Bending Notes

[garetanne]

This week's piece is a bit jazzy, and although I'm hitting the notes in time with the metronome my teacher says it will sound better if I BEND the notes.  He played the piece for me, and of course it sounds better, but he couldn't give me an explantion of what bending IS exactly.

[prometheus]

I assume this is about the piano. Tell your teacher you need a different kind of instruments to bend notes. Bending means bending the string. But of course you cannot do that on a piano. You can try to bend or shake the key, but it will have no effect on the string whatsoever because the key just triggers the hammer and the hammer will hit the string. There is no way to influence the string. The hammer will move the same every time and the only difference you can make is the force with which the hammer hits the string.

I would say that your teacher is crazy. She or he can't be serious.

[tac-tics]

I would say that your teacher is crazy. She or he can't be serious.

I would say you're crazy for being so serious, prometheus. Music is not a domain where people strictly adhere to rigid meanings. The one exeption being the forbidden application of the word "song" to any music written over 100 years ago 

I don't much about jazz or anything, but I watched an episode of 'Scott the Piano Guy' which explained something that sound similar. You might want to look for the video on Google Videos.

[Bob]

Maybe they meant adding a group of chromatic grace notes?  Maybe three chromatic grace notes leading up to the note of the melody?  Kind of improvising that way.  Could be ahead of the beat or really "crushed" on the beat depending on the style.

Unelss they meant swing, but that's rhythm.  Maybe "bending" time though is what they meant.

Find out if the teacher is talking about the beat/pulse or if they mean adding more notes.

[bernhard]

Bending a note is a wonderful effect - much used by jazz musicians - but by no means restricted to them.

Physically speaking, bending a note means to approach that note through a chromatic succession, going through all the microtones. For instance, to bend a D, you would start on the C immediately below and go through a "continuum" of sound until you reached the D.

Unfortunately, as Prometheus said, this cannot be done on a normal piano, because there is no continuum of microtones to go from C to D. All you have is a semitone (D#) interval between C and D.

This is not true of wind and string instruments, where you do have the possibility of creating a continuum of frequencey form one note to the next, so bending notes is really at home with these intruments.

However, it is possible to create the "illusion" of bending a note, by - as Bob wisely mentioned - crushing two (or more) consecutive keys on the piano. for instance, by starting on C and playing very quickly the C-D#-D. Most of these short embellishments in  jazz are attempts at reproducing the bending effect on the piano.

But from what your teacher said, and from what you youself said (I´m hitting the keys in time with the metronome") I believe what he means is indeed "swing" (well done again. Bob! )

There is a convention in jazz notation that 2 quavers are to be played as a triplet with the first two notes of the triplet tied. So that the first quaver is slightly longer than the second: the first quaver would be together with metronome beat, but the second would be slightly after the second beat. Even the triplet notation is an approximation of the real thing. One has to learn to swing by listening a lot to performers who are good at it. Mathematically figuring out a notated score will not help.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[prometheus]

I would say you're crazy for being so serious, prometheus. Music is not a domain where people strictly adhere to rigid meanings.

There are really people that believe they can influence the pitch of a note through wiggling the keys, I have been told. They do this in the same way as people who think that the hands of a pianist can influence the tone of a piano.

It is just superstition. Because people are serious about this I also way seriour. I considered 'bending' to be analogous in this setting but I really had no way to believe that the teacher of the TS was talking about something else.

Furtermore, being called crazy for being too serious is kind of strange because generally being crazy means being the opposite of serious.

[garetanne]

Maybe he has more faith in me than I do...

This is a hard concept ... to be playing the music in a way different than it is written, especially for a beginner.  He told me to treat every other 8th note as a dotted 8th note, but it gets very confusing, especially in lines where the beat is just two half notes.

~scratching my head. 

oh well... I'll muddle through as best I can 

[timothy42b]

The amount of swing varies somewhat with the period of music.  Usually, it is close to 1.5 to 1, instead of being straight eighth notes.  If you play them as triplets you will not be far off.  If you play them as straight eighth notes they just sound wrong.  Think of singing Chattanoogah ChooChoo as exactly even eighthth notes.  Horrible. 

This is not just true of jazz.  Viennese waltz's must have beat two played early.  It is not notated, you must know it and do it by feel.  There are probably other examples I haven't heard of. 

[Bob]

Some ideas for swing....

Split the beat into triplets.

Connect the notes smoothly.  Legato.

Emphasize the third triplet in the beat.  The weight doesn't go down on the beat.  The weight goes up on that third triplet. 


That will give you some type of swing.

You can try it with your voice.  "Do-do-DAH" over and over.  The weight has to feel like it's going up on that third triplet.  Instead of DAH, you could use VAH or WAH.  do-VAY, do-VAY, do-VAY....

Think circles for movement.  Do be afriad to move to the beat or bop your head to get the feeling of swing down.

And there are lots of different varieties of swing, but that will give you a basic starting point.

[lagin]

So kind of like instead of Ma - ry - Had - A - Lit - tle - Lamb  it would be  Maarrr - y- Haaaad - A - Liiiittt - tle - Laaaammmbb? 

Perhaps it would help to think of them as long short long short.  Don't shoot me, but the beginner Hanon book (yellow one), actually has these rhythms roughly written out.  This is how I learned how to do it anyway.  But of course, in a real piece of music, the actual notes would not be written as different values like the hanon which has dotted eighths and sixteenths, ect., so it might not help that much.  It does give one a general idea, though. 



Edit:  How do I put a scanned piece of music from my computer on to here?

[ted]

It is worth noting in passing that swing with the second of the triplet played rather than the third, or more generally, lagged instead of anticipated syncopation, seems hardly to be heard except from Erroll Garner, who seemed to do it quite often for some reason. Aside from him the effect usually only happens when the third right hand note in a group of three over two is played. Just the sort of silly thing I seem compelled to wonder about.