Tuning Slide 4.31- On Getting Stuck

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
E.M. Forster

In the past couple posts or so I have been talking about being a student, how to improve what we can do, some ways I am working on a particular direction, i.e. more precise playing. It is always exciting when I get started on something new or different. I can hardly wait to pick up my horn and do that day’s exercise and routine. That goes along well for awhile until I reach a point where I get stuck. There are two things that can happen. First, I stop progressing. While I have been doing well, hearing and feeling the changes and growth, one day it seems to just stop. Over a period of a few days I notice that there is no more change. It’s all still good and I am doing better than when I started on the new goal, but it hasn’t improved any more. My natural response to that I simple. “Well, I guess I’ve gone as far as I can go on this one. That’s it.”

Which leads almost naturally into the second thing that can happen- I feel like I’m going backwards. The sound isn’t as good as it was last week; the endurance has decreased; my range has suffered. I then become more self-critical and less motivated. I cut corners on the particular routine that I was working on and I get stuck. So I start looking around at the music in my books, the routines I have available, the etudes and lessons that I have worked on- and start practicing without a goal. It will keep my endurance up, my embouchure in shape, but it won’t necessarily improve what I’m looking to improve. I become complacent, satisfied with the status quo. While that status quo is light years from where I was even four years ago, I stop growing.

It is all in my head, sort of. Attitude and self-defeating thoughts can do a lot of damage to our growth and movement. Self 1 has taken over and is telling Self 2 that we’ve reached the end of the journey. We can’t go any further down the road. Just sit back and take it easy.

In the end, when you feel like you have gotten stuck, just move on. In order to move on I usually do the following:

◆ I remind myself why I am playing trumpet in the first place- and why I have continued to play and to find ways to grow in these 57 years since I got my first trumpet. It’s all about the music!
◆ I remember the line if you don’t like playing long tones, you don’t like playing the trumpet for its own sake. If it’s all about the music, it’s also all about the sound!
◆ I then remind myself of something that I wrote about way back in the earlier days of this blog- that one often reaches a plateau or even a step backwards just as one is about to make the next move forward. I call that darkest before the dawn theory of growth. Just when you think you can’t continue- you can. With deliberate practice and direction.

The “Aha!” moment has been reached and I can take a look at what has happened, what I have accomplished, and where I can go. It’s at that point I discover a number of things about myself and my growth. I get stuck when one or more of the following things get in the way

◆ Boredom
Playing those long tones and scales can get very dull. Boredom is actually the inability to find the new that is right in front of you. Boredom is unmet expectations telling you that this is crazy. That’s why, if I do nothing else with my horn on a given day, I play those long tones - and I try to play them with as much life and soul as I can. Soulful long tones? Yep. It’s all in my head and how I hear them.
◆ Fear
The fear is the one mentioned above- what if I am at the end of my ability? What if I can’t get those intervals down right or that lick to fall into place under my fingers? Maybe at my age I should just be satisfied with all that I have done in the past few years and be satisfied. I am afraid to fail, afraid to lose, afraid to not be able to grow and improve. So why try? I can recognize the craziness in that statement the minute I say it or write it. Yes, there may very well come the day when I am at the end, but a quick look at Herb Alpert (age 83) and Doc Servinsen (age 92) will quickly remind me that if I keep going I will grow!
◆ Exhaustion
This is a flip side of boredom which is a form of mental exhaustion. It comes because I have been working and working and getting nowhere. It is also possible to overwork your willpower which can lead to both mental and physical exhaustion. This leads, I think, to some of the leveling off of improvement or even the steps backward we take before making an growth jump. This means I have to take a look at how I’m practicing and how I may be over doing some aspect of it.
◆ Lack of direction
These all lead to this fourth reason for getting stuck- I don’t know for sure where I am going. I’ve lost my way, gotten off the path, been distracted. It is time to look at my goals and what I want to get out of- and give back to- my music. It is a two way street and I need to develop my self-awareness, mindfulness, and goal-setting.

These are not just specific to music. I mentioned in a previous post that I have difficulty at times in my physical exercise routine. When that happens I can look at these same four things to discover a possible underlying issue with my exercise, or my writing routine. Fortunately there are ways to deal with them after we have taken a look at ourselves and what we are in the midst of experiencing. I will deal with that next week.

