Tuning Slide 5.2- What I've Learned

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.
—Henry Ford

As I get into the fifth year of The Tuning Slide I took some time to think about what I have experienced and learned since that first August at Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop. I have decided to put it into the form of a letter to Bob Baca, the director of the workshop and my main mentor these past four years. I am not ignoring the other faculty and people at home who have been part of this journey with me. Together they have helped me implement the ideas and more to where I am today!

Hi Bob,

Well, I missed the trumpet week at Shell Lake this year. It was a tough decision, but I have an opportunity to do some different kind of stretching in my musicianship and I’m taking it. As I told you I will be going to an adult concert band camp in Door County in a couple weeks and couldn’t swing both this year. But more on that later in the year. Instead I want to summarize the many things that you (and the others) have helped me achieve.

What I have learned from these past 4 years:

1. Routine!
I remember from these years at Shell Lake that you and the faculty have often said that one plays a high C the same way one plays a low C. At first I didn’t understand, but I believed you and kept waiting for it to happen while doing what I needed to do. The time spent on playing the lead pipe and LONG TONES has paid off. Last year at the Brass Festival in North Carolina I found myself just playing what was on the page- and the notes came out. The answer to that was a routine. A routine that is regular and consistent.

2. The Basics.
I learned that if we don’t continue to work on our skills, develop our tone, practice rhythms and etudes, we can become stale. Over these past four years I have been renewed in my skills, I have practiced and discovered more ways to speak the language of the trumpet and to put more style and tone and life into it. If I am to grow in any way in my abilities I have to practice the basics- which you have taught me to do and then move into greater technical proficiency. All I wanted to do was be a better musician- and it has happened.

Many years ago I was a first-chair, lead trumpet with whatever skills a high school senior could have in1965. I have learned the importance of being a section player and have discovered all kinds of new techniques. I have never stopped playing, but in the past four years I went from “just playing” to “being musical”. I would never have believed it when I left Shell Lake after that first camp in 2015. I have been amazed at what can happen- and yes, as I have said before, even an old dog can learn many, many new tricks.

Perhaps above all else I have discovered the absolute necessity of never leaving the basic behinds. The Bill Adam routine has taught me not to forget or neglect these basics on a daily basis. I play 10-20 minutes of long tones in various forms every day. It is the foundation. I play exercises in all 12 major keys; I go back and use the first Arban exercises regularly; I discovered that if I can hear it, I can play it. My fingers now move more fluidly through muscle memory and my ears hear more through aural memory. I have learned to always have a beginner's mind!

3. Easy does it. Patience, slow down.
Don’t force it; don’t rush it. The secret to playing fast is to play slowly. Sometimes so slowly that you may not even recognize the tune. If it isn’t working, go back to the basics behind it. So simple, yet so powerful.

4. You can skip a day but you’ll never get it back
I have missed very few days over these last four years, mostly when I was recuperating from surgery and wasn’t allowed to play. Once in a while I may take a day off because there was no way around it. More often I will do the basic long-tones and scales for 30 minutes. On most days I play and now I can play a lot.

5. Listen, listen, listen
Pay attention to yourself in your own practice and to those around you in rehearsal. We practice alone to get to now our part. We rehearse with others to know how our part fits in with the others.

6. The Inner Game- trust self 2
The Inner Game ideas have been around a while and they work. I have known them for years; now I know how to better utilize them and to trust me - Self 2- to do what I can do.

7. Play out. Just do it.
Some may think that a “timid trumpet player” is an oxymoron. Put me in a group or public performance and I would become a timid musician. What a waste. It is exciting. That doesn’t mean to over-perform, be over loud or obnoxious. I means what it says- just do it!

8. Stretch outside the box
I know the importance of stretching one’s skills. It is how we grow. What I have learned in these past four years has given me some directions on how to do that. I enjoy it too much now to even think of stopping.

9. It’s at least 90% mental.
The basics of playing and performing music are the easy parts. Just keep practicing. This goes back to- and expands on the inner game. If you don’t think you can do it- you won’t be able to do it. But if you believe you can- you will- even if it takes months and years of practice.

10. Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the basis of a life of hope and growth. Being self-aware and then being aware of all that is around me and living within it- that’s the ability to be mindful. It doesn’t mean lack of growth or being content with just leaving things as they are. It means being attentive and in my musicianship knowing where I can go next.

That’s what I have learned. Here is what I have received:

A. Play like you like it- and you will like playing.
This is perhaps best described in the meme: If you don’t like playing long tones, you probably don’t like playing trumpet. Really? Yep! It is fun to discover something new with different ways of doing long tones each day. I really like playing and it makes a real difference each day.

B. Confidence
Two weeks ago at a community band rehearsal I had to play a solo part that I had never read before since the soloist wasn’t able to be at that rehearsal. Then I had to play some upper register lines. Yep- I did both. Confidence has built. I don’t get panicked when I see some of those notes or at a passage I would have backed off from before. Now, later this week, I will be attending that concert band camp where I have to audition. I am not the least bit afraid. Call out a major key- I can play any of the 12. Give me a sight-reading page- I know the basics. Am I nervous or anxious. Not any more. Now I am excited.

