Many, many years ago I was playing a Boston Pops tour, and as fate and/or chance might have it, on one fairly long bus ride I ended up sitting next to Fred Buda.
For those of you who do not know, Fred was the set drummer for the Boston Pops through much of the Fiedler era. Given just how many records the Boston Pops sold back then, one could argue that Fred was one of the most-heard pop music set drummers in the world. But even if that had not been the case, I have to say, I thought he was just an absolutely fabulous player. It was just so much fun to be about 30 feet away from this guy night after night as he played the set drum solo in “Sing, Sing, Sing.”
Anyway, when this bus ride conversation occurred, I was still quite the young newbie. And for some reason, while Fred is usually a very quiet and reserved individual, instead of politely ignoring me, for some reason he took it upon himself to give me a little lecture in performance-ology. Here was one of the great masters of rhythm telling me, a country boy from Ohio, how he did his work. And now I’m going to tell you.
Basically, what he pointed out to me was that music is primarily about time. When a really good set drummer plays, it’s not about sustaining a precise, perfect, even beat. The “feel” is created, not through mechanical precision, but through subtle variations, or perhaps one would even say deviations, from the core simple straight beat. (For one example, the next time you listen to a Beatles tune, listen very carefully to what Ringo Starr is doing on the set drums– it’s amazing how much character he puts into an otherwise repetitive rhythmic pattern.)
For a string player like myself, I had gotten so wrapped up in finding the pitches that I had failed to really understand just how much more important the rhythm was. After this conversation, though, my perspective and approach changed completely.
If you consider this in bigger contexts, well, what makes the difference between one performance and another? The difference between a performance of Beethoven’s fifth by one orchestra versus another orchestra is all in the time. After all, they’re both playing the exact same written-out notes/pitches. The reason they sound different (if in fact they do sound different, and sad to say, that is becoming less and less likely all the time) is because one of them is playing it at a slower or faster overall tempo, and their subtle variations/deviations from the core beat are somewhat different.
If you go to see a pop singer performing their latest hit single in a live concert, and they hopefully are not lip syncing, it will not sound exactly the same as the recording. The notes and words are probably the same, but the time, the time… is different. When Paul Simon performs his old standards, he throws in huge variations of time.
What I took from all of these new revelations was, that my job was not about merely becoming more and more precise with pitch and more regular with timing. The purpose of developing overall technique was to give myself greater latitude of freedom with the timing, and subtle changes therein, when I played the notes. (And by the way, the pitches themselves are just measurements of the rate at which sound waves are striking your eardrum, so pitches are really all about time as well.)
Now: I don’t think it’s too much of a reach to postulate that music can express any emotion. And it is able to do so, not through a specific concatenation of 12 pitches, but through manipulation of time.
Time is flowing at a constant rate (I think… Einstein may have a better take on this), but if you cut it up into smaller pieces, you get a faster beat, therefore you have a “more upbeat” feel, or, shall we say for purposes of discussion, happier feel. And typically, if you cut time up into larger pieces, the slower it goes, the more you get towards the sad/introspective “feel.”
But aside from those rather broad brush approaches to tempo, the real “art” of performing is in the management of subtle, tiny little variations in time on every single note.
Of course, before you can do this, there is a major problem to get over, and that is what fear does to your sense of time. If you are afraid, you will do one of two things: you will either 1) speed up, or 2) you will freeze and come to a complete stop.
I like to think of an analogy here, of something resembling the visible spectrum of light. On the left of the “audible spectrum of music,” you might have screaming high-pitched fast moving panic fear, and on the right you have frozen-stiff-can’t-move-fear, but in between you have all of these subtle gradations of time/rate/pace/tempo which can capture and communicate every other human emotion.
Nowadays, my performing is of the speaking variety, but I still remember Fred’s lesson to me on the bus. I always remind myself to not let my fear affect my timing and pace. Simple to say, not so easy to do! The difference between a dull monotone speaker and a speaker that entertains is the difference in the timing. (There was some comedian somewhere who once got up and read listings in the white pages, and had the audience on the floor laughing. Material is important, but the timing is more important. Making your audience feel connected to you can be enhanced or prevented by your use of time.)
If you try to get total command of your inner “clock,” you may discover, as I have, that there are enormous pressures on you all the time to go faster and speed up. The people behind you want you to hurry up, the people ahead of you are yelling at you to catch up, and there’s an endless litany of advertising coming at you all the time telling you to hurry and act right now. All of us are often being made to feel that we are not “worth the time.” And there’s also the normal opposigte reaction, to just freeze and hope no sabre toothed tigers will see you moving.
In one of the chapters in my book, Principles of Applied Stupidity, I compare the ideas of fast thinking versus slow thinking. We all praise fast thinking, and we think of it as being “more intelligent,” but slow, careful thinking is usually much much better for you in the long haul.
When you stop hurrying yourself, you may find that you can get into a “tempo” that is not only very healthy and comfortable for you, but you have a kind of time and pace that is rather unique to you. There is nothing unique or original about being in a hurry, or being totally in sync with a metronome. Having command of your timing and pacing… not allowing your unique personal “tempo” to be ruled by fear or outside forces, is a wonderful byproduct of real arts education, and is key to cultivating your own originality.
Dare to slow down and be different.
© Justin Locke
