How to Pick the Perfect Tempo

How fast should I go?

Hint: Not this fast

This is one of the most frequent questions I get from students, and it’s also a question I repeatedly ask myself in the course of my own music preparation.   Tempo can make or break a piece, and choosing the right one is an essential part of your job as a musician.

Of course, “the right tempo” is a bit of a misnomer because there is usually a range of “perfect” tempos that can work for a particular piece, and that range often broadens as you gain expressivity and skill as a musician.

But if you choose a tempo that doesn’t work, both you and your listeners will know it: The piece will, in some essential way, refuse to come alive. Finding the right tempo is like plugging music into an electrical circuit: Suddenly, it shines.

So how do you choose? Unfortunately for quick-fix fans, the decision is fairly complex, requiring a consideration of multiple, often interlocking factors.  So buckle up, folks: this is going to be a long one.

What is the tempo designation?

When you start to think about tempo, this is the obvious starting point. An adagio is going to be slower than an allegro, for example, and a larghetto is going to be faster than a largo. Great!

But you have to be careful, because it isn’t, as many students want it to be, a straight shot between vivace and the handily shaded vivace range on your metronome.  First of all, metronomes were invented in the nineteenth century, so you really shouldn’t apply a modern-day metronome maker’s take on vivace to music written in, say, 1727.  And for baroque music, tempo designations are often most usefully interpreted as designations of character, not speed (though these concepts are intertwined).  Vivace, for example, means “lively,” and you can be lively at a variety of different speeds

How fast can you play the piece with ease?

This provides you with an obvious upper limit for your tempo selection.  Notice I said “how fast can you play the piece with ease?” and not “how fast can you play the piece?” When you play with ease, you have relaxed body positioning.  You can play with good consistency, as well as with a minimum of mental and physical effort.   If you can’t play a piece with ease within the range of that piece’s musically desirable tempos, you should probably choose another piece to perform in public, although playing at a slower tempo can still be a fabulous learning experience.

What do you know about the piece?

This is where you get to break out all the musical knowledge you’ve been steadily squirreling away from teachers, books, articles, and colleagues.  A chorale, for example, will have a tempo that is very different from a dance….and if you’re playing a dance, the type of dance matters.  A sarabande is going to have a very different tempo (and character) from a gavotte- though to add complexity, this can vary by time period and geographic origin.   If a piece is vocal, you know the tempo needs to be slow enough for the text to be comprehensible.   If you know Bach wrote a flute sonata for a player of particular skill, that piece might be faster than some other works for flute.  A triple meter often suggests more speed than a duple meter.  And on and on. Nerdery for the win!

What’s the mood?

Mood is another tempo indicator, often entwined with key.  Something doleful in minor is probably going to be slower than something peppy in major, though there are always exceptions.  On a more fine-grained level, it tends to work well to select a few words to describe the character of the piece, and use them to help guide you toward a tempo.  Is a piece martial?  Forlorn?  Cute? Lyrical?  All of these suggest different speeds.  And if there is text, what is its content?  You’re definitely going to take a piece about, oh, say, chickens at a different speed than you’re going to take a piece about death.

What is the harmonic rhythm or density?

This is among the most nerdy and intimidating of tempo clues, but it is also one of the most useful, so it’s absolutely worth learning how to assess.  Basically, we are asking ourselves: How easy is a piece to listen to?  As listeners, we need more time to process complex harmony than simple harmony, and we need more time to process changes in harmony than we do harmony that stays the same.  So if a piece has a lot of different chords, one after another, the performer has to take it slower than a piece that features only a chord or two per bar. Or if a piece has complex or unusual harmony, it’s likely to be slower than a piece that contains only two or three chords.

If you haven’t yet had the chance to hack your way through a music theory course or two, a pretty fair cheat, at least in pieces with figured bass, is to look at the numbers underneath the staff.  Are there are a lot of them, and are they close together?  Then you likely have a piece with high harmonic density/complexity, and you should take it relatively more slowly.  Are there only a few in the whole piece?  You’ve probably got low harmonic density/complexity, and you might consider going faster.

What just happened?  What will happen next?

Say you’ve just played an andante as the opening movement of your sonata.  Next comes an allegro ma non troppo.  If you play them at a tempo that is too similar, your listeners are going to get bored.  If every slow movement in your partita is exactly the same tempo, your listeners are going to get bored.  If every piece on a program is played as fast as possible, your listeners are going to get bored….you get the idea. The name of the game is contrast, and in general, the more, the better.  

Red herrings

Here are some things I DON’T think about when I try to find a piece’s best tempo.

Note values   This is a common misapprehension among beginning musicians.  A piece isn’t slow just because there are two whole notes per bar.  Nor is it fast just because you see a lot of black notes.  

Breathing  Your breathing should adapt to your tempo, not the other way around. Don’t take things too fast simply because you would otherwise have to take a breath. Instead, learn to breathe quickly and quietly, without interrupting the musical line.

The named ranges on your metronome  Step away from your metronome’s tempo chart.  Just step away. 

How fast that one dude was playing it on Youtube Maybe it works for him, maybe it doesn’t- but you want something that works for you.  And Youtube is full of crazy. 

I’ve done everything you said: Now what?  

In a word, experiment. Take all your data, make your analysis, and try out some tempos.  Some will feel too fast or too slow; one, or several, may feel “right.” And some may feel “right” only with practice, so it’s worth giving things more than one shot. Over time, your tempo selection process should become faster, more intuitive and, I hope, more fun!

Five Ways to Practice Performing Without Leaving Your Living Room

The only way to get better at performing is to perform.

You may have heard this one.  I know I have. It’s even come out of my mouth a time or two.

But the thing is, it’s not entirely true.

Yes, there’s a lot of truth to it. Practicing the tricky bits of a Handel sonata in your living room feels a whole lot different then playing them in front of a crowd, and the only way to really understand that, deep in your bones, is to take a deep breath and head onstage.

Performing and playing are intimately related skills, but they are different, and if there’s anything I’ve learned in my years of playing and teaching, is that effective practice is skill-specific. In other words, you must practice exactly what you want to learn. 

