Tuning Slide # 4.42- Moving from Voice to Song

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

I think I can hear your song, all of them, even now…
— Dan Millman

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been writing about finding one’s voice using ideas from Stephen Covey and others. Before finding out what that means here’s a recap.

• Voice:
✓ Your voice is your own “unique personal significance.”
✓ Your power to choose the direction of your life allows you to reinvent yourself, to change your future, and to powerfully influence the rest of creation.

For that to happen we have to learn to convert different energies.

• Energies:
✓ mental energy into vision
✓ physical energy into discipline
✓ emotional energy into passion
✓ spiritual energy into conscience

Then, to find that unique voice find out what it is about you by asking some questions.

• Questions:
✓ What angers you?
✓ What makes you cry?
✓ What have you mastered?
✓ What gives you hope?
✓ As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
✓ If you had all the time and money in the world, what would you do?
✓ What would blow your mind?
✓ What platform do you own?
✓ What change would you like to see in the world?
✓ If you had one day left, how would you spend it?

Then it is time to find your song. Here is my definition of your song.
• Song:
✓ The message you can uniquely share with the world.
✓ The way your voice is presented to the world.
✓ An outward expression of who you are.

There are a couple of ways to look at this that can help us move toward finding the song we are called to sing or play. One is an actual song that can be a “theme” song for you. It is a song that you turn to when you need support, a song that inspires, directs, comforts, enlivens you, makes you smile. We all have a number of these for different settings. But think about those two or three songs that are always your go-to song.

◦ What are those songs about?
◦ What is their message?
◦ How do you feel when you hear one of those songs?
◦ Why is it important to you?
◦ How does that message fit your life and the mission of who you are?
◦ Can you put this into one or two sentences, or even better, two or three words?

I talk about several songs since they may be in different places in our lives, expressions of different ideas. They may or may not be songs we play on whatever our instrument might be. But they are only a starting point- a way of discovering and then expressing you, your voice.

That can lead to the song of your soul. When digging around for thoughts on this I came across a Facebook page titled, of course, “Finding Your Song.” It is from Sangeeta Bhagwat who calls herself an Inner Landscape Artist in India. On the Facebook page, she tells the story of an African tribe.

◆ When a woman in one African tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes out into the wilderness with a few friends and together they pray and meditate until they hear the song of the child. They recognize that every soul has its own vibration that expresses its unique flavor and purpose.
◆ When the women attune to the song, they sing it out loud. Then they return to the tribe and teach it to everyone else.
◆ And when children are born into the village, the community gathers and sings their song, one unique melody for each unique child.
◆ Later, when children begin their education, the village gathers and chants each child's song.
◆ They sing again when each child passes into the initiation of adulthood, and at the time of marriage.
◆ Finally, when the soul is about to pass from this world, the family and friends gather at the bedside, as they did at birth, and they sing the person to the next life.
◆ If at any time during a person's life, he or she commits a crime or aberrant social act, that individual is called to stand in the center of a circle formed by all members of the tribe. And once again the villagers chant the child's song. The tribe recognizes that the proper correction for antisocial behavior is not punishment, but love and the remembrance of identity. When you recognize your own song, you have no desire or need to do anything that would hurt another.
◆ A friend is someone who knows your song and sings it to you when you have forgotten it.
◆ Life is always reminding you when you are in tune with yourself and when you are not. When you feel good, what you are doing matches your song, and when you feel awful, it doesn't. (- Link)

There are a number of important insights in this. The obvious one that it takes a village is quite clear. We do not find or develop our song in a vacuum. It may be something that only we understand, but it is found in interactions and relationships in some form of community. Thus the importance of finding a community that is willing to take the time to know you and who you are while not allowing you to stay stuck in a spot. The community is one that can nurture and challenge, comfort you when you are afflicted and afflict you when you are comfortable while always expressing compassion and support.

Our song then becomes associated with us and with our own unique journey. Even those of us who do not live in a community where the tribe finds your song and sings it to you, the environment we surround ourselves with, the people we pay attention to, the mentors, teachers, and guides who come into our lives lead us onto the paths if we pay attention and internalize the direction we are moving.

Where that can take us will be next week. Until then look at your community or communities that you are part of. Which ones nurture you and which ones ignore you? Who are the mentors who have that something that enhances your life and uplifts your soul? Think about what they have taught you, directly or indirectly, and how that has allowed you to be the singer of your own song.

Don’t get hung up in words, just listen to your heart and see where it leads.

