A New Home

The Tuning Slide blog has moved to its own home. All posts have migrated to it as well as all new ones.

Go to www.tuningslide.net.

See you in our new home!

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Here's the box of books- The Tuning Slide, Year One.

The boxes are now empty and recycled as they were given to the students at last week's Shell Lake Arts Center Trumpet Workshop. It has been a labor of love for me- to be able to share my trumpet learning journey of this past year with others is actually humbling. I realize how little I know, but that I can still add to other people's experiences.



I am still about $300 short of the goal of crowd-funding this project. Any help you can add would be appreciated.

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Jazz 5: Adding to the Music

Life is a lot like jazz.

It’s best when you improvise.

-George Gershwin

I’m going to start today with some thoughts from the book, Improvisation for the Spirit: Live a More Creative, Spontaneous, and Courageous Life Using the Tools of Improv Comedy by Katie Goodman. (Sourcebooks, Inc. 2008.) It is NOT about jazz, but rather a book on living a spontaneous life based on improv comedy. But, hey, improvisation is improvisation. So here are her suggestions for skills needed in living a spontaneous life.

1. Be Present and Aware
2. Be Open and Flexible
3. Take Risks
4. Trust
5. Surrender and Non-Attachment
6. Gag Your Inner Critic
7. Get Creative
8. Effortlessness
9. Desire and Discovering What You Want
10. Authenticity
11. Allowing Imperfection and Practice, Practice, Practice

As I look at these I see a number of the themes that I have covered in the past here on the Tuning Slide.

• The “be present and aware” touches easily on the mindfulness we have talked about. 
• “Gag your inner critic” is certainly a variation of the discussions of Self 1 and Self 2 in the Inner Game of Music posts. 
• “Desire and discovering what you want” and “authenticity” tie in with finding your story and song.

But as I pointed out last week with my improvisation stories, it is all easier said- or thought- and done. It takes work and determination to do it. It takes hours of practice. (That’s another whole series to think about for the next year!) One cannot want instant gratification - or instant expertise in improvisation or in life as a whole. So as I look at those 11 suggestions I want to simplify it. I want to make it sound easier than it is, live in my fantasy world that it is easy, or just throw my hands up in surrender. Which is NOT what surrender and non-attachment above mean. So maybe there is more to be learned in that skill than I am giving it credit for.

Surrender and non-attachment, as Goodman defines it on page 92 is about

…learning to let go of your attachments to expectations, goals, and perfectionism. … to cultivate a sense of humor, and to lighten up. [We] surrender the controls and allow life to unfold in a more joyful, free-flowing, and perhaps, unexpected way.

This does not mean giving up and going home. I have heard several times in the past few weeks that the #1 rule for improv comedy is the “Yes, and…” rule. That means you affirm what has come before you, the line or theme that has preceded the hand-off to you. Never negate it- that brings everything to a stop. Instead, accept it as an important bit of information or an unfinished sentence. What do you have to add to it? How can you give added value to the “musical conversation”? In order to do that use those skills of mindfulness, creativity, and giving Self Two the direction to go ahead and play.

Now, in order to do that you have to believe you have something to say. At first, all it may be in your improvisation is to hit the note of the chord with a certain rhythm. Remember, jazz is about rhythm. Then you might want to think about the structure of the song, blues, classic standard, funk. Keep those same chord notes and rhythm but give them a little something extra here and there. Don’t be shy. That doesn’t mean play fortissimo when the song is a nice quiet ballad. Remember, you are adding to the conversation, not stopping it or hijacking it. There are then legato and staccato passages, slurs and marcato. How do they fit together?

Now, don’t expect to go onstage in a public performance and know how to do this. Improv comedy troupes practice. Then they practice some more. Improv does not mean off-the-cuff with no thought or training. It means learning the words and sounds of jazz and making conversation with other musicians. I wish I was able to do this as easily as I write about it. But I am a slow-learner. I still have an inner critic that freezes when he hears that “sour” note. I still have the perfectionist that says he has to do it right or don’t do it at all. I still have the ADD dude who gets distracted by a a lot more than squirrels and then loses mindfulness, flow, rhythm and creativity.

So I go back to the practice room. I pull out the scales or find a song on iReal Pro and try to get the feel for it. I listen to Miles Davis’ solo on “So What” and feel the movement of an easy-flowing improvisation. I take a walk and refocus my mindfulness skills. I do some breathing meditation that gets me back in touch with me. Then I work on it some more. It is a much slower process than I want it to be. I can tend to get too busy. I have too many things to write or too many concerts or gigs to prepare for. So the hard stuff, like learning to talk jazz with my trumpet is set aside.

In other words I am writing these posts as much for me as for you. I am working on my Inner Game. I am reminding myself that I have a story and a song. It is mine and I have been writing it for many years. Back at that very first jazz camp I went to in the 90s one thing did become clear to me. I improvise all the time in my daily life. Things happen that I have to react to. As a preacher for years I would regularly “ad lib” in the middle of a sermon. All that was was just improvising. I pulled in all my knowledge and experiences, all the sermons I had written and preached, all the people I had talked to, all the books I had read. Then came the inspiration and I shared it when it happened. I can still do that. It is almost as easy as falling off a bike for me. I couldn’t do that when I started, of course. I wrote down every word of every sermon. I still work from a manuscript (the score of the music?) and take off when and where appropriate.

That’s all I need to learn to do with my trumpet. It is getting better. I am learning. I don’t believe I will ever be done.

Kind of like life!

You have to practice improvisation,
Let no one kid you about it.
-Art Tatum

The Books Are Ready!

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Here's the box of books- The Tuning Slide, Year One. They are ready to be given to the students at this year's Shell Lake Arts Center Trumpet Workshop. It has been a labor of love for me- to be able to share my trumpet learning journey of this past year with others is actually humbling. I realize how little I know, but that I can still add to other people's experiences.

I am still about $300 short of the goal of crowd-funding this project. Any help you can add would be appreciated.

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Jazz 4: Creating Something New

There's a way of playing safe and 

then there's where you create something 

you haven't created before.

-Dave Brubeck

Many have called it “mysterious.” Some will say there’s magic in it. Others might criticize it for being “too far out” or “odd.” No matter what is said about it, it is undeniably the center point around which jazz congregates.

Improvisation.

I had been listening to jazz for a number of years before I realized that so much of what I was listening to only existed once in the studio or venue where it was performed. In that moment jazz went from being a great form of music that I loved to something far more profound. It was alive in a way that no other music could claim in my awareness. Sure there have been many great improvised solos in other genres; even the classical greats like Bach were known to be excellent improvisers. But no other music called forth improvising; no other music seemed to breathe the life of the music in the moment.

I was in awe.

About 20 years ago, I had my first jazz camp experience. I knew very little music theory and couldn’t have played in many of the keys if my life depended on it. But the time came to improvise. As I sat down that evening I wrote in my journal:

My first solo. Just the basics of course, but an improv solo on the simple concert B-flat scale.

"Play a melody. Write a song with it, Barry."

And I did.

It fit, too. It made some sense. You have to try to listen to what is going on around you. Hear the rhythm, devise the melody, watch the harmony. It wasn't polished. It was kind of stiff and boring, but no one started out as a virtuoso.

