Tuning Slide # 5.21- Taking Stock and Making Dots

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.
— Steve Jobs

It is that time again- the end of one year and the beginning of another. Like the news shows and just about everywhere else, that means it is time to do your own “Year in Review.” For me, that means looking at what Steve Jobs called “the dots” of my past year. I do that, not to get all nostalgic over what happened last year, but to take a look at what my direction has been and to see if I need to do something about it. We can only see our path of dots looking backward!

A few years ago when doing this I came up with a number of categories of “dots” that I have found to be a good starting point. They were dots of:

• Inspiration
⁃ Listen to other musicians, attend live music concerts and events, read about some of the great musicians and how they got that way.
⁃ What has inspired me in the past year and how have I grown from it?

• Humility
⁃ Humility is several things. It is
⁃ Being teachable
⁃ Being honest about one’s abilities and shortcomings
⁃ It builds on what has inspired me this year and given me some idea of the direction

• Learning and openness to growing
⁃ How did I put humility’s teachableness to work in my music?
⁃ Was I as open to learning as I like to think I am and what did I do to show it?

• Patience
⁃ Did I want to be as good as Doc in two short, easy steps or was I willing to take each step as it comes?
⁃ When I hit a plateau in my playing did I get discouraged and want to be just satisfied with where I was instead of moving on through?

• Discipline and commitment
⁃ Did I take the time to take the steps necessary to keep moving in the right direction?
⁃ How successful was I at improving my skills through regular, intentional practice?

• Volunteering and sharing
⁃ Did I keep it to myself or did I live and share what I have discovered?

• Acceptance
⁃ Acceptance is what comes from living “mindfulness.” Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as:
⁃ awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally… in the service of self-understanding and wisdom.
⁃ When I am short on acceptance (and therefore mindfulness) I find myself unhappy and get upset that the world is not doing what I want the world to do!

At the Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop, the talk of dots from above led to a logical conclusion. Since we can only know from looking back at the direction our dots take us, we need to make sure that as we move ahead we are conscious of the dots we are making:

✓ Therefore make good dots

This is where we would have historically mentioned the old tradition of New Year’s Resolutions. Forget it! We never manage to follow them. Most people who are regulars at a gym or fitness facility, for example, do NOT look forward to January. The gym gets overcrowded for these few weeks with all the fitness "enthusiasts" who have made resolutions. Many of them are gone before the Super Bowl. (I would love to be proven wrong on this some year!)

Instead, look at your dots from last year and make notes to yourself about which dots were helpful and healthy and which ones didn’t get the energy they needed. Take an inventory of yourself for 2019 and see what direction you are moving as you begin 2020. Then figure out how to do it differently, more efficiently, or more intentionally. This is not a series of “resolutions” but rather action steps toward a goal. It is planning on making good dots.

For me one of those dots that always needs awareness is practice. Yes, I practice every day. Yes, I have a basic routine that keeps me mostly focused. But I can always use tools to keep on track. One thing I found recently that I will use in the new year is seeing practice as a spiral. Dr. Gabriela Mayer of the CIT Cork School of Music in Cork, Ireland describes this spiral in an article called “Reflective Practice.” According to the article:

Visualizing a spiral helps students focus on the following interlinking key areas during practice. The students need to learn to help themselves during their private practice time between lessons. The ‘practice spiral’ is an image describing an ongoing process which starts with clear intention, leading to execution, reflection, calibration and reinforcement.

In other words, practice is not a straight line. It is rather a continual cycle of a number of things that keep us improving. Some sample questions from the article associated with each key area are:

◆ Intention: What would you like to achieve? Define specific task and ways to tackle it. The clearer the intention is defined, the better the practice process will be.
◆ Execution: Practice must involve active listening. Be prepared to evaluate what you just did. What traps did you fall into and how could you be ready sooner in order to avoid them?
◆ Reflection: Following evaluation, articulate what elements you want to consolidate and what you want to change. Allow more space between repetitions. Are you clear about you new objectives and do they represent small enough goals?
◆ Varied Repetition: play again with new objectives
◆ Consolidation: Once a desired execution has been reached, focused repetition forms a vital component in retention. (Link)

Now repeat. The practice spiral provides a basic structure for an effective practice regime.

As I look to the new year it looks like this is an area I can continue to build on. I will see my growth as a spiral of planning to action to reflection to repetition to make it part of my music. One specific will be moving into more intentional areas of improvisation. I have given that a lot of work over the years building a foundation that is now ready to be built upon. Using the above steps I will see what direction I can plan on taking my dots for this year.

I hope your 2019 was a good one for you musically and that 2020 will be even better. Keep moving!