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!

Three Terrific Recorder Resolutions

It’s January, the time of year in which we stop eating delicious things and start embarking on courses of self-improvement. 

Last year I cut out sugar for a month and it was dreadful.

Fortunately, at least in the musical realm, self-improvement doesn’t have to be joyless.  In fact, resolving to improve your recorder playing can be an exciting and empowering- if you consider your resolutions carefully.

Here are three fantastic January resolutions for recorder players.  I invite you to select one and stick with it for 30 days.  (Why 30 days and not the entirety of 2018? A year is a reeeallly long time.  A month is manageable.)

Completing any of these 30-day challenges will deepen your musicianship and improve your playing.  And all three of them are easier than giving up chocolate!

Recorder Resolution #1: Practice 15 minutes every day.  15 minutes!  That's it!  You can, of course, practice for more than 15 minutes- but you don’t have to.   What you can't do is collapse your 15 minutes- so no 30 minutes one day and 0 the next.  This is because small amounts of practice, distributed over time, can be incredibly powerful, especially when you practice with full attention and engagement.  And 15 minutes is a manageable amount of time, even on your busiest days!

Recorder Resolution #2: Learn one new piece per week.  When students first come to me, they often tend toward one of two extremes.  Either they’re repeaters, playing the same pieces over and over again, or racers, devouring new pieces but never working in depth.  This month, try a middle way.  Pick one new piece (of an appropriate level) to learn each week- but really work in depth on each of your selections.  By the end of the month, you should have made a good start on four new pieces.

Recorder Resolution #3: Sight reading boot camp.  Do you have a sight reading weakenss? Is it counting in whole notes?  Reading alto up the octave?  Playing in bass clef?  Maybe you’ve been wanting to tackle c clefs?  Pick your sight reading poison, then stockpile some appropriate music. Every practice session this month, devote 10 minutes to sight reading in your target area.  I promise you'll improve.

Want some free accountability?  Email me to say which of my resolutions you're embracing this month and I’ll check in with you in early February!

The Best Gift You Can Give Your Musical Self

‘Tis the season of gift-giving! .

And what if I told you there was one gift you could give your recorder playing self that’s completely free, doesn’t require a schlep to Target, and is 100% guaranteed to make you a better player?

Sounds great, right?  It is great.

It’s called distributed practice. 

I know distributed practice may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you imagine recorder-related gifts (I for one would like a full Renaissance consort, a nice Kung bass, maybe a quality sopranino….right after I win the lottery).

But it is hands down the best thing you can do for your playing this holiday season.

What is distributed practice?  Simply put, distributed practice is practice that’s spread out over time.  Distributed practice means more frequent, shorter sessions as opposed to less frequent, longer sessions. If distributed practice were a sandwich fixing, it would be peanut butter- a nice, even spread over your bread.

If you’re working on a new skill (like using your thumb correctly, or mastering a particularly difficult passage), research from the field of motor learning strongly suggests you will learn better, and faster, if you distribute your practice over time.

Instead of two marathon practice sessions a week, try five short ones.

Instead of one hour-long session a day, try two half-hour sessions. 

Instead of packing all your technical exercises at the beginning of your practice, try them once at the beginning, once in the middle, and once at the end.

Trying to master a finger twister?  Practice it, then leave it, then practice it, then leave it, then practice it- etc. etc.

For me, distributed practice has been transformative.  I believe it can be for you, as well.

You’re welcome.

Thank You

November is traditionally a time of thanksgiving.   I’m a fan of gratitude: acknowledging the things you're grateful for can help you nurture a deeper appreciation for them.  But one thing I don’t often give thanks for is music.

Partly that’s because of the dailiness of music in my life.  Like laundry, cleaning, and obeisance to the almighty dishwasher, practicing is a task that is never, ever done.  And because I’m a professional musician and music teacher, music is work, with work’s attendant obligations, anxieties, and financial pressures.

But the truth is I’m deeply grateful for music.  For its truth, of course, but also, on a more fine-grained level, for its consequences- all the smaller, but no less valuable, ways in which it has ricocheted through my life.  Here are three:

I am thankful for music’s mundanity.  I practice every day.  The Sisyphean nature of music-making can wear me down.  But it can also be profoundly sustaining. I’ve had some difficult moments this year (as in other years) and being able to head into the practice room and knuckle down to the business of pushing the boulder up the hill has been a comforting constant.

