Tuning Slide 4.48- Being Free- Gratitude

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did that carry over to the concert?

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

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

Tuning Slide 4.44- How to Lose Your Direction

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Every leader will hit a series of plateaus in their lives. The key is not to stay there, because settling on a plateau can easily lead to an elongated season of comfort. Being comfortable is one of the leader's worst enemies.
― Gary Rohrmayer

Every year on Memorial Day I am taken back fifty plus years to a cool May morning along the Susquehanna River in north central Pennsylvania. I wrote about it the first year of the Tuning Slide and repeated it since. It was the year I hit a plateau that has taken YEARS to move away from. That moment colored everything that came after it- and became the distorting lens that changed how I saw what had been before it.

There was a time somewhere about half a century ago when I was your typical high school trumpet player. I no doubt believed I was invincible, the top of the band's musical food chain. My sight-reading ability was somewhat lacking, but one evening of working on it at home usually fixed that and I was able to exhibit the skill that my first chair position would expect.

I don't remember any hints of uncertainty or doubts about what I could do as a trumpet player. I was lead trumpet in our stage musical. I organized a small combo to play at our school talent show and even made an arrangement of the Beatles' Help! as our number. I was lead in a trumpet quartet that played at many local churches. I was also lead in a Tijuana Brass-style group that played at both the local pool and at our town's annual Fourth of July fest. I knew I would never be a professional musician- that wasn't in my plans. I did know that I loved being a trumpet player.

I had what I might later have called "mojo."

For fifty years, I have considered Memorial Day as the day I lost it. True or not, what we believe is often "truth" if not "fact." If we believe it, it is real.

It was a mostly clear, cool morning. I remember a misty fog along the river, not unusual on a spring morning like that. The sun was breaking through as I joined a group of veterans at the corner of Main and Allegheny Streets on the bank of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River.

Memorial Day always began at the river. This was a time to remember the sailors who had died in service. Since we were only a couple decades past the end of World War II the memories were personal, real- not yet part of history. They were still at the edge of current events.

It was a simple ceremony. I don't know what was said. I remember what was done. A reading and a prayer, and then a wreath was tossed solemnly into the river. The honor guard rifles faced up-river and proceeded with the traditional salute. The volley comes from the battlefield tradition of three-volleys to indicate that the dead had been removed from the battlefield and properly cared for.

The sounds echoed from the mountains and it was my turn.

Taps.

My notes felt right. They flowed as I wanted them to. They moved up-river following the smoke from the volleys. It was an honor to be called to do this. My friend Steve, the second chair, was stationed a short distance away to play the echo. It was all moving and appropriate. It was finished.

Steve and I then joined the rest of our high school marching band for the parade. It would be our last official parade having just graduated. The parade moved up the main east-west street through town. We marched past what had been my Dad's pharmacy and then our house. We went by the junior high school where a Winged Victory statue remembered World War 1 sacrifices. Just past my grandfather's house a small curve in the street took us to the left-turn that led into the cemetery.

The band took its "parade rest"-style position for the ceremony.

My memory of that day is fixed with what happened next. The three-volley honor salute was repeated. It was not the first time I had been in this cemetery and heard that. My dad, a veteran of WW II, had died about 18 months earlier. That volley had echoed from the hilltop cemetery on that cold December day. Now I was standing but twenty yards or so from his and my mother's graves. I was focused and ready to go.

Taps is not difficult to play. It is ingrained in every trumpet player's mind. Its haunting sound is as familiar as our own names. Steve had gone to the hilltop behind us for his echo response to my call.

Perhaps I was nervous, or, at the other extreme, over-confident. I don't remember any performance anxiety at that time. This was not my first public solo performance. Most likely I was just careless.

Three notes in I choked. Everything I knew about performing disappeared. I had forgotten to let the water out of the horn. The sound started to gurgle, the notes lost their clear intensity. My mind went into auto-pilot, which 50 years ago did not include the simple act of letting the water out in one of the pauses at the end of a phrase.

I finished with the gurgles mocking me even more intensely when Steve's echo sounded so perfect to my ear. I was upset at myself. I had let the veterans down. I had let my father down.

I was ashamed.

I had one more opportunity. There was one more short parade that afternoon in nearby Salladasburg. There was one more cemetery with Taps.

That, too, became an embarrassment. I flubbed a note at the beginning and, yes, I again forgot to let the water out. That, I am sure, was more nerves and, even more likely, inexperience.

But it became my experience. It became, for me, a defining moment in my musical life. It made me, in my mind, a sloppy trumpet player.

One day in May 1966 set a standard of self-understanding that I have spent over half a century trying to change. I added my low sight-reading skills to it three months later when I did not get into the marching band at college. I never thought until recently that they simply didn't need another freshman trumpet player at that point and it had nothing to do with my ability. The Memorial Day experience was already coloring my personal lowering expectations and was undermining my self-understanding as a musician.

This story encompasses so much of what I have written about in these now four years of The Tuning Slide. Part of it has been to exorcise those ghosts and discover the musician I am. It has worked- and continues to work. I am playing today at a level I would never have thought possible. Musically, with the trumpet, I have found my voice. It is not impossible. You are never too old to take new directions and find the truth that will set you free to sing your song.

Next week we will look at how to move beyond these plateaus, real or imagined. Until then, let's go practice.

4.20- Tuning Slide: Confidence, Ego, and Humility

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuning Slide 3.47

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

We all have two lives. The second one starts when we realize we only have one.
— Tom Hiddleston

As many of you may know from following this blog over the past three years, I am (sort of) retired from my “day job.” For the past 4+ years I have been part-time at my “second career” as an addictions counselor. When I started out in my “first career” as a minister (at age 25) I would see “older, retired” pastors continuing to preach and take appointments at churches. I would shake my head in disbelief. “Why don’t they retire and enjoy life?” I would ask myself. “Relax. Life is too short to keep working.”

Now, forty-some years later, I am still working at my current career. Why doesn’t he just retire and enjoy life? After all, it is too short.

Several years ago I met Herb Alpert, now in his 80s, and still performing.
Last year I met Doc Severinsen, now in his 90s, and still performing.
We had a local doctor featured in a news article who is still active and working in his 90s.

Nobody is saying they should retire and enjoy life, that life is too short.

