Tuning Slide 4.13- Mastery # 3 & 4: Discipline and Joy

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Discipline is the refining fire by which talent becomes ability.
-Roy L. Smith

Last month I posted the first two in a series discussing the “pathways to true artistry” that Barry Green outlined in his book, The Mastery of Music, his follow-up to the groundbreaking Inner Game of Music. In each of them he looks at musicians and outlines a different pathway they embody. The first was communication, the second was courage. For the third and fourth pathways he talks about Discipline and Fun. First let’s look at

Discipline: The Way of the Will

Just by the name, this sure sounds like it’s going to be a lot of work. Discipline! Nose to the grindstone! All that wonderful stuff that sounds dull, boring, and keeps us from enjoying life. Yet a quick search for quotes about it finds more motivational statements than we can ignore. Without it, we are told over and over, we get nowhere! We will never get to where we want to go! We will never reach our goals.

In short, as Barry Green notes, discipline is simply another way of talking about maintaining focus. We lose our focus, we lose sight of what we want and what our intentions are. We lose the interest and excitement of the possibilities- and we stop. Green describes this in Inner Game terms by saying that loss of discipline or focus is taking Self 1’s criticisms as gospel that we will never make it to where we want to be- so why bother. Discipline instead, he says is choosing to follow Self 2’s assurance that “I can do this!”

He of course talks about goals in all of this. Discipline for the sake of discipline may make us focused and intentional- but to what end? Why do we want to do this? Why do we want to discipline ourselves, often taking the more intense road when we could just sit back and relax? What are my goals? Of course, as we all know there are different levels of goals- long-, medium-, and short-term:

✓ Long-term goals: These are the dreams that we have. They can be years- or even lifetime-long goals.

⁃ Somewhere back in the dimness of my adolescence I committed in some way or another to the dream of being a trumpet player. It was more than just for the few years of high school and college. It never went away. My goal has always been to be a musician in more than just name. It was something that was deep inside me. It has informed and guided so much of what I have done as a trumpet player, but also as an amateur guitar player, or wannabe composer.

✓ Medium-term goals: These are the goals for the next 12- to perhaps 18-months. These are steps along the way to achieving that long-term goal.

⁃ At different points in my life I had some to none in this area. Usually it was just getting ready for the next Christmas or Easter at church. Then it was the summer community band season. Then it became a year-round community band season. That long-term goal was always underneath it all, but lots of other things kept me from really getting down and dirty with the discipline needed. Time- I was after all a full-time pastor, husband, and then father. The overall medium-term goal was simply not to lose what I had of being the musician I wanted to be. That meant I had to keep looking for times and places to practice, even without a concert or performance goal.

✓ Short-term: These are the goals for the next week to month. These are the goals needed to become more adept at the musicianship on an almost micro-level. Where do I need to focus (!) more specifically? What needs work? Where can I find what I need to learn?

⁃ Late last month, for example, I said my goal was to have a lesson sometime by mid-October. I had been working on the things from the last couple lessons and I needed to make some plans. A few beyond-my-control issues cropped up that have delayed this, but by the time this is posted, I hope to have one scheduled. I was also aware the other week that I needed to be more specific on the practice routine of slow and even, with discipline needed on making a fuller sound. That was my focus for the week before I had to take some time off due to surgery.

Even at my age and place in life, that first long-term goal has been maintained. It has gotten a little more focused thanks to The Shell Lake Big Band and Trumpet Workshops and I have discovered more tools and directions than I ever thought possible. I am probably the best trumpet player I have ever been. I am doing things that I only dreamed of. A long-term goal like mine can be an end in and of itself. I find incredible pleasure out of being able to do what I do and to play the music I am playing.

Over fifty years ago my HS band director assigned me the 1st Characteristic Study from the Arban’s book. If there has been an unspoken long-term goal for me over these fifty years it is to be able to play that. I have worked on it in various ways over the years, but never with discipline. A couple years ago I made a medium-term goal of working on it. I didn’t succeed very well due to a number of things. But I kept working on my musicianship, my articulation skills, my sound, my sight-reading. About a month ago I started a disciplined approach and found that I was actually closer to playing it than I have ever been.