C. Energy and excitement
What can I say? They sum up what I have been given. The other day I was feeling a little under the weather and restless, unable to find something to direct me. My wife looked at me and simply said, “Go play your trumpet. That always works.”

And it did.

Thank you, Bob and the Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop. You have given me one of the greatest boosts of the past 30 years.

Crazy? Yep- crazy good!

Tuning Slide 4.47- Being Free #3

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way.
If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.

Jim Rohn

Two weeks ago I started a series based on a blog post at Planet of Success by Steve Mueller. 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 themes of the previous two 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

This week we will look at four more. And as always, my thoughts are in italics.

7. Differentiate between feeling and fact
✓ The inability to get unstuck may feel very real, but in the end, it’s just a feeling. And this very feeling creates our perception of the situation. For this reason, it’s important to remind yourself that feelings are not facts.

Try to look at your situation more objectively. Emotional responses might cloud your perception of reality.

Feelings… or facts? Most of the time we are willing to base our “facts” on “feelings”, even if we think they are really, truly, honestly, facts. Since I have been using my Memorial Day experience from high school as the basis of my “facts” it was hard to say that I was going on feelings. It was a clearly obvious “fact” that first, I am not as good a trumpet player as I like to think I am, and second, that I am bad at auditions. Just look at the visible signs of that on that Memorial Day and then when I didn’t get into the college marching band after a poor audition.

But the facts were different. I was not a less skilled trumpet player because I had problems with Taps on that holiday. It may be that I was careless, or just plain human and capable of error, but skill? No way. Blowing the audition surely showed I let things go downhill when faced with pressure. Never mind that they most likely had enough trumpets and didn’t need a freshman- I was simply not good enough I told me. The fact was I could do it, in both situations, but for the next few decades, you couldn’t have convinced me- until I found some facts and began to move forward. Unstuck.

8. Avoid blaming others
✓ It’s relatively easy to blame others when we feel stuck. While this is a great strategy to maintain peace of mind, it will contribute nothing to the solution of your problem.

Even though you’d like to find an external cause for your situation, try to seek that cause within yourself first. Try to take control over your life by not seeking the fault for your problems in others.

I didn’t face this issue in my situation with my music. I knew it was all my fault and therefore I couldn’t do it. But it is a difficult issue to face. We can always find someone else to blame. I could have blamed the tiredness of having marched to the cemetery for my error; I could have said that the person doing my audition was too intimidating; I could have said they didn’t know what they were doing. That might have prevented some of the attitudes I developed, but they would have kept me stuck because once it happens, it will happen again. The next time it will be because they did it. No matter how you look at it, getting stuck is still getting stuck.

9. Stop comparing yourself to others
✓ While we think we compare ourselves in an objective manner, quite the contrary is the case…. In most situations, we take our weakest spots and compared these with people who are above-average in this area.

If you’re feeling stuck in life, try not to measure your life’s worth based on other people’s accomplishments. Measure your life based upon your own standards. Don’t just mindlessly adopt society’s definition of success, find your very own.

You can always find someone who has different, more, or even greater skills than you do. If I always compare myself to Maynard, Miles, or Doc, I will always fall short. Therefore I am not good enough. It’s an old saying that the only person to compare yourself to is you- yesterday. Have you improved since yesterday? If you haven’t, then do something different- the whole gist of this series on getting unstuck. These ways of getting unstuck are really just ways to change our perspective and find the new ways to see what you or I have done and can do. If playing as good as Doc or Miles is the measure of success, forget it. None of us would ever be successful. But stop- what if Miles had said, I can’t be as good as Satchmo? How much poorer the music world would be.

10. Stop making excuses
✓ Excuses keep us from moving forward in life.
Don’t focus on all the different reasons that keep you stuck. Shift your attention to what needs to be done to effect positive change.

That pretty much sums it up! Make the change.

Mueller then completes the 10 steps with the call to do it yourself:

In the end, the only one that is holding you back is yourself. Do not fall prey to the mistake of focusing all your attention on lousy excuses. Look for the steps you can take that will get you out of your situation.

Get past the excuses this week. Take one more step and make a move. It’s not as hard as it feels- or we make it out to be.

Tuning Slide 4.15- Mastery 5 & 6- Passion and Tolerance

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Real understanding does not come from what we learn in books; it comes from what we learn from love— love of nature, of music, of man. For only what is learned in that way is truly understood.
— Pablo Casals

I am looking this week at numbers 5 & 6 of the pathways for mastery of music from Barry Green’s book by the same name.

First:

Passion- The Power of Love

Apart from the other ideas, Green talks about three kinds of passion that relates to the theme:

✓ Passion for Life
Green shares the quote from Pablo Casals at the top of this post. It says it all. While it is not directly connected to music, without a passion for life, the learning from love, we don’t truly experience the passions involved in music. How does my passion for life infect and grow my music?

✓ Passion for Music
Am I “in love” with music? One of the reasons that music can often inspire others is that the musician has a passion for it. It can be an expression of our own souls. Passion compels us, moves us, helps us do what we are “passionate” about. In that we grow- and, reflecting Casals, it is how we learn best. With passion like that, music can even define who we are. There are groups of excellent musicians who play mechanically, and there are those who play passionately. When the two come together it is a moment of grace.
That may be the reason why a “live” performance sounds more alive than a recording from a studio session. It may explain why the remarkable Miles Davis album, Kind of Blue, is so alive. It was done in few takes and continues to be an expression of the passion in that studio.