I am thankful for my colleagues.  Making music with other people, even in a professional context, is personal.  At some level, when we play, we play ourselves: not who we want to be or who we pretend to be, but who we truly are on an elemental level.  And then we figure out a way to work together.  I’m thankful for every colleague who has let me hear their heart.

I’m thankful for my students.  Music has allowed me to discover what I’m truly passionate about, and that’s teaching.  To learn is an amazing, challenging, and sometimes painful endeavor- and my students inspire me every day with their joy and with their grit.

 What gifts has music given you? 

Practice Pitfalls: Are You Self-Sabotaging?

You practice and you practice and you practice.  But when it comes time to play with others, things fall apart.

Sound familiar?

There are dozens of factors that contribute to how you perform when the chips are down- too many to enumerate a single blog entry.  But it’s worth doing a quick audit of your practice routine to see if you’re falling victim to any of these four common practice traps.  Because if you are, there's an easy fix!

Do-it-over-itis

What do you do when you’re practicing and you make a mistake? If you reflexively go back and replay a passage every time you make a mistake, you may suffer from do-it-over-itis.  Do-it-over-itis is particularly dangerous for ensemble players: By the time you’ve gone back and fixed your mistake, your ensemble mates have moved on.  (And even if you didn’t actually go back, you probably had to spend mental energy suppressing the urge to do so!)

When you practice running a piece, make a note of problem spots for later and then, after your run, spend focused time working out the kinks.

Practicing quickly

Yes, we all want to be able to play quickly.  But it’s a counterintuitive truth that we only develop the ability to play quickly by practicing slowly.  Practicing beyond the capacity of what you can do means practicing mistakes -and since we get better at doing whatever we practice, practicing mistakes isn’t the way to go. You know this.  We all know this.  But it’s 100% worth reminding ourselves. 

Slow down when you practice.

Skipping rests

I was guilty of this one for far, far too long.  Guess what you’ll be tempted to do in performance?  Furthermore, you’ll be missing an opportunity to develop the necessary and valuable skill of maintaining a beat internally when you’re not playing.

Enjoy –and practice- the silences.

Fingers only

If there’s one thing that drives me nuts, it’s hearing students warm up or practice while “marking” their breath- i.e., deliberately underblowing. Airflow is the beating, glorious heart of recorder playing, and practicing without it doesn’t accomplish much of anything.

Always practice with fully engaged air.

It Was Better at Home!

I like to joke that I should have a jar in my teaching studio labeled “It was better at home.”

In my fantasy, every time a student utters this phrase, he or she will be required deposit a dollar into the jar, thus propelling me to vast and renewable wealth.

My students find this scenario less hilarious than I do.

And I understand.  It can be incredibly frustrating to work and work and work at perfecting a piece or technique, only to have it fall apart in front of the teacher. What’s worse, the students know they CAN do it- so it’s unbelievably maddening when they don’t.

And of course I’ve experienced, and continue to experience, this frustration myself.  It is vanishingly rare that I perform to 100% of my capacity in concert.  It is always, always better at home.

So what do we do about it?

After I crack my joke, I get down to business:

Accept

Accept that it will almost always go better at home (though of course it is possible to improve your ability to perform under pressure- another topic).  Accept you are unlikely to perform at 100% of your capability, and are more likely to accomplish, say, 80% of what you set out to accomplish.  Don’t waste your energy on frustration.

Grow your 80%

Instead of fretting about not achieving 100% of what you set out to accomplish, take that energy and put it toward growing what 80% looks like.  Improving your overall skill level means the 80% you hit next week will look better than 100% you hit today.  It’s like supply-side economics for recorder playing (only, you know, it actually works!). Grow the whole pie! 

Improve your recovery

It’s not about not making mistakes- because you most likely will.  It’s about how quickly you recover.  Set aside a portion of your practice time for recovery runs- runs in which you don’t stop when you make an error, but work to right yourself quickly.

Don’t waste your money filling up my jar!  You need those dollars to buy more recorders.

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.