There are several strategies for communicating musical information to an ensemble. The most direct way is to use musical terms. So we might say violins, staccato. It's a musical term staccato. We have shared vocabulary, we know, we know what it means, it means something very specific. It's very efficient to use it and then we might be able to move on from there. Crescendo. Marcato. Forte. Whatever it happens to be.

A kindred spirit to that would be non-musical adjectives or short phrases that essentially mean the same thing. So instead of forte, we might, we might say full or strong. Instead of staccato we might say separated. It's also very efficient and it means something very specific when we use words like that. It's a good idea to develop your own rehearsal thesaurus, essentially more than one way to say the same thing. That way you don't have to keep saying staccato, staccato, staccato every single time you come to a passage that needs to be staccato. Partly it's because eventually the group is going to tune you out. because you keep saying the same thing. And also, because there are shades and different flavors of staccato that we want to be able to elicit. There might be, a, a very, very, very, very dry secco staccato up to a, a big fat resonance staccato. And the word staccato just doesn't cut it, because it's, well it's just one of them. So if we can come up with lots of different words. staccato. Separated. Clipped. Bounce like. Bouncy. Dance like. Some of those mean more that just staccato, but they often imply staccato. So, we want to have multiple tools at our disposal. Multiple words that we can use to try to get the right response.

Another very efficient and, in fact, musical way to illicit a response, is to model or sing what we're looking for. So, we might sing. [MUSIC]. That's much more efficient than if I said, all right, start at this tempo, then crescendo a little bit. And make sure those eighth notes are staccato, then rubato a little bit. I had a little decrescendo, and then a final crescendo with good accents at the end.

First of all, it takes a lot longer [LAUGH] than singing it. The group is likely to tune a lot of it out, if they're, or they're going to miss many of those details. Whereas, I can just sing it and, and show all those nuances right away. It's a little bit like the phrase, a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, it's an oral picture is worth a thousand words. And a thousand words that we don't have to say in rehearsal, because we've just simply modelled it. Both of those are very efficient tools. Direct musical terms. Modeling and singing.

Still sometimes those tactics don't work. Another very effective technique, but something we have to be careful not to overuse is metaphor and analogy. Where we're basically creating mental pictures of something. Usually non-musical, that we hope will elicit or kickstart or inspire our response that we weren't already getting. So for a crescendo we might say. Think of there as being a wave that slowly builds up and then finally crashes on top of the ensemble on, on the down beat of measure eight. So we're creating a very clear image. And that image sometimes even has sounds. Not musical sounds, but sounds nonetheless, associated with it. So hopefully, there are some people in the ensemble who, who'll resonant with that. Say oh that, that image is very evocative to me. And we'll do something physically different that they weren't doing before. That's part of the reason why well we got this spectrum say from pro players and performers to beginners. And you know, on the pro side of things this is where we are going to default to using direct terms, short phrases, and modeling and singing. Professional orchestra, violins, more staccato.

Trumpets, crescendo, more please, whatever it happens to be. One of the reasons is they have the physical skills to be able to put into play what we're looking for along with the musical savvy to complement it. So if we say staccato to the violins.

They're essentially going to say to us, yeah, I know how to play staccato. Great. I'll just put that into play. Tuba more crescendo please. No, okay. I know how to create more crescendo. I know physically how to do that. Or we can sing to the violas. Violas, more [MUSIC]. Phil will say, okay, I've got a good ear. I'm able to imitate what you just sang to me. Well, as we go towards the beginner's side of the spectrum, that technique becomes less and less effective. We want, we're striving for this on the prof, professional side of things, but it doesn't always work. Sometimes the metaphor and analogy can elicit a physical response and a mental response. That we're not getting through the simple singing and musical terms. So, we might say if we say to a middle school brass ensemble for example, not every middle school brass ensemble. We might say, more sound, more forte. Well they may not be able to do it because they simply don't have the physical tools as wind players to put that into effect. Or if they have the physical tools, they're not quite sure how to connect it to their musical ear. But if we say, think of there being a balloon that's expanding, big balloon and [SOUND] the air quickly gets forced out of it. That's the kind of air flow we want. We've given them a non-musical mental image that hopefully they can latch on to. And that will elicit a physical type of technique that they weren't already doing. Maybe they, maybe for some of them, they were doing it. We want to have multiple ways of doing this. But if we use that metaphor and analogy technique too much with any kind of ensemble, but especially a professional ensemble. You, we run into the old story of, oh the conductor, the slightly pompous conductor who gets in front of the orchestra and says, horns. We need to sound as if the heavens are opening. And there's sunshine flowing through the clouds. And there's angels dancing and flying through the air. And eventually a horn player raises her hand and says, [LAUGH] do you want it louder, or do you want it softer? And it's a fair question because from their point of view they have the skills and the musical savvy to know what we're talking about. Just tell us what you'd like or what the music needs and we can put that into play. So we just have to be aware of this spectrum and know that we've got multiple techniques at our disposal. Try not to use more than one or two of these techniques at the same time. Part of it is a matter of efficiency. We don't want to have to say, more staccato. More separated.

More [SOUND]. Like, like I'm hitting something with a little [SOUND]. All of these techniques at once. Maybe just staccato is going to get the effect. We don't have to run through our entire repertoire right off the bat. Also realize that there's going to be come repetition built into what we're doing, more likely than not, often even with a professional group. Just because we ask for it once doesn't mean it's going to happen or happen every time or happen at the next rehearsal. We're likely going to have to go back and do some of it again. And if we can hide that repetition or creatively hide that repetition. It's a phrase that Dan Huff teaches here at UNC is fond of using. That's what we're striving for so, instead of just saying staccato, let's try it, no, staccato, let's try it again, no, staccato, let's try it again. We might say staccato, try it.

More da da, dadadada. Let's try. No, more as if there's little bits of rain going, da, da, da, damp, big, boom, just, bum, that kind of force. Let's try it again. Oh, a little bit more, dik-da, da oom, might exaggerate, and we, we're. Well, but essentially just starting from the beginning and going over, and over, and over again. But we're creatively hiding that repetition by using different techniques in the beginning. The advantage of different techniques, why we have to have them at our disposal. And why sometimes we might want to use one and, one or two at the same time relates to the idea of multiple intelligences. That some people learn differently than others. John might resonate with, if I just say staccato, he's like [SOUND]. I know academic term, I know how to put it into action. Sarah might say, if you sing it to me I can just play it right back to you. And Bob might say if you can create an, an or, a mental image. Boy, I can, I can latch onto that and I can go exactly achieve exactly what we're looking for. So, people learn differently, and so we have to have the ability to teach differently from the podium by having multiple techniques at our disposal. Still, we might run through all of these techniques and creatively repeat the passage over and over. And we're still not getting the effect that we're looking for and we think the music needs. In that case, we'll go to what we'll call rehearsal tools or the rehearsal tool kit and that's the subject of other videos. [SOUND]

Strategies for Communicating Musical Ideas

Fundamentals of Rehearsing Music Ensembles

Meet the Instructors