Expression and Interpretation: are they the same thing?

 

In my previous post I talked about playing with expression. One might ask, "but what about interpretation?" Classical musicians and listeners (and music critics) are always going on about this or that "interpretation" of a given piece by a given artist. What do they mean by that? (It may help to read my post titled Interpretation from February 2015 before continuing here.)

First I want to stress that no musician will play a given piece exactly the same as anyone else. They won't even play it the exact same way they played it yesterday! Yes the notes are the same but the nuances will be different. Since expression comes from the interplay of your ear and your physical movements, this is too subtle to just duplicate at will. Yet, how you move and how you hear will become "your way" of playing, and won't likely change to any significant degree from day to day. It very well may change over the course of a lifetime as you gain more life experience, hear more music, play more music, and delve deeper into yourself.

Interpretation implies some sort of mental construct. People (including some teachers) will tell you that you need to "decide" your interpretation of the piece. I've been playing the piano all my life (almost 70 years) and I have never once tried to decide my interpretation of a piece. I just play from the heart.

As I start learning the piece, usually with an outline and gradually filling in more details, the sound of the piece begins to emerge. Of course, I've probably already heard the piece in recordings and/or concerts, but now I am hearing myself play it, and that is different than anyone else. I respond to what I am hearing and as I gain confidence, I am able to play with even greater expression. It's an "in the moment" thing, not a decision that was made beforehand.

Most composers since Bach have put many markings in the score to give you some idea of how they imagined it should be played. There are dynamic markings (from very soft to very loud), tempo markings, places where you slow down or speed up, phrasing indicators, indicators for touch (e.g. legato and staccato) and much more. But how slow is slow? How loud is loud? All of these have a range from a lot to a little and only you, the player (and listener) can tell what sounds right. You wouldn't play it very loud, for instance, when Chopin indicates it should be soft. You could say "well, I'm going to play it loud because that's my interpretation!" (Believe me, I've had teenage students who do just that.) One could make the argument that since the composer indicates so much of the dynamics, phrasing and touch, there isn't room for that much interpretation anyway. But that would not be right. Again, YOU are going to play it differently than everyone else even while following the composers' markings, because your ear and your body are different from everyone else, and your expressiveness (or lack thereof) will make it your own. 

The only musician who needs to decide on an interpretation is the conductor. Since he/she is not playing an instrument, the process will be different. The members of the orchestra or choir cannot just play their own interpretaion (difference of loud vs. slow, different rates of slowing down or speeding up, etc.) of the piece, because they will not play as a cohesive whole and the whole thing could become cacaphony. As a member of an orchestra, you will be playing the conductor's interpretation. You must still play expressively, however, so every member will be make the most beautiful sound that he or she can make.

I am not saying that there is no mental involvement in learning and playing a new piece. Understanding the complex architecture of a Beethoven Sonata is important. I suppose you could play well without understanding it, but why would you want to? (See my post, Don't be a Dummy.) The more you learn about music your awe will increase. Just don't make intellectual "ideas" about interpretation your starting point. Your "interpretation" will evolve as your musicality evolves and grows.

Playing with Expression

I have talked throughout this blog about the importance of playing with full emotional engagement at all times, at all stages of learning and working on your pieces. But how exactly do you do that?

If you think about jazz and rock musicians, you might say they always play with expression. I doubt that the Rolling Stones ever gave a performance where they were just phoning it in. I doubt they phoned it in during rehearsals either. Why is this so? 

First, if they wrote the music they are performing, they probably have a deep connection to the music -- it really means something to them. Second, if they wrote it themselves (and even if they didn't), they didn't learn it from a written score. so they didn't spend time learning "the notes" and then have to add the expression later. If they are improvising, they definitely are not restricting themselves to written notes. Either way, they know the sound they are looking to achieve, and the ear is running the show. The ear directs the body what to do to achieve that sound. 

