Accent Improvisation for Spiccato (Excerpt from Mendelssohn) | Ep. 3 - Technique-Based Improv

The second type of musical incantation I'm going to talk about is called accent incantation. And what this does is it will help us have a clean attack. So in Mendelssohn's sphere, there are multiple places where we have the sforzando, and it's very, very important to bring those out. So can you play this passage from Mozart's Sforzando? Good. So for a lot of students, sometimes it becomes very difficult to maintain the bounce after playing the fast notes for a period of time. In order to break that down, we can start with just playing one accent. So can you play it with me? So just drop your bow on the string like this. So remember from the physical incantation, we drop the string. We're applying a drop. And then two notes. Three notes. And then four notes. So for each time, make sure you only have one note. So you play one impulse, one drop, and then you bounce. So let's try that. And then five. Six. Okay, so now let's put it in the loop. I want you to just keep playing in this pulse, and then try playing different numbers of notes with one impulse. So now let's try to apply it in the music. To make this passage a little bit easier, we're going to include some reps. So how many notes do you want to play for each measure? I'd say three. Three notes? Okay, so let's try only playing the first three notes of each measure. And then really bring out the difference between sforzando and non-sforzando. Good. Now let's remove some reps. So let's play maybe four and four. Okay, great. How about six and one? Good, good, good. How about six and five? Now try to play everything in one go. Great. How did you feel about that? It feels better building up to it. I still think maybe I'm losing a bit of control trying to go from six into the one. Okay, so now let's try to play three. So one, two, three for the first bar. And then for the next bar, only play the five and six. So focus on anticipating the accent. Okay, very good. Do you want to give me another pattern? I'll do one, two, five, and six in every measure. I was wondering, physically, how are you creating the accent? I mean, transitioning from the non-accent. I guess on that last note, I'm restricting movement a little bit, and then really trying to drop a little bit more weight. Would it help if you try to use this with the fingers a little bit? Let's try. Yeah, so just throw a little more. Can we try with the one, two, five, six pattern with this throwing motion in mind? Very good, very good, very good. And now, finally, let's put it all together. Yeah, that sounds great to me. So this is how you can use accent improvisation to break down a complex, fast passage into manageable parts. And then really think about what kind of movement goes into producing certain things in the music.