Tuning Slide 5.17- Giving Thanks- A Story to Tell

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Music can heal the wounds which medicine cannot touch.
Debasish Mridha

The past two weeks have been difficult, which is why there wasn’t a Tuning Slide post last week. One of my older and deeper friends had a major health event two weeks ago tomorrow. We waited and prayed. A lot! My wife and I spent his last day at the hospital with his wife and daughter. We said goodbye about an hour after the life-support was disconnected. Five minutes after we walked out the door, he passed. Over these weeks, music was the grounding force of my life. This week, then, I have a couple of stories to tell. Since last week was Thanksgiving, the stories connect with the holiday and the gratitude I have felt in the midst of the difficulties.

The overall story goes back many years- thirty-five, to be exact. This friend was a highly talented musician. He was more than just excellent at guitar, banjo, and mandolin. He had played in many groups over the years. He was also our neighbor, he had children the same age group as our daughter, and was a member of our church. We did a lot together- if it wasn’t about church, faith, and family, it usually involved music. He was often encouraging me to work on my musical skills at the trumpet- and the guitar.

One day we were sitting having a conversation over lunch or some meal or other. We began talking about music in the church- and church musicians, many of whom were our friends in our church as well as in the larger community. We were commenting about something or other of those things that often bug pastors, even pastors like myself who were also musicians. For some now long-forgotten reason, I made some comment about myself not being one of those church musicians who would give pastors headaches. He got this “oh, really?” look on his face, paused and said:

“If you practiced more, you might.”

He looked satisfied with that- and dropped the subject.

I didn’t forget, however. I especially remembered it a number of times in the past 8-10 years when I did start practicing more- a lot more! I remembered it as my skills did improve. He was one of those smacks up the side of the head that made me wonder what it was I could really do with music if I put my mind to it.

As part of that ongoing subtle prodding, he suggested I go with him up north one year to a bluegrass jam camp he had discovered. While I have tried to learn to play guitar a number of times over the past 50+ years, I never progressed. I wanted to be as good at the guitar as I was at the trumpet, but without the years of practice. He told me there would be a number of others at the camp with the same skill level as I had- and that it would be fun. Since I have always enjoyed bluegrass music- the jazz of country music- I finally agreed. It was everything he said- and more. He and I then organized a couple bluegrass jam camps of our own at our church’s camp in Wisconsin and had the chance to meet, work with, and become friends with Monroe Crossing, one of Minnesota’s top bluegrass groups. I even went to several monthly jam sessions in the Twin Cities before moving.

After the move, my bluegrass chops began to fall away when my trumpet chops and engagement in a number of groups grew. I continued to love bluegrass and listened to it. I attempted to work on trumpet or brass quintet arrangements of some bluegrass classics. They haven’t fallen into place, but my friend did encourage me at it.

Back in September our community band was putting the music together for our fall concert. I was overjoyed to see an arrangement of a bluegrass classic, Arkansas Traveler, in the list. I took the first part with the short 16-bar solo in the middle of it. I knew it would be fun and would fit right in with all my many musical interests.That piece became the closing number of the concert.

The concert was last Saturday, only three hours after my friend died.

I had told his family about it and we were all humbled by the timing. Over the past couple of years I have lost most of my fear and anxiety of solos. As we came to my three measures of rest right before the solo, I said a brief “Thank you. This is for you, my friend” and just played.

But the story isn’t quite over. The next night my wife and I were at another concert in the Twin Cities with the incredible guitar duo of Rodrigo y Gabriela. They both talked during the concert about how powerful and important music is. It is, they both said, “a force for healing.” My friend knew that in his life. One of the groups that he played with for a number of years was a faith-based group. He often talked about how the music they played in concert or for church was more than performing. It was spirit. It was faith being lived and shared. He often talked about how when they sand and the audience or congregation sang with them, it was a “boomerang” effect. The music and faith, and healing, that they sent out was echoed back to them.

