Tuning Slide 5.31- The "Greats" of Making Music

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

There are 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.
— Bob Baca, Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop

n my music study a few months ago I came across an Internet post: 5 Music Theory Concepts Every Musician Should Know. The post had the following five concepts:

1 - Form
You can’t talk about the arrangement of a song without a solid understanding of form and the vocabulary to complement this understanding. I… You won’t get far as a working musician without a solid grip of form and its accompanying terminology.

2 - Functional Harmony
Knowledge of functional harmony will absolutely be the one thing that helps you learn material the fastest. Being aware of chord tendencies will help you predict what the next chord in a song will be, and will help you hone in on mistakes when one player isn’t in sync with everyone else.

3 - Consistent Rhythm
There is nothing more annoying than being saddled with a musician who is always pushing or pulling at the tempo. … It’s all well and good to be able to play in 7/8, but if you don’t have a solid internal clock while you’re doing it, nobody will care.

4 - Ear Training
Being able to hear a musical line, internalize what you think the notes are, then repeat it on your instrument is key to being a successful musician.

5 - Reading and Literacy
Can you be a musician without learning to read music? Sure, it’s possible. Will you be an even better musician if you do learn how to read music? Yes, it’s absolute.

I was reminded at that moment of the Three Greats from the above Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop quote: Sound, rhythm, ear.

◆ Sound
Music is organized sound.
— Edgard Varese

Sound is at the heart of music. Sound is things like tone, harmony, mood, loudness. I have worked hard over the past few years at getting a better sound. For me that meant not being “flat” or “dull” in my music. It included playing with “energy” so the music feels “alive.”

◆ Rhythm
Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.
— Igor Stravinsky

Now we are talking about the “beat” and the “tempo.” We have “melody” added along with the feel of the “movement” of the music, the “groove” and the “swing.” One quote I found said that music is arithmetic- we “count.”

◆ Ear/Listening
It's easy to get next to music theory, especially between your peers and music classes and so forth. You just pay attention. I had a good ear, so I realized that printed music was just about reminding you what to play.
— Quincy Jones

When we have worked on our musical “ear”, we can begin to know what it is that the music is doing without sole reliance on printed music. Listening I think makes “sight-reading” easier since we can look at a piece of previously unseen music and know what it might sound like. But it is also the ability to play with others, “blending” the different parts into a complete whole.

◆ All Together
All well and good. Now I had three things that had their own individual areas. But music is not found in three independent boxes; music is the combining of all these and more into the complete music. To be a “great” musician, Mr. Baca was telling us, you have to have all three of those and they need to work together. They are in a relationship. You can’t be “great” with any of them alone.

So I put together this visual for myself and played around with it for a while. Instead of putting each of the three separately, I put them in a “relationship.” As I did some brainstorming (or “mind-mapping” as it is called) is put those other boxes in-between the three different “greats” to show what they had in common- the box between “sound” and “rhythm”; the box between “rhythm” and “ear” and the box between “ear” and “sound.” They all merge into what we call “music.”

I do not pretend that this is either exhaustive or even scientific. It is my idea of what I have been working within these three areas over the years. Again, it is to show that what we call music is a lot of different things that come together. What I plan to do, then, is to take a week on each of the three relationships. First I will explore the things that make up the duo of Sound and rhythm, then sound and ear, and then ear and rhythm. Finally, I will bring them all together into music. Again, not exhaustive, but rather a starting point for myself and hopefully for you to do some thinking, planning, practicing, and discovering what music is for you. The goal is to be a better musician and, I think, to be reminded that it is a very poor experience of reality to put everything into separate boxes and keep them from interacting.

I am sure I will miss some things in this series. It is what I have discovered. Each of us will look at music from a different perspective and see different relationships. That is more than just okay- that is what making music together is all about. Think about it in the next week and I will take on sound and rhythm next week.

Tuning Slide 5.9- Learning from Jazz

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

You have to take a deep breath and allow the music to flow through you. Revel in it, allow yourself to awe. When you play, allow the music to break your heart with its beauty.
― Kelly White

As any regular reader of this blog knows, I am a huge jazz fan. I was first introduced through Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, and Al Hirt. I expanded with Buddy Rich and Maynard, then later with Miles. I was hooked when the jazz DJ at the college radio station started playing other musicians and then my good friend Glenn opened the whole jazz world to me. It is a musical language I understand at all kinds of levels and has enriched my life in countless ways. (It’s in my earbuds as I write this!)

Over the past 10-12 years I have been working hard at taking that language into playing it in groups. As I was surfing the other week I came across a post on the Piano Power site on how learning jazz can give us musical superpowers. Overall jazz takes us into all kinds of different nuances, styles, and emotions than we are used to. As I looked over the list all I could say was, “Amen! That IS true.” Here's the gist of it, starting with the question:

How will jazz make me a master of my instrument?

The answer to that is so simple as to defy imagination. Improvisation! (I said simple, but far from easy!) Improvisation moved me away from the printed notes into thinking, listening, feeling, and then playing the music. When I attempt to improvise I end up with a far more physical and even spiritual connection with my instrument and what it can do. Which leads me to see what I can begin to do. Like with any language, it takes practice and it can seem like a long road ahead when you start. The easiest way to start working the sounds and chords is through the blues- and then moving up from there. You get it in your head and heart and you become the composer. As a result I have found that I am also better able to hear the sounds of other music and more easily fall into the rhythms and scales. I become a better trumpet player in all styles I am playing.

