Tuning Slide 5.13- The Tools of Mindfulness

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

“What day is it?” asked Pooh.
“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.
“My favorite day,” said Pooh.
— A. A. Milne

Last week a friend and I were emailing back and forth about “playing the lead pipe” of the trumpet. He was trying some different practice techniques and was sharing what he found with me.

He had just experienced the fundamental foundation of the teaching of Bill Adam- playing the lead pipe to get started each day. (No, I admit, I don’t do that on a regular basis.) Its purpose is to get the player to listen. The goal is not to play the lead pipe in tune. Each lead pipe plays a slightly different note based on length, etc. The goal is to hear the rich, full sound of the proper airflow into the mouthpiece and lead pipe. There is no tuner use with this- we tune the instrument with the tuning slide which compensates for the different tunings of different lead pipes, horns, etc. Play the lead pipe, I was told, and listen for the sound to center and become more full. Some claim to even hear a sound like an old phone ringing when you reach that point. The rest of the goal is to remember that we play every note on the horn that same way. The lead pipe sound and airflow are the foundation. From his experience, my friend had just reinforced for me the insights that Mr. Adam and his students have built over all these years.

[Side note: here is another take on this:]

As I was responding to my friend I realized that some of the reasons this works as it does are because it tunes the ear to listen as well as the lips to form the right shape, the breath to flow smoothly, the arms to hold the trumpet in the right position, and the brain to get in sync with what we’re doing.

In short, it develops mindfulness. And as one moves deeper into what one is paying attention to through mindfulness, it rewires the brain to play the music. It is both muscle memory and aural, hearing memory being developed. I have talked many times over the years about mindfulness. It is a basic, and for me, essential daily skill. Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of the most famous modern proponents of mindfulness, defines it as “awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally…”

When I talk about being more consistent with the mindfulness portion of my routine, I mean I need to slow down and pay deeper attention to what I’m doing. I need to continue the ongoing re-wiring of my brain that improves my musicianship. I am talking about the times I do long tones and flow studies and building awareness through lead pipe playing.

There are mental tools that can be used to strengthen our mindfulness. Wikibooks has a series of articles about what are called “Core Mindfulness Skills.” In that, they present three WHAT tools and three HOW tools.

The WHAT tools
◦ Observe: is simply experiencing, with awareness, your feelings, your thoughts, and sensations directly without the use of words. (Link)
◦ Describe is putting words on experience and experience into words. (Link)
◦ Participate is the skill of throwing yourself into your objectives whole-heartedly without self-consciousness. (Link)

For example, when playing long tones or flow studies, I start by just observing, listening to what I am playing. I (try to) make no judgment, just listen and pay attention to what it sounds like and what it feels like. As I listen, I try to describe what I am hearing or feeling. I will then be participating in the experience. The sounds are with me and come through me. It is at these points that I begin to notice differences as I play. It is at this point that I begin to use the HOW tools.

The HOW tools
◦ Take a nonjudgmental stance. See, but don’t evaluate. Just the facts. Focus on the “what,” not the “good” or “bad,” the “terrible” or “wonderful,” the “should” or “should not.” (Link)
◦ One-mindfully is sustained attention on the present moment which develops concentration. (Link)
◦ Effectively- Focus on what works. Do what needs to be done in each situation. (Link)

This is where you begin to develop the insight into playing and are allowing the sounds to adapt and deepen. Notice I am not saying that the sounds “get better” or that the sound is “bad.” This is not to be a judgment on our part as we listen. It is about the sound and what the sound is like. We do this with a focus that is important. We need that focus or we lose the sound. We notice that and maintain the concentration in the present moment. In this time we then learn what works and what doesn’t. We discover what and when the sound falls into place, becomes richer, closer to what we are listening for and how it just sounds centered.

This can work in other ways when playing in a group of some kind. We are often told to listen to the group. Next time begin by listening, non-judgmentally and with a focus on the person next to you and try to play with them. One of the directors at the Birch Creek camp this past summer suggested we do that. I was amazed at what it did to my awareness of the music- and then my own playing. It is the same thing- mindfulness, in the present moment.

The result, among other things, will be what those working in this call Wise Mind.

◦ Wise Mind is the integration of emotion and reason, where the two overlap.
◦ Wise Mind is a state of mind in which you experience yourself as being calm, centered, and in control of your emotions.
◦ In Wise Mind, you act in accordance with your beliefs, principles, and values which deepen feelings of coherence and integrity.

Again, this is to be non-judgmental. It is based on more than dichotomies of good/bad. It is based on what is working to make music. It is based on the merging of reason and feeling, thinking and emotion and allowing our music to flow from that intersection.

Tuning Slide 4.28- On Being a Student

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

You are always a student, never a master. You have to keep moving forward.
— Conrad Hall

Yes, I missed last week’s post. As has been said by a number of people including both John Lennon and myself, “Life is what happens when you are making plans to do other things.” I had a month of that from mid-December to mid-January. I had planned ahead and had a number of posts ready to publish, but I just couldn’t get to that one last one for last week. I will talk more about that next week. But for this week, it’s about being a student.

We are all students of something. Some of us are deeply involved as students in school, studying, reading, going to class. Some of us have left that regimen far behind. All of us are students of what we like and are interested in. Obvious statement, I realize. But it can be so easy to forget until we hit something difficult or hit one of those plateaus where it feels more like we are moving backward than getting better.

Things music students need to learn

Let me start with a slightly tongue-in-cheek list that speaks much truth. There are ten on the original list, but here are the five that I really liked

(Five of the )Top Ten Things You’ll Never Understand About a Musician (which means these are things we need to learn about ourselves):
✓ Music isn’t a dream. It’s a way of life.
✓ Just because you haven’t heard of us doesn’t mean we aren’t successful.
✓ Don’t hate us because we do something we love.
✓ Listening to music means something very different to us.
✓ You can take a musician out of music but you can’t take the music out of a musician.
(https://www.talkbass.com/threads/top-10-things-youll-never-understand-about-a-musician.1381134/)

We do need to get a little more serious about being a student in general.

(https://flypaper.soundfly.com/hustle/how-to-be-a-student/)

Society restricts the formal construct of a “student” to mean a person enrolled in some sort of academic program. It is an identity you take on when you’re in school and abandon once you graduate. But the world continues to change at a rapid clip, requiring us to learn new things constantly — this situation requires us to expand the definition of what it means to be a student.

A student is anyone who wants to create new neural pathways by exposing themselves to new information and experiences. You become a student when you feel the desire to do something you can’t and start taking actions to turn that around. To be a student, you have to be a combination of a researcher, a craftsperson, an artist, a manager, and a writer.

He goes on to expand on each of those from his point of view.

◆ Researcher

The path to learning complex skills is nonlinear and ambiguous. The most effective compass to help you navigate this ambiguity is your curiosity. It’s hard to figure out where to go next, but an effective way to determine the right direction is to come up with hypotheses and test them.

◆ Craftsperson

Being good at something means your output consistently exudes a sense of quality and attention to detail. How you get there is by showing up every day and practicing the fundamentals. This can be difficult, particularly if you have a chaotic mind with a short attention span like I do.
The problem is compounded if you consider that the rewards of working on your craft only become obvious months after you’ve put in the effort. This decoupling of effort and reward makes it hard to create powerful feedback loops to keep you coming back. But your success as a craftsperson depends on your ability to show up even if you don’t feel like it.

◆ Artist

Craft is important, but it is only the foundation. Once you have the craft nailed down, you have to figure out what to do with it. “Artistry” is the ability to point your craft in a direction — to expand your audience’s minds by showing them new possibilities, to provide warmth and comfort by letting them know that they’re not alone, or even create a whole new response that we haven’t yet discovered.
You can be the kind of artist that cuts through the bullshit and surfaces fundamental truths about the human experience. Or you can be the kind that creates perfect experiences of escapism. It depends on your personal motivations — what led you to embark on this journey in the first place?

◆ Manager

Good managers don’t just allocate resources and impose schedules. They create conditions in which awesome work can happen. The best manager I’ve worked with describes himself as a “shit umbrella.” Managing is as much about creating positive feedback loops and support systems as it is about staying on schedule and tracking progress.
The trick is to not overdo it. It can be very tempting to draft long project plans and get very granular with scheduling tasks. The first step is to acknowledge that no plan will be followed exactly as intended. The second step is to try and identify all the ways in which things won’t work out. The third step is to create mechanisms that pull you back on track if you ever go off the rails.