It is because they enjoy what they do! The old saying that if you love your work you will never work a day in your life may be an exaggeration, but the truth is in there! I can’t speak for the others mentioned, but I do know that is true for me. It is true when I get the opportunity to preach and it is true every day I go in to work as a counselor.

I am having fun. I love it. It is not the only thing I do with my time, either. I write, and read, and ride my bike. And I play trumpet. I am having fun. I love it!

There have been a couple times in my life when the truth of the opening quote above came home to me. I realized as a teenager when faced with family deaths that life is short and not guaranteed. I learned at mid-life when I faced some personal issues of addiction that life is precious and much too important to be unhappy. I am, of course, one of the fortunate ones who has had the means and opportunities to do what I love. Not everyone has that. But many of us do have the ability to look at life from a different angle. Many of us can choose to look at the opportunities instead of the barriers. We can make a decision to make the most of what we have and run with it.

When we truly do realize that the life is the only one we have and that it should have direction and hope and meaning, we have begun to do this life in greater fullness. That is what this Tuning Slide is all about. The interplay of life and music. If you love making music and playing it with others, you will be happy doing it. If it is a chore, work that is done simply because it’s there, you will not be making heartfelt music to the extent you are able.

We can use all kinds of words to describe this- passion, intensity, joy, wonder, awe. Yes, there are days when I say, “The hell with it. I’ll take the day off from the routine.” But I know that will not make me feel joy or wonder or passion. Maybe some guilt, or remorse that I didn’t practice when I could. Which is why I haven’t miss a day in over 14 months now. Because I have learned that when I go to my practice room and play that middle staff “G”, holding it and then moving through the long tones, my life will feel better- and be better.

Now I am not as good at this in other areas as I would like to be. I am working on it. Doing a daily or weekly exercise regimen has been harder than the music. I say that it’s because it takes more time- driving there, exercising, showering, driving home- but it is more than that. I don’t (yet) have the passion for it. I know I can do it- I do it every day with my trumpet. So I know I can do it with exercise.

Life is inherently risky. There is only one big risk you should avoid at all costs, and that is the risk of doing nothing.
— Denis Waitley

Am I willing to take the risks involved in enjoying l life and living it to its fullest? Am I willing to take the time needed? Am I willing to do the work to prepare and expand what I can do? Am I willing to make choices between things that I like and things that give me joy and are filled with my passion? Working well into the “retirement years” is one of those. So is my research and writing. And it is definitely true with my trumpet.

What is the risk? Well, I may have to make decisions- choices- that could be difficult. I may have to be better at budgeting and managing my time and daily schedule. I may have to be more intentional about not staring aimlessly at post after post on Facebook. I may have to be more responsible about my life and relationships, making sure that things happen as and when they should.

Most of the risks we face in life are of this type. They are not “dangerous” but they can be uncomfortable. They may have us discover uncomfortable things about ourselves.

For some of us taking the risk of moving beyond our musical comfort zones is huge. We have to face our insecurities and self-esteem worries. We may realize we need more work or practice. We may find that we aren’t the best musician in the band- or even the section.

Take the risk- play the music. Be you! It is the only life you have- and you are the only you there is. Live it!

Song for the week from the wonderful people at Playing for Change:

The Tuning Slide 3.23- Becoming a Performer

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Tuning Slide 3.16- Avoiding the Extremes

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Happiness is not a matter of intensity

but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.

-Thomas Merton

We’re thinking about musician etiquette this month. Really, it boils down to being a good musician. Remember the four things we are to focus on - in this order…

• The music.
• Other musicians
• The audience
• Ourselves.

"Etiquette" is being a good colleague who displays “musicianship”. That brings all four into play on a regular basis. Last week I looked at how our actions and behaviors in both rehearsals and performances can get in the way of all these things. If we do not practice good musical etiquette in general:

• The music will suffer. It won’t have the quality we want it to have.
• Our colleagues will suffer. They won’t be able to count on us to be equal members of the group.
• The audience will suffer. The performances won’t have the zip and fun that they want to hear.
• In the end we will suffer. We will get fed up with what is happening, especially if we blame it on others, and give up.

Having set that as the foundation of what we are aiming at, here are some of the things that we trumpet players do to others- and to ourselves.

Item #1- and at the top of our list of trumpet player sins.
Wanting to get to that great and wonderful Double High C.

It is the goal, the aim, the end of all being in the great trumpet room in the sky! For most of us it is summed up in one word:

Maynard! (For non-trumpet players, that would be Maynard Ferguson- the trumpet screamer to beat all trumpet screamers.)

To be a great trumpet player we all think we have to play high and loud. Like Maynard. Our hero!

Which of course means that if we can’t play the way-up-in-the-stratosphere register, there is something wrong with us as trumpet players. Many of us have fought that internal self-esteem killer most of our lives. Then we work- and overwork- our embouchure to reach those rare heights and we end up playing hurt, which only makes it worse. I have a hunch that is why, in the end for many of us, our true icon of trumpet playing is Miles Davis who personified for many years the good solid sound of a trumpet- and even played with a Harmon mute! It was almost like he was saying to the world:

I can play loud; I choose not to.

One of the great solos of his was the solo on the classic cut- “So What”. It doesn’t go anywhere near the stratosphere; it has a solid, almost reserved sound. Looking at a transcription of it you might say, “What’s so hard about that?”

Until you try to play it. Most of us could spend a lifetime practicing that and still not get it as solid as Davis does.

Herb Alpert is in the same field as Davis. Davis was once quoted as saying that all he had to hear was a couple notes and he could tell it was Alpert. Which brings me to the lesson for all of us in trumpet- and musical- etiquette. It was one of the items on the Trumpet Camp reflection list. One of our goals is to

Have the same “sound” for everything I play

Davis, Alpert, Chet Baker, Lee Morgan, and any of the greats always have the same “sound”, the same quality and tone no matter what they play. It is their sound. And they don’t have to scream to make it heard. But for my money, the greatest at doing that today - and for most of the past 60+ years - is Doc Severinsen. Here is one of his best examples of not screaming yet managing the complete range of the horn. He plays in that stratosphere as if it were just your every day middle of the staff music.

