Tuning Slide 5.16- Beyond the Notes

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

In the end it’s not about the instrument. It is pulling out everything in your soul.
Benjamin Zander

Benjamin Zander is the founder of the Boston Philharmonic and the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. He is an author and an engaging speaker. I first came across one of his music interpretation class videos with a young man playing the trumpet solo from Mahler’s Symphony #5. (Link) He is working with a young trumpet player he introduces as the greatest player his age anywhere in the world. As you listen and watch, Zander does some of the most incredible bits of teaching I have ever seen. Beyond the simple pleasure of hearing this music played so well, it is a deeper pleasure to watch and learn from Zander. “I want to hear more than trumpet playing,” he says at one point. “I want to hear the meaning of this piece encapsulated in this opening.”

Wow. Really?

Yes. It is about what is within us that we bring to the music to give it an aliveness. Even if we could play a Mahler piece like this just as Mahler wrote it, we would not be adding the elements that make each of our performances of a piece unique. How many different recordings are there of, say, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony? (A quick search on Amazon showed 193 hits under CD and vinyl; 367 under digital music.) Why is Bernstein different from Karajan or Barenboim or your college director? The soul and spirit of the conductor.

The conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound. He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful.
Benjamin Zander

And none of these will ever get close to what Beethoven heard in his mind when he wrote it.

My task then, as a musician, is to learn to put my soul into the piece I am playing. It is to find that space in my spirit and life that connects with that piece of music, pull it together, and then let it play through the horn. I wish it were that easy. He does that with Elmer Churampi in the video mentioned above. See how Churampi shits the music ever so slightly through the video as he is urged on my Zander to make this amazing solo his own.

Zander then takes this idea from different starting places in other videos. “The audience doesn’t hear notes, it hears phrases,” he says at one point. He illustrates this in a TED talk and shows what happens when the musician moves beyond notes to the music itself. All the notes of western music are, in essence made up of the same 12 tones. I heard a musician joke once that he had been given a request for a particular piece. He said he didn’t know that one, but it is made of the same notes he was about to play. The differences are in how you use the notes, how they fit together in a flow (or phrase) and what the musician brings to it.

Zander is telling us that to get from the beginning to the end of a piece, we have to stop thinking about every single note along the way! That may be how we first learned to play our instrument- and it may be a bad way to learn- but it is the way we usually do it. We end up understanding a lot of individual notes, but do we know the music? Do we know the soul of the piece? Finding that can be a journey of an entire lifetime. In one video Zander, talking to a young musician, talks about the sensuality that the particular composer used to inform the composition. He looked at the young man and told him, “You are a wonderful musician - but you don’t have the depth yet.”

He connects this with what he calls “vision.” And this type of vision is the long-term view of nothing less than life itself. That will come, if you practice and see it more than just notes. Here are two possible exercises to build this:

✓ Start with something familiar and easy; something you know well or can learn in an instant. Take “Mary Had a Little Lamb”.Spend some time getting the feel of the song under your fingers and into your head. The normal flow, the way you have always sung it or heard it.

⁃ Then move to changing the rhythm a little. Swing the notes.
⁃ Add then change accents.
⁃ Think about what the words of the song are saying? What are the feelings they bring to mind?
⁃ For example, do they remind you of a wonderful childhood memory? Play it with joy. Do they remind you of the loss of a parent who used to sing it to you? Play it with sadness? Do you remember singing it to your younger sibling or a child you were babysitting or your own child? Play it with comfort.
⁃ Do this regularly until the song itself is expressing you.

✓ Go to something more complex and do some of these same things, but also let your understanding of the music change it. Play it in the relative minor key to the usual key. Perhaps even play it in all 12 major keys and see how it sounds different in different keys. What is your favorite key to play it in? Is it the one that is easiest to finger, or is it the one that captures the tonal quality you like in the music?

Yes, it takes time. But take the time. The self-factor will shine and illuminate the music. Just don't let it outshine the music. No matter how you view it, it is not about you- it is always the music!

The major difference between the 'best' and the 'average' is that the 'best' get as much pleasure from practice as performance.
Benjamin Zander

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

Videos mentioned above.

Mahler’s 5th Symphony Class:


TED Talk:


Haydn Cello Concert Class:



Interpretations of Music-Lessons for Life:
Link

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!

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.

4.20- Tuning Slide: Confidence, Ego, and Humility

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

If you got a trumpet, get on your feet, brother, and blow it!
— Nick Cave (punk-rock musician)

That’s a call to confidence if I ever heard one. Barry Green in the book Mastery of Music that we have been looking at over these months lists the eighth and ninth pathways to mastery this way:

# 8: Confidence: From Bravura to Integrity (Trumpet)
# 9: Ego and Humility: From Fame to Artistry (Opera, Jazz, and Theater Singers)

What really is confidence? Green quotes a definition this way:

An accepted and unheralded evidence within a person that gives a person the unconscious knowledge that he/she is able to produce outstanding results in his/her chosen career under almost any circumstances. Full technical control is a must: this “evidence to oneself” provided by preparation and determination is what fosters confidence and it becomes stronger with experience.

He then lists some of the ways we develop confidence. Among them are:

◦ Preparation by Overpreparing
We are back at practice, practice, practice. If we think we can escape from that or make it optional because of how far we have advanced, forget it. Right now. Some truly advance players may get by with a daily “warm-up.” But that “warm up” will always include scales, chromatics, long tones, and all the basics. And it will usually be at least two to three hours a day. So practice is where confidence must start, not on some self-interpreted view of how good we are. This also includes knowing more than just what we are doing. Sometimes that means studying the music, reading about it, listening to recordings in order to find out where and how your part fits in. It’s all in the over preparing! As Green puts it, we are not just a “right-note” playing machine. We are making music.

