 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Gandalfe
Date: 2005-04-24 03:10
After seven years of playing in school and three years in community bands, band teachers I really respect are trying to teach my wife (returning clarinetist) and me not to tap our feet when we perform. I now resist the impulse to tap on songs I have down but only with a lot of concentration. When I'm sight reading the ol' foot starts a tapping.
My wife and I are intermediate players so we can get away with tapping if we want, but I have been thinking about this inner pulse thing. Are teachers today teaching kids to play without tapping their feet? Do the kids develop inner pulse?
I have found some cases of improved teaching methods with my son. He had zero hour jazz and learned to improvize and worked on his chord memorization. We didn't do this when I was in school.
Jim and Suzy
Pacifica Big Band
Seattle, Washington
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Author: Contra
Date: 2005-04-24 03:19
I never really felt the need to tap my foot. When I do, my leg starts getting overzealous and taps in a subdividing fashion. So, I restrain myself whenever possible.
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Author: dummer musiker
Date: 2005-04-24 04:58
I just tap my toe in my shoe. Doesnt make any noise, its not visually distracting, no one knows, and it still fulfills my complusive need to 'tap'.
"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats."
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2005-04-24 05:14
Ahh, bull.
We just saw a wonderful ragtime piano player, who drummed on the stage floor with his left foot while pedaling with his right.
He explained that the combination of habits (left foot beat, right foot off-beat) makes it impossible for him to dance.
Bob Phillips
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Author: contragirl
Date: 2005-04-24 07:49
I kick my legs back and forth like a kid that is sitting on a chair that is too tall for them. But I do it without any pulse to the music. I'm also weird and don't know how to count. :P
--CG
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Author: Synonymous Botch
Date: 2005-04-24 12:57
The top music schools are doctrinaire about this - my teacher finally just shrugged when I told her it wasn't going to stop.
If you're in front with a wind qaur/quintet, then it matters.
If you're in the back row of the clarinet choir, and don't kick over a stand - who cares? Nobody is looking at us anyway.
I tested the "distraction" theory by wearing a pair of Nike Cortez runners during one formal dress show - NO one noticed the red stripe...
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2005-04-24 13:37
I've seen quite a bit of foot-tapping [some quite innovative] more in bands, marches, dance music, than in symphonic playing [BAD, there!], and no longer do much , except when "other player's" rhythm is "fluid". I still like the heel-toe "rock" in some jazz. IMHO, it takes away the rhythm-setting priviledge due the conductor [keep "one eye" on him/her {the "boss}]. As pointed out by a fine conductor, it can actually be a hinderance in fast music, where it may be hard to "keep up" . Generally, DONT. Don
Thanx, Mark, Don
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Author: VermontJM
Date: 2005-04-24 14:00
It the loud, metronomic, POUNDING foot tapping that gets to me. It's obnoxious to be in the middle of a piece and hear the floor pounding behind me.
I tap my toe, sometimes my heel. once in a great while, my foot gets the best of me.
I don't teach tapping to my students. They end up keeping the rhythm instead of the beat anyway. We work on marching, instead.
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Author: BobD
Date: 2005-04-24 14:58
"My wife and I are intermediate players so we can get away with tapping if we want"
How inconsiderate and snobbish!
Foot tapping is strictly for yokels and is totally distracting for others exposed to it. It's impolite. What is really bad are foot tappers who can't keep the right beat time.
Bob Draznik
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Author: Gandalfe
Date: 2005-04-24 15:19
No Bob, tell us how you really feel. I hope and trust that you do not teach. Suzy and I continue to try to unlearn a habit cultivated from years of school band.
Jim and Suzy
Pacifica Big Band
Seattle, Washington
Post Edited (2005-04-24 15:21)
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Author: William
Date: 2005-04-24 15:35
The conductor of our local Capitol City Band used to play percussion with the Boston Pops Orchestra and he (now retired University of Wisconsin Percussion Professor) has told us "numerous" times that he became much more adept at rhythmic analysis and accuracy when he stopped "tapping his foot to Fiedlers baton". So, apparantly, this controversy also exists at the professional levels as well--and I kind of suspect there will never be any definitive consensis of absolute "right or wrong". Bottom line may be: If it works for you and does not distract audibaly or visually from the music, then do it. Or don't, if that works better for you.
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Author: 3dogmom
Date: 2005-04-24 15:54
The fine print on the Boston Symphony Orchestra's Young People's Concerts programs asks that the audience taps only their toes inside the shoes. Their instruction to the young audience is that the performers already know how to keep the beat.
