Musical expression has  always fascinated me throughout my career as a session musician and teacher. On one of my first recording sessions, straight out of music college (Trinity College of Music, London), I overheard the  MD/Producer talking to the string section-  ‘Nice feel, but more musicality please at bar,,,”. At that time, I didn’t really know what he meant and worryingly for me (about to overdub some percussion), how I was supposed to implement it should he say the same to me!

Many years on, I am still fascinated by the methods performers use to inject emotion into music .  When  selecting  music for the Songbay library, we are always on the look out for ‘musicality’.  One of the huge negatives with  modern recording software, is its effect on emotional expression. The ‘quick construction  tools’  available to producers today (cut and paste, loop sampling, auto levels, compression, auto tune, time stretch, phrase copying etc, etc ) can very easily strip a piece of  its emotional expression. Without this, its impossible to become emotionally engaged to the piece of music.

When lecturing in Music at Anglia Ruskin University last year, I wanted to ensure that learners had a solid grasp of emotional expression.  I designed a course -‘The Musicality Tool Box’,  which  offered  practical examples and exercises to help inject emotion into live performance.

Here’s a few from the list , just in case you ever find yourself  in a session with a producer demanding more emotion!

Tonality (major, minor, modal) changes

Modulation (Key Changes)

Instrument Specific Timbre Changes (colour). For example:

Guitar= (effects distortion, wahwah, etc),

Keyboards=(sustain pedals etc),

Drums= (Brushes, hotrods, snares-off, Stick Bend notes)

Vocals=(Vibrato, spoken, half spoken, vocal inflections)

Texture changes (The combining or layering of instruments within the piece can change the emotion for example,  from icy cold to rich and warm).

By Gary Cubberley

Songbayteam

Online music and Lyric Trading  www.songbay.co