Until then, find out where you may be stuck and what have been happening. It may be one of those four things above, or it may be something very specific to your situation. Don’t be afraid of it- none of us can grow unless we look at what may be holding us back. No matter what, keep moving; don’t stop. Go back to the basics until you discover what you need at this moment in time.

Tuning Slide 4.6- Learning from LIstening

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

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

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

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

Listen to yourself. Listen, listen, listen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3.31- The Tuning Slide: Time for the Important

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

… whenever our affairs seem to be in crisis, we are almost compelled to give our first attention to the urgent present rather than to the important future.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower

Okay, time to get going here. It is getting to be urgent. Here is the thought from last year’s Trumpet Workshop for this week:

✓ Have to schedule the not urgent/important or it gets lost

I am not joking when I say it is getting urgent. It is now Monday night as I am writing this and it has to be ready by Wednesday morning with other things happening in-between. Yes, these posts are important, but they don’t get urgent until the deadline nears. I have always been a person who works at deadline. That doesn’t mean I work better at deadline, I just tend to get sidetracked. That does not usually mean procrastinate, although sometimes it does. In general I just find too many things interesting. Once in a while the “urgent” do take over and push the other important things out of the way.

President and World War II commanding general Dwight D. Eisenhower is given credit for this whole idea picked up by many over the past 75 years including Stephen Covey who wrote the iconic book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The whole idea is often presented this way:

What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.

This can be illustrated with this 2 x 2 matrix, often called the Eisenhower Matrix.

It is easy to figure this out. Many of us, myself included, spend way too much time on the urgent, or what we think is urgent. As shown in this next illustration, things we often call urgent are truly just interruptions, things that get in the way and we can’t avoid them. How often do we truly have something urgent AND important? Sure they happen, but are they all that common? Probably not as much as we think.

Simple illustration that has happened over the years with the advent of cell phones and other personal media devices is the urgency of the phone call. It occurs every time that device buzzes. Even my Garmin Fitness Tracker had a buzz that would tell me when to move. I turned it off, not because I wasn’t going to move, but it became a serious distraction. The buzz said, in essence: “Urgent! Urgent! Urgent!” Think about the next time your phone buzzes with a text message, or your computer beeps with a friend’s Facebook post.

Think back on the past couple of days. How many of the things that happened were “urgent” but far from important? In reality, how many of those “urgent” things could probably be moved into the bottom right corner of neither important nor urgent? Most likely more than we care to admit.

The box that gets missed more often than not is the upper right, highlighted below.

 
Link

These things in this box are important, but they may not have a deadline attached to them, they don’t interrupt us and call out for our attention. In fact many of them easily get missed as we go through the day. We say things like “I’ll get to that later” or “Gee, I wish I had more time for that.” A few weeks or so ago someone posted on the Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop Facebook page a remembrance of a conversation with Bill Bergren a number of years ago. In essence it was,

“I don’t have time to practice two hours a day.”
      “Oh really? Do you have 15 minutes from time to time?”
“Sure, but…”
      “Well, every time you have 15 minutes, use it to practice. By the end of the day you will have your two hours of practice.”

Is daily, significant practice important? You bet it is.
Is daily, significant practice urgent? No. If it’s urgent, it’s too late.

Goal setting, planning, scheduling, and active doing are important things that fall into that upper right quadrant. Exercise, vocation and planning are what’s in the box above as examples. Doing things for your health and growth, doing things for your meaning and direction, setting your goals and the ways to carry them out. This puts the important in a place where it is less likely to get interrupted as often. It becomes part of your schedule.

Another way of describing what you need to do with the items is in the next matrix.

First is always the “Urgent/Important.” Do those things. Do them as soon as you can. Make sure they are given proper attention and management. But be careful. I know people for whom every event or situation escalates into an immediate “Crisis!” which means “Emergency!” and therefore takes precedence over everything. These people are living in a perpetual crisis mode and never get to the long-term issues until they, too, become “urgent”.

At the bottom left are the interruptions and distractions. These are not important but seem urgent. These can be the leftovers of the crisis mode above, or they can just be the things that pop up with all too frequent regularity. Learn to avoid them, let others handle them, or put them in their proper place.