The instructors this morning emphasized that. The scales are to the instrumentalist what the gym is to Michael Jordan.

The same could have been said about my solo at last summer’s Big Band Camp. It wasn’t polished; it was kind of stiff and boring. One of my problems is that I get stuck on “bad” notes. A “bad note” is one that could be a great “blue note,” a note moving from one place to another. But it turns into dissonance and discord because I stop for too long. No movement, more like a crash into a brick wall. My mind blanks, I forget what I’m thinking and nothing of interest comes from the instrument. It made some sense for a little bit, a few measures, but that’s about it.

What a challenge then in this past year when, following the Big Band Camp and then Trumpet Camp in 2015, I decided I was going to do an improv solo this year. And not get stuck! It was one of several goals I set for myself, and the one that looked most challenging. Wikipedia’s entry on improvisation in jazz points out some of the problems.

Basically, improvisation is composing on the spot, in which a singer or instrumentalist invents solo melodies and lines over top of a chord progression played by rhythm section instruments (piano, electric guitar double bass, etc.) and also accompanied by drum kit. While blues, rock and other genres also use improvisation, the improvisation in these non-jazz genres typically is done over relatively simple chord progressions which often stay in one key (or closely related keys.) …Jazz improvisation is distinguished from other genres use of this approach by the high level of chordal complexity…

Problem #1: Composing on the fly.
Saxophonist and composer Steve Lacy once said,

In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds.

It takes time to learn how to do that. A lot more than a year. It takes a certain amount of courage to do it in public. It takes a certain amount of insanity to even want to do it in the first place.

Problem #2: Chordal complexity
Most of us want to sound professional when we do our improvising. That means the complexity of chords and chord changes. We don’t want to sound like some newbie just playing the blues scale over the changes. It may fit, but that’s baby stuff. To think that one can get to that point in one year would be the height of grandiosity- or blindness.

Problem #3: Learning the language
This is all about a language and developing an understanding of its meanings. It is no different than having a conversation with a friend- except we have all learned how to use words in conversations one little bit at a time. We didn’t do that in any great way until we developed a vocabulary, the experience of talking with others, and the experiences of our lives to have something to talk about. If you have 15 seconds to say something, you better have the language ready to be accessed at the right time and place.

A daunting task, to be sure. But I did have a few things in my favor.

• I have a rudimentary understanding of the language. I have a decent ear for jazz, jazz forms, and jazz licks. I have been an intense jazz listener for 50+ years. It’s kind of like being somewhat able to understand, say Spanish, when it is spoken, even though my brain trips over itself when I try to speak it.

• I am also a decent musician. I understand a lot more about music from simply playing it than I realized before this year. That means I have a basic understanding of chord progressions and the blues scale.

• And, I now have the time, in my semi-retirement, to spend time learning.

While I didn’t have a set plan for learning jazz, I first spent a lot of time really getting to know my musical skills- the basics, just the basics. Day in and day out there were those long notes and chromatics. Then there was Arban (always good old Arban!) and Concone and others. Finally I decided I would learn the 12 major keys. Yes, after 50+ years I was doing one of those basic things.

The result was I got to Big Band Camp and I was ready. No getting stuck this year. Let it happen!

It did! No it wasn’t a great solo, but it didn’t get stuck, it didn’t suck, and it wasn’t stiff. I even think there might have been some swing it it. At least I was swinging. Since then I have done some more improvising with the one big band I play in. Nothing fancy. But I now have the courage to at least try. I have done it and I know I can do it again.

What then does all this mean?

#1. It takes time and effort. Just a year of work doesn’t do it. But it’s a start.

#2. Appreciate jazz when other people do it. Listen. Then listen some more. Finally, listen again.

#3. Have courage. Take the opportunity to improvise. In the privacy of your practice room and in public.

#4. Be good to yourself and appreciate what you have done and what you can do.

#5. Push yourself. Don’t stop where you’ve been. Look at where you still want to go.

Now that I have more of the basics down, it is time to move into the advanced beginning stage. (Trying to keep that trumpet ego in check!) That means more of the 5 things above. It means enjoying the practice and challenge. And it means seeing how improvisation has already made and can make a difference in my life.

That will be next week.

The genius of our country is improvisation,

and jazz reflects that.

It's our great contribution to the arts.

-Ken Burns

Books for Trumpet Workshop Students

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Over the past year I have written a weekly blog post on music and life titled The Tuning Slide . It has been based on what I first learned at the Trumpet Workshop at Shell Lake, WI, Arts Center in August 2015. I would like to provide a copy of the blog posts as a book for the students at this year's workshop.

I have tried to go beyond the basic ideas and describe how I personally wrestled with them in my own developing trumpet practice. I have also applied the ideas to every day life, connecting music with daily living.

I have played trumpet for over 50 years but until recently was not able to spend the time to become as proficient as I would like to be. The blog book also explores music as a life-long experience.

The money raised will pay for the book's publishing and free distribution to the students.

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Jazz 3: Swing

It Don’t Mean a Thing

(If It Ain’t Got That Swing)

-Duke Ellington

You may remember the old joke about the comedian who asks, “What’s the secret of a good joke?” and then answers the question without a moment’s break. “Timing.”

Until Einstein, “time” was seen as a constant. It was always the same. Then relativity came along and suddenly time was a “changeable” dimension.  (Don’t ask me to explain THAT!) Time became, to put it way too simply, relative. As we get older we can agree with that idea. Time sure moves faster when you have more time behind you. (Where did this year go? It’s the end of July already!)

Another way of describing this is to say that “time” is how we perceive it. If we are bored, it hardly moves; if we are having a great time, it ends too soon. Music depends on time- and timing. Music is guided by a “time signature.” In jazz, the idea of “time” can take on another dimension. Time becomes the movement of the notes in a unique and special way. From there that movement is what musicians often call “the groove” or the interaction of musicians, time and melody into something everyone can feel.

When you are in that groove with the movement leading you, holding you and the music together-
That’s Swing!

Wikipedia starts the definition of swing this way:

In jazz and related musical styles, the term swing is used to describe the sense of propulsive rhythmic "feel" or "groove" created by the musical interaction between the performers, especially when the music creates a "visceral response" such as feet-tapping or head-nodding.

Got it? It sounds simple.
    1.    There’s the movement (propulsive rhythm).
    2.    That movement is created by the interaction the performers themselves are feeling.
    3.    There is a “visceral response,” perhaps because of that interaction, responses like tapping your foot or nodding your head.

If that’s all it takes, I have seen many performers “swinging” in some of the dullest ways possible. In some ways it sounds like a small group of people doing their thing in a way that moves them.

Wikipedia continues:

While some jazz musicians have called the concept of "swing" a subjective and elusive notion, they acknowledge that the concept is well-understood by experienced jazz musicians at a practical, intuitive level. Jazz players refer to "swing" as the sense that a jam session or live performance is really "cooking" or "in the pocket." If a jazz musician states that an ensemble performance is "really swinging," this suggests that the performers are playing with a special degree of rhythmic coherence and "feel."