Tuning Slide

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Life is about rhythm. We vibrate, our hearts are pumping blood, we are a rhythm machine, that's what we are.
— Mickey Hart

Mickey Hart, one of the percussionists with the Grateful Dead has written much about rhythm and its location at the very center of our lives. It is not a pun to say it is the heart of who we are. To be in touch with the rhythm of our lives is one of those tasks that we can never end. The give and take, the pulses of daily living, the ups and downs of emotions can all fit into a rhythm. Many experiments have shown that different sources of rhythm will fall into sync with each other. Rhythm is one of the basics of music itself, and is therefore, I think, music is one of the best ways to learn about the importance of keeping the beat.

For the past month I have been pulling together the ideas of music and life, how they interact and what one can teach us about the other. Last week I raised the importance of jazz in this process. All musical styles can and will change our lives if we are open to them. Each of us just responds in different ways to different styles. For me- and for many- jazz is one of the most effective teachers of life and rhythm, timing and pace.

Through improvisation, jazz teaches you about yourself. And through swing, it teaches you that other people are individuals too. It teaches you how to coordinate with them.
— Wynton Marsalis

Back at the end year one of the Tuning Slide I had a post that dug into the writing of Wynton Marsalis in his book, Moving to Higher Ground. The focus of that was the idea of “swing,” one of the historically important- and still living- genres of jazz. Jazz musicians will use the generic word “swing” to describe what happens when a piece falls into its intended groove and moves beyond a simple sum of its parts. When a song “swings”, when a musician is “swinging,” they are in the best of all possible musical worlds. You are not just you, but you are, as Wynton described it above, coordinating with the others. It is that coordination that makes it work! This is not just in jazz, by the way. Bach may have produced some of the best music to "swing" to in all of history!

Here is some more of what Marsalis says in the book:

Jazz is the art of timing. It teaches you when. When to start, when to wait, when to step it up, and when to take your time- indispensable tools for making someone else happy….

Actual time is a constant. Your time is a perception. Swing time is a collective action. Everyone in jazz is trying to create a more flexible alternative to actual time. [Emphasis added in both quotes]

Swing can be to a great extent what you accent and how you do it. Different tempos, different tonguing, different rhythms go together to make the music work. It means listening to each other and learning to flow together.

But something always seems to get in the way. In the brass quintet I play in we, like every musical group, can have great difficulty playing in a consistent tempo. There are all kinds of obstacles. Listening to a recording of a rehearsal I found that different ones of us can cause a tempo change within a beat or two if we

◦ Come to a change in dynamics from louder to softer.
◦ Come to a change in instrumentation adding a new tonal sound or removing one.
◦ Make a mistake and let our mind wander into self criticism
◦ Play something better than usual and let our mind wander into how good it sounds

Music teaches us how to deal with change, anticipating it and knowing how to move through it without losing who we are and what we are doing. Something we can always depend on is change, so if we learn the skill of flowing with and through change, no matter what the source, we can discover more direction in our lives.

Rhythm is sound in motion. It is related to the pulse, the heartbeat, the way we breathe. It rises and falls. It takes us into ourselves; it takes us out of ourselves.
— Edward Hirsch

Wynton Marsalis applies all this to our daily lives. Swing helps us in:

1. Adjusting to changes without losing your equilibrium;
2. Mastering moments of crisis with clear thinking;
3. Living in the moment and accepting reality instead of trying to force everyone to do things your way;
4. Concentrating on a collective goal even when your conception of the collective doesn’t dominate.

In the end, Wynton Marsalis says, swing demands three things:

1. Extreme coordination- it is a dance with others inventing steps as they go;
2. Intelligent decision making- what’s good for group.
3. Good intentions- trust you and others want great music.

The most prized possession in this music is your own unique sound. Through sound, jazz leads you to the core of yourself and says “Express that.” Through jazz, we learn that people are never all one way. Each musician has strengths and weaknesses. That is where we each find first our voice and then our song. When we do that we fall into rhythm with our lives and the world, giving back to others the gifts of our own lives.

So then next week we move to finding our “voice” so we can then learn to live our “song.” This may be the greatest gift music has to offer us.

Until then, keep the beat, watch the rhythm, and keep swinging.

Note: All Wynton Marsalis quotes are from the book:
• Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life by Wynton Marsalis and Geoffrey Ward. 2008, Random House.

Tuning Slide 4.37- Life Lessons #3- Jazz and Life

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

What we play is life.
—Louis Armstrong

Before last week’s attempted sidetrack into humor I have been looking at the application of life lessons from music. This week I come to what may be the single best music to learn from:

Jazz.

