Dos and Don'ts

Don’t think about an elephant!

Especially not its long trunk.  And definitely don’t think about its grey ears.  No tusks either!

Is it working? 

I’ll wager a recorder or two that the answer is no, and that there’s a large pachyderm currently sitting atop your consciousness.

It’s not your fault, of course- it’s the way our brains work.  In trying to avoid thinking about something, or trying to avoid doing something, you’re automatically activating the mental representation of whatever it is you’re trying to escape.

And for those of us who are trying to break a bad playing habit, that’s a significant obstacle.

Fortunately there’s a simple solution.

Think of a gorilla.

Black fur, long arms, agile fingers….

Now the elephant is gone.

How does this translate to recorder playing?  When I’m seeking to break a student’s bad habit, I’m most effective when I frame the task positively.  Rather than asking the student not to do something, I ask the student to do something else. 

Action as opposed to avoidance, doing as opposed to not doing.  This can be a magical reframe.  Instead of working to avoid an undesirable behavior (a difficult and often dispiriting task), the student is instead working toward adopting a desirable behavior (a challenging but inspiring task).  A do, not a don't.

Instead of asking a student to stop making breath accents, I ask for a beautiful and consistent airstream.

Instead of telling a student to stop rushing, I invite them to pay attention to every subdivision of the beat.

In my own playing, one of my struggles is not to break character so quickly at the ends of pieces and movements. 

Recently, I realized I needed a reframe, and now, instead of working on not flinging down the instrument too soon, I’m working toward enjoying that particular stillness after the final note.

Learning While Teaching

It was summer workshop party time. The concerts had been played.  The classes had been taught.  Wine was flowing.  Students and teachers sipped, mingled, and laughed.

And me?

I was holed up in a corner with a colleague talking about how to teach note releases.

Which was basically, to my mind, a giant party all on its own.

Teaching recorder is a wonderful vocation.  But it can be isolating.  There aren’t very many people in my neck of the woods who do what I do, and when I’m hired as a traveling clinician, I am most often hired to teach alone.

Summer workshops are the exception- there’s usually a full slate of fellow faculty- but summer workshops are intensive for both students and teachers, and there is seldom any slack time for teachers to exchange ideas, watch one another’s teaching, or just generally compare notes.

Hence closing down a party talking tonguing.

As I progress through my career, I am keenly aware of how much there is to learn from my colleagues (and my students, but that’s another blog post).  I’m also aware that, unlike other, more established fields, freelance early music teaching lacks organized avenues for continuing education, peer-to-peer learning, and general renewal of skills.

The model I’m most envious of, the Professional Learning Community (PLC), comes from the field of Education. PLCs are communities of professionals committed to “continuous inquiry and improvement."

I love the pairing of these words- inquiry and improvement.  Committing to inquiry and improvement means you’re no longer viewing your teaching as a static dispensation of knowledge, but rather as a dynamic learning process. And if you are actively learning, chances are your students are, too.

And so even through I lack access to organized PLCs, I strive to bring elements of inquiry and improvement into my practice whenever possible.  Here are some of the avenues I use.

Watch

I may be exhausted.  I may desperately need to prepare my own courses.  But I try never to turn down an opportunity to watch a colleague teach.  Many summer workshops have big group playing sessions or masterclasses led by a rotation of faculty.  I invariably learn something, and often many things, by watching or participating in these sessions.

Read

If a colleague has written something about teaching or learning, you’d better believe I’m reading it.  Why wouldn’t I?  Free knowledge!

Facebook

Yes, Facebook.  I’m a member of a music teachers’ Facebook group.  It’s not as active as I would like, but when I’ve reached out for support (tips on teaching teens, how to write a studio policy), I’ve gotten valuable feedback.

Chat

Formally and informally, I watch for opportunities to talk turkey about teaching.  I’m also interested in hearing about students’ learning experiences, both positive and negative.  I’m consistently amazed at how much I learn just by keeping an open ear.

If you’re a teacher, what do you do to facilitate inquiry and improvement?  How do you keep learning?

Are You Stuck In a Rut?

