Stop tapping your foot!

[brassmedic]

I was taught that an orchestral trombonist should appear almost lifeless and bored….

Really? You were taught that you should look bored? I have never in my life EVER heard any teacher say that.

[brassmedic]

It's my observation. Do you really think foot-tappers have better rhythm than non foot-tappers? I already posted a video of musicians with excellent rhythm who don't tap their feet. I could post a hundred more, but I would think you would get the idea.

Dude that's essentially meaningless. There's countless scenarios where your observation is invalidated, but I have zero desire to go through all of them. Why can't it be left at for some people it's helpful and for others it isn't? Why does it need to be that it's meaningless period? All that matters is it helps them.

dude.jpg

[AtomicClock]

Really? You were taught that you should look bored? I have never in my life EVER heard any teacher say that.

Now that we have easy access to concert videos with close-ups of the players, you can see the dead-eyed mask people adopt when counting rests. It's really starting to bother me.

[Olofson]

[GabrielRice]

Stefan Schulz touches his bell. A lot.

[musicofnote]

Admin: Is there a way, like in facebook to attach an emoji to a specific comment here? Not to an additional comment or copy/quote of the original comment, but rather to the original comment itself? Would save a lot of time and energy.

[BGuttman]

Admin: Is there a way, like in facebook to attach an emoji to a specific comment here? Not to an additional comment or copy/quote of the original comment, but rather to the original comment itself? Would save a lot of time and energy.

Sorry. That would mean giving you the permission to edit posts other than your own, potentially allowing some serious mischief.

[AndrewMeronek]

To refer to a recent listening binge of mine, relating to foot-tapping:



Foot-tapping could be thought of as integration of very minimal dancing to tromboning. So: watching this performance, there is clearly dancing going on, and maybe this translates to literal foot tapping or not; with the given camera angles, it's impossible to tell.

But - I think it's pretty clear that for these musicians, any resulting dancing or foot-tapping is tied to the energy of joyous music making, rather than an external effort to try to feel time. Consider a learning sequence:

Start with physical motion to internalize an unfamiliar rhythm.
Become familiar with that motion.
Become familiar with the rhythm.
Master the rhythm.
Discard unneeded motion while retaining rhythmic mastery; or vary it at the needs of a performance without worrying about losing rhythmic mastery.

I suspect that foot-tapping and "dancing" variants are more like this rather than a "do or do not" absolute law. In this performance we pretty much see the spectrum: some people are pretty still in the "low energy" beginning; while others are already dancing, and as the energy increases, the dancing increases. On the other hand, there is no worry here about someone pounding the floor with their feet messing up the overall rhythmic focus.

And obviously the drummer is "foot tapping" the entire time.

[Kbiggs]

I used to play in a quintet where one of the trumpet players tapped his foot, sometimes quite loudly, and not always in time. (Cue Brad’s pet peeve.) Comments, intercessions, and pleas were only partially successful.

One rehearsal, when said trumpet player again started tapping his foot, I quietly reached into my mute bag and pulled out a tent stake and 3-pound sledgehammer. When said trumpet asked what the implements were for, I replied, “To nail your foot to the floor next time it starts tapping.”

[brassmedic]

The foot movements are pretty random. It's clearly not helping them keep time. They already know how to keep time. I am not bothered in the least by people moving around when playing trad jazz.

[elmsandr]

Really? You were taught that you should look bored? I have never in my life EVER heard any teacher say that.

Now that we have easy access to concert videos with close-ups of the players, you can see the dead-eyed mask people adopt when counting rests. It's really starting to bother me.

Yeah. Of all the many things I learned from this teacher, that was the only dud. Not surprisingly, that person is out of classical music. Didn’t actually seem to enjoy it…. To nobody’s surprise. But he was so joyous when in an environment he liked. Think that was more the issue there, but either way, I want to see more joy and emotion from so called serious ensembles, not less.

The point was not the boredom, but the professional, serious veneer (meh). The matching, useful pedagogical point was that this is an auditory medium, you must convey your emotion through sound. Fair enough on that point (and this teacher was FANTASTIC on detailed thoughts on every note of every excerpt and how to technically convey the emotion that he wanted. Just looked like a wax robot while playing and almost looked asleep while counting rests.

Cheers,
Andy

[brassmedic]

Now that we have easy access to concert videos with close-ups of the players, you can see the dead-eyed mask people adopt when counting rests. It's really starting to bother me.

Yeah. Of all the many things I learned from this teacher, that was the only dud. Not surprisingly, that person is out of classical music. Didn’t actually seem to enjoy it…. To nobody’s surprise. But he was so joyous when in an environment he liked. Think that was more the issue there, but either way, I want to see more joy and emotion from so called serious ensembles, not less.

The point was not the boredom, but the professional, serious veneer (meh). The matching, useful pedagogical point was that this is an auditory medium, you must convey your emotion through sound. Fair enough on that point (and this teacher was FANTASTIC on detailed thoughts on every note of every excerpt and how to technically convey the emotion that he wanted. Just looked like a wax robot while playing and almost looked asleep while counting rests.

Cheers,
Andy

A particular trombone player I used to go hear a lot never displayed any emotion while on stage, but that didn't bother me at all because what was coming out of his bell was fantastic. I don't need to see orchestra musicians dancing around. I'm there to hear the music. But shame on your teacher for saying anyone should deliberately try to look "bored".