Bottom right issues are, for me, the biggest problem. I easily have way too many “Oh, look at the squirrel over there” moments. I stop typing here and think, “Oh, I’ll just go check my email. Might as well look at what’s happening in the news. Hmmm, maybe somebody on Facebook….” That happened a couple times this past weekend and it got in the way of me practicing my trumpet as much as I wanted to- and it pushed off writing this post until now.

Which brings me to what may be the most important quadrant for our growth and future, the top right. The word there to really catch is “Focus.” That’s the purpose of goals, and the reason we write down our goals, and why I keep a journal of my daily practice as well as the James Blackwell-inspired daily checklist. I can plan and decide; I can focus; I can adjust and make sure I am dealing with what’s important. It may be a small thing I discover, but chances are it will help me reach my goal. For example, I noticed on Saturday that I had not been working on the “interval” exercises. Nothing urgent about them, but they are important. I had been sidetracked by other important things, but I wasn’t finding a balance. When we work in that upper right quadrant we are finding ways to expand our horizons, accomplish our goals, and balancing our lives.

Here is one more matrix with other issues added:

Link

I love the titles given in this one.

#1 is necessity. It’s got to happen. (Do it now!)
#2 is quality. It makes life interesting and meaningful. (Schedule and do ASAP!)
#3 is deception. It looks bigger than it is. (Delegate or delete.)
#4 is waste. It eats up your time with little benefit. (Ignore.)

In the best of all possible worlds, the Eisenhower Matrix sized to time spent on these should look like this:

Link

Maybe take some time this week to work on that upper right quadrant. Take a look at your goals and how you are managing and planning. Then go for it.

The Tuning Slide: 3.12- Inner Game Skills- Will and Trust

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Never let the thoughts of self-unworthiness re-arrange your prepared passion for failure. You can do it even if others say you can't. But you cannot do it if you tell yourself you can't.
― Israelmore Ayivor

Last week I wrote about awareness, the first of what Barry Green and Tim Gallwey call the “skills” of the Inner Game of music. I wrote:

Non-judgmental awareness moves us into a place where we aren’t fighting what’s happening, analyzing it, trying to “fix” it. We are simply letting it be…

There are two skills which build on top of this awareness- will and trust that I want to look at this week. These are all skills that help us grow toward a healthy balance of Self One trying to analyze and fix and Self Two working on what’s natural. Let’s start with “will.” From Google:

• The faculty by which a person decides on and initiates action.
⁃ synonyms: determination, willpower, strength of character, resolution, resolve, resoluteness, single-mindedness, purposefulness, drive, commitment, dedication, doggedness, tenacity, tenaciousness, staying power - "the will to succeed"

• Control deliberately exerted to do something or to restrain one's own impulses.
⁃ synonyms: desire, wish, preference, inclination, intention, intent, volition

The first thought is obvious- we seem to be talking about willpower and doing what you want to do. In and of itself, that is true. But there is more than just “the will” to do something. One of the things research has shown over the past number of years is that, believe it or not, “willpower” has limits- you can “use it up.” If you go through a whole day having to exert choices and willpower to do- or not do- something, your ability to resist temptation at the end of the day is greatly reduced. You don’t have as much “willpower” left. So, let’s dig in a little and see if we can find some directions in this.

Will is both a decision- drive, purpose, dedication- and the exertion to do (or not do) something. It depends on what you discover through the skill of “awareness to refine and develop what it is you are intending to do and accomplish. From Gallwey and Green as I said last week:

• Will can be described as the direction and intensity of our intentions. It sets the goals, keeps us on course, works through trial and error to keep us on course.

Will does start with some exertion of willpower, but that’s not what it’s about. It is about goals and making decisions to move toward those goals. Goals, Green says

• are the direction finders for our will and the major “will skill” that we need to learn is goal clarity… When we have clear goals and are focused on them, our concentration can be sustained. (Green, p. 53)

In other words if we know what we desire (learned through awareness) and have set clear goals, it becomes easier to stay focused and aware. Again, to Green

• When we are clear about our musical goals, we find that … reserves of strength and energy become available to us. On the other hand, when we are uncertain about our goals, it is hard to bring our will to bear on them and easy for our concentration to wander. (Green, p. 53)

We can reach a point- call it force of habit or whatever- where you don’t need to exert as much will to do something. Now Self Two is beginning to step more clearly into the picture. Self Two has taken over some of the work of the will because I enjoy what I’m doing. The awareness, built in Self One has relaxed about these concerns. I don’t worry about some of the technical issues around these concerns. I now pick up the horn to practice every day- and usually at least twice on most days- even if I have a gig or rehearsal later in the day- because it is what I do. It is natural. It is relaxed. It is fun.

