Posted on May 27, 2008 by Sophie Petrillo in Character - Musicality/Phrasing
This works very well with a group class, but can also be used in individual lessons. It can be used on any piece or section of a piece.
On index cards I write several different adjectives describing emotions. For example on one card I might write scared and on another tired or excited. Then I have the student randomly select a card and, without telling me what it says, play their piece with that emotion. Their performance has to be convincing enough so that I (or the group) can guess what the card said.
I might also prepare this exercise with some hints as to how they can effectively portray the desired emotion. For example, they might change a piece from a major to minor key if they are trying to express sadness, add tremelo for scared, or glissandos for romantic. This game can get a bit silly of course, depending on the creativity of the students and on how much freedom the teacher allows for changing the piece, but it is easy to tone down the extreme expressiveness later.
I generally like to do this on easy pieces instead of the repertoire the student is currently working on, and sometimes will have a selection of pieces to choose from on another set of index cards when playing this game in a group class setting, so that we are not just hearing the same piece over and over again.