Lucas Gillan said in the post, “If all you ever do is read notes on a page, you’ll never quite know what your instrument is capable of.” Nor will you discover what you are truly capable of across the whole range of the instrument.

Another post by Austin Consordini on the Making Music site took me into a different area- about the Seven Everyday Tasks That Every Jazz Player Must Do.

1. Clean Your Instrument
2. Practice Scales
3. Play Something by Ear
4. Practice Improvising
5. Listen to Music
6. Increase Your Repertoire
7. Practice Multiple Instruments

I don’t know whether he put these in this order for any particular reason, but I was struck by #1. Only in the past few years have I paid much attention to that one. How does regularly cleaning my horn make me a better musician? Personally, I have found that taking care of my trumpet is an expression of my caring about the music I am making. I don’t know if my sound or style changes with regular cleaning, but my feeling about my playing does. This reminded me of something else I have long observed. When I take my car to the car wash and get it cleaned inside and out, it “feels” like it drives better. I know it is my perception and reaction, but I feel more comfortable driving a clean car. My horn helps me make music! I need to be kind to it and take care of it!

The second item on the list takes me back to the idea of improvisation and knowing music overall. It is one thing- and an important one thing- to do the scale exercises in Arban’s. It is another to do the 12 major scales by doing them without music in front of you. Sometimes I work my way around the Circle of 4ths (C, F, Bb,…); sometimes I start at middle C and work up the notes to the next C and beyond; sometimes I start on G on the staff and expand down and up one note at a time. All this without music in front of me. It is “relatively” easier to do it from a written page, but I think I learn it more deeply when I don’t use the music. BUT, I found I also have to do scales from the written sheet so that when I see a piece of music in one of the scales, I know what I am looking at! It’s a “Both-And” situation.

I still have to do some work on the minor keys, though.

Playing by ear and practicing improvising have been covered earlier but they lead to the next two for me. The more music I listen to with attention and intention the broader becomes my understanding of music overall. That has then led me to the increase of my repertoire. Sometimes I do that through new or different etude books or some of the solo and etudes I have worked on in the past. Pulling out Mozart or Haydn or taking a fake book and working through the melodies can increase what I am discovering about music. A friend recently mentioned an etude book I had never heard of. I borrowed it and played through some of the pieces. I found them significantly different from any of my other etude exercises in ways that changed my listening skills.

In the end Consordini says in his post:

Becoming a jazz master takes living and breathing jazz music every day. You must be willing to dedicate time each day to mastering your instrument and sound. Being able to integrate these 7 steps into your everyday life will help you to be immersed in jazz and be on your way to becoming one of the greats yourself.

I may not become a jazz master, but I am improving as a musician by doing these things. Amazing how that works.

Tuning Slide 4.43- Sing Your Song

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Life is not logic. Life is not philosophy.
Life is a dance, a song, a celebration. It is more like love and less like logic.
-Osho Rajneesh

Agnes DeMille and Martha Graham were two of the greatest dancers/choreographers ever to hit the stage. At one point in her life, Graham sent the following letter to her close friend, Agnes.

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening
that is translated through you into action,
and because there is only one of you in all time,
this expression is unique.

If you block it,
it will never exist through any other medium
and be lost.
The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is;
nor how valuable it is;
nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly,
to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep open and aware directly
of the urges that motivate you.

Keep the channel open.
No artist is pleased.
There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.
There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction;
a blessed unrest that keeps us marching
and makes us more alive than the others.
As quoted in “Dance to the Piper and Promenade Home” (1982) by Agnes de Mille and in
The Life and Work of Martha Graham (1991) by Agnes de Mille

What better way to describe what we have been talking about here for the last month: our voice- the unique part of each of us and our song- the unique gift each of us has to offer the world. So what then are the required actions to make this happen?

✓ Patience
This is not something that happens with a snap of the fingers and Voila! there it is. It takes time to discover, uncover, or recover the important pieces of who we are from beneath the things of everyday life. Don’t expect it to happen immediately. Neither, by the way, expect it to happen only once. The song will be revised, improved upon, translated into other ideas, even transposed into other keys. That, too, requires patience.

✓ First Listening
First listening is my description of moving into a practice of mindfulness and meditation in whatever ways fit you and your style. For some of us, it can be in the form of journaling or quiet times to begin to be aware of ourselves, our emotions, our lives, and our potential. This is the inward focus of discovering more about ourselves. At this point in our journey, we are learning how to be still, be quiet, be patient. Too much noise can clearly keep us from hearing our song.

✓ Willingness
Normally we hear honesty as the first of these three (HOW). In finding our song we have to take the brave step of being willing to learn and change. We are not looking for the things about ourselves that need changing in this. Instead, we are looking at WHO we are. We have to be willing to at least explore that step. We get that from taking the action of learning how to listen.

✓ Honesty
What we begin to hear when we are willing may not be what we expected, or we may be resistant to truly answer some of our inner questions. Honesty is essential. Honesty says “Don’t give the answer you hope is true or the one you think others want from you. Don’t hide from the spotlight of quiet contemplation. Be honest with yourself. Keep track of that in your listening journal.

✓ Openness
After honesty, we need to finally be open to continue. We may find that we don’t like what we have discovered, even with our willingness to take the initial steps. We may decide it isn’t time and we don’t want that to be the answer. It doesn’t mean we aren’t willing, we just aren’t ready- open to the full possibilities. That’s okay. Don’t give up. Go back to the first listening and deepen it.