◆ Writer

If you don’t take a moment to pause and reflect on where you’re going and what you’re doing, you run the risk of running in circles. Writing is a great way to formalize new knowledge as you acquire it, and also create resources that can help others who are on their own journeys. Writing can be incredibly difficult if you aim for a finished piece on your first attempt. You can make it easier for yourself by working in different levels of fidelity. The first draft should be an outburst. Just sit there and pour out everything that’s in your mind without any regard for sense or structure. That way, you have a collection of ideas you can start curating. In subsequent drafts, you can refine and arrange these ideas in a way that ensures impact.

Next week I will dig a little into each of these areas and look at applying some of them to what we all do as musicians. Until then… think about your goals and directions and how you are a student of what you want to be doing.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow.
Learn as if you were to live forever. — Gandhi

4.27 Tuning Slide- More Time In the Zone

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

When the zone calls, you must listen. You never know how long being in the zone lasts. It is a cardinal rule - you must take advantage of every second that you are in the zone.

― John Passaro

There is a family story that my wife has enjoyed telling since, well, for a long time. It goes back to right after we were married. It was a wondrous Sunday afternoon and we were doing nothing. We were both in the living room. I was reading and she was doing something. I was aware she was talking to me. I would make a sound of assent and keep reading. Suddenly she stopped and was laughing.

“Did you hear what I just said?” she asked.

“Uh….[pause] [guiltily] No, what?”

“I said that the pink elephants are coming down the street trampling on all the flowers.”

Which I had said “Uh, huh” to without hearing.

I didn’t know about “flow” at that time. But I was in a state of flow in my reading. A few months ago I talked about flow as part of Barry Green’s music mastery pathway of “concentration.” He called it the “spirit of the zone. In that post I wrote:

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi named the concept of “flow in 1975 and been widely referred to in any different fields. It is also known as “being in the zone.” Flow

is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting loss in one's sense of space and time. (Link)

Requirements for flow can be:
◆ Intense and focused concentration on the present moment
◆ Merging of action and awareness
◆ A loss of reflective self-consciousness
◆ A sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity
◆ A distortion of temporal experience, one's subjective experience of time is altered
◆ Experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding

Very clearly I was in some kind of zone, or even state of flow as I was reading. I still experience that feeling when involved in a book- I am hyper-focused, I am not all that aware of what is happening around me, time is lost, and it is intrinsically rewarding. You can begin to see why this can apply to playing or listening to music, I am sure.

Digging a little deeper in that Wikipedia article I came across Owen Schaffer’s list (he studied under Csikszentmihalyi.) In 2013 he proposed 7 conditions for flow that summarize the above list:
◆ Knowing what to do
◆ Knowing how to do it
◆ Knowing how well you are doing
◆ Knowing where to go
◆ High perceived challenges
◆ High perceived skills
◆ Freedom from distractions
(Link)

Again the connections with music are hopefully clear. One thing it means is that to get into flow is not just something that happens on its own. It is not some magical, mysterious event that occurs when Self 2 gets in charge. Even the best Self 2 cannot get in the zone playing trumpet if it doesn’t know anything about the trumpet, music, or whatever. The Inner Game doesn’t just happens, it is planned for, developed, and, of course, the result of deliberate, focused practice.

Flow can come from, as the list indicates:
◦ Knowledge from learning (being taught), experience, and time. (What to do and how to do it.)
◦ Self-awareness and trust in Self 2 as you have grown and improved. (How well you are doing and where to go next.)
◦ Moving beyond the basics and pushing yourself to new heights that you know you can achieve. (High challenge and perception of your skills.)
◦ Focus, focus, focus, or mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness. (Freedom from distractions.)

When these conditions occur whether in the practice room, rehearsal hall, or on stage, the possibility for flow increases. Of course you still have to pay attention. We cannot forget in a performance that we are not observers. I remember a concert a few years ago when the band was playing an incredibly wonderful piece. I had a long passage of rests, probably at least 32 if not 64 measures. I fell into a listening zone (as opposed to a performance zone)- and almost missed my entry. But, as a result of working hard at knowing the piece and some of the above conditions, I heard the music moving to where I was to come it. It was intuitive as I picked up the horn and played. (But it was close!)

The Inner Game and Flow both show that “attitude” in an important piece of moving in the right direction. Attitude and action go together. Most of the time before we get into flow it is the actions that propel us forward. The old saying is that it is easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than think your way into a new way of acting. That can be called developing a habit, or experiencing the joys of what you want, rewiring the brain, or just plain grit. Attitude must come. If you continue to think you can’t- you won’t.

I found the following list on the Website “Play in the Zone” that we can take into the practice room and rehearsal hall to get us ready for Self 2 to work us into the zone.

9 Attitude Tweaks That Hold the Secret to Playing Your Best
1) Play freely. Don’t play to “not play badly”
2) Love the challenges
3) Accept what happens rather than getting frustrated or upset
4) Don’t care too much
5) Trust in yourself
6) Hear each note clearly before you play it
7) Be decisive, and commit fully to every phrase
8) Be relaxed about nerves
9) Focus on process, not outcome
(Link)

Three of those stand out for me this week.
• Play freely Don’t play to “not play badly.”
⁃ What a way for me to undermine and sabotage my goals, my practice, and especially my sound. I can only play as good as I can today, of course, but I have to play as good as I can today. It is not healthy to say “Well, as long as I don’t suck too badly…” I can’t go there. It won’t work. I will always suck.

• Love the challenges!
⁃ Sometimes the challenge is playing the Arban’s single tonguing exercises as well as I can play them, good sound, clarity, etc. Sometimes it is playing Arban’s Characteristic study #1 better than I did last time. Both are challenges. If I don’t take the challenge of the beginning of the Arban’s Book (or Clarke, Goldman, Getchell, etc.) I will never get to the challenges later in the books.

• Focus on process, not outcome!
⁃ Process does not mean doing it mechanically. It always means playing musically with good sound. Those are assumed. But how do I improve my skills if I don’t have a plan and a direction to what I am doing. Process, the steps and stages from here to there?

Which of the above are things that are important for you? These are all the marks of being a good student of your instrument. I will look at more of that next week and do some expanding on this.

Until then- build your attitude and enjoy what you are doing.

Tuning Slide 4.11- It's (Mostly) All in Your Head

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

• Trumpet playing is
o 90% mental
o 9% air
o 1% physical
— Attributed to a number of people, most often Bill Adam

When it comes right down to it, this is what the Inner Game of Music is truly all about. It is the mental side of playing music. It attitude. It is mindfulness. It is how we think and act out what we are thinking- or not thinking. I am not sure I like that idea. It means that things like building endurance or a perfect embouchure, the right mouthpiece or instrument, or heavy caps aren’t as important as we like to think they are. They are attempts at short-circuiting the process of becoming a musician.

Not to disregard the physical side. (More on that next week.) That is real and does impact the way we play. But it is the more effective use of our energy through the mental that in the long run as the most positive impact on what we are doing. Why might that be? Here’s a thought:

The brain consumes energy at 10 times the rate of the rest of the body per gram of tissue. The average power consumption of a typical adult is 100 Watts and the brain consumes 20% of this [energy].

We also know a great deal about the many ways the brain can impact our actions, our physical health, how our bodies function. While much of it is a mystery, the effects have been seen in many studies.

This also shows why that sometimes the tiredness we feel after a period of playing is perhaps even more mentally caused than physical. That’s a lot of energy going out when we are playing. For example, here are some things that are regular actions of the “mental” that impact what we do:

◆ How we practice- we have to think about that as we do it.
⁃ Slow, fast, articulation, slurs, etc

◆ Hearing the music and notes in our head as we play.
⁃ I am fairly sure that the best way to learn to play is to hear the notes in your head before you play. This is especially true of the upper register, but applies equally to the whole staff.

◆ What we think of our abilities and how far we believe we can go
⁃ I know I can’t play that run. I am unable to memorize. I am crappy.

