Last week, we talked about “Ornaments” and how natural and essential they are in music. For some folks, this may seem unexpected, because grace notes can sound pretty fancy and flowery, and on paper, they take up a lot of ink (and therefore, for more literal-minded players, a lot of attention!). They add a great deal of flavor to the feel of music. Learning to use them well means gaining a good feel for the music and its culture (you might like to read a little more about this in my article “Learning a Style from Within”). Ornamentaion is nothing without good timing, and good timing is rooted in knowing how music is used, especially if for a dance, march, lament or other community function. Grace notes provide more than decoration; they add emphasis, articulation, and connection, all a part of speaking a musical language fluently.
One of the easiest and most common grace notes is what I call “slow” grace notes. Last week, we compared grace notes to the consonants we say before a vowel. If we mean what we say, we naturally speak with a clear rhythm built off our vowel sounds. Consonants are placed before the beat, just like grace notes in music.
For example, if we say “Take a seat!” the two beats are “a” in “take” and “e” in “seat.” It takes time to form that “s” in “seat.” We have to prepare our tongue for the “s” and let out enough of a hiss that people can hear the “s”. We don’t give it a thought as we speak; it’s totally natural, but this long consonant is like a slow grace note in music.
Most of the time, this kind of grace note starts on the note we just played. For example, here is a scale up and down the D string, with lots of slow grace notes:
To make this happen on the fiddle (you can pretty easily translate this to singing or another instrument), we simply change the bow early. The fingering doesn’t change at all; each finger is added on the beat, just as you would without a grace note. So these are right-hand grace notes, made with the bow. This is important, because later on, we’ll talk about how to combine a slow grace note in the bow with a quick grace note in the left hand, and without a lot of effort, really impress your friends and neighbors!
Play the slow grace note with a small sound using very little bow, maybe a half-inch or less. Then give a big shove to the beat note, on time. The contrast between the slow, tiny grace note bow, and the generous shove of the beat note bow is what makes it all really work.
In some styles of fiddling, people will even play a slow grace note that’s the same note as the beat note. For example, in the northeast style of playing Scottish strathspeys, it’s not uncommon to emphasize a beat note by starting it early and then giving it a good shove on the beat. One instructional book from around 1900 wrote this out by place the note right across the bar line rather than after it! If you can make this effect audible with the bow on a single note, you can certainly create a strong effect when you change notes, so at minimum, it’s a good exercise for playing slow grace notes.
I might play the beginning the tune below as shown, with a grace note on the same note as the beat, but it would never be written that way. On paper it would just be a dotted eighth note, and the grace note shown below would just be an interpretation that makes the beat stronger. At right is how that old book illustrated the technique right on top of the bar line.
The effect of a slow grace note is that it gets us to anticipate the beat note it’s attached to. It almost makes that beat note feel like it’s a little late, because we changed the bow early. The listener knows something is about to happen, which makes it feel more powerful when it comes. It’s a little like the difference between humming a few notes (“mm, mm, mm”) and singing them with a consonant in front (“dum, dum, dum” or “la, la, la”).
This simple single slow grace note can be both easy to play and a beautiful addition to a tune. Here’s the beginning of two laments, Skinner’s “Hector the Hero” and Niel Gow’s “Lament for Abercarney” (the real title is much longer!). In the first example, all the grace notes shown are slow grace notes played simply by changing the bow early. In the second example, there’s a nice variation of this idea: the third beat starts with a slow grace note that is different from the note we just played, so it’s not just a bow change, but it makes use of the same effect.
Listen for slow grace notes in the playing of musicians from many cultures, whether traditional or contemporary, including pop music. Singers regularly add slow grace notes as they ease into the next beat note.
This type of grace note works well in quick tunes too. Experiment first in slower tunes — add lots of slow grace notes, maybe even on every beat (they work best to emphasize beat notes rather than random notes in between). Then weed them out and leave the ones you like best. For a fast tune, you might just use it once per phrase, on a really important note, or one or two per half of a tune.
I will say, though, that some notes are best left alone and without decoration. I once started “Mrs MacLeod of Raasay” as shown below at left, with a slow grace note before the beat, but I was playing it in rehearsal with a dancer (my wife) who heard that and said, “No grace note, please! I’m doing a kick on that beat and I want it clean and clear!”
A grace note can add kick to a note, but sometimes you just want a note to be strong and plain, maybe with a little bite from the bow, without adding a lead-in grace note. The more you listen to the effects of these options, the better you’ll hear the difference and know what you like best.
In the meantime, try out some slow grace notes; they’re an easy way to add color and expression to your playing!
Below is a brief video that will give you practice with slow grace notes. Note: this video is only available to paid subscribers, out of respect for those who pay an access fee for the ten videos in Technique Video Group 5 (Ornamentation) on my fiddle-online.com site.
Slow grace notes video
You may enjoy working with this video to practice slow grace notes on the fiddle.
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