Which brings me to the third of the Inner Game skills- trust. Let’s go back to what I said based on Green last week:

• Trust allows the simple awareness to take place without self-criticism, it lets you go through trial and error without giving up, and it lets you be open to tapping your inner resources to perform your best.

In other words Self One knows that Self Two is actually more competent than once thought. Self Two can step aside on those issues and relax while maintaining the awareness of what needs to happen next. But it does that with less self-criticism than it used to. It can now criticize what is happening without adding negative judgements. It knows that I and Self Two are listening and will do something about it. Again, to Green, this is not:

• Blind trust but the trust that comes after hard work, and the trust the comes from knowing there is music inside you…. We have seen that our awareness and will “skills” are powerful tools that can help us solve problems and give intensity and direction to our music. In order to achieve our ultimate goal and enter the state of relaxed concentration where we are one with the music, there is one more skill we need. We need to trust ourselves.

There are barriers to trust that we have to work on. Some of the most common for me are

• Worrying about what others think of me
• Being a failure
• Feeling out of control
• Doubting my abilities.
• Performance anxiety

Fortunately these can be dealt with and I will do so in more depth next week. Dealing with them takes the openness to an awareness of what’s going on within you, including a personal inventory of what you CAN do and what skills you can being to bear on them. It then takes the will to set clear goals and move toward them. But more on that next time.

The barriers can all describe where I was when I attended that Big Band Weekend at Shell Lake Arts Center in June 2015. I felt overwhelmed, outplayed, out of control and exhibited a lack of skill and a lot of performance anxiety. But I also loved what was happening. So I then attended the week-long Trumpet Workshop and found some direction. As a result, I started this expanded trumpet journey. But I had no real goal other than in some way or another to become the best damn trumpet player I can become at my age. I was excited and determined. But I had no idea how to do that. So I started simple- just pick up the horn and practice. As often as possible. Simple goal- aim at playing every day for at least an hour.

Over the next year I averaged between 60% and 80% of days and increased to about an hour and a quarter a day. I managed three months of daily practice! In the middle of the second year I reached the daily practice level- now going on six months without missing a day and have reached anywhere up to two and a quarter hours a day.

I didn’t do that through willpower alone. Yes, it started that way, but the I knew that the simple goal I set was the way to become a better player. I used the same method of goals to learn the 12 major scales around the Circle of Fourths. I then sought to improve my embouchure and stretch my range through some specific exercises. Both of those have been working. These all started with an awareness that I needed to do something. I then set goals, simple, achievable goals to move in that direction. I have been able to sustain and improve my concentration which moved it beyond just exerting my will to pick up the trumpet and play.

I actually trust myself today! I am discovering the music within me like never before in over 50 years of being a trumpet player.

The journey is worth it. Set your goals and move.

The Tuning Slide: 2.28

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Last week I talked about anxiety, specifically performance anxiety and some ways to deal with it. My last point in that post was:

• Have fun practicing!
  I do this because I enjoy it. I need to enjoy the music I make in practice as well. That is where self one learns to trust self two. Maybe I need to stop the tweaking of my plan to get over performance anxiety- and just learn to do it. No, not learn to do it- just do it. And that takes the ability to focus.

I realized as I was summing up things last week that performance anxiety is enhanced, if not caused, by distraction or lack of focus. When I am “working on" “dealing with” my anxiety I am NOT focused on the music. Distraction causes me to lose my ability to stay on task- even a task that is simple and deeply ingrained. I found that happen several times last week when I was practicing scales sitting on the balcony. It has been my favorite place to practice this winter- the Gulf of Mexico, the birds, the wonder of the sky and beach all add a sense of peace.

But only if I don’t focus on them.

So I was running through one of the basic, level one scales, you know, Bb and Eb concert. Most of us can probably do them in our sleep. But not as well if you get sidetracked by something around you-

Hey, look at that pelican..
What a beautiful sky it is today..

Or, well you get the picture. As soon as even the simplest thought entered consciousness, I would miss notes or my fingers would get flubbed up or I would forget where I was in the scale.

