The Joy of Getting Better

Among the many -many!!- reasons to play the recorder is the visceral delight of improvement.  As we get older and dig ourselves into our daily ruts, there are fewer and fewer opportunities for us to set our minds to something, work hard at it, and make progress.  After all, how much better can you really get at merging into traffic, reading the newspaper, or cleaning the stove?

Improving on the recorder offers a sense of mastery and personal satisfaction and pays real musical dividends, enabling you to increase your enjoyment of playing both by yourself and with others.

Yet, over the years I've watched multiple students struggle with the sense that they are treading water when, in fact,  they're improving by leaps and bounds.  A sense of progress can be elusive when you're working hard every day.

Fortunately, there's a clear solution.  Together, my student and I pay attention to how- and when, and why- we're measuring progress.

*Where are you going?  When students come to me with the general goal of improving their playing, I work with them to drill down to some specific goals.   It's tough to see whether or not you're moving forward if you're not sure where you're going.  Perhaps you want to learn the bass recorder, or improve your airflow, or play better in tune.  Whatever your goals are, write them down:  The act of putting them in writing -and referring back to them- helps focus your energy.

*Find your starting line When you're practicing regularly, it's easy to focus on how far you have to go and forget how far you've come.  Take the time to notice, and record, where you are when you start.   This might mean writing down how long you took to learn a piece in bass clef, or timing how long you can blow a note smoothly, or recording yourself playing a piece you're working on. 

*Celebrate your miles  Returning to pieces you've worked on before can be an electrifying way to measure progress and inspire you to keep moving forward.  Try letting a piece rest for at least nine months before picking it up again.  If you've been improving, you'll notice a difference in how you approach the piece, whether that's technically, musically, or both. 

*Find a coach- or a friend.  One of the best things a teacher can do for you is widen your perspective.  It's much more difficult to perceive progress -or lack of progress- on a day-to-day basis than it is to perceive patterns long term.  If you don't have a teacher, it's still worth recruiting another set of ears.  Try checking in at a yearly workshop, or finding a recorder accountability partner to listen to you play.

*The more you know, the more you know you don't know.  It's both a cruel and a marvelous truth that, in any area of life, the greater your expertise, the more accurately you're able to perceive the boundlessness of your ignorance.  It's a little like descending in an airplane: When you're up high, you might be able to make out general shapes like mountains and rivers.  As you get closer to your destination, the details of the landscape leap out at you- individual roads and houses and even cars.  The more you improve, the more the wonder and richness of your project becomes evident. But so does its scale!  Perhaps you've improved at hearing when your recorder is out of tune with others.  That is real progress- but in the short term, your new knowledge may disturb you as you learn to apply it constructively.

I was discussing this yesterday with a student -the immensity of all there is to learn about music.  He came up with a wonderful quote from the poem "Brown Penny" by William Butler Yeats.  The poem is about the boundlessness of love, but that sense of boundlessness, we decided, applies equally to music.   We could study for an eternity- 

Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.

-and still not know everything there was to know.  To me, that's part of the joy of learning (and teaching!).  The road goes ever on.

If improvement inspires you, take a few minutes to think about how you measure, and acknowledge, your progress.  It could open your eyes- and ears!

The Power of Rest

It’s Christmas today.  I must confess I practiced. 

I also practiced on Thanksgiving.  And my wedding day.  And six days after my son’s birth.  I believe in practice.  It's sustaining and grounding and potent, and even though I don’t have as much space for it in my life as I used to, I still undertake to practice daily.

But this isn’t a post about the power practice.  It's about the power of rest.

Sometimes, we are forced to rest.  Perhaps you’re traveling all day, and your fellow airplane passengers would be less than 100% enthusiastic if you whipped out your sopranino recorder.  Maybe you have the flu, or jury duty, or some other of life's immovables.  Maybe you’ve injured yourself and need time to recover. 

Sometimes, we choose rest.  A day, a week, a month.  Short or long, we choose to carve out a space in which our fingers are still and our breath returns to its usual work of keeping us alive.

Rest is not a bad thing.  But it does require intention and purpose.

How do you know you need to rest?

Does playing hurt?  If playing is painful, either physically or mentally, that’s an indicator you may need to take a break.  Note that “frustrating” is different from painful- frustration is an intermittently necessary part of practice; pain is an unhelpful dead end.

