Tuning Slide 4.7-

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

The feeling of togetherness- not togetherness as in some rigid lock step, but togetherness as in dance- is vitally important in music making.
-Barry Green, The Mastery of Music

Barry Green is the author, with Tim Gallwey, of the classic book, The Inner Game of Music. His second book looked at The Mastery of Music: Ten Pathways to True Artistry. In this book Green expanded beyond the Inner Game ideas into developing “true artistry” in our music. Every couple weeks I am going to take one of these ten pathways and bring it to my life and the applications to the Tuning Slide goals.

In The Inner Game of Music Green talked about two of three disciplines than demands mastery. The first was the techniques, the second was concentration. These two are basic, essential, foundations of making music. The conflicts and agreements of our Self 1 which is always ready to remind us of our mistakes and Self 2 which is the innate and intuitive side that knows how to do it are the building blocks. The third discipline is developing what Green calls, “true artistry.” In my view this takes the technique and concentration and begins to develop musicality. To find these, Green looked at different instruments and different people who seem to live and even embody these 10 pathways. He interviewed them and put it all into this book. Let’s start the journey with Green.

Pathway #1— Communication: The Silent Rhythm (Ensembles and Conductors)
I am working under the assumption that we are musicians because we like to make music and that we practice so that we can do that with others. A solo recitals can be nice, but that isn’t really what making music is all about. Even practicing with a play-along CD doesn’t get to the real joy of music that playing in a combo or band can. In order to play well with others there has to be some way we learn to communicate with each other. There has to be some method, style, trick, or just plain intuition that leads us to do more than just be a collection of musicians doing our own things and hoping (or believing) it works together. And most of the time we have to do it without speaking, on the fly, in the midst of a piece.
Green calls this the “silent rhythm” that unites us in communicating with the audience. He calls it “non-verbal, rhythmic union.” Musicians playing in a group get into something called “entrainment.” They sense the rhythm of the music as played by their colleagues. No one is micromanaging the rhythm through conducting. They feel it. As the group locks into a pulse they become more in tune and more efficient and musical in their playing. Yes, there is a science behind it.

In 1665, Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens, inventor of the pendulum clock, was lying in bed with a minor illness and watching two of his clocks hanging on a wall…. He noticed something odd: No matter how the pendulums on these clocks began, within about a half-hour, they ended up swinging in exactly the opposite direction from each other.

Research has shown that the reason for what Huygens noticed is in vibrations (sounds) on the wall caused by the pendulums swinging works to move them into synch, in tune with each other. In reality this falling into synch is improving efficiency. The two pendulums are no longer working against each other. They are “in tune.” In order to get to that point as musicians we have to go back to the technique and concentration Green related to in the Inner Game. We have to know how to play the parts we have- mistakes, flubs, ineffective fingerings can get out of synch with the rhythm.

We must also give in to the group. We must cease being a lone musician who just happens to be playing with others and let Self 2 do its thing. Self 2 is not as worried about your own technique. Self 2 knows what you or I can do and just wants Self 1 to let us do it. Self 2 knows what’s needed- so let it happen. Distraction, whether by the hyper-critical or hyper-analytical Self 1 or a lapse in focus can easily get you out of synch. Concentration- mindfulness and surrendering to the music- keeps us on.

As we share that with each other, Green lets us know that we are receiving guidance from the music itself, from its pulses and chords, phrases and rhythm. In so doing we receive energy (those vibrations) from the music and our colleagues in the group. In Eastern philosophy there is the idea of “Qi” or “chi” as energy. (Hence Qigong and T’ai Chi). As we play in a group it is that same type of energy that is being shared, silently yet powerfully among us.

Green talked to both percussionists and conductors to explain this idea since it is they who must most fully embody that in the group for all of us. They can get the rhythm, or even set it and communicate non-verbally with the rest of us. As we all fall into it, the “groove” sets in and, well, then it “swings” no matter what the genre of music!

But it is not something that can be forced. One of the musicians Green talked to (Ralph Towner) called it a “zen thing— as soon as you think you have its you lose it.”

There are no secondary roles in music: everything you do affects the total music. So it is critical to be one hundred percent attentive to everything, all the time, and hear the whole as it evolves.

Is it any wonder that right behind “sound” is “rhythm” in the building of musicality? Green concludes:

We don’t just play notes: music is a live current, and we navigate it. This current can be shaped and gently guided, but not pinned down…. The moment we interfere too much, the music’s power, effectiveness, and flow will be disturbed…. We have to be silent, attentive, and sensitive to its shape. We have to intuit a silent rhythm that has the power to unite us. We each have unique capacities to respond to the music, and the better we understand, the more we feel, the closer we will come to the true spirit, and the more artistry we shall have to express.

Just like life.

"No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
— John Donne (1572-1631)

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The Mastery of Music: Ten Pathways to True Artistry by Barry Green, chapter 1, pp 21-43.
(2003, Broadway Books.)