Tuning Slide 4.53- Practicing and Performing (from Year 1)

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

(I’m taking four weeks off from new posts while I do a number of things, not all related to this blog. In these four weeks I am posting some from the very first year of The Tuning Slide. Some of it will be to refresh my thoughts, and some of it will just ground what I am doing in the purposes of the blog. This one was post #1.29 on 3/16/2016.)

---

Be harder on yourself in the practice room and
be easier on yourself in performance.

---Bryan Edgett

Going through my notes from the end of last year's [2015] Trumpet Camp at Shell Lake, I came across this note:

Practice like you want to perform; perform like you practice

I had some kind of intuitive idea of what that meant, kind of along the lines of the quote above from trumpeter and professor Bryan Edgett. Practice is where you work out what you want to do and performance is where you share it with others. It also meant to me that when I am practicing I should NOT just be playing the notes on the page. Instead I need to be digging into all the aspects of the music- tempo, tone, shape, groove, etc. If I can't find those in the practice room, they won't be there when I go to perform them.

I have seen that happen in my own playing with a concert band. I practice my part and have it down cold. Technically it feels right and I'm feeling good about myself. Then I get to the next rehearsal and I hear my part with the rest of the band and, oops, I can't make it happen. That means that on some level my practice has been missing some things. One of those is to see practice as a performance.

So I dropped an email to one of the faculty from last summer's camp, Bill Begren. I asked him what he took that statement about practicing and performing to mean. Here's his answer:

Performing at a high level is a habit. Develop that habit by practicing at a high level. This most often means:

• Fundamentals make up 50% to 75% of your daily practice.
• Slow down to the point where you can play without mistakes.
• Repetition is your friend.

I told Bill that I would riff on what he said- and he gave me lots of things to think about. Let's start at the top.

I had never thought of high level performing as a "habit." Sure, I knew about muscle memory and getting in the habit of doing things the right way so I don't have to fix them later. But to see performing itself as a habit was an expanded insight. If I have not gotten into the habit of practicing at a high level, I won't be able to do any performing well.

About the same time Bill wrote me the above, we had a brief conversation online about the meme that Malcolm Gladwell wrote about in his 2008 book, Outliers. What has come to be called the "10,000 Hour Rule" basically says that the key to becoming expert in any field is to have put in 10,000 hours of practice. In our instant gratification society this came as a shock to some. You mean I can't be an expert at this for what, 3 1/2 years of 8 hour days? Sorry, not for me.

The other side of instant gratification is finding an "easy" answer to getting what I want. So, if I sit down and play for x amount of time for x amount of days, even if it is 3 1/2 year, I will be an expert. Let's get started. That naturally doesn't happen that way since someone with that type of attitude isn't going to stick with it for 3 1/2 months let alone 3 1/2 years because they will not see themselves changing.

That's because just practicing for 10,000 hours alone isn't going to do it. If you do it wrong for those 10,000 hours, you will be an expert at doing it wrong. If you settle for less than your best for those 3 1/2 years, you will be great at being less than your best. Hence, Bill's comment above that the practicing at a high level is what it's about.

But 10,000 hours of practicing and performing at a high level will lead to even higher levels of practicing and performing. THAT I find exciting and motivating. That does mean making a commitment to doing just that. After a few months of that kind of practice and performance, you will know whether you want to continue that commitment.

But what is "high-level" practicing all about. Bill gives three parts to it. The first is fundamentals. Back in the 60s and 70s Earl Weaver was the manager of the Baltimore Orioles. Weaver was known for preaching one thing over and over- it's the fundamentals that win ball games. You practice the fundamentals until they are routine. Next time you watch a baseball game, notice things like how the first baseman moves to his position to get the ball. It's habit. You watch him throughout the game and you will see him do it the same way almost every time. I have taken hundred of pictures of pitchers pitching. For each pitcher I very seldom get a picture that is unusual. He always pitches the same way.

Fundamentals.

I didn't ask Bill what he considered fundamentals. I already know the answer:

• Long tones
• Chromatics
• Daily Drills and Technical Studies
• Scales

Google "Bill Adam Trumpet Routine" and you will find the best-known of routines and many variations on it. THAT is fundamentals. Doing them over and over. One is never so good that you don't need to work on some of those early Arban's routines. Herb Alpert told me he plays scales every day. Keeping the fundamentals clear and sharp makes those 10,000 hours effective. If you have an hour to practice, at least 30 minutes of that hour should be fundamentals. I know- we don't have that kind of time. Sure we do. We find it when we up our level by practicing at high levels.

Bill Bergren's second insight into high-level practicing is to "slow down." But Bill, it says allegro! So what. I read on one of the sites I was looking at the other day that if you recognize the tune when playing it, you're not playing it slow enough. Slow down. Make sure you can ht the notes cleanly. Make sure you know what the phrase looks like. Give the phrases feeling- but do it slowly. My one teacher had to keep at me for wanting to play it too fast. I want to be able to show I can do it, that I have the technical chops to succeed at it. But when I do that I always flub up.

Sure we will get faster as time goes on, but it is the ability to play it slowly with meaning and purpose without mistakes that leads to high-level performance.

Finally, repeat, repeat, repeat. Repetition is our friend. Don't run it once and forget it. Play it. Then play it again, only better. Build your confidence. Remember the Inner Game tactic of trusting yourself in your playing? Repetition is how you get that confidence.

This isn't deep rocket science or even deep music theory of performance. It is plain old common sense. Which is why we ignore it. We think we have an easier, softer way. We think we can get it done in half the time with half the effort. Well, if it's going to take 10,000 hours no matter how you practice, why not make those 10,000 hours count!

Tuning Slide 4.4- It's in the Basics

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Success is neither magical nor mysterious.
Success is the natural consequence of consistently
applying the basic fundamentals.
—Jim Rohn

I had already decided on this week’s theme before this year’s Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop. But right from the beginning of the week I realized that this was no coincidence. I return every year to Shell Lake to be reminded and renewed in the basics of being a trumpet player, musician, and human. Success is always in the basics- and working on the basics every day.

My thinking on this started a month or so ago when I had a trumpet lesson with a local musician. I knew that he would help me in a number of areas and I knew it would be about some of the fundamentals. I just didn’t know which ones- and what to do about it. That, of course, is why we need to have a teacher and take lessons. We don’t know what we don’t know, and we can’t be entirely objective about what we are doing. It takes someone outside of my own head to hear what I am doing and what I need to do about it.

It is always about the basics. First and always and forever, it’s about the sound. It is making the best sound, the sound that resonates with myself and others, the sound that “plays well with others,” the sound that I am hearing in my head and wants to come out through the horn. As my mentors at Shell Lake emphasize over and over, the sound is what we focus on. It is learning to listen to the rich harmonics possible in any given note for each note, as they tell me, is the whole universe in and of itself.

Second, and as essential as the first, is the rhythm. How do I work on rhythm? Articulation comes to mind. So does singing the part or exercise. Catching the rhythm is basic to sight reading I am finding out.

