34. Who Do You Hang With?

I want to be around people that do things. 

I don’t want to be around people anymore that judge 

or talk about what people do. 

I want to be around people that dream 

and support and do things.

― Amy Poehler

Let's be honest- trumpet players have a reputation. (Undeserved, I think. Well, maybe.... Okay, it's complicated.) The old joke:

How does one trumpet player greet another trumpet player?
Hi. I'm better than you.

The implication is very clear. Trumpet players think highly of themselves and believe that any other trumpet player they meet is obviously inferior to them. We might make an exception if we are meeting the first chair of the Chicago Symphony, Doc Severinsen, or the faculty at Shell Lake Trumpet Camp. That's our reputation- and at times- our attitude. I could go into some detail on that, but I will leave that to another week.

The problem with having that attitude is, as you might guess, that we always think we are surrounded by inferior musicians. If we are, each of us, the best around us, that means we have nothing to learn, nowhere to grow, and can become pretty damn obnoxious to be around.

Yes, there are players like that, and they aren't all trumpet players. But overall, my experience has often been that we are often more willing to be in a learning position as in a superior position. Learning takes humility which can be defined as "a willingness to learn." That does not mean that we take an inferior position any more than it means taking a superior position. It means that we enter into each other's musical presence with openness to what we have to learn- as well as share.

One of the quotable lines from Trumpet Camp last summer brought all this to mind:

Surround yourself with people who are better than you are.

I realized that this statement is as much about attitude as it is about musical ability. If you are the first chair in the top group at your school or in your community, chances are that you are a pretty good musician. It may very well be that overall you might be better than the other people in your section. But the attitude that could come with that can be downright destructive to the group making good music.

And it could get in the way of you discovering new ways of making music yourself.

If any of us project the kind of attitude that says "I'm the best!" the others will wonder what good they are to the group. If that obnoxious first chair looms over the proceedings like the great judge of the universe- I for example will hold back, play more timidly, see my part as a "small" part. Many of us have heard the comeback to that- there are no small parts, only small players. A "superior" musician among us, though, can make us feel "small." The section will never produce good music if that is the case.

In reality, thankfully, these type of trumpet players are few and far between. Oh, admittedly it might not seem that way at first when you hear them play or watch them in action. It is intimidating to many of us to play in a section, especially next to, one of these top quality players.  But once we get to know them, my experience has almost always been one of openness to assist me in growing. It's not about the other trumpet player's attitude- it's about mine! With that attitude on our part we can discover that this otherwise superior musician is weak in a certain area. They minimize the things they are not as proficient at and maximize the things they are good at.

That I can learn from!

When the better player is open to sharing and accepting a role as a leader, which they often are(!), the whole section gets better. I appreciate the section leader who suggests I take a lead that will push me. It says the leader believes I can do it. I will work harder in the group when the section leader gives us all the "Thumbs Up!" after the concert and says we did well because any of us could have played the lead- and played our parts appropriately.

For those who are at least arguably the best player in their section, to take that to heart as grandiosity will get in the way of your ability as well. You will get easily bored and move on if no one else around you has anything to teach you. You can become a prima donna- a very temperamental person with an inflated view of their own talent or importance.You will become a point of dissension in your group. You, even as good as you are, could very well contribute to your section or group being less musical.

It is interesting that so often across these months of writing this blog I have moved away from technical musical learning. I have often moved to more general ideas that, applied specifically to trumpet playing can have significant impact. One of these, over and over is summed up in "attitude." And attitudes are choices. We can be educated into good or bad attitudes; we can make certain attitudes habits. We all know the perpetual "wet blanket" who never does anything but whine. We also know the cheerleader type who is always up and perky.

These, and all attitudes in-between, will color how we see the world. There's nothing new in saying this. The wisdom is as old as humans who began observing their neighbors' behavior. They then decided they liked being around people with certain behaviors and stayed away from those who others. Or we discover that we may gravitate to those with the same attitude, you know, misery loves company, other people who are as miserable as you are and love to complain about it.

That can be more than just difficult. It can be downright unhealthy and keep us stuck.

Great minds discuss ideas;
average minds discuss events;
small minds discuss people.
-Eleanor Roosevelt

One more thought came to mind. What if you are the best player around? What if there is no one you can easily get together with that is better than you? I can think of a couple of options.

