Music is a Language - Repeating Phrases (Part 3)

Continuing the series on the linguistic qualities of music and how to maximise our musical potential by utilising the same techniques used to learn and improve language, Part 3 will cover the importance of repeating phrases. As mentioned in part 2, this will be presented in a format that covers "external" and "internal" ways to repeat phrases. In this case, the external way to repeat a phrase is repeating phrases from others, whereas internal repetition is repeating phrases of our own creation.

External repetition of phrases:

Part 2 explained how we learn language from infancy by listening to the people around us, and how infants begin to imitate the sounds they hear. The first words an infant learns to speak will be simple words that have the most repetition and meaning attached to them such as "mama" and "dada", two very simple noises that refer to the two most important things in the infant's life as they provide all that they can to keep the infant safe, healthy, and happy. It is from mama and dada that the infant will learn even more vocabulary, as the parents serve as a foundation in the baby's mind for all sorts of things to relate to and associate with. The baby knows that if something comes from mama and dada, it is more likely to be something safe and good, thus it is worth remembering and trying to ask for it later.

Following this natural method of learning, learning to imitate musical phrases should begin with simple phrases such as a single bar of melody or interval recognition. From these simple and catchy phrases, you will be building on a foundation from where many other musical phrases, concepts, and ideas will derive.

It is completely acceptable to make the wrong sound when repeating a phrase. An infant doesn't say "mama" on the first try, it takes many attempts as they acquaint themselves with their instrument (mouth). So don't feel ashamed as you make seemingly irrelevant noises while acquainting yourself with the instrument.

Even adults repeat phrases in conversation. We can repeat a phrase to pose it as a question, to change the context for a new meaning, to learn a new idiom, or to remember a new joke or quote. So even in musical maturity and fluency, it is still appropriate and useful to imitate phrases.

Imitating phrases doesn't have to only be by hearing. Copying from sheet music is another form of this. More on this in future articles.

Internal repetition of phrases:

This is how we can begin to develop our own unique musical vocabulary. The great thing about this is that unlike natural language, music doesn't carry any kind of objective meaning in its phrases - when I say "water" you know that water is the clear stuff that you drink to stay hydrated, but the meaning of a musical phrase is ambiguous and open to interpretation. This means you can make up your own words, and use them in any situation providing your made up phrases are contextually relevant to your intended audience.

The word "XyzGlynaficklky" is made up of letters but it isn't a valid word in English. In music, you can use the building blocks of music (notes, rhythms etc.) to invent your own personal and unique vocabulary. As your general vocabulary increases along with your understanding of rhythmic and harmonic context, you will naturally find places in which your invented phrases fit and give the listener something new and interesting to hear.

By repeating our own invented phrases, and actively and patiently listening to the sound as it is repeated, we gain plenty of insight into our own way of thinking. You can begin to understand how and why you think or sound a certain way as you play, improving your skills in technique and musical expression by refining your vocabulary.

Music is a Language - Listening (Part 2)

For this series, I've decided to follow a format where each aspect of practicing music as a language will be explored in ways that I call either external or internal. For example, in this article I will be covering the aspect of becoming a better musician by being a better listener, just like somebody becomes a better communicator by improving their listening. Listening can either be external (listening to somebody else) or internal (listening to yourself).

External listening:

Some say we get our first taste of communication while still in the womb through experiencing vibrations and other bodily sensations. I'm not a scientist, so I'm going to play it safe as most of us can agree that most of our earliest communication whether in the womb or in infancy takes place in the form of experiencing or listening to external stimuli. Our first taste of language is by hearing it from our parents and family. It is also how we first begin to enjoy music.

Listening to music externally means listening to music that you didn't personally create. As musicians, listening to and understanding others' music is as important as an able child listening to and understanding the speech of others to learn how to speak a language.

There are different degrees of what to listen to, beginners of a language learn best from simple language, so beginning musicians can benefit from listening to simpler music. You don't want to remain a beginner by only listening to top 100 though as it is basically the musical equivalent of fast food, it may taste okay and satisfy your hunger but it's made of cheap materials, is bad for you, and bad value for money. Just as a beginner chef cooks a burger that tastes "good", finding their inspiration from other simple burgers, so can a beginner musician recreate simple music by listening to it. But a master chef can sense the exquisite, sublime, and nuanced balance of seasonings, condiments, spices, quality ingredients grown in optimal climate conditions, and cooking methods to recreate an absolute masterpiece of a burger that those who don't understand the first thing about cooking thoroughly enjoy - the musical equivalent being a virtuoso whose every note touches listeners who may only be accustomed to simple tunes.