✓ Passion Within the Music
Music itself touches feelings that words alone cannot. Some music is so passionate that a simple phrase or measure from the piece can cause goosebumps. Others can make us get up and move. The music triggers things that go beyond simply emotions to the heart of who we are as humans. I know my soul is grabbed and moved, even when I don’t understand why. When that happens I am participating in the music I am hearing. Green says:

As musicians we get to put our lives down, set our personalities aside, and jump into the middle…, to join with others in recreating [the] great moments in musical history. This is way beyond fun. At its best it is a spiritual experience, an act of human passion and skill that can be as beautiful as a crystal, a rainbow, or a brilliant sunset.

What an honor!

While our passion can and does come from all kinds of experiences and places, it must be alive within our imagination, says Green, when we first look at the piece. This is part of what I said last week about learning the piece before playing it. It should start, he says with imagination, not the technical. What is the best sound of the piece? Then organize it. Make it into art. He quotes a soloist who points out that you can throw a bucket of paint on the floor in a fit of anger. It will express anger, but it won’t be art. Art takes discipline along with the imagination.

In my mind that is why practice involves discovering the passion in my soul that is touched by the passion of the music.

In the end, says Green, passion is love. That, he says, is what

brought most of us into the wonderful world of music in the first place. One of the greatest challenges, whether in life, work, or relationships, is to keep that love alive.

The seventh pathway Green talks about is

Tolerance: The View from the Middle

This is the “quietist” and least self-assertive of the ten pathways. Yet it is a critical component for achieving “interpersonal and musical harmony in any ensemble.” Management needs to have this in any ensemble, and the people who exhibit it become the glue holding the orchestra, band, or ensemble together. The support they give, the work they do both within the music and the group as a whole, is what gets people to work together. You all know the “solid” group member, the musician who, while not flashy or out-front, is the one we all count on to keep the group focused and moving.

Green calls this tolerance. It is an attitude. It is not about convincing or changing others. It is about maintaining our own personal balance even in the midst of uncertainty. Tolerance comes from being comfortable in one’s own skin. It recognizes that none of us is essential to the group as individuals. No one of us can be an ensemble. Music is made in community where hostility and tension must be addressed and defused or the music will not happen. Flexibility and collaboration enter in.

We can all share a part in this. When we develop our own “tolerance” and openness to the group as a whole, we are providing a safe place for taking chances and a space for each to grow. Green says that this even includes support and tolerance even for your competitors. A musical performance is not a competition among the musicians. It is a common experience where we discover what happens when our passion is woven together with the passion of others.

Then we are an ensemble- a working, organic group, not just an assembly of individual musicians. This is more difficult than it sounds, but each musician can help make it happen. It is a quiet, but essential pathway to making better music.

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 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 3.39- The Plateaus of Movement

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

I’ve never seen a monument erected to a pessimist.
— Paul Harvey

It has been a long week with some difficulties in traveling, snow storms, major delays on the highways, and a lot of being tired. I just was unable to get this together before right now. So let me start right off with the myth of the week. I have heard a number of variations of this from all sorts of places and people among trumpet players. For those who are not professional musicians and who have to make time to be a musician while doing other things, this myth can be tempting- and dangerous to one’s growth.

When I stop improving maybe I should just be satisfied with where I’m at.

I did a Google search and found all kinds of reactions and rationalizations about what to do when we reach a point where improvement isn’t happening. Many were “comeback players” who had not played for many years and were getting back into their music. Others were people who had been playing for years yet the excitement has gone. Some were satisfied with there they were and had no desire to get any better. Others were sad or frustrated having hoped to be far better than they had become.

In many of these situations they simply stopped where they were. Some quit playing altogether. They stepped away and turned to other things. Some continued to play but were at a plateau. They never got better, but were content to be what they had been.

Now I don’t want to put any value judgement on any of these responses. We are all different people with different dreams and goals. Sometimes there are physical issues and limitations or injuries and setbacks in life that get in the way. But there was a sense of sadness to many of the things I read. These players had wanted to do so much more but just couldn’t seem to get there.

It is not unusual for any of us to get discouraged, bored, or tired. I have talked about some of the ways of dealing with that:

• Switch up your routine while keeping all the basics.
• Find a teacher who will take you to some new places.
• Find friends to play with.Find a new band or group to join that could
• give you new perspectives.

But that is easier than it sounds when you have been working and doing some of those things and you don’t seem to be getting anywhere new. What I have heard and seen in so many different ways well beyond making music are that there are basically two things that get in the way.

First is expectations. If we have wanted to play like Doc or Maynard and just can’t ever seem to get there, that is a potentially dangerous expectation. You are not Doc, I am not Maynard, nobody else is Miles or Wynton. Expectations like this are comparisons. Very few will ever be able to compare to any of those musicians. But I can still be the best musician I can be.