✓ Further Listening
As we move past the willing, honest, and open steps, now we are ready to ask even more important questions. This is when we get into the areas of our lives that give us direction. We find the things that move our soul, the things that connect us with others, the dreams and visions we can develop for ourselves. By this point we are paying more attention in more ways, that is, mindfulness. Perhaps we have learned to listen to the small voices that seem to show us new ideas. Perhaps we have discovered the ways to move beyond Self 1 listen to Self 2 (back to the Inner Game!) with trust. Life can begin to be exciting and frustrating. Patience is even more important now.

✓ Just Doing It
Nike has had it right for years. Just do it! Pick up the horn and play. Stay with the basics as the foundation- never leave them behind. Develop the ear and the eye so we can improve. Be self-aware, not self-critical as we do it, knowing that improvement is just the result of practice. Then keep doing it. If you don’t, you won’t begin to hear your voice in the song that is within you. Your unique song for the world.

✓ Keep Listening
Always listen. Listen to others; find mentors and listen to them; listen to Self 2 telling you that you can do it.

On the website Co-evolve with Kiran, I found the end- and the beginning of this search for the voice and the song. Who you are and what you have to offer.

There is a song that is wanting to be sung. There is masterpiece that is waiting to be painted. There is a life waiting to be lived. There is this song in each of hearts. A yearning which is never quenched. And in some ways we are all learning to listen to that.

The Rose
It’s the heart afraid of breaking
that never learns to dance
It’s the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance
It’s the one who won’t be taken
who cannot seem to give
and the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live

Go and share your voice and song. It is what living is all about.

Tuning Slide 4.38- Why Jazz

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.
— Miles Davis

[I left Miles’s male pronouns so as not to interrupt the thought.]

Last week I brought the three life lesson posts together in the post about lessons from jazz. But that hardly scratched the surface of jazz and its importance in the world of music. Jazz encompasses so many genres that it would be hard to make a complete list. Wikipedia’s jazz subgenera page lists 54 styles from Acid Jazz to West Coast Jazz with all kinds in-between. I have been a fan of jazz for over 55 years now. I don’t remember the first jazz I discovered, although it included anything I might have heard by Louis Armstrong, Doc Severinsen, Buddy Rich, and others on the Tonight Show or Dick Cavett, and perhaps the first, Al Hirt’s "Java".

Learning and listening to jazz, let alone playing it, is a difficult journey unless you get introduced wisely or have some inner DNA tuned to it. I have worked and wrestled and wrangled away at aspects of jazz in the 50+ years since a fellow DJ at our college station introduced me to the breadth of jazz beyond Louis Armstrong and Dave Brubeck. The performance and album that did that was the live album Swiss Movement by Les McCann and Eddie Harris. The now iconic “Compared to What” blew me away. I have never looked back, forever glad I found it.



So, what did Miles mean in that quote above and how is that a basic lesson from jazz? First, as in last week’s post, it is the reminder that unless you are willing to be out front, “projecting yourself,” your jazz street cred will be suspect. A jazz musician will, by the nature of the beast, be up front. Jazz means to be yourself and let people get to know who you are. Not an easy thing to do. That iconic Miles Davis style of playing downward and wandering the stage with his back to the audience was not a way of hiding. It brought the audience upright, searching for the sound. He did it with a microphone, of course, so his sound would get out there, especially with the Harmon mute. He was in charge of the stage and projected energy, electricity, spirit. You never doubted Miles, even when you didn’t understand a thing he was doing.

Which is the second thing from jazz- you have to work on your ideas. Miles was a man with ideas, way more than any one person could follow. He was never satisfied with what he had already developed. He all but invented “cool jazz” and then “modal jazz” and immediately moved to something else. Once he did it, it was time to move on, discover something different, invent something no one ever played before. He made the complex sound so simple, but few could duplicate it. No one sounded like Miles, though many of us wanted to. His ideas were so rich and diverse.

Apply that to life and you have a powerful understanding of what makes a person stand out, and what each of us can learn to do.

✓ First, be yourself- and project that self. That does not mean that introverts need to stand up and shout to the world who they are. That’s not what Miles means. It means be who you are. Is the “you” that people meet in your daily life the “real you?” Sure we have different persona depending on the location and group, but do you shine through, no matter what?

✓ Second, think for yourself. Knowledge is, I believe, a combination of learning, study, experience, personality, and personal interpretation. Too often we just blindly accept something that someone else has said- as long as it matches our beliefs, or reject it because it doesn’t. That isn’t thinking for yourself. That’s allowing someone else to do it for you. When learning jazz, we start by listening and learning from others, we play transcriptions or develop them ourselves. But then we learn to think of our own melodies and improvisations. Do that with your daily life.

Brent Vaarstra at the Learn Jazz Standards website had a list of four reasons why every musician should study jazz. Like Miles’s quote, it is a starting place for that life and music connection. Brent’s four reasons are:

1. [Jazz] will expand your harmonic knowledge.

2. It will force you to be proficient on your instrument.

3. It will improve your ear…big time.

4. It will help you become a better composer.

As I look at those, three things come to mind, reasons why these four are important, no matter what your favorite music genre, if you play jazz or not.

• It will make you think because
• It will be a new language that
• Will introduce you to things you never thought about before.

