Christmas is Coming to Town

Since I traditionally do not play songs meant for Thanksgiving, I spent this week looking for Christmas songs to play. It was a difficult decision to make because there are so many songs to choose from. I finally settled on “Deck the Halls” and “Joy to the World.”

Image via toplayalong

Image via violinonline

Both songs are easy to play, which allows me to focus on developing tone and mood. During my first run through, I was able to play both pieces with minimal mistakes. Since both pieces do not contain any crescendos, I decided to add some on my own to make the pieces sound more exciting. For example, in the beginning of “Joy to the World,” I wanted to play the first few measures as forte and the next few measures as piano. When it was time to transition to the melody, I would implement a crescendo from piano to forte to highlight the transition and to emphasize the melody. However, my crescendos were often sloppy because I would start them too late in the measure and they would sound rushed. Additionally, I wanted to implement the same crescendo technique to “Deck the Halls,” but I ran into the same problem as I did with “Joy to the World”. Luckily, I have a couple of weeks before Christmas, so I have plenty of time to practice the crescendos.

This week, I learned that although they seem unimportant, dynamics truly shape music since they highlight important transitions and carry the mood throughout the piece. For instance, if a song was only played in one dynamic, the song would seem boring and lifeless. Additionally,  I learned that it is not that difficult to jazz up a music piece when appropriate. For example, I was able to add power to two classic Christmas songs simply by adding 3 – 4 crescendos. For myself, I learned that I tend to focus too much on the notes and forget to stick to the tempo and dynamics. As a result, I had some trouble playing the crescendos because I was too immersed in the melody. Next week, I want to strengthen the crescendos in the two pieces and possibly find more ways to make them sound more interesting. Additionally, I plan on finding more Christmas songs to play since the ones that I picked are pretty short.