The second thing that gets in the way and is seriously impacted by expectations is a lack of patience. So often we want the fruits of years of practice without putting in years of practice. Over the years I have often wanted to play guitar. The problem was that Iw as a far better trumpet player than a guitarist. Why? Because I have been playing trumpet a long time and know how to do it. I wanted to be able to pick up the guitar and play it as well as I did the trumpet. It never worked. Impatience. Getting the gold medal without working for it.

What I have discovered in my life- and have been applying it to my musicianship these past three years is that there are ways of getting through the plateau. There are steps we can take. Here are four of them:

Review- Plateaus happen. They are normal, natural, and essential. They allow our learning to sink in and become a more natural part of who we are and what we do. When they happen or when our human tendency to slow down gets going, spend some time in reviewing. Get out some older pieces you have moved past or exercises that used to be a little bit challenging. Play them. Take them for a few days and include them in your routine. I am often surprised at how much better I can play them today.

Revise- Plateaus mean you have reached a new stage in your growth. Where do you want to go next? It’s time to review your goals and expectations. Make sure you are doing the things that will move you there. Name the joys and wonders of what you have been doing- and where that can take you. I am always surprised when that happens- mostly by how blind I have been to seeing the growth and movement I have been experiencing.

Regroup- Pull it all together. The new band or group, the new attitude that gets you back into optimism, the inner excitement of knowing that there is movement ahead. Go for it.

Relax- Stop letting Self One control your thinking. You enjoy that music. You enjoy the possibilities. Take it easy and go for it.

There are a number of ways, then, of naming this week’s holy truth. Some of them were in the summary of last year’s trumpet workshop:

• Your best trumpet playing hasn’t happened yet
• Your best trumpet playing is only a thought away

The truth is you can always continue to grow as a musician and as a human being. The minute you quit- you’ve lost the edge, the growth. Yes, things get in the way, like the problems and barriers I faced in the past week of travel. Yesterday I didn’t have the energy to write this piece. I didn’t feel like picking up the horn. My plan was to be satisfied with going 360 days in a row of daily routine and/or practice. I was giving up the dream of a solid year five days early.

But in the back of my head I heard “Isn’t that what you were writing about this week? Being satisfied?” So I pulled out the horn and did a variation of my daily routine for about 30 minutes. I could feel myself relaxing, falling into the notes- and the notes flowing into me.

If you are not ready to quit- don’t!

Holy Truth for the week then:

• Plateaus happen- and they are good. They are a place to regroup so we can move on!

Learn how to be happy with what you have while you pursue all that you want.
— Jim Rohn

Tuning Slide 3.38- The Myths of Practice

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Misunderstanding is generally simpler than true understanding,

and hence has more potential for popularity.

― Raheel Farooq

Last week we looked at the myth/misconception about equipment. While I used the never-ending discussion of the best mouthpiece to use for the example, we could have taken all kinds of twisty, overgrown back roads about equipment. The answer was, of course, that equipment doesn’t make the music. We do. Hence “Holy Truth #1” was

Equipment is not the answer.

Well what might be the answer? Not hard to guess what the answer to that might be.

Practice, of course.

But if you’ve been following the Tuning Slide for a while you know that just the thought of “practice” brings with it all kinds of myths and misconceptions that never seem to go away.

• Just practicing as we have seen in a number of different series of posts over the past three years can do nothing but keep us mediocre if we don’t have goals and plans.
• Just practicing for the sake of practicing gets pretty boring- and getting bored with practice ends up with us not practicing.
• Just practicing without working at what we need to work on keeps us doing the things which keep us mediocre without improvement.

But I found a couple myths and misconceptions on the website Trumpet Journey that we might have missed, depending on how we have learned our practicing skills.

Myth #1 is that old saying

Practice makes perfect.

Stanley Curtis, author of the Trumpet Journey blog says:

Perfectionism, while seeming to be a noble goal, is actually not that good for trumpeters. More than most instrumentalists, we miss notes, and we need to get on with life. By becoming fixated on our weaknesses, we never let our spontaneous self naturally blossom.

Another way of saying that might be, if we work at being perfect, we are just feeding the ego of old Self 1 who likes nothing better than to find out what ’s wrong. I like that second sentence in that quote where Curtis says that we may very well miss more notes than most instrumentalists. It is a humbling thought which may be why we work so hard at perfect. But Curtis is right, the more we work at perfection, the less likely we are to be perfect.

That does not mean that we should ignore what we need to work on! We know what particular aspect of our playing is not going as well as we would like. It is painfully obvious to us. So we then make a plan, a deliberate practice goal, to do something about it. It’s not rocket science.

Before one of the concerts in the community band last year I realized that I was having some difficulty with intervals beyond fifths. An interval jump of an octave or more just wasn’t falling into place. So I dug out the lessons from the Arban’s book and worked on them. The problem was I was not hearing or feeling the interval and my flexibility was sloppy. It didn’t take much to improve. I just had to do it. Deliberately. Intervals are now on my once or twice a week practice plan.

Myth # 2 that I found on Trumpet Journey:

If practicing makes me better, then MORE practice will make me ever better.

Why sure, that makes sense. If I can do a two-hour practice today, maybe I can make it more tomorrow, and on and on.