◦ State Your Case with Passion and Meaning
Because of the over preparation, one does move beyond just playing the right notes. One also beings the excitement, the passion, the meaning of the music to life. My interpretation of that will be different from yours. If we are in a group together, we learn to state our understanding in relationship to the other musicians. That brings in the ability to listen and learn.

◦ Confidence is a Journey of Learning
Learning is what confidence opens us up to do. Paying attention in practice, rehearsal, and performance opens us to know what we need to do to move forward. Since we have over prepared, we have moved beyond “right-notes” to expressing ourselves. But that doesn’t always work. We get lost, make a mistake, get stuck. So learn from it. The next time, when we get it the way we want it, our confidence will be back.

◦ Stay Within Your Limits, (then) Don’t Think, Just Play
Needless to say, Green, as one of the teachers of the Inner Game, brings us around to allowing Self 2 to be in charge. Thinking is Self 1. By this time we have learned (Self 1) that we can do what we want to do. We then trust ourselves (Self 2) to do it. If we are honest about what we can do at this moment, we will know what is ready for public performance and what isn’t there yet. Staying within limits is NOT about only playing what you used to be able to play, it is about not moving on until Self 1 can shut up and let Self 2 move on.

How do we maintain and continue to build confidence? If we only rest on what we did last time, we will not grow as a musician nor develop confidence to do more than we did last time. Here are some of the ways Green mentions to help confidence grow:

◦ Focus on the Music, Not on What People Think of You
◦ Focus on What You Have Accomplished and What You Can Do
◦ Enjoy Your Anxieties- You are Not Alone
This last one can be tough. This may be where many give up, lose confidence, stop growing. I am not the first player to have flubbed playing Taps on Memorial Day (an old story.) But when I allowed that to become m identity as a solo trumpet player, my anxieties became too great and I couldn’t move beyond them. We grow in confidence when we we are honest with ourselves and move on.

Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player.
— Miles Davis

Confidence can build the image that trumpet players have been accused of. Green calls that “bravura,” the swagger and overt confidence we present even when we don’t have it. Trumpet players are not known for their quietness and humility. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that! If anything it is a call to maintain our proper place in the band. That leads to humility. Humility, of course, can have a couple definitions. One is humility means that we are willing to be teachable. A second is to have a proper knowledge of our strengths and weaknesses. Confidence, built on humility is powerful. It will ring out with the sound of, well, trumpets.

It takes a healthy ego to become confident enough to be humble. What a seemingly paradoxical statement that is! Low self-esteem does not build confidence. Low self-esteem presents our weaknesses and uncertainties and set in stone. “Poor me, that’s just the way I am.” Healthy ego allows us to be truly humble. Oh, by the way, I am not sure we can work on becoming humble. “Look how hard I’ve worked and how successful I have become at being humble!” Not!

I have put these two pathways to mastery together because I believe that when one reaches the pathway of confidence the logical next step is moving away from negative ego to true humility. One cannot, or better not, become so enamored of one’s own sound on the instrument, especially trumpet, that we think we are far and above others. THAT is not confidence. That is unhealthy ego. But neither should the musician, especially the trumpet playing musician, be so shy as to hold back when they need to stand up and blow! Humility does not mean taking a back seat or being reserved when the situation calls for leadership. Musical leadership, whether one is a lead trumpet player or third clarinet, is found in the attentiveness to the music, the focus on one’s sound, and the ability to play well with others.

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision.
You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.
—Theodore Hesburgh

Tuning Slide 4.14- Finding Motivation

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

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

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

Practice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Therefore: don’t practice mistakes

Green has a number of insights into this as well:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What a great cycle to be part of.

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

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

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

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

Discipline: The Way of the Will

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fun: The Joy in Music

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

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

Tuning Slide 4.9- Recreation and Playing

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Recreation’s purpose is not to kill time, but to make life,
not to keep a person occupied, but to keep them refreshed,
not to offer an escape from life, but to provide a discovery of life.
—Unknown

I have a hunch about why, at least in English we say that we “play” music.

If you are a musician you may have wondered about the word we use in English to describe what we do when we make music with an instrument. We, of course, “play” the instrument, “play” music. What a wonderful way to describe it. We “play”! We don’t work, or stress, or force music. (Well, we may do that, but that’s what we are doing to ourselves, not the music.)

It got me to thinking about the deeper meaning of this. But first I checked out what some other languages use.

In German, it is the word spielen- to play; in French, it is jouer- to play. Both these are the same meaning for playing a game, etc. as in English.

In Spanish, though, it’s a little different. The word used with music is not the same. It is tocar- to touch, be in contact with, play (as in music.) (The word for playing games, etc. is jugar.)

I love the idea that we play when we make music. It truly is why many of us were hooked by it’s magic, lured into a lifetime of developing playing skills. It is far more than the ability to turn some marks on a page into a sound that can touch souls. (Notice the word “touch”? I’ll come back to that.) To play is to take part in something or to engage in something for enjoyment and relaxation. (Google) Why else would we spend all these hours practicing and learning, running scales and long tones? It must be fun. Since most of us will never earn a living at it, there has to be some deeper and more important thing to making music.

Not that we don’t “work” at it. Of course we do. We run the routine, do our scales, learn (and relearn again and again) the basics of something we may have been doing for decades. That has to be fun, enjoyable, entertaining, purposeful in some way, or we would have quit long ago. But we haven’t quit. We may feel like it some days when we can’t do what we did so easily last week. But we don’t. We know the truth that we haven’t yet reached our best sound, no matter how good it may be today. But it is “play.” Recreation.

