The Excerpt Hat and Other Magic Tricks

I have devised a fun, new element to add to my daily practice. I wrote down all of the excerpts I'm working on/want to keep fresh on little slips of paper. I didn't count, but looking back I'd estimate around 25. Well, my original idea was to put them in a hat, but I didn't have a proper hat in the reed room (even though there is actually a box of hats in there, but no suitable hats for pulling rabbits out of). Instead, I folded the slips of paper and put them in one of the wine glasses from that time we played the Schwantner in orchestra. Uh, the piece involved the oboists playing pitched wine glasses, you know, filling them with a certain amount of water and then gliding a finger around the rim to make squealy ringy noises.

Okay, back to the magic excerpt hat. Er, wine glass. Magic Excerpt Wine Glass. The plan is that every time I sit down to a new practice session to pick a slip of paper, solfege the excerpt first, then give myself one chance to play it really well. And then move on. If I'm unhappy, I can practice it later of course, but part of the exercise is to really ask myself to play it well straight away, not allowing myself to practice hard bits first or play with a metronome first. Allllsooo, if anyone walks into the reed room or knocks on the door, I will ask them to pick an excerpt from the Magic Excerpt Wine Glass and then perform it for him or her.

You know what that means. If you're a Blair student, you should knock on the door if you're passing by and ask me for an excerpt!!! It'll only take 3 minutes or less, and if you have to run, you don't have to stay and listen! I may put a sign on the door inviting passersby in...

So another big thing I've been thinking about - particularly with all the exercises we do in musicianship, but also really with everything I enjoy doing - reading, practicing, etcetera - what it was/would have been like to do those things as a child. I dwell on this mostly because of how frustrating many of the exercises in musicianship are. It's already frustrating when I have a hard time getting the hang of something, but it is aggravated by my knowledge that if I were 3 or 5 or 6 and doing the same thing, it would be no effort at all to become fluent in the same concepts on the same level. I don't remember anything ever being difficult for me as a little kid. I either chose to learn something or I chose not to. For the longest time, I thought learning how tell time was really dumb and useless, and so refused to learn how. Same for learning how to read music...clearly got over that at some point.

Funny how one of those things that I refused to learn, I think, is standing way in the way of getting back to the me who refused to learn it: time. Wanting to get back to a mode of learning that is nothing but sheer fun, I have been asking myself what the differences are between how I approach things now and how I approached things then. Maybe these differences seem obvious to you, dear readers, but addressing it has really illuminated much in my own mind.

Childhood learning is pure play. It's characterized by a complete absorption in the moment and the task at hand with full value placed solely on doing for the sake of what is being done, as opposed to for the sake of achieving a long term goal or satisfying a requirement. There is no sense of (here are some extreme examples) "if I can't play this excerpt perfectly, I'll never get a job" or "it's so embarrassing that I've been in music school for four years and can't read this rhythm correctly the first time" or "i've got to read this book by tomorrow for philosophy class, i need to know the terms right now, i'll think about them later" or "i don't have time to practice (spends half hour of practicing thinking about the looming philosophy paper)."

Basically, in all the memories I have of myself learning as a child, I had no inner talking. No self-conscious criticism. The learning is done purely for the self, not for a teacher, a grade, acceptance into a conservatory, or to get a job. I'm not saying we are always thinking this way or only thinking this way. Actually, I'm not saying anything about "we" at all. Just talking from my own experience. I certainly do things I love for myself, but they are always colored by the ten million other things I am conscious of having to get done or the reasons why I have to be doing this specific thing now and what I'm doing it for. Even sometimes when I read for fun it seems that I'm doing it more because of the idea that I like reading more than I am actually enjoying the reading at hand in the moment.

As a child, I played, and accidentally learned while doing so. I remember reading, making a big chart of the multiplication tables and finding patterns, playing drawing games with my mom, writing stories, all without any regard for it "being good for me" or "making me smarter" or "making my future better." When I learned to read, it was practically an accident. Zero awareness of needing to learn how to read in order to be accepted as intelligent in the culture I was born in, or needing to learn how to read so that some day I could get into college. It was just something fun that I was doing. And with that kind of approach, I learned to read, which is now, I feel it is safe to say, my strongest skill out of every learned skill I have.

I don't know exactly how to communicate what I'm trying to say. I don't mean for it to seem like I'm always doing tasks as a mercenary for something or someone else. But in comparison to what it was like to be a child, I am. I feel like most people probably do in some capacity.

So my new goal is to approach everything as a child. To think of it as play. Ideally, before I start something is the only time when I will be planning ahead, thinking how much time I am allowing myself to play at whatever it is I'm doing (rhythm exercises, Bach, oboe, reeds, whatever). But after that, total engagement with the task at hand. No worries if I spend the entire half hour on one exercise or one excerpt. If I'm having fun...I don't care. Because if I'm having fun, the learning will be quality. Because I have sufficient wisdom to practice effectively. It's the times when I don't want to be in the practice room that I waste time notching up the metronome and practicing scales mindlessly. If I'm having fun, it takes a quarter of the time to get my scales fast and clean like I want them. I know this from experience. I'll have gotten WAY more out of having fun playing one excerpt for a half hour than from unhappily and trudgingly spending three hours running through the hour and a half of solo rep I'm working on.

So the basic train of thought is as follows: I have fun when I'm practicing effectively. So if I think about practicing (and everything else!) as all fun and games, I'll learn more effectively from my practicing. I don't mean that one necessarily follows the other. Effectiveness and fun are co-constitutive aspects of genuine adult learning.

Okay, I'm babbling on and on and on and NOBODY is reading anymore, I'm sure. Except my parents probably. Hi mom. Anyway, none of this probably made any sense, and I'm sure I left out some key explanations or points, but writing it has certainly helped me understand what I've been thinking about recently. Aaaaand I had fun writing this entry, so THERE. I win.