Do you need a break?  Sometimes we can reach into a cul-de-sac in our practice, in which we've become so fixated on, or caught by, some detail that we cease to make progress.  Or we're simply tired. 

How to rest?

Set your parameters.  Before you undertake a rest, you need to make sure you know what that rest will look like and when it will end.  A rest with no fixed endpoint isn’t a rest; it’s a hiatus, and it likely won’t serve you in your quest to become a better musician.  Set a deadline- even if it’s a deadline for asking yourself whether or not you need to rest some more.   I personally tend to do best with a short rest- a day or two, a week at most.  You’ll discover how long you need.  Setting parameters on your rest also liberates you from guilt: You're not failing to practice; you're deliberately resting.

What kind of rest do you need? Often, you don’t need a break from music. You simply need a break from whatever kind of practicing or music-making you’ve been immuring yourself in lately.  Take a few days to try something new, like learning tunes by ear, listening to recordings, or even playing through things you like.  Meet your friends to play some consort music, go to a live concert- all of these changes can help you return to your practice revitalized and inspired.

So while I did practice today, my practice was different from my usual fare.  Instead of working on a piece I’m going to perform or honing on a specific technique, I’m simply reading, visiting with music I’ve never played and then moving on. 

It feels exploratory.  A little bit joyous.  Restful.

The Million Dollar (Recorder!) Question

What makes individual students succeed?

It’s astonishing to write, but at this point I’ve been teaching recorder for 16 years.  During that time, I’ve taught long-term students and short-term students, absolute beginners and professional musicians, five-year-olds and 85-year-olds and a whole lot in between.

Every student makes progress- but some of them grow by leaps and bounds.  And I can safely say that there is one variable that powerfully predicts whether a student is going to stick with the instrument and blossom, or let his interest wither.

First, a caveat: As a teacher, I consider your progress my responsibility.  If you’re not practicing, it’s my job to figure out what motivates you to practice and help you develop the skills you need to set and meet practice goals.  My job doesn’t end when I close the door to my teaching studio or shut down my computer after an online lesson.

Nevertheless, despite my best efforts, some students blaze forward while others sputter. And yes, some of that is due to differences in drive or investment or experience or inclination. 

But there’s one question I can ask an incoming student that can let me know, in just a few words, the likelihood of that student turning up for lessons next year:

Do you play with others?

The recorder is a sociable instrument.  Most of the time, hearing one recorder on its own is not particularly exciting.  But playing recorder in concert with other instruments, and especially with other recorders, can be magical. 

We humans are sociable, too.  We like to belong to communities, and a community centered on music is a pretty wonderful place to be.  I’ve seen amazing things in the recorder communities I’ve interacted with: people helping one another, and playing music with one another, through sickness and health, joy and sorrow.

Do you play with others?

If a student says yes, it means she has a built-in laboratory in which to try out the new skills she’s learning.  It means she has built-in feedback: She and her playing partners, will be able to see –and hear- the progress she’s made.  And it means she has a built in motivator, a setting to inspire her to work toward her goals and set new ones.

If a student says no, it means I will have to work harder to help that student find meaningful ways to measure her progress, enjoy her playing, and find the motivation to practice.  Sometimes I succeed- particularly when I find ways to connect the student with other players!  Sometimes I don’t.

Do you play with others?

I do.  I hope you do, too.  Making music with others is motivation and laboratory and feedback rolled into one.  And more than that, greater than that, it's a joy.  

Practicing Tunefulness: Your Journey Toward Playing in Tune

This blog entry also appeared in the October issue of the ARS Nova e-Mag, a free service of the American Recorder Society.  Sign up to receive ARS Nova in your inbox.  Photo by Jennifer Carpenter.

One of the questions I'm asked most frequently as a teacher is how to play in tune on the recorder.   

There is, unfortunately, no magic tuning fork. The recorder may be relatively easy to pick up and make noise on, but as many have discovered, it's an instrumental honey trap, keeping its difficulties in reserve until you're hooked! 

It is absolutely possible to play in tune on the recorder, and some intelligent work can help you move closer to your goal.

Change your mindset

The ability to play in tune is a skill. It is not a talent, something a person possesses or not. Nor is it a discrete piece of knowledge that can be absorbed and implemented in one go. Whether or not you can play in tune does not speak to your musicianship, intelligence, or value as a person. Be kind to yourself, and to others! 