That is a major problem of mine. I have never been diagnosed as ADD, but I sure can be easily…

Squirrel!

…distracted,.

I have improved in my performance distractibility. For one I have a pair of reading glasses that focus best at about the distance of the music stand. I can’t see the movements in the audience as easily. (Chalk up one good thing for age!) I have also learned how to stay more focused on the director from peripheral vision alignment. That way I can stay focused on the music in front of me and not get lost when moving from looking at the music, then to the director and back again.

The next step in this process is to deal with focus in practice. That brings me back to

• planning,
• goal setting,
• being intentional in my schedule,
• keeping a journal,
• recording myself, and
• using a metronome.

Here is where I still struggle. I have improved in the first three, but need work in the next three. I have a hunch that if I learn to increase my overall focus in practice, I will begin to find more of it in performance.

I can do it- any of us can. The best example of that may be that as Mr. Baca and others at the Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop have said:

If you have six-weeks to learn something- it will take you six months. If you have six days, you will be ready in six-days.

In the end that may be the best description of focus. Which is why goals, with timelines, are good ideas. They are self-imposed deadlines, yet not so demanding that you resent yourself for imposing them. All in all it is the working on those inner voices that can get us stuck- or soaring to new levels of ability. Focus is being able to sort out the helpful from the unhelpful, the reality from the fear, and learning how to be more in the present. John Raymond, trumpeter and Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop instructor wrote on this in a recent Facebook post.

About 15 years ago I came to New York for the first time. My dad managed to hook up a lesson with the great Vincent Penzarella and, while I didn't remember this until my dad reminded me a couple weeks ago, he dropped some HEAVY wisdom on me back then. It went something like this:

VP: "John, why are you here?"

JR: "I came out to NYC to check out some music schools and I thought this would be a great opportunity to learn from the best."

VP: "Great! Well, who's been your best teacher?"

JR: (most likely some immature response, although my first response was much better than I would've given myself credit for back then).

VP: "The best teacher you'll ever have is your own brain. You know when you are playing and are really in the zone, and then you miss a note. Your brain says "I messed up, oh no." The critical side of your brain can talk very loudly. But you can't be creative when your brain is critical."

"Your brain allows you to be critical or to be creative, but you can't do both at the same time. The critical side of your brain, especially for a perfectionist in music, can speak very loudly John. You need to learn how to manage that critical side. You are going to have to learn how to talk yourself out of that and let the creative side surface."

"Your number 2 best teacher is the music. Listen to the music, learn the music, respect the music, love the music, just as it is. It has been around for a lot of years for a reason."

I only wish I had the maturity back then to internalize all this. Nevertheless, 15 years later and I can confidently say that these words are 100% ON POINT.
- John Raymond

Well, it is never too late to internalize it. That’s what these posts and the whole Tuning Slide blog is about. It is moving forward, taking risks, pushing the envelope. It is finding new ways to be a better musician, a better person, and going to new places in our own experience.

The Tuning Slide: 2.20- Playing Together

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

◦ Steve Carlton was one of the premier pitchers of the 1960s to 1980s. In 1972, with the Philadelphia Phillies, Carlton had a win-loss record of 27-10 and a remarkable earned run average of 1.97. When Carlton did not pitch, the team was 32-87. No pitcher in the twentieth century has won as high a proportion of his team's victories (45.8%).
◦ In 2016 Brian Dozier had 42 home runs, the best of his career. He was tied for 3rd in major league baseball. His team, the Minnesota Twins floundered at the bottom of the league.

As great and wonderful as these statistics are for the individual player, they show something else. It is very difficult for a team to make it if they only have one great player. Carlton, Dozier, and others like them stand out because they have a great deal of talent that can surpass the teams they play with. But the team needs more than they are capable of giving.

I thought of this again as I looked at those four things we as musicians are supposed to pay attention to:

• Music was #1
• Fellow musicians #2
• The audience is #3 and
• You, the individual musician, are #4.

In other words, it isn’t all about me. It is “us.”

