Time, time, time, is on your side (yes it is)

Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change – this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear; out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress. ~ Bruce Barton

And I like messing around in the engine room of music. Seeing what happens in the rhythm section area. Bill Bruford

_______________________________

If you’re interested in playing music, you’ve gotta have rhythm. If you think you don’t “have it,” consider the words of Taylor, a teacher, djembe-player, and all around good guy. Taylor has students feel their heartbeats. It’s a rhythm we all have. But it’s an internal rhythm, an unconscious rhythmic ability, a legacy we all get when we receive a heartbeat from our parents. We may have trouble making that natural rhythm come out consciously under control. But that, too, can be practiced. One of the most rewarding ways to practice rhythm is to learn a percussion instrument. Latin music is a great place to start. You’ve got cajon, shakers, the all-important clave, and my favorite, the conga.

Dizzy Gillespie began experimenting with Afro-Cuban rhythm and using it in his music, but of course he was not the first; Jelly Roll Morton liked to insert what he called, “That Latin tinge,” in his music, too. From this interest came Manteca and many other great Latin-influenced tunes from Dizzy. Because of this interest, he began to learn to play the conga. If you listen to him talk on the Marian McPartland show Piano Jazz, you’ll hear him do a cool rhythmic thing with his hands.Another excellent trumpeter and conga player (better at conga than Diz, for sure), is Jerry Gonzales, one of the musicians in an excellent documentary, Calle 54.

Not only is playing percussion a great way to help your own rhythmic ability, it’s a real kick. Although many percussion instruments are easy to make a sound on, like any other instrument, it takes some serious focus if you want to really master the techniques, and make music with rhythm. But even at a beginning level, playing a percussion instrument will help your rhythm. Many of the instruments are fairly inexpensive, too, like egg shakers, which cost only a few dollars.

I’ve been interested in percussion for a long time and own many percussion instruments (conga, cajon, talking drum, djembe, def, shekere, shakers, etc. etc.) and can play all of them reasonably well, though I’m still learning to evoke great tone from my conga (especially the slap).  I can play a pretty mean egg shaker, though.

Taking a class in any of these instruments is a great idea. In Chicago we’re lucky to have The Old Town School of Folk Music, where you can learn all kinds of fun instruments from great players. If you don’t have such a resource, there’s always YouTube, or you can likely find a local player who is willing to teach. This is a fun way to increase your skills.

Here are some thoughts on rhythm from one of my favorite jazz drummers, Ed Thigpen, a jazz veteran who played with Oscar Peterson and Ella Fitzgerald. I was so sad to learn that he passed away at age 79 in mid-January. Here’s a clip from the 2009 documentary Ed Thigpen: Master of Time, Rhythm and Taste. If you’d like to listen to his magic, check out The Oscar Peterson trio, Ella Fitzgerald or one of my personal faves,  Mr. Taste.

RIP, Mr. Taste. Infinite thanks for your music and teachings.

Have fun and good luck with your practice.

Jazz Resources

Jazz isn’t dead, it just smells funny. ~Frank Zappa

I don’t care too much about music. What I like is sounds. ~Dizzy Gillespie

——–

This coming weekend I’m manning the computer lab at the Evanston Township High School Jazz Festival, a jazz fest for high school jazzers in and around the Chicago area, and from further afield, too. I’m putting together some resources that the budding jazz musician will find helpful, including sites for listening, blogs, freeware, software, podcasts, and anything else that might be useful. Some of the software I’ve mentioned in one or two earlier posts (Sibelius, Aviary, NoteFlight, Audacity, Band in a Box, etc). I’ll put links to that software here, but won’t go into much detail. If you’re not into actually playing jazz, you should certainly check out some of the listening opportunities, and some of the podcasts as well. Great stuff there…. Enjoy!

Listening Chops

If you want to play jazz, or any music for that matter, you have to listen. You have to absorb all those intricate and subtle details of sound that make jazz jazz, or that make rock rock, or that make raga raga. Jazz trumpeter Clark Terry said, “Imitate, assimilate, innovate,” and that first step can’t happen without listening. Below are some great places to listen. For free!

Pandora: Most people know about this site already. It’s an outgrowth of the music genome project. Plug in a key word (an artist, a genre, a song title), and Pandora will make a radio station for you based on your key word. This can be a great way to discover recordings you didn’t know about, and artists you didn’t know about.

Musicovery: If you’d like a more visual experience to find jazz (or any other genre) related to how you feel at the moment, try this interesting site. Fun to play with. I just found a great version of “Body and Soul” by Roy Eldridge (Little Jazz). Woot!

Lala: According to TechCrunch: “Lala May Have Just Built The Next Revolution In Digital Music. The company has the best streaming music product on the Internet today, and a business model that doesn’t burn cash.”