Now that makes sense. When you start paying attention, your mind begins to learn to focus on what ’s happening. It is a development of a mindfulness of what is happening. You are no longer a passive observer or listener, you are moving toward an understanding. A few months ago my wife and I were driving and I was listening to jazz and blues. My wife is not a musician so I asked her if she wanted to understand what was happening in the music- changes, 12-bar blues, etc. I spent a couple of songs lining it out. She commented that she now had a different appreciation for what she was hearing. She still doesn’t know music theory, but she is hearing something different.

Which is a language, a different language. I have spent many, many years working on the language of jazz and how someone like John Coltrane can do what he does. I am now beginning to hear the language. I have crossed some line into a different language- and culture. I am amazed at what I hear in unique ways that I never knew were there.

Which opens me to differences, diversity, cultural complexities, ways of thinking that impact my world-view.

And if that doesn’t apply to life, I don’t know what does.

4.20- Tuning Slide: Confidence, Ego, and Humility

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuning Slide 4.6- 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 4.5- The Power of Recording

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuning Slide 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.

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.

Tuning Slide 3.43: Listening While You Play

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

To me, groups of musicians playing together, not fighting each other, but playing a groove together is one of the most exciting things to listen to.
-Phil Collins

One of the most exciting things about being a musician is the opportunity to play music with others. I can sit in my practice room for hours playing all the great stuff I want to play, but if I’m only doing it alone, I am missing out on the ultimate joy of music. Our brass quintet recently got back together after a fairly long layoff. I had been practicing the pieces we have played and want to play, but I had no idea any more how they sounded together. At our first rehearsal a few weeks back I actually got lost because I became distracted by the other parts. My part didn’t sound the same as it did in practicing. (Doh!)

I have talked before about the joy of listening to a band play from within the band. What I am talking about this week, actually, is the way we have to listen to each other and how we build that into our performances. Such awareness is not natural for most of us. It makes us move outside of our own bubbles and pay attention to who’s with us and what we are doing.

In the book Making Music for the Joy of It, the author, Stephanie Judy goes into considerable detail about the direction of learning to play well with others. She calls it “extended awareness” that goes beyond the notes any one of us is playing to how we play those notes together. (p. 196)

She starts with a new group or even anytime an established group gets a new piece of music. The first time through everyone is essentially playing solos. You know the drill. We stare at the music when it’s put in front of us. We do the normal quick scans- key signature, key changes, tempo, repeats, dynamics, do I need a mute, etc. Then we start playing. We stare more closely at the notes. The pages seem to be endless. We make more mistakes than we care to admit. Unless you are a far more advanced musician than I am (and many of you are) that first run-through will be solos. You have a vague awareness that there are others around you, but most of the time you are listening to yourself with only an intuitive knowledge of what else is going on.

It is in that first run-through with others, though, that we actually do begin to listen. We can’t help it. The longer we have been playing the easier it will be for us to play our parts at least okay and get the feel, the groove, the inner listening of the piece.

Then, even as early as the second time through, we can move beyond our individual part to a better picture of the whole. We begin to hear on some levels how we fit together. We become aware of the ways we play under, over, through, or around others. We can begin to sense when we are leading, supporting, holding back, or enhancing and drawing out another part. Balance comes along as we think (unconsciously?) about it. We see and hear the dynamics. We pay attention to our sound and whether it fits or is not matching the piece. We begin to know our roles in the different parts of the piece.

This takes effort. It takes an ability to do more than one thing at a time. How can I stay focused on my part while watching the director and listening to the flutes or the trombones across the orchestra? How can I pick up the groove from the bass or give appropriate support to that saxophone solo without making it about me?

At the website Making Music, (https://makingmusicmag.com/4-extra-skills-musicians-need-to-play-well-with-others/) Christopher Sutton talks about "4 Extra Skills Musicians Need to Play Well with Others." They all include one form or another of listening. Christopher’s comments are in italics. My comments are in the parentheses in normal type. Here they are:

1. Exercise some patience.

Practice taking some slow, calming breaths when you find yourself getting “worked up” about something. Slow your thinking processes down. It may even help to close your eyes momentarily to remove yourself (if only for a few seconds!) from the stressful situation you find yourself in. (Listen to yourself and what’s going on within you. By learning self-mindfulness you can often discover new ways of reacting and interacting.)

2. Learn to be adaptable.

As human beings, we adapt to our surroundings naturally, though not always willingly. A big part of learning to adapt and accepting change has to do with keeping an open mind. Though it may be temporary, adapting to another musician’s creative process and meshing it with your own may be a big hurdle to overcome. (Listen to what they are saying and/or doing. Be open to hearing new and creative ideas. They may not be what you had hoped for, but you are now playing with others. Collaboration and listening go hand-in-hand.)

3. Make communication a priority.

Just as with pretty much every other relationship in life, communication in a collaborative community is key. In order to effectively balance your creative goals and those of your collaborators, there needs to be clear and consistent conversation. It may seem cliche, but sometimes the safest thing to do is to over-communicate. It’s better to be accused of this than to be reluctant to share your side of the story. (After you listen, make sure to set up and keep communication open to continue the listening.)

4. Try to have a sense of humor.

Perhaps the most important thing to do during this time is to have fun. Learn to not take things or to take yourself too seriously. (In the 12-step communities they will sometimes talk about “Rule 62.” It simply means: Don’t take yourself too damn seriously! Good advice for musicians!)

It is an amazing activity this whole thing of making music with others. Listen, join in and enjoy!