Let’s say you have a performance in October...but that performance is your only scheduled performance, and it’s already August. How are you supposed to prepare? You’re not looking to be bodily assumed into Carnegie Hall, but you do want to do justice to the music you love. If the only way to get better at performing is to perform, are you out of luck? Should you simply throw up your hands and hope for the best?

You could, but you could also harness that most human of superpowers, self-deception!

In short, you can create situations in which some part of you believes you are performing, even if you’re not.

How, you ask? There are a lot of options, but here are five:

Keep going.  Often, when we practice, we are not running through our entire piece.  Instead, we zero in on difficult passages, trying out different interpretations, fixing mistakes, and seeking to improve our execution.  And that is as it should be! But it’s also important to get in a few “performance” runs, in which you practice keeping going no matter what.  Continuing to play after a mistake is a skill, and you need to practice it. 

Mirror, mirror. One of the simplest ways to trick yourself into thinking you’re being watched is to  play in front of a mirror.  A mirror is not an audience, but it does increase your self-awareness in the same way an audience does, and that can be a helpful trick.

Record yourself.  This is maybe my favorite way to fake myself out.  If you’re recording yourself, you feel some of the same pressure not to make mistakes as you’ll feel in performance.  You also have the bonus of a recording you can play back to get a better sense of what you want to change or improve about your playing.

Play for Spot.  Try playing for your pet (if he or she will stay still).  Do not take the pet’s reaction personally! Spouses, parents, and children are other, sometimes more docile, options.

Phone a friend.  Do you have a friend or relative who is willing to Skype with you for ten minutes?  Perhaps you have a colleague who wants to do a performance exchange?  Make a Skype date and “perform” over the ether for one another. 

Good luck!

Process vs. Product

How do you get a student to articulate more clearly?

This topic came up in the faculty lounge at a recent workshop (I know- we recorder teachers know how to party).  Clutching our workshop snacks, we began to call out suggestions.  Review oral anatomy!  Shape the desired tongue placement from an /s/!  Cue teeth closed!   Anchor tongue against back teeth!  Think about spitting a watermelon seed and shape from there!

The inquiring teacher had tried a number of these tricks, but he filed away the new ones to bring back at home.  

Then a colleague chimed in with “tell the student you want a clearer sound.”

“Huh,” we said.

“I haven’t tried that,” mused the first teacher.

It was a good reminder for me.  As a teacher, and particularly as a teacher with a strong interest in technique and a detailed knowledge of the anatomy and physiology behind what we do as recorder players, I tend to focus on process- here’s where your tongue placement should be on this particular syllable, here’s how the articulators should move, here’s what you should feel, etc.

And very often, this works.  After all, breaking down particular skills and teaching, step by step, how to acquire and execute them, is the bread and butter of teaching.  

But sometimes, with some students in some situations, you actually get further by emphasizing product- make a clear sound.  Find a beautiful tone.  Make this part smoother. 

It’s definitely not a panacea- if an emphasis on product were all that was required to learn an instrument, we’d all be instant virtuosi. But occasionally, a student can get so bogged down in the details of process that it is actually better to skip to the goal and then, once achieved, work backward from there to gain a better understanding of the steps required to meet it.

A flexible teacher is able to work from both directions, supporting process while also highlighting product, and toggling between the two as necessary.

Something to take with me as I travel homeward.

My Fourth Best Practice Hack

I used to shirk preparing my music.

This is because score prep is one of my least favorite musical activities, right behind music stand assembly and disassembly.  I resent printing out my music, dislike hole punching and taping, abhor cutting and pasting, and lack enthusiasm for binder assembly. And don’t even get me started on numbering my measures.

As a result, I used to postpone this chore as long as possible, often until hours before the gig.  This ultimately was a time waster- practicing with an unprepared score or part is simply less efficient than practicing from something that is performance ready.

Then, a few years ago, I discovered a simple cognitive trick that allowed me embrace (or at least tolerate) all the musical chores I’d been squirming out of.

I called them practice.  

See, I’m pretty good at getting myself to practice.  On the “Big Five” personality traits, I score the highest on conscientiousness. I may not be able to practice as much as I did when I was young and unencumbered by adult obligations (anyone else spend hours tracking down a gutter company this week?), but it’s an extremely rare day that I don’t practice at all, and I prioritize it in my schedule.

By calling music preparation “practice,” I suddenly had time for it, because I’d blocked out time to practice.  I also found myself resenting it less- instead of having to take time I didn’t have for a dreaded chore, I was fulfilling my obligation to practice.  And the time it took away from more traditional practice was time I ultimately got back by not having to shuffle through stacks of paper hunting for my music, or negotiate reading from too many pages at once.

I’ve since done the same thing with recorder maintenance (another hated chore), music organization, and directed listening, which is something I don’t hate, but which tended to get pushed to the back burner.  

In short, by making my definition of practice more elastic, I am able to accomplish more.

And you know what, these tasks really are practice. They are activities I undertake to improve my playing, and what is practice if not that?

If your challenge is getting yourself into the practice room in the first place, this hack may not work for you.  But it’s been a game changer for me, and for several of my students.  

So happy practicing, whatever form it takes! (And my best, second-best, and third-best practice hacks? Try here, here, and here.)

Why Go to a Summer Workshop?

Before I became a recorder player, I had no idea that summer workshops were a thing. And when I discovered they were, I was skeptical.  You mean people voluntarily subjected themselves to dorm room living after college? For fun?

Now, of course, summer workshops anchor my season.  Some workshops I teach every year and some I rotate through, but I enjoy them all, and I can’t imagine my year without these weeks devoted to learning and growing with students and colleagues.

But if you’re new to recorder world, you might be wondering, as I did, why you’d invite college cafeteria food back into your life.  

First off, cafeteria food has improved immensely since you and I went to college! 

Second, and more importantly, there are opportunities available at summer workshops that are tough to come by during day-to-day life or smaller weekend workshops. Here are a few:

Perspective

No matter how much you love your local teacher, there are limits to each person’s knowledge, abilities, and time.  Summer workshops almost always offer a large slate of faculty, and getting to know multiple teachers can open you up to new ways of thinking and playing, expose you to new repertoire, or give you a different angle on something you’ve been working toward. 