As a director of beginning bands and choruses, I teach children to keep the beat by "imagining" that the beat is represented by my tapping foot - which I demonstrate with my hands. A complete "down and up" is a whole beat, or in their case, a quarter note, but is also two eighth notes. This way they get the visual picture of what a beat is. I then encourage my students to tap their toes inside their shoes. Otherwise, we get the spectrum of distracting problems that some of you have described.
Gandalf, maybe if you tried this toe-tapping technique it would allow you to internalize the beat minus the outward manifestation. I know, stopping a habit is difficult. Would you say that you are a kinetic learner? Possibly this is simply natural for you.
Sue Tansey
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Author: Gandalfe
Date: 2005-04-24 16:31
The two methods I try to use now, especially when sight reading a difficult passage, is tapping my toe inside the shoe or tapping my heel. A professor I really respect tried to get all the saxes in the community jazz band to not tap or to use your heel if you felt you had to tap. In that manner, the audience wouldn't see five saxes tapping (usually) five different beats. :o)
Jim and Suzy
Pacifica Big Band
Seattle, Washington
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Author: Merlin
Date: 2005-04-24 20:12
I really firm about foot tapping with my students. It's especially silly to me when I have a metronome on in their lesson.
If you're playing in an ensemble with a conductor, and you're tapping your foot, in effect you're imposing your sense of timing on others around you, and will be less able to respond to changes in tempo given by the conductor.
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Author: Robert Moody
Date: 2005-04-24 22:27
While I do not believe one should tap their foot to the point of distracting others (i.e. other musicians or audience members), I do believe that there is another reason people tap their foot that is very valid...there becomes a physical occurence in their own bodies with which to align the notes and fingers with.
CIM, a very respected school, I believe requires eurythmics classes. No?
A toe in the shoe is perfectly fine by me.
Robert Moody
http://www.musix4me.com
Free Clarinet Lessons and Digital Library!
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Author: 3dogmom
Date: 2005-04-24 22:29
I participated in a small-group performance this afternoon and I was mindful of this thread while I was there. Some of you might have read my thread of a week ago or so - about singers being added to a performance at the last minute. Well, the performance was today. What a lot of foot stomping from some of the players! It actually rattled my music stand. There was also audible measure counting. Again, as you suggested, there was someone who taps a different rhythm than anyone else (Thoreau, anyone?)
Don't get me wrong - live music is great and it's wonderful to have people involved in creating music no matter what happens. But how much better the performance would have been had we been generating no sounds other than our music.
Sue Tansey
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2005-04-24 22:46
Robert Moody wrote:
> CIM, a very respected school, I believe requires eurythmics
> classes. No?
Yes they do. Visible toe-tapping in the orchestra would bring a swift reprimand, too.
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Author: 3dogmom
Date: 2005-04-24 23:20
Phyllis Weikart and Ed Gordon's work has helped me a great deal with helping children to internalize the beat. I've been able to follow the same kids over a three-year period where I teach, and they are able to perform and notate some pretty sophisticated rhythms, all because they started moving with the beat as very young children. By the time these kids have started to play an instrument in Grade 4 or 5, they already know rhythms, thank goodness. I don't know what the age cutoff is for being able to develop that portion of your brain in such a manner. I would tend to think that it's never top late.
Sue Tansey
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Author: Terry Stibal
Date: 2005-04-25 01:45
Aside from looking pretty bush league when up on the bandstand, there's another very real problem with the habit of active toe or heel tapping. It is the vibrations that these movements set up in the floor.
Unless microphones are adequately shock mounted, toe tapping on an non-monolithic floor (say a wood floor, or a non-concrete stage floor) transmits huge vibrations through the mike stand to the microphone. Recordings made under these conditions are about as useless as you can get. And, on a lively enough floor, the hammering of a 2nd Tenor player's ham-like foot can be transmitted up through a vocalist's microphone stand, and then be broadcast out through the PA system. Trust me on this one...
With our portable recording setup that we use to do our demo recordings, we tend to set up in facilities that happen to be available. When doing so, we long ago learned not to erect the equipment on a stage, as there's always someone hammering away on the beat with a foot, and it invariably gets picked up on one of the brass microphones. For the player who just cannot stop the tapping, it's time to take the shoes off.