Third, and often overlooked by most of us in practice, is patient slowness. We want to play it up to speed as soon as possible. We want to sound like Clifford Brown in one of his incredible be-bop licks or take that whole Clarke etude in one breath like it indicates. But if I haven’t discovered the sound (tone) or rhythm (articulation and phrasing) it will be just a bunch of notes with no life in them. In order to get to that point, I have to take it slow! I can’t help but think of the lyrics of one of the songs in West Side Story when I hear this:

Boy, boy, crazy boy
Stay loose, boy!
Breeze it, buzz it, easy does it
Turn off the juice, boy!

So, in my lesson, what did the teacher do? He took me back to the basics, of course. Since he, like my Shell Lake mentors, was a student of the great trumpet instructor Bill Adam at Indiana University, he had me pull out the tuning slide and just “play the tube.” Breathe and let the air vibrate. Find the center of the tube- and the sound. Listen to it. Improve it. Breathe it. I could feel my sound relax and center. I could feel the tension decrease. It’s the basics, man, just the basics.

Next, still on sound, we started on long tones and long scale tones. Because of what I was hoping for, part of it was to make the sound as soft as possible. Pianissimo. Soft. Quiet. Breathe it soft. Keep the sound centered. Keep the breath moving. (Last week one of my teachers there noticed I needed to do some work on that as well. Another piece of my puzzle added.)

Now it’s the to add some rhythm work- articulation. He had me turn to one of the basic rhythm exercises in the Arban’s book (the ultimate basics of trumpet playing!) and play them keeping the sound and notes connected. After over 56 years of playing trumpet, I had never really ever worked on this before. (Amazing what happens when your last lesson before a few years ago was when Lyndon Johnson was president!) Listen to the sound! Keep the breath moving. Keep the notes connected as I articulate.

Finally, the overall basic for this lesson- take it slow! Don’t rush through it. Do the long tones- slowly. Do the scales and chromatics- slowly. Do the rhythm and articulation exercises- slowly. Find the way to do them slowly but with purpose and energy. Slow can be dull and boring, or it can be filled with potential energy being released.

Two weeks after that lesson I went to the Brass Festival in North Carolina- and I was knocked over by the change in my sound and breath. I do not need to be convinced of the importance of the basics. I see the results in my playing. I hear and feel the results in my playing.

The basics. Now as much as ever. Perhaps even more so now. It is easy to get the feeling that one has learned all the simple stuff. That is for beginners. No. The trumpet, as many trumpet players have said, is a very unforgiving instrument. It will be putty in your hands one day and a piece of ice unwilling to bend the next. It is always in the basics that I learn to keep moving forward. If I do nothing else with my trumpet on any given day, I must always do the basics.

It is just as true in my own daily life. I can get complacent about what I am doing or what is happening around me. I can lose the center of my life, moving into the out-of-tune sections that can lead me to boredom, fear, or just plain laziness. Each day I need to work on my own basics.

• Sound- the tone of my life. Is my tone happy or sad, accepting or judging, willing to work with or working against others? That is the internal. It is my mood, my feelings, my inner reactions to what is happening around me. Mindfulness to these is basic.
• Articulation- how I show it. Do I act out my internal struggles or feelings, taking it out on others, blaming others for my stuff, ignore what is my responsibility? This is the external. How I respond to others is important for it can and will impact all my relationships.
• Patience- Stay loose and keep moving. I have to know I can’t be perfect, so don’t try to rush things in order to get past them and ignore them. Turn down the juice and keep cool.

Every day, in whatever ways I can, it is all about the basics. They are, after all, the only way to get where I want to be.

The Tuning Slide 3.20- Beyond Mediocre (1)

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

If you need to be inspired to practice,
you should probably do something else
-Ted Nash

“You didn’t wake up today to be mediocre,” says a common meme easily found on the Internet. But many, myself included, spend way too much time avoiding the things that can help us move beyond mediocre or keep us stuck in ways that don’t move us forward. Which, in the end, keeps us mediocre.

Definition: of only moderate quality; not very good.
Synonyms: ordinary, average, middling, uninspired, undistinguished, unexceptional, unexciting, unremarkable, run-of-the-mill, lackluster, forgettable;
Informal -OK, so-so, fair-to-middling, no great shakes, not up to much, bush-league

That’s why so much of the research and writing on expertise and improvement focus on “deliberate” practice, working on the things that will make us better and consciously doing things that challenge us to grow. Just playing something two hours a day every day won’t necessarily make us better. With bad habits we may just become fair at being mediocre.

Brent Vaartstra on the Learn Jazz Standards website has an article outlining the Four Ways to Stay Mediocre as a Jazz Musician.

Specifically related to jazz musicians, his thoughts are just as applicable to all musicians who want to improve. I have reversed the themes into four ways to get beyond mediocre, but the idea is still the same:

• Don’t get stuck on scales
• Get out of the practice room
• Work on rhythm and time.
• Don’t beat yourself up

Let me sum up what these mean for me.
• Don’t get stuck on scales
⁃ As Vaartstra says, scales are essential, but how are we playing them? Are they just some rote exercise that we do because we want to learn the scales and let them fall smoothly under our fingers? Good. But what about the style and sound? Can we play them smoothly, with feeling and movement? Can we play them staccato with a sense of musicality? What about the tone? Do they sound like we are just rushing through them to get on with the real stuff? Talking with one of the Shell Lake Workshop participants the other day, he said that he has been working to make part of the Routine"musical". That’s the point. Every time we play we are making music! Then when that scale comes up in a piece, we can play it musically and not just by memory.

• Get out of the practice room
⁃ There are two aspects going on here. One is to get out and listen to live music when you can. It can (and should) be just about any kind of music. It is the opportunity to hear how other people make music and inspire us to improve out own. The other aspect is to get out and play with others. In jazz that can be going to an open jam. It can also be any bands or groups you can play with. Find ways to play with others! Even the best soloist must know how to play in balance and blend with others.

• Work on rhythm and time.
⁃ We often overlook this aspect of deliberate practice. Being able to read more complex rhythm takes time. For my money the two best methods for that are the Arban exercises, especially the syncopation and dotted eighth-sixteenth sections, and Getchell’s Second Book of Practical Studies for Cornet and Trumpet. More about why this is important when we talk about sight-reading. To sum it up now though, it is the rhythm that can often through us off. Rhythm is the dialect and emphasis of the music. When we can get those in our practice, we will be able to play more music.

• Don’t beat yourself up
⁃ It seems we often get back to these underlying concerns that we have often called Self One and Self Two from the Inner Game disciplines. As we work on our pieces, our less accomplished techniques, the more difficult exercises, it is easy to be unkind to ourselves- or worse, give up. Stay steady, let Self Two do what Self Two can do and tell Self One to relax and enjoy the music.

With that in mind here are the two of four ways I have discovered that these movements beyond mediocre can be of great value. I have found some of this on The Musician’s Way website (https://www.musiciansway.com/practice/) and reflect on them from my own experience in practice and performance.

Warm-up and basics.

