Naming Song Parts in Your Pieces

LifelongBeginner

Hi all. I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, but I was just wondering how many of you have named specific phrases, measures, or longer parts in pieces you're working on. I mean, who hasn't informally done that in their head ("Here comes the funky part"), but I've occasionally wrote some of them on the sheet music. It stems from a past recital when I got completely lost where I was and wanted to find more landmarks on the score to help. Or to remind me of the emotional vibe of the music I was going for, or to give myself a chuckle when I'm practicing (or, gulp, doing a recital). Here are some labels I've used:

dreamy interlude
but why? which nicely set up the next phrase below
because!
dissonant interruption
arp A
arp B because I kept confusing two arpeggios in a piece
sit down, old man
nasty

Each of these have their own meaning for me, and they usually got abbreviated to one word when written in the score (e.g., dream, diss). My favorite is nasty, which my teacher inspired when I asked her about a chord in my piece (an F#13-9) and did I really have to play all five notes with the right hand? She looked at it and said sympathetically, "Ah, that's a nasty chord!"

Any of you have odd names for some of your parts, and did you ever write them on your sheet music?

I know someone's thinking, "If you focused on improving your reading ability, and always looked at the score instead of your hands, you probably wouldn't need these gimmicks." Point taken. In fact it's nice when I later notice see these and realize I don't need them anymore. But early on in my playing, in recital when the performance anxiety rose and I'd look away from the score, I swear the sheet music got smaller and harder to read when I looked back at it. And during practice, seeing the "nasty 🙂" made me smile and more motivated to tackle that chord than to fear it 🙂

ShiroKuro

LifelongBeginner I rarely memorize anymore, but I have used the naming approach the past. For example, I did it once when I was memorizing a piece to perform in a recital. It was one of those pieces where it had several sections that were very similar but just different enough to be confusing and easy to play the wrong variation. So I gave each section a story with a “story descriptive” title. IOW not a musical title, but something like “now enter the dark woods” (I don’t remember all the subtitles at this point). It really helped me with the memorization.

I rarely do that now, but I will sometimes think about how I want something to sound in a particular section and sometimes write that down (like “soft and light” etc).

Separate from that, I always write in rehearsal marks (A,B,C) and if there are themes and variations, I’ll go through and figure out where the same theme is varied, so for example, I’ll have A, A2, A3. Then when I practice, I’ll leave notes for myself in my practice log, like “start with E” and that means the next time I practice, I want to start with thee section rather than staring at the beginning etc.

Oh, and if the score I have doesn’t have the measures numbered (i.e., a number for the first measure in each line), I go through and count and write in numbers.

Rehearsal marks and measure numbers are non-negotiables for me because I use them to guide my practice.

thepianoplayer416

Assigning "nicknames" to phrases usually not. To subdivide the music into smaller chunks for practice I'd use rehearsal labels A, B, C, D. If the score is on computer, I'd insert labels before printing the page(s). Otherwise write it in by hand.

lilypad

I haven't written on the score, but in my practice notes I'll refer to places in the pieces like intro, first ending, second ending, turnaround, etc. Also descriptions of challenging parts like "10ths section" or "melody in 6th's" section.

I use moveable tape flags a lot. First, as moving markers for sections as I learn them. I also use them for bug spotting when I listen to a recording I've made and mark where I've made mistakes, lengthy pauses, etc. I have a bad habit of neglecting dynamics and recently used colored flags from cool to warm colors to represent a range of soft to loud sounds and sideways flags of a different color to remind me ritardando places.

LifelongBeginner

ShiroKuro “now enter the dark woods”

Yup, that's what I was talking about! Glad I'm not the only one. But I've done the other stuff too. I also like Lilypad's movable tape flags idea...never thought of that.