But, like “play”, “recreation” is not something purposeless and inane. It is to “create again,” to “renew”. That quote for this week says it so well. Recreation (and the related, relaxation) are paths into life and discovery of wonder and renewal. We are not as good at that as we could be. There is always room for improvement that leads to many positive things. When we take time to re-create, to relax and renew there are many benefits. I went to the Mayo Clinic, Healthy Lifestyles, Stress Management Web page and found a long list of the benefits. I am putting a mark at the end of each one that can be a good example of what playing music can do: (Link)

• Slowing heart rate
• Lowering blood pressure
• Slowing your breathing rate << Playing wind instruments can help us learn how to breathe more efficiently.
• Improving digestion
• Maintaining normal blood sugar levels
• Reducing activity of stress hormones
• Increasing blood flow to major muscles << Increased oxygen from more efficient breathing.
• Reducing muscle tension and chronic pain
• Improving concentration and mood << The mindfulness and focus needed certainly carries into the rest of our lives.
• Improving sleep quality
• Lowering fatigue
• Reducing anger and frustration << Many things about playing music and practicing can help relive these tensions.
• Boosting confidence to handle problems << Being successful can only make us feel better about what we can do.

The Mayo Clinic site then gives some good suggestions about relaxation techniques that I know help improve our music playing- and will then help with stress and recreation- which will then help our music… and it just keeps on going. You will, in fact, find many musicians and books on music (such as Barry Green’s books based on the “inner game”) suggesting many of these.

• Autogenic relaxation. Autogenic means something that comes from within you. In this relaxation technique, you use both visual imagery and body awareness to reduce stress.
You repeat words or suggestions in your mind that may help you relax and reduce muscle tension. For example, you may imagine a peaceful setting and then focus on controlled, relaxing breathing, slowing your heart rate, or feeling different physical sensations, such as relaxing each arm or leg one by one.

• Progressive muscle relaxation. In this relaxation technique, you focus on slowly tensing and then relaxing each muscle group.
This can help you focus on the difference between muscle tension and relaxation. You can become more aware of physical sensations.
In one method of progressive muscle relaxation, you start by tensing and relaxing the muscles in your toes and progressively working your way up to your neck and head. You can also start with your head and neck and work down to your toes. Tense your muscles for about five seconds and then relax for 30 seconds, and repeat.

• Visualization. In this relaxation technique, you may form mental images to take a visual journey to a peaceful, calming place or situation.
To relax using visualization, try to incorporate as many senses as you can, including smell, sight, sound and touch. If you imagine relaxing at the ocean, for instance, think about the smell of salt water, the sound of crashing waves and the warmth of the sun on your body.
You may want to close your eyes, sit in a quiet spot, loosen any tight clothing, and concentrate on your breathing. Aim to focus on the present and think positive thoughts.

Other relaxation techniques may include:
• Deep breathing
• Massage
• Meditation
• Tai chi
• Yoga
• Biofeedback
• Music and art therapy
• Aromatherapy
• Hydrotherapy
(Link)

One last thing, though, which goes back to the Spanish word used for “playing” an instrument. That word, tocar, to touch or be in contact with. It is an apt description of the two-way street of making music. It touches us, moves us, gets us in contact with something greater than ourselves. Music is certainly that! But, if we stop and think about it, that is also what we do with music. We “touch” it, make “contact” with it. I can feel that contact when the music is in the groove, or in harmony, or just plain old centered. That’s what our hours of practice can lead us toward- the contact that makes music such a central part of our lives. And from that, we learn how to do that in the rest of our lives as well.

Here is a podcast about mindfulness and self-talk as relaxation and music-playing, music-touching exercises.

Tuning Slide 4.5- The Power of Recording

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak;
courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
— Winston Churchill

In spite of the fact that I am often an early adopter in finding and using new technology (a geek, in other words), I have not been great at utilizing recording myself to improve my sound and musicianship. Yes, I have always agreed that it is a good idea, but, well, you know, sometimes I don’t do what I know is a good idea. I think, perhaps, that I was actually afraid to truly listen to a recording of myself for fear of what I might hear.

Sure, I have heard recordings of myself playing as part of a band, which may be where the fear actually came from in the first place. It was a number of years ago that I first did a recording of our big band and a number where I had the solo. I was excited about what it sounded like. I thought I did well. I downloaded the video onto the computer and hit play.

Ouch! There was no tone; the sound had no energy and barely felt like it was moving; it felt flat- in all dimensions of the meaning of that word. I was embarrassed for myself and felt like I should apologize to the audience and my colleagues in the band for what I sounded like.

This was before my first experience at Shell Lake Arts Center and that initial session with Bob Baca. At that time he introduced me to a number of the ideas of Bill Adam to be used in practice. I learned about blowing the sound through the notes and not at them; I learned about centering the sound; I learned about ways to actually be successful at practice. I put them into effect and, but a few months later I heard another recording of myself in the quintet and I had a whole new sound. I played it for Mr. Baca and he smiled!

I have recorded our quintet a number of times but never to focus on myself alone. I was listening for the sound of the group, how we fit together, how our balance and tone and dynamics complemented each other. I wasn’t upset about what I could hear in myself. But it wasn’t my goal.

Yet every year at trumpet camp I heard people say we should record ourselves. I thought about it and did a couple things using recordings of myself to play duet parts with myself. But, again, I wasn’t listening to me, just the notes.

I believe I was unconsciously afraid to hear what I might truly sound like. While the quote from Winston Churchill above wasn’t about listening to ourselves playing music, it still applies. If I am willing to be honest with myself and listen critically, it will take courage. Until I realized I needed to do that, I hesitated. Well at this year’s Shell Lake trumpet workshop, one of the leaders (Thanks, Quentin!) talked about how he recorded himself every night when he was on a year-long national musical tour. Then he would listen and make notes, critically, in order to improve. I realized what that could do and set my mind to do it.

