Daryush
Oud Lover
Posts: 15
Registered: 7-15-2020
Member Is Offline
|
|
Trilling in time with beat
Hello all,
I have a question about trilling while keeping time. Although I don't have a teacher, I feel that I have made reasonable progress in the last few
months and can play some basic pieces and get a decent sound out of the oud.
One issue that I feel is hindering my progress, however, is trilling and adding in rhythmic fills. I can do a trill reasonably smoothly when
improvising or just messing around, but whenever it comes to practicing with a metronome or trying to keep in time, the trill always over- or
undershoots the beat. I suspect this might be because I'm not trilling evenly enough? In that I might be speeding up/slowing down.
When playing trills to the beat, do you always play an "even" number, for example 8 risha-strokes (4 down-up) / 16 risha-strokes per beat? (or
whatever is appropriate)?
I also really enjoy the rhythmic aspect of the oud, but I find it difficult to add in "interesting" rhythmic fills, which can make a "boring" piece
sound relatively lively and exciting.
Any advice/tips would be welcome. Thank you.
|
|
|
Brian Prunka
Oud Junkie
Posts: 2916
Registered: 1-30-2004
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Member Is Offline
Mood: Stringish
|
|
Here are a few thoughts that may help:
• tremolo is not a "trill", it's just tremolo. A "trill" is when you are rapidly alternating two pitches (which on oud is generally executed with
tremolo in the right hand).
• tremolo is not intended to be "in time" in the sense of a particular subdivision of the beat, though as you note the start and end points should
be in time with the beat (or a subdivision of it).
• mostly this is just practice. Keep playing with recordings and with a metronome and try to land the endings of tremolos with rhythmic intention,
whether it's on the beat or on a subdivision. Don't get discouraged if it seems challenging, this takes a little time and you will get it if you
keep working on it.
• often a tremolo should end on a subdivision or a non-emphasized beat so that there is a slight "breath" between the end of the tremolo and the
next note (though it's also not uncommon for the tremolo to play through if it's all one phrase). So this is something else to practice.
• practice ending a tremolo on an upstroke so that you can choose whichever is more useful in a particular situation — sometimes it's better to
end up, sometimes it's better to end down.
• practice ending a tremolo both with an accented stroke and with an unaccented stroke (combine with above for 4 possibilities: accented down,
unaccented down, accented up, unaccented up).
• experiment with the angle of your hand, the angle of your risha, as well as the positions of your thumb and index finger and the general
looseness of your grip. General observations: loose grip is easier, more angle is easier. It takes practice, but you should aim to be able to
maintain control with a very light grip on the risha and also be able to vary the angle of attack and other aspects of your right hand while you're
playing. The right hand is always making slight micro-adjustments while playing, as the ideal grip for different techniques varies in subtle ways.
• listen to a recording and try to emulate a specific use of tremolo in time, aim to get as close as possible to the player on the recording.
Sometimes (often) the issue is that you are not imagining the sound that you are aiming for clearly enough; emulating a recording trains your mind to
imagine sounds more clearly and to connect your imagination to the execution of that sound.
Here's a good warm-up/practice exercise: with a metronome, play 8ths, then 8th triplets, then 16ths, then 16th sextuplets, then (if you can) 32nds,
then 32nd sextuplets. So, what tempo should you practice this at?
For reference, I can do the 32nd sextuplets continuously at about quarter=54, and I can do about 1-2 measures at q=58 (before I start to get off
slightly), so that is my approximate upper limit as far as metrically consistent speed (so about 650-700 notes per minute, which is equivalent to
playing 16ths at approximately 174 bpm).
I'm not the fastest oud player by a long shot but that's pretty fast and I will say that I've never encountered a situation where that wasn't more
than fast enough.
You should probably start with the metronome at a higher speed and just eliminate the 32nd triplets and/or the 32nds at first (just play 8ths, 8th
triplets, 16ths, 16th sextuplets). This will be easier. But experiment with slower tempos and higher subdivisions as you get more comfortable. You
can also use other subdivisions (quintuplets are good, since they are in between 16ths and 16th sextuplets). This helps you zero in on feeling the
beat with different groupings in the right hand. At a certain point this all starts to feel very close to a "free" tremolo.