Item # 2: Equipment
Trumpet players always seem to be playing around with equipment, looking for the perfect piece that will make us into the next great star. Usually it starts with the mouthpiece itself. Get two trumpet players together and they will have at least six opinions on mouthpieces, the advantages and disadvantages, why they use- or don’t use this one or that one. Not that there aren’t differences and different ones allow you to do different things. Not to mention that each of us has a slightly different physiology which may mean that certain mouthpieces work differently.

But in general my research seems to show that most people start with a “beginner” mouthpiece that usually comes with the horn. Eventually most move to the good, old, reliable Bach 3C (or equivalent) and stay with that for the rest of their lives or careers, whichever comes first. Should we look at other mouthpieces? I guess. But the thought that comes to mind is “If it seems too good to be true, it probably isn’t.”

That doesn’t mean that a change won’t work well at times. I had that happen starting about a year and a half ago. I tried one of the new Bach Commercial mouthpieces at a workshop. It was a modified “v” cup. It seemed to allow me some freedom at the upper register and an extended endurance. The problem was all they had was a “5mv” and I was nervous about moving from the “3” size. So I didn’t get it. Earlier this year I had a chance to try the “3 MV”. I gave it quite a workout. It was as good, or better than the “5 MV” I had tried earlier. I bought it.

This new mouthpiece has allowed greater dynamic and sound range, higher register, and endurance. Was it a mouthpiece version of the “placebo” effect? I don’t think so- for two reasons. When I first played it for my wife she heard the difference in tone and dynamic immediately. Then, a few months later I accidentally pulled the “3C” out of the bag without noticing. Since the rim size was the same I didn’t feel the difference- until I realized my range and dynamic was off. At first I thought it was because I had been playing too much and was just tired. Then I realized it wasn’t the new mouthpiece. I switched and all the things that felt off went away.

But that alone isn’t what did it or allowed me to do it. What does it is another from the Trumpet Workshop list:

Learning to hear

By allowing me to hear a cleaner sound with greater dynamic and range I began to know what those notes should sound like. I like the sound of the “3MV” for me. I like hearing it and how it feels on my lip. It did not solve my “problems” and perhaps it gave me some new ones. (See next item.) But it did improve my ability to hear and that will always bring about an improvement in musicianship! The equipment we use is there to help us, it won’t do it for us.

The final item of trumpet sinful activities for this post:
Item #3: Balance.

Actually it’s the lack of balance that plagues us. It’s wanting to be a screamer the first time we pick up the horn. It’s wanting to be able to sound like Miles, or Maynard, or Doc without the years of practice. It’s wanting to be able to play loud for hours on end and getting pissed when we get tired- or worse- hurt. It’s wanting the equipment to save us or take us someplace we are still unable to go. Sure, if your valves don’t work smoothly you may never be able to play some of those amazing arpeggios. But a new horn may not be the problem- your present horn may be too dirty, your valves clogged, springs not working right.

Take the time to take care of the equipment and it will probably do what you need it to do. Sure, if you move into a new level of musicianship and career building you may need to upgrade the horn. But probably not. You are the musician that produces the sound. The horn or the valves or whatever doesn’t do it for you. Learn to balance your sound and work.

From our workshop list, this brings up:

Being efficient in playing

Efficiency is balance. If you strain and push constantly, you are not in balance and something will happen to your playing. If you want everything to happen yesterday, it won’t come tomorrow. Balance is taking care of your instrument so it doesn’t get so gunked up that its sound is compromised. Ignoring the basics of say the Arban’s first couple sections will put us out of balance with the whole range of what we want to do. Again, back to the video from Doc (above) the ability to play equally across the whole range of the horn is the result of balance.

Next week I’ll talk about personal balance and self care as it is part of our musicianship. That will get us into the greater aspects of what we can learn from being a “compleat musician”.

Until then, look for the balance, don’t only push to the extremes, but build the solid foundation and middle in order to support the greater sounds and range. Be efficient in order to be effective. Finally, nothing can do it for you.

The Tuning Slide: 3.7- Arrogant- or Confident?

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Arrogance requires advertising.
Confidence speaks for itself.
-The Good Vibe Company

I know I have talked before about the very unfair reputation trumpet players have. We are often portrayed as arrogant and self-absorbed. We are told that in spite of what we seem to think it is not all about us. Here’s a good example of the stereotype from the website The Band Advocate’s Resource: (http://insanerandomhobbit.tripod.com/thebandadvocatesresource/index.html)

Trumpets-They are the leaders of the band, the melody, to quote "Drumline", "The trumpets are the voice of the band!" This constant focus and attention has made them egocentric and fairly arrogant, but mainly to those within the section. They are in love with themselves, and they hate associating with the bottom or the top of the section, depending upon where they are. They're loud and their proud. Typical trumpet conversation with the band director; "I could have played that solo better than that." "Do you want it then." "No thanks." This laid back attitude carries throughout the section. Trumpets tend to be odd and offbeat with perverted senses of humor. They are the comic masterminds of the band. Trumpet sections are about half girls, half guys. You won't see many waltzing off to choir, and if you do, chances are they sit bottom of the section. Straight from a trumpet player to you, though, we're not really as bad as we sound (Ha ha, note our section is longer than yours. Yeah, thought so!).

It’s hard living up to that stereotype, but we’ll keep on trying!

Seriously I have met very few trumpet players that fit that image. In reality most of us are far shyer than we appear. When one plays one of the loudest and most aurally notable of instruments, it’s hard to hide, so we just go for it. If we stand out by virtue of the instrument, we better live up to that instrument’s place in the band.

Which often does look like arrogance. That and the fact that we find it hard to be serious for too long. If there is a disruption somewhere in the band, it is more often than not in the trumpet section. Then we yell at each other, put each other down, ignore the director and then have to ask “Where are we starting?” [Sidenote: This is why I admire Bob Baca’s patience with a room FULL of trumpet players at Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop! Scary, but he keeps doing it!]

Having finished with some “true confessions” let’s go back to reality and what this post is all about- the difference between arrogance and confidence. Any one of us can have either without the other. Or we can even have both. Those are the truly obnoxious one’s among us.

What then IS the difference between the two? Well, for one, if you were offended by that paragraph above, you may need to work on your sense of humor; if you believed it to be true… read on…

First, I found the following on the Womanitely website:

• Arrogance is usually the result of a defense mechanism used by subconscious mind in order to prevent further criticism. Confidence comes from positivity, optimism and mental steadiness.

