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.

Meditation on Intonation

Scale degree 7 is not a leading tone.

Scale degree 7 is the third of the dominant chord.

Scale degree 7 is not a leading tone.

Scale degree 7 is the third of the dominant chord.

Scale degree 7 is not a leading tone.

Scale degree 7 is the third of the dominant chord.

Maybe if I repeat this to myself over and over between now and 8pm, my fa sharps will be in tune during the concert tonight.

Why are there ants all over my computer for the third time this summer? I don't understand.

So, topic for today, topic for this week, and for the rest of my life and yours: intonation. I'm struggling, and I suspect it is because I care too much and consequently am trying to control too much. That is, self 1 is trying to control too much and not allowing self 2 to do its thing, if I may use some Inner Game language.

I am going to make a list of things I know are true, but somehow when I play, I am prevented from trusting these truisms by the lack of trust I have in myself:

-There is a place on the reed where if I am using proper support and air speed, all my notes will be placed exactly where I want them to be.

-I know where I want every note to be. I know that I know this because I can sing them over a drone in tune. And when I sing a note over the drone and then immediately play it, it is immediately or very quickly, exactly where I just sang it and in tune.

-Scale degree 7 is not a leading tone. Scale degree seven is the third of the dominant chord.

-This does NOT mean it is a lowered third. Because that would imply that it is lowered relative to some arbitrary pitch value governed by a universal fudge factor. It means that scale degree 7 is a pure third above the dominant. Which means I will NOT think of trying to play "flat" every time I see an F# tonight. This means that I will simply match the third in the overtone series of re.

-Hiding my sound will not make me seem more in tune. Actually, it will make me sound more out of tune. Particularly, biting the reed will not hide my sound or my intonation. It will make my pitch obscenely sharp.

-If I keep an embouchure that is equally open and cushiony for all the intervals while voicing the correct pitch, I will play in tune.

-I will play ALWAYS on a G on the reed. This does not change across the range of the instrument. There are no high notes on the Baroque oboe. The Ab-Bb-C-Db exercise is for the modern oboe only. Forgettabout it right now.

Now, I know there's the right way to play the oboe where things are in tune, and I know that I know where things should be. At the same time though, I just found this spot today in my adventure with drones. The lips on the reed and the cavity of the mouth and the sympathetic resonance (that's a Gonzaloism) all have to be exactly right for the fa sharp in particular to be just so, and my body and mind are not trained to always find that spot right away on Baroque oboe yet. Gonzalo has told me over and over to be patient, fa sharp is the last note I will feel like I have conquered. I mean, for goodness' sakes, there are five fingerings for the lower octave fa sharp and seven fingerings for the upper fa sharp. I have been playing Baroque oboe for a month, and I am playing on reeds completely made by myself, literally zero adjustments by Gonzalo or anyone else. These are not excuses, and thinking these things over is not making excuses, and I should not beat myself over the head for "making excuses" if I think these things. It's placing myself as firmly as I can in reality so that I maintain a good relationship with my coach and my coach continues to help me and stay out of the way when it needs to.

Of course it's going to be frustrating that my conductors and chamber coaches keep telling me certain notes are sharp or flat when I know they are sharp or flat. It's embarrassing to think that perhaps the coaches and conductors think I can't hear that this or that note is out of tune, because I can hear it (which makes it feel much worse). The problem is, I hear it after I play it. I need to hear it before I play it.

But observing. Nonjudgementally. Observing nonjudgmentally when a note is sharp or flat is what I need to be attending to. And not worrying about what the coaches or conductors are thinking is the problem. And I shall.

