Tuning Slide 4.46- Being Free #2

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you will keep getting what you’ve always gotten.
— Various

Last week 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. Last week I looked at the first three:
1. Face your fears
2. Break your routine
3. Effect change, one step at a time

This week we take the next three and see where they can take us as we work to keep from staying stuck. Again, my thoughts are in italics.

4. Overcome the perception of impossibilities
✓ Feeling stuck in life … paralyzes us and diminishes our ability to see exciting new opportunities. Instead, we feel as if the options at hand are impossible to execute. If every solution you can think of seems impossible to accomplish, you’ll get even more stuck. … no progress can be made. nstead of getting trapped by these thinking patterns, try to explore your options… [T]ry to find the one solution that you like the most and commit to the decision.

It is not impossible to start a new career at least twice in one’s lifetime. Nor is it really too late to do it. I have seen many people over the years just kind of waste away into retirement- and spend many years moving toward it. It is not impossible to find new opportunities. As I have talked about with my trumpet playing, I was convinced that it would be impossible at my age (any age after about 40), to do anything about my shortcomings. Fortunately, I was wrong.

5. Be honest with yourself
✓ If we do want to break free from being stuck, it’s necessary to be honest with ourselves. Astonishingly, we almost always have the answer within ourselves. It might take some time to discover it, but it’s always there. The problem is that we do not act upon this knowledge. We prefer to keep this answer locked within ourselves.
Have the courage to at least think about the possible solution. It might be challenging to even consider acknowledging that you took a wrong path in life. But ultimately, it might prove to be better than suffering from this decision for the rest of your life.

Honesty. I have talked about this as part of the trio of honesty, openness, and willingness. The first honesty is to call BS on yourself when you say “I can’t do that!” or when we say “I don’t know what to do. It’s beyond me!” Neither is true. Because I had that moment of uncertainty at age 18, it does not mean I can’t do it now. Because I am trained in one area of life doesn’t mean I can’t get new training in my mid-40s or mid-60s for that matter. Admit that the biggest obstacle to getting where you want to go is YOU. That’s the first step of courage. The second is to say, “… and I don’t have to continue to block my own way!”

6. Change your perspective
✓ When we feel stuck in life, we most certainly do not have a good overview of the situation. Unfortunately, the feeling of being stuck in a rut can heavily affect our perception of life. It’s time to broaden your perspective!

▪ Stop walking the same path you’ve always chosen.
▪ Explore new perspectives by taking other paths.
▪ Ask yourself what your real goals are.
▪ Explore what you’re passionate about.
▪ Discover what it is that truly energizes you.
▪ Find your true purpose in life.
▪ Challenge yourself to have a vision for your life.

Discovering your vision and the pursuit of your passions can create a powerful drive. It can help you to liberate yourself from the vicious circle of being stuck.

That list above says more than I can absorb in a few moments. In essence, it replays that old cliche that if you keep doing the same things you will keep getting the same results. As long as I said I can’t change, that people my age can’t do that, someone with my history will fail, or I don’t know how that could happen- it won’t happen. Nothing will change if I don’t change. Nothing will improve if I don’t take the steps to make the change and improvement. That means looking at life from a whole new angle and finding out what I really want to see happen.

Remembering the first three things needed to get unstuck:
1. Face your fears
2. Break your routine
3. Effect change, one step at a time.

These were the prelude to everything else. I remember being asked to join a brass quintet, which I had never done in over 40 years of playing. (All three of those.) I remember deciding to get a trumpet teacher and then asking him. (All three of those.) I remember sitting with my teacher and him mentioning music camps and my then signing up for the Shell Lake Adult Big Band Workshop. (All three of those.) That’s when this week’s list came into play.

1. Things were no longer impossible. I did things I had never done before and began to see results, changes in my playing and increases in my skills.
2. I got honest with myself. I had been getting in my own way, but I also saw where I needed help in improvements. So I asked for help. My fears had been lessened, I had broken my routine of decades. I was taking it slowly, one issue at a time.
3. My perspective was changing. For one I began to see my third career in life included music. I was actually beginning to see myself as a “musician” and not having to excuse it away. Getting involved at Shell Lake with Mr. Baca’s trumpet workshop then gave these three items even more power and direction. I could see a vision, a movement, an honesty that was refreshing and exciting!

These first six things, interacting with each other and my new experiences, were life-changing on a surface level. That is where all change begins. We act our way into a new way of thinking, one small step or change or action at a time. After that, the changes get internalized, normalized. But that’s for next week.

Last week I asked you to take time this past week to find a fear that needed to be confronted or something in your routine that can be changed. Did you find a way to make a change? In the next week

• begin to look at those from last week and how your perception is changing,
• how you are no longer getting in your own way.
• What are you still saying is impossible?