• Superiority is the main quality of an arrogant person. Arrogant people are single-minded; … On the contrary, confident people are high-minded, because they can feel good without having a desire to offend others. They usually see people’s potential and can help them succeed in something.

• An arrogant person thinks they are better than others, while a confident person knows they are just as good as others. Confident people will rarely be found lecturing or preaching to others or how they are wrong. Furthermore, they usually show respect while listening to somebody. Arrogant people have difficulty listening to others.

• An arrogant person will always try to one-up everything you say. They mind only their own position and make others accept their ideas. Confident people don’t try to impose their vision of the situation on others. Their accomplishments do it for them.

Lots of good thoughts in those quotes. We can know confident people because they tend to be open to other people’s ideas and abilities without needing to put them down. They listen to others and don’t impose their vision on others, rather seeking to learn new things and new perspectives from others. You don’t get that type of vibe from arrogant people

Cody Brown at Medium.com adds the following two differences:

• Arrogance makes your world smaller and
• The difference between the two has a lot to do with empathy.

It is a small world if what you think is right is the only thing that is right. It is just as small if you think you are either so superior to others or so afraid of failing that you can’t enjoy what you are doing. And the difference really boils down to that wonderful word, empathy. Empathy simply means that in some ways you can understand or feel another person’s emotions and reactions from their perspective. It means caring about them and seeking what’s good for them and for you. It is not sympathy- feeling sorry- but being open to them and what they experience.

In spite of all those things we trumpet players may have been accused of, I have met far more empathetic musicians than arrogant ones. Sure, some may come across as arrogant. They have such great confidence in their skills that they don’t seem to need or want comments or advice. That is often more a product of the gap between their skill and mine. If Trumpet John Smith picks up the horn and just blows away- that can seem arrogant because I want so badly to be able to do that. But when he leans over to the me and gives me a helpful hint, we can begin to see the empathy.

So how can we combat the image of being arrogant musicians? Here are some suggestions I found helpful.

Seek humility. That does not mean striving for it so we can boast of how humble we are, but learning to live it. One way to describe humility is to be teachable. Always look to learn from whoever you are with. There is wisdom abounding in our world. We often miss it because we think we already know it.

Listen with an open mind. That goes along with the being teachable. None of us knows it all. None of us can ever know it all. Someone else’s experiences may give a whole new perspective to how we see ourselves and our world. Keep that inquisitiveness fresh and open.

Be rigorously honest with yourself. One way of describing this is to not thing either to highly OR too lowly of yourself. Know you strengths and your weaknesses and be willing to admit the weaknesses to yourself. That’s how we know where we are still needing to work and learn. Confidence comes from doing what you do well and working to improve what isn’t there yet. All os who have attended the Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop have heard story after story of the way some of the great trumpet players keep working on the early pages of Arban’s. They know they have to keep working on the basics and practice every day just to maintain where they are. That’s rigorous honesty with oneself.

Pay attention to Self Two. This comes from the Inner Game ideas which we will delve into again more deeply later this fall. But for now, just remember that Self One is logical and wants perfection. When Self One wants to criticize you let Self Two pick up the slack and give Self One what it wants, a plan to get better. Then do it.

Believe in yourself! That’s part of that honesty. Believe you can do what you can do and are willing and able to learn how to do what you are not yet able to do. This also means don’t put yourself down in negative language or negative attitudes. Admit where you need to grow, but don’t make it seem like it is a personal flaw. You just haven’t gotten there yet.

Look like you believe in yourself. How you dress, how you stand, how you smile (or don’t smile), goes a long way in how others perceive you.

Find a group of musicians to play with who are better than you. If you are the best player in your band, get yourself a group to be with where you aren’t a star and listen to them. Get into a group that is more advanced than you are and work with them. Find a teacher who will push you. Take new ideas as ways to grow and not as criticism.

Keep a Beginner's Mind! Don't lose your inquisitiveness or joy at discovering new things about your world or your instrument. That is a surefire way to keep from becoming arrogant. The more you learn while keeping a beginner's mind, the more you will realize how little you truly know.

In the end your music will tell your story. You don’t have to do it. If you are confident, it will show. If you aren’t, no amount of arrogant behavior will make a difference.

The Tuning Slide: Losing My Mojo

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Many of our deepest motives come,
not from an adult logic of how things work in the world,
but out of something that is frozen from childhood.
-Kazuo Ishiguro

There was a time somewhere about half a century ago when I was your typical high school trumpet player. I no doubt believed I was invincible, the top of the band's musical food chain. My sight-reading ability was somewhat lacking, but one evening of working on it at home usually fixed that and I was able to exhibit the skill that my first chair position would expect.

I don't remember any hints of uncertainty or doubts about what I could do as a trumpet player. I was lead trumpet in our stage musical. I organized a small combo to play at our school talent show and even made an arrangement of the Beatles' Help! as our number. I was lead in a trumpet quartet that played at many local churches. I was also lead in a Tijuana Brass-style group that played at both the local pool and at our town's annual Fourth of July fest. I knew I would never be a professional musician- that wasn't in my plans. I did know that I loved being a trumpet player.

I had what I might later have called "mojo."

For fifty years, I have considered Memorial Day as the day I lost it. True or not, what we believe is often "truth" if not "fact." If we believe it, it is real. Since today is the 50th Anniversary of that day, I will tell the story in full, something I have wanted to do for years.

The "Monday Holiday" bill had not yet been enacted. In 1966 Memorial Day, the day to remember those who died in battle, always celebrated on May 30, happened to fall on a Monday. It was a mostly clear, cool morning. I remember a misty fog along the river, not unusual on a spring morning like that. The sun was breaking through as I joined the group of veterans at the corner of Main and Allegheny Streets on the bank of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River.

Memorial Day always began at the river. This was a time to remember the sailors who had died in service. Since we were only a couple decades past the end of World War II the memories were personal, real and not yet part of history. They were still at the edge of current events.