Fortunately the big band had two gigs right after camp. I hadn’t asked Quentin how he did it, but I figured out a method. I set my iPhone on a stand right next to my music stand. In essence I was playing into the mike on the phone while still getting the overall sound of the band. The first gig’s recording was disappointing for a number of reasons beyond my control. So I erased it and set it up at the next gig. This one worked. There I was, clear as day; there was the band behind me doing its thing. Now I had to listen critically.

I have been told that the best way to give critical feedback is to give the good first as the foundation on which to build. I did that. I didn’t cringe at my sound like I did in that earlier recording five or six years ago. I liked the general tenor of my sound. I felt I was following well and that there was real energy in what I was playing. Improvement! Hearing those things first helped strengthen me for now listening for what wasn’t as positive or as musical as it could. Knowing that listening could give me clues to what I needed to work on next, I listened again.

That, too, worked. I could hear the things I was clearly deficient at. I could also hear things about my playing that surprised me. It is important when preparing to listen to yourself play from a recording that you realize that while playing you never hear yourself the way others do. We are normally hearing ourselves from behind the horn. Believe it or not that can often be louder than it truly is. One reason is that we are often hearing the sound slightly reflected off our music stand. More to the point, we are “hearing” sounds that no one else can hear- the vibrations of the horn against our lips and hear, flowing through the bones and skin of our head and face and into the inner ear without going through the air. It is the same way listening to a recording of our voice. It never sounds to us like us. So don’t be surprised at the sound you hear. It will probably have less bass and different overtones than you are used to hearing in yourself! You will also not hear yourself in balance with the rest of the band. The mike is at your stand and your sound will be predominant. If you want to hear how you blend with the rest of the band you need to put the mike out front of the whole group. But that’s not the purpose of this recording. I wanted to hear my sound.

You will hear a lot of other things. You will hear strong or weak articulations. You will hear changes in tone and color that you didn’t know were there. You will discover that things were not as alive (or more alive) than you wanted. You will hear every mistake, wrong note, slipped note, flub and frustrating fingering. You will hear how your sound generally blends with the sound of the group. Is your tone brighter or darker? Is your articulation the same as the rest of the section? Am I playing with the same musicality as my fellow musicians?

I realized that it was the real reason I was doing this. My goal was not to pat myself on the back and pin a first place medal on my shirt. I wanted- I needed- to hear this since I don’t normally hear that when I am behind the horn.

So have courage. We have a tool that musicians did not have until recently- a relatively simple and available method for recording ourselves. The simple voice memo on iPhone is all you need. The greatest part of the tool is the willingness to be honest with myself about what I sound like. I am working on it already. It seems to be working- but I won’t know for sure until I have the courage to do another recording.

(P.S. Next week I will relate this to life and even talk about what I hear about my playing and what I am doing about it.)

Tuning Slide 3.45- Success

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Success is not final; failure is not fatal:
It is the courage to continue that counts.
— Winston S. Churchill

Another week of looking from life to music, instead of the other way around. Lessons learned in life about life are just as applicable to playing music and being a musician of any level. When I first looked at the quote from Winston Churchill I read it wrong. I expected it to say that failure is not final. But he headed down a different path. Perhaps a more important path.

Success, just as much as failure, is not final. Think about that a moment. You have been working and planning and striving for success at some thing or another. Then, there it is. You have achieved your goal. Success is yours.

What next? Where will you venture next? What new goal will you set? Or will you just stop and say, “Well, that’s my success. I think I’ll quit now”?

I don’t think so. Many of us have had that one solo or ensemble piece that we have worked hard at. It may be something that challenges you to be a little bit better than you have ever been. So you push, and work, and “woodshed” until it is what you had hoped it would be. You get to the performance and you nail it. It comes across with all the joy and energy that you put into it. You have succeeded! You take the moment to receive the congratulations of family and friends.

You then go back to the practice room and start on the next goal.

Or you blow it. You get lost in the middle of the performance. You don’t shine like you had hoped to. Your family and friends still congratulate you on your efforts. But you are bummed. You failed at that attempt. At least that’s how you see it. You smile and walk away.

You then go back to the practice room and start on the next goal.

You can quit after either event, but what good would that do? You may decide this isn’t for you after the “failure”. You put the horn away- perhaps just as you were ready to make a leap forward. Or you decide that this success is as good as it will be and you stop. You miss the opportunity to do even more than you can imagine.

Neither success nor failure is an end. As the wonderful quote from the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel says:

Everything will work out in the end. If it hasn’t worked out yet, it isn’t the end.

Which easily brings me to the second quote from one who embodies these ideals, Helen Keller.

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
— Helen Keller

When Keller was less than two years old she lost her ability to see or hear. Through incredible training and perseverance she succeeded and became a prolific author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deaf-blind person to earn a bachelor of arts degree. She knew that to be pessimistic was what could be truly fatal to one’s ability to succeed. The movie The Miracle Worker is the story of how her teacher, Anne Sullivan pushed and inspired Keller.

There are many reasons to be pessimistic. None of them will get you where you want to go, unless you want to fail, or at best, be mediocre. One reason for pessimism is to keep from being disappointed. Too many bad things could happen that will keep me from succeeding. In order to prevent those things, I can adopt pessimism. Another reason is the fear of failure- or being held accountable for what you said you would do. Set low, pessimism-based standards, and you won’t have to explain when you don’t succeed.

I tried that the other year when, at trumpet camp, my friend, Jeff, looked at one of the parts of the “routine”, pointed to the high F or G way up there above the staff, looked at me and said, “By next year you’ll be playing up in that range.”