The process of learning, playing, and performing classical music is so different from rock or jazz that it is difficult to draw parallels. Sorry folks, I know I'm biased, but classical music, played at a very high level, is the most difficult. Playing a Brahms or Rachmaninoff piano concerto lasting 40 minutes is a world away from playing a set of ten 4-minute songs on guitar. The technical challenges alone are vastly different. It may take months, even years, to learn, master and memorize a classical piece. 

For the average amateur or beginning pianist, the process of learning and absorbing the notes of the piece can be quite daunting. It helps to be great sight-reader but there is a lot more to it than that, specifically, the technical aspects. Because of those two challenges -- reading the notes and then training the hands to find and play them -- the musicality tends to fall by the wayside. It doesn't have to be this way, but it ofen is. Sadly, a lot of teachers don't even talk about this. They figure you either "have it" (musical talent) or you don't.

I recently saw a video on You Tube where the teacher, to her credit, did emphasize the importance of always playing with expression. The problem is, she couldn't tell you how to do that. Her only suggestion was to listen to a lot of recordings of great pianists. If only it were that easy. Even if you can tell by listening that the pianist has tremendous musicality and expressiveness, you are not going to be able to identify what exactly they are doing to achieve that. The notes are flying by at hundreds per minute so you couldn't focus on what they are doing on a note-by-note basis even if you wanted to. And if you could (you can't), you'd end up playing like that person; it would not be your own expression, it would be theirs.

The problem is that many people view the "expression" as separate from the notes, like a coat of paint you put on at the end. The expression comes from nuances of touch and timing, phrasing, dynamics, and much more. Everything you do physically affects the sound. Let me say that again: Everything you do physically affects the sound. Not just the sound of each note, but more importantly, the sounds of the notes in relation to each other. In the video mentioned above, she says no two notes of the phrase will have the same dynamic level. Not true, but even so, how would you micro-manage that? Trying to do that note-by-note would give a very stilted and artificial sound. Instead, to create a long phrase (also called a long line) you need the arm to initiate the movements which subsume the individual notes within the phrase. The fluidity of the arm movements will create the arc of the phrase. I realize that just saying this is not going to enable most people to actually do it. It's just an example of how the physical  movements determine the sounds. In my lessons, I have my students place their hands on my hands and arms to feel what I am doing. I also move their hands and arms for them (briefly) just so they can experience the feel of it. You've got to experience it, physically. Just watching someone do it is not enough. After experiencing it, you try to "cultivate" that experience, meaning, do it all the time until it becomes natural for you. You would be learning a whole new way to move. Again, this is why you need a teacher who can help you with this. Sadly, however, many teachers cannot help. Do they play expressively themselves? Even if they do, many pianists (and other instrumentalists) don't really know how they do what they do. It takes someone who has done a deep dive into this subject.

Here is one of the most profound statements my brilliant teacher, Joseph Prostakoff, said: "You play the way you hear, and you hear the way you play." What this means is that if you play in a very note-wise manner, using primarily finger technique, your ear will absorb that sound and impel you to play that way in the future. The more the ear expects that sound, the more you will do it, and so on in an endless loop. Likewise, if you play in a very fluid manner, integrating the arms, hands and fingers into larger movements to create phrases, not just notes, you will hear music that way, and your ear will direct your body to play in that way. Whichever "loop" you are in, you are constantly reinforcing it. You can see why it would be foolish to think it's OK to play without expression some of the time; you are reinforcing the loop you don't want. You'd be learning the piece with one set of physical movements, only to have to replace it with a different set when you want to perform and play "musically." No wonder some people have such a hard time playing expressively; they spend the bulk of their time NOT doing that.

If I could teach you how do play expressively by just telling you. I would do it. Sorry, but it can't be done. I can only give you warnings about what NOT to do, and some hints at what to focus on if you want to change your playing to be more expressive.

