Phrasing musically under pressure

TECHNIQUE

Principal double bassist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra; associate professor of double bass, orchestral studies and chamber music at Boston University College of Fine Arts, MA, US

BORN Tucson, Arizona

STUDIED WITH Henry Portnoi, Peter Mercurio, David Perlman

TEACHES Conservatoire students aged 17+

EDWIN BARKER

Many conservatoire-level students have a strong technique. Fewer have the analytical skills and discipline necessary to help them improve their technical approach to musical phrasing. Every time we develop a technical process it’s as if we are creating a new pathway in our brain, or making grooves in a soft clay ball. We can deepesn and widen each groove through repetitive and varied practice, which helps us build the muscle memory and security that we need to phrase and articulate music beautifully, even in high-pressure situations on stage. This aids us in our ultimate goal to develop the craft of music making.

EXERCISES

To begin, we must decide on the shape of a phrase.We should control the inflection of every note that we play, just as we use our voice to shape words to fit the meaning of a sentence. It is vital to play with good diction, using the bow strokes outlined in figure 1. Here the sounds that begin with black blocks have consonant-like articulations, as though they begin with a p, k, b and so on; those without are more like vowels. The thick strings of the double bass take time to react, so to create a consonant sound we have to grab the string with the bow, pull it to the side and release it again, like a bow and arrow. A vowel attack can be less pronounced.

Choosing one articulation style, play eight bow strokes for each note of a scale. The bow strokes should be played with equal weight but with a slight accent on the first note of each grouping Reduce the number of strokes per note to six Further reduce the number of strokes per note to five, four, three, two and finally one. As you get faster, this will help you to align your left and right hands for each bow change

You can use combinations of these strokes to bring out syntax, movement, tension and release in any musical passage.

MARCO BORGGREVE

HOW TO PRODUCE A RESONANT SOUND

For each bow stroke, take care not to choke the string. Every note has a core pitch, but its surrounding resonance or ‘glow’ only comes when the string is free to vibrate. Relax your right hand and arm and ‘float’ the bow across the string, rather than dragging it, to bring out more overtones and colour.

‘Play’ full, legato, silent bow strokes one inch above the string

Move the right arm from the shoulder and pay attention to how you hold the bow with your hand and fingers to keep it in place

Next, with the same motion and floating feeling, return the bow to the string

As you play, experiment with different amounts of ‘drag’ and ‘float’ by squeezing and releasing the bow stick as you pull and push the bow, to explore how this affects your sound

This will also help you to practise making smooth bow transitions without the unwanted ‘kicks’ or accents that can result from accidental accelerated arm movement on a bow change.

DEGREES OF INFLECTION

Now use these different types of articulation style to give shape to a phrase. In addition, grade each note according to its level of inflection, as I have done in exercise 1 using numbers and inflection lines. Once you have determined your inflection numbers – one being the lowest level of inflection and five the highest – practise bowing this shape on a single note untilit is ingrained in your muscle memory. I call this ‘modelling’. It is a valuable way to work on musical direction and syntax without interference from the left hand.

When you create any exercise based on a musical phrase, always maintain that phrase’s original musical shape

BULLET-PROOF PHRASING

When you have decided how to use diction and inflection to phrase a passage, deepen and widen the grooves in your ‘clay ball’ by practising in different ways. In a phrase with stronger notes on down bows and weaker notes on up bows, for example, reverse the bowing so that the up bow becomes the strong note and the down bow becomes the weak note, change the rhythm or add accents (exercises 2 and 3). When you create any exercise based on a musical phrase, always maintain that phrase’s original musical shape. This will help to embed the shape of the phrase deeply in your muscle memory, no matter which bowings and rhythms you use. You can also work on the same bowings in isolation using one note or a simple scale.

FIND A FAIL-SAFE FINGERING

A final useful way to help us phrase even a difficult passage musically in a stressful situation is to associate every note in that passage with a particular finger, so that muscle memory and finger placement become intertwined. This is useful for the simple but terrifying double bass solo that opens the third movement of Mahler’s First Symphony. I like to play this rather dangerously, with long shifts and no harmonics for more musicality (exercise 4).

IN YOUR PRACTICE

All the exercises in this article can be adapted to any scale or passage of music and will help you to coordinate your brain and hands in the most appropriate way to serve each musical phrase, even in high-pressure live performances or auditions. In any musical line there is an element of shape and movement based on tension and release, intensity of inflection and musical structure that you can mould according to your own creative desires. Isolate each musical gesture, shape it and apply that shape to a note or scale to make a drill out of it and deepen the grooves in your clay ball. Make sure that you approach orchestral repertoire with the same amount of musical commitment and detail that you would with a solo. A classical double bassist’s bread and butter – and the bulk of our best repertoire – comes in the orchestral setting. The double bass role within an orchestra is largely as a rhythm and harmony instrument, so we need to articulate every sound cleanly and clearly to make sure that our sound carries.

TIPS FOR TEACHERS

My students often tell me that no one has ever talked to them in such an analytical way about music and phrasing before, but to me an analytical, disciplined approach to music making is essential to help them learn the craft.

A classical musician’s role is to recreate what a composer has written, and it is our duty at least to start with what we see on the page. Great players will inject their own soul and emotion into that as well, but we should never phrase something only because it ‘feels good’. We have to be able to justify it in terms of the musical context.

As teachers, it is our job to give students the tools they need to interpret music, so that their performances are phrased in a way that is individual to them, but also musically and structurally appropriate, with good syntax, motion, momentum and breath.

INTERVIEW BY PAULINE HARDING

FURTHER MATERIALS

Henry Portnoi’s Creative Bass Technique is a very interesting text that goes hand in hand with my training on the double bass and the concepts presented within this article.

Practising for Artistic Success by Burton Kaplan is a phenomenal book that helps to guide musicians on the best ways to integrate technique into the craft of music making.

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