Ornaments

Are they essential or just icing on the cake?

Grace notes, ornaments, embellishments — the very words make them sound superfluous, as if they’re icing on a cake. In one sense, they are. James Scott Skinner wrote that grace notes are “like leaves fluttering in the wind” while the main notes of a tune are the “large branches.” It’s true that giving too much attention to ornaments can derail the actual melody and timing of a tune.

And yet, ornaments are essential to the musical feel of a song or tune. Listen to any singer on the radio and pay attention to how many grace notes they effortless use as they slide into or out of a note, or attack a note with the extra noise, or warble their way off of a note they just sang, adding emotion to their performance.

In singing as in talking, vowels are the beat notes. If we say, “Eat your food,” the vowel sounds “ee” and “oo” are the beats. We emphasize “eat” and “food” and de-emphasize “your” in order to make “food” sound stronger.

So if “oo” is the beat, what does that make the “f” of “food”? It’s a grace note. It happens before the beat. We put our lips together in anticipation of the beat “oo” so that the beat can be said on time, and people know we mean what we say. The only times we don’t have a good beat when we talk is when we mumble, or don’t care what we’re saying, or don’t yet speak the language fluently and haven’t picked up its timing.

What if instead of the word “eat” we said “beat”? Then, as with “food,” we’d put our lips together for the “b” before saying the word. The “b” and the “f” are the grace notes before the vowels. What if we said “treat” instead of “beat”? We’d be adding two grace notes, while the vowel remains in the same place.

Now let’s add one more letter to “treat” and make it “street.” Try saying out loud “Go DOWN the STREET.” Notice how incredibly early you prepare for the “ee” by saying the “s” sound, followed by “t” and “r” at the last moment. You don’t even think about it. Your timing is built around the “ee” sound. Those three consonants before the vowel feel the same as playing three grace notes before a beat note. But the “s” is surely longer than the others, and next week we’ll talk about what I call “slow grace notes.”

All this is to point out how natural grace notes are, how we use them all the time in everyday speech. To speak clearly, our rhythms are strong, but when singing, they’re even stronger and more obvious.

Different languages and cultures have their own favorite kinds of ornamentation in their music, ornaments that usually relate to the language or temperament of the culture. Getting a feel for a fiddle style necessarily includes absorbing a feel for the use of its grace notes, in order to become more fluent in that musical language.

Just as we naturally know how to prepare our “s” early enough to say the word “street” on the beat, we also know, if we’ve learned a musical style, how to hit a beat harder by clobbering it with two or three grace notes, or in another style, perhaps, to slide into a note, creating anticipation for the beat, or even disguising it and keeping the listeners on their feet.

Some styles prefer plain notes, but may attack them with a strong bow and multiple grace notes. Others enjoy sliding into a long note, and instead of keeping the note plain and simple, they may prefer to fill it with embellishments such as a roll. Sometimes an embellishment may fill a long note but may end at a moment that emphasizes the tune’s rhythm. Sometimes a left-hand grace note or two can actually substitute for a bow change in order to articulate a beat in the middle of a long bow, or a long squeeze (accordion) or a long blast of air (flute, bagpipe, etc.).

In several upcoming articles, we’ll take a look at how various types of ornaments are made and why they’re not only useful, but natural and integral to the music.