Note Grouping

 

The following is based largely on the teachings of Dr. James Thurmond in his book

Note Groupings: A Method for Achieving Expression and Style in Musical Performance.

If developing musically effective phrasing is something you are actually interested in (and as a musician, what could possibly interest you more?), his book is invaluable.

     An essential but often ignored aspect of phrasing is your note grouping. Proper note grouping will give your lines a musical purpose and a sense of motion which is integral to good music. You may already be aware that the concept that propels harmony is that of tension-release. Almost all music can be simplified into dominant-tonic or predominant-dominant-tonic groupings. Notice that the harmonies that create tension (predominant and dominant) precede the release (tonic). This of course makes sense; there can be no release without tension beforehand. Our problem arises from the fact that within a bar the harmony is usually is usually ordered in some variation of: Itonic dominantI, Itonic dom. tonic dom.I, or ItonicIdom.ItonicIdom.I. This visually puts our music into groups of release-tension which breaks up the musical grouping of tension-release, and makes most players give unnatural significance to the downbeat of a measure.

     Take the following example: Most people would group this as but the grouping that you actually want to think about is . This puts the stress on the tension creating notes and treats the downbeat as simply the resolution of the preceding music. To play groupings like this it probably enough to just change your thinking about how notes are grouped instead of attempting to accent the beginning of the groups, but thinking about a slight push in the tension creating music (the arsis) and a release on the downbeat (the thesis) might help.

     Once we have shed the influence of the bar line on our thinking we can start to think on bigger and smaller levels. Within every level of rhythm, from 64^th notes to groups of whole notes, the notes are visually grouped release-tension, so it is up to us to rearrange that order when we play so that within the grouping that we made above, think about these groupings . On the eighth note level, this means thinking and . This concept be transferred down to notes of any value, and can also be transferred up to longer notes so that a group of half notes becomes . You now no longer have to sit on long notes wondering what to do with them. All of this can be applied to compound time by thinking .

     Now that you have an idea of what constitutes good note groupings, you should pay close attention to the way that great players group their notes. An important thing to remember is that this is usually done very subtly. I have analyzed how Maurice Andre does his note groupings in the exposition of the Haydn concerto. There are some interesting things that you should notice in the Haydn. One is that he is normally very subtle, so that when he is more obvious it is a very effective way of adding more motion to his line. Another thing is that at the asterisk (6^th line), which is one of the most musically interesting sections of the piece, he reverses the order of his note groupings. This is effective because at this spot Haydn does something unexpected and puts diminished chords (functioning as dominant) on beats 1 and 3, which resolve to major chords on beats 2 and 4, instead of the more common dominant chords on beats 2 and 4 with resolutions on beats 1 and 3. Even though Maurice Andre does not group his notes rhythmically how one would expect, his note grouping still lines up with the dominant-tonic grouping of the harmony.