I don't tap, for what that's worth, but I do move the toe in the shoe. The shoe doesn't move, hence no impact worth worrying about.
leader of Houston's Sounds Of The South Dance Orchestra
info@sotsdo.com
Post Edited (2005-04-25 01:48)
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Author: Clarinetgirl06
Date: 2005-04-25 02:49
This kind of goes along with this.
I had a voice lesson semi-masterclass a few hours ago, a pre-State Solos event. Our judge commented to me that on my fast song I didn't move very much, but on the slow song I tended to kind of bob some. She got me to stand still and she noted that my phrasing and breathing had improved. I had never noticed that I bobbed, and my mom said I sing like I play my clarinet, especially my solo which I get very into. So now I know not to bob.
Internalize!!!!!!!!! That's what I need to do when I sing!!!!!!
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Author: VermontJM
Date: 2005-04-25 02:49
Never thought of the affect on mics- good point.
I've had my stand rattled by tappers on occasion... the audible counting is worse, though. Especially when they get to "six, two, three, four; seven, two three four..."
the S in six an seven can ALWAYS be heard. Sssssssss...
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Author: Lisa
Date: 2005-04-25 02:50
Wow, so many opinions!
I confess I'm a toe-tapper. It's a cross between a routine habit that's hard to unlearn and a real need to move with the chosen tempo. I don't mind tapping when I practice at home or at rehearsal, but at least once a performance I catch myself tapping my foot instead of my toe. I can still hear my dad's voice in my head from about 20ish years ago telling me that a middle school player (me) shouldn't be tapping her foot onstage.
I played a keyboard standing up (for the first time) in front of an audience last weekend because there was no bench, and I found myself tapping my (left?) foot while I played. So then when I realized what I was doing, I stopping tapping but before you know it, I started pulsing my knee/leg to the beat because I wanted to keep a steady tempo for the vocalist I was accompanying.
On measures with more challenging rhythms, I'll mark where each beat falls, and that translates to foot taps to me. I know it's not proper to tap, but I also think some people may be more kinesthetically inclined than others.
Post Edited (2005-04-25 12:25)
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Author: mkybrain
Date: 2005-04-25 03:11
Is any movement at all a problem, provided that it isn't an attempt to keep tempo and that it doesn't affect tone production and etc.... Btw it really shouldnt distract fellow musicians(assuming there isn't foot STOMPING going on or people getting up and tackling the flute players, at least that is what I'd do if I were going to go crazy on stage). Why are they looking at your feet and not the music/conductor?
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2005-04-25 03:29
Aside from the noise and distractive (to yourself and others) factors, there are musical reasons to not tap one's foot/toe/whatever.
Proper rhythm is achieved by knowing where all notes are going. Energy leads from note to note, phrase to phrase, throughout a piece, without fail. Toe-tapping creates a stopping point, both physically and mentally, and, while it can be initially helpful in aligning a tempo, it does more harm than good by restricting the flow of the music. The anticipation of a beat no longer originates from the forward momentum of the music, but rather to an anticipated alignment with foot movement.
I find that toe tapping, and other excessive per-beat movement for that matter, tends to make music sound choppier, and often is counterproductive to its usual desired goal of "keeping the tempo up." Not to mention the utter havoc that is wreaked whenever slight liberties in tempo are desired.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Steve Epstein
Date: 2005-04-25 03:41
Interesting.
I play almost exclusively Western European (Keltic, Scandinavian) and American folk music for dancing. Occasionally a bit of jazz or klezmer. Always for dancing, or just "jamming", where others may be listening, but I haven't played a real concert since high school.
I have learned that in the folk tradition, tapping -- often vigorously (though not so much as to bounce things around) -- is mandatory. At first it seemed strange. I too was taught to tap only in the shoe at most, back in school and in private lessons, at least as I became a more advanced player. But most of the time, in the gigs I play, we have no conductor to follow, nor are we playing from arrangements. So we are following each other. We expect the rhythm instrument, i.e., piano or rhythm guitar, to set and keep the tempo. We love having monitor speakers to hear each other, more important than the PA's that go into the hall. To help us stay on time, we not only tap, but watch each other's tapping, so we can tap together.
Sometimes I play this music with a large, open pick-up band. There will be a conductor, but he/she may not be professionally trained (I've "conducted" myself and I'm not professionally trained), and so the conducting may be unclear or inexpert. Once at such a band rehearsal the leader, a well-known fiddler, acted primadonna-ish and played games with the band, changing tempos, starting and stopping and seeing if we could follow. Her arm motions were minimal fuzzy gestures, she was also sitting down and we were arranged around her in nearly a 2/3 circle. But I had no trouble following her. I ignored her hands. I just watched her leg going up and down.