• Find a teacher in some nearby community who might be willing to take you on as a student. It might not be able to be done weekly, but set up a schedule
• Gather other musicians who would be willing to "jam" or even become a group and push each other. Don't be the "leader". Be just another group member as you seek to blend in with the whole group. Dream with them, have common visions, don't be satisfied for the "good" which is almost always the enemy of both the "better" and the "best" you can be.
• Find camps, workshops, jam sessions, that you can attend.
• Listen, listen, and then listen more to great recordings. All types of recordings. Watch videos online or on the various media. Find lessons online that may be in an area that you are less proficient. 
• Go back to the first item and do it again.

It's not always convenient or easy, but if we are committed to being quality musicians, no matter the level of our ability (!!!), we will find the ways.

24. Assimilate - Practice, Practice, Practice

We are what we repeatedly do. 

Excellence, then, is not an act, 

but a habit. 

—Aristotle 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 This is not an easy step to complete.

Yeah- I know.

So what now?

You are what you practice most. 

---Richard Carlson

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

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

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

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

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

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

23. Observe and Imitate

Try to find the best teachers,

listen to the finest playing, and

try to emulate that.

Be true to the music.

-- Wynton Marsalis

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

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

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

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

Imitation, Assimilation, Innovation.

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

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

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

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

Learning to hear. Paying attention.

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

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

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

The first skill is:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8. Efficiency and Planning Practice

Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.

― Plato, The Republic

 
Let me start with a confession… Sometimes we write about things that we aren’t doing in order to make ourselves research and then, if the stars align correctly and the rivers don’t flood, we may actually try what we are talking about.  In other words, I am, not good at this week’s topic:

Efficiency and planning in practice.

I never have been. I don’t believe I am alone. Most of us play instruments because we want to play music. Long tones, then playing scales or chromatics and endless lip slurs begins to sound boring. At best. So we collect song books, method books, lesson books, etudes, etc. in the vain hope that the more we have to choose from the more likely we will be to actually play them.

Sure we have Arban’s, Clarke AND Schlossberg. We may even have tried to put together some routine out of them. We are good for a while and then get sidetracked by any one of a number of things.

At Trumpet Camp in August we all received a handout that had the start of a decent daily routine. I added some Arban’s and Schlossberg to is and soon was in the groove of regular practice. With the exception of a period in September when circumstances were beyond my control, I have been doing quite well.

The result is as expected. My range, tone, style, technique, and endurance have almost skyrocketed. But the efficiency is beginning to wane. I am now finding myself being distracted as I am playing long tones or missing fingering on chromatics that we all have played for years.

In other words, I may be playing my trumpet, but I am not practicing as efficiently as I did in mid-August. Some days I do slurs, other days sight-reading. One day I will work through scale exercises and the next play rhythm challenges. Am I getting better? Sure. My embouchure is improving and my tone is the best it’s probably ever been. But I’m just kind of wandering around the practice. I am only now beginning to ask, “What is it I need to be working on?”

So I went surfing and Googling on the Web to see what’s out there. Let me start with a list from Wynton. (Do I need to give his last name?)

THE WYNTON MARSALIS 12 RULES OF EFFECTIVE PRACTICE:

1. Seek out the best private instruction you can afford.

2. Write/work out a regular practice schedule.

3. Set realistic goals.

4. Concentrate when practicing

5. Relax and practice slowly

6. Practice what you can't play. - (The hard parts.)

7. Always play with maximum expression.

8. Don't be too hard on yourself.

9. Don't show off.

10. Think for yourself. - (Don't rely on methods.)

11. Be optimistic. - "Music washes away the dust of everyday life."

12. Look for connections between your music and other things.

-Link

What then, to look at the top of Wynton’s list, should go on my list? What should my schedule look like? What do I need to develop?

Here’s a place to start on schedule and planning as found on The Trumpet Studio:

What is Skill Building?

Begin working on a particular skill (tonguing, scales, range) in simple, attainable steps, then increasing the difficulty SLIGHTLY. Practicing that level for many repetitions UNTIL MASTERED, then increasing the difficulty. It may take hours, days or weeks to MASTER a particular level. Mastery is obtained when you can play a particular passage or selection 10-15 times at the given metronome marking with no mistakes.

