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 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.

Tuning Slide 4.3- What Music Does For Me

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

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

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

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

What Playing Music Does for Me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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: 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: 2.21- Growing Mindfulness

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

As you begin to realize that every different type of music, everybody's individual music, has its own rhythm, life, language and heritage, you realize how life changes, and you learn how to be more open and adaptive to what is around us.
-Yo-Yo Ma

Becoming open and adaptive the what is around us is a goal for every musician. A good word for it is mindfulness. In the ongoing spirit of this blog where tuning ourselves helps us be in tune with our music- and vice versa, I am going to step away from music for most of this post and talk about being mindful. Don’t forget- how you do anything is how you do everything. Therefore if you do anything with mindfulness, you will learn to do everything with mindfulness. The result will be that you are a better musician and a better person.

Let’s start with a reminder of what mindfulness is. The person who has introduced mindfulness to millions is Jon Kabat-Zinn. His classic definition is simple and to the point.

Mindfulness is awareness that arises through
⁃ Paying attention,
⁃ On purpose,
⁃ In the present moment,
⁃ Non-judgementally. It’s about knowing what is on your mind.

How can we learn this? I found a web site called Zen Habits that lists some possible “rituals” that can help develop mindfulness. Here are a few of them that can be important for our developing musician mindfulness.

It’s good to start the day being mindful. Zen Habits suggests two mindful actions. (Original comments in italics; mine within brackets.):

Sit in the morning. When you wake up, in the quiet of the morning, perhaps as your coffee is brewing, get a small cushion and sit on the floor. I will often use this opportunity to stretch, as I am very inflexible. I feel every muscle in my body, and it is like I am slowly awakening to the day. I’ll also just sit, and focus on my breathing going in and out. [I’ll have more on breathing and mindfulness meditation again in a future post.]

Brush your teeth. I assume we all brush our teeth, but often we do it while thinking of other things. Try fully concentrating on the action of brushing, on each stroke of each tooth, going from one side of the mouth to the other. You end up doing a better job, and it helps you realize how much we do on autopilot. [Here is a good example of how we do anything can impact everything. Just being mindful of brushing can train us to focus the mind.]

As you go through your day, take time for these:

Walk slowly. I like to take breaks from work, and go outside for a little walk. Walk slowly, each step a practice in awareness. Pay attention to your breathing, to everything around you, to the sounds and light and texture of objects. [Slow walking is great for feeling the body in motion. It can help us begin to “feel” what our body “feels” like. That is an important part of playing music- knowing what how our body is feeling and responding.]

Read in silence. Find a quiet time (mornings or evenings are great for me), and a quiet spot, and read a good novel. Have no television or computers on nearby, and just immerse yourself in the world of the novel. It might seem contradictory to let your mind move from the present into the time of the novel, but it’s a great practice in focus. [Just an “Amen!” to that! Note, though, that this isn’t studying or reading to learn- it is for enjoyment.]

As you think about your day, Zen Habits suggests practicing your ability to focus. This one might be helpful if you have a significant concert or performance coming and you need to get the feel of it.

Work with focus. Start your workday by choosing one task that will make a big difference in your work, and clearing everything else away. Just do that one task, and don’t switch to other tasks. [Then apply this to your music practice. Simple, yes, but it takes practice.]

Dr. Amit Sood, one of my mentors from Mayo Clinic suggests that we should have a specific “theme” for each day of the week and stay focused on that through the day. His weekly list is

Monday: Gratitude
Tuesday: Compassion
Wednesday: Acceptance
Thursday: Higher Meaning
Friday: Forgiveness
Saturday: Celebration
Sunday: Reflection

If you start each day aware of the theme and learn to work on that for the day, in a few weeks all of the themes will be woven into the fabric of each day. It’s just like highlighting one part for each day. Then, with another few weeks practice you will know which of these is needed on any given day or even part of the day.

The goal of all this is that non-judgmental awareness- mindfulness.