Like sensuous opening ceremonies, warm-ups prepare the body, mind, and spirit for making music.
– The Musician’s Way, p. 37

I still haven’t found warm-ups and basics to be “sensuous”, but they are the obvious place to start in the movement beyond mediocre. As I mentioned above this can be a place to develop musicality and tone. To play that “simple” Arban routine with beauty and tone is always the goal. Some of the exercises are even performance etudes. They are how we learn to do it. A good warm-up routine, appropriate to your needs and growth is worth it’s weight in gold- and time. So are things like mindfulness and exercises like T’ai Chi and Qigong in getting the body into a healthy spot.

Listening and learning

“For you to perform with native inflection, you have to listen and listen until you break through to the soul of a style.”
–The Musician’s Way, p. 98

The more you listen, the more you learn. On one website I read the more than obvious statement that we actually learn to speak- by listening. No one tells us how to talk. It is natural. We are designed that way. The same is true for music. But there are different types of music- just as there are different languages. They all share the same notes, though not always played the same way or in the same order. Some have different rhythms and different time frames. Some are “straight” and some “swing”. How do we know how to play it if we haven’t heard it.

I was reminded of this last weekend. One of the big bands I play with had a gig at a local dance venue. It was an amazing evening for me. I found myself moving along in time (mostly) and able to go with the rhythm. I realized that I am now truly beginning to understand and “speak” the language of jazz big band. I can more regularly look at a passage and know what it probably sounds like because it is in a pattern that is commonly used in the music. I realized I was no longer reading it “note for note” but playing it out of what was called above the “soul of the style.” It is just like when I have learned a new language and found myself thinking in the language. I was no longer translating from an English thought to a German or Spanish thought. On Friday evening I was not translating a written note from one style to another- it was more often just coming out that way.

This is actually more important than it may seem at first glance. All music is language. Music is perhaps a “generic” term for different languages. Like learning any new language we do not start with the most complex words and sentences. Trying to read War and Peace before a first-reader would be most difficult. As I was watching the John Coltrane documentary the other evening I was reminded of this truism. There is much in Coltrane’s later music that I do not understand. It was a different language than any most I have known in music. It was clearly powerful and transformative. I could feel it- but I don’t yet understand it. I want to- and have been working on that for years. I know more about it today. Someday it may all fall into place.

For that to happen I have to keep listening. The many styles and languages of music will enrich my overall understanding of the depths of music and increase my vocabulary. I will be a better musician- and a better person for it.

Which, next week, will bring me to two other aspects of practice that will help us all move beyond mediocre- sight-reading and memorization.

The Tuning Slide 3.19- Endurance

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Last month we looked at attitudes and habits that lead us to self-care, respect for our colleagues, and balance in our musical lives. This month I want to dig into some of the things I have learned about practice. I never was very good at practicing. I would do it when I needed to or when I wanted to have some fun with some new piece of music I found in a music store. But I was not very disciplined or organized. Over these past few years of my growth into a musician I have been taught a great deal about what makes for practice. I have even come to enjoy it. What then are the effective, efficient, and deliberate ways we can practice that will enhance what we want to do?

So, the theme for November here on The Tuning Slide:

The joy of practice

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

If you’re not practicing- that’s stupid.
-Lennie Foy

How long can you play? How high can you go? How will your chops hold up? I ask myself these questions all the time. They are questions of endurance. I have had a love/hate relationship with endurance. I love it when I have it and hate it when it bugs out on me. I am not satisfied with what happens and what I’m doing. Some days it seems like I have more endurance than I need and then the next I barely make it through a 30 minute routine. As I was working on this week’s post I dug a little more intentionally into the book by Paul Baron, Trumpet Voluntarily: A Holistic Guide to Maximizing Practice Through Efficiency. In a number of different posts I have written about “deliberate practice” and I have been trying to do that. But it seems I was missing something.

Well, not missing it so much as not applying what I know to my practice. That missing something was what I talked about last week- balance. Baron, on p. 13 caught me up short when he wrote:

A chop-building routine requires stretching the boundaries of your range, endurance, and volume but with a balanced approach so as not to injure your lips.

He goes on to talk about how rest is important- you know- rest as long as you play when practicing. He talked about things I am already doing- the Clarke studies, the Bill Adam routine, and Concone etudes. But he also ended up talking about the danger we fall into, what I fall into, when I think I have found the promised land of endurance and range. I get what he calls “stupid chops”. For Baron that is when he neglects the daily maintenance of his chops in order to play a show. He ignores the stuff that balances the thing he is working on with the basics.

What does he mean?

When things are going great, we sometimes feel like we are unstoppable and do not pay attention to the proper mechanics of playing, only to pay the price later. [Then] we decided to try a new routine and push it to sheer exhaustion.

He just described what I (and obviously others) end up doing in some repetitive and self-destructive cycle. All stemming, it appears, from an inability to maintain balance.

Stupid chops.

• My lips don’t recover enough between days of practice
• My range falls apart.
• My sound is mediocre to poor.
• I feel like I am straining to just play what I used to be able to play well.

Sometimes, as I have noted before, this happens just before I am about to make another breakthrough in endurance or range. So I used to just power through it until I had to back off and go at it again. It always needed up in some way of taking a step backward to allow my chops, attitude, and ego to rebuild. Then it moves ahead- but only after I have consciously stopped to return to balance.

I am at one of those points again which is why I think I subconsciously picked this month’s topic. I get the chance to write it out and see what it might mean. After Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop in August I was working on some embouchure adjustment thanks to Bill Bergren’s mentoring. It began to fall into place. I was regularly doing things that I had not thought possible a few months earlier- like regularly being able to hit the high “C”, “D”, and at times “E” above the staff. I was able to play quite well for up to two hours a day! It felt good. It was a major breakthrough.

Until about three and half weeks ago when it became work again. It happened on a Tuesday after a Monday when I practiced an hour in the morning with my normal routine and then two Big Band rehearsals that evening, and therefore the equivalent of another two hours plus of playing. I forgot to balance and went right ahead on Tuesday to try to do it again. And I fell apart. Like Paul Baron said, I felt “unstoppable” until I stopped. I forgot the mechanics of playing (just say “M”, right Bill?) and breathing. I barreled my way into the upper register forgetting the basic middle “G” approach. Now here I am trying to recuperate and recover from my own stupidity- er, lack of balance.

Maybe I should practice what I preach.

Let me bring it together as a way of giving myself a direction if not an actual plan. My “deliberate” practice over the next month or so will focus on balance. I will work on developing an overall style of practice that will allow for the balance to be more natural and ongoing. The basics of that will be:

• Rest as much as I play.
  
  • Admittedly I am not good at this. If I have an hour to practice I have difficulty only playing for 30 minutes. But that doesn’t mean I should spend the whole hour playing in order to get it all done. That IS a recipe for disaster, and it isn’t deliberate. I need to prioritize and plan the things I need to do.
• Balance the upper and lower.
  
  • Doing the expanding long tones starting on middle “G”; working Clarke 2 and 4 as expanding up and down from G; playing different volumes
• Increase slowly, not trying to get too far too fast.
  