(Susquehanna River Bridge, Jersey Shore, PA)

It was a simple ceremony. I don't know what was said. I remember what was done. A reading and a prayer, and a wreath tossed solemnly into the river. The honor guard rifles faced up-river, to the right in the above picture, and proceeded with the traditional three-volley salute. The volley comes from the battlefield tradition of three-volleys to indicate that the dead had been removed from the battlefield and properly cared for.

The sounds echoed from the mountains and it was my turn.

Taps.

My notes felt right. They flowed as I wanted them to. They moved up-river following the smoke from the volleys. It was an honor to be called to do this. My friend Steve, the second chair, was stationed a short distance away to play the echo. It was all moving and appropriate. It was finished.

Next Steve and I joined the rest of our high school marching band for the parade. It would be our last official parade having just graduated. The parade moved up the main east-west street through town.

(Allegheny St., Jersey Shore, PA)

We marched past what had been my Dad's pharmacy and then our house. We went by the junior high school where a Winged Victory statue remembered World War 1 sacrifices. Just past my grandfather's house a small curve in the street took us to the left-turn that led into the cemetery. The band took its "parade rest"-style position for the ceremony.

(Jersey Shore, PA, cemetery)

Speeches and honors were now given for all who had died in the service of the country. For a small-town in Central Pennsylvania, we had our share of names on the veterans' memorials downtown next to the Post Office. There were 45 who died from World War II, and another 9 from Korea. Many hundreds served.

But that's another story.

My memory of that day is fixed with what happened next. The three-volley honor salute was finished. It was not the first time I had been in this cemetery and heard that. This was my fourth or fifth Memorial Day parade. Beyond that, my dad, a veteran of WW II, had died about 18 months earlier. The volley had echoed from the hilltop cemetery on that cold December day. Now I was standing but twenty yards or so from his and my mother's graves,

Again, time to play Taps. I was focused and ready to go. Taps is not difficult to play. It is ingrained in every trumpet player's mind. Its haunting sound is as familiar as our own name. Steve had gone to the hilltop behind us for his echo response to my call.

Perhaps I was nervous, or, at the other extreme, over-confident. I don't remember any performance anxiety at that time. This was not my first public solo performance. Most likely I was just careless.

Three notes in I choked. Everything I knew about performing disappeared. I had forgotten to let the water out of the horn. The sound started to gurgle, the notes lost their clear intensity. My mind went into auto-pilot, which 50 years ago did not include the simple act of letting the water out in one of the pauses at the end of a phrase.

I finished with the gurgles seeming to mock me even more intensely when Steve's echo sounded so perfect to my ear. I was upset at myself. I had let the veterans down. I had let my father down.

I was ashamed.

I had one more opportunity. There was one more short parade that afternoon in nearby Salladasburg. There was one more cemetery with Taps.

(Salladasburg, PA, cemetery from Stacy on Find a Grave)

That, too, became an embarrassment. I flubbed a note at the beginning and, yes, I again forgot to let the water out. That, I am sure, was more nerves and, even more likely, inexperience.

But it became my experience. It became, for me, a defining moment in my musical life. It made me, in my mind, a sloppy trumpet player. One day in May 1966 set a standard of self-understanding that I have spent half a century trying to change. My low sight-reading skills added to it three months later when I did not pass the audition to get into the marching band at college. I never thought until recently that they simply didn't need another freshman trumpet player at that point and it had nothing to do with my ability. The Memorial Day experience was already coloring my personal lowering expectations.

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post on how logic and emotions interact. My now ancient story is as good an example as I can imagine. In the great scheme of things, even the past 50 years of my own life, that Memorial Day series of flubs isn't even a drop in the bucket. If anyone noticed then, or remembers it today, I would be shocked. I did what I could and I did it well. My logical brain knows all that. It knows that the gurgling sound of a trumpet is not the end of the world- and that very few people even heard it.

But there was a sense of failure and shame connected to that moment in my memory. It had more to do with standing mere yards from my parents' graves than it did about the hundred or so people who were there. It was connected with my own needs to live up to perfection for my deceased parents. In that moment I failed.

Here's how that all works in us. We start with:

• Principles:
  
  • Values
  • What you stand for
  • Your personal foundation

These don't change much over our lives. They are reaffirmed or adjusted, but we mostly maintain our personal principles.

We add to our lives with:

• Experiences:
  
  • What happens to you
  • Interactions with the world beyond you

In and of themselves, these experiences are simply there. We give them meaning, positive or negative, healthy or unhealthy, based on our personal values, that foundation through which we judge the world and ourselves. This then produces:

• Emotions:
  
  • Feelings at a given moment.
  • Reactions to experiences

Let's put it together:

• Experiences produce emotions.
  
  • These emotions may be based on our principles and values, or on a physical reaction to what is happening. If it makes us feel good, happy, fulfilled or whatever, it is a positive emotion. If we are hurt, sad, lost, etc. it can be a negative emotion.
• Experiences and emotions are stored together in our memory.
  
  • That's how memories work. They are not stored as a single event- A Memory in A Location. They are stored in some interconnected way in our brain. When a memory comes back it easily comes back with the emotions. This is Proust's famous experience with the madeline cake.
• The emotions connected with experiences can then interact with our principles.
  
  • Good emotions can produce a positive "value" response; negative feeling emotions can produce a "value" response that says that this does not fit my values.
• Together these guide how we do what we do in our lives.

To design the future effectively,

you must first let go of your past.

-Charles J. Givens

There's the rub. Back again to the letting go I talked about last week. Back to logic and emotion and principles and mindfulness.

After a previous post on developing experiences my friend Terry commented:

Experience counts more than theory, because experience works on the heart

But when that work on the heart is an ongoing emotional "shame" it will color what we do every time we are faced with a similar situation.

Finally, today, 50 years later, I am discovering new ways to rewrite that emotional experience of Memorial Day 1966. I have been able over the past few years specifically, to present alternative realities. I have also been willing to take risks such as doing a solo, attending jazz, big band, and trumpet camps where I couldn't hide and playing in a quintet. New experiences rewrite the "heart story" and put things into a better perspective. Even this Tuning Slide blog on trumpet playing is part of it.

I have been controlled by that previous day for 50 years. Maybe I will finally let it go.

In working on the previous post and this one I came across lyrics from singer-songwriter James Bay in his song Let It Go. The song is about breaking up with a girlfriend, but some of the words are perfect for what I have been talking about...