As you develop these skills they will have a positive impact on your musicianship. Your musicality will be more even and not as dependent on “getting in the right mood” since you will have more awareness of how to focus on what is in front of you. It won’t be pulled down by other people as acceptance and compassion will be there. You will find yourself more balanced as you discover the greater meaning in your day and your music, celebrating with gratitude what you are given the chance to do. Reflection on your life and music will help you be more forgiving of others- and most importantly of yourself.

There is a comfort, peace and joy in deepening the ability to mindful. It gives each moment the possibility of new discoveries. It keeps us focused on what is in front of us, and it allows us to build today what will be good for us tomorrow. No judgement. Just start with what is and move from there.

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: 2.19- As Simple As...

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

It is one of my favorites of Mr. Baca’s insights from the Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop:

Make everything sound like "Mary Had A Little Lamb." A 3-year old can sing it without thinking about it. Put the rhythm on the board for a new player and they will struggle with it.

And we all know it’s true.

• All those black marks on the page are intimidating.
• All those sharps or flats? No way!
• Look at the tempo marking. Are they kidding?
• How am I ever going to get that down in time for the concert?

Excuses, excuses, excuses. But they work. We don’t ever learn it like we could. We don’t take the time to practice like we need to. We continue to assume that it is too hard because we think it’s too hard and therefore it remains too hard.

No, this is not another post on practicing. That’s still a few weeks away. It is another post reminding us to keep ourselves in the right balance with the right kind of goals. It is a reminder that just practicing any old thing will just get us any old someplace- or nowhere near where we want to be.

Last week in looking at planning for the new year I wrote:

• We start something by taking the necessary steps to get there.
• We have to know where we want to go.
• We then create opportunities then things happen.
• We follow our interests and take risks.

One of those places we want to go is to make everything as natural as "Mary Had a Little Lamb" (or "Twinkle, Twinkle.") No matter what the piece is that we are working on, it is the feel of the natural that we want. I used to joke when I heard a trumpet player do something extraordinary that “those notes aren’t in my trumpet.” I was trying to be funny. But I was also trying to make a feeble excuse for myself. If they aren’t in my trumpet then I don’t have to work on them or learn to play them. Simple? Yes. But also self-defeating. It ’s almost like saying:

“My goal is to be as mediocre as I feel I am. I want to continue to suck at being a trumpet player.”

The website, Cyber PR posted last year on ideas for setting musical goals. They suggested a few steps:

• Find your focus areas (You are creating a sense of order)
• Write the goals down. (Journals, paper or virtual, are a great idea.
  
  • Start with an easy goal and do it on a timeline
  • Keep moving by keeping lists for each goal
  • Look at the goals daily
  • Look for people to help you achieve the goals- your “team”
  • Plan for the time to do what you want

So, after writing that I came up with my focus list for musicians to consider. I wrote them in the first person since they are my way of finding some focus.

• Listen to the kind of music I want to know or play better, which is (or should be) basically all music
• Take time to sing
• Find my weak spots
• Develop a plan to improve the weak spots.
• Try some memory work
• Write some licks, choruses or songs

Here’s one thing that came out of that:

• A week or so ago I was listening to a folk version of the song the Beach Boys interpreted in Sloop John B. I noticed that it had a different feel from the Beach Boys’ version. I also noticed that I liked the way the arrangement fell into place with the different voices. [This is the first item above. I love to listen to music, but as a musician I am also trying to listen differently than I used to. Hence I noticed things about the song that intrigued me. Yes, I sang along!]
• It might be fun to learn the song on my trumpet. [This helps me address a couple of my growth areas- playing by ear, memorizing a song, expanding my musical vocabulary.]
• I then thought that it also might be a fun piece to work into a number for the brass quintet, maybe even trying to put different sections into different styles allowing the different voices of the different instruments to stand out individually. [I now move into the area of taking what I hear and discover into writing it down- and adding other parts that also require a closer listening and more learning by ear. It will also help me understand a little more music theory, chord, melody structure, etc. An important area for my own growth!]
• I have a couple months coming up when I will have more time than usual to do the learning and writing. [A timeline- by the end of March to have a first draft ready for the quintet to play.]