Jason Bergman, in the October 2016 Journal of the International Trumpet Guild, interviewed the trumpet section of the Dallas Symphony. Ryan Anthony, principal trumpet said,

You know, a principal player is only as good as the section. Specifically, he’s as good as the second trumpet allows him to be. It’s always up to Kevin how well I’m going to do. I always trust Kevin and know that any time I sound good it’s because he’s right there with me. (ITG Journal, October, 2016, p. 90)

Music is #1, but who you are playing alongside is #2. In order to perform the best that you can, and do justice to the music itself, you have to be aware of what the other musicians are doing. You have to know your place in the piece and your role in the group. I said earlier this season that a composer writes a fourth part for a reason- she wants a fourth part; it does something for the music. Whatever part you are playing can seriously impact the other other musicians, the music, what the audience hears, and finally your own feelings about what you are doing. See how all four of those fit together?

It happened to me again on Christmas. The quintet was playing a really fun and exciting piece as our final prelude number. Somewhere, somehow about 8 measures into the piece I had a very brief moment when I defocused. My ADD had a “squirrel” moment. In a piece like that, even a brief mini-second is enough to get lost. I got lost. Because it was a newer number I was not as clued into the whole sound of the group as I could be. It was not a big disaster, but it was enough. For about 16 or so measures the group was relatively lost. The congregation listening to us might have just thought that it was a kind of weird arrangement. As a group, though, we had some difficulty getting back together until what was obviously a transition point in the piece.

It ended well. The brass accompaniment to the opening and closing hymns was superb. No one but us will probably ever remember the prelude falling apart. But I re-learned several things in the process:

1. Focus is essential. Maintaining it can be tough. I have come to realize that a significant part of what used to be “performance anxiety” has become more like the inability to stay focused. I can get distracted by a movement in the audience. I don’t usually get distracted by my own thoughts, although it does happen. When I think of it as “performance anxiety” then I do get distracted by myself. But it is usually that other movement. It is one of the things I must work on. I am better, but I am still working on it.

2. Rehearsal is essential. As we have heard, practice is for us to learn our part; rehearsal is to learn how our part fits with everyone else’s. Obviously I have gotten lost before in a performance. (See #1). In a number of our pieces we all know the piece well enough to get back without a train wreck. For me, this incident showed how important those rehearsals are for the sound of the whole group together! If I know my part well enough, I can then stay focused at rehearsal and know the rest of the parts.

3. Don’t panic. I have learned not to react when I get defocused. When I was younger I tended to feel like the world had just fallen apart and was only going to get worse. It is impossible to regain any focus when that happens. The fight or flight syndrome will automatically kick in. Mindfulness, stress reduction, centering can then be used to stop the panic. With enough practice of doing this when panic isn’t happening, just a quick breath, switch in thought, or some internal cue can being things back to center.

4. Listen. When I am no longer on the edge of some form of panic, self-induced or other, I can take a moment and hear what’s happening. If my time in rehearsal has been effective, I can more easily find my way back to where I’m supposed to be. The feel of the piece, the forward movement of the song, the groove at work will guide me in the right direction.

5. Get focused again. With all things back in place- or heading in that direction, it’s back to focus and move on. The music regains its #1 place, I am in tune with the other musicians (#2), the audience gets to hear the music (#3), and I’m in the right place in my head. (#4)

It takes longer to write or read this than it does for it to happen. Like all else in what we are doing, we need to develop the skills. Next week I will look at some of the ways we can learn and develop those skills. That is important since performance is not the only place where we can get defocused, lost in our thoughts, issues, problems, or stress.

How we do anything can become how we do everything!

The Tuning Slide- Sky Thinking

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Hard work beats talent 

when talent doesn't work hard.

-Tim Notke

I'm actually not going to write about "hard work" but about what I may need in order to do the "hard work." That happens to be having "goals." In essence goals are the ways we know where we are going. Over the years I have been taught at many workshops that goals have to be SMART:

• Specific – target a specific area for improvement.
• Measurable – quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress.
• Attainable – assuring that an end can be achieved.
• Realistic – state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources.
• Time-related – specify when the result(s) can be achieved.
-Wikipedia

Which means that my goal

to be an excellent trumpet player

doesn't really fit the criteria. But

to be able to play at speed the first section (12 measures) of Arban's 1st Characteristic Study by January 15

does fit. (And now that I mention it, might be a goal to work on over the next month!) I have a few goals related to next summer's Big Band and Trumpet Camps, including

to be able to comfortably extend my range to that elusive (to me) high C or D

as well as

to be more comfortable with dealing with changes in songs and do an improvised solo.