Life is always better with jazz. This is not to discount all the other kinds of music. Classical, pop, rock and roll, bluegrass- they all have an important place in my life and experiences. Each one can change moods, open doors, give vision, and give life new dimensions.

But there is something about jazz.

Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in blues and ragtime. Jazz is seen by many as "America's classical music". Since the 1920s Jazz Age, jazz has become recognized as a major form of musical expression. It then emerged in the form of independent traditional and popular musical styles, all linked by the common bonds of African-American and European-American musical parentage with a performance orientation. — Link

As a counselor, for example, I have to listen to what someone else is saying, make sense of it, figure out what it might mean, and then respond. It’s like improvising jazz. The same is true as a preacher, even working from a manuscript, or as a public speaker feeling the mood of the crowd.

Two interesting books come to mind when looking at an understanding of jazz:

• The Jazz of Physics by Stephon Alexander and
• Yes to the Mess: Surprising Leadership Lessons from Jazz by Frank Barrett

Google articles about jazz and business and on the first page you get:

• How Jazz Can Transform Business - Forbes
• What Can Jazz Teach Us about Business? | TIME.com
• Business and all that jazz | Education | The Guardian
• Jazz as a Metaphor for the New Model of the Enterprise - Don Tapscott
• What Leaders Can Learn from Jazz - Harvard Business Review
• How Jazz Music Prepared Me for Life as a CEO - Entrepreneur
• 8 Lessons that Entrepreneurs Can Learn from Jazz - Jazz Education

One of the articles I found gave a good list to “riff” on for me- Josh Linkner in “11 Leadership Lessons From Jazz Musicians” at Inc. Here’s his list with my thoughts interspersed.

1. Playing it safe gets you tossed off the stage. Take risks. Yes, it is risky to take steps outward, to step into center stage. But we all have to do it.
2. There are no do-overs in live performances. Practice so you know what you can do is the secret of jazz improvising. This helps us get certain things about ourselves into the realm of being natural. It is no different than learning to walk- it takes practice and then you don’t have to think about it anymore. Life is a live performance- go for it.
3. Listening to those around you is three times more important than what you play yourself. Pay attention to others. I know too many people, myself included at times, that are always thinking about that they are going to say next instead of listening. Listen! I am amazed at what I don’t know and what I can learn.
4. There's a time to stand out as a soloist and a time to support others and make them shine. Share the glory! What do you do when someone else is getting the congratulations? Stand and feel jealous? Wish it was you? That won’t get us anywhere. Celebrate with them.
5. Expect surprises and adversity, since jazz (and life) is about how you respond and adapt. Anticipate problems and plan. This is where that practice in #2 above really pays off.
6. Know your audience. It is often about the other person’s needs. Remember #3- listening. This is one of the reasons we do that when with others- so we can respond to them where they are.
7. It's always better leaving people wanting more, rather than less. Don’t overdo it.
8. The best leaders are those that make others sound good. Don’t hold back and keep others from shining.
9. Pattern recognition is easier than raw genius. Learn from what has happened. This helps when the surprises happen- “Oh, I’ve been through this before. I can handle it.”
10. Shy musicians are starving artists. Linkner says, If you're playing a gig, you get paid when there's butts in seats, so you can't be shy in telling people about the upcoming show. Learn to present your possibilities without bragging. It also means looking for opportunities to be yourself, to learn, to share, to grow.
11. Keeping it new and fresh is mandatory. Linkner reminds us that Jazz has its roots in real-time, collaborative innovation. Look for the new challenges. Then look for those people who you can work with to make it real. Find the friends, the colleagues, the significant other who does more than just agrees with you, but who will also challenge and enhance what you have to offer!

Linkner ends with this:

Legendary jazz pianist Dave Brubeck put it best, and his words resonate not only on stage for musicians but also in life for business leaders. As he so eloquently described it, "There's a way of playing safe, there's a way of using tricks and there's the way I like to play, which is dangerously, where you're going to take a chance on making mistakes in order to create something you haven't created before."

I would sum this all up with the idea that life does not come with an instruction manual. How can it? Each of us is unique with our own blend of ideas, abilities, insights, and experiences. We build on what we have been given and what we know. In the end you compose your own operations manual and the song that is you!

Tuning Slide 4.35- Health is Physical and Mental

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I’ll start with a confession from last week- I didn’t get to post anything. We have been traveling on our end of the winter “vacation” and things were going in all kinds of wonderful directions in Savannah, GA, that it never happened.

Two weeks ago I started a three-part series on life lessons to take away from being a musician. In that one I riffed on a post from the website, The Odyssey Online, where Amanda Gribbin reflected on Eight Life Lessons Through Music.