Skills require practice, but are ultimately accessible to everyone. It is true that, due to innate predisposition or prior experience, some of us pick up particular skills more quickly than others.  But with focused practice over time, anyone can improve a skill. Viewing tuning as a learnable skill, just like moving your fingers between notes, is the first step to playing better in tune.

Improve your tone

Recorders are designed to play in tune when they're being blown correctly. If you're not producing a clear, open, resonant, and steady tone on the recorder, there's a very small chance that you're playing in tune. In contrast, if you are breathing efficiently and producing an excellent tone, you've fought at least half the battle already.

Tone is among the trickiest things to improve on the recorder. The best way to improve your tone is to work with a teacher -- learning to blow and breathe properly is a complex process that benefits from expert advice and consistent feedback. You can find a teacher on the American Recorder Society website. If you don't have access to a teacher, the ARS website has a series of instructional videos by recorder professional Vicki Boeckman.  

Learn your instrument

The recorder is a sensitive -- and particular! -- instrument. Every recorder is different, and each note on the recorder wants to be blown in a specific way. Spend time with each of your recorders, learning their tendencies. Is your recorder particularly sharp? Is this particular note unusually low?  A tuner with a needle can be useful for this task.

If the recorder is generally out of tune, it can be "pulled out" or "pushed in." In other words, the head joint can be slightly pulled away from the body, lengthening the instrument and lowering its pitch, or pushed back in, raising its pitch back up. Make sure your recorder is warmed up before you assess its tuning, since a warm recorder will be a different pitch than a cold one. And make sure you don't pull out very far -- more than a few millimeters and you will have disrupted the relationships between individual notes.

Step away from the needle

Tuning comprises two separate, yet interlocking, skills: the ability to hear whether something is in tune, and the ability to adjust your playing according to what you hear.

A tuner that provides you with visual feedback, like a needle or lights, is very useful when you're working on the first of these skills. But many people still rely on the needle when it comes time to practice adjusting their own tuning. This is a mistake. You don't need to learn how to adjust your tuning to visual feedback. You need to learn to adjust to a note you hear, whether that note be in tune, sharp, or flat.

Instead of the needle, use a drone.

Most good tuners or tuning apps have a drone function, the ability to produce a sustained note. Practice playing along with the drone. Can you hear when you are sharp or flat? If not, use the needle as a spot checker to help you learn to hear what it sounds like when you're in tune -- or not -- with the drone.  

Once you can hear if you're off, practice beginning your note deliberately sharp or flat -- and then adjusting to match your pitch to the drone. Practice intervals -- thirds and fifths, particularly, so you can hear what good intervals sound like. Practice matching pitches in the same octave, as well as the octaves above and below you. If you have a tuner that offers different temperaments, use the opportunity to practice tuning to slightly different pitches.

You can use a physical tuner, an app, or even a CD.  I use a Korg OT-120 -- it's on the bulkier side, but produces a nice, loud drone in various temperaments.  Clear Tune and other tuning apps offer drones and even more temperament flexibility, though sometimes a drone from a phone can be a little soft for initial practice. My colleague Jody Miller, who directs Lauda Musicam in Atlanta, asks his ensemble members to work with a product called Tuning CD. (I've never used it, but I've met a number of Atlanta recorder players who play remarkably well in tune!)

Trust

If you've put in sufficient time with your instrument and a drone, you've likely developed a subconscious feel for playing in tune. Often, your subconscious tuning-master is faster and more accurate than your conscious brain. Try "hearing" a note in your head before you play it: Ten to one, that note will be better in tune than if you'd approached it with no forethought.

Verify

Our hearing changes as we age. This is particularly true of our high frequency hearing, the kind that allows us to hear some of the overtones that tell us whether or not we're in tune. If you know your ear for tuning is no longer as reliable as it once was, or if you are in the learning stages and feel you could use the extra help, one way to keep playing pleasurable is to make an arrangement with a buddy, someone who can tell you if, in ensemble, you need to adjust your pitch. Formalizing this relationship can help to take some of the angst out of it -- and who among us, in our musical journeys, doesn't need a little help along the way!

Transform Your Practice: Keeping a Practice Journal

Yes, it's true: An unprepossessing 3x5 inch notebook can become the most important tool in your musical arsenal.

It’s called a practice journal, and if you use it thoughtfully, it can increase the effectiveness, efficiency, and joyfulness of your practice!

A practice journal serves multiple functions:  It keeps you accountable, tracks your progress, and helps you chart your course.  It can also evolve into a resource you can refer back to later for ideas and inspiration.