Depth

During a weekend workshop, it’s simply not possible to delve deeply into techniques, repertoire, or concepts.  Summer workshops tend to be longer, somewhere around a week, and this allows you more time to deepen your understanding and build skills.

Connections 

Summer workshops draw regionally and nationally, so you’re able to make connections with other players outside your local sphere. Peer to peer learning at workshops is real and invaluable. Maybe you’ve always wanted to try out a comfort tenor, or talk to someone who has put together a school concert. Someone at the workshop can probably help you out!

Focus

Do you dream of a class devoted entirely to the hurdy gurdy?  Are you keen to try out crumhorn or play with harpsichord? How about a class devoted to music for bass recorders?  Summer workshops, with their large student and faculty pools, are the place to do this.

Time 

For those of us with many commitments outside of playing the recorder, the most precious gift summer workshops offer is time.  Think about how much time you spend each day working, cooking, cleaning, commuting, etc.  Now sweep all of that away and replace it with large blocks of time devoted to music, punctuated by meals someone else makes. Sound good?  (EDITOR’S NOTE: IT’S GLORIOUS!)

Are you interested in giving a summer workshop a try?  There are many good workshops out there. But here are the four where you can find me this year:

Virginia Baroque Performance Academy

Unique, intimate workshop in the Shenandoah Valley offering recorder masterclass and mixed-instrument baroque chamber ensembles.  Capped enrollment; ideal for more advanced amateur players. Recorder and voice classes are full this year but spots still available for viola da gamba, harpsichord, and violin.

 Mountain Collegium

Exceptionally well-run early music and folk workshop in the North Carolina Mountains.  I’ve taught many times at this workshop and am always impressed by its friendliness.  It’s also a great place to try something new. 

Mideast

It’s my second outing at this longtime Pittsburgh-based workshop.   It boasts a devoted following and a number of faculty you won’t catch anywhere else on the circuit.

Pinewoods

It’s my first time at this beloved Massachusetts institution!

Hope to see you in the lunch line!

Oops! I Did It Again

Here’s the deal: You’re going to mess up.

How do I know this? I’ve been playing and performing for nearly 30 years, and teaching for almost 20.  I’ve messed up a lot.  My students have messed up a lot. Messing up is a natural part of the learning process.  It’s also something that, at least for the vast majority of us mortals, never entirely goes away.  It’s part of our humanity (and, as such, contains a few drams of beauty).

Yes, you definitely want to minimize the frequency and audibility of your mess-ups, particularly in performance.  But in my experience, an intense preoccupation with accuracy almost always comes at the expense of musicianship.  If you’re terrified of messing up, you’re less likely to really listen to the sound you are producing, the shapes you’re making, and how those shapes fit with the shapes being made around you.  You’re less likely to take risks.  You’re less likely to enjoy the music you’re playing, which will, in turn, diminish the likelihood that you’ll be able to transmit that enjoyment to your listeners.

To dredge up a basketball metaphor from my years of rabid childhood fandom, you want to play offense, not defense.

This is not to say that you abandon all sense and simply run toward the basket (traveling!), or smash willy nilly into the opposition (charging, people). Offense is an art, not an expression of brute force.   But staying on offense is important.

I’ve even heard colleagues make the suggestion to go ahead and make a mistake early in each performance, deliberately, to get it out of the way, so that the rest of the time can be spent getting down to the far more important business of communicating what there is to love about whatever it is you’re playing.

I haven’t ever dared to do that. But the impulse makes sense to me.

I had a series of performances last week.  I prepared for them as rigorously as I could- but yes, I messed up.  And so did most of my colleagues.  After which we picked ourselves up as quickly as possible and got back to the business of making music.

Rusher or Repeater: What's Your Musical Learning Style?

Are you a rusher or a repeater?

Every musician and music student I know leans one way or the other, and I think understanding your tendency can help you better structure your practice and improve your skills.

So which one are you?

If you love sinking your teeth into a new piece but squirm when you have to perfect something you already know, you might be a rusher.  Rushers have many strengths: they are curious, they love to explore, and they are often strong sight readers.  But they’ll sometimes balk at being asked to repeat a piece, and need a push to work toward perfecting something already familiar.  

Repeaters, on the other hand, bask in the familiar.  If, during your practice, you catch yourself playing the same pieces over and over again, or if you need a push to tackle unfamiliar music, you might be a repeater.  Repeaters also have strengths, such as patience, high boredom thresholds, and a desire to comprehend deeply.  But they’ll need a push to tackle things outside of their comfort zones.

Recognize yourself? It’s a continuum, so most people fall somewhere in the middle of the extremes.  But I can definitely pick out my own tendency (I’m a repeater) and that of most of my students.

How does knowing your tendency help you improve your playing?  Here are some suggestions to help you work with, or through, who you are.

If you’re a rusher…

1.  Chanel your curiosity. Continue to explore, but set a duration and focus for your exploration: A month for bass repertoire, e.g., or a month for Handel, or a month for sixteenth-century divisions. Having a repertoire focus will help you carry from one piece into the next, even if you’re still cycling through them quickly.

2. Try an exercise.  Exercises and etudes, by definition, are designed to be repeated. Tackling one at a time, for an extended period, can be a good opportunity to flex your repetition muscles. (The ability to repeat takes time to develop, just like any other skill.)   

3. Perform.  There’s nothing like a performance to motivate you to work more deeply on something. This can be a “performance” during a lesson (teachers are great counterweights for both rushers and repeaters), an informal performance for your friends or family, or a public outing.  Having the deadline ahead of you will help you dig deep.

4. Commit in chunks.  Pick one piece to really work through- and then, with the rest of your daily practice time, cut yourself some slack follow your curiosity where it leads! 

If you’re a repeater….

Listen. Sometimes repeaters repeat because they’re not sure what else to play.  Broadening your listening (through CDs, Youtube, streaming services, online music libraries like Naxos etc.) can help you discover new and beautiful music.

Find a project. Repeaters tend to enjoy structure….so use a structured project to help you step outside of what you know.  Tackle all 12 Telemann Fantasias, or work your way through an anthology, or commit to learning three sonatas by composers who were heretofore unknown to you…the possibilities are endless. 

