One of my earlier cello teachers would
constantly say ‘You have to REALLY listen!’ (I use uppercase because she
emphasized that word)1. I’ve spent the rest of my life hearing that
phrase in my head and repeating it. I’ve always remembered it despite not fully
appreciating what it meant at the time. I thought: I am listening! What more
can I do? What’s the difference between listening and really listening? Over
the years I’ve come to realise two things. One, there are many ways of
listening as a musician, many of which we take for granted. Two, there’s also
different levels of intensity and concentration involved when listening to yourself
and others.
I started learning the violin and
cello within group classes (3 & 5/6yrs of age respectively). It was fun
playing with them as a group. This starts a child on the road to really listening
which is of great value in itself and probably the best way to start learning
an instrument rather than having individual lessons. In addition, I attended
classes at a well-known theatre school from a very early age. So I had already
learnt to listen, co-ordinate and co-operate with others whether it be playing classical
instruments, singing, dancing, acting, musical theatre or working as a large
group when putting on a show. In retrospect, I have come to appreciate the
diversity of musical experience I was exposed to as a child which helped me
later. It’s similar to sport. If you want to be a professional tennis player it’s
a good idea to play other sports too when you’re younger. Likewise, if you want
to be a professional musician it helps to participate in a wide range of
musical experiences and genres. So, for me, working with others, including
musically, comes naturally.
Really listening to your playing
as well as the musicians around you is not a skill that is unique to playing with
an orchestra or playing chamber music. All musicians in every genre need to
develop these various musicianship skills. For instance, it makes no sense for
a singer to go off on their own tangent leaving musicians to keep up as best
they can. That would be a cacophony. Take a pop star, such as, Celine Dion. She
is a solo singer but, nevertheless, has backing singers and a band. All of them
have to co-ordinate and synchronize otherwise no-one will come to the concerts!
There are often certain chords or drum beats that cue the singer to land
certain notes and if this isn’t timed absolutely correctly then the song falls
apart. Equally, Celine can’t just speed up in the middle of a song when she
feels like it because it would confuse her backing singers and band and they’ll
end up out of sync with her. Unhappy backers, unhappy band and one unhappy
audience who couldn’t sing along to their favourite song.
It’s the same with classical
musicians. The soloist is important but not to the extent that the conductor
and orchestra are left to fend for themselves while s/he plays the concerto as
s/he hears it in her head without paying any attention to the musical dialogue
between soloist and orchestra. As for conductors, I don’t think paying
attention to a conductor or choir leader should replace being sensitive to
what’s going on around you musically. Conductors or choir leaders add something
different to the mix. For instance, they give cues to improve anticipation,
timing, and help a large group of musicians or singers gel together with ease.
They impart musical ideas and feedback as and when needed.
Listening to yourself helps you
maintain perfect pitch and intonation as well as a good tonal quality. It also trains
you to have an ear for simultaneously listening to yourself and others with
whom you are making music as well as how your combined efforts blend together musically
and aesthetically. In addition, you have to be quick enough to adapt and adjust
to the musicians around you and the conductor/leader in a matter of
milliseconds to keep a balance between pre-prepared interpretation and an element
of spontaneity within the musical interactions. So, for instance, in a
concerto, it’s a dialogue between soloist and orchestra. It’s always a matter
of knowing when to, figuratively speaking, talk and when to listen. If the two (soloist,
orchestra) don’t do this and talk over each other it ceases to be a musical
conversation, loses meaning and becomes a mess. The same applies to singing or
playing a musical instrument accompanied by a pianist. When playing my cello repertoire
with my cello teacher accompanying me on the piano, I found myself listening to
what I was playing as well as what she was playing as an accompaniment and
remembering to complement her to create a harmonious sound. This skill also
translated well when singing pop and musical theatre songs with my singing
teachers accompanying me and/or us singing as a group.
So to return to my two points at
the beginning. What you take for granted is the variety of ways you listen as a
musician:
1) You
listen to your playing/singing but not in a general way which merely results in
you hearing yourself. You train your ear to pick up the slightest changes of
pitch and tonal quality and learn how to make constant tiny adjustments to
maintain consistency and perfection. Nobody achieves 100% perfection but we all
have to strive for it to provide the best possible experience for the
listener/audience.
Furthermore,
different genres have different pitches. Classical music has the highest pitch,
making its standard pitch slightly sharper than the norm. Some pop singers,
especially divas, use a more classical pitch while most others’ pitch is slightly
flatter to varying degrees. Musical theatre singers are mostly around the norm
in pitch although those with some classical background may be closer to a
classical pitch. Country and folk singers generally have a flatter pitch but
there are exceptions such as Dolly Parton. Some genres have their own scale. For
instance, the blues scale flattens the 3rd, 7th and
sometimes 5th even though it is a major scale. In classical music, minor
scales characteristically have a flattened/minor sound so composers use this
scale to write music in a minor key to depict sad emotions as opposed to major
scales and keys which are typically seen as conveying happiness. Musicians nearly
always choose one pitch and sing or play everything according to it.
I sing and play
the cello (and other instruments) according to classical pitch, partly because
that was how I was taught as a child and partly for technical reasons, such as
it keeps you more reliably in tune. However, when making music with others,
especially when singing with others, it is very useful to be aware of their type
of pitch and adjust accordingly so you blend with them and avoid pitch clashes.
This is part of what my cello teacher meant by REALLY listening: develop your
listening skills so you pick up on small details and not just the general
picture.
2) Pitch
isn’t the only aspect of music you need to attune your ear to in order to have
musical awareness. Other aspects include tempo, rhythm, rests, when and how others
are beginning and ending notes, their colouring, timbre and volume. All this
takes a huge amount of concentration and intensity. This is the difference
between listening and REALLY listening. You cease to listen to music like a
non-musician who can relax and let the music wash over them. For the musician,
it’s a matter of combining all these different types of listening with heightened
awareness and concentration and being attentive to the minutest details in
sound production. It’s not a passive process but a constant, active process of
analytical, critical listening.
1Based on my comment
on facebook in response to Steven Isserlis’s post: ‘All the World’s a (chamber
music) stage…’ 28/06/2017 available at:
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