Trying to push this problem up the hill
When it's just too heavy to hold
Think now's the time to let it slide

So come on let it go
Just let it be
Why don't you be you
And I'll be me

Everything's that's broke
Leave it to the breeze
Let the ashes fall
Forget about me

Come on let it go
Just let it be
Why don't you be you
And I'll be me

A 50-Year Memory: Losing My Mojo

A Tuning Slide Extra

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Many of our deepest motives come, 

not from an adult logic of how things work in the world, 

but out of something that is frozen from childhood.

-Kazuo Ishiguro

There was a time somewhere about half a century ago when I was your typical high school trumpet player. I no doubt believed I was invincible, the top of the band's musical food chain. My sight-reading ability was somewhat lacking, but one evening of working on it at home usually fixed that and I was able to exhibit the skill that my first chair position would expect.

I don't remember any hints of uncertainty or doubts about what I could do as a trumpet player. I was lead trumpet in our stage musical. I organized a small combo to play at our school talent show and even made an arrangement of the Beatles' Help! as our number. I was lead in a trumpet quartet that played at many local churches. I was also lead in a Tijuana Brass-style group that played at both the local pool and at our town's annual Fourth of July fest. I knew I would never be a professional musician- that wasn't in my plans. I did know that I loved being a trumpet player.

I had what I might later have called "mojo."

For fifty years, I have considered Memorial Day as the day I lost it. True or not, what we believe is often "truth" if not "fact." If we believe it, it is real. Since today is the 50th Anniversary of that day, I will tell the story in full, something I have wanted to do for years.

The "Monday Holiday" bill had not yet been enacted. In 1966 Memorial Day, the day to remember those who died in battle, always celebrated on May 30, happened to fall on a Monday. It was a mostly clear, cool morning. I remember a misty fog along the river, not unusual on a spring morning like that. The sun was breaking through as I joined the group of veterans at the corner of Main and Allegheny Streets on the bank of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River.

Memorial Day always began at the river. This was a time to remember the sailors who had died in service. Since we were only a couple decades past the end of World War II the memories were personal, real and not yet part of history. They were still at the edge of current events.

(Susquehanna River Bridge, Jersey Shore, PA)

It was a simple ceremony. I don't know what was said. I remember what was done. A reading and a prayer, and a wreath tossed solemnly into the river. The honor guard rifles faced up-river, to the right in the above picture, and proceeded with the traditional three-volley salute. The volley comes from the battlefield tradition of three-volleys to indicate that the dead had been removed from the battlefield and properly cared for.

The sounds echoed from the mountains and it was my turn.

Taps.

My notes felt right. They flowed as I wanted them to. They moved up-river following the smoke from the volleys. It was an honor to be called to do this. My friend Steve, the second chair, was stationed a short distance away to play the echo. It was all moving and appropriate. It was finished.

Next Steve and I joined the rest of our high school marching band for the parade. It would be our last official parade having just graduated. The parade moved up the main east-west street through town.

(Allegheny St., Jersey Shore, PA)

We marched past what had been my Dad's pharmacy and then our house. We went by the junior high school where a Winged Victory statue remembered World War 1 sacrifices. Just past my grandfather's house a small curve in the street took us to the left-turn that led into the cemetery. The band took its "parade rest"-style position for the ceremony.

(Jersey Shore, PA, cemetery)

Speeches and honors were now given for all who had died in the service of the country. For a small-town in Central Pennsylvania, we had our share of names on the veterans' memorials downtown next to the Post Office. There were 45 who died from World War II, and another 9 from Korea. Many hundreds served.

But that's another story.

My memory of that day is fixed with what happened next. The three-volley honor salute was finished. It was not the first time I had been in this cemetery and heard that. This was my fourth or fifth Memorial Day parade. Beyond that, my dad, a veteran of WW II, had died about 18 months earlier. The volley had echoed from the hilltop cemetery on that cold December day. Now I was standing but twenty yards or so from his and my mother's graves,

Again, time to play Taps. I was focused and ready to go. Taps is not difficult to play. It is ingrained in every trumpet player's mind. Its haunting sound is as familiar as our own name. Steve had gone to the hilltop behind us for his echo response to my call.

Perhaps I was nervous, or, at the other extreme, over-confident. I don't remember any performance anxiety at that time. This was not my first public solo performance. Most likely I was just careless.

Three notes in I choked. Everything I knew about performing disappeared. I had forgotten to let the water out of the horn. The sound started to gurgle, the notes lost their clear intensity. My mind went into auto-pilot, which 50 years ago did not include the simple act of letting the water out in one of the pauses at the end of a phrase.

I finished with the gurgles seeming to mock me even more intensely when Steve's echo sounded so perfect to my ear. I was upset at myself. I had let the veterans down. I had let my father down.

I was ashamed.

I had one more opportunity. There was one more short parade that afternoon in nearby Salladasburg. There was one more cemetery with Taps.

(Salladasburg, PA, cemetery from Stacy on Find a Grave)

That, too, became an embarrassment. I flubbed a note at the beginning and, yes, I again forgot to let the water out. That, I am sure, was more nerves and, even more likely, inexperience.

But it became my experience. It became, for me, a defining moment in my musical life. It made me, in my mind, a sloppy trumpet player. One day in May 1966 set a standard of self-understanding that I have spent half a century trying to change. My low sight-reading skills added to it three months later when I did not pass the audition to get into the marching band at college. I never thought until recently that they simply didn't need another freshman trumpet player at that point and it had nothing to do with my ability. The Memorial Day experience was already coloring my personal lowering expectations.

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post on how logic and emotions interact. My now ancient story is as good an example as I can imagine. In the great scheme of things, even the past 50 years of my own life, that Memorial Day series of flubs isn't even a drop in the bucket. If anyone noticed then, or remembers it today, I would be shocked. I did what I could and I did it well. My logical brain knows all that. It knows that the gurgling sound of a trumpet is not the end of the world- and that very few people even heard it.

But there was a sense of failure and shame connected to that moment in my memory. It had more to do with standing mere yards from my parents' graves than it did about the hundred or so people who were there. It was connected with my own needs to live up to perfection for my deceased parents. In that moment I failed.