In other words, if you don’t understand it, that’s because you aren’t an experienced jazz musician. It takes a “practical” and “intuitive” understanding to know when it’s “cooking.” That just adds a bit of snobbery to the first part of the discussion. You have to be with the “in crowd” to really know what swing is or even how to make it happen. How about that attempt at paradox- practical AND intuitive.

Do you get the idea they can’t describe it any better than anyone else? All they are saying is that they know it when it happens. When it’s not happening, well, it “just ain’t swingin’ man.”

The crazy thing is that this is as good as it gets trying to nail it down without some time listening to the music. We have all had an experience of the essence of “swing” whether it is in jazz, or any other kind of music. It may have been the Sunday the organist at church nailed a Bach prelude or the praise band’s hallelujah touched the depth of your soul. It might have been at the rock concert when your favorite band never sounded better and every note was right where they (and you) wanted it to be. Those are the same as “swing,” just in a different musical genre. They are peak experiences when music and time come together and meld into Einstein’s four-dimensional universe.

Okay, enough of this. We can wax and wane poetic, prosaic, or scientific night and day and never quite get to that kernel of truth about swing. We know swing because it moves us. We know swing because something in us responds to it. As musicians, we know we are “in the groove” when we come to the end and realize you were simply carried along.

In jazz, we call it swing. Swing always is an interaction in time and musical movement. On a very simple technical level swing is that dotted-eighth/sixteenth combination of notes. But Latin jazz doesn’t do that, yet it can swing as hard as any other jazz.

That’s where the idea of time really comes into play. Wynton Marsalis describes it this way in his book, Moving to Higher Ground:

Jazz is the art of timing. It teaches you when. When to start, when to wait, when to step it up, and when to take your time- indispensable tools for making someone else happy….

Actual time is a constant. Your time is a perception. Swing time is a collective action. Everyone in jazz is trying to create a more flexible alternative to actual time

We are back to our perception of time, and again that perception is grounded in a collective sense of time in the interaction of the musicians, the rhythm, and the music.

Wynton Marsalis applies all this to our daily lives. Swing helps us in:

    1.    Adjusting to changes without losing your equilibrium;
    2.    Mastering moments of crisis with clear thinking;
    3.    Living in the moment and accepting reality instead of trying to force everyone to do things your way;
    4.    Concentrating on a collective goal even when your conception of the collective doesn’t dominate.

Change happens. It is a constant. Sometimes it is expected and not jarring. It is in time. Sometimes it knocks us off our balance. That is when the understanding of swing, staying in the groove, going with the flow comes in handy. The moments of crisis, times of change, when we can lose our ability to make healthy decisions is when we move back to the basics. The forms of life that keep us moving.

Remember that jazz is made up of forms and when you have an understanding of the forms you can adapt. If you know the forms of your life, you can begin to trust your Self 2 instinct as discussed in the Inner Game of Music. It’s the muscle and mental default mode that keeps us standing when it would be easier to fall.
From there we accept what is- staying in the moment- accepting the things we cannot change, changing what we can, and knowing which is which.

Another way to describe swing is that it’s how you accent the music, what you emphasize, what you want people to hear. Any jazz musician knows the forms for accents, for what to emphasize and what not to. That can change from performance to performance, within the basic forms of course. Tonight the musician may want to emphasize the upbeat feel of a chorus; tomorrow, after a difficult day, the emphasis may take more of a bluesy style.

What you accent in life can become your song or story. How you do that can change the rhythm of your life.  That’s your perspective. We all know the analogies of looking at the doughnut or the hole; the cage of horse manure with the optimist seeing the possibility of a horse amid all that. Even the old "is the glass half-empty or half-full" can add a new dimension- the glass is refillable.

Accentuate the positive. Assume positive intent.
Or not.
It’s your choice.

But you are not alone. With few exceptions jazz is a truly collective music. We have to listen to each other, not fight each other in a jazz performance. It is a cooperative action of attempting to make more than any one of us can make on their own. If I accent the upbeat and you slur through them it might sound unique, but will it sound appropriate? Will it sound like one of us is trying to one-up the other? The music will often suffer as a result. It can easily descend into chaos. Some might call that “free-form” but it takes amazing concentration of collective action to produce good “free-form” jazz.

In the end, Wynton Marsalis says, swing demands three things:

    1.    Extreme coordination- it is a dance with others inventing steps as they go;
    2.    Intelligent decision making- what’s good for group
    3.    Good intentions- trust you and others want great music.

Swing is worth the effort. We grow in relationships- and we learn how to develop relationships. We learn how to listen to others and, in the end, ourselves. That will lead us into the next two weeks’ posts on what may be the heart and soul of jazz- improvisation, the ultimate in going with the flow.

Until then, keep swinging.

I don't care if a dude is purple with

green breath as long as he can swing.

-Miles Davis

Note: All Wynton Marsalis quotes are from the book:
    •    Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life by Wynton Marsalis and Geoffrey Ward. 2008, Random House.

Jazz 2- What Makes Jazz Jazz?

Jazz does not belong to one race or culture,
but is a gift that America has given the world.
-Ahmad Alaadeen

I remember a discussion I had with a teenager in my church youth group some 30+ years ago. We had been listening to some live rock song that had a great guitar solo. We started talking about different styles of music and came up with a question.

What makes jazz jazz? Why isn’t it rock or vice versa?

Neither of us had an answer, although we did, in general, agree that we knew it when we heard it. Here, then, decades later, I am going to attempt to answer that question from my experiences. As I said in the previous post, I have been enthralled by jazz in all its forms for over 50 years. I’m not out to give an in-depth analysis of jazz and what makes it what it is. There are countless books that do that. Some are history like Ted Gioia’s History of Jazz, a remarkable story of how jazz got to be what it is. Some are on video like Ken Burns’ mini-series documentary, Jazz, from PBS. Barry Kernfeld’s What to Listen For in Jazz has informed this particular post. All three of these are 16 - 20 years old, but capture the story that has become jazz.

Since one of my goals is to relate the music and the experience of jazz to my life and experience, musicology is not my goal. Living jazz is. So, I found in Kernfeld’s book seven things that are essential ingredients to understand about jazz. These, I think, give a little more to work with than just saying “I know it when I hear it.” While all of them can be found in most other musical genres, how they apply to this genre begins to answer the greater question of what makes this music what it is.

First comes rhythm. This should come as no surprise. Jazz started as music for movement. It was street music, dance music, walking and marching music. The power of the “beat” is unmistakable. It is almost impossible to call it “jazz” if it doesn’t have rhythm. It must constantly be supported and carried by the rhythm section- drums or bass, piano or guitar. I know that sometimes that rhythm is pretty hard to find, especially in more free-form jazz, but if you ask the musicians they will say there is something there. It will go nowhere without a living, breathing pulse.

All music breathes. The rise and fall of dynamics, crescendo and decrescendo, are the active elements that make it something more than a one-level sound. In jazz, that breath becomes a rhythm. Some of this is what is called articulation. When you emphasize what note, how you flow from one section to another. But it is always alive, always moving.

When jazz musicians say the music is “in the groove” this is part of what they mean. It is alive and moving. The two most common rhythms can be described as

• Swing and
• Duple.