You know what a rut feels like.  You ‘re practicing diligently, playing the same piece or the same passage over and over again.  You don’t think you’re getting any better.  In fact, you’re getting worse. 

What do you do?

Throwing your recorder out the window or burning your music might be tempting, but it’s expensive.  And when it comes to making you a better musician, it’s not your best option. 

Instead, try this action plan for breaking free:

Don’t panic.  Falling into a rut doesn’t necessarily mean you are on the wrong track.  Ruts and potholes are part and parcel of the road to better playing, and there’s not a musician in the world who doesn’t hit them. A rut is not a reflection of your musicianship or strength of character.

Is it a knot?  To me, the practicing process is like brushing hair.  You can brush and brush the surface of your hair and think everything is smooth; but you haven’t yet discovered the knots underneath the surface.  Snarls that crop up in your practicing likely aren’t new; they’re just knots you’ve finally discovered.  Keep untangling with patience and calm.

Change things up.  If you feel like you’re banging your head against the wall during your practice, it’s time to switch things up.  Fortunately the variety of things you can change about your practice is infinite. Slow your tempo to adagio.  Change the rhythm of that tricky passage.  Change your start and stop points.  Play backwards.  Reposition yourself in the room.  Or find something new to focus on: Fingers if you’ve been focused on air, articulation if you’ve been focused on fingers. 

Step away.  Often, a practicing rut is best broken by making an appointment to come back later.  When you reach frustration level, take a short break and play something else, returning when your body and mind are relaxed.

Rest- intentionally.  Though it seems counterintuitive, sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is to rest.  This doesn’t mean giving up or walking away or abdicating.  When done correctly, rest is an intentional act. It requires your attention and intention, and when it’s done well, it enables you to return to your instrument itching to play.

The Single Word That Can Transform Your Playing

What are you bad at?

I’m not that great sight reading.

And actually that’s a point of pride, because I used to be terrible at sight reading, and to be “not that great” marks a giant leap forward.  For the first several years of lessons, I essentially had to memorize a piece to be able to play it. 

Over the ensuing decades I’ve worked hard, and deliberately, to get better at reading, and I’ve radically improved. But I’ll never be the strongest reader in a room, and if someone in a group of professionals is going to make a reading mistake, it will probably be me.  The rapid parsing of visual information just doesn't come easily to me.

And it is undeniably true that some things come more easily to some people.  This can be frustrating.  When you see others breeze through tasks that are difficult for you, it can ding your confidence and make you feel discouraged. 

And there are so many aspects of the recorder to find challenging! I have students who have difficulty covering the holes, students who have a hard time with rhythm, students who have trouble improvising, students who have trouble performing- the list goes on.

The thing is- “bad” is not a binary.  It’s not even really the correct term.  You are not bad at something; you are at a specific starting place on your journey to better playing.  And I firmly believe that, no matter where we begin, each and every one of us can make progress in the areas that are difficult for us. 

You are not bad.   You are beginning.

It’s a simple reframe, but it opens a clear way forward.  If you are bad at something, you are content to rest on your limitations.  If you are beginning, you are motivated to research, design, and execute a plan to make progress.

A teacher can help you do this.  In fact, the transmutation of “bad” to “beginning” is one of our primary responsibilities.  But you can also make this leap on your own.   Start right now by taking a moment to answer to the question I posed at the top- what are you bad at?  Write that down.

Now cross out the word “bad.”  Write, instead, “beginning.”

Now you’re ready to take the first step on your journey forward.  Your next task is to figure out, and write down, what you can do to improve. 

The possibilities are as varied as the challenges.  If you’re a beginning sight reader, you can commit to 10 minutes a day of sight reading -perhaps in cut time.  If you’re looking to cover the holes, you could spend 5 minutes each day sitting with the recorder and feeling the appropriate finger reach.  If you are beginning to read up the octave, you can commit to trying it at your next recorder meeting.

What’s important is that your plan be:

Concrete: A concrete plan tells you what, how, where, and when to take action.