In the folk tradtion, especially French Canadian, there is foot percussion, a guy tapping "click-a-clack" on a foot board, often miked. Everyone else is tapping, too.
One of the posts mentioned that the BSO children's concerts discourage the kids from tapping. Discouraging kids from doing something they would naturally do to music, music which you want to get them to like. Talk about shooting yourself in the...foot. ![[huh]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie11.gif)
I'm curious as to what chamber players do. There's no conductor, either. But there is "decorum". ![[frown]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie2.gif)
Steve Epstein
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Author: Steve Epstein
Date: 2005-04-25 03:47
Alex wrote:
"Toe-tapping creates a stopping point, both physically and mentally... The anticipation of a beat no longer originates from the forward momentum of the music, but rather to an anticipated alignment with foot movement."
Which is exactly what we want when we play for folk dancing. It keeps the dancers on the beat and gives them "lift".
It all depends upon what kind of music you are playing and for what purpose.
Steve Epstein
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2005-04-25 03:53
"It all depends upon what kind of music you are playing and for what purpose."
I totally agree. My comments were intended toward the "classical concert music" world. There's a difference between foot tapping for style and feel, as in folk music, and for tempo alignment, as in classical.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: ned
Date: 2005-04-25 05:37
Check out a video of Ray Charles performing............toe tapping AND accentuated body movements. Quite necessary of course............for the others in his band! Some of his numbers were played at a slow death tempo, a drummers nightmare.
I can understand of course, that a symphony orchestra full of toe tappers would be a little distracting to fellow players too.............not to mention the audience!
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Author: Steve Epstein
Date: 2005-04-25 05:44
John Kelly - Australia wrote:
> I can understand of course, that a symphony orchestra full of
> toe tappers would be a little distracting to fellow players
> too.............not to mention the audience!
Yeah, but they might at last get a groove on!![[grin]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie5.gif)
Steve Epstein
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Author: BobD
Date: 2005-04-25 15:26
"No Bob, tell us how you really feel. I hope and trust that you do not teach. Suzy and I continue to try to unlearn a habit cultivated from years of school band."
That is how I really feel. You cultivated a bad habit because your school conductor(s) didn't correct you early enough. No, I don't teach....probably wouldn't fit in with today's teaching methods. Lucky for you your current conductor has at least tried to get your attention to the subject. Lucky for you you don't sit beside me in Community Band as I would probably step on your foot to get your attention. Your foot tapping is annoying your current conductor.....give him/her a break. At ease!
Bob Draznik
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Author: Clarinetgirl06
Date: 2005-04-25 19:03
I have to say that there was one istance where toe tapping was useful in symphonic band style.
This year at All-District Band I was 1st chair on 2nd Clarinet, and our conductor (although from a good school and well known) was extremely hard to follow. I watched our Principle Clarinet right infront of me and she was tapping and kind of bobbing. While it is distracting, she was the way for me to keep the beat. After awhile, the whole 1st Clarinet section was with her and so was I and so all 24 of our clarinets were together and were with the conductor. We tried to find his beat but it was SO HARD to follow. The meter wasn't tricky-he was.
I noticed that I am a foot tapper. I used to bob, and then I stopped and started tapping... I'll try to stop!
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Author: sfalexi
Date: 2005-04-25 22:14
I twitch my calf muscle to the beat (basically, stick your foot to the ground, and try to turn your heel, but not raising it. It'll make the back of your calf move). Odd, I know, but I somehow learned to do this a long time ago and it's stuck with me.
Alexi
US Army Japan Band
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Author: jim lande
Date: 2005-04-27 01:05
It is the only exercise that I get. And I am getting slower and slower at it, too.
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Author: diz
Date: 2005-04-27 03:41
Simple - follow the conductor, you DO NOT NEED extraneous body movement to keep in time, and if you DO, then you'd better reconsider professional playing ... becuase you won't last very long in a pro orchestra with waggling feet.
Without music, the world would be grey, very grey.
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Author: ned
Date: 2005-04-27 04:04
''Simple - follow the conductor, you DO NOT NEED extraneous body movement to keep in time''
Sounds reasonable enough for you classical bods. Ray Charles was definitely the ''conductor'' and the performer too.
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Author: diz
Date: 2005-04-27 04:43
Good point, JK, in the jazz world - "anything goes"
Without music, the world would be grey, very grey.
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