Do you remember when you were in high school and the whole English class had to take turns reading Shakespeare’s Macbeth out loud? Our teacher assigned a different cast for each scene so we could all get a chance to experience public speaking anxiety. You never knew when it was your turn; you just waited in agony; your only consolation was how bad your classmates were doing. Everyone was saying the right words, but hardly anyone was really confident in their understanding of the text, despite any confidence they pretended to have in pronunciation. They were simply words without meaning: noise. It would’ve been painful to endure if we weren’t so clueless. I have a feeling that some of us thought we were doing a good job, but I don’t think anyone in my class went on to pursue an acting career. As bad as it was, I still enjoy hearing people read out loud.
I can hear us now just droning on…
Macbeth: If we should fail?
Lady Macbeth: -We fail?
But screw your courage to the sticking place
And we’ll not fail.
Now think for a minute of the old man you used to see at the grocery store—it helps if you had a job at a little grocery store while you were in high school—who had worked as a mechanic for 50 years and had to drop out of middle school to help out on the farm. He couldn’t pass an English class if his life depended on it, but it didn’t really matter; even with atrocious grammar and a vocabulary half consisting of words that could not be found in the dictionary, he could still create a sentence that would stay with you for 20 years because he knew exactly what he was talking about.
“How you doing today Mr. Wallace?”
“I’m doing fine, and you?”
“Pretty good.”
“Pretty good hard to beat.”
Pretty good hard to beat has been incorporated into my language. It may seem just like words on paper-or a screen-but it was the way he said it that let you know there was a lot more meaning that went into that sentence. Maybe he meant, Young man you don’t understand how good you really got it. I think about that old man whenever I chance to use this phrase. Whatever he may have intended, it certainly resonated with me.
That is what we call in music phrasing. Phrasing is how a musician puts a sequence of notes together into a musical thought, and how they interpret written music. It is the reason that Blues musicians could limit their musical vocabulary to the 5 note pentatonic scale and make people cry. It is why folk music can be so simple in its form, but still able to make us recall memories of places we’ve never been and times in which we never lived. And the same reason that beginner musicians sound like beginner musicians: their phrasing is off somehow. They may be playing the right notes-even reading the right notes from a master composer-but still unable to convey the real meaning of what the composer was trying to say.
The blues is feeling good about feeling bad.
Phrasing is more than having a nice voice, or tone. But I imagine that won’t hurt, but I’m not convinced it helps all the time either. It doesn’t matter how nice your voice is if you don’t have anything to say. Or if you are only going to regurgitate words that came from someone else’s heart.
It took me a while to really appreciate Shakespeare, and the closest I have come to understanding it was to see a play performed by actors who understood it at least better than me. I took Sarah to Blackfriars Theatre in Staunton, VA to see a All’s Well That Ends Well and Two Gentlemen of Verona. It was a far cry from bending over the text book following along as your buddy in class-who had never read a book for pleasure in his life and barely had a grasp on 21st century American English-stumble through his assigned lines without the faintest idea of the plot. Those Blackfriars performances have stuck with me and I would like to go back again some day.
Phrasing isn’t any one thing, but a host of subtle things like tone, dynamics, timing, space, and feel. These are all musical terms that could each have their own textbook and university course. So whether speaking or playing and instrument, how do you learn to phrase well? For a start, I think it is important to know what you want to say. For a musician, the most important part of phrasing is to get emotionally involved with the music. I think the best way to do that is to pay attention to the lyrics. And that means you need to understand the lyrics. People can tell when you don’t know what you are talking about. You don’t have to master the language of music-or the English language for that matter- to say something that will connect with a listener, but you do need to master your vocabulary, no matter its size. You don’t want to sound like someone who picked a random $40 word out of a dictionary and tried to force it into a $15 vocabulary. It will stick out like a Ferrari in a trailer park. If you want to build your vocabulary you need to read good stories-and listen to good music. A well written novel has the power to increase your emotional intelligence. Good readers understand empathy.
Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding. Proverbs 17:28
If you want your words to carry weight, don’t waste them.
Mostly From Memory 