This week I turn to the website, Musicnotes Now.

[From their page: Musicnotes Now – A Noteworthy Blog for Seriously Fun Musicians. Bringing music lovers the latest news, tips, and products to help nourish their love for music.
“Now” is a blog brought to you by Musicnotes – the world leader in digital sheet music.]

There I discovered a post titled:
17 Surprising Health Benefits of Playing an Instrument

In the first section they talk about possible physical benefits including improved breathing, exercise, improved immune response, hearing, and stress reduction. The one item that I have had some experience with centers on the breathing and muscle improvement. I am a whiz at your normal, everyday standard “plank” exercise. My trainer was amazed the first time I did a solid two minute plank. He commented that not too many people my age (or even younger) could do a two-minute plank. A few weeks later we were discussing it again and he said, “I wonder if part of why you can do that so well is because you are a trumpet player and need to use your core?” I don’t know if that is true or not, but it gives some truth to the physical side of playing an instrument.

Perhaps the clearest benefits, and life lessons, however, can be found in the second area mentioned on the website, the mental benefits. Here these are with the comments from the article:

✓ Mental Performance
⁃ Playing music is like doing a workout for every part of your brain. It helps improve your mental performance and memory. There’s even evidence that music can help a patient’s brain recover from a stroke, as well as slow the onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

✓ Coordination
⁃ Using your fingers, hands, and feet in a rhythmic manner for a sustained amount of time, while also being conscious of playing the correct tones, can be a challenge for even the most coordinated people. Over time though, playing music refines your motor skills that go beyond the hand-eye.

✓ Time Management
⁃ Learning an instrument requires practice, of course! But more specifically, it requires consistency and routine. Figuring out how to fit practice into your busy schedule and really stick to it helps you develop better time management and organization skills.

✓ Reading Skills
⁃ Reading music helps strengthen your ability to process information by creating new connections between the synapses in your brain. As a result, reading and absorbing information from other sources becomes a lot easier.

✓ Listening Skills
⁃ Learning music doesn’t just improve your ability to hear details; it also makes you better at listening. Whether you’re practicing on your own or playing with other people, you have to listen for timing, expression, and whether you’re in tune. This can make you a better listener even in everyday conversations as well.

✓ Concentration
⁃ Focus is a necessary part of learning an instrument. Improving your musical skills forces you to use all the parts of your brain involved in concentration, making you better able to concentrate in other life situations. This is another reason why music is beneficial for those with disorders like ADD (-Link)

These are not empty ideas. There is a great deal of research as well as anecdotal observation that can point in these directions. Now, one must always ask, are people who improve in these ways drawn to music because they can do that? No, I think it is more than that. Sometimes I think there are people drawn to music because they know it will benefit them.

For example, I am aware of a young person who had some significant learning concerns, possibly on the autism spectrum. They were somewhat reserved and uncertain. Somewhere around 5th or 6th grade they decided they wanted to be a trumpet player. We all know of the reputation we trumpet players have for being front and center and obnoxiously self-centered. That does not seem to be the best way to go for a person who appears just the opposite. Yet, I knew that this young person was about to do something remarkable. I was right. I saw them regularly over the next six or seven years and the change was clear and consistent. They became a trumpet player in all the best ways and expanded into other musical endeavors. It worked to change this person and help them find new and exciting ways to enter into social and school situations.

Yes, it’s an anecdote, an observation made from short and infrequent contacts. But it is not unusual as the above ideas propose.

So, for you and me- we are already musicians. We have learned how to play the instrument. Perhaps we have had to struggle with time-management or focus. Perhaps we know that we could be sharper in our mental performance- we get lazy thinking periods- or we just get lazy. Is that how we want to live? Is that going to help us move forward in music AND in all the other areas of our lives?

I have learned more from being a musician about living and thinking and development. I know that musicians (and often other arts-types) have to do a great deal of work to become more than just mediocre. We know we can do it! We have been doing it. Some of us for a few months or years, some of us for decades. We are not done yet, but we are moving.

Probably in the end, the most important life lesson we get from music is that we can succeed. It is the sense of achievement that builds confidence that helps us move to other levels of achievement and on and on.

Nike had it right, “Just do it.” Then, when we have done it, keep doing it. Why? Because you know you can do it!