  • Impatience. Dangerous. We get hurt when we are too impatient because we forget the basics. Take it easy. Grow at your pace and don’t push it. (By the way, never pray for patience. God will make you wait.)
• Don’t forget the basics
  
  • I know what they are. We all know what they are. Sound, rhythm, scales, long tones. We all know where to find them- Arban’s pages 11-36. Now to be aware of playing with good sound, good rhythm, and good intonation. Balance!

So what’s good in all this? Well, the work I have done has not been lost. I just need to get back into balance. When I was practicing last evening I still have the range I had three weeks ago- and it is actually a little stronger and clearer than it was. My sound is as steady and full through the same range- and is a little stronger as well. I am aware of being more relaxed overall. It is always a movement forward even when you have to slow down or even take some time to regroup!

This is one of those topics where it almost begs me to comment on how this applies to every day life.

• Rest and play- All work and no play makes Johnny dull. It can also make us sick and can lead to burnout. Take the time to kick back; find the direction of play; have fun.
• Balance the extremes- Always living at the extremes will just make you more addicted to adrenaline. It may easily lead to physical repercussions. The body needs the balance.
• Patience- Take it at a sensible pace. Life is a marathon- not a sprint. Plan for the long-haul.
• The Basics- Breathe. Take time to renew and refresh. One Day at a time.

If we can make these who we are, we can endure more than we thought, with greater range- and for longer than we think possible.

The Tuning Slide: 2.25- Goals!!

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

I forget where I recently saw this, so I can’t give attribution, although a Google search turns up lots of others who use it. But this was quite a wake-up when I saw it:

I don’t know about you, but I don’t wake up in the morning with aspirations for mediocrity.

Maybe some mornings I wake up and don’t want to do what is needed to avoid mediocrity, and other days I'm just fine with being average as days go. Yet when it comes to a lot of different aspects of life, mediocrity is not what most of us want to settle for. So why do we?

Some of it goes back to what I said about grit a few weeks ago.

• We lose interest,
• don’t have the energy, or
• believe we can’t be anything but mediocre.
  
  • Since I can’t be as great as Miles or Maynard why bother at all?

I will end up being satisfied to be as mediocre as… well, as mediocre as me.

I return to something Bill Bergren emailed me a few months ago that I didn’t use at the time:

Tiger Woods tells us we should never have to use more than 80% of our capacity when striking the golf ball. The same goes for playing the trumpet. This means your ability must be at a very high level to allow for that 20% buffer.

When I read that I realized why I had been stuck for so many years at what I am today calling “mediocre.” My capacity, let’s call it overall ability wasn’t that great. I never practiced regularly. That began to change when I started playing in three different groups and was playing more often. I was still mediocre, but less so. I was on the right track. I had no buffer like Tiger talks about because all I ever did was play when I needed to. My ability and endurance both ran out before the end of the rehearsal or gig.

Which fits what Bill said in the paragraph following the one above.

Tiger also tells us that the number of hours at the practice range or playing practice rounds far exceeds the time actually playing golf. This is true of any sport...........and music.

Makes sense, of course. If I can’t play more than 25 or 30 minutes, I’m not going to make it through a sixty- or ninety-minute gig. Fitting in just enough time to sort of work on the tougher passages won’t help a great deal. I remember the years in the summertime municipal band. At the start of the season I was lucky to get through the rehearsal. With a few days a week of working on those tough passages I could soon move up to at least getting through rehearsal. (The breaks when the director worked with the woodwinds helped.) By the end of the summer I could play through the whole concert, but I didn’t have a lot left over. There was improvement (in endurance) but I didn’t know that it was still just mediocre. In order to get that 20% buffer I needed to practice far more than playing the gig.

How much time is needed? Perhaps 20% more? But I have no answer to that. I did notice something in the book on Zen and the Art of Archery that I mentioned last week. Eugen Herrigal reports simply being told by the archery Master,

“Don’t ask- practice.”

There are aspects of practice that are important like singing the piece, playing it slow enough to know what the notes feel and sound like, recording yourself, listening to other recordings. All of these are not a prescription to zen and music, they are simply part of the practice. A classic zen idea is to realize that you will know it’s happening when it is time. Until then wait with patience- and keep practicing.

Again, last fall I adapted some of what Bill Bergren wrote to me with the deliberate practice ideas from from the book, Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool.

• Deliberate practice is focused. Students must give it their full attention.
• Deliberate practice involves feedback. Immediate, specific feedback on where students are falling short is vital.
• Deliberate practice requires a teacher
• Deliberate practice requires leaving one’s comfort zone. If students aren’t pushing themselves beyond what is comfortable and familiar, they will not advance.
• Deliberate practice requires specific goals aimed at target performances
• Deliberate practice builds on mental representations.

I have paid little attention to #5 on the list:
Deliberate practice requires specific goals aimed at target performances.

Last year in the first year of the Tuning Slide I took a shot at this idea. I have never been good at that type of planning in my practice regimen. Since reading the ideas in Peak and its explanation of deliberate practice I have spent some time thinking more about the idea of goals and plans. I’m still growing in that area, but I have learned some things. Well, one thing is for sure:

Figure out what you want to do (the target performance) and then plan ways to do it (specific goals).

What I have discovered over the past two years of this head-long leap into becoming a trumpet player that isn’t mediocre is to have a routine. Do it regularly. Daily is the goal. That’s where we have to start. When I made that a goal, it actually happened. Doh!

But then we have to be deliberate about it. We don’t just pick up the horn and start playing anything we feel like playing. A routine of long-tones, scales, Clarke studies, etc. Those remain the basics. Doing them daily is a key goal. I didn't even know I needed to do them or that if I did I would improve as much as I have.

Ask questions of your teachers and/or mentors about what you need to be doing. Then do what they suggest. Get a mentor or teacher and pay attention. That is the goal. That's where the goal begins to get specific, about you and what you need.

Read, research, and listen. In so doing you can find out what you want to improve. That's the goal. Then put it into practice. That's the goal. For example, I have always (!) wanted to be better at jazz improvising. I bought several of the Aebersold books, messed around with them for a very short period and then set them aside. "I guess that won't happen," was my response. What I didn't realize was that before I in particular would be able to do that I needed the basics. After the first goals above became reality I started reading more, researching more, listening more. I achieved a decent basic mastery of the 12 major keys. Now I had learned more of the language I needed. Goal!

Recently I came across a simple exercise on basic licks that can help get the feel of jazz under my fingers. Simple goal Practice one of these a day for six-days, in all 12 major keys. (Right there I would have set it aside if I hadn't had the other goals earlier.) Then on the seventh day- don’t rest- but play through all of them. Doing that is a goal. Today is the seventh day and I am looking forward to seeing how well this fits together. (See Learn Jazz Standards.) And- I am doing all this without written music, which was another goal in this past six-months- to work on my listening- and translating what I hear into music.

I am amazed some days at how long it has taken me (55 years?) to learn this about my trumpet playing. Fortunately I knew some of this from my vocation outside of music. I would have starved to death a long time ago if I hadn't. Applying it to my music has been the extra added value!