I laughed. “Never!” I said. I can never do that. I’m not a “screamer”. Be pessimistic. Set the bar low and you don’t have to go anywhere. It was, I will admit, a cover-up of fear. I wanted to be able to play those notes. I had never been able to play that high C on any regular basis, let alone go up another third, fourth, or fifth! That’s crazy to even think about it.

Crazy good! Because I wanted to.

The next year I had to go up to Jeff and admit that I had lied to him the year earlier. I wasn’t soaring up in those notes, but I was able to play them. I have continued to work on them. No, they are not flowing easily. Not yet. They may never for any one of a number of reasons. But I am now willing to be optimistic that things will work out in the end.

The song for this week is an old number from Frank Sinatra and the movie A Hole in the Head. Fun… and a song I’ve loved for years…. High Hopes.

3.30- The Tuning Slide- The Worst Sin

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Seeking new levels of technical mastery should be a life long pursuit -
not because you want to impress, but to facilitate any direction
the great spirit inside you wants to go.
― Kenny Werner

I continue talking about goals and goal setting for the month as well as using a number of the quotes from the end of Trumpet Workshop summary. First here is what was noted from the summary board:

✓ The worst sin is feeling sorry for yourself- because it’s all about me.

What does that have to do with goal setting anyway? How does a “poor me” attitude get in the way of being a better musician and person? I know I have gotten to the point where I say to myself “Enough is enough! What’s the use?”

That usually occurs when I hit one of those regular plateaus of progress or even those days when it seems that I have gone backwards. “Damn! I played better last week!” But to achieve goals we can’t allow such self-pity to get in the way. One of the surest things that can get in the way of my goals is “poor me!” Self-pity, pure and simple, is being selfish. Everything becomes focused on me. That means that I cannot focus on the music, the audience or potential audience, or my fellow musicians. It’s me and me alone that is getting all my attention.

That is just plain counter-productive.

As I was working on this post I also started reading a book I picked up last summer. Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within by jazz pianist Kenny Werner (1996, Jamey Aebersold Jazz) starts right off with what I was thinking about. He says that one of the reasons that many musicians never achieve mastery is the false idea that runs around our society. He starts the Preface this way:

The realm of the gifted has always seemed to be an exclusive club. The common belief is that, “Some of us have it, some of us don’t.” Implicit in that statement is the assumption that “most of us don’t.” (p. 9)

Most of us then assume that we are in the group that doesn’t have the gift. We remain mediocre. “Poor me.” He goes on in the Preface to mention two ways we approach music. He talks about

Good players who, for some reason, have little impact when they play. Everything works fine. That are “swinging” and all that, but still, something is not landing in the hearts of the audience. They are trapped in their minds. There is no nectar because they are merely plotting and planning an approach along acceptable, “valid” lines of jazz style. (p. 10)

He is saying, in other words, that they are being controlled, “dominated” he says, by their conscious minds. Sound familiar? It is on the same track as the Inner Game approach we have talked about often on this blog. We are looking at another example of Self One and Self Two at odds with each other. What we must do, Werner says, is

Practice surrendering control to a larger, higher force. It’s scary at first, but eventually liberating…. [L]iberation is attainable through the surrender of the small self to the larger “Self.” … After one taste of [liberation] through the medium of music, one will never want to return to a life of “thinking music.” As one moves beyond the acceptable to the inevitable, creativity flows. Personal power will increase manyfold. (p. 10)

Wow! I want that, is my response as I read that. Where can I find it? The answer is obviously in the “Self” or as Inner Game refers to it, Self Two, the intuitive, natural musician within each of us. It is the movement from “Thinking Music” to “Playing or Living Music.” Thinking music can probably be seen as

• Over analyzing
• Relying on the conscious mind
• Over thinking what we are doing
• Worrying about being perfect
• Worrying about what others will think.

Playing or Living Music is deeper than that. It is

• Feeling the music
• Letting the rhythm carry you
• Channeling the music of the Self
• Trusting Self Two to guide you since Self Two knows what to do and when to ask for help.

Back to Werner’s Preface…

True musical depth is not about better playing, but about more “organic” playing…. [The] intuitive self… is very much about “forgetting” one’s self…. Music can shoot through the musician like lightning through the sky if that music is unobstructed by thoughts. Therefore, the elimination of thoughts is a very relevant issue. (p. 11)

That’s a lot of stuff from just three short pages at the beginning of the book. It does, however, sum up our problems. Many times they are of our own making because we are unwilling or unable to let go surrender to Self Two and the music. Which brings me to another of the Trumpet Camp summary ideas:

✓ Obstacles appear if we take our minds away from the goal. Therefore we must always be shooting for a trajectory.

Every time we hit an obstacle we get thrown off-track into ourselves. We lose sight of our goal, worry about ourselves, dig into the “poor me” pity pot and lose the music. We go back into “thinking” music and lose sight of the living music.

In reality this takes a lot of practice. It takes the seemingly endless hours of long tones and scales, chromatics and thirds, Clarke and Arban.

This past week I did some improvisational noodling for the first time in a few weeks. I started doing some very basic blues progressions in a couple of different keys. I went from C to F back to C then to G, F, and back to C. You know. Just the basics. I then did it in F and again in Bb and finally G. Nothing new or outstanding. I was part way through when I realized that for the first time I had stopped thinking about what I was doing. My fingers kind of knew which note was next. Self One is actually the one that noticed and told me. At which point Self Two took a bow, told me to shut up and get back to playing.