As I put all this together, and our big band played a gig this past Monday, I realized that is what has been happening in my life over these 55 years since I started playing the trumpet. It is what I discovered playing in many groups over the years. It is what I am continuing to discover, even when I sit and play long tones or woodshed a difficult part of a piece. It is what happens when our big band plays for a senior citizens group- and they smile, tap their feet, and even sometimes yell “wahoo!” when we’re done.

Music. What a joy, what a gift both to give and receive. I am thankful to overflowing with it. Never lose it. Keep playing, keep practicing, keep performing. You and the people around you will discover healing and hope.

My friend’s memorial will be next Saturday. It will be a celebration of his life- and it will be filled with music!

Tuning Slide 4.48- Being Free- Gratitude

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Can you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be?
– Danielle LaPorte

Three weeks ago I started a series based on a blog post at Planet of Success. It is about 10 powerful ways to free yourself if you are stuck. I took the concepts and riffed on them from my own experiences in the last 8-10 years to overcome self-defeating attitudes that kept me from changing and growing in my trumpet playing. Here are the 10 themes of the previous three weeks:

1. Face your fears
2. Break your routine
3. Effect change, one step at a time
4. Overcome the perception of impossibilities
5. Be honest with yourself
6. Change your perspective
7. Differentiate between feeling and fact
8. Avoid blaming others
9. Stop comparing yourself to others
10. Stop making excuses

But I said there were 10, what gives? Well, the post actually gave 11 ways to set yourself free. That means there is one more to go- and perhaps the most important in the long run.

But first I want to tell you about two incidents within the past week that gives added impetus to what I have been writing about. The first was last Monday evening at Big Band practice. As we were putting the chairs and stands away one of the other trumpet players, who is a regular reader of this blog and knows my story, gave me a big smile and said to me, “When I started that solo in one of the songs, my horn was full of water. I bet you never even noticed.” He was referring to my story from that Memorial Day fifty-some years ago when water in my horn embarrassed me and started the long road to try to rebuild my self-confidence.

No, I hadn’t even noticed- as probably no one fifty years ago did, either. Thanks, Steve, for the reminder that I am my own worst enemy at times.

The second event built on it and was at community band on Thursday evening, the last rehearsal before the concert this past Saturday. There were only four of our six trumpets there due to schedule conflicts. That meant that each of us was a little more on our own than usual. It also meant that we were each often almost playing solo parts. On one piece I was the only 1st trumpet. Anyone who has followed this blog knows that when that happens I easily tense up, muscles contract, my brain seems to misfire, and Self One says, “You really think you can do that?”

Well, I knew all the music very well, I took some breaths, relaxed, and let Self Two tell Self One to be quiet, that yes, I really know I can do this. And I did- as did all of us. For one of the first times in any of the groups I play in at home, I was confident and relaxed. Did I make mistakes? Sure- that’s one of the purposes of rehearsals- to figure out where the weaknesses are and fix them.

So with all that for a long example, I come to the last of the things that Steve Mueller outlined for getting unstuck in that article. It may, in the long run, be the most important interaction between our music and our life:

11. Be grateful for what you have
✓ We sometimes feel as if we’re not moving forward when we think we haven’t yet accomplished enough in life. As a result, we’re quite frustrated about our situation. If we do not succeed as much as we desire, it can feel as if we’re stuck in life.

Developing the habit of being grateful can help you to ease the feeling of being stuck. It helps us to rediscover what is beautiful about our life. Gratitude can also enable us to find what makes our life worth living. As a positive side effect, we spent a lot less time chasing evermore. Instead, we learn to find joy and fulfillment in everything we already have.

Ultimately, this is the way to truly relieve yourself from the feeling of not being able to move on. So take yourself some time to count your blessings. Appreciate everything you’ve been given.

Gratitude is something we often overlook in our music as well as in our daily lives. Gratitude works with parts of the brain that produces dopamine, the “feel good” brain chemical. Because you get that feel good reward you are then learning to do that same thing again. It becomes a cycle of doing the right things and finding the reasons to be grateful.