For the past few decades, musical comprehension has severely declined and consumerism has greatly increased. Our modern society mostly consists of simple-minded and musically illiterate consumers that do not understand the language of music. To stay relevant and to continue making profit, modern music producers catch and retain the attention of such consumers through hypnotic rhythms and melodic motifs. At best, these mass-manufactured audio manifestations are accompanied by themes of puppy-love, heartbreak, and dancing. Unfortunately, the more common themes of popular music tend to be debauchery, money, power, status, and even violence - even pre-teens are happily dancing to Nicki Minaj on TikTok. By being musically literate and promoting good music, you are doing society a favour.

You will find deeper appreciation and relation to music, and more control and freedom of expression as you mature in musical eloquence and articulation, skills gained by exposure and practice of more sophisticated music. Just like opting for quality food as opposed to fast food to discover culinary delights and inspiration for recipes, opting for quality music over Taylor Swift's hundredth song about her hundredth ex-boyfriend (Yes, I went there, fight me) will expose you to a whole new world of beauty and freedom of expression.

Internal listening:

As an infant absorbs the sounds spoken by its parents, it makes unashamed attempts at creating its own sounds. The musical equivalent to this would be just to make sound on the instrument. It is normal to be self-conscious of how we sound when we begin playing an instrument, but nobody in their right mind would knowingly criticise an infant for babbling, so those who mock a musical beginner are the foolish ones.

Babbling still has its place in music through the standard practice of jazz musicians in skatting, and also communicating to those who are less rhythmically inclined. Have you ever been in that situation where you're trying to describe a melody or riff of a song and you explain it to your friend like "what's that song that goes dun, dun dunnuh, dun dunnuh, dun dunnuh!" or "la da da da, da da da daadaa" and they're like "Oh yeah that's Call me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen". Don't be afraid to make stupid noises as even the pros do it.

From infancy to adulthood, it is important that we listen to our own voices. We must be aware of our tone and choice of words to accurately and meaningfully communicate. No matter what level of musical experience you have, it is vital to listen to your playing. Focus less on what your hands or body is doing, ignore expectations and preconceptions about how you sound, and experience your musical voice unfiltered from distraction or bias.

Increase your musical vocabulary at least 168 times more effectively (I'm not kidding).

Hanon. Charles-Louis Hanon's "The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises".

Stop right there, don't run away. I agree that Hanon has some severe drawbacks and limitations, I am here to explain how to overcome those limitations and draw on Hanon's method to develop what is objectively the most comprehensive way to develop not only your musical dexterity as Hanon intended, but also your musical vocabulary and fluency.

By objective standards, this method has the potential to increase your musical vocabulary by a factor of 168 or even more.

Now, let's look at Hanon for a second, the bane of every pianist. The first twenty exercises in The Virtuoso Pianist follow a particular method which has a surprising quality to it that is often overlooked. The method that the first twenty exercises follows goes something like this:

1. Begin with a fingering pattern of semiquavers in 2/4 with two hands in unison starting in C major an octave apart.
2. Ascend the diatonic modes of C major using the same fingering pattern for two octaves.
3. Reverse the fingering pattern and descend the modes for two octaves.

What Hanon has effectively made every pianist do with this exercise is multiply a basic phrase by:

1. Playing it through seven modes
2. Across two octaves.
3. Altering the phrase.
4. Playing the altered phrase through seven modes
5. Across two octaves.

So, he has given you one phrase that has been multiplied by 7 modes x 2 octaves = 14 new phrases, and then provided you with another 14 phrases, giving you a total of 28 phrases for the price of one! This may seem trivial but ask yourself this, when was the last time you seriously studied a phrase and played it in a different mode, different octave, different key, rhythm, scale, wait... Hanon didn't change keys, rhythm or scale in his first twenty exercises, his strict use of semiquavers in 2/4 in the key of C is precisely one of the reasons his method warrants so much criticism, along with the claim that 60 exercises total is all it takes to develop a virtuoso technique.

What I am getting at here is that Hanon had something right all along, and because us musicians tend to avoid critical thinking in favour of being opinionated egotists we never noticed! What Hanon has laid the foundation for is for us to effectively remove the limitations of Hanon's method and replace them with methods that make them theoretically limitless.

Let's focus on those limitations and systematically improve on them:

Hanon only provides sixty exercises.

There is no way that only sixty exercises are going to make anybody a virtuoso. That's like saying you can be fluent in a language by mastering just sixty phrases. Anybody who practices Hanon or any other technical exercises will use it as a supplement to learning and creating real music. So by learning Bach or composing your own music you're already increasing and improving your musical vocabulary. There is an innate problem with this though that most musicians are neglecting which I have mentioned in this article, which is the fact that when most of us learn or create a phrase we tend to ignore that it has at least seven times more value if we play it in all seven modes.

Hanon's exercises are limited to only a few scales.

To my immediate recollection, Hanon only uses the diatonic, melodic minor, harmonic minor, and chromatic scales. Most of the exercises he provides aren't even mentioned to be played in other scales.

