0:18
The technique for cues is, the same technique that we use for starting a
piece, except in this case the piece has already begun, and we're just initiating.
Another voice or bringing out something in another voice.
So there are three or four parts.
There's the pre prep, in this case which is getting the
cue, the voice that you're trying to cue, getting their attention.
Sort of like saying, hey somethings about to happen.
Then there's the prep which need to be an active beat.
Then there's the down beat or the ictus of
the cue itself and then there's the rebound from that.
And it's useful to have eye contact all through out that.
And so for example in slow motion if we're going to cue something
on beat one without the group four it might look like this.
In slow motion one two we get their attention and we prep.
We cue and then we move on.
It's really useful to make, maintain eye
contact through the ictus and even beyond it
otherwise we kind of disengage in the middle of it, it might look like this.
1:18
And right down into the score.
It just doesn't maintain the energy through
the event that we're trying to create.
So let's try this with the group and what we're going to
is, we'll bring in someone, we'll cue something on beat one.
And then we'll try it on beat two, beat
three, and beat four and we'll try a couple of
variations on it because we can do it just
with our right hand and our eyes and eye contact.
Or we can use our left hand to in a simplistic way just say now you play.
3:20
Now beat two, actually anything other than beat one, can be tricky because if
we don't de-emphasize the prop, the beat
prior to the prepatory beat, everything looks big.
It would look like this, let's try beat two again,
and I'm, I'm not going to change the size of the pattern,
you going to see how its all big, its hard to tell
where the prep, where the cue is, so beat two again.
[MUSIC]
3:52
Not only did I not breathe or use my left hand, but everything looks the same size.
And the way to avoid that is to do the cues version of
the passive or deadbeat that we, we talked about in terms of starting pieces.
In this case we de-emphasize, or under emphasize.
Two beats before the actual cue.
So in this case if we rebound from beat
one that's the big rebound to cue beat two.
We're going to have a small rebound from beat four too before that beat two cue.
By doing that it makes the beat one rebound seem bigger.
Without the group it looks like this, one, two, three, four, one.
Two.
So by making the rebound from four small, why?
Because nothing in this case interesting,
relatively speaking, happens on that downbeat.
By de-emphasizing that, it makes it easier to emphasize the rebound from one
and show something that's other than two three four one two three four one.
We go one two three four one!
Two, which looks and sounds like this.
We'll try the beat two again.
[MUSIC]
7:11
And so that, if that's intuitive beat two is not
so intuitive right because we're coming into the centre so
we have to make sure we don't kind of cross
our planes here but we still have a sense of that.
So we have to verticalize it slightly to make sure that we can still
show cross or into beat two so it's a different part of the pattern.
Beat three is more intuitive.
If we have one, two, three, because we can effectively rebound
to the left and then come across our body for beat four.
And then to beat four is pretty intuitive.
One, two, out, in.
Prep from three to be four.
And then prepping beat one is the most intuitive because
we all often want to give a big upbeat from four.
So one, two, three, up.
Then, then down to beat one.
Let's try cueing in a three four pattern and we'll
do the same way as we did in the four, four.
First we'll do it just with our right hand and eye contact.
And then we'll try using our left hand.
Same principles apply here that to make it clear we
want to slightly de-emphasize two beats before the cue happens.
Or one beat before the preparatory rebound.
So here's cueing on beat.
One and three four.
[MUSIC]
Let's try adding our left hand for that.
[MUSIC]
Let's go to beat two, so first just our right hand and eye contact.
[MUSIC]
So, those for that, it's the, it's the, this is the not so
intuitive one because it's something, it's the
beat right after one, right after de-emphasizing
the rebound from beat three, the last beat in the measure to make
sure I don't have a big upbeat, because I don't care about that upbeat.
What I really care about is one, two, small one.
Two, the one is the preparatory beat to the act,
to the action which is the cue on beat two.
Let's try our left hand at that.
[MUSIC]
And now finally is going to be three, first just with our right hand
[MUSIC]
So same issue there, where we going to de-emphasize two beats before that action
happens, with the beginning of the cue, now let's add our left hand to that.
[MUSIC]
At their most basic level, cues just tell when to play.
But really we can use them to do more than that.
To tell how to play.
The style, the dynamic.
And that comes from both the pre-prep part of it where we're just getting.
The attention of what we're cueing and the prep
but really also the ictus and what happens after
the ictus and if we use it effectively it can be more than just, yep, you play now.
It can give a whole lot more expressive information.
So for example let's try this, in the Chester example we did earlier.
And we'll first start on beat one and we'll
use different kinds of cues to different, different styles and
you'll see from all four elements of the cue, pre-prep,
prep, ictus, and rebound from it and that's the stripe.
That's on beat one.
[MUSIC]
12:05
And good players will be looking for that sort of information, because if they
are keeping track of the pulse themselves the cue is really just a remind of.
Yeah, I know I'm supposed to play there.
Give me some information beyond that.
As opposed to the kind of cue which is, I have no idea where I'm supposed to play.
Please tell me when.
Sometimes we have those sorts of cues, which is
all just based off of confidence and just saying.
Okay, that's when you play.
But once the confidence is there then we add an extra element on top of it.
When the confidence is there we don't have to
emphasize quite so dramatically all four parts of this.
We can get away with just even an eye contact cue.
Because again, the player is already there, and we
might be juggling multiple things, other voices, other issues.
And then we just as invite the player to come in using our eyes.
Let's try that.
How about we go to beat three, a cue on beat three, yeah.
So just eye contact.
[MUSIC]
13:11
Natale was already making eye contact with me and some ways the
key was reverse, she was saying, hey hey something is about to happen.
And when It happened I just checked in [UNKNOWN], and yep, she was.
And we went on from there.
And that can be useful not only for this
subtle moments like that, but if let's say you
have a cue on beat one and a cue on beat two and there's a cue on beat three.
Well, you can't cue them all using this pre-prep, prep, ictus and rebound
method, so you might put the one on beat two, for example, with eye contact.
So, in, it'll look like without the group two.
Three, four.
[SOUND] So that way, a left hand cue beat one.
My eye cue, cue beat two, and my right hand cue beat three.
So there are variations on this, some more subtle than others.
But the basic cue has those four parts.
The pre-prep, the prep, the ictus, and the rebound.
Dr. Evan FeldmanAssociate Professor & Wind Ensemble Conductor
