Music Video Lesson: Why Rests Are as Important as Notes

You're watching LivingPianos.com. I'm Robert Estrin bringing you why rests are as important as notes.

You might think, rest? You can do rests. I'm doing a rest right now.

Well, that may be true, but I'm going to get a little bit metaphysical with you just for a moment.

You know, Carlos Castaneda in some of his writings talked about when you're looking at a tree, for example, you learn to tune out the space between the leaves and just focus on the leaves as if the space between the leaves are not anything, it's just nothing.

But think about this, if there was no space between the leaves, you couldn't identify the leaves. It's the only thing that gives anything you look at definition is the space between things.

In the universe, you have matter and energy and the space between things. If there was no space, you would not be able to discern any matter because it would be just a whole conglomerate of mass and there would be nothing because if everything was mass, how could you have anything? Okay, that's kind of a heady subject, but rests in music are vitally important. How can you have sound if you don't have silence for the sound so that you can have the yin yang, the balance between what is and what isn't, life and death, black and white, good and evil. This duality of reality is prevalent in music and rests make it possible to have music without rest you wouldn't have notes, you wouldn't have sound. I want to demonstrate this with the beginning of the Pathetique Sonata and listen how important, how vitally important the rests are in the beginning of the Pathetique Sonata of Beethoven.

What would that be without the rest? Yes, I can't even imagine and in advance of this video I didn't try it so I'm going to try it now without the rest. See what the heck this would sound like.

There's nothing there. It's the drama of waiting in anticipation for what's coming next that gives the power that makes the music compelling.

Listen to a great jazz artist and it's the time between the notes where they're formulating their ideas much like a conversation.

There's nothing worse than getting stuck with somebody let's say at a social event and a person who talks non -stop. You find yourself tuning out. You can't even concentrate on what they're saying.

It's only the time between the sentences and the thoughts that gives you a chance to assimilate the information and so it is with music.

Take the rests for their full value. It's the mark of a great musician and nothing irks me more than when I hear accomplished concert pianists not holding the rests long enough.

It drives me nuts because it loses the character of the music.

So remember rests are just as important as notes. You can't have the notes without the rests. Consider the time between the notes just as important as the notes themselves.

Alright, I hope this is important to you and helpful. Count your rests. It's easy to rush your counting when your counting rests. When nothing's going on it's easy to speed up your counting. So deliberately slow down your counting to compensate for your natural tendencies and check your metronome to make sure you haven't overcompensated.

Thanks again for joining me Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com with thousands of videos and articles and more to come. Lots of great content for you.

So I'll see you next time here at LivingPianos .com, your online piano resource.

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