Superficial vs. Deep Learning

 

People often tell me that a source of frustration in their playing is that the music they have learned doesn't "stick." They spend weeks or months learning it, and feel they have gotten the piece to a place where it is solid -- they may even feel they played it really well -- but then after not practicing it for a short time, it's just gone -- they can no longer play it. You'd never really be able to develop a repertoire of pieces you can just sit down and play, because it would be terribly time-consuming to try to learn new material while also having to constantly play the music you learned previously, just to keep it from fading away.

I call this "superficial learning." There are, I believe, four main contributors to superficial learning. 

First is an almost total reliance on muscle memory. As you are aware, when you hands/arms/fingers perform the same physical movements over and over, neural pathways in the brain are formed, and the impulses travel down these same pathways every time you play, enabling you to play almost on auto-pilot. However, the brain, finding it no longer needs these pathways when you stop playing that piece for a period of time, will let them dissolve, so to speak. (I realize my language is not very scientific, but I think it describes what's happening.) When the pathways are gone, you can't play the piece, at least not nearly as reliably as you did at one time. Muscle memory is a wonderful thing and we couldn't really play without it. But it's not the only thing.

Second is reliance on "thinking." It's akin to talking yourself through the piece. Your mind is trying to remember specific notes, specific chords, even specific fingering, saying to yourself things like "put 3rd finger on this E." There would be hundreds of these little "thoughts" even in a short piece and you can't possibly remember them all, even when actively practicing, and certainly not if you've taken a break from the piece. I have several posts about "thinking" while playing. It just doesn't work.

Third is trying to rely on visual cues. The keyboard looks the same 100% of the time! No key is going to jump out and say "play me next!" to help you know where to put your fingers. This sounds so silly and so obvious, but people often unconsciously do this. They are staring at the keys as a means of finding their way around, but it's absolutely pointless. If you've learned to play the correct way, which is not looking at your hands as close to 100% of the time as you can manage, then your muscle memory will guide your hands where to go. Looking at the keys will slow you down, at best, and throw a wrench into muscle memory, at worst.

Fourth is not playing with emotional engagement, or with "expression." Many recent studies of the brain have shown that it works differently when the emotions are involved, and not only differently, but better. It stands to reason that you will remember something better if it is meaningful to you. You may love music, but if you play in a perfunctory way, as many do when they think they are just "learning the notes," the music will never become as ingrained in you as it will if you are giving it your all, emotionally.

You can see from these four items that a very important one is missing. That is the ear.

The auditory capabilities of the human brain never cease to amaze me. I believe humans are uniquely "wired" for music. To really know music at a deep level is to know how it sounds. You may say, "of course I know how it sounds!" But if you can't reproduce it, without looking at the written score, then you don't really know how it sounds. It's really as simple as that. Take a piece of music you are working on currently, but don't have memorized yet, and just play the top melody line for a phrase or two, by ear (without reading it). Of course, much music has multiple melody lines, but just take the most prominent one. Can you do it? Does it come easily? If not, you don't know how it sounds. Then you could move on to the bass line and do the same. Put the melody and bass together and do it by ear. Move on to more of the inner voices and/or harmonies. This is hugely challenging for most people but it can be done. The great news is that every time you do this, your ear will improve and you will be better at it the next time. And voila! When you can do it all this way, the piece is memorized! Ear = memory.

I recently had some friends over and played several Christmas carols. I play them all by ear, in interesting arrangments with full harmonies. I can play them in any key. I have never looked at a written score for these. I have been playing them by ear all my life. Since I only play them at Christmas time, I go all year without playing them yet they do not fade at all. So it can't be attributed to muscle memory. The ear informs the hands and fingers where to go. One friend said "how to do remember all those??" I replied "I don't remember them. I just know how they sound." Not being a musician, she may not have understood the difference. I didn't learn from the written score and then commit them to memory. I just heard them enough in my early years that their sound became permanent wiring in my brain. I am fortunate to have been born with a very good ear (absolute pitch), but I have also worked to improve it even more. I am not going to lie and say everyone can learn to do what I do. But the key to making music more permanent in your brain is to drive it into your ear. I have many posts on ways to do this.