So much of this is the mindset. There's nothing to be afraid of. There is literally no reason to be anxious about playing out of tune or rushing such and such a spot. Today in chamber rehearsal, people (including myself) kept making remarks to that degree - "I'm worried I am going to rush this spot" etcetera. Finally I said something about it - that if we know how we want to play it, there is no reason to hypothesize about what could go wrong. Someone else said that it wasn't so much fear as professional concern. I mean, I know what she meant, and she's right to the extent that we do need to be involved (duh). But since the word "concern" can have two meanings, and one of those meanings is emotionally charged, I don't entirely approve of the terminology. I know that's awfully picky, but this is important to me in my own quest for mental discipline right now, to think about these things in just the right way so that I fully comprehend them, and when I'm teaching in the future, I want to communicate my personal philosophy about performing in the clearest, most concise way possible. "Engaged" or perhaps "highly conscious" or "highly aware" works a lot better for me than "concerned." Instead of "I'm worried we are going to rush here, let's run this spot and try not to rush," I think the better approach is, "Let's be extra conscious of the tempo and pulse here, we want it to be precise and energetic." There's no negative emotion or positive emotion in this latter approach, merely a statement of the goal and a call to notice how that goal might be better achieved. Chances are, that spot will be in tempo next time and not rush. If it does rush, this can be stated without a value judgement.

I only make such a big deal out of this because the extent to which I have engaged in this type of thinking is the extent to which I have improved both my musicianship and my emotional health, particularly over the past year. The discipline that I lack in this area (as evidenced by my recent freak out moments/rehearsals about intonation) leads to physical tension and a worsening of the problem.

After I said the bit in rehearsal today about not being "afraid" of anything, I suddenly played 300% more in tune. Surprise surprise.

Yesterday's Post (I didn't have internet)

Well, no internet yet tonight, so I won’t be posting this until tomorrow at least.

So I have arrived in Boston! Specifically, Cambridge. I’m here for the International Baroque Institute at Longy (aka IBIL) for the next week.

After orientation, we met in sections. Gonzalo handed me a French sonata and said, “Here, you can play this in masterclass tomorrow.” This was at 9pm. And there are only three of us, so the slots of time are pretty big – meaning, more than one movement. Meaning, he and I are expecting me to have the entire thing learned by 9am tomorrow.

So! Perfect study in Learning Music Quickly, a point of extreme interest for this blog. So I can’t resist writing about what I’ve done so far tonight, even though I really need to get to bed (if I wake up at 6, I can be practicing by 7:30…).

I practiced a lot yesterday, so it was actually a very good thing that pre-orientation I had only practiced about an hour, because by the end of the second hour, my chops were a little eeeh and I was biting a little (eeeeeh). Probably more than a little. (That’s bad, if you don’t play oboe and don’t know what I’m talking about.) So that second hour started at 9:15ish, when the oboe meeting was over and I was left standing in the room with this sonata by Andre Cheron. Immediate fight or flight response (choosing fight of course) was to dive irresponsibly straight into trying to play the music at tempo with all the ornaments. Dumb of course. But I was saved actually, by the harpsichord maintenance team, or whoever they were, who came in after about five minutes to put together a harpsichord in that room, and I moved rooms. It was enough time to clear my head and say to myself, “Here’s an opportunity to learn something quickly the correct way, so take it.” Luckily, there was a fully functional (but radically out of tune, alas) harpsichord in this new room (much easier than playing a half step lower than you are singing solfege on the piano).

So I sang through movement by movement, and in logical chunks, I’d go through the rhythm, sing it (using the piano to check intervals I wasn’t totally sure of, but surprise, I wasn’t ever off, I don’t think), and then attempt to play it. I made it through the entire piece like this, leaving off the ornaments, and on the fast movements often playing something slowly once and then speeding it up. Then I started to go back to the beginning and work on first shaping the phrase the way I wanted it (still starting with singing the solfege until it sounded the way I wanted, then playing it), and then adding in some ornaments. But I didn’t even make it past the first half of the first page when the security guard came in and told me the practice rooms were closing.

It was 10pm. What? What kind of practice rooms close at 10pm??? I take Blair for granted, I guess.

