Some notes on phrasing and lyricism

Phrasing:

Big sense of lyricism

Big line, big mountain

What does it sound like?

It sounds connected. It sounds like one line. It has flow to it. It sounds like the most beautiful thing soaring in the clouds. 

One thing I like to think of for lyricism and phrasing for both brass playing and singing is, I think of a soaring line, or like a big mountain, like the hills of the countryside.

The notes are strung together by your sense of lyricism. In that way, your sense of lyricism is unifying. It transforms the individual notes into one unified idea, one beautiful phrase, that can move audiences.

It’s like a curve

It’s kind of like you’re sending a ball on a trajectory

Base your playing and your legato exercises on that big sense of lyricism

One technical element that helps with phrasing is to think:

In the manner in which you are exhaling, you are letting out a constant river of air, which lightly has the tongue skipping on it, like a flat skipping rock on the water

Air is one of the foundations of lyricism

Some of my favorite examples of people performing with lyricism are Jacqueline Du Pre, Mstislav Rostropovich, Øystein Baadsvik, Patrick Sheridan, Bud Herseth, Tom Hooten, James Markey, and many others.