Hence I have come up with a goal and a plan to address some of my own joys and areas for evolution.

Right now that all looks and feels a lot like a full score of Les Mis printed on one page. But with my goals set down for you (and me) to see, I have a plan to turn it into "Mary Had a Little Lamb." It of course is one of several goals in my focus for the next couple months, but this is a new and challenging area for me. I expect it will also have impacts on my other areas of advancement.

To learn to do this in music is a great way of learning to do it in other areas. I have already learned ways of doing this kind of planning and focus in my career and personal life. I bring it to my musical life, improve the process, and take it on to other things as well. This is the cross-fertilization that naturally occurs in our daily living. We are internally interconnected. Allow each to nourish the others. You will keep your life in tune.

What is your plan for the next three months?
Where do you need to focus?
Who can help you develop it?
What’s keeping you from doing it?
Go and do it.

The Tuning Slide: 2.14- Deepening the Beginner's Mind

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Before starting last week’s post I did some journaling/scribbling of thoughts. I decided it needed to be a short “poem” in place of the “prose” I generally use. (Poetry is like music in that it forces one to focus on the things that are important without getting into a lot of words- kind of NOT like I am doing here.) Anyway, here’s what appeared when I was finished..

Having a beginner’s mind-
    The mind of a child:
Being childlike,
    Filled with wonder- where even the
Old is new
    And what’s young is filled with wisdom

Do you have any memory of the wonder and awe the first time you heard some music that moved you?
That’s beginner’s mind.

Do you still have that happen when you hear a performance or recording of someone doing great music?
That’s beginner’s mind.

Do you still have that happen when you have finished a performance and you sit back in wonder at having been part of the creation of something powerful?
That’s beginner’s mind.

It happens when the notes fall into place and are no longer just black marks on a white paper. It happens when you wake up one morning and realize that this is a new day of unknown opportunities. It happens when someone points out to you that the trees on that mountain over there are not green- they are an infinite number of colors we call green. That childlikeness is a gift to be nurtured since most of us lose it as we grow older. It doesn’t take long for us to get bored with seeing the same things, playing the same songs, looking at the same four walls. Those days we wake up and wonder what’s the big deal about another day? We assume it will be just like the ones before. When we do that we lose the childlikeness that EXPECTS each day to be different and can hardly wait to see what it will be.

Do something right there where you are. After reading this paragraph take a look around the room where you are sitting. It is most likely someplace familiar, someplace you may even know like the back of your hand. There’s nothing there you haven’t seen before. Or is there? Look around- and find one thing that you may never have noticed before- or never saw quite that way until just this moment.

Go ahead. Do it now and then come back. I’ll do the same.

How did it go? Find anything? See anything new or unusual or out of place? If not, do it again. Really look hard. There are things there I am sure.

I am sitting at one of my normal coffee shops, one I frequent 3-4 days/week- and have done so for three or more years. Two things showed up in my line-of-sight. First, was a new sign indicating the type of coffee being served this evening. Not unusual, but the sign was new. It didn’t have the standard company logo.

The second thing I noticed was an American flag folded in one of those triangular display cases made for the flag when it is given to families at a funeral or graveside. What is that doing here, in a coffee shop? Does that framed paper underneath it explain it? So I went and looked. It was a flag flown over Operation Resolute Support base in Afghanistan. It was given to a local high school (and this coffee shop) for support of Operation Hometown Gratitude.

That has nothing to do with music. It is the growth of awareness that does. It is sharpening my senses so that I can be more ready to see and hear and experience the life that is around me and within me. How we do anything is how we do everything. Remember that? If the only place and time I try to be mindful is when the trumpet is in my hands, I will probably not be as successful at it as I would like. I will just be playing ink spots on a page or getting whatever sound comes out when I press valves 1 and 3 at the same time. It may sound like music, but it won’t be musical. Until I pay attention. Until I know what is inside that note with those valves pressed. Until I know what that sounds like alone- and in a line with other notes. Until I know what those notes sound like when added to other people playing their own notes. Childlikeness. Wonder. Awe.

