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Re: Accuracy in orchestral auditions

Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2019-11-19 23:19

The question is not "feel" vs. "counting," but rather what is actually more important. As "clarinetwife" points out, there are many examples of musicians not allowing their ears to mesh rhythmic material together because (I would assert) there are too many intellectualized roadblocks being put in the way.

Let me address counting first. We count for two reasons. The count is firstly the roadmap we read as we play allowing us to move along together as prescribed by the composer. The other reason we count would be to determine rhythmic relationship amongst the note lengths before us. I would assert further that this is where we get the idea for the primacy of subdivision in rhythmic accuracy. Smaller units should be harder to make irregular and therefore it should be more accurate to cut the rhythm into smaller and smaller pieces to achieve more accuracy.

Here is where I diverge from the majority. From my perspective, if you can play quarter notes (for example) at incorrectly irregular lengths, then it is also possible to make your sixteenth notes irregular in length as well. In other words, making smaller pieces doesn't ensure that those smaller pieces are more accurate.

What I prefer is to reduce this issue to its most primordial element. We are talking about the audible length of a note in time (for example, a quarter note equaling 1.00 seconds). So to my mind it makes more sense to relate the length we HEAR of one quarter note to the length of the next quarter note.

Now taking this idea past the basic pulse of the music (usually a quarter note...for example, or a full measure as in the Scherzo to Mendelssohn's Midsummer's Night Dream) can be an interesting exercise, or even fun thing to test yourself with, but I only refer to the basic pulse of the music and its subdivisions.

The beauty of LISTENING to the length of YOUR note length is that it also involves LISTENING to the note lengths of others. And this is what ensemble playing is all about.

Now let me throw out an extreme example. I was with a student orchestra that was otherwise a crack ensemble. In the middle of a big instrumental solo, the soloist dropped about six measures (UH OH!!!). We all heard it, we all knew where the soloist now took us and the whole ensemble just played from that corresponding measure (disaster averted). But that was made possible by everyone LISTENING.........and not just.........counting.

A gross example I know.

...................Paul Aviles

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Accuracy in orchestral auditions new

Morrigan

2019-11-15 13:02