Here's how that all works in us. We start with:

• Principles:
• Values
• What you stand for
• Your personal foundation

These don't change much over our lives. They are reaffirmed or adjusted, but we mostly maintain our personal principles.

We add to our lives with:

• Experiences:
• What happens to you
• Interactions with the world beyond you

In and of themselves, these experiences are simply there. We give them meaning, positive or negative, healthy or unhealthy, based on our personal values, that foundation through which we judge the world and ourselves. This then produces:

• Emotions:
• Feelings at a given moment.
• Reactions to experiences

Let's put it together:

• Experiences produce emotions.
• These emotions may be based on our principles and values, or on a physical reaction to what is happening. If it makes us feel good, happy, fulfilled or whatever, it is a positive emotion. If we are hurt, sad, lost, etc. it can be a negative emotion.
• Experiences and emotions are stored together in our memory.
• That's how memories work. They are not stored as a single event- A Memory in A Location. They are stored in some interconnected way in our brain. When a memory comes back it easily comes back with the emotions. This is Proust's famous experience with the madeline cake.
• The emotions connected with experiences can then interact with our principles.
• Good emotions can produce a positive "value" response; negative feeling emotions can produce a "value" response that says that this does not fit my values.
• Together these guide how we do what we do in our lives.

To design the future effectively, 

you must first let go of your past.

-Charles J. Givens

There's the rub. Back again to the letting go I talked about last week. Back to logic and emotion and principles and mindfulness.

After a previous post on developing experiences my friend Terry commented:

Experience counts more than theory, because experience works on the heart

But when that work on the heart is an ongoing emotional "shame" it will color what we do every time we are faced with a similar situation.

Finally, today, 50 years later, I am discovering new ways to rewrite that emotional experience of Memorial Day 1966. I have been able over the past few years specifically, to present alternative realities. I have also been willing to take risks such as doing a solo, attending jazz, big band, and trumpet camps where I couldn't hide and playing in a quintet. New experiences rewrite the "heart story" and put things into a better perspective. Even this Tuning Slide blog on trumpet playing is part of it.

I have been controlled by that previous day for 50 years. Maybe I will finally let it go.

In working on the previous post and this one I came across lyrics from singer-songwriter James Bay in his song Let It Go. The song is about breaking up with a girlfriend, but some of the words are perfect for what I have been talking about...

Trying to push this problem up the hill
When it's just too heavy to hold
Think now's the time to let it slide

So come on let it go
Just let it be
Why don't you be you
And I'll be me

Everything's that's broke
Leave it to the breeze
Let the ashes fall
Forget about me

Come on let it go
Just let it be
Why don't you be you
And I'll be me

The Tuning Slide: Inner Game 2: Trust

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

The nerves are a problem on trumpet,
because when you mess up everyone can hear it.

Just remember most people are too polite
to say anything about it.

That should calm your nerves.
-- Wynton Marsalis

I have introduced the background of the Inner Game in a couple earlier posts. In the Inner Game of Music Barry Green adapted the original work of W. Timothy Gallwey. Basically Gallwey and Green describe two parts of who we are, Self 1 and Self 2. Simply put,

• If it interferes with your potential, it is Self 1.
• If it enhances your potential, it is Self 2.

The next part then is to learn and develop three fundamental “inner game” skills. Candace Brower on the Albuquerque Music Teacher’s blog writes:

Green advises us that if we want to reach our full potential as musicians, we need to learn three fundamental skills: (1) awareness, (2) will, and (3) trust. Awareness is about being fully aware of the sounds, sights, and feelings of playing while avoiding self-judgments that could distort our perceptions. Will is about setting goals, then using the feedback we get from being aware to reach our goals through a process of trial and error. Trust is about letting go of self-judgment and of the physical act of playing to Self 2 and trusting Self 2 to get it right.

Without specifically dealing with the Inner Game, I have spent quite a bit of time already on awareness (mindfulness, attention, etc.) and setting goals. So what’s this thing with trust? Green writes that this is

Not blind trust, but the trust that comes after hard work, and the trust that comes from knowing there is music inside you….

In order to achieve our ultimate goal and enter the state of relaxed concentration where we are one with the music, there is one more skill we need. We need to trust ourselves.

There are, according to Green, three major obstacles to trust:

• Worries about your self-image,
• The feeling that things are out of your control, and
• Doubts and fears about your own ability.

These feed Self 1’s objections to our playing well. Any of these can creep in and interfere with our music. Let's look at each as Green talks about them.

• Self-image
  "Music is a performing art," says Green. He then says the secret to getting beyond self-image is to give "yourself the character and emotions of the music. You become the music, not yourself." This is like being an actor playing a part. The goal of the actor is to express the character not their own personality. So it is with music. We come to accept our role as "interpreters of the composer's music."
  
  Okay- easier said than done, especially when we are playing a solo. Our image as a performer can be at stake, we think, if we flub it. If we keep aware of the fact that it is not about us, we are well along the way.
  
  
• Out of control
  Self 1 wants to keep control and make sure everything is going the way it wants. Letting go of control is then the direction to go in our learning. How do we learn to "let go" to Self 2?
  
  That depends to a great extent on the awareness, goal-setting, and preparation work we have been doing. It is based on trusting ourselves. Why should we? Because we have had years of listening and playing; we have had years of physical training of our embouchure, breathing, fingering; and we have been storing all kinds of information in our nervous system to respond when needed. Every one of us has known that moment when we stop worrying and let go to the music. That is the moment when we are in "the groove" - and it works. That's trusting ourselves. We are not in control- and don't need to be- because Self 2 and the music are.
  
  
• Doubting our abilities
  Hard to believe that a trumpet player will ever doubt his or her ability. That sure doesn't match our perceived self-image and personality. But we didn't start that self-assured about our ability nor do we always have it conquered. But really, what's the worst that could happen? Self 1 will be good at making a catastrophe out of it, but really, what is the worst that is most likely to happen? Chances are it won't be anywhere near as bad as good, old Self 1 thinks.
  
  What's the best that could happen? Probably a more likely prospect than the worst. Plus, unless there is a recruiter from the New York Philharmonic or the Canadian Brass sitting in the audience the best that could happen is most likely the warmth of having done a job well.