Take it deeper- and keep moving forward.

Tuning Slide 4.32- Beyond the Plateau

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Plateaus are a manifestation of the law of diminishing returns, and when we reach one it simply means that it is time to adjust our methods.
― Chris Matakas, The Tao of Jiu Jitsu

Last week I talked some about the perennial problem of getting stuck in our movement forward as musicians- or in life, for that matter. I mentioned four of the main reasons that I have discovered for my “stuckness.” They were:

• Boredom
• Fear
• Exhaustion
• Lack of direction

Discovering some of these reasons behind my getting stuck may help find a way around them and into the next stage of growth. In order to do that I have to be willing and able to confront my plateaus and discover what to do next. Often what I am really facing is a decision point. In the musical world that question goes back to making a decision whether I am willing to settle for where I am. I have a hunch that any of us can always grow beyond where we are. Here is a famous quote from the great cellist Pablo Casals:

He was asked one day why he continued to practice four and five hours a day. Casals answered, “Because I think I am making progress.”
— Leonard Lyons

Who am I to disagree? So first I have to change my language to have a better, more positive way of describing the moment. Instead of being “stuck” I remind myself that I am at a “plateau.” I remember that in my past every musical or life-changing growth has been preceded by the plateau. A plateau is better than a stuck place- think flat land vs. a swamp or quicksand. Given a choice, I’ll take the flat plain. A plain or plateau tells me there is movement possible, even if for the moment it is at the same “level.” I am still moving, hopefully toward my goal.

My wife and I discussed this last week. She has been on an exercise development program following a period of medical concerns. At this point her goal was simply to walk a mile four times/week. Two days in a row she had some difficulties and I could sense she was on the edge of giving up. She was at a stuck point. I didn’t say anything specific, I just encouraged her to try it one more time. As it turns out the next time we went, she had made a step toward a better place. She was pleased and energized. She had been at the point I described last week as the “darkest before the dawn” point. She has continued to move forward.

I doing research on this topic, I found many websites that give thoughts and directions. One, the Every Day Power blog has five game-changing strategies for when you’re feeling stuck in life from Erika Boissiere. (https://everydaypowerblog.com/strategies-feeling-stuck-life/) They were:

◆ Challenge your assumptions- every last one of them!
She says that we may believe we have explored all the things that are happening. If we are still on the plateau of stuck, we probably haven’t. She suggests brainstorming more ideas, even crazy ideas. The goal is to come up with as many things as you can find. She adds, “Stop ruminating on the ideas you’ve already come up with!”

◆ Talk yourself through your worst-case scenario
Boissiere continues then to look at the worst-case options. What if this is as good as it gets? Could you continue? What might happen if you did continue? Could you survive? “If the answer is YES, you will un-tether yourself from fear of the worst case happening – and move forward.”

◆ Learn about courage
Sometimes it might take a bit of courage to move on. If fear is one of the main reasons behind this plateau, this one becomes especially important. Courage is the ability to do the next right thing, the next important thing, even if it is challenging or uncomfortable. Chances are that in my musical life, this will not kill me, that I can survive the next step and move forward anyway. For me that continues to be those solos that can trip me up. That I why I continue to play in the quintet and work on it. I am more exposed and my errors could be more devastating than playing fourth in a big band or being a section player in the concert band. Again from Boissiere, “Allow yourself to be scared. If you fall flat on your face, believe that you will pick yourself up again.”

◆ Use your village
Our individual “villages” are those people around us who we trust, who have our best interests in mind, and know something about what we are doing. So go ask them. Trust them. This what my wife did the other week when she was stuck. She trusted me and continued on her journey. It might mean finding a mentor or teacher and taking a lesson or two. Broissiere tells us to “[g]o to your strongest allies, and get their input.”

◆ Create your vision
At this point it usually comes back to what I talked about last week, make some goals, give myself some new direction. It might be learning a new piece, working on a specific technique, getting back to some basics and building on them. Broissiere remind us that “[y]ou must look beyond your short-term anxieties and create a vision for yourself.” It is, as she says, looking at the horizon instead of down at your feet. Where am I going?

I have been taking my winter season to work on these things. A few weeks ago I talked about my work on improving my precision and sound. As I said then it has been working, although there have been plateaus. That in and of itself is one of the best motivators to keep moving forward. I have also been working on my jazz language skills. I am building my vocabulary of jazz and learning how to be more free-flowing in improvising. While this may sound like it’s at odds with the “precision” goal, at this point they are beginning to merge, much to my surprise. Because I worked on my sound and attack, I feel more comfortable to working with chord changes and trusting the sound I am hearing in my mind. It all begins to meld into something new and different. My two goals are working together. They give me a direction.