Tuning Slide 3.42: Listening for Your Sound

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Musicians do not get on stage without hearing the song singing inside of them.
― Michael Bassey Johnson

Professor Harold Hill was supposedly a con man. For those who may never have seen the musical The Music Man, Hill would come into town, get people to buy musical instruments and then skip town leaving the wannabe students without a director and their parents without the money. He pushed what he calls the Think System. Just think about what you want to play. Keep thinking and it will get better. Finally, after thinking long and hard enough you will be able to play. And Hill would have skipped town.

In River City Hill met his love, Marian the Librarian and is forced to face the townspeople. In the end the kids DID learn to play and they go marching through the streets of town playing a rousing "76 Trombones". The think system worked- and no one was as surprised as Harold Hill- although he never admitted that.

Many of us know already that the Think System does work, although we do need instructors to lead us in the right direction. One of the most important pieces of it is learning how to listen. Listening to music in general, to other musicians, and then our instrument and to our own sound. These then lead us to listen to the song that is already singing within us.

Some of us start by knowing there is this song in there. Others discover the existence of the song after years of work and practice. All of us who care to be musicians will eventually hear our song- a style, a genre, a sound that fits us. Do you remember the early days of hearing other musicians who played the same instrument? Take a moment and remember that moment when you said, “I want to do that, too!” The world was new and exciting- even infinite. You could have turned to three or four other people standing with you and said, “Can you hear that? Isn’t it incredible?” and they would have looked at you sideways and nodded politely. But you heard it. It was someone else’s music and song, but it touched you and brought your song into consciousness.

It's that first and early listening that gets us to where we are today at whatever level we are currently playing. Setting aside the instruction for the moment, that sound never left you. Fifty-some years later I get the same feeling as when I first heard the opening notes of Al Hirt’s "Java" or Herb Alpert’s "The Lonely Bull". It was and is the sound of the trumpet. It was and is my sound. It has never left me. If I had stopped my playing those songs would today be just nice nostalgia. Instead as I have continued to play and change, they are still living sounds. In me. Through my horn.

I have listened to all kinds of music over the years, all of which shaped and informed my sound. I could never get the guitar to do the same, although I have loved trying- the songs of guitar- bluegrass, folk, rock- have impacted my trumpet sound. But over the years two things happened with my trumpet. As I listened to other trumpet players, Doc and Maynard, Clifford and Lee, Chet and Miles, I discovered that there are many different sounds to the trumpet. Bud Herseth and the Chicago Symphony Brass section and the Canadian Brass opened whole other sounds and styles. The rich and wondrous range to trumpet music was nothing short of a gift from God.

I learned how to make different sounds on the trumpet. I began to realize that I have to pay attention to those sounds- their similarities and differences. Listen and imitate. Experiment. Not just with the specific notes, but with the sound and rhythm, the tonguing and fingering, the phrasing. These soon became intuitive to some extent. Not that I was practicing enough for many years to improve as much as I would have like to, but it was building. I was learning the languages of the trumpet. Even just thinking of the sound as coming from a different style or source would change the music I was making.

That was the part of listening to the horn. My particular horn, an almost 50 year old Bach Strad, that I have been playing now for almost 35 years, is one I know. In the past three years of intense practice and learning I have found that I have barely scratched the surface of what we can do together. A couple years ago when I first found a new mouthpiece and compared it to the one I had been playing I discovered that the new one caught my sound in new ways. It was more me, more alive in the ways I felt the music. That was me, working with my own horn, and bringing them together in my sound.

If you have listened long enough and developed enough awareness of your song, your sound, and the potential the music universe of your instrument becomes endless. In the book Making Music for the Joy of It, the author, Stephanie Judy, spends some time talking about listening and sums it all up this way:

Listen without judgement, not what is wrong but what is…. Every note of every instrument is available in a fantastic range of volumes, attacks, duration, and tone qualities. It is both frustrating and liberating. (P. 116)

In essence what you are doing she says is finding more ways to play it, not taking control. If you are judging your playing (Self One at work) you easily end up with feeling that is was “no good.” All that does is shut the door. The path toward your sound, and the path your sound can take, is closed.

There is a sound inside each of us that we want to make. It may not yet be a song, but it has everything you need to make it your song. It may not be a particular song that is already written, although those can lead us. It will most likely be a sound and style that moves you. As it does so, it will also move your playing into new areas. Just do it. Just play it. Listen.

Then listen some more.

Tuning Slide 3.41: Learning to Listen

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

For the rest of April I’m going to tackle the theme of “Listening.”

We think that Music stops at the ears. That is a mistake.
Vibrations can be felt in all places and at all times,
even with the eyes.
- Victor Wooten (or Michael?)

Victor Wooten, Grammy-award winning bass player talks about listening in chapter 11 of his wondrous book, The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music. The whole book is a lesson on different aspects of making music. He finds a spirit guide or muse named Michael who pulls him into all kinds of different situations.

One night Michael takes him into woods at night and teaches him to listen. He hears the frogs and other animals and is introduced to the idea of noise pollution which can be just as deadly as other types of pollution. Noise pollution can hide the sounds of danger or keep animals from communicating with each other. He gets a couple different lessons from Michael about the importance of the practice of listening to everything that is around.

Victor talks about music as vibrations. We don’t need to have a degree in physics to know that this is true. All atoms and molecules vibrate. The universe itself vibrates. The “background radiation” of the universe is the “sound” the vibration of the Big Bang. (Yes, oversimplified, but the general idea is correct.) We see vibrations of light, we feel vibrations of heat, we hear vibrations of sound. Our whole body “listens” to vibrations of many types and makes decisions based on what we experience in these vibrations.