Accujazz: This is a fantastic site, not only because it’s got great jazz recordings to listen to for free, but the way they’re organized is brilliant. By genre, by decade, by artist, by instrument, and a whole bunch of other great ways to organize the music. I’m currently totally diggin the Blue Note channel. Fantastic stuff! Highly recommended.

Jazz Blogs

Here are some of the jazz blogs I subscribe to. Blog is short for “web log” of course, and it’s a place where you can read and respond to the thoughts of folks you might not otherwise get to interact with or see in person. There are thousands of bloggers out there, so you’re bound to find a few that are interesting. Save time and collect them in one place.

The aggregator I use is the Google Reader, a fantastic cloud computing tool.  Many other options exist, but it’s a good idea to have one that collects all the blogs (and podcasts) you’re interested in one spot. Saves vast amounts of time.

A Blog Supreme: NPR’s fantastic contribution to jazz blogging.

Accujazz Blog: Related to the radio station mentioned above. Good information.

The Jazz.com Blog: Want to go deep? Here’s the place. I’m just getting to this one, but like what I’ve read so far.

About.com’s Jazz Blog: About.com’s contribution to jazz blogging. Good info here, too, especially if you’re new to jazz.

All About Jazz: Not technically a blog, but tons of info here: writing, pics, vid, discussion, etc.

Jazz Lives: Written by Michael Steinman, writer and jazz addict. Nominated as one of the Best Jazz Blogs of 2009 by the Jazz Journalists Association. I just discovered this blog and look forward to exploring it.

Dave Douglas’s Blog: A good blog by DD, mostly about his music and other issues in jazz (like the hot debate over metronome use), lots of free sound files of Dave and his various groups. There are probably a lot of blogs out there by jazz musicians, but I haven’t looked into them much. If you know of a good one, please leave a comment with the address, and thanks!

Jazz Podcasts

All of these podcasts can be subscribed to either on the site (which is the link provided) or on iTunes. Just run a search using the right name and you’ll be able to subscribe via iTunes. This is how I get all my podcast subscriptions as it saves time and is automatic. Many on this list come from Blogspot’s list, many of which I’d already subscribed to, but there are a few new ones here I look forward to hearing.

Word Jazz: Okay, this one doesn’t have much to do with jazz, but it’s a very cool series of spoken word pieces done by poet Ken Nordine. who worked with cool jazzer Chico Hamilton for a while.

30 Years of Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland: This NPR show is truly fantastic. McPartland, a piano player, interviews and plays with jazz luminaries and has been doing it for decades (btw, this link isn’t a podcast, but follow the “more” link and you’ll find the podcast button). On this site you can scroll over pics, click on them and get a good 5 minute clip from interviews. One of the best sites I’ve seen in some time, and a great resource. Thank you, intertubes. Thank you, NPR!

Conversations with Christian (McBride): This is a podcast you have to get through iTunes (it’s free), and can be had in either audio or video formats (vids can also be found through CM’s Facebook page). The first one is w/ Eddie Palmieri. As a bonus here are a bunch of McBride’s videos playing with a host of fantastic musicians.

Wynton Marsalis: Video podcast series now in over 100 episodes. A major insight into the great trumpeter’s work, including extensive HD footage of band rehearsals, master class footage, concert footage, album trailers, spoken word, pdf samplers of written work…. Good stuff, but can’t be had in audio-only, so it won’t go on an iPod shuffle….

The Traneumentary: Sweet! Just discovered this and am psyched to explore the 33 episodes up already. Presents interviews on John Coltrane’s music with many jazz greats including McCoy Tyner, Charles Tolliver, Sonny Rollins, Steve Kuhn, Jimmy Cobb, Joshua Redman, Joe Lovano and many more. Available at the site, or through iTunes. Free.

We Insist!: Jazz Speaks Out: A multi-part series exploring the impact of jazz music on social change movements and African-American history and culture. The series features conversations with musicians, authors and educators who have studied the music and its impact, experienced it first hand and, in some cases, created it.

Jazz Profiles: An in-depth look at the greatest performers who have influenced the history of jazz; presented by host Nancy Wilson. Highly recommended! (subscribe here)

GWU Presents American Jazz: Traditional jazz and the stories behind the music. Hosted by George Washington University’s Dick Golden, listen Saturdays from 10am-Noon on Sirius-XM Channel 70. Podcasts Now Available. Listen in iTunes.

Software

Audacity: Free audio editing software. I’ve written about this before and posted some video tutorials on slowing a piece down and changing its key. We’ll be using this in the ETHS Jazz Festival computer lab to slow down a fast improvised solo, making it easier to learn by ear.

Band-in-a-Box: This program has been around for a while (it was invented by a dentist, but don’t let that scare you away) and is a pretty handy tool, especially if you’re trying to learn how to improvise or to play with others. It’s one of the more expensive programs, however, ($99-$349) but I find it quite useful. You enter chord names, choose from hundreds of musical styles, and the machine creates a backup band for you to jam with. Recent additions to the BBX tools use recordings of actual musicians for a more  realistic sound. There are add-ons that can be easily found (often for free) that have a suite of pre-entered chord progressions. I have the entire Real Book series, for example (Real Books are a large collection of jazz standards). I just open up a tune like ‘Round Midnight and away I go. Lots of tutorials out there for this program, too. Overview of the program will be given at the Jazz Fest.