It takes practice, of course, to become better at seeing and responding with gratitude. It is a skill, one that is essential to our positive health and growth. Keep a gratitude journal, say thank you to people, feel the joy of music, be grateful for the ability to play music and then let it move through you.

I went home last Thursday after rehearsal grateful and flying high. It felt good to be able to do what I needed to do. It felt good to know I am capable and have skills. It felt good to know for the first time in some ways that I am no longer as stuck as I thought I was. It is time to move forward.

Did that carry over to the concert?

You bet it did! Gratitude and experience reinforced each other. I do have to admit that it wasn’t as good as Thursday evening. But I also know why- and will be working on it. But the confidence and greater willingness to let Self Two do his thing were there. It is, after all, progress - not perfection and I am progressing!

Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.
— Lionel Hampton

Tuning Slide: 4.1- Why I Play Music (1)

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

If you play music for the right reasons, the rest of the things will come. The right reason to play music is that you love it. That's why I play music.
— George Benson

Music is- and has been since third grade- one of the centers of my life. Sometime between ages 8 and 9 I started taking piano lessons. I wasn’t particularly good at practicing so after two or three years with the wonderful Miss Palmer my mother thought it would be good to stop. It wasn’t going to happen. She played the piano as did my Dad’s sister, my Aunt Ruth. I enjoyed their music as well as the many old 78 rpm records that they had.

I did learn how to read music in those lessons with Miss Palmer and, from time to time would even pull out a piece of sheet music and play the melody line. Music intrigued me. Playing music intrigued me, but I was more interested in reading than playing music.

In 8th grade, age 13, I decided I wanted to play trumpet. I have no memory of why. I probably saw the trumpets in the high school band marching in a parade and liked it. Maybe I saw Louis Armstrong on TV. Herb Alpert’s first single, The Lonely Bull, was a year from being released and Al Hirt’s Java was three years away. So nothing remains of the first memory- except the trumpet and the never-ending desire to play it- and play it better today than I did yesterday.

As many of you know from previous posts, I have never stopped playing in these soon to be 57 years. There were lean times when playing for Christmas or Easter at church was the extent of my playing, but the horn was always nearby. The last three years since my first Shell Lake Adult Big Band Workshop has been a whole new world of music opening for me. Some of this has been chronicled in the earlier posts in the Tuning Slide. As I get started in the fourth year of the Tuning Slide I sat back and reflected on why I play music. Over the past weeks a number of moments have occurred in various places that have reminded me why I continue to do so. To get Year Four started- here’s the first half of what came to mind.

My Experience of Playing Music (part 1)
✓ Band members smiling in rehearsal as we practiced Holst’s “2nd Suite.”

The two Holst Suites may be the greatest concert wind band pieces ever written- and the 2nd is at the top of the list. We were rehearsing it for a summer concert and I looked up during a long rest in the fourth movement and noticed that almost every musician in the band who was in the middle of a rest was also smiling. I couldn’t believe how my whole body, mind, and soul responded immediately to it when we hit the first notes. Yes, it is that great! Every time.

✓ Carmen Dragon’s “America the Beautiful”

Our director called it perhaps the best concert band arrangement of any time- the Dragon arrangement of America the Beautiful. I have long lost count of how many times I have played this. I have never forgotten the first time. I was a senior in high school and was at our district band festival playing first trumpet (not cornet, since I didn’t own a cornet.) The band arrangement was only three years old at the time and not well-known- like it would become. I was overwhelmed and inspired at that point. I still am today. Even writing this gives me goosebumps.

✓ Remembering my daughter’s solo in “A Copland Tribute” when I’m playing the piece

My daughter played clarinet in Middle and High School. In her senior year the band played the wonderful music of Aaron Copland in the piece, A Copland Tribute. As both her father and as a musician myself I enjoyed that piece when it came to the section known as the Shaker Melody (or Simple Gifts.) It begins with a clarinet solo- which she played beautifully. Every time a band I am in plays that piece- and it has been at least five times in the past 20 years- my mind lights up in joy remembering her.