After this brief surgery-caused hiatus my short-term goal is to make progress on the middle two sections of that study, the two that are my least polished. It is a very clear short-term goal, based on the medium-term goal of increased musicianship, undergirded by the long-term dream of being a trumpet player! Arban’s #1 will add one more example to my growth.

I will look more into the practice aspect of all this next week, but I don’t want to end without mentioning the fourth pathway to true artistry:

Fun: The Joy in Music

If this weren’t fun and fulfilling, I wouldn’t be doing it! I would have long ago given up and sold the trumpet. (I know- unbelievable, huh?) Fun is essential. As I said a few weeks ago- we “play” music, we don’t work it. Music touches my soul. It energizes and directs and moves me. Especially playing it. This past week of not being able to play has been difficult. I have been out of sorts. There is a piece of my joy missing.

But more on that next week. Until then- Stay focused. Be disciplined. Self 2 knows you can do it. So do it!

The Tuning Slide 3.20- Beyond Mediocre (1)

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

If you need to be inspired to practice,
you should probably do something else
-Ted Nash

“You didn’t wake up today to be mediocre,” says a common meme easily found on the Internet. But many, myself included, spend way too much time avoiding the things that can help us move beyond mediocre or keep us stuck in ways that don’t move us forward. Which, in the end, keeps us mediocre.

Definition: of only moderate quality; not very good.
Synonyms: ordinary, average, middling, uninspired, undistinguished, unexceptional, unexciting, unremarkable, run-of-the-mill, lackluster, forgettable;
Informal -OK, so-so, fair-to-middling, no great shakes, not up to much, bush-league

That’s why so much of the research and writing on expertise and improvement focus on “deliberate” practice, working on the things that will make us better and consciously doing things that challenge us to grow. Just playing something two hours a day every day won’t necessarily make us better. With bad habits we may just become fair at being mediocre.

Brent Vaartstra on the Learn Jazz Standards website has an article outlining the Four Ways to Stay Mediocre as a Jazz Musician.

Specifically related to jazz musicians, his thoughts are just as applicable to all musicians who want to improve. I have reversed the themes into four ways to get beyond mediocre, but the idea is still the same:

• Don’t get stuck on scales
• Get out of the practice room
• Work on rhythm and time.
• Don’t beat yourself up

Let me sum up what these mean for me.
• Don’t get stuck on scales
⁃ As Vaartstra says, scales are essential, but how are we playing them? Are they just some rote exercise that we do because we want to learn the scales and let them fall smoothly under our fingers? Good. But what about the style and sound? Can we play them smoothly, with feeling and movement? Can we play them staccato with a sense of musicality? What about the tone? Do they sound like we are just rushing through them to get on with the real stuff? Talking with one of the Shell Lake Workshop participants the other day, he said that he has been working to make part of the Routine"musical". That’s the point. Every time we play we are making music! Then when that scale comes up in a piece, we can play it musically and not just by memory.

• Get out of the practice room
⁃ There are two aspects going on here. One is to get out and listen to live music when you can. It can (and should) be just about any kind of music. It is the opportunity to hear how other people make music and inspire us to improve out own. The other aspect is to get out and play with others. In jazz that can be going to an open jam. It can also be any bands or groups you can play with. Find ways to play with others! Even the best soloist must know how to play in balance and blend with others.

• Work on rhythm and time.
⁃ We often overlook this aspect of deliberate practice. Being able to read more complex rhythm takes time. For my money the two best methods for that are the Arban exercises, especially the syncopation and dotted eighth-sixteenth sections, and Getchell’s Second Book of Practical Studies for Cornet and Trumpet. More about why this is important when we talk about sight-reading. To sum it up now though, it is the rhythm that can often through us off. Rhythm is the dialect and emphasis of the music. When we can get those in our practice, we will be able to play more music.

• Don’t beat yourself up
⁃ It seems we often get back to these underlying concerns that we have often called Self One and Self Two from the Inner Game disciplines. As we work on our pieces, our less accomplished techniques, the more difficult exercises, it is easy to be unkind to ourselves- or worse, give up. Stay steady, let Self Two do what Self Two can do and tell Self One to relax and enjoy the music.