Shore up your reading.  Being a repeater often goes hand in hand with weak sight reading skills.  It’s a chicken and egg scenario: if you aren’t the best reader to begin with, you are more inclined to play what you know, which in turn means you aren’t getting as many opportunities to practice reading new work.  Carve out time to deliberately practice your sight reading- it’s the only way to improve.

Start small.  Commit to 10 minutes of reading or exploration per session, and then let yourself play what you love.

Happy practicing!

How to Turn Dislike into Opportunity

“I just don’t like that piece.”

I’ve said those words to at least three of my teachers, so it must be cosmic justice that I now hear them on the regular from my students.

As a young player, I used those words as a stamp, formalizing my rejection and excusing any weaknesses in my playing.

As a more experienced player –and now, as a teacher- I hear those words as an invitation and a challenge.  I don’t like that piece- yet.  My student doesn’t like that piece- yet.

Why don’t we like certain music?  Sometimes, we just don’t- there’s not much more to it than that. 

But a substantial portion of the time, we don’t like a piece because something about it makes us uncomfortable.  We may not be familiar with its style.  We may not comprehend what it is trying to achieve.  We may have technical difficulties with it.  And with music, discomfort almost always signals an opportunity for growth.

Thus, I propose that when you discover a piece you don’t much care for, instead of discarding it immediately, take my Fair Shake Challenge.  It’s a three-step checklist I designed to make sure you and I are making dislike work for us.

And if, at the end of the process, you still dislike a piece? Well, then it might not be to your taste.

 Fair Shake Step One: Time

 You know how a person might initially irritate you, but if you spend more time with him or her, you see more and more things to like?  It’s the same way with music.  If you’re not crazy about a piece, spend time really getting to know it inside and out.  If any of your discomfort was due to technical difficulties, more time will help to sort this out; you’ll also get a better feel for what the piece is and what it’s trying to do. 

Fair Shake Step Two: Information

Before you dismiss a piece, make sure you have approached it from an informed perspective.  Maybe there’s an underlying dance rhythm you’ve forgotten to think about, and the piece will snap into focus once you have. Or perhaps the piece has a structure informed by a popular chord progression or national style.  Or maybe you need to think about the piece’s harmonic structure, or where it fits within a composer’s oeuvre. Gathering information is where having a teacher can really shine, but you can do some of the research yourself. 

Fair Shake Step Three: Change

If you don’t like a piece, why not assume for a moment that what you don’t like is, in fact, the way you play it. So try something new.  Shift your tempo, or change your articulation.  Record yourself playing and listen back to see how you could alter your approach.  Listen to someone else, or many someone elses, playing your piece, and see how their approaches might inform yours.

 I went through this process recently with one of my least favorite Telemann Fantasias, No. 7, “Alla Francese.”  I practiced the piece every day for a month, trying out different tempos and articulations. I listened to recordings.  I thought about the influence of French music on the structure of the piece.  I recorded myself and played it back, listening critically, five separate times. Then I performed the piece six times in three days.

 And you know what? Now I like the piece.

Your One Sure Bet for the New Year

As someone who writes a blog focused on improvement, I am both impressed and intimidated by the number of ways in which it possible to get better!  The paths toward improved musicianship are close to limitless, and the goal posts are always, always just a few miles ahead.

That’s why it bemuses me to be able tell you that if you do only this one thing, and no other, to improve your recorder playing in 2019, you’ll still be miles ahead of where you were last year.

I’ll cut to the chase: Enjoy your air. 

That’s it! Three words! It’s simultaneously the simplest and most complex of musical resolutions, and it’s the one you should make today.

Why? I hesitate to say this before an audience of recorder players, but most instruments are more complicated than the recorder.   Pick almost any other instrument and you’re likely looking at reeds or keys or strings or pegs, apparati requiring attention and care.

The recorder, in contrast, is air moving through a stick with holes.  We’ve had instruments like it for millennia, whereas we’ve had, say, the saxophone for less than 200 years.

Many people assume the instrument’s simplicity means the recorder is simple to master (it isn’t, though one of its virtues is undeniably its accessibility during the earlier stages) or somehow deficient.  But simplicity is among the recorder’s greatest strengths.  Playing recorder is the closest you can come to singing without singing, and the voice of the instrument, that sound of air moving relatively unencumbered through it, is haunting.

This is easy to forget.  You get caught up in the minutiae of fingering or articulation, some particularity of ornamentation or phrasing, and you temporarily lose sight of the fact that your air is the best thing you have going for you. Get involved in executing something difficult, and your air is often the first thing to suffer.

And that’s too bad. Because air- and the enjoyment of the movement of air- is the recorder’s raison d’etre. It should be yours, too.

So enjoy your air. I guarantee you’ll enjoy your playing more.

Is it Time to Break your Habit?

Habits have been in vogue lately, spawning self-help bestsellers and pop Psych paeans.

Mostly, this literature trumpets the awesome power of habit and how habit can harnessed for good. And I’m definitely a believer!  After all, daily practice is the habit to which I owe my career.

 But there’s a dark side to habit, in that a bad habit, once it’s sunk in, can be particularly difficult to eradicate.

This plays out time and time again in my teaching, especially with students who were originally self-taught. Don’t get me wrong- I’m overjoyed that people are out there teaching themselves recorder. But I’m even more delighted when I get to help a student before bad habits have sunk in.

But let’s say I’m too late. Say a new student comes to me with an entrenched maladaptive thumb technique, a way of breathing that sets her up for tension, fingerings that are not in tune… the possibilities are endless!

In this case, the student and I have a decision to make.  Do we put forth the very considerable effort necessary to replace a bad habit with a good one?  Or do we let the habit slide?

The decision-making process is different in each case, but the questions we consider are similar:

How entrenched is the habit?

Fingering the E incorrectly for 30 years is different from fingering the E incorrectly for five months.  And in general, adults tend to have a more difficult time replacing bad habits than children do.  I’ll always push a child to change, and almost always push a near beginner. 

How damaging is the habit?