Targeted: The more specific the action you take, the faster you’ll see improvement

Feasible: Will the action plan fit into your lifestyle and time availability? If not, it won’t do you much good.

Begin today.

Why not? You can only get better from here.

How to Get the Most from Your Workshop

The Mountain Collegium Faculty realizes it has a sandal problem.

I like workshops.  They’re full of people who are learning and challenging themselves, and there’s usually lots of coffee.  A workshop is a great way to explore new music and discover new ways of thinking about music and playing.

But it’s not a magic pill.

I still remember attending my first few masterclasses.  I waited to hear the teacher say the magic words that would take my playing to the next level.

They didn’t come.  Because words don’t transform you, at least not immediately. To words, you have to add work- intentional, intelligent work over time.

Workshops can give you tools that help you accomplish that work.  They can provide guidance and motivation.  But even more valuable, a workshop widens your sense of the possible.  A workshop can show you what a more skilled version of yourself could do, and that’s incredibly motivating.

Workshops do cost money, so if you’re attending one, it makes sense to approach it in a way that will get you the most musical bang for your buck.  Over the years, I’ve attended many, many workshops, both as a student and as a teacher. Here are my hard-earned lessons about how to make a workshop work for you:

Be uncomfortable.  If you are fully comfortable with every aspect of what happens musically at a workshop, you are not learning.  You may be enjoying yourself (and if that’s all you want, fine), but if you ‘re not uncomfortable, chances are you’re not exploring new territory or expanding your understanding.  The best thing you can do for yourself at a workshop is get comfortable with being uncomfortable. If you’re not sure you’re doing it right, you’re doing it right.

Have a goal.  You probably wouldn’t go to the grocery store without a list.  Similarly, you’ll get the most out of your workshop if you walk in the door with a goal to help you filter and focus what you hear.  It’s most helpful to make it specific:  You’re here to learn more about articulation, or play bass recorder on at least two pieces, or improve your tone.  A concrete goal will help you to dodge the workshop’s signal hazard, which is overwork.  You will be tempted, sorely tempted, to learn crumhorn, sign madrigals, go to yoga class, shop for music, play after hours, and organize a workshop square dance.  Then, on Wednesday, you will collapse.  Unless you have a goal.

Stay open.  You’ll probably hear something from teachers or fellow students you disagree with or weren’t expecting.  Try it anyway.   Your teachers are trying to help you, and embracing, even if temporarily, someone else’s perspective can make you a more interesting and flexible player.

Write things down.  You may think you’ll remember the name of that terrific canzona you heard, or that smart thing you heard about breathing, or that exercise book you loved.  You won’t.  (I speak from experience!)

Chat.  One thing workshop attendees consistently tell me is how much they learn from other workshop attendees. I know I nearly always learn something at workshops from students and colleagues.  Even if you’re not the chatty kind, take a moment to strike up a conversation at coffee hour (bonus = coffee).

Ask for financial help.  Many workshops offer some kind of financial aid for those who couldn’t otherwise afford it.  Often, this isn’t well-publicized and I’ve several times seen scholarships go unclaimed. If aid would make the difference to you between attending and not attending a workshop, ask!

Bring coffee.  Some workshops have excellent coffee. Some workshops have coffee of the quality one drinks only in desperate circumstances.  Desperate circumstances will arise.

Go.  I urge my students to attend workshops when it’s financially feasible, because they always come back inspired.  Workshops aren’t magic beans, but they are infusions of fuel: your fire will burn more brightly.

And if you’d like to join me at a workshop this summer, I’m privileged to be teaching at four: Check out the Virginia Baroque Performance Academy, Mountain Collegium, Mideast,  and SFEMS Recorder Week.

Use What You Have

Photo credit: Marin Currie

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can

   -Arthur Ashe

I have this quote taped to the door of my studio.  That’s out of character, because inspirational quotes (Dream big!  Reach for the stars!) make me itchy.  Often they represent endpoints, telling you where to go without telling you how to get there.  And an endpoint with no plan is the opposite of good teaching- and good learning.

But Ashe’s quote is different.  In three sentences, Ashe assures us that everyone can learn and everyone can grow -every single one of us, without exception- and what’s more, he tells you how to do it.