With that in mind here are the two of four ways I have discovered that these movements beyond mediocre can be of great value. I have found some of this on The Musician’s Way website (https://www.musiciansway.com/practice/) and reflect on them from my own experience in practice and performance.

Warm-up and basics.

Like sensuous opening ceremonies, warm-ups prepare the body, mind, and spirit for making music.
– The Musician’s Way, p. 37

I still haven’t found warm-ups and basics to be “sensuous”, but they are the obvious place to start in the movement beyond mediocre. As I mentioned above this can be a place to develop musicality and tone. To play that “simple” Arban routine with beauty and tone is always the goal. Some of the exercises are even performance etudes. They are how we learn to do it. A good warm-up routine, appropriate to your needs and growth is worth it’s weight in gold- and time. So are things like mindfulness and exercises like T’ai Chi and Qigong in getting the body into a healthy spot.

Listening and learning

“For you to perform with native inflection, you have to listen and listen until you break through to the soul of a style.”
–The Musician’s Way, p. 98

The more you listen, the more you learn. On one website I read the more than obvious statement that we actually learn to speak- by listening. No one tells us how to talk. It is natural. We are designed that way. The same is true for music. But there are different types of music- just as there are different languages. They all share the same notes, though not always played the same way or in the same order. Some have different rhythms and different time frames. Some are “straight” and some “swing”. How do we know how to play it if we haven’t heard it.

I was reminded of this last weekend. One of the big bands I play with had a gig at a local dance venue. It was an amazing evening for me. I found myself moving along in time (mostly) and able to go with the rhythm. I realized that I am now truly beginning to understand and “speak” the language of jazz big band. I can more regularly look at a passage and know what it probably sounds like because it is in a pattern that is commonly used in the music. I realized I was no longer reading it “note for note” but playing it out of what was called above the “soul of the style.” It is just like when I have learned a new language and found myself thinking in the language. I was no longer translating from an English thought to a German or Spanish thought. On Friday evening I was not translating a written note from one style to another- it was more often just coming out that way.

This is actually more important than it may seem at first glance. All music is language. Music is perhaps a “generic” term for different languages. Like learning any new language we do not start with the most complex words and sentences. Trying to read War and Peace before a first-reader would be most difficult. As I was watching the John Coltrane documentary the other evening I was reminded of this truism. There is much in Coltrane’s later music that I do not understand. It was a different language than any most I have known in music. It was clearly powerful and transformative. I could feel it- but I don’t yet understand it. I want to- and have been working on that for years. I know more about it today. Someday it may all fall into place.

For that to happen I have to keep listening. The many styles and languages of music will enrich my overall understanding of the depths of music and increase my vocabulary. I will be a better musician- and a better person for it.

Which, next week, will bring me to two other aspects of practice that will help us all move beyond mediocre- sight-reading and memorization.

The Tuning Slide 3.19- Endurance

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Last month we looked at attitudes and habits that lead us to self-care, respect for our colleagues, and balance in our musical lives. This month I want to dig into some of the things I have learned about practice. I never was very good at practicing. I would do it when I needed to or when I wanted to have some fun with some new piece of music I found in a music store. But I was not very disciplined or organized. Over these past few years of my growth into a musician I have been taught a great deal about what makes for practice. I have even come to enjoy it. What then are the effective, efficient, and deliberate ways we can practice that will enhance what we want to do?

So, the theme for November here on The Tuning Slide:

The joy of practice

*************************

If you’re not practicing- that’s stupid.
-Lennie Foy

How long can you play? How high can you go? How will your chops hold up? I ask myself these questions all the time. They are questions of endurance. I have had a love/hate relationship with endurance. I love it when I have it and hate it when it bugs out on me. I am not satisfied with what happens and what I’m doing. Some days it seems like I have more endurance than I need and then the next I barely make it through a 30 minute routine. As I was working on this week’s post I dug a little more intentionally into the book by Paul Baron, Trumpet Voluntarily: A Holistic Guide to Maximizing Practice Through Efficiency. In a number of different posts I have written about “deliberate practice” and I have been trying to do that. But it seems I was missing something.