Swing is a movement of triplets enhanced or bounded by accentuations. Duple is doubles, also enhanced and defined by accentuations. While recognizing that there are numerous variations and exceptions, we can take Dixieland and “big band” traditional jazz as the best examples of “swing.” Duple is more straightforward and can be seen in Latin jazz. I will talk more about rhythm, especially swing, in the next post.

The connection of rhythm and breathing with living is obvious. Drumming has been one of those human endeavors most likely since the first time an ancient relative hit a hollow log with a stick. In so doing they were mimicking the action at the center of our lives- the heartbeat. Rhythm is more than primitive in its origins. It is primal. It is basic, essential. A heart arrhythmia can be fatal- it is out of rhythm.

Second is form. With tens of thousands of possible songs to play, a jazz group and its musicians would be hard pressed to memorize everything out there. That would clearly limit their repertoire and challenge the skill of even the greatest among them. What has developed to make this job relatively easy is the form of jazz music. The most common of these was adapted from the basic “song” form- the music of the Great American Songbook. Very simply this form is the beginning theme, the “head”, the first description of which is usually done twice, the chorus in the middle and then closing with the theme. This often referred to as the AABA form.

There can be many variations on how long these individual sections can be. The song form would, in general, be 32 bars, 8 in each section. Other variations can have a repeating pattern of measures and chord changes such as the 12-bar blues which can be adapted to 8- or 16-bars. Chord changes are often sort of standardized with the 12-bar blues being the grandaddy of them and the progression of the chords of I’ve Got Rhythm (referred to as “rhythm changes”) being another.

One other form is the march and ragtime form. These are usually 16-bar phrases with two, three, or four themes as the song progresses.

Now, in general, a jazz musician can pick up a book of songs and all it might have are the head, chord changes, and the closing. When you understand the basic form of these songs, you have the greater possibility of playing more music and not being completely lost.

Third is arrangement. This is the first of three elements of jazz that are about “writing” the music. Arrangement is taking something that already exists and adapting it. Arrangers can do it note-for-note adding embellishments with their group playing as close to the original as possible. They can also take the original and add embellishments to it to change the patterns around the original. The third is to orchestrate the song differently. Having a saxophone-based combo play a song will give a very different experience from a piano-based one. For example taking a Lennon-McCartney song and arranging it for a big band would take all these into account. What instruments do you want to play when? How close to the original will it be? Will you divide it into sections that build on or riff on the theme?

Fourth is composition. Simply put this is basically writing new music. You are composing a new song. It can be based on the chord progressions from another song, such as the many on the changes of I’ve Got Rhythm or the 12-bar blues. It will be a new melody, a new song.

Fifth is improvisation. Improvisation is so essential to what call jazz in all its forms, I will take at least two posts to deal with that. Suffice it to say here, that being able to improvise is what can help all of us succeed in the ups and downs of life. It is not simply flying by the seat of ones pants. It is the ability to call on our knowledge, experiences, hard work, and creativity to solve problems and enhance our lives. Kernfeld called improvisation the “most fascinating and mysterious” element of jazz. It will be featured prominently in all that we do in jazz.

Sixth is sound. This is where orchestration comes in. Different instruments sound different. Different combinations sound different. How you put them together can make a huge difference in what you hear- or don’t hear. It is also the tuning of the notes and how they fit together. Miles Davis famously said that “there are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places.” Thelonius Monk added to that sentiment. "There are no wrong notes; some are just more right than others.”

The ultimate in the jazz sound is what has been called the “blue note.” Simply put the “blue note” is a note that is played or sung a half-step off from what would be expected. Blue notes add a sense of tension, surprise, or worry to the sound. It comes from its use in the blues progression. The “sound” of jazz is what has led many to say they may not know what jazz is, but they know when they hear it.

Finally, the seventh element of jazz is style. Jazz is not one style of music- it is a genre made up of these elements and then flowing into numerous styles. Kernfeld, in What to Listen for in Jazz, leaves the idea of style to an epilogue. That way he could look at the elements that can be found in one way or another in different styles. Here are some of the styles that have developed in jazz, and are still breathing life into the genre:

• New Orleans Jazz
• Big Band
• Bebop
• Hard Bop
• Fusion
• Free Jazz
• Latin Jazz
• Acid Jazz
• Jazz Rock
• Kansas City Jazz
• Modal Jazz
• West Coast Jazz

And Wikipedia goes on to list another 30 sub-genres.

Talk about diversity. Talk about having an abundance of opportunities. Talk about a perfect music to have developed in a little more than only 100 years in the United States.

That’s jazz. That’s all there is to it. In 2000 words or less.
The details, are in the hands of the musicians- and of you and me as listeners. That’s where we will go in the next six posts, seeing how these are good metaphors for life and how, when we learn jazz, we are also learning how to live.

Jazz is the type of music
that can absorb so many things
and still be jazz.
-Sonny Rollins

Jazz 1- What About Jazz?

Eight weeks on jazz. Ah, where to begin?

-Me

I could start with a dictionary definition, but that would be almost antithetical to the whole idea of jazz. I could find a quote from some famous jazz musician and place it at the top of this page as an introduction. I could find a video of someone explaining the basics of jazz. But jazz is much more than any of those and far beyond any ability to explain it easily, quickly, or purposefully.

So instead I will do what jazz might encourage. I will riff on the theme. I will answer my own question: What do I want to say about jazz? Here goes:

1. It moves me- just like many forms of music. It moves me internally- I feel good when it hits me. It moves me externally- I physically cannot sit still when listening to jazz. My family will tell you that I direct music when listening to it. Jazz inhabits me and makes me move like no other music.

2. It is a dialogue in sound that occurs through the interaction of different instruments- just like many forms of music. I’m not even talking about improvising at this point. Just the sonic mix of instruments does it. Again, all music requires some sense of interaction in sound, but jazz has taken it and made it into a musical art and craft.

3. It is alive. Even when it is a studio recording there is a sense of a living form that most other types of music may only get through a live concert performance. This is where improvised solos play an important part, but because the music of jazz has grown out of live experiences, it seems to capture that in ways other genres do not.

4. It is almost infinitely adaptable. That is another aspect of jazz being “alive.” Jazz - combo or big band - can play an arrangement of Jim Croce or Lennon-McCartney as easily as it can play the music of the Great American Songbook or the classic music of jazz and Dixieland. On top of that, composers can write music that is new and exciting and it will be jazz.

5. It can stand up with other genres and styles as well as anything. There is Preservation Hall Jazz Band recording with Bluegrass icon, Del McCoury. You can hear Wynton Marsalis in concert with Eric Clapton or Willie Nelson.

6. It is our American music. It is part of the very roots of our American heritage. It describes so much of who we are and the potential of who we can be.

I have been enthralled by jazz for well over 50 years. Jazz has been involved in all of my adult life, moving me, challenging me, inspiring me. It started with Al Hirt’s Java. Herbie Mann’s Memphis Underground kicked me up the side of the head. Les McCann and Eddie Harris with Compared to What gave me more insights. Doc Severinsen, Buddy Rich, Maynard Ferguson, and, above all, Louis Armstrong all contributed even before I graduated from college! I want to share what this has done and why.

You see, above all else, I think jazz is the best musical paradigm for how to live day in and day out. Life is an improvisational exercise. Life is finding the rhythms, harmonies, dialogues, hopes, fears, and emotions to make it through another day. All of that is what jazz does in ways that no other single genre of music can- at least for me.

