Eight Days A Week

It was recently brought to my attention that I haven't been

upholding my end of this blogging arrangement, ie. - I was a

couple months behind again!

The problem is that I haven’t had time! Who has the time for

anything these days, with the pipe band season picking up, the

kids in soccer and baseball, teaching everyday...

With each week getting busier and busier and the hours, days,

weeks and months flying by, I find myself wishing I could slow

down time. Hmm, perhaps that’s possible. The problem, really,

is that I need to add time, and that's not possible!

What the heck is “time” anyway?

A quick dictionary search will bring up about a hundred

definitions for time, but, how’s this one: “a system of

measuring duration”? I like this, because we can relate this

concept to music!

Music only exists in relation to time.

Every piece of music is played in relation to time, dependent on

the time signature and tempo. If we play 30 measures of music

in 4/4 time at 120 beats per minute, we create 1 minute of music

which exists as a physical entity for those 60 seconds only. It

does not exist before or after. (Sometimes this is a good thing!)

Music is created by combinations of sound and silence, and

organized by time (meter and tempo).

Music, like time, can be explained mathematically.

Einstein proved that perceptions of time are relative, and not

absolute. That’s fine for Einstein but, for musicians, we need

absolutes. We, as musicians playing together and playing

“in time”, need an absolute starting point, an absolute ending

point, and absolute landmarks along the way, in order to play

in proper unison.

These absolutes are important to the listener as well, because

the brain requires order to process information. Music without

an absolute start and end point and without the proper mechanics

(rhythmic pulsing, cadence, tension, resolution, etc) could not

be preceived as music by the listener.

In music, we use a metronome to measure time.

Thinking of our earlier example, if we play 30 measures of

music in 4/4 time at 120 bpm, we’re playing a given amount of

time as determined by the metronome.

We have our absolute staring point

(A) = beat #1 of measure 1 at time :00 -

and our absolute end point

(B) = beat #1 of the silent measure 31 at time :60.

But what happens along the way from A to B?

The metronome will click out every beat in each measure along

the way, from A to B, in equally spaced intervals. In this example,

the metronome will click one beat every half second, or two beats

every second for one minute.

Although the metronome will never waiver in it’s spacing

between clicks, sometimes the musician will choose to play “off

the click” for musical effect.

Think of every beat as having 3 possible attack points: dead

centre (we call this the “pocket”), slightly in front of centre, or

slightly back of centre. Playing ahead, behind or in the pocket

will greatly change the overall feel of the music for the listener.

But, what if this slight shifting of beat placement isn’t enough to

achieve what the musician is trying to express? Answer:

We play “off the click”.

This is an important technique in bagpipe music because the

instrument itself has some significant limitations in the sound

it’s able to produce. The bagpipe is limited in its range, unable

to vary its volume, produces only legato notes, is unable to play

rests, and no one knows how to tune the things.

Subtle variations in articulation become extremely important

in giving traditional bagpipe music shape.

Pipers compensate and add expression to their music by

varying the length of the beats within a measure or phrase. We

refer to this as long and short note articulation, and it's a

form of rhythmic dynamics.

The important thing to remember is that, with the start and end

points (the time, in other words) predetermined, we need to be

careful that all our long and short beats add up mathematicaly

correct in the end, (so that A eventually lands cleanly on B). This

is where our landmarks come into play. Landmarks should fall

precisely in the pocket (the more precisely they land, the "deeper

the pocket") and, the more landmarks we have along the way, the

more solid our time will be.

The best and most effective (and most musical) way to do this

is to start every bar of triple or quadruple time (3/4, 9/8, 4/4 or

12/8) in the pocket, and every two measures of duple time (2/4 or

6/8) in the pocket, as a general rule.

Using 4/4 (standard) time as an example again... beat one of

each measure should land deep in the pocket, and the remaining

beats have room to move on or off the click at the musician’s

discretion (provided that the next beat 1 lands in the pocket again).

So, here’s the deal:

If, in 4/4 time, every beat 1 landmark falls precisely in the

pocket with consistency, we can give each measure a relative

value of 100%. Hence, 100 is the sum of our 4 beats in every

measure.

The metronome, with its equally spaced intervals will, therefore,

assign a value of 25% to each beat in each measure:

The musician, however, may assign different values to each beat

note to change the rhythmic feel of the piece. Such as, the

following for a strathspey:

Notice that the measure still adds up to 100%. The attack point of

every beat 1 will land in the pocket producing landmarks for the

musician and points of reference for the listener.

The key to remember is that you can not add time! I hear the

following time and time again, and, I'd say this is the biggest cause

of ensemble phrasing problems in band playing:

Remember... music, and time, are products of the universe and

follow all the same rules. Every action must have an equal or

opposite reaction. If you add time somewhere, you must subtract

time somewhere else.

Music is mathematics, music is time, music is life.

And... we're out of time... (for now)

Cheers!

-Ryan