That goal of comfort in changes is a little too vague to really fit the criteria. If I have some specific activities and exercises that I am using to get in that direction such a long-range goal can tend to be okay.

The Edge of Unachievable is one way we learned at camp to find goals. Maybe we could use the phrase Sky Thinking. Even though that phrase is often used to mean things that are out of touch with reality, why do our goals have to be that way? How about, instead, may be on the edge of unachievable but not quite out of reach. With hard work informing and forming whatever talent we may have, who says we can't get there?

Hoping your Sky Thinking plans have been

Written Down, and traced back to exactly

what to Act on today.

-Bob Baca

Expanding on Bob Baca's wish for us at the end of camp, there are three things necessary for us to move forward.

• Do your sky thinking. Brainstorm. Take some time to think about where you want to be in a month, six months. I was talking to a young trumpet player the other week who has been working on the Carnival of Venice from Arbans. He has already played it for Solo/Ensemble but hasn't reached where he wants to go with it. He is still pushing his sky thinking.

• Write them down. Start a journal where you note your sky thinking goals and can see your progress. If they aren't written down, they are less likely to happen. The further out you go, of course, the less specific you can be. You also have to be ready to go with whatever life may throw at you. Don't be so rigid that you will break if something gets in your way. Writing them down may also be a way to share them with others- teachers, family, friends, band directors- who can help you.

• Translate into action. Ah, here's the work. I am great at spinning ideas and plans into thin air (the "sky" of sky thinking.) I can easily get side-tracked by those pesky squirrels that are everywhere. I can lose focus and direction if I don't have some form of plan of action. It doesn't have to be fully outlined with footnotes and explanations. I'm not that structured. But I need a flow-chart that keeps me on the ball. I need to have some way of knowing what I need to do today in order to get closer to my goal tomorrow.

Put this all together and I end up with a far better set of goals than I had when I started. I also feel better about what I am doing. I know I am going somewhere that I can regularly test by my own criteria.

Try some of these for yourself if you are having trouble in some area of your life. Where are you going? What do you want for you? Get out of the rut by going off into that almost unachievable place.

[By the way- since I listed some achievable goals above, I promise to let you know how I'm doing.]

The Tuning Slide- No Wandering

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

On those long notes behind the trumpet solo,

if anyone lets his mind wander for a minute

he is dead.

-Don Ellis

Things are moving along nicely. You are in "the groove." You are feeling what the rest of the group is doing. It can be a concert band piece or a trio. You know the music is working its magic on you and you couldn't feel better.

Then for  moment you get distracted. It could be something out of the corner of your eye or a note that didn't land just right from you or someone else. Maybe you just remembered something you forgot to do before you left home. Perhaps a memory of another performance was triggered by a note or just a random thought drifted up from the unconscious.

Suddenly the whole mood and feel changes. You aren't lost- you know right where you are, but the groove is gone. You are not in sync with what's happening.  If you are in a concert band you may get away with it. If you are in the midst of a solo, as great trumpet player Don Ellis so bluntly put it- you're dead.

Now, I know Robert Baca said the same thing about "panic" that I quoted a few weeks ago. The truth is, though, it's true. It took me years to realize the truth of it- and why my performances were often riddled with moments when I "died." No one noticed most of them except perhaps the director and the person sitting next to me. But distraction is for me the worst of.....

Squirrel.

Just kidding. Another way of describing this result of distraction is that obstacles appear when we take our mind away from the sound, the music, or the goal. Obstacles are things that get in the way of doing what we want to or are usually able to do. When I have listened to recordings of some of my solos in the big band or concert band I have often noticed one thing in particular- the sound. Perhaps it is better to say that I notice when my "sound" goes flat or isn't alive. The obstacle is not that I can't keep a clearer sound, the obstacle is maintaining it when I am distracted.

Sometimes I get distracted by the fact that I just did the previous line or phrase better than usual. I take that moment to congratulate myself- and I am distracted. Sometimes I get distracted by paying too much attention to the audience and I get flustered. Sometimes in life I get distracted by "the small stuff" and miss the goals and hopes I have for myself.

Even good things can be distractions, of course. If it takes me away from my goals, it is a distraction.