Life is not a bunch of disconnected boxes. Life and music are all the things that I am and all that I can learn. I have a hunch that it is still an endless and growing path in front of me.

3.28- The Tuning Slide: Goals for a New Year

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

What better way to begin a new year of posts than to talk this month about goals. Setting them, working on them, achieving them, revising them. I will let the quote below tell us why.

When I was growing up I always wanted to be someone.
Now I realize I should have been more specific.
— Lily Tomlin

So this month we will get specific. That’s what goals are all about isn’t it? We move and grow, change and develop. We start with who we are, where we are, and then move into what we might want to become. Simply said, goals are ways to help us grow and realize the potential that is within us.

While I have been starting each post with one of the summary statements on the board at the end of last summer’s Workshop. But this week’s is based on a whole paragraph from the groundbreaking book, The Inner Game of Tennis. We talk a great deal about the principles in that amazing book and The Inner Game of Music by Barry Green with Gallwey. The note I wrote down from the summary simply said:

✓ Be yourself at your full potential (Example of the rose, Inner Game of Tennis, p. 37)

I needed to be reminded what that meant so I went digging and easily found it. Here’s the full paragraph:

When we plant a rose seed in the earth, we notice that it is small, but we do not criticize it as "rootless and stemless." We treat it as a seed, giving it the water and nourishment required of a seed. When it first shoots up out of the earth, we don't condemn it as immature and underdeveloped; nor do we criticize the buds for not being open when they appear. We stand in wonder at the process taking place and give the plant the care it needs at each stage of its development. The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change; yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is.”
― W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance

Our potential is already present before we start this process; at each moment we are right where we are and that is okay! I can’t help but think of our individual genetic codes when I read that. Inside that double helix of genes and chromosomes is all that is needed to make each of who we are. Period. Nothing else is needed. Each cell in our body is completely us. No, I don’t understand all the ins and outs of it, the processes behind it, etc. But I don’t need to. All that I ever was, all that I have ever become, all that I am yet to be is somehow or another encoded. Yes, I have an impact on how that happens. But the potential is there.

What then do I want to do? Where have I been? What have I learned and experienced already that can help me. So, as I think about 2018 I look at where I am and what has gotten me to this point. Last week I did a list of the experiences of 2017 that have created dots that I have connected in the past 12 months. Here are a few of them. They were:

⁃ Dots of inspiration and humility.
⁃ Dots of learning and staying open to growth.
⁃ Dots of discipline and commitment.
⁃ Dots of patience and improving skill.
⁃ Dots of acceptance of Self Two doing its work.
⁃ Dots of sharing what I have learned so others, too, may learn.

What didn’t happen as fully as I wanted?

• Exercise and weight loss (I know that's not a direct musical issue. But it does go back to the old "how you do anything is how you do everything" mantra. If I can so easily lose commitment and dedication in that area, it could happen in other ways. Not to mention that being in better shape and weight will help me in many ways, including as a musician.)

What do I want to expand on?

• Increased endurance and range. (Already a huge jump over a year ago.)
• Improvising. (Also leaps and bounds ahead.)

Making a plan:
James Blackwell has some ideas and ways to keep track of goals and the path to fulfill them. (http://www.blackwellstrumpetbasics.com/3244-2/)

Here’s my take on it in a mock-up of just part of what James talks about. Mine is set up on a weekly basis instead of monthly. That’s just the way it fits in my mind. My mock-up shows via an Excel spreadsheet what I am doing. I keep the list in my “Basics” notebook so I can follow along.

Barry's Practice Log	Su	M	T	W	Th	F	Sa
Daily Routine
Long Tones	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
2 Octav Thirds- Circle of 4ths	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
Clarke 1 Expanding	x		x	x	x	x
4-5 days/week
Schlossberg 28		x	x	x		x
Scales- various Exercises from Arban	x Ab		x Ab	x Ab	x Ab		x Db
Clarke 4 Expanding			x		x		x
Arban Lessons (Examples)
Basics, Lip Slurs, Chromatics,	B, C	LS	C			B
Scales, arpeggios		A	A	A	A		A
Tonguing, Technique	x	x			x	x
Rotation
Goldman 1-6	1		2,3		2		5
Clarke 5-6, 7-8		5, 6		5,6		5,6
Arpeggio Scales		x		x	x		x
Getchell/Concone	x
Other
Etudes
Arban- Characteristic Study
Keel Row/Blue Bells	x			x
Yankee Doodle/America						x
Charlier/Vanettelbosch
Other
Jazz Improv	x				x		x
Current Band Pieces, etc.

That’s a lot, I realize. It would easily take over 2 hours/day to do it all. That isn’t the point, of course. Even my over-active perfectionism knows that. What this is doing is now giving me an overall structure to my daily practice. The Daily Routine is required and can take up to 35 minutes. It is what I have learned keeps me centered and focused on the very basics.

