Joe's Blog
SPEAKING OR SINGING THROUGH ORNAMENTS
November 14, 2020
Singing, enthusiastically, any upcoming ornament, just before i play is
frees my body to execute the ornament in a very clean and clear way.
Whatever it was I captured (more easily) by singing it carried over
into my physical piano playing moments later. We know how to use our
voice, singing or speaking, to express the shape of a phrase, the
rhythm of a phrase, the emotion of a phrase. This comes naturally to
us, even if we have the worst singing voice in the world.
This sing-then-play procedure can be extrapolated beyond just
ornaments, and any next note, or coming up notes, chords; to the
feeling of any next emphasis of the beat. IT is as if we are singing,
identically, twice in a row. Only in one case, we activate our vocal
chords and in the second case, we activate the piano keys.