High-wire artist, acrobat, and daredevil Nik Wallenda of the famous Flying Wallendas has this to say:

I've trained all my life not to be distracted by distractions.
Nik Wallenda

Perhaps the word for what Wallenda does is maintain focus and being mindful. Staying in the moment is essential. Notice that he says he has had to "train" all his life to do it. I do not think it comes naturally. We are easily distracted because that is how our brain is constructed. It is part of the ancient survival system. To learn how to do this takes time and energy.

We learn in the practice room when we work on our pieces so that we know them more than just technically. We learn focus as we become familiar with the rhythms and flow that make the music alive. We learn mindfulness as we take the time to sing the parts out loud to feel the movement. We discover awareness as we listen to ourselves play and how what we are playing fits into the greater picture of the music.

But we also improve our musical focus ability when we take five or ten minutes on a daily basis to meditate or focus on our breathing as a way of bringing ourselves back into the moment. What we do in the hours of the day when we are not playing music can have a huge impact on how we learn to avoid distractions. Our music is not a box we can separate from the rest of our lives. Nor is our life a separate box from the music.

As we learn to integrate who we are and what we do, we find that our music will flow from us.

And we can flow from our music.

Practice mindfulness. Stay in the moment. Pay attention to your breath. Feel the pulse of the music as you play. Remember the sound you want and play it. Don't think about it; don't analyze it. In your practice - just play it so it is yours.

A Quick Thought

In my reading recently I have found a lot of research about how the brain works efficiently- and often- not so efficiently. For lots of evolutionary reasons our brains respond to novelty. We react to wanting new things and getting a rush (of dopamine, often) in response.

Interestingly, many of the reasons for this evolutionary development no longer hold true. We don't need to remember the exciting things in order to survive (i.e. where that great food was located.) Now we can just look at our credit card receipts.

But the reaction is still there. Evolution doesn't move fast enough considering we are very, very recently out of that kind of survival mode.

Which brings me to the cellphone, the Internet and Facebook.  Do you find yourself refreshing your Facebook feed every few minutes? Do you react automatically and reach for the phone when that little *ping* announces a new text?

Well, the *ping* causes dopamine to be released. Pleasure. Excitement. Reach for the phone. I was sitting next to a young woman who kept her phone in the top of her high boots. Even in the midst of other things happening, I knew when her phone went off. Not because I heard it, she had it on *buzz*. But because she reacted. With the automatic reaction of her hand going instantly to reach for the phone. Instantly. No matter what she was doing or what was happening around her.

That, of course, is why the cellphone has become even more dangerous than drinking and driving. The *ping* or the *buzz* releases the dopamine that distracts us, no matter how much we think it doesn't. It is instantaneous. Even more so than the ADD reaction of


It is quite frightening how much is does impact all  of us. All  of us!!!

So,


Oops. I gotta go- there's news on Facebook I have to check.

Too Easily Distracted...

... But that's part of the fun!


We have been snowbirds for the past 7 weeks, but alas, the trip is over. The realities of March in Minnesota (talk about March Madness!) have settled in. It has been one of the finest winters for us. Doing nothing, reading, sleeping late and/or taking naps, producing 16 videos and taking a gazillion pictures. Ah, the life.

If it hadn't been for the daily Lenten posts, I would have been far behind in my daily discipline of my blogging. While I may not be officially diagnosed with ADD, I certainly show all the symptoms. (Look- a parasailer. My, maybe I should go walk on the... Wait a minute, I need to get the shells... Oh- it's time for Better Call Saul...)

I realize that this is one of the advantages of partial retirement and I will agree that if I were 100% retired back home, I would probably eventually go a little (more) bonkers. But then again...

The biggest problem was that I last any of the standard discipline I had worked so "hard" at developing last fall. The work on my writings has taken a back seat to many of those parenthetical things above. I have gone to the library at least once a week and did some writing, I played in a local community band and I had a great experience at a recovery convention. I remember reading somewhere (wait for it- here comes my justification) that there are times when you need to take a vacation from your writing when there is something you need to work through. I know that has been part of what is happening.

As I have been researching and writing on my Dad's 10th Armored/80th Medical history from these months at the end of World War 2, I have also been coming to some new insights on my Dad, his family and how it all has impacted me. As one of those introspective (not introverted), intuitive, feeling types, these are important times for me. I am grateful that I have had the opportunity to experience and introspect on these things recently. As I settle back into my daily routines at home, they will do me well.

But the distractions will still get in the way- which for me is good.