Curtis nicely sums up why that’s a potentially dangerous misconception:

The error here is that there is a limit to practice, especially the physical aspects of practice. Practice is a lot like a great paint job on a fine automobile. Instead of one sloppy, thin coat, it’s far better to paint many thin coats to avoid runs and smears. When we practice too much, we start to get sloppy, and then we get used to being sloppy. I like to think of weekly practice goals, so that each day can be a little different.

In my own reading and research into practicing, I read somewhere (which means I didn’t note where I read it) that we should make sure we stop our practice session before we have exhausted ourselves, our lip, and our mental capacity to keep growing. The reason is simple, we will learn the exhaustion stage more than the place where we were sounding good. This is the same as an athlete. They do not set records in practice. They want to build themselves to a point of 80% of maximum. The only time they need to give 100% is the race or game when the extra push is needed.

We have to do it slowly. We have to build. We don’t blow it all in one marathon practice session a day. We will hurt ourselves that way. Slowly, surely, build it up. Curtis’s statement about building many thin coats of pain reminded me of what the master Leonardo da Vinci did. He would add very thin layers of paint slowly over time. The Mona Lisa or Last Supper were not done with thick layers. The wonder of his artistry was how he built it slowly, one layer at a time.

So, again, we have seen a couple myths and misconceptions of practice. There are more. We will surely invent them (or re-invent old ones) on a regular basis. We think we have all the answers, which as the quote at the start of this post indicates, will lead us to more misconceptions. So slow down and keep it patient, balanced, and deliberate. After all this is supposed to be fun, not torture.

Which brings me to the Holy Truth for this week. I think by following this, I may be able to keep that patience and deliberateness that is essential to better musicianship.

When you practice, rest as much as you play!

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

Note:
By the way, Stanley Curtis at Trumpet Journey has a series of weekly lesson plans for trumpet practice over three years. While many of us have adopted the basic routines that we have learned from teachers who were taught by William Adam, there are also other lesson plans that we can use to build certain aspects of our musicality. If we remember it starts with the sound, these lessons may be helpful. Just thought I would pass it along. It should take you the rest of your life to get through it. What a great thought!

3.27- The Tuning Slide- Connecting the Dots

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
-Seve Jobs

This week’s quote from last summer’s Trumpet Workshop owes its existence to a 2005 commencement address by Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs. In the first story in the address he talks about the journey of life (our theme this month) as connecting dots. But, he points out,

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

We can only see our path of dots looking backward! The resulting summary quote, then, from last summer:

✓ Therefore make good dots

I made some good dots musically this past year.

• I met Doc!
• A dot of inspiration and humility
• I attended the Big Band and Trumpet Workshops at Shell Lake for the third year.
• Dots of learning and staying open to growth.
• I have practiced every single day since March 24 (and only missed 7 days before that this year.)
• Dots of discipline and commitment.
• I am now regularly hitting an E above the staff in my daily routine and almost getting F.
• Dots of patience and improving skill
• I volunteered at the Eau Claire Jazz Festival as a “room host”
• Dots of seeing the great future of jazz music and instruction.
• I took several lessons and spent time with some amazing musicians
• Dots of accepting my need for outside input and support.
• I have learned how to relax while playing a performance.
• Dots of acceptance of Self Two doing its work.
• I published my book, The Tuning Slide, of the first two years of this blog.
• Dots of sharing what I have learned so others, too, may learn.
• I continue this weekly blog!
• Again, dots of discipline and commitment,

As a result of these and other dots, my skill level has increased, my self-confidence has improved, my tone and rhythm have gotten better, and my life continues to be filled with music and more music! These dots also add to the ongoing theme of my life that how I do anything is how I do everything. To be honest there are non-dots from last year. Or perhaps it might be better to say attempted dots that somehow didn’t get connected in this rear-view summary. They represent things for next year (and next week’s post!) But what I know is that because I have made these dots this year, I am moving in a direction that these can be applied to more and more areas of my life.

Dots of:

• Inspiration
• Humility
• Learning and openness to growing
• Patience
• Discipline and commitment
• Volunteering and sharing
• Acceptance

In short it has been a good, and growing year. As I am continually amazed, even old dogs can learn a lot of new tricks! Thanks to all of you who have helped make it the year it was!

What dots did you make last year? How do they connect? How do they lead to your future? See you next week in 2018!

Happy New Year!

The Tuning Slide 3.19- Endurance

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

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

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

The joy of practice

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does he mean?

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

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

Stupid chops.

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

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

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

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

Maybe I should practice what I preach.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Tuning Slide: 2.30

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

We don’t move smoothly from one level of ability to next. Reading about quantum physics I realized that most of what happens in the world is not on a continuum. It may look like it, but it isn’t. That’s because we can’t see the little things happening, down on the quantum level. The electrons, for example, move one energy level orbit to another in jumps. Discrete jumps. In-between they are nowhere. It is referred to as “discontinuous.” In other words, a “leap” from one place to the next. Or maybe in a whole cloud of possibilities of all the things that could happen which in physics is known as a sum over paths.

I realized that this also explains some of what I have often noticed in my practicing and improvement as a musician. In summer band I used to notice somewhere around week 4 of rehearsals that my improvement slowed down and even regressed. This would happen just before I made a significant jump in my playing and skill. The first time it happened I almost quit the community band thinking that I was getting too old for that. (I was all of 38, and this was 30 years ago). Then, in a couple of weeks, in time for the second half of the summer band season, things would improve. When it happened again the next year, I figured it must be normal.