Well, not missing it so much as not applying what I know to my practice. That missing something was what I talked about last week- balance. Baron, on p. 13 caught me up short when he wrote:

A chop-building routine requires stretching the boundaries of your range, endurance, and volume but with a balanced approach so as not to injure your lips.

He goes on to talk about how rest is important- you know- rest as long as you play when practicing. He talked about things I am already doing- the Clarke studies, the Bill Adam routine, and Concone etudes. But he also ended up talking about the danger we fall into, what I fall into, when I think I have found the promised land of endurance and range. I get what he calls “stupid chops”. For Baron that is when he neglects the daily maintenance of his chops in order to play a show. He ignores the stuff that balances the thing he is working on with the basics.

What does he mean?

When things are going great, we sometimes feel like we are unstoppable and do not pay attention to the proper mechanics of playing, only to pay the price later. [Then] we decided to try a new routine and push it to sheer exhaustion.

He just described what I (and obviously others) end up doing in some repetitive and self-destructive cycle. All stemming, it appears, from an inability to maintain balance.

Stupid chops.

• My lips don’t recover enough between days of practice
• My range falls apart.
• My sound is mediocre to poor.
• I feel like I am straining to just play what I used to be able to play well.

Sometimes, as I have noted before, this happens just before I am about to make another breakthrough in endurance or range. So I used to just power through it until I had to back off and go at it again. It always needed up in some way of taking a step backward to allow my chops, attitude, and ego to rebuild. Then it moves ahead- but only after I have consciously stopped to return to balance.

I am at one of those points again which is why I think I subconsciously picked this month’s topic. I get the chance to write it out and see what it might mean. After Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop in August I was working on some embouchure adjustment thanks to Bill Bergren’s mentoring. It began to fall into place. I was regularly doing things that I had not thought possible a few months earlier- like regularly being able to hit the high “C”, “D”, and at times “E” above the staff. I was able to play quite well for up to two hours a day! It felt good. It was a major breakthrough.

Until about three and half weeks ago when it became work again. It happened on a Tuesday after a Monday when I practiced an hour in the morning with my normal routine and then two Big Band rehearsals that evening, and therefore the equivalent of another two hours plus of playing. I forgot to balance and went right ahead on Tuesday to try to do it again. And I fell apart. Like Paul Baron said, I felt “unstoppable” until I stopped. I forgot the mechanics of playing (just say “M”, right Bill?) and breathing. I barreled my way into the upper register forgetting the basic middle “G” approach. Now here I am trying to recuperate and recover from my own stupidity- er, lack of balance.

Maybe I should practice what I preach.

Let me bring it together as a way of giving myself a direction if not an actual plan. My “deliberate” practice over the next month or so will focus on balance. I will work on developing an overall style of practice that will allow for the balance to be more natural and ongoing. The basics of that will be:

• Rest as much as I play.
  
  • Admittedly I am not good at this. If I have an hour to practice I have difficulty only playing for 30 minutes. But that doesn’t mean I should spend the whole hour playing in order to get it all done. That IS a recipe for disaster, and it isn’t deliberate. I need to prioritize and plan the things I need to do.
• Balance the upper and lower.
  
  • Doing the expanding long tones starting on middle “G”; working Clarke 2 and 4 as expanding up and down from G; playing different volumes
• Increase slowly, not trying to get too far too fast.
  
  • Impatience. Dangerous. We get hurt when we are too impatient because we forget the basics. Take it easy. Grow at your pace and don’t push it. (By the way, never pray for patience. God will make you wait.)
• Don’t forget the basics
  
  • I know what they are. We all know what they are. Sound, rhythm, scales, long tones. We all know where to find them- Arban’s pages 11-36. Now to be aware of playing with good sound, good rhythm, and good intonation. Balance!

So what’s good in all this? Well, the work I have done has not been lost. I just need to get back into balance. When I was practicing last evening I still have the range I had three weeks ago- and it is actually a little stronger and clearer than it was. My sound is as steady and full through the same range- and is a little stronger as well. I am aware of being more relaxed overall. It is always a movement forward even when you have to slow down or even take some time to regroup!

This is one of those topics where it almost begs me to comment on how this applies to every day life.