What surprised me most in that short “poem” above was the way the last two lines flowed out. They came from an awareness- hopefully a mindfulness- of something I hadn’t even thought of yet. We are talking about a way of seeing the world around us so that even what is “old is new and what’s young is filled with wisdom.” This is a mindfulness where we are open to learning from each other and don’t put value judgments on what we may see or hear. There is newness even in that same old song I have played a thousand times over the years. How many times has our big band played Glenn Miller’s immortal, In the Mood? How many times have all of us played Stars and Stripes Forever or the Star-Spangled Banner? Do they still move you? Do they still touch that inner place of wonder and awe as if it were the first time you heard them? They can.

Just as the new song or new lick or new flower growing in the spring can be a source of wisdom- learning wise ways that may have never been seen or heard quite that way before. Every March and April I go out looking for signs of spring. I have done this for years and I know what I will find, when it will show up, and where to go to see it. But it is new. New every time. It is a new life. It is a new experience of the world. Alive and returning. Wisdom.

Yes, I am getting philosophical here. Maybe it’s the time of the year for that. But when we learn to be mindful and aware in the normal course of each day, each day will no longer be just “normal” but unusual, filled with wonder, and ready to move us into new understandings of who we are. Tomorrow, when I pick up Clarke #2 there will be something there to change my perception. It will even be there in the long tones I start with. As I cultivate that in all I do each day, I will grow- and so will my music.

The Tuning Slide: 2.8- Listen to Grow

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

The past two weeks I looked at the first two parts of this statement from Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop

Three characteristics of a great trumpet player:
1. Every time you play you have a great- not a good- sound.
2. You have great- not good- rhythm.
3. You have great- not good- ears to hear the sound.

How does ”great ears” add to this trio of greatness? What the heck does that even mean?

My first thought went to “ears” as the ability to be in a group and hear what others are doing. That would be the skill of blending your sound with the sound of the whole group. Not as easy a task as we might think. I am still amazed when one of my colleagues in the concert band knows when I have hit an F instead of an F#. (One of my most common errors.) Even when I wasn’t playing loudly and they were sitting two chairs away from me. They have a good ear, perhaps even a great one. They know when my note isn’t fitting into theirs. I can do that sometimes with others in the section, but it hasn’t come easy.

Most of the time I am way too involved in myself to hear what the rest of the band is doing. I want to make sure that my “ears” hear “me.” Fortunately this has gotten better over the years. One of the best ways to work on it is to play in a smaller ensemble like the brass quintet I play with. After the first run through of a piece when we do end up concentrating on our own parts, then it is time to let the ears do more work. How do I fit in with the group? Am I hearing the chords and my place in them? Am I overpowering the other parts, throwing things out of balance? When there are only five of you and obviously only one on a part, these are not incidental questions. Thus one of the important pieces of having “great ears” is to know how to play well with others.

But I also realize that a lot of this has to do with what we do before we get into the rehearsal. As always it is found first in the practice rooms. Wondering how others understood this I asked Matt Stock, one of the faculty from Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop, to reflect on what “great ears” meant. He responded:

I’m realizing more and more that “ears” is misleading. Generally we think of that as just pitch or passing an aural skills test in school. The better definition would be the ability to conceive every detail of a performance (pitch, tone, time, expressive details, etc.) from a written score. I suppose good ears would be the ability to do that with the music you normally encounter and great ears would be the ability to do that at sight with the unexpected/unfamiliar and for a classical player transpose at sight. For a jazz player I suppose that would be the ability to react to unexpected chord substitutions, transcribe, etc.

