Leaving space in music

This week we learnt a Russian folk tune called Itzikel, along with a harmony for the B part of the tune. The tune has plenty of long notes in it, so we spent some time revisiting the process for learning to play with vibrato. It’s important to go through each step, and make sure your left hand and arm are completely relaxed as you make the movements. Repeatedly going through this process helps us to build muscle memory for making the vibrato movements, so that when you come to try to play with vibrato, you can easily make your hand move to make it happen. Here’s an interesting video that adds a few extra steps to the process, and along with a very detailed explanation:

 

Creating space

We also spent some time thinking about leaving space in the tune, and letting it ‘breathe’. Creating spaces in music can help with phrasing, and also change the dynamics and emphasis in parts of a tune.

We worked on this phrase, which repeats at the end of the A and B parts:

We changed the bowing so we started the phrase with a slurred up bow, then lifted the bow, missing out the 3rd quaver in the bar, and followed this with another single upbow, then slurred pairs of notes to the end of the phrase: