Tuning Slide 5.2- What I've Learned

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.
—Henry Ford

As I get into the fifth year of The Tuning Slide I took some time to think about what I have experienced and learned since that first August at Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop. I have decided to put it into the form of a letter to Bob Baca, the director of the workshop and my main mentor these past four years. I am not ignoring the other faculty and people at home who have been part of this journey with me. Together they have helped me implement the ideas and more to where I am today!

Hi Bob,

Well, I missed the trumpet week at Shell Lake this year. It was a tough decision, but I have an opportunity to do some different kind of stretching in my musicianship and I’m taking it. As I told you I will be going to an adult concert band camp in Door County in a couple weeks and couldn’t swing both this year. But more on that later in the year. Instead I want to summarize the many things that you (and the others) have helped me achieve.

What I have learned from these past 4 years:

1. Routine!
I remember from these years at Shell Lake that you and the faculty have often said that one plays a high C the same way one plays a low C. At first I didn’t understand, but I believed you and kept waiting for it to happen while doing what I needed to do. The time spent on playing the lead pipe and LONG TONES has paid off. Last year at the Brass Festival in North Carolina I found myself just playing what was on the page- and the notes came out. The answer to that was a routine. A routine that is regular and consistent.

2. The Basics.
I learned that if we don’t continue to work on our skills, develop our tone, practice rhythms and etudes, we can become stale. Over these past four years I have been renewed in my skills, I have practiced and discovered more ways to speak the language of the trumpet and to put more style and tone and life into it. If I am to grow in any way in my abilities I have to practice the basics- which you have taught me to do and then move into greater technical proficiency. All I wanted to do was be a better musician- and it has happened.

Many years ago I was a first-chair, lead trumpet with whatever skills a high school senior could have in1965. I have learned the importance of being a section player and have discovered all kinds of new techniques. I have never stopped playing, but in the past four years I went from “just playing” to “being musical”. I would never have believed it when I left Shell Lake after that first camp in 2015. I have been amazed at what can happen- and yes, as I have said before, even an old dog can learn many, many new tricks.

Perhaps above all else I have discovered the absolute necessity of never leaving the basic behinds. The Bill Adam routine has taught me not to forget or neglect these basics on a daily basis. I play 10-20 minutes of long tones in various forms every day. It is the foundation. I play exercises in all 12 major keys; I go back and use the first Arban exercises regularly; I discovered that if I can hear it, I can play it. My fingers now move more fluidly through muscle memory and my ears hear more through aural memory. I have learned to always have a beginner's mind!

3. Easy does it. Patience, slow down.
Don’t force it; don’t rush it. The secret to playing fast is to play slowly. Sometimes so slowly that you may not even recognize the tune. If it isn’t working, go back to the basics behind it. So simple, yet so powerful.

4. You can skip a day but you’ll never get it back
I have missed very few days over these last four years, mostly when I was recuperating from surgery and wasn’t allowed to play. Once in a while I may take a day off because there was no way around it. More often I will do the basic long-tones and scales for 30 minutes. On most days I play and now I can play a lot.

5. Listen, listen, listen
Pay attention to yourself in your own practice and to those around you in rehearsal. We practice alone to get to now our part. We rehearse with others to know how our part fits in with the others.

6. The Inner Game- trust self 2
The Inner Game ideas have been around a while and they work. I have known them for years; now I know how to better utilize them and to trust me - Self 2- to do what I can do.

7. Play out. Just do it.
Some may think that a “timid trumpet player” is an oxymoron. Put me in a group or public performance and I would become a timid musician. What a waste. It is exciting. That doesn’t mean to over-perform, be over loud or obnoxious. I means what it says- just do it!

8. Stretch outside the box
I know the importance of stretching one’s skills. It is how we grow. What I have learned in these past four years has given me some directions on how to do that. I enjoy it too much now to even think of stopping.

9. It’s at least 90% mental.
The basics of playing and performing music are the easy parts. Just keep practicing. This goes back to- and expands on the inner game. If you don’t think you can do it- you won’t be able to do it. But if you believe you can- you will- even if it takes months and years of practice.

10. Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the basis of a life of hope and growth. Being self-aware and then being aware of all that is around me and living within it- that’s the ability to be mindful. It doesn’t mean lack of growth or being content with just leaving things as they are. It means being attentive and in my musicianship knowing where I can go next.

That’s what I have learned. Here is what I have received:

A. Play like you like it- and you will like playing.
This is perhaps best described in the meme: If you don’t like playing long tones, you probably don’t like playing trumpet. Really? Yep! It is fun to discover something new with different ways of doing long tones each day. I really like playing and it makes a real difference each day.

B. Confidence
Two weeks ago at a community band rehearsal I had to play a solo part that I had never read before since the soloist wasn’t able to be at that rehearsal. Then I had to play some upper register lines. Yep- I did both. Confidence has built. I don’t get panicked when I see some of those notes or at a passage I would have backed off from before. Now, later this week, I will be attending that concert band camp where I have to audition. I am not the least bit afraid. Call out a major key- I can play any of the 12. Give me a sight-reading page- I know the basics. Am I nervous or anxious. Not any more. Now I am excited.

C. Energy and excitement
What can I say? They sum up what I have been given. The other day I was feeling a little under the weather and restless, unable to find something to direct me. My wife looked at me and simply said, “Go play your trumpet. That always works.”

And it did.

Thank you, Bob and the Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop. You have given me one of the greatest boosts of the past 30 years.

Crazy? Yep- crazy good!

Tuning Slide 4.33- Keep the Rhythm

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

To live is to be musical, starting with the blood dancing in your veins. Everything living has a rhythm. Do you feel your music?
― Michael Jackson

As I write this I am sitting on a balcony overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. There is a hazy cloudiness, but still some diluted sunlight. The wind is coming at about 10 mph from the southwest. The palm branches sway with the winds rising and falling. I see reflected off my computer screen a kite behind me catching the wind. I hear the call of gulls and children laughing and playing. Later there will be the possibilities of thunderstorms and tomorrow is forecast to be at least 20 degrees colder, so I want to enjoy what I have at the moment.

But more importantly is the constant sound from the waves. The consistent rhythm of the tide and currents is what touches me and depths I have no way of touching in a conscious way. Some will say it’s because of the none months before we are born, hearing the watery amniotic fluid in it’s rhythm. Others will point to the heartbeat and the rhythm of the blood in our brains. Others still will point to the vibrating rhythms of the universe. It doesn’t matter how or why, it is simply to say that we live in a world of rhythm, pulses, movement of sound waves, most of which we cannot even hear.

We all have rhythm! Mickey Hart, percussionist with the Grateful Dead explained it as the movement from chaos to order:

In the beginning, there was noise. Noise begat rhythm, and rhythm begat everything else.

I did a quick Google search on songs with the word rhythm in the title. While there were many versions of some of the classics, here are six:

✓ Fascinating Rhythm
✓ Rhythm of the Falling Rain
✓ Girls Got Rhythm
✓ All God’s Children Got Rhythm
✓ Rhythm Nation
and of course,
✓ I Got Rhythm.

A few years ago I did a post on the idea of rhythm in expanding on rhythm as one of the three things every trumpet player (and musician) needs to have:

There are three characteristics of a great trumpet player:
1. Every time you play you have a great- not a good- sound.
2. You have great- not good- rhythm.
3. You have great- not good- ears to hear the sound. (Link)

In essence you have to have a sound that’s worth playing and listening to, a rhythm that turns the sound from noisy chaos into music, and the ability to hear it all.

This came up in my thinking the other day as I was “drumming” along with a song on the radio. I was attempting a steady beat that wasn’t just single drum beats. I was trying to fit into the style and rhythm of the song. What I discovered again, other than why I am a trumpet player and not a percussionist, is how difficult it really is to keep the beat steady AND interesting. Sooner or later I always miss a beat, come in late, or just generally mess up the whole thing.

Which brought me to the next thought about playing in a jazz big band. The “rhythm section” isn’t just the drummer. It is also the piano, bass, and guitar. Sure, they all get solos from time to time and some of them even get a melody, but they are, together, the rhythm of the band. They keep us moving at the steady and appropriate beat. Rhythm is far more than just keeping good time. It is the entire flow of the music. When we work together at the rhythm, when we get in synch or flow, music truly happens and we, I firmly believe, are in touch with the music of the cosmos.

Our biological rhythms are the symphony of the cosmos, music embedded deep within us to which we dance, even when we can't name the tune.
― Deepak Chopra

For me it is easier to keep rhythm on the trumpet than on the steering wheel of my car or the table I am typing at. It is my way of expressing rhythm. It is part of my “biological rhythm.” This is one of the important things I have discovered (and rediscovered many times) over the years. The music I make has rhythm- and I have to learn to feel, hear, and reproduce it through the horn. Which in both the short- and long-term takes me back to basics- yep, Arban, Clarke, Schlossberg, etc. As I work through those routines I begin to feel rhythm. I begin to know what it feels like to be in the right rhythm for the song. Self 2 just goes there and I work with it. Fortunately it doesn’t matter whether we are jazz, classical, or polka musicians. In those basics we learn what rhythm is. And we discover how it touches us.

Build the ear for rhythm by working the rhythm of the basics, then moving on. Feel the movement of the song. Watch for the unexpected that means the rhythm is changing. It is more than keeping the right tempo. Metronomes don’t provide rhythm, for example. They only give us a guideline for what speed something is to move. That may be helpful sometimes in practice, but it will never help us develop a sense of rhythm. Time in music is a structure on which the rhythm is built. You start with the sound and make sure you have the best sound you can have.

Then you let it flow. The world will change!

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
― Rabindranath Tagore

Tuning Slide 4.6- Learning from LIstening

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

If there is a behavior you are trying to change, be it large or small, listen to what you are saying to yourself as you work on it. You could be the only person/voice standing in your own way.
— Samantha Smithstein Psy.D.

Last week I talked about the importance of recording oneself for learning and improvement as a musician. I didn’t talk about two things, what I discovered and am doing about it and what does this all have to to do with every day living.

Let’s start with the trumpet stuff. I am not an expert, but have managed to pick up a great deal of insight from the great faculty at the Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop. I hear their voices and suggestions whenever I seek to play better. It is always, they will say, about the sound! What do you hear? Are you listening? It’s also about the breath. How are you breathing? Is it relaxed?

Listen to yourself. Listen, listen, listen.

Well, when I listened to myself on the recording I liked what I heard in general, but was really aware of what needed work. Let’s be honest. We can be our own worst critics, hearing everything that’s wrong even when it’s only a brief slip here or there. I was needing to be my own best critic- that means I needed to be a constructive critic of my playing. I needed to listen musically as if it were someone else.

I know how to do that. I have listened to live music and heard things that I knew were needing improvement. Ever since my first experience of hearing my tired, blah sound those six or so years ago, I have been more aware of it when I hear it. It is because I know what it sounds like- and that it can be dealt with- that allowed me to take the leap of faith unto the recording a few weeks ago. I knew I could trust both my Self 1 and its “great” analytical powers and my Self 2 and its love of music to lead me in the right direction when I wanted to change and grow.

What I learned in more depth than I ever realized it was that I tend to be a sloppy player. I had at times a very sloppy sound. Not always. I noticed that the songs I knew best in the set were usually much, much better than some of the newer or more complicated pieces. There were several songs that we have been playing as a group for most of the ten years I have been with the group. Those I heard my sound clearly and with a musicality that I could appreciate. (Pat on the back, Barry. See, you can do it!)

What does a sloppy sound mean? That was my question to myself as I listened more closely. It was not enough just to say that it was sloppy. That was an immediate reaction which could be discouraging. Go deeper, I told myself. What is sloppy? I was aware of four things, listed from the most basic and obvious to those I have learned from my mentors:

1. Not hitting notes cleanly. That meant I would either slip to a higher note or stick on a lower note. It also meant that old bugaboo of mine- the dull, non-energetic tone. I also learned this past few months that this is also a sign that I am not centering the air and holding its strength as it plays through the music. This happened way too often, even on the songs I knew well. That meant another problem that I talk about later.

2. Articulation issues. Part of that was the air from above. But it was also inefficient use of valve changes and careless movement of my fingers from note to note. I was not being as precise in my fingering as I could- and the result was that at times it sounded like I was simply playing a series of notes and not a melody line. Again, the older songs, even those that were more complicated, didn’t have this as much as the newer ones.

3. Distraction. Since it is me listening to me playing, I know the musician quite intimately. One thing I know is that I can be on the edge of ADD way too often. (Squirrel!) My mind can easily move off its own center line. I know from hard experience in my practice room that when that happens I can easily get lost even when playing a simple C major scale. I could hear that in my playing. Some of those flubs were just silly moments when my mind went somewhere other than the music or its sound.

4. Finally, playing at the music, instead of through it. This is a deeper discussion of what I mentioned in the first one above. Let it flow, move the air in a steady stream and keep the tongue from getting in the way.

What then is there for me to do? Thanks to my teachers and mentors I have set up a few things to handle these.

First, I am paying attention to the basics of the long tones. (Oh, not them again!) I have been doing them every day for a year and a half, but there is always something new they have to teach me. I am discovering that they are my best friends. (If you don’t like playing long tones, you don’t really like playing trumpet I have been told.) I do a set of them in whisper (very, very soft) tones. I am listening, carefully, trying to keep the sound centered and what it feels like.

Second, I am doing it slowly. Most mistakes come from trying too fast. Slow on the long tones, slow on the exercises from the beginning of the Arban’s book, slow from Getchell- so I can listen while still moving the valves deliberately.

And third, go for a lesson! Which is scheduled for later this week and then I am planning one a month through December when it can be arranged.

For life, then, in this whole discussion about recording oneself and listening:

• Focus. Unless we learn ways to maintain focus in life, we will get sloppy. We will miss important things that are around us and in front of us. And the best teacher of focus can be-
• Mindfulness. The non-judgmental action of bringing one’s attention to the present moment without putting values on them is an invaluable skill. This gets us in touch with our feelings and reactions. We miss so much of our daily lives by losing focus and mindfulness. We ignore important things and settle for the trivial because we don’t see what’s around us. But for it to work we have to have-
• Teachability- honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness. There will be countless times each day when the opportunity to learn something new will be in front of us. Watch for the teachers, listen for the mentors. Then move forward.

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.