✓ Falling in love with new pieces

At our spring concert our community band played a new piece by composer Jay Bocook, Down in the River (Hal Leonard.) It is a series of variations on the gospel song, Down in the River to Pray. It was fun to play and I loved the way the theme came in and out from the background. It also happens to be one of my favorite gospel songs. Yes, people are still writing music that can move me!!

Then at the recent July 4th concert I was introduced to another song I had never played before, an arrangement of the hymn God of Our Fathers by Claude Smith written in 1974. I am surprised I have never heard it before and fell in love with it in spite of mangling the trumpet trio in the first three measures during the last rehearsal. (I played it spot on in the concert!) It was a wonderfully challenging and inspiring piece. There will always be new pieces to play for the first time and fall in love with!

✓ Learning Al Hirt’s “Java”

It was my first favorite trumpet song. Released in 1964 it captured my imagination. I bought a transcription in the late 60s and tried to learn it. No luck. I didn’t take the time to really work on it and by then I was heading into my career and let the advancing of my trumpet skills slip. About six or seven years ago I found a transcription online and began working on it again. I can now play most of it and sometimes even up to tempo. It may be 54 years late, but it is why I am still playing music.

✓ “1812 Overture”- as exciting as it was 50 years ago when I first played it

• College band, 1969, in Carnegie Hall. We even used the cannon the football cheerleaders used at games. What a kick!

• Every Fourth of July, just before the Stars and Stripes and the fireworks. It never gets old! It is new every time! That is what music can do!

That’s why I play music!
What’s your reason?

(More next week as we continue into year four of The Tuning Slide.)

3.33- The Tuning Slide- Beyond the Negative

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age,
which means never losing your enthusiasm.
-Aldous Huxley

The topic this month is attitude. It’s that simple- and that difficult. There are a number of good thoughts from last summer’s trumpet workshop that can guide us in looking at attitude so let’s not waste any time and get right to it.

One of the worst things we can have is a bad attitude. Here's one of the quotes from last summer's Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop:

✓ Negativity is exhausting. You will be negative about others if you are negative about your self.

We have all been around Negative Norman or Debbie Downer. Nothing is ever right for them.

Me: What a beautiful day.
Negative Norman: Yeah but we’re going to pay for this nice weather one of these days.

Me: I really enjoyed that book.
Debbie Downer: Yeah but the author did use a lot of big words.

We soon give up being around them. I once heard a preacher say, “There is no way to make a whine sound good.” Anytime I hear “Yeah, but…” after a positive statement, I shut down. I can almost feel my own energy being sucked out of me and my attitude starting to head down.

Unless I’m saying it, in which case I probably don’t hear it and just fall into my own negativity. Then I wallow in the bad attitude and usually ramp it up so I can feel even worse.

One of the reasons for this type of negativity is that we often have this fear that there’s only so much good stuff to go around or that happiness is what’s called a “zero-sum” commodity. In the end, I fear, I will have to balance all this good I have with bad so that in the end it’s just plain old average- ten good days has to be offset by ten bad days. I can’t be that lucky.

Notice that this is all about me? I can’t be that lucky…. I can’t have all these good things…. I will eventually fail… Pretty soon that permeates everything and naturally the bad “luck” begins to happen, the “good things” sour, and I “fail.”

My best friend in college was just the opposite of that. Everything always seemed to go well for him. He never had “bad luck.” Those of us around him would shake our heads in disbelief that everything always seemed to work out for him. How lucky can you be to fall into that proverbial vat of manure and come out smelling like a rose?

Except it wasn’t luck. It was attitude… and a willingness to learn and change.

✓ Animals can’t change emotion- we can.

That was another of the statements on the summary board at the end of the workshop last year. I am not entirely sure that non-human animals can’t change their emotions since I’m not one. What we do know is that human animals can! It happens all the time.