This helps explain part of what many of us may have experienced- playing in tune. There are times when I cannot actually hear myself as clearly as I would like, but I can tell when my tuning is not right. Some of it is through the ears- what I am hearing of my note is not in synch with what I am hearing from the musician next to me or the rest of the band. But there is also the other piece- the vibrations. I can sometimes feel that I am out of tune. Self Two says, “Lip it up. You’re flat.” The vibrations are not together.

As with the animals in Victor’s forest, noise pollution can be deadly for us as musicians. I don’t know about the forest animals, but I do know there are two types of noise pollution that get to me.

The first is “Outer Pollution”. This comes from the things happening around us that take our attention away from what we are doing. This is the noise of the crowd, the extraneous sounds that are often around us. It may even be things we want to have around us- TV, radio, iTunes. They are the things that can distract us. Sometimes it may even be the words and actions of others aimed at us that we take to heart.

When we take those words and actions of others and turn them into directions for us, they can add to the second noise pollution, “Inner Pollution”. We have often talked about Self One who is always trying to find out what we are doing wrong and setting us up to fail, proving our incompetence or lack of ability. It can be the words we have internalized from others or experiences that have hurt us or kept us from achieving what we know we can do.

Both of these sources of noise pollution keep us from truly listening to what is around us and what is within us. Which is why Michael took Victor into the woods. He wanted him to discover what music can do when we allow our whole body to “hear” music.

I closed my eyes and let the music envelop me. It was easy to do. It was the first time I’d ever felt music with my whole body. I thought I’d done it before when I heard music that made me get up and dance, but even then, I was only hearing with my ears…. (p. 182)

There is a “silence” that is enhanced by this kind of sound, music, enveloping us, allowing the inner self (Self Two?) to relax and get creative. It is partly the vibrations, as I have said, but it is more than that. It is the smells, the touch of a breeze, the feel of the ground we sit on. All of it together, what can be called the “ambience” or environment, contributes to the music that we can listen to. They are in harmony as Victor discovered.

I closed my eyes and sat inside the music.I listened to all the sounds around me and noticed how they fit in. Like different instruments in a band, each sound served a purpose. Each animal made a sound that somehow supported the other sounds while leaving enough space for all to participate. (p. 183)

Victor talks about a time a few months after this encounter when he was playing in a band and decided to apply what he had learned about listening from Michael. He is aware that his time at the lake in the woods gave him a new way of utilizing the skill of listening.

I noticed that most musicians seemed to reserve their ears for themselves rather than open up their ears to the rest of the band. I found that when I listened to the other musicians more than I listened to myself, it caused me to play better. I realize that listening is a choice. (P. 184)

I mentioned in a previous post how I was taken by a performance of the band I was playing in that almost got me lost. What really happened was that I was far more aware of the band than of myself. I could relax and “go with the flow” in a way that I wish were more common. I guess it can be if I take the time to choose to listen to something other than my own inner pollution of fear and uncertainty. The music of the pieces we were playing truly did carry me to playing as I very seldom get to do. Not because I don’t want to, but at that moment, the whole sound I was part of was more powerful and entrancing than my own sound.

Of course, as the theme of this blog has stated over and over, there is a correlation between music and life. They are interconnected. Learning to listen in music can be a way to experience listening in other ways. Victor adds:

The same is true in conversation. When I listen to other people more than to myself, I know how to respond and support them in a better way. It also helps me know when to remain quiet. (P. 184)

Music, even well “scripted” music played by a band or orchestra is a conversation. It is like watching a well-written play. The actors say the same lines in every production, but it is how they interact and respond to each other that makes a play come alive. Otherwise it is just a dull reading. In music we learn to listen and interact with others. If we can’t do it in our music we will most likely have a difficult time doing it in conversations.

We are just scratching the surface of the skill of listening. What’s next? How about learning to listen with a new set of ears and digging for greater insight?

Only through the power of listening can you truly know anything.
- Victor Wooten (or Michael?)

The Tuning Slide: 3.36- Ask! Just Ask!

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see?
The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story.
It is a balancing act and it is a dream.
-Neil Gaiman

All of us who know Bob Baca from UW-Eau Claire and the Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop know that he likes to tell stories. Actually he is as much a storyteller as he is a master trumpet player and teacher! We listen because we know the story will be interesting and have an application for us. Personally, I am a big believer in stories. I write fiction stories because they can illustrate truth in ways that real events may find difficult. Those in 12-Step recovery programs tell stories about what people “used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now.” The goal is to illustrate what works- and what doesn’t. The result will be a new understanding.

I had another one of my events in the past month that needs to be told. It is a story of learning what I thought I already knew and a reminder that we never know as much as we think we know. It will also illustrate eight more of the summary thoughts from last summer. As usual, these summary thoughts will be indicated by a check mark.