The key thing is to keep everything as relaxed as possible, and being able to play without accenting any notes. You may want to accent the first note
in each group, which is fine (especially at the higher subdivisions), but see if you can play without accents as well. At the slower speeds really
avoid emphasizing any notes. The absolute most important thing about tremolo and speed in general is to be relaxed and not force anything.
by the way, this is technically the "oud maintenance" part of the forum . . . while the boundaries are pretty loose around here, a question like this
may get more responses in the general "ouds, ouds, ouds" section!
|
|
|
Brian Prunka
Oud Junkie
Posts: 2916
Registered: 1-30-2004
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Member Is Offline
Mood: Stringish
|
|
A couple of additional thoughts:
You can start and stop a tremolo by simply moving your hand towards/away from the strings; this is a good way to have a less abrupt start/stop or even
a fade-in/fade-out (if that's what you want).
A tremolo can start or end three ways: accented note (could be slight or heavy), normal note, or dal niente (fade in without attack). Practice all
of these.
|
|
|
Jody Stecher
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1354
Registered: 11-5-2011
Location: California
Member Is Offline
|
|
One idea I can add to Brian's excellent response: Listen to what your favorite oud players are doing when they do what you are calling "trilling"
(whatever that may be). Listen and listen and listen until you can hear that sound in your mind. Then try to sound like that. It won't be perfect at
first but what goes in comes out. To get a good standard of competence or excellence of course you need to do a lot of practice. But having a sound in
your mind will help a lot.
|
|
|
Brian Prunka
Oud Junkie
Posts: 2916
Registered: 1-30-2004
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Member Is Offline
Mood: Stringish
|
|
Quote: Originally posted by Jody Stecher  | | One idea I can add to Brian's excellent response: Listen to what your favorite oud players are doing when they do what you are calling "trilling"
(whatever that may be). Listen and listen and listen until you can hear that sound in your mind. Then try to sound like that. It won't be perfect at
first but what goes in comes out. To get a good standard of competence or excellence of course you need to do a lot of practice. But
having a sound in your mind will help a lot. |
Yes, excellent advice! I tried to touch on this but I like your explanation better. The ability to vividly and clearly imagine the sound we want is
crucial to all aspects of music-making.
From my observations, students often hyper-focus on the technical difficulties of playing an instrument. This is understandable since it is the most
obvious thing when you pick up an instrument: you lack the physical skills to make the proper sounds out of it.
But by far the biggest project of musicianship is to develop one's internal musical sensibility: the ability to hear and listen in a focused way, to
sing and imagine sounds, to connect your ability to audiate and imagine sounds with knowledge of how those sounds are produced and how they relate to
the context.
What often happens as students progress is that the early habit of focusing on technique tends to obscure the real issues behind many difficulties:
the failure to properly internalize sounds and contexts and develop a vivid aural imagination and play what you hear. This leads to a lot of people
getting stuck in the "intermediate" stage because they misdiagnose a musicianship problem as a technical problem. Or they develop a lot of technical
skill but still lack core musical abilities.
I certainly spent a lot of time stuck here when I was younger. As someone who started playing music pretty late and who didn't have a musical
upbringing at all, I had a lot of obstacles to overcome, and I still consider ear-based work the primary focus of my practice.
|
|
|
Daryush
Oud Lover
Posts: 15
Registered: 7-15-2020
Member Is Offline
|
|
Thank you both for your detailed and informative advice. By "trilling", I did mean "tremolo" (also apologies for posting in wrong section).
I look forward to incorporating your advice and hopefully seeing some improvement. I can definitely relate to what you mention about technique taking
over the musicality...as well, I have limited time to practice, so I'm often reluctant to spend time practicing and repeating exercises when I could
be playing "fun" and familiar pieces, even though I know this probably does not help with progress.
|
|
|
Jody Stecher
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1354
Registered: 11-5-2011
Location: California
Member Is Offline
|
|
OK. If you mean tremolo I have additional advice. There was a period in my life when my tremolo stopped before I intended it to. I would intend the
tremolo on any note to last longer but it abruptly stopped. I discovered the cause. I was holding my breath! When I just allowed myself to breath
normally the problem vanished. I'm not saying *you* are holding your breath but just in case, it's easy to check to see if that is happening.
| Quote: Originally posted by Daryush | Thank you both for your detailed and informative advice. By "trilling", I did mean "tremolo" (also apologies for posting in wrong section).
I look forward to incorporating your advice and hopefully seeing some improvement. I can definitely relate to what you mention about technique taking
over the musicality...as well, I have limited time to practice, so I'm often reluctant to spend time practicing and repeating exercises when I could
be playing "fun" and familiar pieces, even though I know this probably does not help with progress.
|
|
|
|
|
![[*]](images/xmbprobrown/default_icon.gif){kind=icon}