◆ Self 1 criticizing or Self 2 wanting to just do it
⁃ This goes beyond the previous one. This happens in the middle of a performance and we get distracted. “I just missed the note! OMG! I’ll never get it,” Meanwhile I didn’t get the next three measures because I got lost. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

◆ Memorization
⁃ It takes concentration and mental effort to memorize. I have not been willing to spent the time or take the effort. And that does impact my playing. (I also tell myself I can’t do it.)

◆ Listening to ourselves and others.
⁃ I have to pay attention when listening. Engage the brain!

All that takes mental activity. The more difficult it is, the more we are distracted and the harder we have to work- and playing becomes more difficult. Part of it is what is the story we are telling ourselves about ourselves? What is it we believe about our abilities? But it is also about being intentional about taking care of our brains- the mental activities that can strengthen what we do with the trumpet. So I Googled (always a good place to start) “How do we train the brain to be more efficient?” and I got some interesting thoughts from an article on Entrepreneur.com. Here are their eight ways to improve brain power (the ideas are from the article. The thoughts about them are mine) (Link):

1. Exercise.

⁃ The work of endorphins and other neurotransmitters is essential. Exercise helps generate them and regenerate cell activity. Most of us (pointing at myself as well) do not get enough physical exercise. It really doesn’t take a lot- average about 30 minutes of walking a day and it will enhance brain power! That and the oxygen boosts efficiency, too.

2. Drink coffee.

⁃ It’s a stimulant and helps in learning. It is only a short-term solution, but what you learn helps build the brain connections.

3. Get some sunlight.

⁃ Yes, get outside. It is actually more than the sun- it is the vitamin D, I am told. But to me it is also the ability to take-in fresh air, see and experience the world, and discover new things all around you.

4. Build strong connections.

⁃ We are not meant to be lonely. We have been created as social creatures. Some have even theorized that what we call “spirituality” is the need to have connections with the world and others. When we are isolated unhealthy things can begin to happen to our bodies and brains. Get out, be social.

5. Meditate.

⁃ Mindfulness/meditation has become the “In-thing.” For very good reasons. Not the least of which is that it works. Ten minutes a day can make a big difference. I don’t just mean “sitting meditation. I would add T’ai Chi and Qigong or walking meditation to a meditation regimen. The increased inner balance gets us more “in tune” with ourselves and what we are doing. Maybe do some yoga as part of a weekly exercise program as well.

6. Sleep well.

⁃ I know the old dictum we have heard from some- “You can sleep when you’re dead” as a way to get us off our lazy couches and do something. But to ignore healthy sleep habits can potentially get in the way of health itself. Sleep hygiene can be a big help, even if you sometimes have to struggle to get enough. Look into it.

7. Eat well.

⁃ I read that and said, “Yep, I will love to eat a lot.” I don’t think that is what it means. To eat well is to eat healthy, to not subsist only on junk food, or high sugar content drinks. Feeding your body healthy fuel will certainly help the brain!

8. Play Tetris.

⁃ For some reason, Tetris is considered by some researchers to be one of the better video games. It works on spatial recognition (an aid to balance), hand-eye coordination (like translating all those black marks on the page into music?), and keeps brain matter alive and working. Why Tetris? I have no idea. But I remember when I played it on the old Gameboy. It was fun and probably helped. (Maybe I'll download it on the iPhone.)

I would add a couple other things:

◆ Take time for relaxation and hobbies.
◆ Journaling can be a great way to get in touch and keep in touch with what is going on in your own head.
◆ Read more than you watch TV.
◆ Listen to music more than you watch TV.

If I want to be a better trumpet player, I guess I need to take care of the mental. Losing my mental sharpness will not have a good result in my music.

Tuning Slide 4.3- What Music Does For Me

Life is a song. It has its own rhythm of harmony. It is a symphony of all things which exist in major and minor keys of Polarity. It blends the discords, by opposites, into harmony which unites the whole into a grand symphony of life. To learn through experience in this life, to appreciate the symphony and lessons of life and to blend with the whole, is the object of our being here.
- Dr. Randolph Stone

As I write this I am between musical experiences. A little over a week ago I participated in an amazing international event, the 3rd Moravian International Unity Brass Festival. I have never before had the opportunity to play in a large brass band of 167 musicians. I was one of the 1st trumpets and kept up with it (except at the end of the concert when the old embouchure said “No!”) There were 50+ trumpets and related, nearly 60 trombones and related, and nearly 60 horns, euphoniums and tubas. Stop and think of that sound. It is nothing short of mind-boggling. (Here is a link to a video of one of the hymns as we rehearsed it.)

When this gets posted on Monday morning, July 30, the annual Shell Lake (WI) Trumpet Workshop will be just getting under way. That, as any regulars here know, was the source of the great leap somewhere forward in my trumpet playing over the past three years. My whole understanding of music and being a musician changed in ways I would never have anticipated. It all started with a simple act of simply playing the lead pipe on my horn to learn how to “center” the sound of my playing. It’s all that simple, I was told. Just do that and you will play in ways you didn’t know you could.

These two specific experiences go far beyond the list of things I posted the past two weeks of why I play music. They go much more deeply into what playing music does to and for me. They get to the heart of the connection of life and music in me- in my soul, at the center of my being. I can list five specific things that being an active musician helps me with. In many ways this summarizes so much of what I have written over the past three years and the foundations of what I will continue to write. So here goes with:

What Playing Music Does for Me

1. Discipline
No one is a born musician. Some may have certain aptitudes, but very few (other than the prodigies) are truly able to be good at it without work, followed by more work, and then enhanced by more work. Knowing that Doc Severinsen “warms-up” for three hours in order to make sure he knows what he is doing and ready to do it when he gets on stage, humbles me. I think I am doing well when I take 30 minutes to do the daily routine before moving on to the pieces I have to know. Yet, I have developed a discipline- a training regimen for the trumpet- that I never thought I could do. While I don’t always carry that over to other areas of my life with the intention I give to the music, it has helped. I am more disciplined in exercise, writing, and even just taking the time to relax and read!

2. Focus
Part of discipline is learning how to be focused on what I am doing. I have seen it happen over and over- I take a mini-second to think of something else and I get lost. This happens even when doing something as rote as playing the C Major scale. My mind burps and I miss a note. I have had this problem for years when performing. It is easy to get distracted when I am by nature somewhat attention deficit disordered. Playing music has helped me learn to stay focused. This is a huge help in many other times and places as well. If I can do it when playing my trumpet, I can do it for other situations, too.

3. Listening
A musician has to be able to listen. If all I do when I play is listen to my own notes, I will never be able to be a good musician. I may end up being technically proficient at what I do, but, as they might say, “He doesn’t play well with others.” The skill of listening is one of those basic interpersonal skills that we all need to develop, no matter what our lives look like. Too often, it is said, we don’t listen to hear what the other person is saying, we listen to figure out what we are going to say next. Listening, by the way, is at the heart of what we do in a musical piece when we “play the rests.”

4. Blending
Another way of saying this is that we DO play well with others. When we have learned to focus and listen we will know how our part fits in with the others. It is easy to think that they should blend with me when the reality is we have to learn to blend with each other. The brass quintet I play with had a rehearsal on Saturday. At the end we all looked at each other and smiled. We were even excited by what we were sounding like. We all agreed, it was because we were paying attention through focus, listening, and blending. A musical group of any size is, by nature, a set of relationships. They are just like relationships we have with family, friends, co-workers, or even strangers we meet in our daily travels. Do I listen to them or do I ignore their needs or concerns? Do I seek ways to work with them (blend) to get a job done, to accomplish some activity, or just to let each other know they are important? I fear we are forgetting how to do that and instead yell at each other, throw memes around like firecrackers on the 4th of July. I learn- and am reminded to keep learning- when I play in a group, we need to work together. Always!

5. Mindfulness
For me, when I put all these together, I end up with being mindful. Mindfulness is to be that non-judgmental attitude that keeps me open to the present and what it happening. Mindfulness is one of the exciting therapeutic tools to come along in the past twenty years and has shown to have great impact on many kinds of situations. Being a mindful musician can help me move away from a narrow-focused view of what is happening and allows me to play more intentionally. It helps calm down my Self 1 that is forever over-analyzing and lets Self 2 show what it knows and what it can do. At times I know this sounds like a variation of the Music Man’s “think system.” But it is more than that. It helps bring these five things that I get from being a musician into fruition.

These five things will surely be showing up again and again in year four. I am constantly looking at ways of making them more effective and more natural. As I learn to do it in my musicianship, I am learning how to do it in all that I do.

Tuning Slide 3.43: Listening While You Play

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

To me, groups of musicians playing together, not fighting each other, but playing a groove together is one of the most exciting things to listen to.
-Phil Collins

One of the most exciting things about being a musician is the opportunity to play music with others. I can sit in my practice room for hours playing all the great stuff I want to play, but if I’m only doing it alone, I am missing out on the ultimate joy of music. Our brass quintet recently got back together after a fairly long layoff. I had been practicing the pieces we have played and want to play, but I had no idea any more how they sounded together. At our first rehearsal a few weeks back I actually got lost because I became distracted by the other parts. My part didn’t sound the same as it did in practicing. (Doh!)

I have talked before about the joy of listening to a band play from within the band. What I am talking about this week, actually, is the way we have to listen to each other and how we build that into our performances. Such awareness is not natural for most of us. It makes us move outside of our own bubbles and pay attention to who’s with us and what we are doing.

In the book Making Music for the Joy of It, the author, Stephanie Judy goes into considerable detail about the direction of learning to play well with others. She calls it “extended awareness” that goes beyond the notes any one of us is playing to how we play those notes together. (p. 196)

She starts with a new group or even anytime an established group gets a new piece of music. The first time through everyone is essentially playing solos. You know the drill. We stare at the music when it’s put in front of us. We do the normal quick scans- key signature, key changes, tempo, repeats, dynamics, do I need a mute, etc. Then we start playing. We stare more closely at the notes. The pages seem to be endless. We make more mistakes than we care to admit. Unless you are a far more advanced musician than I am (and many of you are) that first run-through will be solos. You have a vague awareness that there are others around you, but most of the time you are listening to yourself with only an intuitive knowledge of what else is going on.

It is in that first run-through with others, though, that we actually do begin to listen. We can’t help it. The longer we have been playing the easier it will be for us to play our parts at least okay and get the feel, the groove, the inner listening of the piece.

Then, even as early as the second time through, we can move beyond our individual part to a better picture of the whole. We begin to hear on some levels how we fit together. We become aware of the ways we play under, over, through, or around others. We can begin to sense when we are leading, supporting, holding back, or enhancing and drawing out another part. Balance comes along as we think (unconsciously?) about it. We see and hear the dynamics. We pay attention to our sound and whether it fits or is not matching the piece. We begin to know our roles in the different parts of the piece.

This takes effort. It takes an ability to do more than one thing at a time. How can I stay focused on my part while watching the director and listening to the flutes or the trombones across the orchestra? How can I pick up the groove from the bass or give appropriate support to that saxophone solo without making it about me?

At the website Making Music, (https://makingmusicmag.com/4-extra-skills-musicians-need-to-play-well-with-others/) Christopher Sutton talks about "4 Extra Skills Musicians Need to Play Well with Others." They all include one form or another of listening. Christopher’s comments are in italics. My comments are in the parentheses in normal type. Here they are:

1. Exercise some patience.

Practice taking some slow, calming breaths when you find yourself getting “worked up” about something. Slow your thinking processes down. It may even help to close your eyes momentarily to remove yourself (if only for a few seconds!) from the stressful situation you find yourself in. (Listen to yourself and what’s going on within you. By learning self-mindfulness you can often discover new ways of reacting and interacting.)

2. Learn to be adaptable.

As human beings, we adapt to our surroundings naturally, though not always willingly. A big part of learning to adapt and accepting change has to do with keeping an open mind. Though it may be temporary, adapting to another musician’s creative process and meshing it with your own may be a big hurdle to overcome. (Listen to what they are saying and/or doing. Be open to hearing new and creative ideas. They may not be what you had hoped for, but you are now playing with others. Collaboration and listening go hand-in-hand.)

3. Make communication a priority.

Just as with pretty much every other relationship in life, communication in a collaborative community is key. In order to effectively balance your creative goals and those of your collaborators, there needs to be clear and consistent conversation. It may seem cliche, but sometimes the safest thing to do is to over-communicate. It’s better to be accused of this than to be reluctant to share your side of the story. (After you listen, make sure to set up and keep communication open to continue the listening.)

4. Try to have a sense of humor.

Perhaps the most important thing to do during this time is to have fun. Learn to not take things or to take yourself too seriously. (In the 12-step communities they will sometimes talk about “Rule 62.” It simply means: Don’t take yourself too damn seriously! Good advice for musicians!)

It is an amazing activity this whole thing of making music with others. Listen, join in and enjoy!

Tuning Slide 3.41: Learning to Listen

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

For the rest of April I’m going to tackle the theme of “Listening.”

We think that Music stops at the ears. That is a mistake.
Vibrations can be felt in all places and at all times,
even with the eyes.
- Victor Wooten (or Michael?)

Victor Wooten, Grammy-award winning bass player talks about listening in chapter 11 of his wondrous book, The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music. The whole book is a lesson on different aspects of making music. He finds a spirit guide or muse named Michael who pulls him into all kinds of different situations.

One night Michael takes him into woods at night and teaches him to listen. He hears the frogs and other animals and is introduced to the idea of noise pollution which can be just as deadly as other types of pollution. Noise pollution can hide the sounds of danger or keep animals from communicating with each other. He gets a couple different lessons from Michael about the importance of the practice of listening to everything that is around.

Victor talks about music as vibrations. We don’t need to have a degree in physics to know that this is true. All atoms and molecules vibrate. The universe itself vibrates. The “background radiation” of the universe is the “sound” the vibration of the Big Bang. (Yes, oversimplified, but the general idea is correct.) We see vibrations of light, we feel vibrations of heat, we hear vibrations of sound. Our whole body “listens” to vibrations of many types and makes decisions based on what we experience in these vibrations.

This helps explain part of what many of us may have experienced- playing in tune. There are times when I cannot actually hear myself as clearly as I would like, but I can tell when my tuning is not right. Some of it is through the ears- what I am hearing of my note is not in synch with what I am hearing from the musician next to me or the rest of the band. But there is also the other piece- the vibrations. I can sometimes feel that I am out of tune. Self Two says, “Lip it up. You’re flat.” The vibrations are not together.

As with the animals in Victor’s forest, noise pollution can be deadly for us as musicians. I don’t know about the forest animals, but I do know there are two types of noise pollution that get to me.

The first is “Outer Pollution”. This comes from the things happening around us that take our attention away from what we are doing. This is the noise of the crowd, the extraneous sounds that are often around us. It may even be things we want to have around us- TV, radio, iTunes. They are the things that can distract us. Sometimes it may even be the words and actions of others aimed at us that we take to heart.

When we take those words and actions of others and turn them into directions for us, they can add to the second noise pollution, “Inner Pollution”. We have often talked about Self One who is always trying to find out what we are doing wrong and setting us up to fail, proving our incompetence or lack of ability. It can be the words we have internalized from others or experiences that have hurt us or kept us from achieving what we know we can do.

Both of these sources of noise pollution keep us from truly listening to what is around us and what is within us. Which is why Michael took Victor into the woods. He wanted him to discover what music can do when we allow our whole body to “hear” music.

I closed my eyes and let the music envelop me. It was easy to do. It was the first time I’d ever felt music with my whole body. I thought I’d done it before when I heard music that made me get up and dance, but even then, I was only hearing with my ears…. (p. 182)

There is a “silence” that is enhanced by this kind of sound, music, enveloping us, allowing the inner self (Self Two?) to relax and get creative. It is partly the vibrations, as I have said, but it is more than that. It is the smells, the touch of a breeze, the feel of the ground we sit on. All of it together, what can be called the “ambience” or environment, contributes to the music that we can listen to. They are in harmony as Victor discovered.

I closed my eyes and sat inside the music.I listened to all the sounds around me and noticed how they fit in. Like different instruments in a band, each sound served a purpose. Each animal made a sound that somehow supported the other sounds while leaving enough space for all to participate. (p. 183)

Victor talks about a time a few months after this encounter when he was playing in a band and decided to apply what he had learned about listening from Michael. He is aware that his time at the lake in the woods gave him a new way of utilizing the skill of listening.

I noticed that most musicians seemed to reserve their ears for themselves rather than open up their ears to the rest of the band. I found that when I listened to the other musicians more than I listened to myself, it caused me to play better. I realize that listening is a choice. (P. 184)

I mentioned in a previous post how I was taken by a performance of the band I was playing in that almost got me lost. What really happened was that I was far more aware of the band than of myself. I could relax and “go with the flow” in a way that I wish were more common. I guess it can be if I take the time to choose to listen to something other than my own inner pollution of fear and uncertainty. The music of the pieces we were playing truly did carry me to playing as I very seldom get to do. Not because I don’t want to, but at that moment, the whole sound I was part of was more powerful and entrancing than my own sound.

Of course, as the theme of this blog has stated over and over, there is a correlation between music and life. They are interconnected. Learning to listen in music can be a way to experience listening in other ways. Victor adds:

The same is true in conversation. When I listen to other people more than to myself, I know how to respond and support them in a better way. It also helps me know when to remain quiet. (P. 184)

Music, even well “scripted” music played by a band or orchestra is a conversation. It is like watching a well-written play. The actors say the same lines in every production, but it is how they interact and respond to each other that makes a play come alive. Otherwise it is just a dull reading. In music we learn to listen and interact with others. If we can’t do it in our music we will most likely have a difficult time doing it in conversations.

We are just scratching the surface of the skill of listening. What’s next? How about learning to listen with a new set of ears and digging for greater insight?

Only through the power of listening can you truly know anything.
- Victor Wooten (or Michael?)

3.32- The Tuning Slide

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

The heavens, whose aspect makes our minds as still
As they themselves appear to be,
Innumerable voices fill
With everlasting harmony;
The towering headlands, crowned with mist,
Their feet among the billows, know
That Ocean is a mighty harmonist;
Thy pinions, universal Air,
Ever waving to and fro,
Are delegates of harmony, and bear
Strains that support the Seasons in their round…
-William Wordsworth, On the Power of Sound

One of the joys of our winter stay on the Gulf Coast in Alabama is the ability to practice on the balcony overlooking the beach and water. I put my silent mute in and do my daily routine whenever it is warm and sunny enough, which is at least 75% of my time there. One day recently I finished my 30-40 minutes of playing and then sat and meditated for another 15-20 minutes. The result was the following reflection on both the practice and how music itself pulls us in and we become part of something greater than any one of us could ever be.

The surf is the constant background. It is a rhythm without a pattern, or better yet, a rhythm and pattern combining into breath. Its constancy is a heartbeat, a watery drum keeping all in motion. There are days it is as soft as a baby’s sleeping breath. This is, after all the Gulf of Mexico, not the expansive ocean. Even at fifty yards it can easily be overpowered by my muted horn.

But it is never lost. It is a pianissimo of my inner heartbeat, a drum cadence. It allows, even invites, movement. My long tones follow in order. They fall in sync with the surf. Then I play scales and it becomes a counterpoint. Play the chromatics too fast and I can lose the rhythm, the pattern under it all.

Slow down, the surf calls.
Follow me, the rhythm beckons.

In my time frame the surf is infinite, perpetual. Any time of day or night I can walk out on the balcony and it will be there. When it isn’t, life itself will have come to an end. This surf, formed by the world-wide waters, has been the breeding source of life itself. It shapes and reshapes the shorelines, constantly changing and challenging what even human grandiosity thinks is permanent. It will destroy and remold what we- and it- have built.

Then come the louder days. Gale force winds whip the tops off large swells. Though it is still the Gulf, its power is beyond what we can know. Most such days I am forced back inside, unable to compete in sound or comfort to the surf. In between the extremes, though, after a storm has moved through, shifted the winds, and roiled the surf, I can take the routine back to the balcony. Now the sound and pattern of my playing shifts. I get a little more aggressive, a little more stubborn in my insistence that I be heard, even by me.

I never win, humbling for a trumpet player to admit. Perhaps if I removed the mute my sound would carry a little further but I don’t want to disturb neighbors- or the surf itself. I must be in tune and time with the surf. Chromatics, Clarke #1, have to fall into the proper places, not just the silence but the ebb and flow of sound. The exercise on thirds must find the note solid in the right place of the surf’s rhythm. Amazing how many things it takes to make music. But with time and experience they do fall into an intuitive second nature. Harmony.

At times I realize I am also hearing and seeing other parts merging in this chamber composition. The birds in the tree below, the silent hopping of the sparrows on the edge of the balcony, the gulls laughing, pelicans soaring and diving. Whom am I to intrude, to insist on the importance of my part over theirs? That’s the harmony. I am not here to force my will on that of the world. I must not or the music will be more than dissonant, it will be destructive.

In between exercises and runs I pause. One is to rest as much as one plays, is the old adage. Here, on the balcony, that is a pleasure. As I stop the surf remains. It brings a moment of refreshment before I pick up the horn again. The others instruments continue their own song, unaware that I am listening. The call and chatter of the gulls, Laughing Gulls, in fact, challenging my hubris that I of all creatures can think I can accompany the greater symphony. Or they just do what they are supposed to do simply because their melody is needed to fill out the sound.

I take an extra 15 minutes at the end of the routine to just improvise over different chords, working on my favorite tunes I want to play at jams- Amazing Grace, This Land is Your Land, and Horace Silver’s The Preacher. They are now my contributions to uniqueness, more than just routine, foundation, they are different every time, influenced I am sure by the mood of the Gulf and the melody playing around me.

I am both humbled (kept in my proper place)
And empowered (given the direction to do what I can do)
By these practice times on the balcony.

• Humbled at how little power I truly have;
• Humbled that I am allowed to accompany such beauty;
• Humbled that the surf and sand, birds and beach could care less!

Yet,

• Empowered because I, too, am part of this symphony simply by being here in this moment;
• Empowered to play and seek ongoing harmony with nature’s music;
• Empowered by the inner and outer beats of the Eternal Heart.

Music is a gift of God!

The Tuning Slide 3.21- Beyond Mediocre (2)

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

You have to, take a deep breath
and allow the music to flow through you.
Revel in it, allow yourself to awe.
When you play allow the music to
break your heart with its beauty.
― Kelly White

What else is there about practicing (this month's theme) that can help us rise above being simply mediocre? How about memorization built on sight-reading which itself is built on listening and rhythm?

If there is a secret - and easy - way to memorize, I haven’t found it. In fact I have seldom memorized a song all the way through. The only exceptions might be When the Saints Go Marching In and several songs I learned by ear. As I write that I also know that I have just given one of the not-so-secret ideas about memory work. Some of memory work goes back to what we talked about last week, listening. I have a hunch that memorization is more than just rote recall of something. Like I have said, you have to know the language. Sure, anyone can recite something in a different language without knowing what it means. But it will be lifeless compared to knowing the real feelings behind it.

The other thing that I have found that helps is having a better feel for the rhythm and style. This starts with the basics we always talk about- scales, chromatics, arpeggios, and the like. As we get to know the feel of these basics they become natural. We don’t have to think about them with Self One and will give appropriate control to Self Two. Then, when that run comes up in a performance piece or rehearsal, it just happens. Listening and rhythm then lead to what I have found to be the next pre-memorization step- sight-reading.

Sight reading
Expertise with sight-reading belongs
at the top of your list of priorities.
–The Musician’s Way, p. 99

This was one of my greatest weaknesses for years. Way back in high school I was a mediocre sight reader- at best. Even though I was first chair I had difficulty with sight reading. Part of that may be my somewhat ADD personality, but I didn’t know how to move beyond that. I would then take the music home and woodshed it and be able to play it like a first-chair should play it the next rehearsal. (We had an excellent second-chair who could sight read and was right there to support me and the section. Something every section needs!) Without going into the many decades since then, It was not until the last five or six years that I learned you can actually practice sight-reading.

Enter Getchell’s Second Book of Practical Studies for Cornet and Trumpet. They are amazing- and fun to play! They are based, among other things, on rhythm and time. The more I worked on that, the better my sight reading got. I then learned how to deal with a new piece of music and the “steps” of sight-reading. These include the obvious mental checklist of key signature, time signature, key changes, repeats, dynamics. But they also include a quick look at what appear to be difficult passages- and then humming or singing them. All this can be done in a relatively short time. The more time, the better. By the time the conductor raises the baton to start, I found I am no longer truly reading it for the first time. It is almost not sight-reading.

But here is where a paradox shows up for me. The more I get into the printed notes on the page, the less I am able to do it from memory. I have tried for years to memorize the closing section of Stars and Stripes Forever. Trumpets always stand to play it and I can’t read the music. Put the music in front of me and I can play it flawlessly. Take the music away and I easily get lost. Last year I worked on it using a lot of the new ideas and techniques I have been gathering for the last three years and I had it almost complete. In the end it became a melding together of all that I know about playing that came from listening enough to know the song including the rhythm and progressions (from sight-reading practice).

How then do I move on to greater ability to memorize? On the Your Music Lessons website I found this: (https://yourmusiclessons.com/blog/how-to-memorize-music-5-times-faster/)

The steps to memorizing can be broken down as follows:
• Put information into short term memory.
• Repeat the information in your short term memory multiple times.
• Sleep. [Important to moving information from short- to long-term memory.]
• Repeat steps 1 through 3.
• Do the whole process again after some time has passed.

(I like the sleep idea!) How then do I put these steps into practice? From The Musician's Way website here are The Four Stages of Memorization
https://www.musiciansway.com/blog/2010/05/the-four-stages-of-memorization/

Stage 1: Perception

Deep perception makes for solid memory. When we grasp the inner workings of a composition as well as how we want to shape each phrase, those rich connections lead to steadfast recall.

• What’s the structure, how does it flow, what are the emotions? This is the start of getting information into the short-term memory.

Stage 2: Ingraining
Ingraining is the means whereby we lay down enduring memory tracks. But beware: ingraining necessarily involves repetition, yet only mindful repetitions will do.

• This takes us back to all the elements of mindful practice. Just practicing doesn’t do it; practicing with images and goals will do a great deal. We need to make the music part of us, ingrained in us.

Stage 3: Maintenance
Even if we ingrain deeply, unless we maintain our memory, the mental connections we form will gradually disintegrate. Here are strategies that keep memories strong.

• Here we do things like record ourselves and listen or do mental reviews of what we have memorized. It keeps it alive.

Stage 4: Recall

• This is performance. Be relaxed and mindful, feel the emotions and trust in your preparation. With some of the music I have been working on this means getting myself out to a jazz jam or volunteering for the improvised solo in a gig.

This is exactly what I have been trying to do with some of the jazz work I have been developing. I have seen that as I work on playing by ear it allows the music to be more than just short-term since I cannot rely on visual memory alone. That in itself is a big piece of memorizing for me.

With all that here are some final thoughts on memory and music from Your Music Lessons: https://yourmusiclessons.com/blog/the-four-types-of-musical-memory/

“Muscle memory” is not even memory, it’s purely habit. Habits are formed in the most primitive parts of our brains. Studies have shown that people with no ability to form new memories, because of accidents or disease, are still able to form new habits. This shows that habits are not technically memories. When musicians depend on “muscle memory” what they really are doing is repeating patterns mindlessly.

This type of “memory” is also very prone to memory slips because the music is actually not in the musicians memory at all, and any small break from the habit (like a mistake or someone in the audience coughing) can cause the habit to break down.

Real music comes from our actively engaged minds. If the musician cannot sit down and write out an entire piece of music from memory, the piece is not memorized. Never try to acquire “finger memory”. It will come naturally because of constant repetitions. You should always seek an intellectual understanding and memory of the music first.

So, memorization, connected with playing/transcribing by ear, will be one of my goals over the next six-months. I’ll see if this old dog can still learn these new tricks.

The Tuning Slide 3.18- Ways to FInd Balance

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Life is like riding a bicycle.
To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

-Albert Einstein

Remember- how you do anything is how you do everything. If our lives as musicians are “out of balance” that means that many things we do are also out of balance. There is also the reverse way of thinking about this. If we begin to find balance in some different ways, the balance will begin to move into other areas as well. Balance is a physical as well as emotional factor. Our “sense of balance” comes from the inner ear, as many of us learned in high school health or biology. As a counselor who loves metaphors, I think the awareness of balance connected to the “inner ear” is a great metaphor well beyond the physical facts of human anatomy.

The “inner ear” is also be about that part of who we are that listens to how we are feeling, inwardly. The “inner ear” listens to the signals and feelings from within. The “inner ear” can “hear” discomfort and internal pain, it can feel “out of balance” and knock us out of whack as much as an inner ear infection can cause us to be dizzy and unable to maintain physical balance. (Yeah, I’ve had that happen!)

In this month’s posts I have been talking about the ways we can be “compleat” musicians. One of the things that seems to jump out of all that I have written is balance. That came to mind on Sunday at the Pops Orchestra concert. As the 4th trumpet I was only needed for the first number. I went out into the audience to enjoy the rest of the show. At intermission I went backstage and told the director how good it was sounding in the auditorium. His only question:

Was it balanced?

Yes, it was. Which was why it sounded good. Of course the question was more than just about whether the oboe could be heard appropriately with the violins. It was also about blend and how everyone was playing. If one trumpet is playing the section staccato and another is playing the same passage legato, it will stand out. So balance is more than just weighing two or more things against the others. It is the overall sound and tone, the style and dynamics. As always:

It’s all about the music

There are different things that I have found that can help me find balance so that I can translate it into my music. Perhaps the most valuable and effective are the movements and disciplines surrounding the ancient arts of yoga, T’ai Chi and Qigong. While yoga has kind of morphed into a wide range of exercise options, at its heart is the ability to move and stretch into a more balanced life. If you want it for aerobic or extreme exercise classes are available all over the place. I am not going to talk much about yoga. I highly recommend it for learning how to move and stretch, to grow into a more flexible and physically fit musician.

For me, the T’ai Chi and Qigong (pronounced chee-gung) based disciplines have become a key part of my own journey into better balance. I have been working on these two disciplines at various levels for four or more years. I am in no way an expert at these. I am a mere beginner who has discovered a way that has helped me in many, many ways. As I did some digging recently I found that a number of music schools, including Berklee and Vanderbilt have T’ai Chi courses for musicians. From Berklee’s catalog:

Tai Chi Chuan, or "Grand Ultimate Fist," is a moving meditation/exercise/martial art that can complement and energize your studies, music, and all the activities of your busy day. ... It is also a constantly evolving art/science that promotes physical, mental, and emotional balance, and is a useful tool for identifying playing-related tension patterns and opening constricted channels of the body. Tai Chi Chuan is a slow, flowing, no-sweat exercise with excellent health benefits that requires no uniforms or equipment, a moderate amount of floor space to perform, and no opponent to compete against except yourself. -Link

For their Qigong class, "Playing in the Key of Qi" Berklee says:

These exercises promote emotional balance, mental clarity, and an optimum physical state. Students will learn about the unique physiological benefits as well as how to apply these exercises to their instrument, daily activities, and creative endeavors. In addition, students will learn how qigong can act as a catalyst for healing or preventing an overuse injury and other health maladies. By the end of the course, students will be more able to conduct the inner orchestra of their mind, body, heart, and spirit through a state of relaxed awareness. -Link

The Harvard Medical School Guide to T’ai Chi (Harvard, 2013) lists ingredients that are the framework for T’ai Chi. Five that have particular impact for musicians:

• Awareness
• Intention
• Active relaxation
• Strengthening and flexibility
• Natural freer breathing

In that same book, there is a chapter on enhancing creativity with T’ai Chi. Artists and musicians make comments like:

If you like music, you will probably like T’ai Chi. You can learn to tune into your body and know what that means. (Harvard Guide, p. 254)

T’ai Chi is about getting flow to happen, from inside to outside, side to side, and top to bottom. This is the same as creativity. (Harvard Guide, p. 252)

The experience [of T’ai Chi] felt so similar to playing music. Movement, rhythm, themes, and even vibrations, all come into play in both activities. When you play music, you have to play in tune, balance with your fellow players, and know where you are without thinking about it. Practicing T’ai Chi teaches you to tune in to the mind-body, the sense of balance, of being in the moment, and nowhere else.Doing the T’ai Chi form is a lot like playing chamber music. (Harvard Guide, p. 253)

Okay, I know this is sounding like an infomercial on T’ai Chi and Qigong. I guess what I am trying to say is that this is one way I have discovered to build balance into my own practice. The meditation in motion enhances my awareness and mindfulness. The discipline of easy breathing is an aid to relaxation before or after practice or performance. (Sometimes even during a performance.) Playing music is for many of us far more than just the notes on the page. It is deep movement, it is the breathing, it is the experience of doing something with others that is moving and entertaining. Above all, it is also a gift to ourselves allowing us to find the melody and the balance in tune with ourselves and the world around us.