When I got to the end I thought about it. What had happened? I had never before had that happen. I then realized I had added two new exercises to my daily routine over the past month. I was working ascending thirds in each key and working on a jazz pattern of triplet thirds, again in all keys. I have practiced one or both of those most days in the past month. They have become second-nature, intuitive to some extent.

I was channeling the music of my Self Two be surrendering to the music- living it instead of thinking it. Yes, I spent a month of thinking and visualizing; yes, I had to work on it daily. Although I didn’t kick myself for being slow or imperfect. I didn’t over analyze, I just let the patterns and music flow as it should- and as Self Two knew how to make it flow. And now it was real.

A short-term goal has been reached!

I was told that by Mr. Baca and others in the past. I had to trust them. It is happening because they have shown me that setting goals and moving ahead is important. Stop playing “poor me!” Stop whining and moaning about what you can’t yet do. Set the goal, let go of the selfishness and move forward. There are lightning bolts of music waiting to shoot through me- and you.

[Note: I may do a month of posts on Kenny Werner’s book on Effortless Mastery later in the spring. It looks like a good addition to the Inner Game training we have been doing.]

3.24 The Tuning Slide- Start the Journey

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

I decided that for the next three months I will be basing each post on one of the “quotes” from the summary of last summer’s Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop. I went back to the list (Link) and picked out three months worth that fit into three general categories. For December I will be talking about The Journey of being a trumpet player, musician, and human. A good way to end another calendar year, thinking about where we have been.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is good to have an end to journey toward,
but it is the journey that matters in the end.
-Ursula K. Le Guin

I will start with the obvious, simplest and maybe simultaneously the most profound quote from the Trumpet Workshop 2017:

✓ The best way to go 1,000 miles is to take the first step.

Life IS a journey. It continues to be a great metaphor for what happens in these days between birth and death, or as someone once called it- the hyphen years (Born — Died). At some times the journey is fairly straightforward. Other times it wanders and curves in spirals and cycles all over the place. It may even seem like the movie Groundhog Day. (Didn’t I just do that?) If you want to get anywhere, however, the simplicity of the quote is painfully obvious.

The obvious: Doh!
None of us is going anywhere if we don’t get off square one. We can talk all we want about what we want to do, our dreams and hopes, the kind of musician or person we want to be, but to do nothing to get there will be the surest way to not get there. Life isn’t a magic trick where we say “abracadabra” or “cowabunga” or anything else and we get it.

There are, of course, many things that keep us stuck on square one. Fear is probably the most powerful thing that keeps us stuck. We don’t want to fail, make a mistake, seem silly, or incompetent. So we don’t do anything, or we do the safest thing. The result is we are stuck.

Lack of self-confidence is another way we remain where we have always been. “I really cannot do that!” becomes a mantra. It ends up with “See. I couldn’t do that.” The result again is that we are stuck.

In the end many of us find ourselves doing the same things over and over and feeling dissatisfied. We forget to take the first step. In 12-Step groups it is often said that the first step is the most important one that you have to do perfectly and at a rate of about 100%. Nothing else can get done if you don’t do the first step completely. Which leads me to:

The profound: Aha!
The first step is the foundation. It isn’t just some silly saying. Of course you have to take the first step. Tell me something profound so I can do it. It’s the deep and profound and mystical and even magical that we are really looking for. We want an answer that will lead us into wherever we are going with little to no effort. The simplicity of just taking the first step hides the power of

taking the first step.

Fortunately the first step we have to take in our journey is so obvious and profound that it can be summer up in those four words! Stop arguing. Stop procrastinating. Do something! Get moving.

Make it a good first step!

The Psychology Today website (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/women-s-mental-health-matters/201612/7-ways-get-yourself-unstuck) posted seven strategies when you feel stuck. It was originally written for a post on women’s health, but it is as real and important for all of us.

1) Let go of the past. ...
2) Change your perspective. ...
3) Start with small changes. ...
4) Explore your purpose. ...
5) Believe in yourself. ...
6) Practice being hopeful. ...
7) Consider talking to a professional.

Everything we have learned from Trumpet Workshop and the Inner Game directions can be found in those seven jump starts. Let me translate those seven into a different way of seeing what these suggested first steps can be. Numbers correspond to the numbers above:

1) (Letting go…) Trust Self Two to get you where you need to go.
You are NOT the same person who missed that note last year- or even last week.

2) (Perspective…) Practice “mindfulness”
Instead of noticing the things you aren’t doing, see the things you are doing.

3) (Small changes…) Go back to the basics and practice them in your regular routine.
Record yourself and listen to what needs to be improved- then zero in on one of those

4) (Purpose…) Why am I doing this?
Always a good question to ask. The answer may simply be “because it’s fun!”

5) (Believe…) Start thinking of yourself as a “musician” moving forward.
“I am not able to do that” quickly takes on new meaning when you add the word “yet!”

6) (Hopeful…) Start keeping a journal and write down the improvements you will see
Watch for your expected improvement and don’t get discouraged when it doesn’t happen overnight.

7) (Professionals…) Take some lessons, if you aren’t already doing so!
You can’t always see other perspectives. Ask for support and guidance.

Those of you who have been around this blog for the past few years or have read the book I published from it, know that these are some of the ways I have been able to move from a mediocre 60-something trumpet player into a better 60-something trumpet musician. Last weekend, for example, the quintet I have been part of played for a church worship. As the service came to an end I noticed that among other things I was

◆ relaxed, not tense from performance anxiety
◆ comfortable with how I had played, not kicking myself for days afterward
◆ aware of my sound throughout the playing, not worried about my ability to do it
◆ able to answer the purpose question, in this case, in order to provide music for people to be touched and moved by its power.

