1/18/24 What's In Your Musical Closet?

I was doing a Strum Bowing workshop at Belmont University recently and I was teaching a technique I call “percussive bowing, which involves making ugly percussive noises. I often have to remind classical players that it’s OK to make those sounds, and this is usually where I go into my “Different Rules for Different Schools” spiel.

 But it occurred to me that you can also think of musical techniques like clothing styles. 

 Casual vs formal is one of the main ways we classify our wardrobe. You don’t show up to a fancy wedding in sweat pants and you don’t go to a gym in a tuxedo.

You pick out clothes that are appropriate for the occasion.

We can think of musical technique in the same way. We need to have the same basic variety in our musical wardrobes.

There are times we need to be better dressed, to sound more formal–a lot of classical music falls into this category--and times when we need to dress down and sound more casual in order to fit into a jazzy, funky, rocky or hip hoppy musical situation.

Our musical technique should be as occasion-appropriate as our clothes, and if it's a casual musical environment, you don't want to show up with concert gown technique.  

That pertains to the kind of vibrato we use, the amount of refinement vs. coarseness in our bow stroke, our approach to slides, improvisation, etc.

Pop and folk music is vernacular music the way slang is vernacular language and street clothes are vernacular fashion.

All the masterpieces of classical music that we love were originally composed in the current vernacular style and place of the various cultures it came from. That’s why music from the Baroque period sounds different from music from the Romantic period.

And we are taught to play classical music with a technique that is appropriate to those various periods.

To extend the clothing metaphor, this is the musical equivalent of wearing period costume, like powdered wigs or Victorian-era gowns.

Those musical costumes are perfectly appropriate for Vivaldi or for a symphonic concert stage, but not so much for a hip hop club.

It’s good to have a variety of techniques in your musical wardrobe so that you don’t have a closet filled only with period costumes that you can’t wear on the street, musically speaking.

Which means it's time for a shopping spree!

You might want to start by looking for a nice casual vibrato. Then find yourself a great-fitting informal bow stroke, not too loud but not too dull. And why not splurge on a business casual effect pedal?

Get outfitted for the musical reality of the 21st century string player.

Groove on!