The physical form of the practice journal can vary. I use a small notebook- easy to open, carry, and modify.  I’m not picky about the cover, but if you’re a visual person, having a beautiful object might increase your chances of using it.  You could also use a word doc or note-taking software as a journal.  There’s even an app- though I find it to be more limiting than free-form journaling.

Whatever it looks like, a successful practice journal allows you to tracks several things:

• Time:  When did you practice?  For how long?  I typically jot down my start and end times.  Why track your time?  It's not meant to be punitive or shaming.  Rather, tracking is one of the best ways to motivate yourself.  It's also yields valuable information.  Try jotting a few notes about how you felt prior to and during practice.  You may discover patterns in your practice: perhaps you practice with more energy after dinner, for example, as opposed to before you've eaten.
• Target: What’s your goal?  Writing down what you’re trying to work on, whether it be for the task, hour, week, month, or year, helps you focus your energies and harness your attention. Some goals I’ve set recently include improving my clef reading and brushing up on RV 443. 
• Task: What did you practice?  Ideally, your tasks should relate closely to your targets.  I might make a note that I practiced reading tenor cleft excerpts for 10 minutes, e.g., or that I spent 5 minutes practicing the tricky bit in the Vivaldi at half time.
• Thoughts:  How did go? What did you learn?  If I discover something in the course of my practice that will be helpful to remember, things I tried that I want to avoid or amplify, I jot them down.  Reflecting on my practice helps me refine it.  It also helps my build on each day's practice moving forward.
• Tomorrow: At the end of each session’s entry, I make a note of what I want to accomplish the following day (or week, or month).  I might read a longer excerpt, or tick up my metronome marking, or make a note to listen with my score to a piece for an upcoming concert.
• Odds and Ends: This is optional, butI tend to use my journal as a place to jot down things I want to remember.  It might be a sonata want to play, or a recording I want to listen to, or something somebody said that was extremely helpful.  I star these kinds of entries so that I can flip back through my journal and quickly locate ideas, inspiration, and advice. 

Happy Journaling!

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Better Playing in Five Minutes! No, really!

One of the joys -and frustrations- of learning any musical instrument is that it takes time. Improving your playing is a journey requiring sustained energy, effort, and attention.  It’s a wonderful, and lifelong, process.

But what if you only have five minutes?  On some days and in some seasons of life, that’s all we have. Can you still improve?

The answer is a resounding yes!  Try one of these five ways to improve your playing… in less time than it takes to read this article.

Check your posture.  The way you stand or sit has an enormous impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of your breathing.  It also affects your range of motion, the angle of your ai rstream, your resonance, the degree of tension in your hands and throat- even your mood.  Use a mirror to help guide you, and aim to stack your shoulders over your hips.  Your head should feel as if it is suspended by a string attached to its crown, and your chin should tip neither up nor down.  Your recorder should tilt at approximately a 45 degree angle from vertical.

Vibrate.  Play a note, concentrating on the points of contact between your instrument and your fingertips.  Can you feel vibration? If you can’t, you’re probably gripping the instrument with more force than you need.  Optimize the ease of your motion by keeping your fingers loose.

Begin.  Even if you don’t have time to finish a piece, you have time to start it. Practice putting your best foot (finger?) forward by being purposeful about your inhalation.  You want a loose, efficient inhale with a relaxed chest and throat.  You also want to make sure you’re breathing in time with the piece you’re about to start, as if you were cuing yourself.  Practicing this skill will help you to implement it automatically when you need it- like in performance.

Listen.  Listening to other recorder players can jumpstart your practicing, show you new possibilities, and introduce you to new repertoire. Pick something you’re working on or try something you’ve never heard before.  Listen deliberately, with your full attention, and the score in front of you if possible.   Take notes.  What do you like?  What don’t you like?  What would you like to emulate?  Youtube has a wealth of good (and bad!) recorder music.  If you’re a member of Early Music America, the Naxos Music Library is free to stream on EMA’s webpage.

Journal.  Keeping a practice journal can transform your practice.  It helps you track your progress, set goals, stay accountable, and keep track of things you’ve learned and things want to learn.  Any small notebook or other method of recording will do.  If you’ve got five minutes today, spend them purchasing or re-purposing a practice journal or practice journal app.  Then write your first entry: Today- bought a practice journal!

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