My passion is to help others in the community, young, old, and everyone in between, find relevance and joy in learning, performing or listening to classical music.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

An uninspiring but important tip for singers

As a collaborative pianist I play for a lot of singers and it never ceases to amaze me how often I see them in coachings singing from photocopies that are in their binder in a less-then-ideal way.  On occasion I also see this with instrumentalists.  Although the following tip might seem trivial, I'm going to go out on a limb anyway and to share some thoughts about why I think the following advice is actually pretty important.  Here it is:

When using photocopies* of a score and putting them in a binder, don't just punch holes on one side so that you're having to turn the page at the end of each one - punch them in such a way so that you can have them laid out like they are in a book, with pages facing one another.  This is not only true for the pianist's music but it's also true for the singer's.  

Sounds terribly trivial, doesn't it?  But here's why I'm even bothering to blog about it...

  • Page-turns, whether in photocopies or in standard books, typically trip up our thought-processes.  It's a built-in interruption that can be hard to counteract.  In my own process of learning music I find that I have to work pretty hard to learn the music that hovers around the flip of the page so that I don't consistently mess things up.  If you're having to turn the page at the end of each one, that's giving yourself twice the number of page-turn spots that can be inadequately learned.  
  • As singers, memorization is a must.  Visual memory is one very important tool to aid in the process but if photocopies are arranged in the less-than-preferred way, not facing one another, your visual map is half the size that it could be.  Looking at it another way, there is twice the amount of material that occurs on the same part of the page, making it much more difficult to differentiate one spot from another.  For instance, let's say you're having trouble remembering the words at the beginning of the second verse of a song - if your pages are arranged in standard book form, facing one another, the chances that the second verse starts on the same part of the page as the first and third verse of not very likely.  You can use this cue as a way to remember what the difference is and how that second verse starts when it is on the top of the left-hand page versus the third verse, which starts on the bottom of the right-hand page.
What on earth is this?
  • Do you remember those little games they often have in kid's magazines where they show an up-close fragment of a larger image and ask you to identify what it is part of?  Playing from music that is not ideally arranged is sort of like looking at one of those up-close images.  It's very difficult from this vantage point to get a sense of the whole, to know where you've come from and where you're headed.  Musically speaking, this can translate into a less musical performance.  
  • Turning all those pages can be terribly hard on one's wrist and can also dry out the delicate skin on the tips of one's fingers.  We can't have that! 
So singers, get those hole-punchers out and tape dispensers out and get to work.  In my mind it's worth it. 

I'd be curious to hear from some singers on this topic or from anyone that might have some specific research or science that we can use to back-up this seemingly silly little tip of mine.  And if you think I've just gone bananas with all this, you can let me know your feelings about that too! 

* I don't encourage people to use photocopies unless they own a copy of the score and are using the photocopies for practical purposes.  Making photocopies to avoid purchasing the music is illegal! 



18 comments:

  1. I began reading this post thinking that the advice was aimed at providing a courtesy for the accompanist! (Ease of page-turning, in particular.) It was strange and surprising to discover that it was aimed at singers and that there are actually singers who bind their music as single pages.

    It goes without saying that, for the most part, published sheet music has usually been very carefully edited, including the matter of page turn placements. I can't even imagine binding a photocopy in such a way as to undermine that!

    (As a flutist, I would give the originals of my music to my accompanist in advance of a performance, but I would go to great trouble to prepare an "as published" copy to keep for myself, because – as a pianist – I found it hugely beneficial to play through my own accompaniments and I would often be referring to or even playing from the piano score when I practised.)

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    1. Thomasina,
      I was kind of worried that the post might get misinterpreted in that way so since you've read the post I've tried to clarify why I wrote the post. Anyway, I'm glad you got it in the end. And yes, believe it or not, I more often than not have singers that bind their music in this way. Even when studying opera scores they'll do this which means they are flipping pages about every 5 seconds. Kind of crazy in my mind. But after seeing this happen way too many times and seeing how it directly influences their ability to learn and memorize, I decided I had to say something.

      Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment!

      -Erica

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  2. Erica, I have many binders of music punched and stapled for 2-sided working. I like to photocopy music so I can mark it up and recopy for clean pages as necessary. I have a CURRENT binder, PERFORMED binders, a TO-DO binder (pieces I want to learn soon), and some SOURCE binders of other works that intrigue me.

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    1. Sue,
      You must have a lot of binders! I actually like working from photocopies in binders as well for many of the same reasons. I also like having all the music for one program in a binder in the order in which they are to be performed. Not only does it make it much easier to carry around my recital music, but I also like having it in such a way that I can thumb through it away from the piano without having to hunt through other pieces. Kind of weird, perhaps, but there you have it.

      Thanks for sharing how you manage it all and it's great, as always, to hear from you here!