I said earlier that I want to really work on jazz improvisation this year. That may mean that the Jazz Improv line may need to move up on the chart. Even if it doesn’t, I will have a way of noting if I am truly doing what I say I am going to do. For me, that is the real value of this chart and my accompanying notebook/journal. The charting gives me a great visual that can show me at a glance were I might be missing something. Following James Blackwell's thoughts, I will probably keep tweaking this, moving things around, adding and deleting as I work through things and find new areas to improve.

One of the goals for the year is reflected above in the line- Arban's Lessons. I am hoping to get through a significant part of the classic Arban's book in the next 12 months. I am using an excellent resource recommended by one of my teachers. Eric Bolvin has developed a series of lessons that takes you through Arban in a well-organized manner. It is called The Arban Manual and is available at his web site. (https://bolvinmusic.com/product/arban-manual/)

Over the next few months I have more practice time and plan to try at least two 50-60 minute sessions/day. Perhaps more some days? I know it can be done. Can I do it? Will I do it? The goals and planner will hopefully keep me on target.

Remember, for each of us, like with the rose, the seed - our potential is already present. It can always be changing and growing, but it is also always there.

Last week I talked about Steve Jobs' now famous commencement address where we talked about connecting all the dots. He knew any of us can get lazy and stop making good dots, or get distracted, or find ourselves in difficult situations. He ended that address with words placed on the back cover of an early 70s iconic publication, The Whole Earth Catalog. The catalog's farewell was written beneath a picture of an early morning country road. All it said was:

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Jobs said he wished that for himself and for his listeners. Stay hungry for more adventure and growth. Stay foolish enough to think we can actually do it.

Or as Mr. Baca would put it,

Crazy? Yeah. Crazy Good.

It's going to be a great new year!

The Tuning Slide: 3-8- Lifelong Learning

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Live as if you were to die tomorrow.
Learn as if you were to live forever.
-Mahatma Gandhi

Every year two things happen with education and learning. Every summer about this time we hear that “School’s Back.” Every spring we hear that “School’s Out.” And every spring I react the same way:
I hope not. I hope NEVER!

Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.
-Daniel Boorstin

I had another good example of this recently. As many of you know, I have been playing trumpet for over 55 years. I have no memory of having learned how to play the trumpet. It happened in a different world to a person far different from the one writing this blog. In my mind I have always played trumpet even though I was in 8th grade when I started. Playing trumpet has been second nature. Or was until Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop in 2015 when in a few moments of instruction, Bob Baca, workshop director, taught me something I didn’t even know I needed to know. I started changing how I practiced and how I saw trumpet playing. An amazing transformation has been at work.

Fast forward two years to this year’s workshop. For a couple months I have been aware that perhaps my embouchure needed some fine-tuning. I seemed stuck on a couple things so maybe it was something about my embouchure. I had been working on that in my practicing. I need to point out that until then I didn’t know that it might be something I needed to do. I’ve “always” played like this. I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

I went to this year’s workshop with an openness to get some expert advice and instruction- to be “teachable” as I talked about last week. I signed up for a lesson with Bill Bergren whose opinions and approach to the trumpet have always impressed me as anyone who has read this blog before knows. So I went in for my lesson having previously told him what was going on.

We sat down and what did he do but start at the beginning. No, not the beginning of the lesson but the beginning of trumpet playing, just a few steps beyond “This is a trumpet.” I had watched Bill teaching a non-trumpet player how to play that morning. Here he was using THE SAME techniques on me, someone who has been playing for over 55 years. (Hear the arrogance? It was covering the lack of confidence I was feeling at that moment.)

At first I did everything but say “But, Bill, you don’t understand. My situation is different.” I started to get frustrated. “But Bill..”

“Just do it, Barry.”
“Breathe this way.”
“Blow like you’re cooling hot soup.”
“Sing it first.”

He wasn’t working directly on my embouchure, he was working on my breathing. He was working on how I put the trumpet to my lips. He was working on how I thought about playing this instrument that I thought I knew how to play. He was helping me set my embouchure.

Back to basics to learn what I didn’t know I didn’t know. It took a few minutes for me to relax and realize he was doing exactly what he knew I needed. I relaxed a little as I struggled with something I thought I knew how to do. I kept listening and attempting to do what he suggested. I worked on turning off Self One. That’s the part that wanted logical how-to instructions.

“But, Bill, how do I…?”

“Let Self Two just do it.”

We made a little progress, but time was up. I went back to the rehearsal room and tried some of Bill’s techniques. They sort of worked. I went back to my room and worked on it some more. The next morning as I started my daily routine I applied them some more. They began to happen- after some frustrated mumbling, of course.