• Rest and play- All work and no play makes Johnny dull. It can also make us sick and can lead to burnout. Take the time to kick back; find the direction of play; have fun.
• Balance the extremes- Always living at the extremes will just make you more addicted to adrenaline. It may easily lead to physical repercussions. The body needs the balance.
• Patience- Take it at a sensible pace. Life is a marathon- not a sprint. Plan for the long-haul.
• The Basics- Breathe. Take time to renew and refresh. One Day at a time.

If we can make these who we are, we can endure more than we thought, with greater range- and for longer than we think possible.

The Tuning Slide- Review and Plan for a Happy New Year

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Don't practice quickly and hope it gets better;
practice excellence and hope it gets faster.
--Frank Campos

It is an old and trite idea to take the end of the year as a time to look back and reflect on what has been happening in one's life. But what makes something "old and trite" is that there is truth in it. Most of the time we don't stop to review and see where we have come. Why not take the end of the year as such a time?

Which is where the importance of the journal comes in. Remember a few weeks ago or so when I reminded us of the importance of keeping a journal of our practicing? Seems like busy work. But here is when you will appreciate it- and maybe get back into the habit since if you are like me you have not kept the journal for a few weeks or more.

I went back and looked at my journal from right after trumpet camp last summer. At camp we were given ideas on a regular practice routine. In addition I was given the idea to do the Arban's exercises from page 13 - 22 and 25-28. These are good, basic exercises that have been proven to be so fundamental it might be valuable to practice them on a regular basis.

So starting in mid-August I did that. For six weeks or so I made sure that I went through those on a regular basis. Now anyone who has played trumpet for more than a few months knows how to play these. There's nothing particularly difficult in them. For years I mostly ignored them since, well, I can play that.

But could I play them well? Could I play them at speed? Did I take the time to play them slowly enough to develop excellence? Often I would practice it quickly so I could say, "Did that. What's next?" Over these last five months I have discovered that there is an amazing depth in those exercises. They start easy; some are more difficult than others; they introduce us to key signatures and chord structures.

Last week, aware of reflection time for this week, I went back to page 13 and started playing through them. I hadn't done them all in about 2 months. I had worked on other things and had continued to notice my progression as a trumpet player. What would these sound like now?

I started with a medium tempo and found they fell into place smoothly. They moved along and felt right. Can I play them as the upper suggested tempo? Surprise. Yes, I can, at least many of them. I looked at my notes in the journal (minimal though they are) and saw that it took me a lot longer to play them in August and September because I a) couldn't play to tempo and b) missed a lot of notes.

I can talk about other reflections, but this is a good introduction to it. What I discovered was

• if I hadn't kept a journal I would have had to rely on imperfect memory for comparison
• if I hadn't taken time for reflection I wouldn't have been as aware of my progress
• if I hadn't slowed down when first working on these back in August I wouldn't have gone beyond "just good enough"

The natural question then is "So what? What do I do with this?" As I was working through these sections of Arban's with a little better insight I discovered the ones that were still causing me difficulty. I was reminded that there are always (!!) the basics that need to be worked on. It may be "easy" to breeze through and play some of these. But there is always the opportunity to strengthen the foundation.

That brought me to the result of review and reflection- planning. I have already talked about goal-setting, etc. but that will often return as a theme. In short, for this particular review, I came up with a specific plan to refine my daily routine. I have taken the sections between pages 13 and 36, some of the very basics, and divided them into three sections. At first I will play through each section every third day. I will be going through each section twice each week for the next 3-5 weeks. My goal- reinforce these basics and add a bit of "excellence" beyond "good enough." This will take about 10 - 15 minutes of each day's routine.

With all that aside, the biggest reflection for me is what has occurred in my trumpet playing since June when I attended the Big Band Camp at Shell Lake. The quintet I am part of then had a "peak experience" at the Vintage Band Mini Fest in Northfield, MN. I then headed back to Shell Lake for trumpet camp where my whole view of my trumpet playing took a huge positive jump. I have continued to play in two Big Bands, two concert bands and the quintet and have practiced 8 out of 10 days.

I am humbled and amazed at what has happened. I am grateful to all who helped, encouraged, challenged, instructed and allowed me to play along with you this past year.

There is more to come.

Happy New Year to all!