Sadly it has been reported recently that, as far as music sales go, jazz has become the least popular musical style. That is a long way down from the heights of the big band era when some would argue that Glenn Miller’s In the Mood helped us win World War II. It is a sad departure from the incredible all-time best-selling Miles Davis and Kind of Blue. There are no doubt many cultural factors involved in that, but it still is depressing to think that this rich musical heritage is an endangered species.

So what I will do in the next seven installments of this Tuning Slide series is talk about jazz as I see it. I will explore how it has enlivened me, what it can teach us, and how it can give us all a sense of movement and unity.

Let me close this with a video. Well actually it is a You Tube video of what many consider the greatest jazz solo Louis Armstrong ever made. Way back in the mists of jazz history, Satchmo and His Hot Five recorded West End Blues. It set the standard on which just about everything else is built.

43. Crazy Great! Preparing for Tomorrow

Learning isn’t a way of reaching one’s potential 

but rather a way of developing it.”

― Anders Ericsson,  

A recently published book has been making some waves. In Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson (psychologist) and Robert Pool (science writer)...

skillfully examine the eternal debate of nature vs. nurture with this thoughtful treatise supporting the latter. The authors posit that deliberate, focused practice is the key to learning and mastering any new skill, whether or not an underlying natural talent is present. “Generally the solution is not ‘try harder,’ but ‘try differently,’”
-Publishers Weekly

Success in today's world, expertise, requires a focus on practical performance, not just the accumulation of information.

 I thought this would be an appropriate way to end this first year of the Tuning Slide. It gets back to the general themes we have looked at in these posts since last September. It deals with intention, practice, passion, having mentors, paying attention. Anders and Pool comment that they

..can report with confidence that I have never found a convincing case for anyone developing extraordinary abilities without intense, extended practice.

The students of Bill Adam's instruction (and their students!) who have so influenced me this past year would agree. They have challenged me, and through me, you to look more closely at what we do in practice. Take it seriously. Find the time if you want to find the skills. Over this past year, as I have shared with you my journey at age 67 to become a much more proficient trumpet player this has been my constant awareness.  Each month I found myself practicing more days- because I wanted to and made it happen. Each month I also practiced longer each day- again because I wanted to and had the increased ability to do so. There are now days when I finish my routine and practice and can't believe what I have managed. Old dogs- new tricks. Yep!

But, as Anders and Pool tell us:

Doing the same thing over and over again in exactly the same way is not a recipe for improvement; it is a recipe for stagnation and gradual decline.

If I keep doing what I have always done I will keep getting what I have always gotten. Sure, I may have more endurance, but I won't have gained much else. One thing I know I want to work on, for example, is my high-note ability. I have a hunch I have been working on that the way I have always worked on it. Yes, I am more able to hit the high "C" than I used to be, but it is not solid or clear. My experience tells me I am not finding new ways to work on it to get me past my plateau. One of my goals this summer at adult Big Band Camp is to find one of the instructors who can help me figure that out.

Well, fleshing all this out will be one of the themes for next year. Which brings me to answer the question

• What's coming on The Tuning Slide?

First, I'm not posting anything for the next two weeks. I will be at the adult Big Band Camp at Shell Lake taking my next step into jazz and improv. I will be taking notes and developing the next series of 8 posts here on the Tuning Slide- all about jazz and improv and how they apply to life and what we can learn from Jazz about living. I will try to keep it broadly about jazz and not narrow it down to trumpets. This has been a passion of mine for many, many years and now I will take some time to write about it. Watch for that beginning Wednesday, July 6.

I will also be at the Trumpet Camp at Shell Lake the first week of August, taking notes and talking to people, including you, Mr. Baca. My goal will be to develop and expand the thoughts and ideas for year 2. Year 2 posts will begin on Wednesday, August 31.

Let me know if you have any topics you want me to research or riff on. Much of what I do here is my own written version of improvising, which is not, as some people think, simply flying by the seat of one's pants. Send me thoughts, quotes, or questions. Add them to the comments on the blog and I will work on them.

So, have a good two weeks while I regroup and move this blog into the next phase. Hope to have you back in a few weeks.

Meanwhile, don't stop practicing and growing. It is easy in the summer to become distracted. If you want to continue to grow toward your expertise, keep at it.

Let me conclude with two paragraphs from the website, Create Yourself Today about the Anders and Pool book. This is her takeaway from it

It’s not what you are born with or not, that makes you great at anything, makes your performance peak. And it’s not your environment either, at least not the one you were born into.

Your performance at any given field is all about your intent, your readiness, your desire to get great. Exceptionally great.
-Link

Maybe even

Crazy great!

42. Finding New Comfort

Anxiety, it just stops your life.

-Amanda Seyfried

No, I'm not going to talk about anxiety as such. I'm going to talk about how we have learned to deal with it. We all know what it is, of course. But here's one definition:

Anxiety:
a feeling of

• worry,
• nervousness, or
• unease,

typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.

One of our natural adaptations to the world around us is our response to anxiety producing times and places. When we face a situation of perceived fear or threat there are survival mechanisms that come into play.

Maureen Werrbach, MA, LCPC writes about this:

...your body is responding to a perceived threat. This is called the stress response. The stress responses, fight, flight, or freeze, help us in situations where we perceive physical or mental threat.
Link to Psych Central

Right there they are:

• Fight
• Flight
• Freeze.

They are the things of anxiety that can "stop your life." They are essential responses to life-threatening situations. The problem is that they developed when almost everything in the world around us was a life-threatening situation. That rustling of the leaves in the bush was more likely a predator than a small bird. High-level awareness was a necessity to remaining alive. What is even more important is that these responses occurred deep in the early human brain, beneath consciousness. These responses were, and are, hard-wired into who we are. These initial responses would occur in a fraction of a second before the conscious mind knew what was happening.

We still have that going on. If you are standing on the sidewalk and suddenly a car veers out of control heading at you, your mid-brain response may be as long as .2 to .3 seconds before your conscious brain knows it is happening. You will probably jump out of the way. This will happen before you know with your conscious mind that it is happening.

Two-tenths of a second doesn't seem like very long. But a vehicle moving at even 40 mph will travel about 60 feet (!) in one second. In that .2 - .3 seconds it will travel 12 - 18 feet. That may be just enough time for you to jump to safety. You probably knew that you couldn't fight the vehicle. But you may have some background that causes you to freeze instead of flee, which is fatal.

The kind of threats that our ancestors faced, though, are much less common than they used to be. We don't have wild animals stalking us, for example. Our lives, in much of the world, in spite of what we often feel or hear, are far safer on a day to day basis than they have ever been. As a result we have developed ways of evaluating anxiety-producing situations and easing the fears and sub-conscious responses. Throughout our lives we develop these self-soothing mechanisms. They are defense mechanisms against  things we don't like to feel, don't have to feel, or don't want to feel. When we enter into an anxious place where fear, worry, nervousness or unease bubble up, we all have ways we have learned to cope with these. Therefore, these situations brings old issues up- old ways of finding safety or comfort. Even if they have become counter-productive!!