There are more places offering T’ai Chi or Qigong than in the past. Google it for your area or check with a local community education program or healthy living center. Do some exploring for yourself. The best way is to learn with a teacher, but there are some good videos that can help you discover what it means. Here are links to three videos that I have personally found helpful:

Don Fiore T’ai Chi
Qigong at Spark People
T’ai Chi Chih

Mindful Musician
Tai Chi Health Products

With these we come to the end of this month's tips on being a "compleat" musician. In the end, self-care in all its forms allows us to grow and develop our skills. We can learn to be better balanced in music as well as the daily lives that surround our music. Or perhaps the music surrounds our lives to give us greater harmony and joy in life.

Next month we will jump back into ideas about practice, reminding us of the effective, efficient, and deliberate ways that we can use on a regular basis. See you then.

The Tuning Slide: 3.14- The Inner Game- Why It Works

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Practice like you've never won;

Perform like you've never lost.

-various sources

When Tim Gallwey started the “Inner Game” teachings and Barry Green applied them to music, we didn’t know a lot about the brain. People like Gallwey went a lot on intuition and personal experience. As a tennis player himself and later a practitioner of meditation, he developed the principles based on seeing results from his ideas.

In those years neuroscience was often done blind since it was hard to watch the brain at work. They really had no idea how the brain functioned. As science progressed with all kinds of ways of scanning the brain a revolution began. It should come as no surprise that many of the old, traditional ideas of how the brain works were disproved. But it also should come as no surprise that many ideas that people like Tim Gallwey developed were right on target, though in slightly different ways. Scientists began to see that the brain was far more complex than they had even imagined. They learned how the two hemispheres of the brain had more to do with each other than had been thought. And it is in that interplay between the two hemispheres that the secrets of the Inner Game and mindfulness meditation were beginning to be unlocked.

The results of all this research and technological advancements is far more than I can even begin to understand in depth, let alone share in this post. But in short, much of it has given some scientific, research-based support for what Gallwey and Green have worked on with the Inner Game.

For me, one of them is how balancing Self 1 and Self 2 can have such an impact. Let’s sum it up as I interpret it:

• Self 1 is the logical, task-oriented, perfectionist who can be easily frustrated when things aren’t going right.
• Self 1 kicks your butt when you make a mistake.
• Self 1 is the one who tells me I am too old to become the type of trumpet player I have always wanted to be.
• Self 1 will hook on to all kinds of things to keep me from succeeding in order to prove my incompetence.

It sounds like Self 1 is out to sabotage me, but it isn’t. Self 1 has some real advantages. Self 1 is the one who can figure out problems utilizing information. Self 1 is the one who will tell me why, for example, Arban’s basic exercises are so important to maintaining my skill. Self 1 will then tell me, time to push yourself, Barry. Try something a little more difficult. Then, as soon as I try, and don’t do it perfectly, Self 1 can say, “Well, I guess we shouldn’t have done that.”

• Meanwhile Self 2 is standing in the background saying, “Hey, here I am. Yes, I can do that. Give me a chance.”
• Why? Because Self 2 had been doing just that for years. Self 2 has taken the ideas and work and pushing of Self 1 and turned them into my ability to move from simple to more complex music. The simpler stuff has become “natural” and Self 1 just lets Self 2 go ahead with it.
• Self 1 knows when I make a mistake. Self 2 says, “Yep. Let me correct it.”

There are many ways of describing this whole process. One of them we have often used is “Muscle Memory.” If I keep practicing that particularly difficult lick, it will become natural and I will intuitively remember it when I get to it. What neuroscience has discovered is that this “muscle memory” is, in reality, physical, in the brain- and real. As we develop our skills at the more complex tasks, the brain makes adjustments, shortcuts, to do them. The brain actually uses fewer neurons and less of our brain to do these complex tasks, leaving the brain more available for the things we haven’t learned yet.

In other words, our brains become more efficient at processing what we already know how to do, no matter how complicated. The brain has physically changed to do them. This is known as brain “plasticity”. The brain has the amazing ability to be continually changing throughout life, reorganizing itself, finding or making new pathways that are more efficient.

How do we utilize that efficiency more effectively? In how we practice. Deliberate practice, focus, awareness, mindfulness, listening, planning, openness to change, letting go. This will come up again and again as we think about and work toward greater skill. Deliberate practice says that the best way is not just to pick up the horn and play any old thing. It won’t get us to new levels of skill without being challenged.

In the last few weeks I have noticed a sloppiness setting in to some of my practice routine, especially with working on Clarke #1. I wasn’t hitting the notes as cleanly as I had been. My fingering dexterity had become uncertain. I was even missing the very basic chromatic scale we all come to know intuitively. So I changed my focus to be a little more deliberate. I decided to really listen to what I was doing. I slowed down the tempo of the exercise, paying attention to what I was doing.

Self 1 was in logical heaven. Not only was I working in ways that made the logical Self happy, Self 1 was loving it that I wasn’t doing as well as I had. “See. You are too old for this.” But Self 2 came to my rescue. Self 2 reminded me that I can do this. In fact, Self 2 was actually enjoying the fun of finding musicality in something as basic as chromatic scales.

Things are improving.

I went back and looked at the list of items from this year’s trumpet workshop and noticed three in particular, other than the ones on the Inner Game, that apply here.

• Hear it, study it, make it become natural
That’s really what we are about in all this. Using the brain’s plasticity to increase efficiency by making new circuits and pathways for action.

• If you panic you will die
Panic is Self 1 taking over and pulling the emergency brakes, bringing everything to a complete stop. It actually sabotages its own skills of investigation. Self 1 is basically lazy and doesn’t do well at thinking in new ways. It has to be pushed. Sometimes you have to tell it to stop so it can actually work with Self 2 at finding new ways.

• Just have fun! It will happen faster.
Let Self 2 have fun- and things will usually happen more effectively and in ways you may never have dreamed.

This is not just about music. All this applies to many other aspects of our lives. Remember that the Inner Game started out as a coaching method for tennis and has been turned into coaching for golf and business success as well. Learning how to utilize these skills with music will give you a step ahead in applying the same skills to whatever occupation or vocation or even hobby you pursue.

One of my “day jobs” for the past 25 years has been as an addictions counselor. In the disease of addiction the brain has been hijacked and its natural wiring has been short-circuited. Without brain plasticity my job would have been hopeless, recovery would have been impossible. Yet these advances in neuroscience have given me and the addiction treatment field new and exciting tools.

Much to my initial surprise the skills and tasks developed by Gallwey and Green in the Inner Game are at the heart of these tools. They also work in my career, my daily life, my relationships. We are all “pliable” in emotion, in attitude, and skill. We can build new wiring, shorten brain pathways for certain activities and therefore make them more efficient, use awareness and mindfulness to improve who we are and make life even more fun.

It’s an Inner Game and it’s worth playing.

The Tuning Slide: 3.10- Seeing Differently- Lessons from the Eclipse

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

What you see in a total eclipse is entirely different from what you know.
-Annie Dillard

I have often commented here about the need to connect our music and our lives. What we learn in one area can and should make a difference in the other. We have talked about that at Trumpet Workshop a number of times. Most of us are not going to be full-time professional musicians. We are going to be full-time something, however. The skills we use at one can be applied to the others.

It was with that in mind that I realized that there was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reflect on a total solar eclipse and figure out what I could learn from it. So I did the following:

• Planning
  
  • Check dates, clear calendar, coordinate with family
• Waiting
  
  • In between decision and the event, there will always be waiting. You can’t avoid it so how do you best utilize the time?
• Researching
  
  • Find the path, find a city, find a motel,
• Finalize plans and equipment
  
  • What kind of filters will I need for photography, what might I want to make sure I have ready,
  • What plans can I make for a Plan B?
• Practicing
  
  • Take the cameras out with the filters, get pictures and video, work on how different settings will impact the final product.

Here, then, in a slightly longer than usual post is the result.