So I came back to the dorm (about a ten minute walk, I was impressed that I can already navigate around here, haven’t gotten lost yet. Well, the first time I set foot in the town doesn’t count, but I’m just saying that every time I’ve had a general idea of where I wanted to go after that, I haven’t been lost). I went through each movement all the way through, two times each for just singing rhythm without the ornaments (including the inegalite, which I sure hope I am using appropriately, probably not). After that, I spoke solfege in rhythm, without ornaments. The solfege is really important for getting the groupings and the phrasings just right – things suddenly make sense, which they don’t do if I just start playing on the instrument and barrel through, trying to get the right notes. So then I spoke through with ornaments, which is a bit more of a challenge. That’s the hard part. It is particularly challenging because it is a matter of both getting the rhetoric correct and getting the fingers to be extremely graceful and not blurble or slam down or wind a note at the end of a gesture because it is a cross fingering, and it might not come out…or something.

So hopefully this will all pay off tomorrow, and I won’t be so dead tired that I can’t function. I woke up at 4:45 this morning to head to the airport. Had some rough sleep on the plane (but long sleep, almost the entire three hour flight, surprising for me) and then napped when I got here for about two hours. We shall see. Luckily, there’s a Starbucks across the street.

Oh yes, the other thing I have been meaning to write about. So yesterday I was watching America’s Next Top Model. You laugh, but this is very relevant! (I was also practicing Baroque oboe at the same time, which might not have been entirely healthy, but we can discuss that later…). So (cycle 16, if you’re interested) one of the first challenges for the girls was with a prominent acting coach. The challenge was basically, to face the “inner critic.” When I heard this, I had to laugh because this is such a familiar concept to us musicians (at least us musicians at Blair and us musicians who have read Inner Game of Tennis and probably everyone else). In The Inner Game of Tennis, the author talks about Self 1 and Self 2, Self 1 being the voice that rambles on and on, trying to control everything and getting in the way of the performance (tennis, music, anything really). Professor Ploger’s name for it is the “coach,” that is, pretty much the same thing – the berating voice that is the biggest obstacle for any performer.

In the past year, while I was practicing at school, I had been focusing on building a better relationship with my coach. We were really on bad terms, and I hadn’t even been noticing how mean my inner coach was being to me, how much it was affecting not only my playing, but my overall happiness. I spent a lot of time, particularly first semester, both paying attention in order to notice my coach’s negativity, and literally having conversations (mostly in my head, sometimes out loud, don’t institutionalize me haha) with my coach. I was forgiving, made offerings of friendship, was gentle. In years before, when trying to deal with the negative voice, the (inappropriate) response I gave was always equally negative; I knew thinking these things were not doing me any good, but I didn’t know how to fix it – “Don’t be stupid, why are you thinking like that? If you think like that, you’re never going to be any good. Now play it right this time and stop beating yourself up.” Ironically of course, just another form of beating myself up.

But the gentler, patient approach worked really, really well. I’d say my coach and I have an excellent relationship now. Except sometimes the coach is lazy. Well, okay, a lot of times the coach is lazy. So that’s my challenge now, and particularly for the next year – I’ve gotten the coach to stop hurting me, but the coach doesn’t always put out the effort to help me in the way I know it can. And that’s largely on me. I think more Alexander and possibly (hopefully) yoga are in order here.

I do want to finish describing the ANTM challenge though! Because I think I will do it sometime possibly, it sounds like a good idea. So the acting coach had an easel with poster paper and markers set up behind each girl, and after he described the concept of the inner critic and they all understood it, he told them to turn around – 15 minutes to draw their inner critic. Then each went up on stage to face their inner critic in front of the other girls (the acting coach held up the poster and played the part of the critic while the girls had to confront the inner coach and tell it what’s what). Good idea I thought.

Which reminds me of something else I should mention, since the girls definitely weren’t gentle with their inner coach. There does have to be a definite degree of dominance – gentle, yes, but firm first. Resolute. Stare it down. Let it know you are in charge, and you won’t be putting up with its nonsense anymore.

Recommended Reading: The Inner Game of Tennis

Recommended Viewing: ANTM