They have a way to go yet, but now, a few weeks later, I am seeing the results.

Amazing.

We humans are not dogs! You can teach an old human new tricks. At one point I asked Bill, “How do you break a 55-year old habit?”

He quickly came back with the most common answer that has been around for the past 50 years. It comes from the book Psycho Cybernetics which says that it takes a minimum of 21 days! That’s how long the old mental images take to fade and to be replaced by something new. A lot of all this is changing how we see ourselves. If we believe we are too old to learn something new- we won’t learn anything new.

Whether you think you can or you think you can’t,
you are right.
-Henry Ford

More recent research emphasizes the “minimum” part of the 21-day rule. The more complex a habit, the longer it takes to replace it. It is meant to be more difficult to break a habit. It helps us run on autopilot when we need to. It is what Self Two runs on! In general, though, I know I have to be working on this for at least 21 days before it begins to become more habitual.

So far it’s been 14 days. And it is happening! Self Two is beginning to be in charge of how I set my lips to play- relaxed and ready to simply breathe out. I now believe I can do it differently. In fact I am at the point where I have to stop and think about how I used to do it. A sure sign that things are moving in a new direction.

It doesn’t matter what it is we are trying to do differently. Part of our success will be in our ability to visualize the new way. It may be getting the right note in our head before we play it; it might be in taking time to exercise or practice or eat healthier food. It isn’t willpower, it’s habit.

Learning is not a part-time experience nor is it simply what happens in schools. If that was the extent of learning, we would be a far poorer people and our individual lives would be quite dull. There are people who do stop trying to learn. They become satisfied with where they believe they are or that they have nothing new to learn. The past two years for me have shown that even in something as ingrained as my trumpet playing was, it can change and grow.

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.
Anyone who keeps learning stays young.
The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.
-Henry Ford

School’s Out?
No way. I have too much to learn.

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: 2.9- The Best Practice

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Let me start this week with a quote from the book, Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool.

The best among us do not occupy that perch because they were born with some innate talent but rather because they have developed their abilities through years of practice, taking advantage of the adaptability of the human body and brain. (Ericsson, p. 256)

“Heresy,” you say. “What about the Mozarts of the world; child prodigies who just seem to be able to do whatever they do naturally?”

Ericsson tears that myth to pieces, as does Angela Duckworth in Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Research indicates that innate talent seems to be a lot scarcer than we want to admit. The reasons? We all can have a good excuse why we aren’t THAT good at whatever we do. “I wasn’t born with that talent.” While there may be predisposed for certain kinds of activities, the determining factor of the highly expert in many fields has nothing to do with that. It has to do with practice.

Oh, that again!

Yep. Even with something as seemingly mysterious as extremely advanced ability, the answer is not mysterious at all. In fact, as has often been quoted, the simplest answer is usually the most likely to be true. The incredible secret to becoming an expert is good old practice, practice, practice. Doc and Maynard and Miles got to their heights through practice. Being in the right place at the right time can help you get discovered, but there may very well be people who are as good as any of these icons who never had the opportunity to “make it.” One of the reasons is, of course, that it takes a lot of work (!!) to reach those levels. It also is because we are often satisfied to live in the “comfortable rut of homeostasis and never do the work that is required to get out of it. [We] live in the world of ‘good enough.’ “ (P. 47)

With this introduction in mind, here is a summary from a book review:

Not all practicing is equal. Ericsson identifies three different types of practicing. The most basic type of practicing is naïve practice, the generic rather mediocre practicing that children muddle through as they go from piano lesson to piano lesson. They will not become star performers, nor do they intend to.

A much more effective type of practice is what Ericsson calls purposeful practice. Purposeful practice is not simply repetition. Instead, it is characterized by well-defined, specific goals. Instead of just playing a piece over and over, purposeful practice would require the piano student to play the entire piece three times in a row with no mistakes. The guiding principle of purposeful practice is to take baby steps –– a bunch of them that, little by little, helps you reach the goal.
There are other characteristics that separate purposeful practice from naïve practice:

• Purposeful practice is focused. Students must give it their full attention.
• Purposeful practice involves feedback. Immediate, specific feedback on where students are falling short is vital.
• Purposeful practice requires leaving one’s comfort zone. If students aren’t pushing themselves beyond what is comfortable and familiar, they will not advance.