Tuning Slide 4.34- Applying Experience

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Music is … A higher revelation than all Wisdom & Philosophy
― Ludwig van Beethoven

I keep saying that this blog is “reflections on life and music”, but then I have to admit that most of it is about the music part. Sure, I have put many connections into the posts, but I don’t often just take aim at the “life lessons” from music. I thought I would take a few weeks to talk about some of the life lessons I (and others) have gotten from being musicians. I started with a Google search, of course, and found three pages in particular that have given me the foundation for this and the next two posts.

Of course it could be argued that many of us bring these life lessons into music and not the other way around. Many of us do know that some of the things we have discovered in life are very applicable to the music side of our lives. It may be the case that people who have certain ideas, ideals, and habits more easily become musicians, but I think it more often works the other way around since most of us started music before we developed these lessons, habits, and traits. If we stayed with music after high school or college, chances are these habits grew together and became woven into the fabric of who we are.

So, with that as an introduction, let me turn to the first set of lessons. These are from a website, The Odyssey Online, where Amanda Gribbin reflected on "Eight Life Lessons Through Music."

1. Do not expect instant gratification.
2. Mistakes are okay.
3. Wholeheartedly pursue your passion.
4. Have people to look up to.
5. Keep an open mind.
6. Challenge yourself.
7. Set personal goals.
8. Working for something that you love will never feel like work.
(— Link)

Some of these are obvious, though easily forgotten (instant gratification). Some we have looked at in different ways and the application to life from music is clear to see (challenge and goals). Let me reflect on several of them. (This is something I learned from jazz, by the way. I start with an idea and then riff on it, improvise on the theme. Or is that one of the reasons I life Jazz? See how it goes both ways?)

✓ Instant gratification
I love guitar. If I want to learn any other instrument and be able to play it at least reasonably okay, it would be the guitar. Back in high school, after I was already an established trumpet player (and therefore a musician) I bought a guitar and started taking lessons. I was doing okay and, since I played trumpet in a Tijuana Brass-style group with my guitar teacher, he actually had be learn the chords for one of our TJB songs and I would play guitar when we did that song. My problem was that I was not able to be as good at guitar as I was at trumpet. At least not able to do it overnight. Instant gratification! I have since taken lessons several times and still own a guitar. There was a point when I did play more, but I never really got it. I would get frustrated and quit. In many other areas of my life I have learned to wait, be patient, do what needs to be done. I just never had the time (or took the time) to do it with guitar. I know why I am not a good guitar player today. But it never became a goal. That’s how these go together. I know there isn’t instant gratification. I also know that there are other things more important (higher priority) than being a guitar player.

✓ Mistakes are okay
We have to be careful here. Mistakes are okay if we correct them by learning from them. We must not get the attitude that if I make a mistake in a performance, eh, who cares? Expect to make mistakes since none of us is perfect. Don’t be satisfied with the mistakes and use this as an excuse not to improve. I can name many mistakes I have made as a counselor. I have forgotten important points, responded out of my personal motives, even been called on the carpet by supervisors. But I made sure I didn’t do it again- and didn’t beat myself up over it.

✓ Have people to look up to
Mentors, gurus, wise colleagues, experienced elders are all people to look up to. I still “look up to” a professor and a supervisor I had 45 years ago who set me on the path I have taken. I remember with joy a colleague who taught me more by his example how to be a person of humble spirit and soul. In all that I do, I try to incarnate the lessons they gave me. I still have people- colleagues, friends, and/or musicians- who come to mind when I need a personal reminder.

✓ An open mind
For me this is always a growing edge. In some ways it is the summation of the others. If I think I am always right, my mind is closed to opportunities and life itself. If I think I have nothing to learn from others, I am going the wrong direction. If I am satisfied with where I am today and not willing to accept challenges to grow, I might as well sell the horn. I’m done and will miss many things. Life itself is always changing. Just because it isn’t how it was when I was growing up in those “good, old days” doesn’t mean it’s wrong today. An open mind is one that is mindful of the world and able to move within it with a sense of personal acceptance and then to learn from it. Essential in our very difficult age.

✓ It will never feel like work if you love it.
This is a variation on the old statement, “If you love what you do you will never work a day in your life.” While that is an extreme statement that certainly leads in the right direction, it is a lesson we have to learn. The lesson is that even on the difficult or bad days, if you love what you do, you will find ways to enjoy it. A quote from one of the instructors at the Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop that I quoted a few weeks ago says the same thing. “If you don’t like playing long tones, you don’t like playing the trumpet.” Or at least you are playing it for some wrong reasons. Every job, every part of life, has its times of boredom and drudgery. You finish washing the dishes, and more are dirty; you get the wash folded, and there’s a new pile. Most of us in music know the feeling of picking up our instrument and having life change in an instant. That is an important lesson for all of life.