Here you need to consider the magnitude of both physical and musical damage. Holding the recorder with too much tension may cause physical damage in the long run, and that absolutely needs to be addressed. And playing the alto’s low B-flat without the pinky makes for tuning infelicity audible to the casual listener. In contrast, leaving the index finger off the high A is usually audible only to recorder teachers.

 What are the student’s goals?

It goes without saying that bad habits in a pre-professional player must be addressed.  But what about the adult amateur?  Here’s where the student and I really need to think about his goals.  Does the student want to be the best recorder player he can be?  Or is moment-to-moment enjoyment the student’s primary focus?

 What is the student’s tolerance for struggle?

Every student has a different tolerance for being uncomfortable- though this tolerance can be grown.  Some students enjoy the challenge of replacing a bad habit; others grit their teeth and bear it; a few find the process debilitating.

Does the student want to change the habit?

Here’s where the rubber hits the road.  As a teacher, I can encourage and guide and help to provide motivation for change, but at the end of the day, the student needs to be on board. Sometimes a student will say they are on board, but they really aren’t, or some part of them isn’t- and then we need to grapple with that.

How does this decision-making play out in real time? Let’s walk through a couple of scenarios:

1)   Student R came to me in her late 50s with three decades of amateur playing under her belt, including one brief stint of lessons from a non-professional player many years in the past.  Her breathing technique was underdeveloped and included a deeply entrenched habit of thoracic activation, resulting in poor support, short phrase lengths, and a wobbly tone. R was organized and enjoyed challenge and the process of improvement. She loved the bass recorder in particular, and wanted to improve her skills there.  Changing R’s breathing habits was an easy sell, especially when I explained how it would help her on the bass.  We took an organized approach, starting small using specific exercises to replace thoracic breathing with diaphragmatic breathing, and within a couple of years R’s tone was much better supported and she was able to play significantly longer phrases, resulting in a much more enjoyable musical experience for her and her ensemble.

2) Student B came to me in her mid 80s with many decades of amateur playing under her belt. She’d been taking lessons from another professional teacher until that teacher retired, but had retained a maladaptive thumb technique (if a student has had high-quality instruction but still hasn’t broken a bad habit, it’s a good though not infallible indicator that the student doesn’t want to make the change). Student B enjoyed coming to lessons and particularly enjoyed playing duets, but she confessed she didn’t practice much outside of her lesson time, and what’s more, she didn’t really want to.  Her primary goal was to enjoy making music.  We decided to leave B’s thumb technique alone and concentrate on exploring level-appropriate duet repertoire.

Do my students replace their bad habits?  In most, though not all, cases, the answer is yes.  Adults who take lessons are a driven, curious, and achieving bunch. They’ve already shown they are interested in becoming better players, and they tend to be up for a challenge. Replacing bad habits is seldom easy, but it’s almost always rewarding, and watching students take on the task is unfailingly inspiring.

Blue Apron Your Practice

Confession time: I am a rotten cook.  I dislike every part of cooking, from the shopping and meal planning to the mind-numbing chopping to the Sisyphean setting pf the table to the cruel parting lash of having to clean up. The only part of cooking I enjoy is eating, and these days there are a lot of ways to eat without enduring the drudgery of cooking.

Lately, though, I’ve tried out some meal kits.  You know the ones- pre-portioned ingredients delivered to your door alongside detailed instructions. And I’ll be darned if I haven’t actually managed to produce a few edible meals from these kits. It’s a culinary miracle!

Which got me thinking. If meal kits can get me into the kitchen, what could harnessing meal kit psychology do for those of us who struggle to practice?

Let’s steal a few moves from the meal kit playbook.

Pre-portion your ingredients:  A lot of the appeal of the meal kit is that it takes away some of the petty hurdles, or what user experience gurus call “friction,” of food preparation. So let’s take away the friction of practicing.  Leave your music stand out.  Leave your music open on the stand. Leave a plastic recorder already assembled within reach (or a disassembled wooded recorder close to hand). Make picking up your instrument and starting to play as effortless as possible.

Have a menu plan:  Deciding what to cook takes mental energy.  So does deciding what to practice. Before you end each practice session, write down exactly what you’re going to do in the next one.  I use a practice notebook for this purpose, but you could use a slip of a paper clipped to the music stand, a small whiteboard, or your phone.

Step by step instructions:  Meal kits tell you exactly what to do and when to do it.  Try writing out your “recipe” before you start practicing.  Want to work on tuning?  Make a step-by-step plan –some drone work, say, followed by interval work followed by recording and listening back.  Then execute.

Visualize your goal: The meal kit recipe cards have delicious looking pictures of the finished product on the front that keep me focused when I want to put down the (inevitable) scallions and pick up the takeout menu.  This is not an accident- visualizing your goal helps keep you working toward it.  Try listening to a CD of the piece you’re working on. Or visualize yourself performing ir to an appreciative audience!

If I can cook, you can practice.

Up Your Practice Game

We all want to get better at what we do. How we do that is the challenge. This month I have three words for you: specificity of learning.

Say what?

Time to get nerdy! The specificity of learning hypothesis is a 1968 chestnut from the field of motor learning.  I can already see your eyes glazing over, but bear with me a minute!

To shamelessly over-simplify, the specificity of learning hypothesis proposes this: For best result, your practice should look like your performance.

Motor learning is more complicated than that (1968 was a long time ago, and we’ve learned a lot since then), but I think specificity of learning is worth revisiting because it speaks to a phenomenon I’ve observed time and time again in my years as a performer and teacher:  

Most of the time, we get better at exactly what we practice- and we don’t get better at what we don’t.

Sure, there’s some carryover. Practice the alto and you’re in a better position to pick up the tenor.  Practice one sonata by Handel and you’ll have a better understanding of his style when it comes to tackling the next one.

But more frequently, in order to make efficient progress, you need to think in a granular way about the specific skills you want to rehearse.  If you don’t do this, and decide that practice is practice is practice, you’ll likely become frustrated when you happen upon a gap in your skill set.  

If you’ve never practiced sight reading with a whole note beat, for example, you’re going to be hard pressed to do it under pressure, even if you’re a quarter note ace.  I find that students who encounter a difficulty like this often over-generalize: they decide they are bad readers, or that playing with a whole note beat is inherently too difficult.   