Purposeful practice is more effective than naïve practice. (Link)

Ericsson makes it clear that there are good things about “purposeful practice.” It is possible to improve one’s abilities with it. But he points out clearly that trying hard or pushing yourself to the limits is not enough. (P. 25) Back to the summary:

But to truly become an expert requires an even higher level of practice: Deliberate practice. Deliberate practice also pushes people out of their comfort zone and involves feedback and focus. However, deliberate practice is different from purposeful practice because it is based on proven techniques developed by past experts. “Deliberate practice is purposeful practice that knows where it is going and how to get there,” Ericsson writes. (Link)

What makes “deliberate practice” better than “purposeful practice”? One is that it benefits from a history of well established and well developed strategies and standards that produce high levels of performance. (Music training, by the way, is one of the prime examples of this!) Second is that it requires a teacher who can push and provide significant feedback. Ericsson calls it “purposeful” and “informed.” (P. 98)

Ericsson then goes on to list the traits that characterize “deliberate practice.”

• It develops skills that others have already figured out how to do and for which effective training techniques have been established.
• It takes place outside of one’s comfort zone and requires the student to try things that are just beyond current abilities.
• It involves well-defined, specific goals, not some vague overall improvement.
• It is deliberate- it requires a person’s full attention and conscious actions.
• It involves feedback and modification of efforts in response to the feedback.
• It produces and depends on effective mental representations.
• It almost always involves building or modifying previously acquired skills by focusing on particular aspects ad working to improve them specifically.

Deliberate practice works thanks to one very special attribute of the human brain- plasticity. It harnesses the adaptability of the human brain in response to mental and physical training.

There’s a lot of information in this one post. I will spend the next couple posts expanding on these and adding some hopefully helpful examples of how this can work. I will also look at the ideas of grit as talked about in Angela Duckworth’s book mentioned earlier. This whole concept I have been discovering over the past six months is nothing short of remarkable. It makes me excited to read it and think about what it means for me. It is also quite simple. Far, far from easy. But simple and straightforward. It has worked for many, and can have an impact on any of us.

Keys to effective practice are the same as the keys to effective living. That I will also explore. But for the next week, think about these ideas and reflect some on how your practice brings some of these ideas together and what needs to be improved.

Be serious, but, in the end I think we should also be careful that we don’t take ourselves too seriously. That can result in being too hard on ourselves. Being serious about our music- taking it seriously- is essential. But if it’s a drudgery, we won’t get to where we can go.

Have fun. That is one of the keys to the success of the work ahead. We have to enjoy it. So look at that this week, too.

The Tuning Slide- Assimilate and Practice, Practice, Practice

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

We are what we repeatedly do. 

Excellence, then, is not an act, 

but a habit. 

—Aristotle 

Last week I mentioned Clark Terry’s three important bits of learning to improvise: Imitate, Assimilate, Innovate.These are also important in growing as a musician in any genre, even if we never have to improvise.

I discussed listening as basic to imitating. In our listening we pick up on things that are going on in the music we are listening to. We pay attention to what is going on within the music and even within our own emotions and responses to the music. Imitation, in Clark Terry’s thought, is learning by ear and then absorbing the feel, articulation and time of whatever you are listening to.

Well, in that absorption something else begins to happen- the second of Clark Terry’s bits: Assimilate.

I looked up the general definition of assimilate before digging into what he meant by it. Here is a little from the Free Dictionary online:

Assimilate means:
1. to learn (information, a procedure, etc) and understand it thoroughly
2. to become absorbed, incorporated, or learned and understood
3. to bring or come into harmony; adjust or become adjusted to
4. to become or cause to become similar

To learn and understand thoroughly, in the case of musical listening is not just saying, “Oh, I get the theory behind what is being played!” It goes beyond understanding what is happening. It is hearing the theory applied. It moves from getting the theory to hearing, feeling, catching hold of what the theory sounds, feels, and perhaps even looks like.

Assimilation then moves to allowing what we learn and understand thoroughly to become absorbed and incorporated in what we are doing. Remember, we are imitating Clark Terry, Miles, Coltrane, or Herb Alpert. Imitation is beyond aping or mimicking- it is absorbing the style so it becomes yours. As a result we ourselves can move into harmony, become adjusted to whatever it is we are listening to and imitating. That is an important step that cannot be overlooked, or short changed.

On the Jazz Advice website where they talked about these three things of Clark Terry’s they described some of this step this way:

Assimilation means ingraining these stylistic nuances, harmonic devices, and lines that you’ve transcribed into your musical conception… truly connecting them to your ear and body. This is where the hours of dedication and work come in.

• Get into the practice room and repeat these lines over and over again, hundreds of times, until they are an unconscious part of your musical conception. 
• Take these phrases through all keys, all ranges, and all inversions. 
• Begin slowly and incrementally increase the speed until you can easily play them. 
• Don’t feel satisfied until you can play these lines in your sleep. 

 This is not an easy step to complete.

Yeah- I know.

So what now?

You are what you practice most. 