-Link

It is clear that this doesn’t happen overnight. On the Trumpet Studio the plan to move from single to double-tounguing mastery can probably take up to 6 months moving across all the scales. That picks up on Wynton’s #5- practice slowly, which can also expand into "Practice patiently."

What are my realistic goals? What are the essentials of becoming a more efficient and capable trumpet player? I need to look at what I can already do and see where the growth needs to happen. A year ago I decided to work hard at sight-reading, one of my poorer skills. I got the Getchell 2nd Book of Practical Studies and just started working through it. (No, I wasn’t very organized at it. I just kept playing the next exercise until I reached the end.) Did it work? Yep. Could it have worked better if I hadn’t been impatient? Yep. Am I happy with where it took me? Yep. Could I continue to do better? You bet.

But that “better” will be more than just sight-reading. It will be in technique as I learn to play the dynamics and tone of the song. But the days I work too much on that, I don’t do scales or slurs. There’s always a trade-off. That brings me back to the scheduling and deciding what my goals are to be. Which takes me to #1 on the list- an instructor/teacher. Yes, I have had them. But I have not been able to use them as effectively as possible.

See how it gets complicated and how someone like me who is not Mr. Organization can get turned off to practicing and end up getting nowhere?

Let me challenge you and me, then, to begin to make a list of the goals we want to achieve in the next few months. Let’s talk to our instructors about ways to move forward. Agree to a schedule but don’t be so rigid that you get angry if you miss it by a day or even hour.

This is supposed to be fun.

And make sure you take time to play music. After all, that’s why we practice.

Which, as I have said before, is a lot like life. And as ever, more to come as these continue to develop.

6. Hear the Inner Music

Music is the language of the spirit.

It opens the secret of life bringing peace,

abolishing strife.

― Kahlil Gibran

More than once on this blog you will find me writing about the "Inner Game." This is based originally on the work of Timothy Gallwey's 1972 classic, The Inner Game of Tennis.

Where I want to start in this post is to talk about what is there, inside, where we do the work of the Inner Game. What we find there, I am convinced is the soul, the spirit, that we all have in common but which is expressed in unique ways in each of us. In the midst of that spirit is music, the language of the soul. A large part of what a musician does is get in touch with that inner language and then use the tools of the Inner Game to move that language outward.

We can easily lose this when we think about the music too much. If we try to read it, analyze it, dissect it as if it were a science experiment, we won't hear the music.

When we begin music it is like learning any language. Whether it was as infants picking up our native tongue or learning a second- or third-language as we got older, we start first with listening and then the basics of the language- notes, time, etc.

Surprisingly (or not) with the language of music it is actually a short jump from "This is a note." to "This is a measure." and on to phrases, songs, and beyond. I watched an instructor take a complete non-trumpet player from nothing to playing a simple song in less than 30 minutes. That included learning how to make the sound.

I'm not going into detail on that at this time, but it was fun to watch. The volunteer was doing this in front of a room full of trumpet players and was somewhat nervous. But in the end it worked. And we all learned something.

One of the things that I think makes this happen is simply that there is music within us. Our minds, bodies, spirits all respond to music in one way or another. We have an inner rhythm (our heartbeat, for instance) and an awareness of the music around us.

The fact is that at any level of playing music, we have to, in one way or another, hear the inner music. With some songs it is easier than others. There is a hook, or phrase that gets our attention. A local composer has written a few marches for our community band. One run through and I found myself humming the tune. I don't know what it is, but he has a way to connect with my inner music, and I guess the inner music of others.

Then as you work on a musical piece you can be freed to move within the music and no longer be an observer of it. That's the part of the inner music- singing it to yourself, reading it as music, not notes on a staff. The desire to "figure it out" through logic or tricks doesn't allow the music to flow.

We aren't used to learning music through the inner music. Brandyn said to me:

If you think about the next passage instead of just hearing it you'll create obstacles and that's bad. Just keeping that mindset of singing everything and letting go of everything else is by far the hardest thing and most unfamiliar thing for me to work on.

But when we learn how to do it, it will amaze us. The music we will be able to make will increase drastically each time.

That is where we will look in later periodic posts at the inner game of music. How do we free up this inner music? How does part of us (called Self 1) keep us from doing it and how can we free Self 2 to allow it to happen? It works in all of our lives. The result is musical.