Three Tips for When You Get Frustrated
Here’s a dirty secret about making music: It’s frustrating.
It’s not frustrating all of the time, or even most of the time. But if you’re trying to get better at music, you must accept that, for a solid chunk of the time, you are going to be trying to do something you can’t quite do yet, or can’t quite do with consistency. And there’s a fair chance that fact will piss you off.
Honestly, musical training is really frustration training in disguise. In order to stick with music, and reap its multitude of rewards, we each have to learn to deal productively and kindly with our own frustration. Yes, this is annoying, but it’s also great training for life!
As a music teacher and a musician, I spend a robust chunk of my time helping people productively negotiate their frustration.
For all of us, it’s a lengthy and ongoing process. But I do have some tips!
Treat mistakes as data
You made a mistake!. Guess what? Mistakes are normal part of practicing and performing. And you know what else? They provide incredibly useful information. When you make a mistake, you learn important things about what is working in your playing and what is not, as well as what you might want to work on moving forward. What you don’t learn is anything about your worth as a human being or as a musician. Mistakes are morally neutral.
Try something different
You know the saying “if at first you don’t succeed, try try again?” It needs some revision. How about: “If at first you don’t succeed, maybe try again once or twice more, but after that you need to stop trying the same thing in the same way and change something about your approach.”
Slightly less catchy, but, at least for music, infinitely more accurate! If you’re consistently flubbing a specific passage, don’t just keep trying it over and over. Instead slow it down, break it apart, or start from someplace new. Or ask your teacher for some expert guidance.
Walk away
A shocking amount of learning takes place away from the instrument, in between bouts of practice. If you’ve hit a brick wall on something you’re practicing, don’t keep banging your head against it! Move on to something else and come back to the frustrating section later, when you’re fresher and can approach it with curiosity and calm. And who knows? It just might have gotten better overnight!
Why Stopping at "Does It Work?" Doesn't Work
As a teacher (of myself and others!), I am extremely interested in efficacy.
What’s efficacy? A fancy word for the vital question that marches unceasingly through the mind of anyone who is interested in the process of improvement: Does it work? If I assign a student a particular series of exercises to do to help facilitate tone production, will it work? If I assign myself a particular method of tackling a tricky passage, is it working? If I try out a particular image with a student, did it work?
Note the mix of tenses: This is a question I’m asking myself at every part of the process, before, during, and after I ask a student (or myself) to complete a task or task sequence. I think (hope!) almost all teachers do, whether consciously or not. And if you’re teaching yourself, you should do the same!
But what happens after you answer the question? If you stop at yes or no, I’d argue that you’re missing a key opportunity for reflection and growth. Because for me, each answer -yes or no- gives rise to a sequence of additional -and important!- questions.
Does it work: Yes!
You asked if it worked, and the answer is yes. Fantastic. Now you want to ask the following.
Is it working for this particular student? Sometimes as teachers we discover something that works, put it in our toolkit, and then leave it there without conducting ongoing reassessment. Not every intervention or technique is going to work for every student, and when your teaching technique is not working as it has in the past, I believe it is up to the teacher, NOT the student, to make a change. Once you write lack of progress off as your student’s fault (they aren’t practicing enough; they’re not motivated; not talented; they don’t get it, etc.), you’ve missed a HUGE opportunity for growth, and quite frankly, when I see teachers do this, it makes me sad. In my opinion, the onus remains on the teacher. Is there something you could do to help the student practice more? Is there a technique that would reach the student more effectively? What could help motivate him or her? Don’t let the fact that something generally works blind you to whether or not it is working now.
Is there a way to get the same results faster? This question is really about efficiency. Say a student plays long tones on every note of the instrument every day, and their tone improves. Terrific! But it took that student two hours, and a future student might only be able to carve out 30 minutes. Is there a more efficient way to achieve the same goals?
Will gains be maintained? Is the student able to independently and effectively monitor themselves moving forward? Can they carry the strategy forward without consistent teacher input? If not, you need to work the development of self-assessment skills into your teaching.
Does it work: No!
Curses! Things are not going well. But before you throw everything out the window, there are some important follow-up questions to ask.
Is it a dose problem? Sometimes it’s not a method issue. Sometimes, especially with a strategy that is generally successful, what you’re trying will work or is working- the student just hasn’t done enough of it AND/OR the student hasn’t done it for a long enough time span. This is particularly true when students are working on skills that typically have longer time horizons, like tone production or free ornamentation. Alas, it can be difficult, as a teacher, to assess whether the issue is dose or method. Getting an accurate picture of the student’s practice routine can help, as can increasing the dose (number of times you ask a student to complete a task each session, e.g.,) and seeing if you get a result. If you’re seeing at least some progress, there’s often a dose issue involved.
I will also add that assuming the problem is method, and not dose, is a an extraordinarily common error made by students who are teaching themselves. Many skills simply require a timescale of months or even years.
Is it a comprehension problem? Sometimes you think you’ve successful explained a concept, but the student doesn’t quite have an accurate grasp of what he or she is to do, or loses their grasp after the lesson is over. This can lead to mis-practicing, in which a student thinks he or she is practicing the assigned skill, but is in fact practicing something different, often to his or her detriment. One way to winkle out comprehension issues is for the student to restate, or “teach” you the desire concept or exercise. Recording is another useful tool. The student can record the entire lesson to refer back to. Or you can provide a short video of a particular task for reference.
Is there a constraint? If there is, you don’t want to miss it! Maybe the student is playing an Adler recorder from the 1970s, and someone’s dog chewed on it. Perhaps the student has short-term memory weakness, or arthritis, or compromised lung function. If it’s a constraint that can be removed, remove it (goodbye, Adler!) If it’s a constraint that can’t be removed, you must think about how to accommodate.
Is it a motivation issue? Sometimes a student just doesn’t see the utility of what you’re trying to do, but is reluctant to tell you so. This can come into play both with goals (e.g., you want to help the student control his uncontrolled vibrato but the student actually likes the way it sounds) or with strategies (e.g., the student doesn’t *really* believe the tone exercises you’re asking her to do are going to work). If it’s a motivation issue, you need to address it. Can you use recordings, or a discussion of tuning, to convince the student of the beauty of a clear tone? Would the student prefer to work on something else for now? Can you ask another student to talk about how similar assignments improved her playing?
What are you going to try next? If it doesn’t work, and it’s not a dose or compression or motivation issue, you have a moral imperative to move on and try to find another way of meeting your goals. What’s next?
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!
Better Playing in Five Minutes! No, really!
Got five minutes? Use it to improve your recorder playing!
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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