I didn’t expect that answer (which is why I ask questions!) Matt is saying that “ears” is the ability to go beyond just sight-reading when you see a new score. It is the ability to “hear” that score even before you play it. It doesn't necessarily mean to look at a full score and hear all the parts. That takes years and probably more time than most of us have if we are not becoming conductors or music majors. But it does mean to look at my part and see where it goes, what it does, and how it does it. It means audio visualization like we have talked about before.

In many ways this took me back to the ongoing fundamental analogy that music is a language we learn to speak. When we develop an “ear” for a language we are on the way to learning the language. It means that when we read the language on the printed page, we can “hear” it and know what it means. Then it moves to being able to hear the language when spoken and be able to know what is being said. That starts with mentally translating as you listen. To do that is very slow and means we miss a great deal of what the other person is saying. Then it moves to where certain words and phrases are understood without translating. You then start to use those phrases appropriately without needing to translate into or from our native language. Eventually if we are to really learn the language we have to do more than read and listen- we have to internalize it and then speak what we hear. To do that with our music takes us back into the practice room and playing it.

If we have the opportunity, we need to hear it being played, of course. We have talked about listening to recordings of performances, then singing it, before playing a piece. That’s hard to do in the middle of a rehearsal, though, when a new piece is handed out or in the middle of improvising when an odd chord comes up. So we develop our ears to know what it sounds like before we play it- or to know what’s happening when we hear it.

Back to playing in ensembles, that, too, is more than just hearing the others play. It is about the ability to hear when I am wrong. It is “ears” to know that my style isn’t matching the style of the lead trumpet, or that when I have a part that is a duet with the horn or trombone, we have to be able to blend our sounds together. When we do that we change- and enliven- the color of the music. Playing in the quintet has been the single best way for me to develop my “ears.” It still takes the practice room where I learn the language of my part. It takes the practice room to begin to put those sounds in the right place.

Back to Matt’s thoughts:

What helped me be more demanding with my ear training has been to record myself singing. With the Tonal Energy app you can record yourself and use the tuner when you play it back. (http://tonalenergy.com/) In the ear training classes I took you passed if you ended up somewhere near the right note no matter how sloppy everything was along the way. This forces you to be much more honest. It’s humbling at first but pays off if you stick with it a few weeks. John Hagstrom recommended that in a masterclass at NBS a few years ago. He also talks about it in one of the interviews with Brass Herald that he has posted at: https://www.trumpetmultimedia.com/ (top right corner).

In the practice room, the “great ears” come from working on them. It can be ear training, long tones (them again!), learning the sound of arpeggios in each key, or recording yourself. You won’t develop great ears if you don’t use them. Intentionally. (By the way, I looked up the two resources Matt mentioned. The Tonal Energy app looks like a really good overall resource- a tuner that does more than tell you that you are out of tune. Trumpet Multimedia has some excellent information. Thanks, Matt!)

Beyond just hearing the sound and playing it appropriately, this is about mindfulness in all that we do. As I have gotten older and more aware of the importance of paying attention, the whole concept of mindfulness has grown in value. Being mindful is about being in the moment, knowing where and who you are and how you fit in with what’s happening around you. One definition I found (Google):

a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations…

Even more to the point is the definition from Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of the key developers of the ideas of mindfulness:

Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally. It’s about knowing what is on your mind.

• Paying attention
Concentrate on what’s happening and going on within you and around you.
Take time to more than smell the roses- see them and appreciate them.
• On purpose
Not as an after thought, but being committed to your growth and development.
Make it part of your daily plan to be aware and mindful.
Allow the world to amaze you at what is happening that you may have missed before.
• In the present moment
The past is history, the future a mystery, stay in the now.
Our fretting over the past or worrying about tomorrow is one of the biggest obstacles to growth.
Notice the world in all its infinite wonder.
• Non-judgmentally
Don’t be hard on yourself, judging, and over critical.
You are where you are. You may not be where you want to be.
But only when you accept the here and now can you begin to move beyond it.

When we practice this in our music, we will discover it in the world around us.

When we practice this in our daily lives, we will find the wonderful sound of our music.

“Ears.”

It is more than just hearing.

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.