What a change in a few years! But I had to take a step and move into uncomfortable territory and attend the first Big Band Camp at Shell Lake. No, there was the step before it of starting lessons again after 50+ years. No, there was the step before that of saying “Yes!” to the invitation to join the quintet in the first place. No,….

I think you get the idea. The best step to take next is the one that will move you in a direction you would want to go.

Then just do it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By the way, Christmas is coming....

Here are my books available at Amazon.

They are both in Kindle and paperback.

They make really nice Christmas gifts.

Link to ordering page.

The Tuning Slide 3.23- Becoming a Performer

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Everything that comes out of your horn must sound like music.
It’s then that you can call yourself a musician.
-From Eric Bolvin, The Arban Manual.

Perhaps one of the least mentioned ways of practice that will get us beyond mediocre is to stop practicing and always perform. The quote above is at the bottom of one of the lesson pages in the Arban Manual Study Guide by Eric Bolvin. The result of effective and dedicated practice is not being a technically good or even excellent musician. The result of that practice is that whatever comes out of your horn must sound like music. That is not as easy as it seems when written on the computer screen. It doesn’t take much effort to remember those awful days when we could hardly make “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” sound musical. With practice, Twinkle Twinkle can be as musical as a Miles Davis solo.

Becoming a performer of music is truly what all this practice is about. It gets pretty boring to never perform. Sure we may play some wonderful pieces and become accomplished at playing the trumpet. But it is the act of performing the music that shares the wonder of music with the world.

Way back in my earliest high school years as a trumpet player, I had a number of solo-type pieces and etudes from the method books that I liked to play. There were many times in my practice that I would imagine putting together a concert- a performance- for my family. In my mind I would pick out what the program would include and in what order. I would then practice as if I was actually performing them for the family. That more than anything else may have helped move me from the techniques of playing the trumpet into the joy of being a performing musician.

Gerald Klickstein whose website The Musicians’ Way has been the source of much of this month’s posts, talks about a three-step process of moving into the performance level. He looks at the progression we all do when working toward performing a new piece of music. He says the “material” goes through three stages:

Stage 1: New Material
• Get an overview.
• Make decisions section by section.
• Slow tempo.

Stage 2: Developing Material
• Refine interpretation.
• Increase tempo and problem-solving.
• Memorize.

Stage 3: Performance Material
• Practice performing.
• Maintain memory.
• Renew and innovate.

As I have seen it in my own practice, this does work in a clear progression. The overview is when I scan the music for the first time. What’s the key, the range, the key changes, the tempo? Maybe I sing or hum through it. I look for the harder appearing sections and make note of them. I also know that just because it looks hard doesn’t mean it is hard. Play through it - keeping it slow. At this point I am looking for the way the music flows and moves. I am trying to make it sound musical. I try to be conscious of the sections and how the music changes from one to another or maybe circles back to something earlier. I am getting the music to fall under my fingers at this point.

The second stage, letting the music develop, is when I “know” the music but haven’t figured out how to interpret it musically. I might experiment with different tempos or figure out why my fingers refuse to cooperate on certain passages. As I said a couple weeks ago I am not good at memorizing so I don’t usually do that part of this stage. But the goal of “performing” the piece has to be there- even if it’s a new Goldman exercise or Clarke etude. The aim is always to make music- be a performing musician.

The third stage for me is putting it all together. It will now become performance! It cannot remain just another piece for the practice room even if I know it will never be performed anywhere else. That is the “practice as if you are performing” injunction. I sometimes react to myself “Would I want an audience to hear it that way?”

What I am talking about is simply to make sure I move beyond being just a practice room musician. The particular etude or exercise will most likely never be a public piece, unless I record it and put it on Facebook or something. But what I learn and experience in doing this with all my practice will carry into other things I do. That is why we practice things other than our performance pieces. That is why we may do the same routine with variations every day for weeks, months, or years. We are transforming everything into music so when we come to the musical pieces we will play them musically.

It’s back to Self One and Self Two and how our brains work. It is back to easing the performance anxiety of Self One trying to take the negative road and undermining what we can do. It’s about Self Two learning and showing that we can do it. It is taking charge of the music since it is the “natural” musician.

This is being a performer. It is how to live.

There is a You Tube video titled Transform Yourself Into a Performer. (Watch it below.) It is by concert pianist Alpin Hong in a TEDxLaSierraUniversity talk. In the enjoyable presentation he talks about

• Being self-conscious and still projecting self-confidence.
• If they’re in your audience, they want you to succeed. They are on your side!
• Thoughts on making mistakes- yes, we all make them. He even quotes Monk. His answer is to improvise, i.e. know your piece well-enough that if you get lost, for example, you can make your way back to the right place.

That is what we are all about. Performing. We want to truly make music. It doesn’t just happen by chance, but it is certainly within our grasp.

The Tuning Slide: 3.7- Arrogant- or Confident?

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Arrogance requires advertising.
Confidence speaks for itself.
-The Good Vibe Company

I know I have talked before about the very unfair reputation trumpet players have. We are often portrayed as arrogant and self-absorbed. We are told that in spite of what we seem to think it is not all about us. Here’s a good example of the stereotype from the website The Band Advocate’s Resource: (http://insanerandomhobbit.tripod.com/thebandadvocatesresource/index.html)

Trumpets-They are the leaders of the band, the melody, to quote "Drumline", "The trumpets are the voice of the band!" This constant focus and attention has made them egocentric and fairly arrogant, but mainly to those within the section. They are in love with themselves, and they hate associating with the bottom or the top of the section, depending upon where they are. They're loud and their proud. Typical trumpet conversation with the band director; "I could have played that solo better than that." "Do you want it then." "No thanks." This laid back attitude carries throughout the section. Trumpets tend to be odd and offbeat with perverted senses of humor. They are the comic masterminds of the band. Trumpet sections are about half girls, half guys. You won't see many waltzing off to choir, and if you do, chances are they sit bottom of the section. Straight from a trumpet player to you, though, we're not really as bad as we sound (Ha ha, note our section is longer than yours. Yeah, thought so!).