Now, one note of caution. Changing emotions or attitudes to avoid feeling them is not good. Emotions are present in our lives for very good reasons. We have evolved with them; they are signs and indicators. It is right to feel sadness when someone important has died; it is right to feel fear when something is attacking us; it is right to feel angry when someone has hurt us. The issue is not that we have emotions and attitudes- of course we do. It is whether they are appropriate, based on reality, and do they lead us into doing something positive about them and ourselves?

Negativity is the “attitude” that keeps us from doing something helpful and positive about what’s happening. It allows us to get stuck and to wallow around in that depressing and unhelpful place.

As I was working on this I came across an article from New York Magazine from last March. It was titled “How New Evidence Supports the Classic Advice From a 1972 Book About Tennis.” Yep- the Inner Game which we spend a great deal of time putting into practice around here- because it works. That’s what the article was about.

The author pointed out that the book is still a best-seller and that is because its premise works:

you need to get out of your own way — is not only a timeless key to peak performance on the playing field, but also off of it. But what’s especially fascinating is that more than 40 years after the book first came out, now-emerging science supports nearly all of its insights, many of which, like how to thrive in unsettling times, are as relevant as ever.

He goes on leading toward an excellent example:

“It is Self-1’s mistrust of Self-2 which causes the interference known as ‘trying too hard’ and that of too much self-instruction.” Both result in tightening up, overthinking, and losing concentration. We are better off “letting it happen,” trusting instead of fighting our Self-2, Gallwey writes, than we are “trying to make it happen.”

The example he gets to next in the article is “performance anxiety.” This can, we all know, be devastating. I have written a number of times about my personal struggle with playing solos. It goes back in many ways to a couple of incidents over 50 years ago that I have only been able to deal with constructively in the past three or so years. I would often tell myself, “Just relax, Barry. You can do this.” I would be pressuring, pushing, dragging myself into making sure that I got it right. Usually I didn’t. The article picks up on this and the Inner Game approach:

When you tell yourself “I need to relax,” your Self-1 is sending a signal that something is wrong — that you are stressed — and begins trying to fight the physical sensations of Self-2. Yet, as Gallwey writes, this often just leads to further tightness and angst. When you stop trying to fight the sensations and instead embrace them — telling yourself that what you are feeling is excitement, that the body is engaging all the systems it needs to be fully alert — an enhanced experience and outcome often follows.

Guess what? That was also on the board at trumpet workshop.

✓ Are you nervous or excited? Read yourself

Nervous means something is wrong- I am stressed.
Excited means I can hardly wait to play this and share it with the audience.

One is negative and unhelpful; the other is positive and helpful. Self-1 doesn’t trust itself (you) or Self-2 (also you). Self-2 knows it (you) can do the solo or performance and is eager to show it and wants Self-1 (again, you) to watch and see.

The study the New York Magazine article was reporting on concluded:

Compared to those who attempt to calm down, individuals who reappraise their anxious arousal as excitement perform better.

Now obviously, this doesn’t mean you can pick up the Haydn Concerto and just rattle off the solo. It doesn’t work that way- it is not some magical way of getting by without practicing. Self-1 is essential to keeping us on track and focused on what we are doing and raising warning signs. That’s why the quote from Shell Lake ends with “Read yourself.” That is the hours of practice from long tones through the particular solo piece. That is the “woodshed” of getting to know the piece and internalizing it. But “read yourself” does not mean to allow fear or uncertainty (Self-1) block you from doing what you (Self-2) can do.

Attitude change works!

LINK to article.

The Tuning Slide 3.23- Becoming a Performer

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Everything that comes out of your horn must sound like music.
It’s then that you can call yourself a musician.
-From Eric Bolvin, The Arban Manual.