---Richard Carlson

Well, the basic answer is go and do it. That phrase above, connecting them to your ear and body, is really the goal.  But can I really do that? Do I have the motivation to do what needs to be done to become a better trumpet player? What about those days when that trumpet looks like it weighs a ton and the mouthpiece seems to have all kinds of nails sticking out before I even pick up the horn?

At this stage of the learning, we are working at being similar in our style to whatever we are listening to. So we just have to keep at it. Maybe we are working on a difficult passage in a classical wind band piece. The notes run by too fast. Keep playing it. Build it up in your head. Listen to a recording of it. (Much gratitude to You Tube on this one!) I have been doing that with that first characteristic study from Arban's book. I found a recording by Paul Mayes of it at full speed and listen time after time to it. What are the nuances? I watch his fingering and see if he uses any alternates. I even watch how he moves the trumpet on his lips. It is the whole process of imitating- hearing, feeling, seeing.

Don't overlook singing the music as well. Part of the assimilation is to get it into your head. Sing it. Then sing it again. Get the feel. I can usually sing something closer to the full tempo sooner than I can play it. But they work together.

These tricks work. They help me pay attention to the music and how I feel as I'm playing. But more than that, they also introduce me to a way of playing that I may not have known before. When I try to improvise, for example, I tend to be more melodic, Miles Davis in "Birth of the Cool" or even Al Hirt in "Java." I have not been able to think fast to do some of the bebop licks. But I have been listening to them and even singing some of them.

What I continue to be amazed at is that this is all taking place for me now- 55 years after I first learned the trumpet. It is possible- and exciting- for an old dog to learn new tricks. Some of it is common sense. Some of it is just the old line- practice, practice, practice. What do I want to become as a musician? Well practice that.

And usually all it takes is to pick up the horn and start those long tones and my mind and body begin to come together. It's about the music.

The Tuning Slide: Observe and Imitate

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Try to find the best teachers,

listen to the finest playing, and

try to emulate that.

Be true to the music.

-- Wynton Marsalis

I have been reading Words Without Music, an interesting memoir/autobiography by modern American composer Philip Glass. It is a good insight into the creative process of one remarkable composer and how he developed into the person he has become. Reading it with an openness to seeing creativity develop is worth the time. At one point he is describing his working with sculptor Richard Serra. Glass spent several years working with Serra as a "day-job" to support his composing. He expressed to Serra one day that he would like to learn how to draw to which Serra replied that he could do that by teaching glass how to "see" and then he would be able to draw.

That was an eye-opening insight for Glass. He reports the following thought that flowed from it:

Drawing is about seeing, dancing is about moving, writing (narrative and especially poetry) is about speaking, and music is about hearing. I next realized that music training was absolutely about learning to hear - going completely past everyday listening. p. 223 [emphasis added]

This reminded me of an article about Clark Terry on the Jazz Advice website. Terry's three steps to improvising are:

Imitation, Assimilation, Innovation.

That simple. (Yeah. Right!) They define imitation this way:

Listening. Learning lines by ear. Transcribing solos. Absorbing a player’s feel, articulation, and time.

The same as Glass's insight- learning to hear. Paying attention.

We've all heard someone say (or have said it ourselves) that they just don't "get" or "understand" that music.The first time you hear music from a completely different culture based on scales and rhythm that is "foreign" to us, we scratch our heads in wonder. What that means on some level is that we are not listening or able to listen to the music as it is meant to be heard. Our own brains don't expect it to sound that way.

Learning to hear. Paying attention.

But we can keep working at it.  We can keep listening. We can train ourselves to listen differently. Too often we expect things to be just like they have been before. Or in a way that we are used to. Glass himself faced a great deal of criticism and even hatred for the type of "odd" music he was writing. When he started in the 50s and 60s "modern music" was considered the music of the 1900s- 1920s or so. People came on stage and attempted to stop his concerts! They weren't able to hear- and therefore made a judgement about its quality and even its definition as music.

I would go beyond listening to learn to improvise. I think it is essential to being a musician of any type of music. Hearing what it sounds like; hearing what it feels like. Then picking up our instrument and trying to imitate it. The more we listen, the more we are open to hearing, the greater our musical skill will become and the deeper our understanding of music will go.

What this boils down to is going beyond the music theory and an intellectual understanding. The website Brain Pickings has a post from the 1982 book by author and composer Elliot Schwartz Music: Ways of Listening. The book outlines seven essential skills of learning to listen in this age where, he believes, we have been “dulled by our built-in twentieth-century habit of tuning out.”

The first skill is:

• Develop your sensitivity to music. Try to respond esthetically to all sounds, from the hum of the refrigerator motor or the paddling of oars on a lake, to the tones of a cello or muted trumpet. When we really hear sounds, we may find them all quite expressive, magical and even ‘beautiful.’ On a more complex level, try to relate sounds to each other in patterns: the successive notes in a melody, or the interrelationships between an ice cream truck jingle and nearby children’s games.