They are automatic thoughts!

We have all kinds of automatic thoughts going on all the time. They are like the trailer at the bottom of the TV screen during a ball game. While the game is happening on the screen, the trailer is telling you about other games, scores, etc. Our automatic thoughts are that trailer. Which means we don't pay much attention to them unless we have to.

If, in the middle of that ball game, you hear a "ping" or "beep" that is out of place you will most likely see something like a severe weather warning down in the trailer section. The "automatic thoughts" of the trailer are now conscious. You read the warning- and you miss the game-winning touchdown as the clock runs out. In spite of what we think we can do, multi-tasking is next to impossible.

When these thoughts are "negative" and get in the way we refer to them as "Automatic Negative Thoughts"- or ANTs. That can be a way of identifying them and putting them into a more healthy place in our mind.

Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way,
ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or
a pioneer of the future.

~Deepak Chopra

But these automatic thoughts, negative or positive, are how our brains work. They are finely tuned for survival- and anxiety is a sign that something feels threatening- or at least uncomfortable and we want to change it. Which brings us back to

• fight
• flight or
• freeze.

I have spent years working in addiction counseling and treatment. For some people the anxiety response they have developed over the years is to drink or use chemicals. They are seeking comfort from, ease of the anxiety and fears. It becomes the default response. They are not even aware how it happened or, at times, even why. It has become hard-wired. It is a "flight" response. Escape. Get away.

That is an extreme example, but the way it happens is similar to the many other ways we respond. Here are some other ways:

• Flight: not taking solos because of anxiety; dropping out of the group since you can't "keep up"
• Fight: always be a rebel and a trouble-maker; be unwilling to accept what someone else is suggesting because it makes you uncomfortable; passive-aggressive responses can be just as much "fight" as some overt action.
• Freeze: Not responding to a suggestion, keep doing what you have always done and ignore the ideas. (This can look like passive-aggressive, but is different in attitude.)

When these become habitual they are also chemically wired in the per-conscious mid-brain. Does this mean we are now stuck in these old ways of dealing with these situations and feelings? Fortunately, the answer is no. One of the discoveries of neuroscience is that the brain is quite "plastic," It can "rewire" itself. If it couldn't a person who had a stroke could never learn to walk or talk again. The brain develops work arounds. We can help that process.

Actually, we have to or it won't happen. That is the purpose of physical therapy/rehab after a stroke or traumatic brain injury.  That is the purpose of recovery activities for an addict. These help the brain rewire itself in more healthy ways. Learning anxiety work arounds will help our brains move beyond the ways we have always done it and find new sources of comfort in anxious times.

On the website mentioned earlier, Maureen Werrbach suggested these proven methods (Link to Psych Central):

• Embrace imperfection. Striving for perfection always leads to stress. Practice replacing perfectionistic thinking with more acceptable, less extreme ones.

• Identify automatic thoughts. Uncover the meaning of these thoughts and you can begin to replace them with more appropriate thoughts.

• Become a neutral observer. Stop looking at the stressful situation through your emotion-filled lens. Imagine that your stressful thoughts are someone else’s. You will notice that you can see things more objectively this way.

• Practice breathing exercises. Focus your attention on your breath. Fill your lungs slowly and exhale slowly for a count of 10. Start over if you lose count. This exercise is meant to reduce your body’s response to stress.

• Accept and tolerate life events. Acknowledge, endure, and accept what is happening in your life at the moment. Focus on the present and be mindful of your surroundings. Be deliberate about allowing this exact moment to be what it is, rather than what you wish or hope it to be.

Don't expect an immediate, extreme change. Anxiety and stress response habits are as ingrained as any other long-term habit. But as we learn the newer responses and practice them as needed, they will slowly but surely become our new comfort and new normal.

P.S. You’re not going to die. Here’s the white-hot truth: if you go bankrupt, you’ll still be okay. If you lose the gig, the lover, the house, you’ll still be okay. If you sing off-key, get beat by the competition, have your heart shattered, get fired…it’s not going to kill you. Ask anyone who’s been through it.

~Danielle LaPorte

41. Inner Game 3- Developing Harmony

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself.

― Hermann Hesse

I have written several times about the idea of The Inner Game of Music, the book in which Barry Green adapted the original work of W. Timothy Gallwey and tennis to music. 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.

Candace Brower on the Albuquerque Music Teacher’s blog writes about three fundamental skills for the "Inner Game": (1) awareness, (2) will, and (3) trust. A great deal of what I have covered over the past months has been focused on these ideas. With inspiration from what Ms. Brower has written as well as my own experiences and the increased knowledge of how the brain works, let me move to a new dimension of the inner game.

It would be easy to read the books and come to a logical conclusion as pointed out by Ms. Brower:

• Self 1 is the bad guy, the enemy;
• Self 2 is the good guy, the hero.

Which is too much of a black and white dichotomy for Brower and for me. All we have to do, it seems, is get rid of Self 1 and give Self 2 free reign. We will then flourish, bloom, become great. (Overstatement on purpose!) Brower asks the question:

...does Self 2 really have what it takes to learn the refined skills of playing a musical instrument or to perform a complex piece of music from memory? None of us is born with the innate ability to play a musical instrument, and in fact, it requires many years of training, and the development of very precise motor skills.

She goes on:

... I have found it helpful to recast the relationship between Self 1 and Self 2 in more positive terms that align it more closely both with Timothy Gallwey’s original conception and with what neuroscientists have since learned about the brain and nervous system. In The Inner Game of Tennis, Gallwey does not demonize Self 1, but rather encourages us to “improve the relationship” between Self 1 and Self 2. According to Gallwey, harmony [emphasis added] between Self 1 and Self 2 comes not when Self 1 disappears, but when Self 1 becomes quiet and focused, so that the “two selves are one.”

Without going into all the advances and insights in neuroscience that inform and affirm this let me simplify it very quickly.

Self 1 is seated in the thinking, decision-making part of the brain. It is hard at work doing its essential tasks when we are learning something. It is an essential part of the learning process. As we practice and repeat the new skills, the actions move deeper into the brain. We have heard people talk about "muscle memory", for example. This is when the less conscious and pre-conscious parts of the brain have taken over the activities. This is Self 2. When Self 1 begins to see that Self 2 knows what to do, Self 1 is free to learn the next thing. Hence we improve our skills, move on to more complex activities, etc.

Before putting this all together, let's go back again to Ms. Brower's thoughts:

Thus it appears that the “inner game” skills taught by Gallwey and Green—awareness, will, and trust—are skills to be learned by Self 1. It is Self 1 who must be aware and set goals, and who must learn to trust Self 2. If Self 1 cannot let go of self-judgment, driven by the need to win the approval of others, this can get in the way of performing the many other tasks that it needs to carry out.

In my own teaching, I encourage my students to think of Self 1 and Self 2, not as adversaries, but as collaborators working together in a spirit of cooperation. I help them sort out which tasks belong to Self 1 and which to Self 2, and help their two selves to work together to master the complex skills of playing a musical instrument.