It’s hard living up to that stereotype, but we’ll keep on trying!

Seriously I have met very few trumpet players that fit that image. In reality most of us are far shyer than we appear. When one plays one of the loudest and most aurally notable of instruments, it’s hard to hide, so we just go for it. If we stand out by virtue of the instrument, we better live up to that instrument’s place in the band.

Which often does look like arrogance. That and the fact that we find it hard to be serious for too long. If there is a disruption somewhere in the band, it is more often than not in the trumpet section. Then we yell at each other, put each other down, ignore the director and then have to ask “Where are we starting?” [Sidenote: This is why I admire Bob Baca’s patience with a room FULL of trumpet players at Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop! Scary, but he keeps doing it!]

Having finished with some “true confessions” let’s go back to reality and what this post is all about- the difference between arrogance and confidence. Any one of us can have either without the other. Or we can even have both. Those are the truly obnoxious one’s among us.

What then IS the difference between the two? Well, for one, if you were offended by that paragraph above, you may need to work on your sense of humor; if you believed it to be true… read on…

First, I found the following on the Womanitely website:

• Arrogance is usually the result of a defense mechanism used by subconscious mind in order to prevent further criticism. Confidence comes from positivity, optimism and mental steadiness.

• Superiority is the main quality of an arrogant person. Arrogant people are single-minded; … On the contrary, confident people are high-minded, because they can feel good without having a desire to offend others. They usually see people’s potential and can help them succeed in something.

• An arrogant person thinks they are better than others, while a confident person knows they are just as good as others. Confident people will rarely be found lecturing or preaching to others or how they are wrong. Furthermore, they usually show respect while listening to somebody. Arrogant people have difficulty listening to others.

• An arrogant person will always try to one-up everything you say. They mind only their own position and make others accept their ideas. Confident people don’t try to impose their vision of the situation on others. Their accomplishments do it for them.

Lots of good thoughts in those quotes. We can know confident people because they tend to be open to other people’s ideas and abilities without needing to put them down. They listen to others and don’t impose their vision on others, rather seeking to learn new things and new perspectives from others. You don’t get that type of vibe from arrogant people

Cody Brown at Medium.com adds the following two differences:

• Arrogance makes your world smaller and
• The difference between the two has a lot to do with empathy.

It is a small world if what you think is right is the only thing that is right. It is just as small if you think you are either so superior to others or so afraid of failing that you can’t enjoy what you are doing. And the difference really boils down to that wonderful word, empathy. Empathy simply means that in some ways you can understand or feel another person’s emotions and reactions from their perspective. It means caring about them and seeking what’s good for them and for you. It is not sympathy- feeling sorry- but being open to them and what they experience.

In spite of all those things we trumpet players may have been accused of, I have met far more empathetic musicians than arrogant ones. Sure, some may come across as arrogant. They have such great confidence in their skills that they don’t seem to need or want comments or advice. That is often more a product of the gap between their skill and mine. If Trumpet John Smith picks up the horn and just blows away- that can seem arrogant because I want so badly to be able to do that. But when he leans over to the me and gives me a helpful hint, we can begin to see the empathy.

So how can we combat the image of being arrogant musicians? Here are some suggestions I found helpful.

Seek humility. That does not mean striving for it so we can boast of how humble we are, but learning to live it. One way to describe humility is to be teachable. Always look to learn from whoever you are with. There is wisdom abounding in our world. We often miss it because we think we already know it.

Listen with an open mind. That goes along with the being teachable. None of us knows it all. None of us can ever know it all. Someone else’s experiences may give a whole new perspective to how we see ourselves and our world. Keep that inquisitiveness fresh and open.

Be rigorously honest with yourself. One way of describing this is to not thing either to highly OR too lowly of yourself. Know you strengths and your weaknesses and be willing to admit the weaknesses to yourself. That’s how we know where we are still needing to work and learn. Confidence comes from doing what you do well and working to improve what isn’t there yet. All os who have attended the Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop have heard story after story of the way some of the great trumpet players keep working on the early pages of Arban’s. They know they have to keep working on the basics and practice every day just to maintain where they are. That’s rigorous honesty with oneself.

Pay attention to Self Two. This comes from the Inner Game ideas which we will delve into again more deeply later this fall. But for now, just remember that Self One is logical and wants perfection. When Self One wants to criticize you let Self Two pick up the slack and give Self One what it wants, a plan to get better. Then do it.

Believe in yourself! That’s part of that honesty. Believe you can do what you can do and are willing and able to learn how to do what you are not yet able to do. This also means don’t put yourself down in negative language or negative attitudes. Admit where you need to grow, but don’t make it seem like it is a personal flaw. You just haven’t gotten there yet.

Look like you believe in yourself. How you dress, how you stand, how you smile (or don’t smile), goes a long way in how others perceive you.

Find a group of musicians to play with who are better than you. If you are the best player in your band, get yourself a group to be with where you aren’t a star and listen to them. Get into a group that is more advanced than you are and work with them. Find a teacher who will push you. Take new ideas as ways to grow and not as criticism.

Keep a Beginner's Mind! Don't lose your inquisitiveness or joy at discovering new things about your world or your instrument. That is a surefire way to keep from becoming arrogant. The more you learn while keeping a beginner's mind, the more you will realize how little you truly know.

In the end your music will tell your story. You don’t have to do it. If you are confident, it will show. If you aren’t, no amount of arrogant behavior will make a difference.