The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think,
but to give you questions to think upon.
--Brandon Sanderson, fantasy and science fiction writer

I have been on a great roll with my trumpet playing. A few ups and downs with the usual plateaus and then moving forward again. Toward the end of January I following my routine and Arban’s lessons. I was at a slight plateau but I was not worried. Plateaus happen. I noted in my journal that it was beginning to improve with some solid sound in the high C - E range. I was playing them with a solid sound and confidence. For me, that is a huge step forward. A week later I noticed pain on the inside of my upper lip, almost like a pressure sore where my lip and teeth came together. That was a first to that extent. I remembered what I had been told at Shell Lake:

✓ Listen to your body

• It was telling me it hurt.
• It was telling me it didn’t have the range or endurance.
• I didn’t want to miss any days of doing my routine. I have not missed a day since the end of March last year. Yes, that was ego at work, of course. I want to go a whole year of not missing a day. I also had a concert coming up and didn’t want to lose anything of my endurance, even though that was happening any way.
• I had bragged a few weeks ago to one of my trumpet friends how I was regularly playing notes in the upper register - now I was struggling and finding even my upper mid-range register was beginning to sound mushy. It was the worst setback in my playing since I started this part of my journey almost three years ago.

An important reminder from the words of Bob Baca:

✓ If you panic you will die.

Yes, Self 1 was in panic mode. That meant, for me in this case, that I wanted answers and wanted them fast! I couldn’t afford to lose my ability. I was doing so well in so many ways and now here I was, almost floundering, seemingly overnight. I was “dying”.

I wondered whether it is possible for Self 2 also to slide toward panic? Self 2 is supposed to naturally do what is the best. All is generally cool with Self 2. But, what happens when there is something out of even Self 2’s control? Whatever the physical reason(s) behind my inner lip problem/blister/sore, it was hindering what I was doing. I was hurting. I didn’t want to make it worse and have to stop.

So I did the normal plateau things of not pushing beyond pain limits; I went to slow easy pieces in the lower and mid-register; I worked on pedal tones. Nothing was working.

Oh- even my wife had noticed something was wrong. “Your playing sounds tired, exhausted. Take it easy,” she said. “Nah, I’m fine,” I said at the time. Typical.

✓ Circle of influence is important
✓ Power of ask

More words of wisdom from the board at Shell Lake.

Ask.

So I turned to the community. I went to the Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop Facebook page and posted a question, explaining what had been happening:

ME: OK, gang of trumpet gurus: I have developed a pressure sore (not a cold sore) inside my upper lip where it hits against the tooth. I have been practicing daily for almost 11 months. I had gotten to a good level of endurance and range! That is now going backward. Knowing opinions about taking a day off, etc. what might I do until sore eases so I don't make it so bad I can't play? Any thoughts?

Quentin replied first with a good practical question, but right behind him was the one who knew more about my embouchure than anyone else at camp. Bill Bergren. He worked with me on it last year-

BILL B: This can be caused by a crooked tooth, braces, or bad playing habits. Are you still playing with open lips? [He was remembering our private lesson last summer.]

ME: Thanks! More info: Bill- if you mean breathing, I have been working on it. …. Blah, blah, blah… more blah, blah, blah… Any other ideas or questions? [When you don’t get an answer, just talk more, add more information, fog it up with words. I can be good at that!]

BILL B: I reiterate; This can be caused by a crooked tooth, braces, or bad playing habits.

ME: I would agree since it …. Blah, blah, blah… It happened so suddenly, though. Oh well. I keep on playing. Thanks, Bill. [Ramble on my wayward son.]

I thought we were done. But I hadn’t heard Bill and he knew it. Bill, not one for extra words (or putting up with fools like me being dense) had one more, simple six-word reply.

BILL B: You are over analyzing. The sound..................

Mumble, grumble, huff and puff.

He was right. I was doing what I hate when other trumpet players do it- analyze the life out of everything. Ramble on and on about what’s happening looking for a quick solution. By focusing on the pain and lip and the sudden lack of range/endurance I was ignoring what Self 2 can do best- play with the right- and best- sound. Back to the board at Shell Lake:

✓ Always play with your best sound
✓ Just have fun! It will happen faster.

Self 2 knows how to make sound- good sound. It needs to convince Self 1 that it can still happen. “Be easy, man,” it was telling me through Bill’s words. “Don’t get so hung up on all that crap. Make the best sound. Always.”

I went back to the long tones and Getchell with slow and easy playing. I let the sound go from the horn. I stopped nerding-out and obsessing about what I was experiencing. "It’s a plateau, dummy. You pushed too far, you didn’t pay attention. Relax! Have fun. Make music!”

✓ Your best trumpet playing is only a thought away [therefore]
✓ Your best trumpet playing hasn’t happened yet

It’s been over a week now. I have regained the mid-range sound- simply by playing it the way I was before. I have regained the fun of playing. I am watching that I am not pushing the limits- I am paying attention to the body and what Self 2 is saying. The body does not like it when I push to playing tired. It unlearns what it has learned. It wants to feel good playing, not exhausted.

I've played two concerts in the past 6 days. The second was last night. I played well, with range and endurance! It was fun and I liked what I was doing.

Sometimes we have to listen to those around us.

As always and every time, thanks, Bill!

If you're going to have a story, 

have a big story, or none at all.
--Joseph Campbell, mythologist, writer and lecturer

The Tuning Slide 3.21- Beyond Mediocre (2)

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

You have to, take a deep breath
and allow the music to flow through you.
Revel in it, allow yourself to awe.
When you play allow the music to
break your heart with its beauty.
― Kelly White

What else is there about practicing (this month's theme) that can help us rise above being simply mediocre? How about memorization built on sight-reading which itself is built on listening and rhythm?