Recently I noticed, for example, that my upper register had begun to fall into place in ways I have never, repeat NEVER played before. I know I am approaching another jump in my skill. The next day I wasn’t playing up there. Then I was. Or in my second set of practicing on a given day I was not able to do it as I had the day before. There is a discontinuity happening.

I am in that never-never land between skill levels. I’m not where I was, but I am not quite where I am going. I am in the cloud of possibilities. On any given day I might be approaching that new level and on the next, well, I’m barely where I was. When that happens, I get excited- it means things are changing. Here’s what is happening as a way of illustrating:

It wasn’t that long ago, within the past year, that the “F” or “G” at the top of the staff was my comfortable limit. Yes, I could sort of hit the “A” and “B”, sometimes okay, usually not as well. Basically my skill level was the “F” or “G”. Early this year I noticed I had become more comfortable all the way to “C” on the ledger line above the staff. Still not perfect, but changing. “A” was now the top.

Then three weeks ago, for the first time ever, I purposely went all the way to “E” above the staff. I could do it without too much problem. Sometimes. “C” now felt comfortable. It was at that point that I noticed the seeming regression in skill. For a few days I was barely getting to the “C” again. I got excited. The leap is beginning. In my old way of thinking I would have believed that I had reached the end of my skill. I even remember saying to one of the other big band and trumpet students (Jeff!) that I will never be getting up to the “E” let alone any higher. I don’t believe that anymore. I heard the “E” come out of my horn and I know it will happen again.

Which brings me back to the listening part of music- having a “great ear.” That doesn’t just mean hearing when a note is right or wrong. It also means hearing the note before you play it. I used to take a quick break going up the scale as I went from “G” to “A”. I had to set myself to play it. I couldn’t naturally hear it. In one book I saw online the general feeling of why many trumpet players can’t play in the high register is that they aren’t able to hear the notes up there. Once we can, we move toward playing it. Then, one day, the leap is made.

I do notice that the “leap” is not as fast as it used to be. I don’t think it’s because of anything I’m doing differently. I believe it has to do with the act that I am up in the upper range of the instrument. Some will argue, quite persuasively that the range of the trumpet does go that high, but the fewer number of harmonics makes it a little more sensitive to smaller changes than lower on the instrument. As we move higher in the range, and build our own skills, embouchure, and endurance, the “center” of the trumpet scale moves upward to “C” or “E” on the staff instead of the second line “G”. When you go to higher levels or greater extremes in any activity the progress doesn’t change as quickly. But it still happens.

As we come to the end of this second year of the Tuning Slide, I am aware of many of those leaps in my own playing. I am doing things I never thought possible- and know I am working toward more of them. These past two years have been a remarkable time for me as a person and as a musician. I have consistently called this blog reflections on music and life. They go together. When my life is in better balance and focus, so is my music. As my music focuses more, so does my life. What I learn in one, applies to the other. If there is one sentence that summarizes this second year it is:

How you do anything is how you do everything.

Keep at it. It’s worth it.

«»«»«»«»«»«»«»«»«»

Between now and the end of June here on the blog I am going to focus specifically on jazz here on the blog. I will be writing a few new posts as well as re-posting my series on jazz from last year. This will give me time to edit and format the two years of the Tuning Slide into a new book. I hope to make it available to the students at Shall Lake Trumpet Workshop in August, as well as on Amazon. I will also be attending the Eau Claire Jazz Fest (to see and hear Doc!) and the adult Big Band Workshop at Shell Lake. As always I will be taking notes, looking for the many more ways that music and life enrich each other.

Any ideas? Let me know. Looking forward to more over the next year.

The Tuning Slide: 2.18- Failing Forward

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Google goal-setting. There can be:

• Seven types of goals;
• Four types of goals;
• lifetime, long-term and short-term goals;
• outcome, process, or performance goals….

On and on it can go. Goals need to be

• Specific and achievable;
• Measurable and realistic…
• etc., etc., etc.....

As we start a new year we often hear about all those great new year’s resolutions- that are only too soon forgotten. Anyone who has been a regular at a gym will tell you the worst time of the year is January when all those people who have decided to get healthy show up. Give them a month or so and things will quiet down.

Resolutions, though, aren’t goals. Resolutions are ways of wishing and hoping. That’s why they usually fail. And when they fail, we give up on them. Guess I’m not going to do THAT this year. We move on.

Perhaps that is one of the greatest differences between resolutions and goals. When we set a goal, we are also setting in place the possibility of failure- and if we are honest- we know that. But when we set goals, the failures are planned for.

Several of the faculty talked about some of this at last year’s Shell Lake workshop. I went back to my notebook from the week and came across this series of notes and reflections on the important place “failures” have in helping us reach our goals:

• Goals take time. They have failure moments along the way. Success is moving through the failures and using them for your benefit. The famous remark from Thomas Edison that he didn’t have failures, he just knew many things that don’t work.