It's all about hearing. The other six skills Schwartz explains help us guide our learning and our hearing, going deeper and broader.

• Time is a crucial component of the musical experience. Develop a sense of time as it passes: duration, motion, and the placement of events within a time frame.

• Develop a musical memory. While listening to a piece, try to recall familiar patterns, relating new events to past ones and placing them all within a durational frame.

• If we want to read, write or talk about music, we must acquire a working vocabulary.

• Try to develop musical concentration, especially when listening to lengthy pieces.

• Try to listen objectively and dispassionately. Concentrate upon ‘what’s there,’ and not what you hope or wish would be there.

• Bring experience and knowledge to the listening situation. That includes not only your concentration and growing vocabulary, but information about the music itself: its composer, history and social context. Such knowledge makes the experience of listening that much more enjoyable.

This isn't just about music, of course. The relation to writing, or cooking, or being good at your job can be easily made. From the Brain Pickings post:

Perhaps most interestingly, you can substitute “reading” for “listening” and “writing” for “music,” and the list would be just as valuable and insightful, and just as needed an antidote to the dulling of our modern modes of information consumption.

Go for it. Listen!
Then, really hear.
Then imitate.

The Tuning Slide- Be Crazy- Crazy Good!

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Those who dance were thought to be insane 

by those who could not hear the music.

I know- I ended last week's post with that same quote. Well, consider it the theme, the phrase that ties last week to this week. It is a segue into what is like a coda to last week. For when I was finished typing it for last week, I could hear the unmistakable voice of camp director, Mr. Baca:

Are you crazy?

and the response, as always

Yeah- crazy good!

Not sure what to say about that I Googled the phrase "crazy good" and ended up at the online Urban Dictionary where I found:

a. Awesome, amazing, cool, stunning, super cool

Knowing the humility for which we trumpet players are so well known (?), that made sense. Hey- this is about being "crazy good." Awesome, amazing, etc. It is beyond just plain good. Man, it's crazy good!

But that's not what the quote is about. It's more than being especially good, talented or stunning. And sure enough, right after that first definition was another:

b. The feelings following an enlightenment; typically in creative work (elevation of work of art, idea, ability, level of happiness), where one is playing with and extending further. As the paradigm has shifted, others may express the genuine feeling you have actually gone crazy, however the opposite could be true and the path to awesomeness is being cemented.

Wow. Now that I have had happen. A moment of enlightenment, that old "Aha!" moment, leads down a path that you had never thought you would be following. The idea or ability or level of happiness is beyond what we have thought to be "normal." And that can feel like crazy!

Isn't that what musicians are looking to do- go beyond the "normal," find the new idea, the new experience, even in the song you have played hundreds or more times?  You finish playing that exercise in Clarke or the Etude in Concone and you find yourself sitting in silence. Something has just happened. You can't explain it, but you know it is real. People may look at those hours of practicing studies from the 19th Century and look at you and say,

What? Are you crazy?

and you smile and say,

Yeah- Crazy  good!

Or you are sick and tired of that piece your band plays every gig. There isn't even a place of solos or improvising. Sure, the group plays it well. You should after how many times you have played it. But then there's that moment when the audience stands and applauds and you realize you have just played it in a way that you never remember before. Sure, same notes, same rhythms. But the groove? The expression? The tightness of the group? You smile to yourself and say,

Yeah- Crazy good.

Or there's that memory of that place on the west facing lookout at the park. There's room for maybe 20 or 30 people- and the place is full. It is almost sunset on a perfect day. People are chatting and discussing everything from the weather to politics to how to keep the kids quiet long enough for you to see the sun set.

You didn't need to worry. As the sun sinks into t he western horizon and the colors begin to grow and deepen, the crowd speaks more softly. Even the children are entranced by this every day event as daylight lessens and shadows lengthen. You realize that the whole group is now silent. Adults and children in awe of one of the most common events on the planet. In awe as if there has never been one like it- and never will be again.

Try to explain that to someone who may not be able to get it, who doesn't hear the music of the sun or the birds in the forest behind you. Try to describe what it means to one of those overly logical-types who want answers.

What? Are you crazy or something?

Yeah- crazy good!

The past few weeks I have written about the language of music and the ability to speak it, live it, understand it, play it. It is a wordless language that makes no sense to someone who has never experienced it. It is tough enough for most of us on those days when the lip won't stay on the right note, the brain forgets how to play a "G major" scale, and you run out of breath half-way through every phrase.

But we keep coming back because we know the language and we know it works. Not every time, not every day, but when it happens, we are transformed.

So, I will end by again quoting Mr. Baca:

Let's get crazy!
Crazy good!