In fact, this is a lesson in specificity of learning: in order to improve reading with a whole note beat, you need to practice reading with a whole note beat.  Students who decide a whole note beat is too hard are. forgetting about the years of practice they’ve already put in reading music with a quarter note beat- practice that worked! 

In my own playing, I’ve found that I’m much weaker in sharp keys than I am with flats.  After almost thirty years of practice, four or five or even six flats is not problem.  But five sharps? Run! This is a direct result of specific practice: recorder music tends to be written in flat keys, so over the years I’ve put in infinitely more hours with flats.

The payoff to thinking about specificity of learning is that you’re empowered to improve your skills. I spent a lot of time in sharp keys this summer- and I definitely improved my facility!  My students who have trouble with a whole note beat get more assignments with a whole note beat- and they improve!  Trouble with bass clef?  Practice bass clef. Trouble performing?  Practice performing.  Trouble finding your place again when you get lost? Practice finding your place again when you get lost.

Becoming a better recorder player isn’t a straight shot. It’s a million small -and marvelous- journeys.  Happy traveling.

The Game-Changer You Already Own

What's the one thing you can bring to a lesson or practice session that is guaranteed to make you a better musician?

It's not magic.  It's not even high-tech.  It's the score!

One of the first things I teach new students is to always, always cart along the score.  Unless you're playing an unaccompanied solo, showing up with only your part is like bringing a serving dish to a potluck but forgetting to fill it with food. 

Seriously, folks. The score is essential.  The score is your lifeline.  You need to sleep with the score under your pillow.   You need to carry it next to your heart.  No, you don’t necessarily need to play from it (although I like to whenever possible), but you do need to know it backwards and forwards.

But why?  What’s so important about that junk for the keyboard or all those other consort parts anyway?  Especially if you’re not planning to play the piece with anyone else in the immediate future?

Here's the thing: the score is your boss.  You may think your part is your boss, or that you are the boss.  No and no. The score is your boss.  It shapes, colors, and dictates how you play your part.

Take any single note in your piece. Here are five things the score can tell you about it:

1)   Are you the main event? You have four quarter notes.  Do you invest them with a soloist’s emotion, or do you play them as a graceful accompaniment?  Take a look at the baseline- if it has thematic material or fast moving notes, chances are you’re not the big cheese.

2)   Are you a crunch or a release?  The more technical terminology for this is dissonance or consonance.  Is your note crunchy, or dissonant?  If so, you need to play it up and connect it to its release note.  If your note is consonant, you most often play it with less propulsion, sometimes taking a comma or breath afterward.

3)   Where are you in the chord?  If you’re the third, you’ll place the pitch of your note somewhere different than if you’re the fifth, e.g.

4)   Which notes will work in your ornament?  If there’s an E Major chord underneath your note, you’re not going to be happy leaping to a G natural as you decorate.

5)   What’s your tempo?  Say you’ve got a half note, but the bass part is all sixteenth notes and the whole movement is marked “adagio.”  Those sixteenth notes have to sound adagio, not just your half note- which means you may need to play the movement slower than you think.

This is only the beginning!  Bring the score!

What I Really Think of Your Playing

I have yet to find an adult student who isn’t nervous when they play for me, at least the first time. And I get it- I really do.  Any time you’ve got someone’s undivided attention, particularly when that person is analyzing your actions, it’s natural to feel a little exposed.  Add in the fact that you are by definition undertaking something outside of your comfort zone (the bravest and best part of taking lessons!), and sweaty palms make sense.

But I want to put a nail in the coffin of one common student fear.  Make that tens of nails.  Hundreds of nails.  A nail-gun-gone-berserk number of nails.

It is never, ever a burden to listen to you play.

“You must get tired of listening to me,” I’ve had students say.  Or, “I hope we're not ruining the piece for you.”   “Can you really stand to listen to the repeat?” “I didn’t want to make you listen to any more of this.”

There are dozens of variations, but the core concern is the same: a sizable minority of students worry their playing is a chore.

I can’t think of anything further from the truth.  Listening to a student or students play, no matter what the level is profoundly engaging and uniformly enjoyable. Because every time I listen, I’m confronting a fascinating challenge: How can I help this particular student or group of students make progress, both now and in the long term?  

Working that out is pretty much the most captivating puzzle I know, and I immediately busy myself with a host of subsidiary questions. What knowledge or skills do students possess that I can build on?  What should we select to work on?  What can I say or do to best communicate the goal?  How can I motivate the student toward the selected goal?  How can I check for understanding of the improvement process? How will I develop the student’s ability to self-monitor?  What personality or time or technical constrains might stand in the student’s way, and how can I mitigate them?

Listening to great music is pleasurable, sure. But it’s far more fun to dig into the challenge of helping you get better.  And we can always improve- each of us, from the greenest beginner to the most virtuosic professional.

So please know this: Your teachers don’t get tired of listening to you play.  We genuinely feel that it is a privilege to hear you.

And If I ever stop feeling that way, I hope I’m smart enough to take a break.

Improve Your Playing in 15 Minutes

There are some seasons of life in which your time for practice is limited.  Or your energy for practice is limited.  Or both. 

I gave birth to my second child early this month.  Infants are not known for their restfulness, and my infant is doing her part to maintain the infant status quo.  I’m tired.  And encumbered with baby care tasks. On some days, if I get 15 minutes to practice, I call it a good day.

This perspective was hard-won; when I was younger, if I only had 15 minutes to practice, I’d call the whole thing off as not worth it.  But as I’ve grown older (and, it must be said, busier), I’ve discovered what a jewel 15 minutes can be.

Got 15 minutes? Here are some ideas for how to spend it:

1)   Technical exercises.  Long tones, arches, scales, etudes: 15 minutes is actually the perfect morsel of time to devote to these activities, which require intense mental focus and, thus, tend to be tiring.  This is why you’ll often hear teachers recommending you tackle technical exercises first during a practice session, when your brain and fingers are fresh. 

2)   Tackle a sight-reading goal.  Grab some material that targets an area of reading weakness and spend 15 minutes reading.  Do you want to be able to play bass clef on a c instrument? Read alto up the octave? Transpose up a step?  Now’s the time to practice- and the short time frame will ensure you don’t bog down with fatigue.