You can go beyond this by changing the scale. Using Hanon's exercises that are in C major for an example, we could take that first exercise and once it has been played as it is written, play it in harmonic minor instead. Now we have taken a phrase, played it in 7 modes x 2 scales = 14 exercises.

Hanon's exercises use only one key per exercise (with a few exceptions).

So, Hanon has already given us a method that can effectively increase our musical vocabulary and musical dexterity by a factor of seven. But for the most part, his method avoids playing each exercise in all twelve keys.

By doing so, we can effectively multiply one phrase or exercise by 7 modes x 12 keys = 84 new phrases!

If we change the scale, then we can further multiply those eighty-four phrases by each scale that we use. So a phrase that is usually diatonic that can provide us with 84 phrases/exercises, provides us with another 84 for each new scale we assign to it. Playing a phrase this way just across two scales will yield us 168 ways to play just one phrase.

Hanon's exercises may possibly restrict hand independence.

Most of Hanon's exercises utilise both hands in a way that they will play the exact same notes at the exact same rhythm one octave apart. Honestly, I think this is a bad practice and may restrict the musician's independence of each hand. This is simply remedied by playing the exercise with one hand of your choice, and then providing accompaniment with the other hand. This accompaniment could be improvised, it could be pre-arranged and notated, the world is your oyster.

Hanon's exercises are rhythmically unimaginative.

Now, I can see why Hanon may have chosen the first twenty exercises to all be a set of eight semiquavers in bars of 2/4. It does provide uniformity but in my opinion that's kind of like training wheels.

Whether you are using Hanon's exercises, a Bach melody, or your own phrases, it is worthwhile to use rhythmic variation so music doesn't always feel like it's being experienced through the same rhythmic lens. I imagine somebody who played Hanon the way he intended (all sixty exercises in one sitting every day) would suffer from perceiving all music as being slurred and modified variations of the sixty exercises. To be clear, I don't simply mean to just slur your phrases and play them rubato or staccato, I mean use completely different rhythms such as various time signatures and subdivisions. It could be interesting to add subdivisions or even omit or extend some notes.

It's called The Virtuoso "Pianist".

The music police (I hate those guys) will not arrest you for playing these exercises on your guitar, clarinet, trumpet, cello or whatever. I have had a serious talk with the chief at the music police station and he said it is completely acceptable by all standards of the music law to compose technical exercises for one instrument and arrange them for any other instrument.

This can yield some very powerful results, playing a phrase across twelve keys on guitar is significantly easier than on piano, but playing it across seven modes is significantly more intricate and thus will benefit your dexterity and musical abilities profoundly.

Hanon emphasises finger dexterity over musicality.

Dexterity is required to be an able musician, but the emphasis should be on creating and enjoying music, or else you're proverbially stuck riding with training wheels.

Trying to attain virtuosity just by increasing dexterity is like trying to be a better speaker just by practicing mouth movements, or trying to be a better writer by practicing correct pen-holding technique and writing out the alphabet with attention to form. These can be useful exercises, but the context and expression that accompanies the exercise is really what is at the heart of any practice whether it be music, painting, sports etc.

Moving on:

Improving your musical vocabulary by playing it in the multitude of various modal and tonal contexts is more than meets the eye. By practicing this way, we are not merely adding to a memory bank of musical phrases. More importantly, we are actually exercising our ability to perceive music in fresh new ways. I encourage you to consider that you aren't just increasing your vocabulary and dexterity, but you are expanding and developing your understanding of musical relationships in ways that transcend the idea of boosting your musical vocabulary. More important than having a large vocabulary is knowing how to use it, and this should innately occur through quality practice and reflection.

As I'm a big fan of thinking and getting other people to think, I thought of something new to introduce in my articles to encourage musicians to improve their music by thinking while also giving me more material for future articles. I thought I could end each article with relevant thought exercises such as considerations/questions and visualisation exercises to stimulate musician's abilities in navigating and creating musical possibilities. I am also considering making posts solely on visualisation exercises. Gee, I've got so much to work on.

Consider and question:

• In the future, when I learn a piece, I will practice particular phrases across across seven modes, twelve keys, and in various scales. Potentially multiplying my musical vocabulary by a factor of 168 or more.
• What would learning a major piece in harmonic minor or another mode be like? What new musical ideas, contexts, and patterns will I absorb? How can I use this new knowledge?
• What scales am I unfamiliar with? I will practice those.
• Let's make phrases in new time signatures and rhythmic patterns, and then play them through modes, keys, and scales.

Visualise and imagine:

• Hear and visualise your hands playing a simple phrase in C major. Imagine the same phrase across all the modes of C major. Try this for all 12 keys.
• Hear and visualise that same phrase but in harmonic minor. Imagine it through all seven modes of harmonic minor across all twelve keys.
• Imagine this with different phrases and scales.