The kind of foot tapping behavior I was talking about in the first post doesn't convey joy, in my opinion. To me it just looks like a nervous habit of an insecure player. I think in many cases, they were taught to do it as a kid and just never dropped the habit, and probably aren't even aware that they are doing it.

[GabrielRice]

As to "professional demeanor," I think it's about knowing what your job is. Sometimes the job is to be engaging to the audience both visually and aurally, in which case I move a lot. More often in my career, my job is to play very precisely with the musicians around me and not be distracting to them or the audience. In other words, the show is not about me at all and my role is supportive most of the time. In that case I don't move around much. I don't think I look bored, but maybe some might see it that way.

[AtomicClock]

To me it just looks like a nervous habit of an insecure player. I think in many cases, they were taught to do it as a kid and just never dropped the habit, and probably aren't even aware that they are doing it.

In my case, it was "Oh, I appear to have bad time. I'd better tap even harder." Tapping was the *only* approach ever taught to me, to stay with the beat. Well, taught to a room of middle schoolers of varying abilities I happened to be a member of.

I still don't have great time, but at least I quashed the tapping. I'm sure things would be even worse if I poisoned the time of all my neighbors, too. The turning point was when I was told my foot was behind. Until then, I assumed the foot was correct, and I was just playing behind it.

[baBposaune]

One of my favorite trombonists here in LA is a good friend of mine. A foot tapper. Great time, very musical, can play in a symphony or a jazz club. Tapping works for him.

I was taught in college by the conductor of the top wind ensemble to NOT tap your foot. He'd say, "What if your foot is wrong?" He wanted people to keep steady time in their heads. (Plus metronome practice to keep you honest.)

I don't tap my foot. Works for me. I learned by high school the value of subdividing in my head. And listening. Everyone is responsible for time. The job is to have everyone's time line up, whether you tap your foot or not.

[PhilE]

K Biggs' -that poem you posted Until I Saw Your Foot is so good.

Amateur bone player here.
Some years ago the community band I play with was playing a concert in an old building with a wooden floor.
I was pounding away with my left foot as I always did, oblivious to its effect on others when an annoyed clarinet player in front of me told me to stop.
It took a while to kick the habit but I reduced it from pounding to light tapping.
A few years later we were playing an outdoor Christmas gig when a friend (a top order musician) commented to me afterwards how many different foot tapping rhythms he saw in the group which bore no resemblance to the music.
More recently an ex military music director told us to resist the urge to move any part of the body in time. He said it doesn't help you keep time in fact, he said, it will hinder your ability to play correct time because of the mental energy (distraction) required to do the movement - foot tapping specifically.
It is, he said, much better to focus the mind on the pulse and subdivision.
It works for me.

[LeTromboniste]

On the topic specifically of foot-tapping, I really don't think it has much to do with having good time. I used to tap my foot, then I stopped. I had good time before and still had good time after. There are people who have awful time, and whose time is not any better or worse when they start tapping. There are specific instances where I can conceived it as helpful, and some I can see it would be hurtful. Overall I don't really care much if people tap their foot or not, except when they do it in a way that's distracting to colleagues, then I care very much!

One more fundamental reservation I have is that foot-tapping goes, for me (and this is linked with the other thread where we've discussed musicality and artistry), with a way of conceptualizing time that I believe more people should get out of, more of the time. That is, that there's a notion of "time" and pulse that is independant of the music, and upon which the music is then superimposed and lined up. That concept works great (when not downright required) for certain general genres or repertoires, and certain specific contexts. But there's also a lot of repertoire where, for me, it is much more helpful to think in terms of momentum, where increasing or decreasing tension, melodically or harmonically or timbrally, is what generates the expectation (that can then either be fulfilled or confounded) of where the beats fall – in other words, conceptualizing time not as what dictates when the musical events happen, but as the result of the musical events happening the particular way they have. I find that when one feels rhythm and time as this immutable, extra-musical governing reality, they are much less likely to generate interesting momentum through phrasing and shaping of the music, than when one needs to shape and phrase every moment of the music in order for it to have a momentum that makes sense and feels both interesting and organic. Foot-tapping is more likely to happen in the former than the latter, simply it kind of makes no sense in the latter.

On the more general topic of moving too much (or inversely, looking as bored as possible), I do think there is somewhat of an over-emphasis on staying as still as possible in certain circles of the classical world (and especially in the brass). What I think I've learned so far through both playing and conducting, and both as a student and as a teacher, is that movement in itself is not inherently bad; not being grounded is. One frequently sees someone move "too much" and it being hurtful to the music, but when I analyse it in myself or others, the problem is typically not merely that they are moving, but rather that they are moving in a way that takes them out of their "grounding", motions that create involuntary instability. But while movement can impair grounding, movement can also help it, and help the connection to the music. Some of the most memorable performances I've had, where I've felt the most "locked in" with an ensemble and in the music, where gigs where everybody was moving a lot more than I usually see. Chamber music projects with complex rubato and freedom but where we try to generate and feel the time together instead of one person cueing, and a couple orchestra gigs without conductor where everyone played standing.