Again, this isn’t rocket science:
Set goals- figure out what you want to do and then plan ways to do it.

Of course,
then do it!

The Tuning Slide: 2.23- Beginning With Air

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

I had a request a couple weeks ago for an idea for the Tuning Slide. It came from one of the students at last year’s Trumpet Workshop at Shell Lake, WI. Not one to ignore one of my one or two fans, I thought I would give it a go.

One of the days at camp Bill Bergren taught one of the permanent Shell Lake staff how to play a trumpet. The staff member had never played trumpet before. He was a musician, played bass as I remember it. But had never played a wind instrument. Bill is an excellent teacher in the Bill Adam tradition and is a former student of Mr. Adam. It was quite a “demonstration.” Perhaps some of the high school and college-age students can remember their first struggles with the trumpet. I cannot. It is a dim and clouded place in history, fifty-five years ago, somewhere between the space flights of Alan Shepherd and John Glenn. But I am fairly certain that I was not able to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” as well as this volunteer did- after only 20 minutes.

Bill used no music, nothing about the musical scale or notes. That was not because the volunteer already knew music. If so, Bill would have said what notes were being played so the student could have a frame of reference. He was not told, “Now you are going to play a ‘G’, second line of the staff.”

He did start out by telling the student that it was all about the “air.” He did not even have the volunteer buzz the mouthpiece, an act of heresy to many band directors or teachers. He simply demonstrated what to do and then told the student to do it. [Any error in this description is due to my poor notes.]

I’m not going to go into any greater detail about the specifics of what Bill did, which I realize will disappoint any of us who may want a step-by-step description of what to do in what order. I will not do that for the simple reason I can’t. I can’t because first of all, my notes were not clear about what he did. I was more interested in watching and only recorded thoughts, not the steps. The second reason I can’t is that Bill wouldn’t tell me. I wrote him an email, and true to his style of teaching didn’t give me any such plan for instruction. Instead he wrote:

Everything I did was in reaction to the student. It's all about understanding the concept then articulating/communicating in your own words and style. IMO this can't be expressed in the written word and is the reason Mr. Adam never wrote a book. Imagine the master in Zen In The Art of Archery writing a book on his methods. I don't think so.

As usual, Bill nudged me into thinking about this in a different way. First, it is not about the method, it is always about the student. A good teacher in a situation like that must be ready to pay attention to the student and what the student needs. The good teacher must be able to read the student’s responses and adapt to what is needed at the moment. Not that the teacher doesn’t have lesson plans or a toolbox filled with ideas and methods. The good teacher knows which to use and when and is also on the lookout for new ways as new students are encountered.

Teaching is communication. So is learning. It is the receiving and reverse direction of communication.

With this in mind, I did look back in my notes to see what I could now learn from the little bit I did write down. What I found was two things.

We have taught trumpet as if the student is deaf. For example we tell them to push the 1st valve and you will get “F”. It becomes a technical exercise as opposed to musical. They learn that if you push this you will get what you are looking for. We don’t pay attention to what it sounds like. Bill had the student sing the note in imitation of what he did. With that we begin to enter into the realm of music and not technique. What does it sound like, is as important as what valves do I have to push to get that note on the page. Reading the music is very important (Doh!) but so it what we hear. We are not deaf.

I am sure we have experienced this when working on a scale. We push the wrong valve and the sound is wrong. We know by hearing that we have played a note that is not normally a part of that scale at that point. (Note that I didn’t say it was a wrong note! It just doesn’t fit what the scale sounds like.) We don’t know it because our brain tells us we pushed the wrong valves, we know it because it didn’t sound right. It is important to try to develop that sound awareness from the very start or build it back if you have lost it.

Playing music is more than just the right fingering, it is the sound! Which brings me to the other thing I learned from Bill’s demonstration lesson:

It’s the air that makes the sound, not buzzing. From he very beginning Bill talked about “air”. He used various techniques to have the student experience “air” including submersing the bell in a bucket of water for the student to see when his air flow changed. Can you feel the difference, not just see it in the water? That’s also at least part of the reasoning behind the Bill Adam technique of playing through the lead pipe without the tuning slide in place. It’s about the sound of the air. We learn by listening when the air is going well, when it is centered. You can hear the difference. We then learn to play that way with the tuning slide back in. I do notice I have a better tone in practice when I start with the lead pipe air exercise!

I had a quick example of how this works the other week in band rehearsal. I was talking with one of the other trumpet players about some of Mr. Adam’s ideas and things I have learned from Bob Baca and Bill Bergren. I mentioned the lead pipe air exercise. He asked me, “What does that do?” So I showed him. I didn’t tell him. I pulled the tuning slide out and played. I had not warmed up yet so the sound wasn’t centered. I showed what I knew how to do. I explained what I was doing. Then I did it one more time. “The goal,” I said, “is to have that same air no matter where on the scale you are.”

The result of all this in particular is back to the three things we should always have:

• Great not good sound
• Great not good rhythm and
• Great not good ears.

Listen, imitate, put it together. The sound will follow if you listen, imitate, and put it together.

Those are the basics, and I have a hunch that no matter where we are on the skill development journey we will be able to learn from them. Oh, and a reminder to myself that if Bill does this demonstration at this summer’s trumpet workshop, I will record it.

That’s not all I got from Bill’s brief note. But that will take another whole post, so I will save that for next week.

The Tuning Slide: 2.13- Nothing New- All is New

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
-Ecclesiastes 1:9

Many have seen quotes like this one from the preacher in the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes as profoundly depressing. Day by day goes by and there is really nothing new. It’s the same old same old day in and day out. But let me suggest that there is another way of looking at it, a way that gets me back to basics and exploring. In the end it will turn into a couple of “new” things:

First, that I can learn from how things were done before. People have been doing what I am doing- how did they grow and learn. That of course is the idea of having mentors, teachers, people to inspire and guide us in what we are doing. It means that there may very well be wisdom in what has gone before. Most of us as trumpet players have been using the Arban’s method for years. It was first published around 1859- and is still in print! Charlier, Concone, and others have built on it, but it is still as good as it gets. Nothing new under the sun- just look at Arban.

Second, the preacher of Ecclesiastes can also be saying that if we keep aware of the things around us, we will find something, that for us, is new. Yes, I realize I am reading into the text, not reading from it. But if I know darn well that even if there is nothing new under the sun, I sure haven’t learned, seen, or done it all yet. For me, it could be as new as this morning.