How does this work, then. Here's an example:

Technique: Scales and Key Signatures

• We learn and practice up and down the scales. 
• We look at that key signature and use Self 1 to name what the flats and sharps are. 
• We then play that scale. In doing that we are learning the relationships between the different notes through hearing and seeing, at least at the beginning, the notes on the page. 
• We begin to learn consciously that this is the movement of our fingers, embouchure, air, etc. as we play this particular scale starting on whatever note we begin with.

Months and years later we are playing a piece written in that key. Self 1 pays attention, appropriately, to the key signature.  It tells Self 2, in essence, it's now in your hands. Experience has taught us that we know the key and how to play it. Self 2 takes over and does what is needed to play in that key.

Self 1 relaxes. However, it remains aware, mindful, ready to catch things like key changes, accidentals, particular rhythms, etc. Then Self 2 goofs. (We are, after all, human.) This is a new piece and as we were playing, Self 2 misses that F# or Eb of the key. Not a big deal. It is practice or rehearsal. So what do we do? Self 1 jumps back in and reminds us. We stop and circle that note. Self 1 is overriding the automatic mistake of Self 2. Self 2 is still in control. It is the driver. But Self 1 has become the navigator, as Brower describes it. The circle around the note becomes a navigation aid. Self 1 catches that and immediately sends the message through Self 2- play the sharp or flat.


The work of the brain and mind, Self 1 and Self 2, in tandem, each doing their appropriate tasks.

• Collaboration is at work- just as between ourselves and the other musicians in whatever group we are participating with. Now, though the collaboration is with ourselves! The three skills of the "inner game" are being utilized effectively.
• Awareness is at work- the mindfulness to what is happening around us in tone, style, etc.
• Will is at work- Self 1 has done its job setting goals and guiding the process to get where it is today.
• Trust is at work- or the collaboration wouldn't be happening. Self 1 knows Self 2 is competent. Fear is reduced allowing for harmony as the Hesse quote above notes.
• Harmony is the result- music is being made.

Circling around then we have the same concerns we have always had as well as the same answers. Not to be too cliched about it but it does boil down to

• practice and
• how we practice.

Simple.

40. Losing My Mojo- or- When Memories Get in the Way (An extra post)

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

39. Letting Go- A Reminder

The key to change... is to let go of fear.

-Rosanne Cash

Letting go means taking risks.
Letting go is taking action, not resisting
Controlling comes from fear - if I am not in charge, things will fall apart.

From Bill Ferguson's Mastery of Life:

Fear is a state of mind and is created by resisting a future event. For example, if you have a fear of losing someone, you are resisting the future event called, “losing the person.” The more you resist losing the person, the bigger your fear. The bigger your fear, the more you feel threatened. The more you feel threatened, the more you hang on and push the person away. By resisting the future event, you tend to make the fear come true.(How to let go and flow with life)

In a business organization book, Yes to the Mess, Frank J. Barrett relates being part of a jazz combo to successful business practices. Letting go is part of it:

Jazz musicians... often speak of letting go of deliberation and control. They employ deliberate, conscious attention in their practice, but at the moment when they are called upon to play, this conscious striving becomes an obstacle. Too much regulation and control restricts the emergence of fresh ideas. To get jazz right, musicians must surrender their conscious striving...

We're back to the practice room again. A natural place to start the process of letting go. We strive in practice and let go in performance. He is of course talking about improvising, but for most of us this letting go begins with any public performance.

In the words of saxophonist Ken Peplowski, "You carry along all the scales and all the chords you learned, and then you take an intuitive leap into the music. Once you take that leap, you forget all about those tools. You just sit back and let divine intervention take over."

I'm not sure about "divine intervention" in my trumpet playing. I'm not sure that God cares that much about what I play. My interpretation is that when I get in touch with the "spiritual" aspect of playing music, I can more easily let go and allow the music to flow.

But there is another aspect of all this letting go. Unless we are in a solo recital, we do not play alone in public performance. Whether it is a duo or trio, a combo or a wind band, our music has to fit into what the others are playing. Hence the statement I saw on Facebook one day:

Practice is to learn your part;
Rehearsal is to learn the other parts
and how your part fits in.

Wisdom.

But the letting go is really in the next step, the actual public performance. The time when nerves and stage fright, performance anxiety and just plain old "blanking out" takes over.

Here I have to make a confession: I have a very difficult time practicing what I preach when I get into a solo performance. I know I have talked about this before, but it has raised its ugly countenance again. I had some pieces down cold- in my practice room. I got to rehearsal psyched to play- and it was like I had never seen the piece before.

Damn!

Now, to be good to myself, I have made progress. I can play in the quintet and not get that fear. I can play in the concert band and, for the most part, allow my part to sing out. But the solos are still bugging me.

I do know that the techniques of letting go work. They have worked for me. I know from from experience that letting go can move me to new places. I also know that what Frank Barrett talks about above are the problems:

• Striving-
    which means working hard instead of relaxing
• Regulation and control-
  wanting to remain in charge and not trust the flow of the music
• Tense muscles-
  caused by the inner tension and growing unceretainty
• Shallow breathing-
  when we are tense we don't take the time to deeply breathe. We react and the fear cycle of fight or flight kicks in.
• Losing attention-
  and then we are in full time crisis mode.

I have talked about all these things in the past. But they bear repeating and relearning. The need to "Let Go" at those moments is essential. Taking a deep breath, realigning yourself (easier to do if you're not in the middle of a solo!), focus on what is in front of you.

This is simple. I wish it were as easy!

With time, it may be.

From the movie Frozen:

It's time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through
No right, no wrong, no rules for me I'm free!

Let it go, let it go
I am one with the wind and sky
Let it go, let it go
You'll never see me cry!

Here I stand
And here I'll stay
Let the storm rage on!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~               ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Sidenote: I know when all this started for me and I'm going to tell that story in a Tuning Slide extra next Monday. By telling the story I may be able to do some exorcising of that demon instead of continually exercising it.)

38. Logic vs. Emotions

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

― Leo Tolstoy

Yeah, but what did Tolstoy know? The music that is arguably the most amazing in western history is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach- and it is some of the most logical music ever written. Mathematically precise; ordered in almost uncanny exactness. No wonder that when Wendy Carlos (under her birth name of Walter Carlos) wanted to show the amazing use of the Moog Synthesizer, she used the music of Bach. (Switched on Bach. 1968.) There should be no emotion in a computer-generated song; no human input to play it other than the 1s and 0s of computer/digital coding.

Yet it was an amazing album that touched people deeply, and not just because of the newness and uniqueness of it. For many of us who first heard it in 1968, the album, for example, captured the emotion of Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring with amazing clarity.

Logic will get you from A to B.
Imagination will take you everywhere.
- Albert Einstein

As much as mathematical precision, Bach also used imagination that allowed him to place layer upon layer of things never before seen or heard. The imagination of Wendy Carlos added another layer which grabbed us like nothing ever seen or heard before. Yet it was all there in Bach's logic combined with his musical imagination.

Then we have Miles Davis on Kind of Blue or John Coltrane on A Love Supreme. At one moment their solos can sound as precise as Bach's mathematical journeys. The next moment, then, is filled with an emotion that sweeps in and takes over, surrounding us with things that are like nothing ever seen or heard before. All of us who work with music from the rank amateur to the amazing heights of Davis or Coltrane know that everything they do is based on all the logical manipulations of music theory. They may twist those theories and make up a few new ones of their own, but they are acutely aware of the logic behind what they are doing.