Many years ago my daughter and I were pondering our first ever roller coaster ride. She was 8 or 9 and I was in my early 40s. I had not ridden a coaster in decades; she never. We sat on a bench where we could watch the coaster we were considering. I counted the seconds to the top. I counted the seconds of the first drop. I timed the whole ride. We asked each other the questions about worst and best. Could we survive for those couple seconds it took to drop? Would I be way too nervous to bear the tension of the ride to the top? Would we get sick? (Probably not- and it wouldn't last long if we did.) Would we like it? (Probably- but if not, we just don't have to do it again.) We would be completely out of control. (But strapped in.)

We went on the ride.

And then got back in line to do it again. For the next hour. The worst didn't happen, but the best did. We had, in the end, only one real decision to make- did we trust the people who built, maintain, and operate the ride? Just like needing to trust my own ability to play.

Self-trust is the result of our practice and techniques we learn. That crazy run in Tchaikovsky's "Finale to Symphony #4" doesn't look quite as impossible when you realize it is just a variation on all those scales you have been doing for the past years. The solo in Holst's "Song Without Words" from Holst's "Second Suite" isn't quite as scary when you have listened to it for months and done some innovations on how it is constructed and you can see it's form in your mind.

Self-trust. Do you believe you can do it? Have you worked on being able to do it? Have you set goals, formal or informal to be ready to do it? Have you allowed you and the music to meld into a unique idea?

If so, you can do it.

If not, don't quit, just go back and work some more. But remember, sooner or later we will have to be ready. Do it. You know you can.

The player needs to be able to forget about himself. This is when real communication begins. For with the elimination of the self, he is able to reach the very core of the music, and is free to transmit it. 

-Kato Havas

[Footnote: Ms. Brower in the blog post cited above gives a very good counter argument about the seeming “bad guy” status that Green gives to Self 1. She focuses instead on Galleway’s original idea that the purpose of the inner game is to bring Self 1 and Self 2 into harmony with each other. (How’s that for a good musical idea?) I agree with Ms. Brower and will do some more on this and the insights from neurologists about the brain in a future post.]

Trying to Exorcise Old Ghosts

When it comes to playing solos with a band, I have had an amazing stretch of performance anxiety since, well... probably since high school. I have played in quintets, a Tijuana Brass-style group, church groups, brass choirs, and Big Bands. In the quintets, church groups, brass choirs and Alpert-style group I have no problems. I can play as the only person on the part. But put me into that trumpet solo in the band and my mouth dries up, I obsess and then make it less than good.

Well, Saturday night I had another opportunity to exorcise this old demon. I had the opening trumpet solo in one of the pieces in our community band concert. I never (repeat- NEVER) played it correctly in any rehearsal. I would flub something. I have been practicing it ad infinitum and working with my trumpet teacher on it. There was no doubt that I could play it. Except when the band was there. It is a huge mental block. My colleagues in the trumpet row were rooting for me. The director never made me feel small or incompetent. I was doing a good enough job on that myself.

I have been working on my own cognitive reframing of the situation including that information of 50 years of playing in all kinds of settings.I was the lead trumpet in that Tijuana Brass group in high school and the lead in our brass choir that played in churches around my home town. One week I realized that as the band was rehearsing and I was flubbing the piece- again- that I was feeling like a little kid- pulling into myself, mentally sucking my thumb. That got my attention. I don't feel like that often- I don't remember the last time I felt like that. So I started talking to myself about being an adult and working on my self-awareness. "Just play it," one of the other trumpet players said to me. "You know it cold!"

I work with people to do this all the time. When you find yourself having some emotional reaction that doesn't make sense, that means it is time for some cognitive reframing. Put simply, it is utilizing the human, rational part of the brain, the pre-frontal cortex, for what it is designed to do- deal with emotions to see if they are realistic or not. If not, then do some work on the underlying beliefs that are at work to undermine you. Dispute the thinking process and rewire the brain so it helps instead of getting in the way.

So, as the concert started I started the final work on those mid-brain, pre-conscious thoughts. I got into the third number and I realized that I was enjoying myself. The number we had just played was fun, challenging and exciting. I had enjoyed it. I was having fun. That is what playing in a community band is all about. We aren't here to put on a professionally perfect performance. We are here to share our joy of music with the audience. We were doing that. As we started the third number I remembered something an acquaintance said about his playing music: "It's a spiritual experience, man!"

I happen to think that third piece is a deeply spiritual composition. It touches some deep and profound emotions through the weaving of themes and instruments. So I decided to let the music unfold from my horn and allow the music from the band to move me as we worked together to move the audience. I allowed myself to play without thinking about it; to move with the music; to allow the soul to be touched. It worked- as it often does. I was no longer working at playing music- I was living with the music, spiritually.

You can also call this mindfulness. I was playing mindfully, in the moment, just being there and not analyzing or thinking. What a joy. It wasn't the first time that's happened for me when playing. But it was at an important moment for me.

Two more quick and fun numbers and we took a short intermission. We came back with the first piece of half two and then my solo that starts the second piece. That was the problem, hitting it cold, all by myself. I looked up at the director and he gave me a knowing nod. I was weak and tentative on the opening note and continued with an acceptable performance. I got a couple nods and subtle thumbs-up. But I wasn't done. At the end of the second page the song does a "DC," it goes back to the beginning. I had one more shot at the solo- one more chance to exorcise that old demon.

I did a quick millisecond talk to myself. I let my pre-frontal cortex have its logical say to the mid-brain.

"The hell with it. I'm going to step up, hit it, and give it all I've got. F-it." (Sometimes I think the mid-brain only understands profanity which is, I believe, part of its own emotional language.)

I sat up, leaned into it and let 'er rip.

I nailed it.

Not to put to fine a point on it, but I flipped off my amygdala- and it got the message.

That is not a technical neuro-scientific statement- it is an emotional one. It is an emotionally winning one.

I know the importance of the mid-brain and it's anxiety producing, emotional responses. It keeps all of us alive on a daily basis. But it is primitive and gets involved in all kinds of things. It is part of the flight, fight or freeze response. But it can learn to flow as well. It is teachable- re-wireable. It learned to be afraid of trumpet solos in a band setting somewhere in the mists of my time. Now it can learn to accept them as okay and probably no different from when I play in many other settings.

But no matter how you frame it, it worked.

And it feels damn good!