It can be so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that once we have learned something, we can move beyond it- we don’t have to keep on working on it. That would be a profound danger for any of us in life- but certainly a potentially musically fatal error as musicians. Reading the stories of people like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Johann Sebastian Bach seems to show that these great musicians never stopped learning and growing. They were constantly exploring what was already there, it’s just that perhaps no one had ever seen it quite that way before. I would describe that to some extent as having a “beginner’s mind.” There is a Zen Buddhist idea known as “shoshin” - beginner’s mind. According to Wikipedia

it refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner in that subject would. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin)

Having that beginner’s mind is one of those essentials of growing in our trumpet skills. In earlier posts about practicing I talked about planning as one of the things that sets deliberate (and effective) practice apart from just playing the horn. Let me be clear, I have great difficulty with planning of this sort. I tend to want to move along, not get stuck in “boredom” of practicing too much on one thing. I have been working on this aspect of my musical growth these past 18 months. I am beginning to see the results. (By the way, patience will be one of my topics some week. When I get around to it.) Not just because it has forced me to plan ahead and work on things that are more difficult- an obvious need, but because it has made me look at what is important- and then focus on it. With this all in mind, then, I wondered what one of our Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop leaders would add to this. So I emailed Bill Bergren two questions:

What makes a good plan?
What should be in every trumpet player’s plan?

His answer came as no surprise, but rather an important reminder that even when there’s nothing new under the sun, there’s always the need to be reminded of what is important. He sent me four pillars of what should be in every trumpet player’s plan. The first two:

FUNDAMENTALS! 75% The majority of your practice time, 75%, should be spent on fundamentals. If you can play the instrument, you can focus on the musical aspects. This includes routine, scales, method/etude books.

 MUSIC! 25% If you are practicing fundamentals in a musical manner, playing actual music should be easy.
Yep. No surprise. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. Three things stood out this year in a different way for me when Bill reminded me of these two pillars.

1) These help me play the instrument so that
2) I can learn to play the fundamentals in a musical manner, and
3) This helps me play music musically.

Because there is nothing new under the sun, what I will find in some musical piece for band, quintet, etc. will include what I have practiced in the etudes. I remembered on one of the pieces the community band played last summer that it felt like a Getchell or Arban’s exercise. It made it a lot easier to learn the piece.

I know it sounds strange to think of playing something like an Arban’s exercise “musically.” We don’t think that way when we are looking at the notes and figuring out how to play it. That is why it is important to “read” the piece and then “sing” it first. (Another of Bill Bergren’s points from Shell Lake.) Take the time to see and hear the music in the piece so that the music and not just the notes can come out.

It is important to see the etudes we practice as part of the fundamentals. According to Merriam-Webster, etude is defined as:

1. a piece of music for the practice of a point of technique
2. a composition built on a technical motive but played for its artistic value (Emphasis added)

The word “etude” comes from the French for study. Those etudes from Charlier, Getchell, etc. are meant to be musical so that we can learn techniques- fundamentals. One of my other mentors, Paul Stodolka, also from Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop, commented to me once that when he is finding himself off-center and needing to focus, he goes back to the etudes. It always works.

Bill listed two other pillars that should be part of every trumpet player’s plan. These two he said should be separate from the regular practice time:

LISTENING! ----You need to set aside time every day to listen to good music. It doesn't have to be trumpet players.

IMPROVISATION! Improvisation is important for ALL players.

A year ago I would have responded, “Yes, but…” to the second of those pillars. Not because I didn’t think it was important, but, well, it just kind of didn’t fit into what I was thinking. In reality I was afraid of it! It meant a degree of familiarity with the horn- and music- that I didn’t think I could have. Not that I didn’t want to learn to improvise, I was just intimidated by it. So what did I do? I followed Bill’s advice and went back to fundamentals. I learned the 12 major scales. Then I memorized Clarke #2 and one of the exercises doing thirds around the Circle of 4ths. Basic stuff. I worked on trying to play them musically, not just notes being translated from ink to air. It had to move from air to sound to music. I also listened to music. I always do that, but I became far more intentional about what I listened to. I began to concentrate on some specific pieces that had some good- but not complicated- improvisation. That was my plan. It worked.

And what fun it has become.

Next week I’ll take a look at what this can mean if we dig even more deeply a allow the beginner’s mind to be at work. As always, it will help us be better musicians and be better at living.

And THANKS, BILL, for the thoughts!

The Tuning Slide: 2.10- Building on Basics-Being Deliberate

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Last week I started looking at some of the research information published by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool in the book, Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. They present three levels of practice: naive, purposeful and deliberate. It is only through that last level that we move beyond just being okay or even good to new levels of “expertise.” This goes beyond the supposed “10,000 Hour Rule” that was intuited by Malcolm Gladwell and others from Ericsson’s research, as a key to making that level of success. Ericsson points out first that 10,000 hours was an “average” - meaning there were those who had more and those who had less. Beyond that it wasn’t just any practice that allowed them to get that far. It was very clear, deliberate and quite intensive practice.

What is deliberate practice then? Well, combining several of Ericsson’s and Pool’s explanations, here is a summary of the elements of “deliberate” practice.

• Deliberate practice is focused. Students must give it their full attention.
• Deliberate practice involves feedback. Immediate, specific feedback on where students are falling short is vital.
• Deliberate practice requires a teacher
• Deliberate practice requires leaving one’s comfort zone. If students aren’t pushing themselves beyond what is comfortable and familiar, they will not advance.
• Deliberate practice requires specific goals aimed at target performances
• Deliberate practice builds on mental representations.

I note that in the list there are no suggestions. These are all required. No “electives” on the list. Deliberate practice is not for those just in it for simple fun. It is not for those who want to be casual players. It is for those who want to reach significant levels of expertise in their chosen field. I would say that from my observations over the years in my career fields (ministry and counseling) that these elements hold true for those who end up excelling in those fields. They work at it; they don’t take any of it for granted; they are never complacent about what they can do or can accomplish. They will almost always look for new ways to step out of their comfort zones to experience, to learn, to grow, and often to share their expertise. I have no research data to support this- it is what I have seen often. It may be that what many of those have done is just very effective purposeful-type practice, although I would argue that the expanding elements of deliberate practice are also at work- with or without the research data.

Ericsson points out that the research data is rich in certain fields- sports being one; music being another. That is because there are very specific skills and methods of teaching that can be employed in those fields. They can show that taking those extra steps and actions do have real and measurable impacts on the development of expertise.

An important element of why this works is what we now call “brain plasticity.” This is the ability of the human brain to grow and change throughout our lifetime. The brain will “rewire” itself with enough practice and exercise. Many of us used to call this “muscle memory” when we would work over and over on a particular passage until it fell just right beneath our fingers. That’s part of the brain plasticity. The memory is in the whole interconnection of brain, nerves, and muscles.

Building on basics, one on top of the previous, next on top of what we already know. That’s the stretching out of our comfort, the need for feedback, the place of a teacher. But it is also why even the top trumpet players still practice their scales on a daily basis. Many also do a series of routines that keep their skills sharp. Yes, they have played them for years; yes, they do them from memory; no, they are never satisfied that they know them cold. Those basics, whether they are from Arban, Clarke, Schlossberg, or Charlier, are still the basics. These do not change.

What I have discovered, since I am not planning on reaching that very high level of expertise that would require 3-6 hours of practice daily, is that these routines keep me grounded in my trumpet playing AND in how my abilities are improving. It is these basics that are truly never “just” basic. What Doc or Wynton does is based on those. Everything is built on them. Every time I play those I need to remember to stay focused. Even the famous Clarke #2. Pay attention. What do I hear differently this time? Why am I having trouble with that particular key today? Why do I forget that particular sharp or flat note? Focus. Give it my full attention. I wish I could say I can do that regularly. I can say I am better today that I was six months ago. If I stay focused, I will continue to improve.