      All the best,
      Erica

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  3. Funny this should come up just now. I always photocopy my music (after I purchase it) so that I can mark it up while learning it, and then again for a clean performance copy. I have never put it in binders until now..I am preparing a full recital- 4 pieces, two of them several pages long. Just to keep it all straight I decided to get a binder. And yes, I turned the pages back to back, then taped them for ease of turning, I cannot imagine anyone doing it the other way! And I love my binder!

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    1. Janet,
      Funny you should mention making clean copies for performances. Normally I have just used my marked-up copies for performance but I've been thinking lately that sometimes those markings end up just confusing me up on stage. I need to give the clean copies a try so thank you for the suggestion!

      And just for the record, my favorite binders come from Staples.

      http://www.staples.com/1-Staples-Better-View-Binder-with-D-Rings-Black/product_648819

      They come in all sorts of fabulous colors which might be a little too flashy for on-stage but sometimes I defy tradition anyway in the name of fun.

      Thanks for taking the time to read and comment, Janet!

      -Erica

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  4. Erica,
    I play in church for the most part and always copy my piano music. It usually comes from different books with 200+ pages and doing it any other way just doesn't work. I have never figured out what to do with all that copied music after I am done for the day b/s I only play the piano about once every three months and music is never the same.
    I keep my flute church music in a separate binder, since I have to transpose it and usually do it by hand (on Sunday morning during/after practice, LOL). I am now up to 37 pages of hand written transposed music and sometimes find it difficult to find what we are playing quickly though I keep an alphabetized list. Do you happen to know of a better way of doing this?

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    1. Olya,
      I'm still trying to figure out a good system myself. I have file cabinets and hanging folders in addition to binders but I have music illogically divided between the two. Ideally I'd like to have all the stuff I'm currently working on in binders and then as soon as I'm done with them I'd put them in the correct place in the hanging files but during the busy season I rarely have time to be organized like that. Perhaps the best solution would be to teach my daughter how to file stuff and to pay her to be my little assistant - lol!

      If I do that and she proves skilled at it, I'll send her your way!

      And wow - 37 pages of hand-written transposed music? That's pretty incredible. Do you literally do it by hand or do you use a computer program? If you use a program, what do you use?

      -Erica

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  5. None of this is trivial at all!

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    1. Thank you, LaDona, for your affirmation - I needed that!

      -Erica

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  6. Erica,
    Your system sounds great! I wish I was half that organized. I am still struggling with organizing our bills. LOL. Please, do send your daughter our way, especially if she works for cookies. :)
    I do it by hand only because I never know what keys we will be playing the music in, so I basically do it in my head while we are practicing and write it down during Sunday school (people are used to me multitasking, you know, it's the three children thing). There is, however, a great program, Mozart. You can find it on-line and download it for a free trial. Once that expires, you will have to pay to buy it or you can continue using it in a very limited way (you can transpose and print but can't save) I only use it if I need to transpose something complicated. It is a great program, though, and VERY EASY TO USE.

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    1. Will do, Olya. I'll get to work on training my daughter as soon as possible! And if cookies are involved, I'm sure she'd be willing and eager :-) Me too!

      And thanks for the heads-up about that program. I'll take a look at it. I've been using a free program recently called MuseScore. I like it a lot although it takes some getting used to. I just didn't want to invest in Finale or Sibelius since I don't need to notate music very often.

      Until later, happy musicking!
      Erica

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  7. Erica - just saying hello - my warmest regards to you and your family!

    David in Maine

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    1. Many thanks - it's great to hear from you again since it's been quite a while. I hope all is well with you!

      All the best,
      Erica

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  8. I am an accompanist and I always ask my singers to provide me with single-sided copies of their songs. Then I stick them together with tape in one long line of pages. I can then practise up to three or even four pages at a time without needing to turn a page - then the next three etc. As I can change where I fold up the sheets I can practise every section of the whole work without needing page turns. This avoids the problem of never being able to practise the music across a difficult turn and makes for a much smoother performance when one has a page turner helping out. And if there's no page turner one can organise the copy to have turns in the easier moments. Just takes a bit of planning!

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    1. It's very nice to meet you! Always good to meet fellow accompanists. And I love your solution in regards to the moveable page turns - that's brilliant and definitely solves the problem of ingraining bad habits at the turns. Do you use this method when you're playing for an entire recital and have a lot of pieces to play one after the other? My only concern for me would be that I would accidentally get the pieces in the wrong order. When they're in a binder I'm less likely to mess that up.

      Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment!

      All the best,
      Erica

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  9. I also accordion-fold my photocopies into one long sheet as well. Rather than put them into a binder, I keep current music in folders in a zip-up carrier. Very light and easy to cart around. When I was an accompanist in high school we would often tape the sheets to colored construction paper for increased rigidity and ease of grabbing the right music (color coded).

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  10. Liz,
    Those are some fantastic ideas - I especially like the colored construction paper idea for color coding. I happen to like having some color to make things a little more visually enjoyable.

    Thanks for reading and for sharing your thoughts here.

    All the best,
    Erica

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