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Home: Tellef Kvifte's blog
A blog on Norwegian and Nordic traditional music, its music theory, and related topics, from a musician and scholar
This is my blog - a collection of post about music, releases, and more or less scholarly papers
The blog posts are reflections on music (mainly folk, traditional and jazz), music theory and the music industry, from the perspectives of an academic, a musician, and a label founder.
You will also find a list of most of the album releases where I have taken part in one or more role
Also, a list of a few of the articles/books - more or less academic in style - I have published during four decades. For the moment, I have chosen a few that are somehow connected to topics in the blog posts.
Most recent post:
Precision or expression?
Precision or expression?
In most genres of music today, precision in timing and intonation is a much valued ability for musicians; and closely connected to perceived professionalism. The more precise "in time" and "in tune" a performance is, the better it is usually considered to be. Playing with sloppy timing and out-of-tune is not what one expects of a good performance. But what is considered sloppy and out-of-tune has varied a lot. The historical records of actual performances are limited to the era of sound recordings, starting roughly around the beginning of the 20th century, so what the norms were before that is hard to know. But during the history of sound recordings, there has been a development in the direction of more precision in timing and intonation. Some authors attribute this to recording technology, arguing that when the sound of a performance is repeated many times by playback, intonation errors is supposed to be more easily heard and noticed.
The many tools available and used to "correct" perceived bad intonation in record music may of course be part of the explanation, but the question remains: why do people really want to use these tools and alter a recording? In the absence of a wish to streamline intonation, there would not be developed such tools.
It seems to be taken for granted that precise intonation is to be desired - I can not remember a single article or book in the field that argues against this. Same for precision in timing.
Then my problem is: Where is the room for personal expression? If you take away two parameters like intonation and timing are to be first and foremost used to communicate how good you are to follow strict norms, there is not too much left for you to do your own way; in other words, the performance will not reflect your own personality and your own interpretation of the music.
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