(Bob Reeves published Jerry Hey-Larry Hall Extended William Adam Practice Routine. That is how one becomes an expert!)

Paying attention is, in and of itself, a source of discomfort- moving out of my easy box. When I pay attention I don’t just go through the exercise and say, “Got it for today. Time to move on.” If I am focused I will notice the tone is off, the breathing isn’t falling into place, rhythm skips, or all those missed or sloppy notes. They better get fixed or I will never get it right. That brain plasticity works for the mistakes, too. Mistakes get ingrained if we don’t do something to correct them immediately. The single best way to do that is simply to slow down. Still not right? Slower. Remember a few weeks ago when I looked at the three elements of a great trumpet player?
• Great Sound
• Great rhythm
• Great ear.
If tone or sound is off, you need to hear it. If you can’t get the rhythm, you need to hear it. If you can’t hear it, assume you are playing it too fast. So slow down. In a different context I often quote comedian Lily Tomlin: “For fast relief- try slowing down.” It works on trumpet as well as it works in daily life. That is the whole idea of mindfulness, one of those ideas that flow in and out of these posts. More on that again in three weeks. Right now, simply slowing down is the basic. That, in and of itself, can be a stretch for most of us. We want to play at speed, we want to be Dizzy playing a Charlie Parker bebop lick at full speed. Resist that temptation. Learn it first. If the sound and rhythm are off, slow down and get them right. Speed will come- often one beat/minute faster each day.

As I was working on this post, the lead trumpet in the quintet emailed me about having a “trumpet sectional” i.e. the two of us. My first thought was to think back on the quintet’s rehearsal the day before. I know that on one of the numbers I was less than good. It is a section of the piece in a style that I have trouble with. My response back was “Good idea.” It is for the very reasons I have been talking about. I will not get better if I am doing something wrong and not getting feedback- even when I know I haven’t done it right. There are the times and places, more than we realize, when we must move to that deliberate practice of getting personal feedback and then working with a colleague on improving it. The email came at the right time. Maybe I should do that more often if I want my practice to be deliberate.

What will be your deliberate practice movement this week? Maybe it will be an extra ten minutes with improving Clarke #2 or working that second section of Charlier at a slower speed in order to get the tone and rhythm right? Maybe you have a piece coming up in a way-too-soon gig that needs your attention. Don’t put it off. Work on it. Be deliberate- and slow- until the brain picks it up. Listen. Hear the good and the not-as-good. Work on fixing it. Get feedback from a colleague or a teacher.

Above all- be deliberate. It’s what gets you to your next level.

Next week we will look at more of the elements of deliberate practice and add one more thing: Grit- the thing that keeps us deliberate in our practice.

The Tuning Slide: 2.4- What's Number One?

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Why do we do what we do as musicians?

Somewhere at some time in the past- distant for some, more recent for others- music made us stop and pay attention. Most likely it happened when we heard something in music and our world changed.

Mine was in junior high music class. The teacher told us to listen to his piece of music and tell what we hear. The needle dropped and I heard cars and people and the noise of a city through a series of notes and instrumentation that I later learned were iconic. When a few moments passed she stopped and asked us what we heard. I tended to be shy and didn’t raise my hand in class very much at that point so I remained silent.

She looked around the room. I don’t remember if anyone else said anything. I do remember her telling us the name of the piece.

An American in Paris by George Gershwin. I had heard correctly. The music was alive and real.

Several years earlier I had taken piano lessons for a year but had never stayed with it. I liked making music, or at least trying to. But I wasn’t hooked. Around the same time as the American in Paris experience I started playing trumpet after much badgering of parents who expected it would be a repeat of the piano. Fortunately it wasn’t. Again because something happened. I don’t know what it was in this instance. I do know that music became a central part of my life. It was September 1961, 55 years ago. Music is even more central today than it ever was- both listening and playing.

As a performing musician of various skill levels and involvement over these 55 years I can honestly say I have never wanted to quit. There were fallow periods when I didn’t play much if at all. But it was never far away. My brain kept yearning, even if it was just at Christmas and Easter, or singing along with the radio.

Music is always number one!

Maria Popova wrote about this aspect of music for performing musicians on her web site, Brain Pickings.

“Each note rubs the others just right, and the instrument shivers with delight. The feeling is unmistakable, intoxicating,” musician Glenn Kurtz wrote in his sublime meditation on the pleasures of practicing, adding: “My attention warms and sharpens… Making music changes my body.” Kurtz’s experience, it turns out, is more than mere lyricism — music does change the body’s most important organ, and changes it more profoundly than any other intellectual, creative, or physical endeavor. (Kurtz, Practicing: A Musician's Return to Music)

Then, quoting TED-Ed author Anita Collins, Popova leads us to an insight about how powerful music playing is:

Playing music is the brain’s equivalent of a full-body workout… Playing an instrument engages practically every area of the brain at once — especially the visual, auditory, and motor cortices. And, as in any other workout, disciplined, structured practice in playing music strengthens those brain functions, allowing us to apply that strength to other activities… Playing music has been found to increase the volume and activity in the brain’s corpus callosum — the bridge between the two hemispheres — allowing messages to get across the brain faster and through more diverse routes. This may allow musicians to solve problems more effectively and creatively, in both academic and social settings.

My guess is that at that somewhere moment in time our brains were filled with neurotransmitters and emotions and our mid-brain knew that it was good! Even when it got boring, we kept at it because it has been good and we knew it. The more we worked at it, the more we practiced, the stronger our brains became (that full-body workout of the brain!). It is dangerous to say, but in that our brain was hijacked. We can never be the same again.

That’s what got us going- and even keeps us going. It sounds like making music, then is all about us- the musician. And not anyone else. Just us. We do it to please ourselves. Which will get us nowhere. One of those seemingly insignificant statements that float about the room at the Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop points this out.

No matter what:
• The music is number one. It is first and foremost,
• Fellow musicians are second,
• The audience is third, and
• You are fourth.

Let’s take a quick look at each and see how this falls into place.

✓ The music is first.
The music has to be there and, let’s be honest, it has to sound good. It has to have that element of the notes rubbing together that Kurtz is quoted as writing above. The instrument shivers with delight when all those things come together. We strive for that moment. We want that moment to happen every time we pick up our instrument, even when playing those seemingly endless long tones and scales. If Clarke #2 has never done that for you, try it next time you play it. That’s what hooked us in the first place- the music.

Unlike a substance addiction where you can never get back to that first “high”, with continuing practice and dedication you can go beyond that first musical hook to even greater heights and depths. The first time I played Clarke #2 starting on the high G at the top of the staff was a moment as fulfilling and exciting as when I first played “The Saints” 55 years ago. It is the music that perpetuates itself in us, fulfills us, and helps us move to the next stage of our performance ability. We want to make the music and we want to make better music.