3)   Listen. Seek out and listen to 1-2 professional-quality renditions of a piece you’re working on, with the score in front of you and no distractions.  I guarantee you’ll pick up ideas –and hopefully inspiration.

4)   Plan. If the thought of picking up an instrument is simply too much, or you have 15 minutes but someone, say, is sleeping- use your time to map out a plan for your practice tomorrow, next week- even next month.  Explicitly mapping out where you want to go and how you’ll get there will give you a running start when you pick up the recorder again.

Of course, you'll ultimately want to practice more than 15 minutes a day if you can.  And I will as soon as I'm able.  But just because you have limited time doesn't mean you can't improve.

Old Friends

Do you have music you consider an old friend? Pieces you keep coming back to, pieces that, no matter how long you’ve gone without playing them, never fail to feel like coming home?  

I have many. Two of my oldest friends are by Bach: the fourth Brandenburg concerto and the cantata “Actus Tragicus “(BWV 106).  These are pieces recorder players get hired to play over and over again, and as a result, I’ve been playing them for decades.  

Fortunately, they are both gorgeous.

Part of what I enjoy most about visiting my old musical friends is that, when I do, I briefly experience the echo of all their previous incarnations.  All the different venues and seasons and times of life in which I’ve encountered them, all the small triumphs and petty failures of execution, the different tempos and interpretations, the colleagues and friends and strangers who have been my partners in bringing these pieces to life.   

I’m drafting this from south Texas, where I’ve just wrapped up performing BOTH Brandenburg 4 and cantata 106- the first time I’ve done them as a double bill. Spending time with my old friends now, as I’m about to take some time off from performing to have my second child, is particularly poignant, and I find my memories surfacing even more insistently than usual.

I remember the terror of learning and performing Brandenburg 4 for the first time in early high school, and how the piece seemed insurmountable.  I recall one of my first away-from-home gigs out of college, playing cantata 106, and how thrilled I was to be put up in a hotel!  With soap!  And towels!  I flash on renditions of agonizing slowness and breathtaking speed, the sorrow I felt the first time I had to turn down a Brandenburg, the pride of performing alongside one of my students.  

These pieces punctuate my musical life.  I’ve been playing them so long they’ve become comfortable. But I’d play them again a million times over, because every single time I do, they teach me something new.  That’s the beauty of old friends and old friendships- they are never too old to surprise and delight.  

And you are never to old to make a musical acquaintance that will grow into a friend.

How Low Can You Go?

The four lowest notes of the recorder are no joke.

Sure, they seem like a a joke sometimes: a mean-spirited practical joke in which you expend Herculean effort only to be rewarded, even in the best-case scenario, with a wisp of sound.

And of course the worst-case scenario is worse, involving squeaks, squawks, gasps and awkward silences.

But low notes (I’m talking about F, F#, G, G# on an F instrument; C, C#, D, D# on a C instrument) absolutely can be accessed reliably and beautifully, sounding each and every time you attempt them.

It just takes a smart and deliberate learning process.  

Accordingly, here are my four top tips for working toward reliable, lovely low notes:

1)   Accept low notes for what they are.  On most recorders, low notes are never going to be loud or ringing or present. And trying to make them loud is only going to make them crack.  Part of the beauty of the recorder and other historical instruments is that each and every note has a slightly different timbre and volume- unlike modern instruments for which timbre has been flattened throughout the instrument’s range. So enjoy the soft sounds of a recorder’s low notes.  Played properly, they are dark and soothing and beautiful.

2)   Think like a doctor.  If you miss a low note, don’t just jam your fingers down again and again trying to make it come out.  Not only is this a recipe for frustration, but even if you eventually hit the note, you’ve lost the opportunity to diagnose what went wrong with your initial attempt.  A missed note isn’t a tragedy; it’s an opportunity to gather information about what’s working and what’s not. Low notes usually fail for one of two reasons: too much air, or leaking fingers.  So sit with your error for a moment while running through a checklist to determine what, exactly, has gone wrong.

a.    First, lower your breath pressure.  If the note comes out as you blow less, you’ll know that you have to work on your air and/or mouth shape.

b.    If lowering your air does nothing, try picking up your lowest finger (if you’re on an F, say, move to the G).  If your playing clarifies as you do this, you’ll know that your problem was with finger 7, your pinky.

c.    If the G is still a no go, continue to pick up fingers, one at a time, to figure out which finger was leaking.  Fix it, then head back down again, one finger at a time.

3)   Play the note.  This sounds almost too flippant to be helpful, but I’ve consistently found that it is.  In order to play a note well, you need to spend time playing it.  And not just playing it, but deliberately cultivating your awareness of what it feels like, sounds like, and looks like to play your low note in a relaxed way.  So once you’ve found a good low F, hang out there for a while. Relax your fingers, jaw, and tongue, etching the feeling of successful playing into your body and mind so that you can access it more easily next time.

4)   Go home. After you’ve spent sufficient time hanging out on your low note to ingrain how it feels, make it your home.  My favorite exercise for low notes is one I call “home base.”   Play your low note beautifully, long and low and slow.  Then leap up one note and return to home base. Then two notes, then three notes, returning home to your low note every time.  This helps ground your low note as something to be leapt from, not to, while improving your ability to move from high to low.

Enjoy your low notes!  (Quietly.)

Is it Me Or the Instrument?

I joke sometimes that if you make a sound on the recorder you don’t like,  you should immediately withdraw the instrument from your lips and hold it front of your face with furrowed brow and narrowed eyes, lips pulled back in a rictus of incredulity, as if to say: Et tu, Recorder?

This is sure to absolve you of any error.

Of course, in  95% of cases, the root of a problem lies not with the instrument, but with the player.  It’s not always a comfortable truth to stomach, but, alas, if something goes wrong, ten to one odds the fault lies with us and not with our equipment.

But there are exceptions.  And it is the specter of these exceptions that can haunt students (and teachers!).  Are low notes really supposed to be so hard?  Is my teacher right, or would I have an easier time with high notes on a different instrument?  Is that rough airstream really my student’s fault?

