back into the original tempo can sound more natural. How this is applied is a matter of taste and judgement but, it basically depends on the severity of the bend. Pupils pick this up pretty much by osmosis through playing with older pupils over a period of years.

Exactly what people mean by musical playing is difficult to pin down. Perhaps if we could, the magic would be gone. At the very least we should hope it has the properties of other living things: to be - at least breathing, hopefully moving and - on a good day - soaring.