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade.

It makes the hand bleed that uses it.

- Rabindranath Tagore

It is no doubt obvious where I am going with this. We are not dealing with an either/or situation when we deal with logic and emotion. It must be a both/and for it to go beyond just the notes on the page or in our heads. In human thinking it used to be that we believed that if only we humans would be "logical," then we would always make the right decisions. When faced with choices, we should be able to use the coolness and precision of logic to make the good choices.

Without going into all the details, science, medicine, and psychology were all shocked when this proved to be an incorrect theory. There were examples where a person, through an injury or surgery, lost the ability to connect emotions to decision making. All their decisions were based on good old-fashioned rational thinking. "Just the facts!" The old theory would say that their decisions post-trauma should have been better decisions- emotions weren't in the picture.

That is not what happened. In essence, they actually lost some of the critical ability to make any decisions in the first place. Neuroscience had to be rewritten. Cold, impersonal logic does not make good decisions alone. To disconnect emotion is to take away what makes us human- and what makes human decision-making human in the first place.

Which is why I think music has played such an essential and foundational role in human culture and development. Daniel Levitan, neuroscientist, session musician, sound engineer, and record producer, captured this idea in his two seminal works, This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession and The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature. Somewhere in our brain, music, I think, brings together emotion and logic in ways very few things do.

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words
and that which cannot remain silent.
― Victor Hugo

So, let's get back to you and me and how this is important to us. Actually, in some ways it is another way of reminding us of things already discussed and beginning to put them into a "logical", effective, and helpful place.For example, we have talked about being able to be aware of, and able to share, "your story" in your music. How do you know your story? By your feelings, among other things, and then applying logic and thinking to it. We discussed the importance of the "groove" in music. Well, first we have to have the "logical" ability to play the notes correctly. Then we add the feeling, the emotion we are sensing in the notes. That becomes the groove.

That's why we practice. First to find the notes- the specifics of this song in this place. Then we find the groove- the story, the emotions, the nuances. These are built on the logic of knowing the fundamentals as well as how we are feeling. We may be able to play a piece with clockwork precision, but does it "feel?" It is in the feeling that we connect with the music.

Am I just repeating the same thing over and over, driving it into the ground until you say, "Enough already! We get it."? Perhaps, but I have found over the past year that I forget these things on a regular basis. I get bogged down in the notes on the page or the dynamic markings. I forget to listen to the music as I am playing it in my practice room. I rush through the notes instead of listening to them; I try to get the piece down cold in one or two attempts; I don't savor the world found in each note. Or, in performance, I can ignore the other musicians I am playing with. Sometimes I get so emotionally involved in a song that, without me realizing it I get sloppy and the technique can get lost.

I have to be constantly reminded of the interaction of logic and emotion- unless the emotion I want to drag out of the horn, myself, or the listener is disgust. It is in the balance of our logic and emotion that practice turns into performance, that we discover how a particular song can express our own story.

We will look a little more at this in another post in a few weeks on some ways to work with the Inner Game in new ways. For now, don't let your logic close out your emotions- or your feelings dismiss logic. Together they make quite a duet.

37. The Reality of Dreams

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,
and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined,
he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

-Henry David Thoreau

A month or so ago I came across a group of people going door-to-door for some cause or other. I was polite and said, "Hello. How are things going?" The answer was a kind of sarcastic, almost fatalistic, "Living the dream!"

Huh? I just went on my way- as did they.

A couple days ago I was talking to a fellow trumpet player who asked about my involvement in groups and my regular routine. After telling him he responded, "Well, that is being a musician full-time."

I smiled and said that this has been a dream of mine for years- to be a "full-time musician. Finally, with semi-retirement, I'm doing it."

When I stop and think about that statement I am still taken aback. What right does a 67-year old retired pastor and semi-retired counselor have to think he can be a "full-time musician?" Even though I don't need to do it to make a living, is it realistic? Isn't it naïve to think it is possible or should even be worth doing?

One of the quotes I wrote down at the end of trumpet camp last summer was:

The reality of dreams comes from naive ideas.

Simply put, even to think some of our dreams are possible is an act of naive belief. As usual, I like to look at definitions and found these two for naive:

• showing a lack of experience, wisdom, or judgment.
• natural and unaffected; innocent.

Most times when we dream of things we would like to do or become there is a definite lack of experience. It is naive in that we don't know what it means or even how to get there. It sounds impossible. We may be told, "Get real!"

A lack of experience, wisdom and judgment, however, can easily lead to the second definition- innocent. Many dreams have a simple, joyful aspect to them. They are based on innocent belief that this might just very well be possible. It can be found in that age-old question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I once wanted to be an astronaut. But it wasn't a dream. Just a sense of adventure. I also dreamed of being a youth worker, a counselor, a preacher, a radio announcer and a TV host/producer.

I have been ALL of these at times in the past 50 years. I found ways to make all those naive dreams into reality.

I have also dreamed of being a musician. I never let go of that one. Things often got in the way- like earning a living, time commitments, etc. But I never let the trumpet go. Whenever and however I could, I found ways to keep playing, however sporadic or mediocre it was at times.

The subject is dreams and believing in them as possible. This is all about the reality of dreams beginning in naive innocence and growing into existence.

When researching this week's post I came across a blog by Joey Tartell, an Associate Professor of Trumpet and the Director of Undergraduate Studies at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. In a post titled "Belief" he had this to say:

Last week, in a lesson, I told a student that I knew she could play the piece in question great. But the look I got back from her reminded me of the second hardest part of teaching:

There are times where the teacher has more belief in the student than the student has in her/himself....

Which brings me back to belief. It’s a very difficult concept to teach. Try this: picture a player that you admire. Now you need to know that that player was once a beginner. That player was not born playing at a world class level. That player had to learn fundamentals and music just like everyone else. And on the first day of playing did not sound like a professional. So if that player can do it, why not you?

Belief in oneself is at the heart of turning dreams into reality.Belief is based on your dreams and the reality those dreams represent. Belief is based on what you think you are able to accomplish, what your skills are and, just as importantly, what your skills can develop into!

Back when I was talking about the Inner Game of Music I wrote the following:

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.

That is belief and it is basic to overcoming the inner barriers we place in our own way. Such trust and belief is what we build as we practice, develop helpful and healthy routines, begin to develop our skills into new levels of experience and even expertise. This is where those routines and experiences, the people we hang around with, the story we discover in ourselves and the song we sing come together. In our dreams and the belief we can live them.

Joey Tartell concludes his post:

So here’s what I need for you to do:

• Dream big. Think of what you want to do, not what you’d settle for.
• Realize that someone gets to do that, so it could be you.
• Get working, because it’s unlikely anyone is just going to hand it to you. You need to earn it.

But most importantly, believe in the possibility. Like most things, this becomes a logic problem for me. So follow me here:

• If you don’t believe, your chances of success are virtually zero.
• If you believe, your chances are now higher than zero just based on the acceptance of the possibility of success.

Link- Belief to Dreams

By the way: This year's Shell Lake Trumpet Camp is less than three months away. Hope to see many of you there. Link.