Each of the quote’s three sentences is worth mulling, but lately it’s that middle one I keep coming back to.

Use what you have

As teachers, we frequently focus on pinpointing weaknesses. We figure our job is to assess what’s going wrong and why, and determine what a student needs to do to fix it. Do you need less tension in your fingers?  More knowledge of the uses of different tonguing patterns?  Better thumb technique?

This focus on need can be valuable, but it sometimes overwhelms what could, and should, be an equally detailed assessment of strength.

A strengths-based approach to teaching and learning pays multiple dividends.

First, a focus on strengths invites students to nurture areas in which they are already strong rather than simply shoring up areas in which they are weak. Just because something is an area of strength does not mean it could not be further developed -and turned into an even greater asset.  

As a player, I’ve spent many years trying to shore up my musical weaknesses. I worked, and continue to work on my rhythmic precision, my reading, my harmonic understanding. 

And this was, and is, valuable work.  But I wish it hasn’t taken me as long as it did to focus on improving my shaping, one of my areas of relative strength.  Just because I was already strong didn’t mean I didn’t have room to grow.

Second, a focus on strengths allows us to harness what we –and our students- do well to help us learn more efficiently and effectively. Each student’s strengths are individual, as are each student’s weaknesses, and finding a way to apply strength to weakness can be magical.

Here are some examples:

Student A

Student A, a professional musician transitioning to the recorder, was struggling with overblowing.  Student A had an excellent ear and the ability to adjust his blowing to match pitch.  We developed a practice plan involving matching pitch with a tuner to help A accustom himself to the recorder’s optimal airflow.

Student B

Student B, a five-year-old girl learning recorder for the first time, was struggling with hand position and did not enjoy having her positioning corrected. B was highly articulate and eager to communicate her knowledge. We spent several weeks having B “be the teacher,” instructing me and her mother in the proper way to hold a recorder, improving her own positioning in the process.

Student C

Student C was not a natural improviser, and ornamentation was initially daunting.  But C was extremely hardworking and ferociously organized.  Together, C and I developed a set of “rules” for ornamentation and outlined a step-by-step process, allowing her to use her strengths in task analysis and process implementation to work toward successfully going off-book.

What strengths do you and your students have?  How have you recently accessed your strengths, or helped someone to use what they have?

Switcheroo

At the Kelischek workshop, Brasstown, NC

Flexibility is an important life skill.  It’s also an essential part of playing the recorder.  We frequently move between fingering systems, switching from C instruments to F instruments, G and D and beyond. And we toggle between clefs- treble and bass to start, and often more.

It’s a great mental workout, but it can also be frustrating.  You pick up an alto but your fingers are still playing a tenor. Or you’re trying to read bass clef and your mind slips back into treble.

“How do I deal with switching instruments?” is a question I’m asked frequently at workshops. 

There’s no easy answer, but there is an answer: strategic practice combined with a simple technique for orienting yourself to new instruments and clefs.

Get Comfortable

It might seem obvious, but the first step is to get as comfortable as possible in each mode (clef or fingering system) in which you play.  If you’re not comfortable in bass clef, for example, spend a little time each day reading in that clef.  There’s no “trick” to clef reading, but it does get easier with practice!

Pause

Rather than picking up a new instrument and plunging right in, take a moment to breathe and go through a three-part checklist:

1)    Ground yourself physically by placing all seven fingers and your thumb on the instrument, as if you were playing its lowest note.  This will help accustom your body and mind to the new stretch.

2)    Say the name of the lowest note in your mind.

3)    See the line or space to which the lowest note corresponds.  Imagine yourself playing that note.

Taking the time to orient yourself, both physically and mentally, will pay dividends when you start to play.

Switch it up

We get better at what we practice, so why not explicitly practice switching? One exercise I often give students is to take a multi-part piece and, working either up or down, play each of the parts in turn.  It’s a great way to practice, deliberately, the flexibility you’ll want during workshops and performances.

Happy switching!

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!

Grow your recorder playing: Blog RSS