• How did your failures help shape you? I was set on being an engineer when I graduated from high school in 1966. Everyone who had any kind of chance to go to college in those years was directed toward engineering or science. The space race spurred it; American pride accelerated it. After two years it was more than clear that I was not cut out to be an engineer. It wasn’t how I thought. Some of my family saw that as failure. I was not going to make it in the world with a degree in political science. I was a disappointment.

• Figure out a different way. Which is what I eventually did. I didn’t give up on life or whatever. Over the next four years I finished college and found something that did fit the way I work and think. I entered seminary and went on to a very satisfying, challenging, and exciting career.

• Change your perspective. Management guru John Maxwell wrote a whole book about this- Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes Into Stepping Stones for Success. Failure is in giving up, not getting back up. Success- at its very basic is continuing to put one foot in front of the other, even when it doesn’t look like it’s going the right direction.

• There are valleys between mountaintops. That is one of the more subtly profound statements I wrote in my notebook. The metaphorical mountaintops lead to valleys. The valleys are the places where we can learn to take the next step toward what we saw from the mountaintop.

• To realize you suck at something- you’re on the right track. It was when I heard a recording of our quintet and the poor quality of my sound that I realized I needed to do something. I didn’t hear that when I was playing live. The same thing happened when I heard my solo on Basin Street Blues with the big band for the first time. In my ear- it sucked! I didn’t like it. It had no life. It sounded tired. If I had never heard that and realized how poor it sounded, I might never have started on this journey that has now gone through two summers of Shell Lake camps and incredible hours of practice in ways I never have done before.

That’s the simple process of failure and success. I was in my mid-60s when that all began. It could have been discouraging. I could have said “The hell with it!” But I had a greater goal, one of those big ones- to truly be a musician in ways unlike any time in my life. It can be called perseverance, or grit, or stubborn, ideas I will deal with later this winter and spring. It is just following the goals and dreams into something new and different.

Have goals and act on them. Prioritize, them, of course. I have never been able to memorize. That doesn’t mean I can’t. At this point in my musical life, there are other things more important than taking the time needed to learn how to do that. My goals are in scales and arpeggios, improvising and endurance, fun and performance. I keep thinking about memorization, but it’s not a priority. Yet.

As we start 2017 in our musical journeys:

• We start something by taking the necessary steps to get there.
• We have to know where we want to go.
• We then create opportunities then things happen.
• We follow our interests and take risks.
  
  Happy New Year! Let’s continue to make music- and life.

The Tuning Slide: 2.17- Looking Both Ways

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Steve Jobs famously once said:

You can only connect the dots looking backward. Just make good dots.

My thought when I heard that was that in order to be successful you need to look both ways, just like we were always told when crossing the street. Here, though the looking is back and ahead. Looking back connects the dots, as Jobs indicated, helping us to see what we did (or didn’t do) to get where we are today. Looking ahead helps us think about where we want to be in the future. Many of us do that at certain times of the year- birthdays, anniversaries. But most of us do it this week between Christmas and New Year. Another year has passed, the year ahead is a so-called “blank slate”.

The subject reminded me of a saying I heard at Shell Lake last summer:

Whenever you go through a door- you will see four more doors appear.

There is a sense in that which says that we are never finished- when we make progress, we can see the progress we need to make. When we make progress, when we are successful or improve at what we are doing, we can see the new possibilities that lie ahead of us. And those possibilities multiply as we go through each door of progress.

Last year, for example, I made it my goal to learn the twelve major scales. I made it very successfully through that door. After that initial success I decided that advance in my skill led me to at least two more opportunities. One was to memorize Clarke #2- a great way to add to my skills at the scales. The other was that I found myself able to improvise on different scales more easily. Each of those doors has now led me to new confidence.

But there was a door I didn’t go through quite as well as I had hoped. I wrote earlier in the year about my “performance anxiety” and that over the years it doesn’t matter how well I know a piece, the move from the practice room to the performance venue never goes as well as I would like it to. I never play in performance as well as (I think) I do in practice. It happened again on Christmas and I found myself starting to slide back into the old thinking. “I’ll never get past it. I’m not as good as I think I am.” But looking back, I managed to say, “Not true!” Looking back and connecting the dots, I saw the Vintage Band Festival in July when I did the solo part of the Canadian Brass version of “Amazing Grace.” No accompaniment, no rhythm, just me starting out and paying. I can do it. I have made it through that door far better than I am willing to accept when I have a glitch. So what’s wrong? What is the next door ahead of me that this has brought me to?

See how it works? Connecting the dots as we look back helps us discover what we need to be doing ahead of us.

Take time this week then to first ask yourself:

• What doors did you go through this past year
• How far have you come?
• What’s new about you this year?
• What doors are now opened that you couldn’t have walked through last year at this time?
• So what?

Looking at progress helps you see what you are still capable of doing. Looking at when we didn’t do as much as we wanted gets us looking at what we can do to change that. There’s an old saying:

Doing what you’ve always done will only get you what you have always gotten.

At that point we often rationalize or make an excuse why we aren’t doing something- “I can’t do that!”