At this point in my teaching career, I’ve taught hundreds of students playing hundreds of instruments.  And in maybe a dozen cases, I came to the conclusion that the student’s technical problem could be laid at the feet of a substandard instrument.

In other words, it’s probably you.  But every so often, it’s not.

So how can you tell? 

One method is clearly both easiest and best: Consult an expert.  A professional recorder player can try your instrument and, within a very short period of time, tell you if it’s any good.  Case closed.  I've performed this service for many private students and I am always happy to assess someone's instrument at a workshop.  It takes almost no time to render an opinion and provides instant clarity.

But what if you don’t have a teacher?  Or what if, as in the case of so many of my students these days, you’re learning online?

Here are four things you can try:

1)    Change recorders.  A good plastic instrument is durable and highly standardized. It’s most likely going to respond in a stable and predictable way.  So try whatever you were struggling with on a good plastic instrument.  If you still struggle- it’s you.  If you can suddenly play with ease and accuracy- it may have been your instrument.

2)    Change players.  Say you have trouble with the high f, and you’re wondering if it’s you or the instrument.  Many people with no access to teachers still have access to other recorder players.  So hand your instrument to a colleague or three.  If every single one of them gets the same results you do, you may have a case for indicting your instrument.

3)    Assess the condition of your instrument.  Is your instrument over 40 years old?  Is it a school model (some hints include a rounded shape, no foot joint, straight windway, maple or pearwood).  Was it stored in a basement or attic or car for any length of time?  Did you buy it at a garage sale or very cheaply on ebay? Can you feel sticky deposits on the inside, or do you see mold or visible cracks? Has your dog ever chewed on your instrument?  If one or more of your answers to these questions is yes, there’s a greater chance your instrument isn’t up to par, and a trained recorder maker will be able to tell you if the instrument is reparable and/or worth repairing.

4)    Keep practicing.  Say you’re struggling with low notes.  Keep practicing low notes.  If, over time and with deliberate practice, your low notes improve- well, you guessed it, it was you.  But not anymore!

What Does Success Look Like?

The first time my student R attended a workshop, she spent most of the day in tears. 

I was distressed, but not surprised.  At that point in her playing life, R had a strong negative reaction to every playing mistake she made, allowing each error to derail her progress through a piece.  Whenever she made a mistake, she became so flustered that it was almost impossible for her to hop back in.

Just a few years later, R was attending workshops throughout the region, making mistakes and finding her part again with aplomb. 

Mostly, this is a credit to R’s perseverance. Not everyone would stick with playing after an upsetting experience, but R was impressively determined.

But helping R also required me to use one of the most powerful tools any teacher’s arsenal- the power to define success.

What does defining success mean? When you define success, you identify, shape, and shift the parameters by which students measure their own performance. You help students choose -and use- the success metric that best suits their abilities and needs at any given time.

If you don’t define success, your student will do it for you.  The fact is that students come to lessons with all kinds of pre-determined success metrics.  Some are explicit- students know what they want to achieve.  But some are implicit- hidden definitions that can cause trouble along the way.  In addition, students’ success metrics can also be static- they don’t change over time as a student grows.

In contrast, a good teaching success metric is explicit and dynamic- both student and teacher know what success means at any particular time, and the definition of success shifts to match student needs.  One lesson, success might mean playing all the notes in time.  A year later, success might mean playing all the notes in time and in tune.

When she attended that first workshop, R carried with her an implicit and unhelpful success metric: Success, to R, meant not making mistakes.

What I needed to do was to give R a more constructive definition of success.  After that first workshop, we debriefed and made a plan.  From now on, 10 minutes of every lesson would be devoted to sight reading duets.  And R’s only goal during these sessions was to get back in.  No matter what.  No mater how long it took. 

She could exclaim, she could sigh, she could spend most of the piece trying to figure out where she was, but if she got back in by the final cutoff, even partway through the last note, R would have succeeded.  Later, we took the same definition of success into group playing sessions.

It worked.

Slowly, but steadily, it worked.

I moved out of state and no longer teach R, but I saw her recently at a workshop and asked permission to tell her story.  The workshop featured a student performance and I watched as, during the last movement of her piece, R lost her place- and quickly hopped back in.  It was a splendid moment-  over in a few blinks of an eye. 

To Repeat or Not to Repeat?

“Do I have to play the repeats?”

It’s a question I’m often asked by new students.  Sometimes students don't even ask, but axe their repeats as a matter of course. 

And I understand the impulse. Musicians, amateur and professional, tend to be type A, efficiency-minded, get-it-done individuals (I’m no exception).  And (on the surface at least) repeating seems to be the epitome of inefficiency.  After all, you’ve already played that music!  Why would your teacher or your audience want to hear it again?

But here's the thing: Repeats aren’t superfluous drudgery.  They are vital and exciting opportunities for both you and your teacher.  You should most definitely play the repeats, and my veteran students know this.

Here’s why:

1) The composer expected it.  When your composer was penning whatever repeat-containing masterwork you’re tackling, he or she spelled out his or he intentions  in black and white.  The piece was written with repetition in mind, and if you don’t repeat, you’re leaving out 50% of the piece.  Would you ever leave out every other note, or cull 50% of the staff?  No, you wouldn’t!  (This isn't even the most compelling reason to repeat, to my mind, but it's worth saying.)

2) Surprise and delight your listener! It may not be immediately obvious, but a repeat offers you, the interpreter, an unparalleled opportunity to give your listener pleasure. If you’re repeating, you’ve already set up a set of expectations for your listener.  Playing with and overturning expectations- in this case through timing, articulation, ornamentation, etc.- is part of what makes art engaging.

3) Repeats are great data.  For both you and your teacher, repeats offer a wealth of information.  When I listen to a student repeating, I can tell if a note mistake the student made the first time around is a dug-in mistake or a transient one.  I can tell if a student really intended that particular rhythm.  I can tell if the flashy fingerwork that came off so well in iteration number one has been practiced enough to achieve consistency. And if my student has her antennae up, she’ll  be able to tell many of these things, too.

Should you play the repeats?  In my book, the answer is a resounding yes.  Happy repetition!