Whole Musician Notes and Quotes

Post #5: Dynamics Are Much More Than Volume

I had a music theory professor in college named Randy Coleman that liked to talk about the wide range of dynamics available to musicians.

He pointed out how most performers limit themselves to a relatively narrow range of dynamic options from very soft to very loud (notated in western classical music as starting from pianissimo–pp– and going up to fortissimo–ff).

Randy went on to assert that the actual low end of the dynamic range bordered on inaudibility and that the high end of dynamics led to the painful.

I was inspired to imagine the possibilities inherent in the field of dynamics and immediately began to experiment with just how soft I could play before the sounds I produced became inaudible and how loud I could play before the sounds produced became unbearable. This led me to micing the piano so that I could hear (through headphones) the small, shimmery sounds that the tiniest movements of the piano key produced. It also led me to blowing a portable foghorn into a live sound system in a small room in the middle of an otherwise serene concert I co-produced with some experimental artists.

Eventually, I discovered what many master musicians and audio engineers have known for a long time–that there are dynamic sweet spots, unique to each instrument, each acoustic environment, each recorded track, and each musical situation.

Responding dynamically to the music means much more than deciding upon the volume. It involves searching out the sweet spots in each moment, whether you are improvising, performing, mixing, or warming up. Vocal and instrumental articulation and touch, as well as technological tools such as EQ and compression add to the infinite set of dynamic options that are available to be explored and crafted on the stage or in the recording studio.

Enjoy the sense of possibility born out of the variety of musical dynamics. Explore it all–from the inaudible to the painful–and then return to the musical moment where the dynamic sweet spot waits patiently to be rediscovered.