In my examples of movement this year I have decided the next stage of work will be to learn the minor and 7th chords across the 12 keys. I’m still exploring the ways of doing that, but I know it is at the top of the goals for 2017. I have also been working on learning a solo from a recording I admire and enjoy. That is the next of my goals for the beginning of the new year- finish learning that and then adapting it for myself. And third, the performance issue. I realized that most of the time now it has nothing to do with how I’m feeling about myself or my ability; it is about how I focus- or don’t- getting ready for a performance. My third goal is only partially related to my music- it’s about focus and building my inner ability to do so. I have a couple things I want to do in that area and learn how to apply it to my performance.

Goals. That’s the other half of looking both ways. They are today’s dots leading to the ones we haven’t put down yet. That is how we make good dots that connect us from where we have been to what can yet become.

May you all have a Happy New Year- making music, enjoying music, and turning them all into the excitement and hope for you.

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

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IMPROVISATION! Improvisation is important for ALL players.

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

And what fun it has become.

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

And THANKS, BILL, for the thoughts!

The Tuning Slide: Being a Trumpet Player

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Today I start volume two of The Tuning Slide. I come refreshed with new ideas from another Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop week. I have been doing some exciting reading and experiencing insights into music, life, and the connections they make.

Over this past year I have found myself moving from an okay amateur trumpet player into a somewhat more accomplished amateur. I have spent more time practicing and playing than I ever would have thought possible. As the year progressed I found it more and more difficult to MISS a day of practice. Since mid-April, I have only missed one day- a long day of travel and meetings. As a result I have discovered that you can teach an old dog new tricks.

In some of my reading I came across a fun and insightful description of trumpet players. It came from pianist and composer Jonny King's An Insider’s Guide to Understanding and Listening to Jazz (1997, Walker). After talking about other of the jazz instruments, on pages 61-62 he tackles the trumpet. Here is part of what he had to say.

The Egomaniacal Trumpet Player
Among musicians, trumpet players are reputed to have the biggest egos. As the other musicians see it, they’re the cockiest guys on the bandstand. They… try to take over every tune and every gig and musical situation. Of course, such sweeping generalizations couldn’t possibly be true for all trumpet players, but the trumpeter’s reputation might be justified to a certain extent. You probably have to be somewhat brash to think that you can lead a quintet or power a big band’s brass section with a pint-sized horn with only three valves….

Well, yes. That is our reputation, but at least he has the insight to see where some of it comes from- a pint-sized horn that powers a whole band. He goes on to give us some pretty heavy support:

The technique of playing the trumpet is bewildering to the rest of us. The horn is a small curved piece of brass (or other, more exotic metal finishes) with a mouthpiece the musician blows into and a “bell” that fans out from the horn and projects notes and sounds. The mouthpiece is a small metal cylinder into which the trumpeter must blow his tightened, purse lips. … The trumpet is an extremely physically demanding instrument, and you can’t lay off for more than a few days without seriously compromising your chops.

I had never thought about it that way. I started playing in 1961 at age 13. I don't remember any of the early fights with learning or how awful it must have sounded to my parents. And that bit about compromising your "chops" is one of the more famous issues to a trumpet player. Yeah. Wow. He understands.

Once you get a full head of steam and force air into the horn to create notes, how do you determine the pitches of those tones? By combining different amounts of air pressure, changing lip positions, and pressing down different combinations of the three valves, the trumpet is able to sound about three octaves worth of pitches. Most people are fairly blown away by the prospect of trying to control dozens of different notes with barely perceptible changes in lip positions and valve alterations. 

 As I was writing this, I was listening to Lee Morgan do everything described in that last paragraph- and then some- on the amazing "Just One of Those Things". He made it sound so smooth and easy- using only those barely perceptible lip changes and valve combinations.

When I initially read that description, I did react with surprise. After a while you just pick up the horn and start playing. It becomes second nature. It is natural and you don't think about why and how you do what you do. To describe it as King does gives a whole new dimension to what we do.

But, and this is important, I think, when we get that nonchalant or even carefree about our playing, we can find ourselves at a loss. That may have been the underlying secret insight I got a year ago at Shell Lake. In a brief moment of instruction from Bob Baca my whole way of looking at what I was doing as a musician changed. I know now that part of what happened was to take what had become natural and allow it to grow and change. When we are satisfied with how we are playing, we can get stuck and not move on.

For years I had been somewhat satisfied. I believed that perhaps this was as far as  I could ever get. I was wrong. I am grateful I was wrong. I also found that it takes patience and persistence to move on to new levels. The suggestion that I could have a daily routine of long tones, chromatics, and scales brought me back to basics. In playing those long tones I have to listen, not just blow them. I have to hear the chromatics move. I have to be aware of the steps and half-steps of the scales. Yes, I am memorizing the scales; I am become familiar with the shape and movement of the sounds. But I don't just rattle them off so I can get on to something else.

THAT was a whole new understanding of practice and the road to improvement. It has worked- and for that I am grateful. And, yes, it does lead to second-nature playing because these routines and exercises become deeply ingrained in my brain and neural wiring. It is my whole musical self learning, melding, and growing together.

That's how we learn and grow in anything important. But we can never be lackadaisical about it. All these are gifts. Yet if we don't use them and improve them, we can get stuck. I like where music has taken me. I can hardly wait to see what's next.

Toward Pentecost (44): Patience