✓ Fellow musicians are second.
But we can’t do it alone all the time. Music is a communal act. It is done with others. Even the greatest soloists in any musical genre cannot maintain a solo act with no supporting musicians. In saying that our fellow musicians we play with are second means that we are building a community of people working together to make music. The music lives when it involves others. The music lives when we make the music WITH others. The tone and color change; the rhythm can be different. Even if we are playing in unison, it is more than one person. Plus, as we have no doubt discovered many times, our part sounds different when played with the rest of the parts. Hitting that top of the staff F is a lot easier when it is in a major chord than when it is rubbing against some minor dis-chord.

✓ The audience is third.
And yes, we have to play FOR someone else. I think I knew that way back in my early days. I would dream of planning and performing a concert for my family. What would be the order? What do I need to work on? What will please them? Some of that may have been a way of atoning for all the “bad” sounds they had to endure, but it was also a natural extension of the music’s communal aspect. The music had a long way to go, but they seemed to enjoy what I did, if only because I was doing it for them. That group sitting out there in the auditorium or concert hall wants the music we have to offer. Bruce Springsteen was talking on TV the other night about the magic that happens in concert. The interaction between us and our audience is critical for good music. Sure, we can play exceptionally well without that feedback, but the chemistry of performers and audience is exciting and energizing.

✓ I am fourth.
In other words, in the end it is not about me.

Yes, playing music moves us. Yes, playing music does all kinds of healthy things for us, the musicians. Yes, music makes us better people. But in the end it is not about us. It is about #1- the music. The music does not primarily serve us and our needs as the musician.

• We serve the music.
• We support our fellow musicians.
• We present our offering of music to the audience.
• We are moved, filled, energized, and carried to further service.

The Tuning Slide: Practicing and Performing

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Be harder on yourself in the practice room and
be easier on yourself in performance.

---Bryan Edgett

Going through my notes from the end of last year's Trumpet Camp at Shell Lake, I came across this note:

Practice like you want to perform; perform like you practice

I had some kind of intuitive idea of what that meant, kind of along the lines of the quote above from trumpeter and professor Bryan Edgett. Practice is where you work out what you want to do and performance is where you share it with others. It also meant to me that when I am practicing I should NOT just be playing the notes on the page. Instead I need to be digging into all the aspects of the music- tempo, tone, shape, groove, etc. If I can't find those in the practice room, they won't be there when I go to perform them.

I have seen that happen in my own playing with a concert band. I practice my part and have it down cold. Technically it feels right and I'm feeling good about myself. Then I get to the next rehearsal and I hear my part with the rest of the band and, oops, I can't make it happen. That means that on some level my practice has been missing some things. One of those is to see practice as a performance.

So I dropped an email to one of the faculty from last summer's camp, Bill Begren. I asked him what he took that statement about practicing and performing to mean. Here's his answer:

Performing at a high level is a habit. Develop that habit by practicing at a high level. This most often means:

• Fundamentals make up 50% to 75% of your daily practice.
• Slow down to the point where you can play without mistakes.
• Repetition is your friend.

I told Bill that I would riff on what he said- and he gave me lots of things to think about. Let's start at the top.

I had never thought of high level performing as a "habit." Sure, I knew about muscle memory and getting in the habit of doing things the right way so I don't have to fix them later. But to see performing itself as a habit was an expanded insight. If I have not gotten into the habit of practicing at a high level, I won't be able to do any performing well.

About the same time Bill wrote me the above, we had a brief conversation online about the meme that Malcolm Gladwell wrote about in his 2008 book, Outliers. What has come to be called the "10,000 Hour Rule" basically says that the key to becoming expert in any field is to have put in 10,000 hours of practice. In our instant gratification society this came as a shock to some. You mean I can't be an expert at this for what, 3 1/2 years of 8 hour days? Sorry, not for me.

The other side of instant gratification is finding an "easy" answer to getting what I want. So, if I sit down and play for x amount of time for x amount of days, even if it is 3 1/2 year, I will be an expert. Let's get started. That naturally doesn't happen that way since someone with that type of attitude isn't going to stick with it for 3 1/2 months let alone 3 1/2 years because they will not see themselves changing.

That's because just practicing for 10,000 hours alone isn't going to do it. If you do it wrong for those 10,000 hours, you will be an expert at doing it wrong. If you settle for less than your best for those 3 1/2 years, you will be great at being less than your best.  Hence, Bill's comment above that the practicing at a high level is what it's about.

But 10,000 hours of practicing and performing at a high level will lead to even higher levels of practicing and performing. THAT I find exciting and motivating. That does mean making a commitment to doing just that. After a few months of that kind of practice and performance, you will know whether you want to continue that commitment.

But what is "high-level" practicing all about. Bill gives three parts to it. The first is fundamentals. Back in the 60s and 70s Earl Weaver was the manager of the Baltimore Orioles. Weaver was known for preaching one thing over and over- it's the fundamentals that win ball games. You practice the fundamentals until they are routine. Next time you watch a baseball game, notice things like how the first baseman moves to his position to get the ball. It's habit. You watch him throughout the game and you will see him do it the same way almost every time. I have taken hundred of pictures of pitchers pitching. For each pitcher I very seldom get a picture that is unusual. He always pitches the same way.

Fundamentals.

I didn't ask Bill what he considered fundamentals. I already know the answer:

• Long tones
• Chromatics
• Daily Drills and Technical Studies
• Scales

Google "Bill Adam Trumpet Routine" and you will find the best-known of routines and many variations on it. THAT is fundamentals. Doing them over and over. One is never so good that you don't need to work on some of those early Arban's routines. Herb Alpert told me he plays scales every day. Keeping the fundamentals clear and sharp makes those 10,000 hours effective. If you have an hour to practice, at least 30 minutes of that hour should be fundamentals. I know- we don't have that kind of time. Sure we do. We find it when we up our level by practicing at high levels.

Bill Bergren's second insight into high-level practicing is to "slow down." But Bill, it says allegro! So what. I read on one of the sites I was looking at the other day that if you recognize the tune when playing it, you're not playing it slow enough. Slow down. Make sure you can ht the notes cleanly. Make sure you know what the phrase looks like. Give the phrases feeling- but do it slowly. My one teacher had to keep at me for wanting to play it too fast. I want to be able to show I can do it, that I have the technical chops to succeed at it. But when I do that I always flub up.

Sure we will get faster as time goes on, but it is the ability to play it slowly with meaning and purpose without mistakes that leads to high-level performance.

Finally, repeat, repeat, repeat. Repetition is our friend. Don't run it once and forget it. Play it. Then play it again, only better. Build your confidence. Remember the Inner Game tactic of trusting yourself in your playing? Repetition is how you get that confidence.

This isn't deep rocket science or even deep music theory of performance. It is plain old common sense. Which is why we ignore it. We think we have an easier, softer way. We think we can get it done in half the time with half the effort. Well, if it's going to take 10,000 hours no matter how you practice, why not make those 10,000 hours count!