Perhaps one of the least mentioned ways of practice that will get us beyond mediocre is to stop practicing and always perform. The quote above is at the bottom of one of the lesson pages in the Arban Manual Study Guide by Eric Bolvin. The result of effective and dedicated practice is not being a technically good or even excellent musician. The result of that practice is that whatever comes out of your horn must sound like music. That is not as easy as it seems when written on the computer screen. It doesn’t take much effort to remember those awful days when we could hardly make “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” sound musical. With practice, Twinkle Twinkle can be as musical as a Miles Davis solo.

Becoming a performer of music is truly what all this practice is about. It gets pretty boring to never perform. Sure we may play some wonderful pieces and become accomplished at playing the trumpet. But it is the act of performing the music that shares the wonder of music with the world.

Way back in my earliest high school years as a trumpet player, I had a number of solo-type pieces and etudes from the method books that I liked to play. There were many times in my practice that I would imagine putting together a concert- a performance- for my family. In my mind I would pick out what the program would include and in what order. I would then practice as if I was actually performing them for the family. That more than anything else may have helped move me from the techniques of playing the trumpet into the joy of being a performing musician.

Gerald Klickstein whose website The Musicians’ Way has been the source of much of this month’s posts, talks about a three-step process of moving into the performance level. He looks at the progression we all do when working toward performing a new piece of music. He says the “material” goes through three stages:

Stage 1: New Material
• Get an overview.
• Make decisions section by section.
• Slow tempo.

Stage 2: Developing Material
• Refine interpretation.
• Increase tempo and problem-solving.
• Memorize.

Stage 3: Performance Material
• Practice performing.
• Maintain memory.
• Renew and innovate.

As I have seen it in my own practice, this does work in a clear progression. The overview is when I scan the music for the first time. What’s the key, the range, the key changes, the tempo? Maybe I sing or hum through it. I look for the harder appearing sections and make note of them. I also know that just because it looks hard doesn’t mean it is hard. Play through it - keeping it slow. At this point I am looking for the way the music flows and moves. I am trying to make it sound musical. I try to be conscious of the sections and how the music changes from one to another or maybe circles back to something earlier. I am getting the music to fall under my fingers at this point.

The second stage, letting the music develop, is when I “know” the music but haven’t figured out how to interpret it musically. I might experiment with different tempos or figure out why my fingers refuse to cooperate on certain passages. As I said a couple weeks ago I am not good at memorizing so I don’t usually do that part of this stage. But the goal of “performing” the piece has to be there- even if it’s a new Goldman exercise or Clarke etude. The aim is always to make music- be a performing musician.

The third stage for me is putting it all together. It will now become performance! It cannot remain just another piece for the practice room even if I know it will never be performed anywhere else. That is the “practice as if you are performing” injunction. I sometimes react to myself “Would I want an audience to hear it that way?”

What I am talking about is simply to make sure I move beyond being just a practice room musician. The particular etude or exercise will most likely never be a public piece, unless I record it and put it on Facebook or something. But what I learn and experience in doing this with all my practice will carry into other things I do. That is why we practice things other than our performance pieces. That is why we may do the same routine with variations every day for weeks, months, or years. We are transforming everything into music so when we come to the musical pieces we will play them musically.

It’s back to Self One and Self Two and how our brains work. It is back to easing the performance anxiety of Self One trying to take the negative road and undermining what we can do. It’s about Self Two learning and showing that we can do it. It is taking charge of the music since it is the “natural” musician.

This is being a performer. It is how to live.

There is a You Tube video titled Transform Yourself Into a Performer. (Watch it below.) It is by concert pianist Alpin Hong in a TEDxLaSierraUniversity talk. In the enjoyable presentation he talks about

• Being self-conscious and still projecting self-confidence.
• If they’re in your audience, they want you to succeed. They are on your side!
• Thoughts on making mistakes- yes, we all make them. He even quotes Monk. His answer is to improvise, i.e. know your piece well-enough that if you get lost, for example, you can make your way back to the right place.

That is what we are all about. Performing. We want to truly make music. It doesn’t just happen by chance, but it is certainly within our grasp.