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

It is the day- August 21, 2017. We have come to Kansas City, just on the southern edge of totality. We get up early to get to where we plan to watch the eclipse, Lathrop, a small town in western Missouri where the local Baptist church (among many others) has set up parking. We plan on getting there between the early rush and the later one to give us time to relax and be ready. Here, with later additions, is what I wrote during the next four and a half hours:

• 9:00 E(clipse)-2h 40m Sitting watching the clouds. Heat and humidity in the morning sun. But oh—oh that solid cloud deck! Weather Channel app on my phone says it is cloudy now but should clear. People from Oklahoma, Minnesota, Kansas, Texas, Wisconsin around us. Sixteen cars to a row, maybe 10 rows of cars in a field at the local Baptist Church’s north campus. Cameras on tripods, fancy reflecting telescopes, folding chairs, here and there a tent or canopy. I set up my cameras and take a couple of pictures to show the sky and the full sun.
• 10:00 E-1h 40m Took a walk around the grounds. One of the attendants told me some people wanted to be here early to get a good viewing spot! “I don’t want anything in my way.” “But lady,” he added, “just look up.” “But can we leave when its done?” since some places are having all kinds of other activities. The attendant pulled up the yellow plastic tape they used to mark off the parking area. “Just tear it,” he said as he shook his head in disbelief.
• 10:18 E-1h 20m
  
  Rain and thunder for about ten minutes. Now what? Looks like it could clear to the west.
• 10:41 E-1h Still overcast and sprinkling with thunder. Storms popping up. Will it or won't it? Looking less hopeful. I want to cry.
• 11:09 T(otality)-2h Not looking hopeful. But keeping the feeling of hope alive. This can still happen if only for part of the Eclipse. Washington Post just said it is starting in Oregon. Bring the sunshine with you, please. Should I try to figure out a Plan B or just stick with what I have planned?
• 11:25 E-15m Dare I say that it looks like some possible clearing to the west? I would hate to jinx it. It is still not out of the question?!?! Just don't say it out loud. A field full of eclipse watchers holds our collective breath.
• 11:30 E-10m The rain has stopped!? Sky brightening. Walked over and bought us a lunch. Now we will see if we have anything to see.
• 11:54 E+15m My first chance to see the eclipse.
  
  The clouds clear. I zoom the cameras, take my first pictures, start the video. It is happening.
• 12:45 We’ve had a relatively good run of clear skies. Almost a full hour of variable clouds and sun. I have paid attention to the advice from a photographer I read during my research: “Take your eye away from the viewfinder and watch the eclipse itself. You may never see anything like it again and you would hate to miss it.” I took five short videos totaling about 25 minutes of different points in the eclipse. It is amazing to watch it. I have seen a number of lunar eclipses but this is different. This is the sun being blocked. It is a “crescent sun.” I have also been watching the clouds to the west and southwest. They are the real thing. My heart sinks as I come to realize that they are moving faster than the moon. They will be the eclipse I see.
• 12:52 T-15 Clouds finally move in.
  
  I take my last picture before totality. It will be the last regular picture I take. I hold my camera at ready. I take the filters off both cameras- just in case. We will have to see what we can see here. There is no Plan B.
• 1:09 Totality- and clouds. We watched it get darker and cooler. People were quiet, still, perhaps sharing a moment of sadness or grief along with the amazement. Many of us have traveled to see this and now we won’t. I watched the clouds get darker. It begins to look like a tornado storm, but it is the shadow of the moon crossing the earth, approaching us. It is not like sunset- it moves much faster than that. It gets dark quickly.
• 1:09 - 1:13-
  
  I start the video camera to get shots of the horizon in its odd colors where the clouds have broken. As promised it is a 360 degree sunset in a purplish hue. I start a video pan to catch what I can. Then, just as I was about to turn it off and start packing up, a small break in the clouds. Third contact (the moving of the moon from the sun) has past; totality is over. The darkness on the other side of the clouds has moved southeast. For a moment there is the sliver of the sun. [Looking at the video later I am amazed at watching the darkness move across the clouds, more visible in a speeded up video. I will be putting a video together in the next week of the experience.]
• 1:20
  
  Heading back to our motel in bumper to bumper traffic. Making as much as 12 mph (mostly less) for over half of the trip. It took 2 1/2 hours to make the 40 miles we had done in 45 minutes that morning.

We were home by Thursday and I was coping with sadness and depression. The long-awaited and dreamed of event was over. I was still bummed. I had done all the right things to get ready:

• Planning
• Waiting
• Researching
• Practicing

And it didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to. It was out of my hands. I did my part to be at the right place at the right time, but that’s as far as I could go. So it goes. Powerless!

On Thursday evening I watched a cloudy sunset and realized how different it was from what I saw on Monday. New reflections began to ease the sadness. I began to explain to others what I saw and heard. Their amazement at what had happened that they didn’t get a chance to see touched me. I began to understand that I did get to see a good deal of the eclipse, my experience of the eclipse.

In other words, by Thursday I had to come to grips with what this event was going to mean for me. I decided, by action and intuition that I had to have my story to tell about the eclipse since I was there. A solar eclipse IS a big deal. But I had two choices:

1) Be a whiner, live in sadness and despair and depression that here was this incredible chance and it passed me by. Poor me! or
2) Reflect on what I DID experience in this rare opportunity. The eclipse did not pass me by. I saw the moon moving across the sun. I was with all those people locked in a common purpose and event. I was right there in the middle of totality as it happened. The world darkened; the temperature dropped; birds returned to their nests; humans stood in awe. It truly was something that felt out of this world.

As asked by the wondrous book and movie, Life of Pi, "which is the better story?" Which story includes hope and belief, wonder and meaning? That’s a no-brainer!

Now, a week later, I am excited by what I have experienced. The more I have talked about it, looked at some of my video, and listened to other people’s experiences, the truth of Annie Dillard’s words at the top of this post sink in. What I saw in this eclipse was different from everything I have ever known, even to the point of not seeing the totality but being impacted by it.

• What happens in an eclipse is this-
  
  • Our normal way of seeing things is blocked.
  • The sun is gone, covered by the moon.

All that we think we know about the world shifts, if only for the few minutes of totality. We are forced to react and respond differently, even if we know what is happening. It is not hard to imagine what people without the scientific and technological resources would think about a total solar eclipse. It can feel like the world is coming to an end.

Here then are my initial thoughts and learnings:

• Do the necessary footwork!
• Be open for the surprises that are there, even when they aren’t what you expected. Which in reality is most of the time.
• Let the moment be real and allow it to soak in to your own psyche.
• Be aware of your story and know that you can choose how you respond to what is happening.
• Choose the better story, the one that will stand the test of time and that you will be telling into the future.
• In the end I was forced by the clouds to take my eye away from the camera and watch the eclipse- and I am better for it.

Let’s translate that to our musicianship.

The Footwork:
Do the day in and day out work to become the musician (or whatever) you want to become. How many times can I play an opening exercise of long tones or those early Arban’s exercises? One more time than I already have! I will never reach the end. It will always be “one more.” Listen to music; read about it; learn the ins and outs of it.

The Surprises:
I will never know that solo or song or ensemble piece perfectly. I need to be open at each moment for the music itself to tell me what I need to know. That’s where Self Two can begin to take over and allow me to feel, hear, and internalize the music.

The Moment:
Which moment is the most important? The one you are in right now. Is it practicing? Make it good practice. Is it performance preparation? Mindfulness. Being in the moment and letting it happen. I played in a concert last Friday evening. I allowed the music to be present within me. I heard parts of the pieces that I had never heard before since we were outside, in a different venue. Those were the surprises. So was how I felt I was playing. Self Two was definitely as work. What a moment!

Your Story-The Better Story:
This happens after The Moment. This is the reflection on what has happened. Call it debriefing or evaluation, or awareness, this is where you make sense of what has happened and place it into its proper context. It may be that your solo went better than you hoped- or not as good as you wanted. What do you learn from that? Will it stop you from another solo or will you see that it can be different next time?

Take your eye away:
That eye is often Self One ready and willing to criticize us, tell us we can do it better- or that we can never do it right. Take your eye away from the technical and just play. Just do it. Relax and “play” in all the broad meanings of that wonderful word.

Enjoy. If you have done the footwork and practice and research, it will happen.