The ear needs to be the driving force. If you are mostly doing the four things that keep it at a superficial level and not spending practice time on ear development, you probably will find things don't "stick."

Why I don't have videos

 

While reading some of my posts about aspects of technique, you may have wondered why I don't just include videos to show you instead of just tell you. It's not that I didn't think of it or don't know how to do it.

I don't have videos because I don't want any readers to think that you can learn to play the piano by watching someone else do it, whether in person or by video. If that were true, there would be a lot more good, or even very good, pianists out there. But sorry, it just doesn't happen.

Playing the piano is intensely physical. It may not look that way to the casual observer because great pianists can make it look easy. As with sports, mastery at the piano takes years of training your body to do thousands of different motions that make the whole thing work. You'd probably agree that you can't learn to play golf or tennis by just watching someone else do it, even if they explain what they are doing. You may be able to watch them, but they need to be watching you in order to see and hear what you are doing in order to correct your technique.

The other day I happened to notice some You-tube vidoes pop up on my phone about various subjects related to piano. Most had outlandish claims such as "learn to master all your chords in a few easy steps" or "learn everything you need to know about music theory in 20 minutes" or "the one exercise that will catapult your playing to the next level." You get the idea. They sound too good to be true because they are. I suppose some of these people think they are doing a service to the public, but I suspect that getting you to subscribe, and eventually to sell you some of the materials, has something to do with it.

In this blog I do not purport to teach you how to play. I only wish to give you food for thought if you are either currently trying to learn and experiencing some frustrations, or thinking of starting to learn the piano but don't know what direction to take. Many of the ideas and methods I talk about are VERY different from traditional methods and beliefs about how to play, and I firmly believe that my approach is an enormous improvement over older methods. But I never promise you will "learn all your chords in a few easy steps." (BTW, the woman who had that video just referred to the 12 major and 12 minors. She didn't mention 7th chords. She had all the chords in root position, which is necessary to start with, but unless you also learn inversions of chords, you don't have the knowledge for real-life playing. "All your chords" was 24 chords. In reality there would be hundreds of permutations.)

It is important to learn what really works and what doesn't. That way you won't spend endless hours in drudgery and pointless exercises that don't work. So yes, you can speed up the process of learning, to some extent. But there is no "secret" method that some person on You-tube has discovered that will allow you to bypass the many years people spend to achieve a high level of playing on the piano, or any instrument for that matter.

I'd like to share a funny -- yet also sad! -- story about someone who tried to find a shortcut to learning the piano. His name is Noah Adams and he is a well-known journalist and broadcaster. Some years ago he became interested in the piano and wanted to learn to play a specific piece, Traumerei by Schumann, for his wife. Traumerei is a beautiful little gem. It is only one page, but devilishly tricky to play well. It is NOT a beginner piece. He went to the Steinway store in New York City and bought himself a beautiful baby grand. He soon realized he didn't really know where to start, but didn't feel he had the time for private lessons, or perhaps just didn't want that much commitment. So he found a program online which guided the student through lessons from the very beginning with videos etc. Problem was, that for the program to work, you had to have an electronic keyboard attached so the computer program could hear what you were playing. There he was, playing on a dinky little keyboard while the online program buzzed him for every wrong note, while his beautiful Steinway sat, unplayed, in the other room. Eventually he gave up on this approach, no closer to playing Traumerei. Later on, he went to music "camps" where he got some personal instruction, and tried some other approaches. In the end, after several years (if I remember correctly) he did play Traumerei for his wife, though I doubt he played it very well. I don't know whether he learned many other pieces or only that one. The moral of the story is that he looked for a "shortcut" but ended up with a long and tortuous path instead. If he had gone to a REALLY GOOD teacher right from the start, he would have achieved much more, both quantity and quality, in that amount of time. You can read his story in his book titled "Piano Lessons."

You'll see that in my blog, I urge my readers to try to find a committed and highly perceptive teacher. No videos, no outlandish promises, nothing I'm trying to sell, just meaningful insights from a lifetime of playing and teaching.