Tuning Slide 4.14- Finding Motivation

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Amateurs Practice Until They Get It Right;
Professionals Practice Until They Can’t Get It Wrong
- Various Sources

Last week I focused on Barry Green’s insights on discipline as one of the pathways to mastery of music. While I didn’t talk very specifically or at length about it, we all know what discipline means.

Practice.

I have had a love-hate relationship with the idea of practice no matter what the area of discipline. I played basketball (very poorly I must say) in my sophomore year in high school. Practice was lousy! No fun! Boring! The lack of willingness to really practice was the reason my parents in 4th grade decided I should quit piano lessons. Then came the trumpet. It would be fun and neat; then it would be dull and boring. Anytime I hook on to something new in my trumpet playing it goes along well for awhile, then it gets, well, the same-old-same-old. In other words- boring. Let’s see how fast I can play my long tones so I can move to something else. (What an ironic statement!)

Then I get interested again, for example in improving my sound and back I go to the more disciplined version of long tones, Clarke #1, etc. The new excitement, even of the same routine, can last for weeks, even into months, but it may easily get lost again. The question will always become, “What is motivating me at the moment and how can I expand and extend it?” Green raises that question in his book and went searching for answers from other professional musicians. These are the four sources of motivation that he found:

◆ Competition: Like Green, I am not a big fan of competition, but an audition or enforced competition between musicians by directors can be a motivating factor. I think The third and fourth motivators below are actually what make it work.

◆ Required Performance: Personally, this is probably my biggest motivating factor. When I know I am going to be playing this piece in public performance, I will make sure I know my part and become familiar with it. Again, the next two factors are probably most at work.

◆ Pride (i.e to prevent embarrassment): If I believe I am a good enough musician to play the piece, I don’t want to embarrass myself, either in rehearsal or in performance. My pride could take a hit and down goes my skills. I have related before the incident playing Taps when I was in high school that had more of an impact on my skills than any other single, negative event. That was a Self 1 issue, but I was embarrassed and have worked ever since so it doesn’t happen as often as I am afraid it will.

◆ Fear: The last phrase in the last one may say it all- afraid. The source of anxiety that has perhaps motivated more of my practice than anything else.

Of course my greatest motivator is the music itself. I continue to play music and work at improving my musicianship because I really do love it! The week I had earlier this month when I was unable to practice or play due to surgery was really tough. The evening I picked up the trumpet and produced a tone was a release of tension that I really needed. I play because of the music and the fun I get from it, but the other motivators move me to improve and grow as a musician and as a person.

Which leads to think again about disciplined practice. Those four motivators that Green described are what keep me digging into new things and taking lessons when and where I can. If all I wanted was to just play and doodle around on the instrument, I wouldn’t have to do those long tones or the Clarke, Schlossberg, and Arban exercises. I wouldn’t work on the Getchell pieces to see what I can do next. I would just pick up the horn and blow. But I wouldn’t be getting any better. I would feel as if I was just “good enough,” and that’s okay. But it isn’t. At least not for me.

We learn what we practice and we practice what we learn.
We spend too much time practicing our mistakes.

I saw one of those memes on Facebook that said I hate to give up my bad habits or mistakes. I spent a lot of time doing them. When I rush through the long tones or play a Clarke exercise as a throw-away, I am simply ingraining my mistakes, or at least my less than good habits. When I pay attention and work at it intentionally, I am rewiring my brain (and fingers, lips, etc.) to do it better.

Therefore: don’t practice mistakes

Green has a number of insights into this as well:

Learn first, then practice. Study the part before you play it is what he’s talking about. This is the first step of “sight-reading.” We know how to do that, we just don’t do it as often as we need to. Look at:
◦ key and time signatures
◦ key changes
◦ dynamic markings
◦ Repeats and coda

In a sense, as Green suggests, we need to “practice away from the instrument.” This may mean singing the piece. No, you don’t need to sing the right pitch, etc., but after you have sung it through, you will no longer be sight-reading!

He then suggests that we use the acronym STOP to help us focus, especially when we get to difficult parts or are having some problems in an area:
Stop
Think
Organize
Proceed

In other words, don’t go barreling through and learning the mistake instead of the right way.

Practice slow, is what he suggests next. The age-old adage that we seldom do. Slow it down. The faster I play, especially as I am learning the piece, the more likely I am to learn the mistakes. And once I do that, I will be certain to play the mistake more often than the correct way because that is what I have learned. Green quotes another musician that “legato is a doorway to velocity!”

In the end he is saying that we are to find “the beautiful voice inside” each one of us. The instrument, we all have been told, is an extension of the voice within us. It is an external version of the song and music that is part of who we are. Effective and efficient practice allows that voice to expand and live.

These thoughts on motivation and practice are actually more important than we realize. Most of the time we think we have to rely on “will power” to move us to do things like this. In reality will power is a limited quantity. We can get tired, exhausted, by exerting will power. That is when the motivation of fun can make all the difference. I have found that the better I get at being a musician, the more fun I am having. The more fun I am having, the more motivated I am to practice so I can have more fun.

What a great cycle to be part of.