If there is a secret - and easy - way to memorize, I haven’t found it. In fact I have seldom memorized a song all the way through. The only exceptions might be When the Saints Go Marching In and several songs I learned by ear. As I write that I also know that I have just given one of the not-so-secret ideas about memory work. Some of memory work goes back to what we talked about last week, listening. I have a hunch that memorization is more than just rote recall of something. Like I have said, you have to know the language. Sure, anyone can recite something in a different language without knowing what it means. But it will be lifeless compared to knowing the real feelings behind it.

The other thing that I have found that helps is having a better feel for the rhythm and style. This starts with the basics we always talk about- scales, chromatics, arpeggios, and the like. As we get to know the feel of these basics they become natural. We don’t have to think about them with Self One and will give appropriate control to Self Two. Then, when that run comes up in a performance piece or rehearsal, it just happens. Listening and rhythm then lead to what I have found to be the next pre-memorization step- sight-reading.

Sight reading
Expertise with sight-reading belongs
at the top of your list of priorities.
–The Musician’s Way, p. 99

This was one of my greatest weaknesses for years. Way back in high school I was a mediocre sight reader- at best. Even though I was first chair I had difficulty with sight reading. Part of that may be my somewhat ADD personality, but I didn’t know how to move beyond that. I would then take the music home and woodshed it and be able to play it like a first-chair should play it the next rehearsal. (We had an excellent second-chair who could sight read and was right there to support me and the section. Something every section needs!) Without going into the many decades since then, It was not until the last five or six years that I learned you can actually practice sight-reading.

Enter Getchell’s Second Book of Practical Studies for Cornet and Trumpet. They are amazing- and fun to play! They are based, among other things, on rhythm and time. The more I worked on that, the better my sight reading got. I then learned how to deal with a new piece of music and the “steps” of sight-reading. These include the obvious mental checklist of key signature, time signature, key changes, repeats, dynamics. But they also include a quick look at what appear to be difficult passages- and then humming or singing them. All this can be done in a relatively short time. The more time, the better. By the time the conductor raises the baton to start, I found I am no longer truly reading it for the first time. It is almost not sight-reading.

But here is where a paradox shows up for me. The more I get into the printed notes on the page, the less I am able to do it from memory. I have tried for years to memorize the closing section of Stars and Stripes Forever. Trumpets always stand to play it and I can’t read the music. Put the music in front of me and I can play it flawlessly. Take the music away and I easily get lost. Last year I worked on it using a lot of the new ideas and techniques I have been gathering for the last three years and I had it almost complete. In the end it became a melding together of all that I know about playing that came from listening enough to know the song including the rhythm and progressions (from sight-reading practice).

How then do I move on to greater ability to memorize? On the Your Music Lessons website I found this: (https://yourmusiclessons.com/blog/how-to-memorize-music-5-times-faster/)

The steps to memorizing can be broken down as follows:
• Put information into short term memory.
• Repeat the information in your short term memory multiple times.
• Sleep. [Important to moving information from short- to long-term memory.]
• Repeat steps 1 through 3.
• Do the whole process again after some time has passed.

(I like the sleep idea!) How then do I put these steps into practice? From The Musician's Way website here are The Four Stages of Memorization
https://www.musiciansway.com/blog/2010/05/the-four-stages-of-memorization/

Stage 1: Perception

Deep perception makes for solid memory. When we grasp the inner workings of a composition as well as how we want to shape each phrase, those rich connections lead to steadfast recall.

• What’s the structure, how does it flow, what are the emotions? This is the start of getting information into the short-term memory.

Stage 2: Ingraining
Ingraining is the means whereby we lay down enduring memory tracks. But beware: ingraining necessarily involves repetition, yet only mindful repetitions will do.

• This takes us back to all the elements of mindful practice. Just practicing doesn’t do it; practicing with images and goals will do a great deal. We need to make the music part of us, ingrained in us.

Stage 3: Maintenance
Even if we ingrain deeply, unless we maintain our memory, the mental connections we form will gradually disintegrate. Here are strategies that keep memories strong.

• Here we do things like record ourselves and listen or do mental reviews of what we have memorized. It keeps it alive.

Stage 4: Recall

• This is performance. Be relaxed and mindful, feel the emotions and trust in your preparation. With some of the music I have been working on this means getting myself out to a jazz jam or volunteering for the improvised solo in a gig.

This is exactly what I have been trying to do with some of the jazz work I have been developing. I have seen that as I work on playing by ear it allows the music to be more than just short-term since I cannot rely on visual memory alone. That in itself is a big piece of memorizing for me.

With all that here are some final thoughts on memory and music from Your Music Lessons: https://yourmusiclessons.com/blog/the-four-types-of-musical-memory/

“Muscle memory” is not even memory, it’s purely habit. Habits are formed in the most primitive parts of our brains. Studies have shown that people with no ability to form new memories, because of accidents or disease, are still able to form new habits. This shows that habits are not technically memories. When musicians depend on “muscle memory” what they really are doing is repeating patterns mindlessly.

This type of “memory” is also very prone to memory slips because the music is actually not in the musicians memory at all, and any small break from the habit (like a mistake or someone in the audience coughing) can cause the habit to break down.

Real music comes from our actively engaged minds. If the musician cannot sit down and write out an entire piece of music from memory, the piece is not memorized. Never try to acquire “finger memory”. It will come naturally because of constant repetitions. You should always seek an intellectual understanding and memory of the music first.

So, memorization, connected with playing/transcribing by ear, will be one of my goals over the next six-months. I’ll see if this old dog can still learn these new tricks.