Noteflight: Free notation software

Aviary Audio Editor: Free loop-based software (in the cloud)

Other software here and here from a previous post.

Have fun, and good luck with your practice!

Tiny Grains of Sand: The Warmup and the Breath

We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present. Victor Hugo

———

It is difficult for us to perceive the small, the distant. This is why both telescopes and microscopes are such magical manipulators of the world, devices that strong-arm it into revealing itself. Some things however, aren’t revealed by such physical devices but are instead revealed by the scope of the mind, of reason, of imagination. Getting better at music requires such tools, such perception. What do we need to see that is so small? So distant?

Imagine your musical ability is made up of tiny motes of sand. At birth some minute piles might be slightly bigger (call it “talent” or “innate ability” or “proclivity” if you must) but because the amounts are so small, they can’t be easily seen, and are therefore similar. As you go through life, things you do, the environment in which you live, and your beliefs will add to your teeny tiny pile of musical-ability-sand, one invisible grain at a time (and if you practice incorrectly, you might even be taking tiny grains away from your pile). Research continues to show us that becoming a great musician has little or nothing to do with the pile of sand you start out with. It takes work, a lot of it, and the only way to get that work, the only way to get good no matter your starting point, is to pile it up. This takes effort and time: an ability to trust in tiny increments of progress, and an ability to see distantly, into a future where all that practice has added up to a pile of sand that can be seen, felt, and heard. All that practice and piling up of experience will give you the ability to make music, to communicate musically.

One of the best ways to both remind yourself of some of those grains in your pile of sand, and to add more, is the warm-up. The warm-up is a time to reconnect with the ways of making sound that are specific to your chosen instrument. The warm-up (often no more than 5 minutes), is a reminder to get the body firing in the way it should. The breath is one of the first things I focus on in my warmup becasue it’s so fundamentally important. And since I’m giving a talk on breathing at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival (come say hi if you’re attending), the rest of this post will convey some of that information about taking a good breath. Of course, the breath is also important for percussionists, pianists, and string players (just watch Yo-Yo Ma play, or Glenn Gould, or the fantastic jazz trio Bobby Broom/Kobe Watkins/Dennis Carroll and you’ll see that they breathe with their music). If you’re not a wind player, the following may be less useful, but still interesting.

Because visualization is an important aid to helping us understand how things work, consider the following animations. Here’s how respiration works:

And here’s how the diaphragm muscle works, the muscle that controls the breath, the one your music teacher has probably mentioned:

It helps to know of these things when taking a breath, but also important is exactly how the breath is taken. Specifically, how open the throat is. If you can hear your inhalation, you’re doing it wrong. There’s a simple device called a breathing tube that can be made from an empty toilet paper roll or from a 3/4 inch piece of PVC (teachers: you can buy a 10 foot length for around 4$: makes about 25 tubes). Here’s my vid explaining how to make and use one. Basically, the device makes you open your throat to take a breath in the way that you need to do if you’re playing a wind instrument. This is especially true for flute and tuba players!

There are 3 stages to the breath. Sort of. The 3 stage-breath is just a device to help understand the process of taking a good breath for wind players. In reality, the steps happen almost simultaneously. Nevertheless, it often helps to break things down until you get it, then piece the pieces together into a coherent whole. Here is the last video on the 3-stage breath. If you practice it frequently, and with a breathing tube, you might want to sit down. If you’re not used to breathing in this way, you’ll be come light-headed and might even pass out. Be careful!

Do some of these slow, considered breaths during your warm up to remind yourself how it’s done. You’ll be on your way to making it an automatic process. Another grain for your pile of sand! Have fun, and good luck with your practice…

Geurrilla Practice

The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose. ~Henry Kissinger

The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea. ~Mao Zedong

______________

What do you do with your down time? On the train or bus, walking with your hands in your coat pockets. I practice trumpet fingerings (songs, scales, patterns) and try to “hear” the pitches in my head. When I was a bored lifeguard on an early morning shift, I’d sing along using solfege syllables, trying to see the notated music. Conga rhythms are easily played on a leg. I notice that this mental/physical practice, taken in little doses throughout the day when I think about it, seems to help my dexterity, speed, and ear.

Here’s a story about Peter Brett, a guy who wrote a novel on his phone while riding the F train, in New York City (book “trailer” ).

All that sitting time, no matter where it is, can be put to good use for practicing music, too, of course. I do fingerings, but that wouldn’t work for most, especially a trombone player. Use your imagination. Singing is good ear training and works for everyone, though. If you have an iPhone, check out the following apps: Karajan, app list.

Have fun, and good luck with your guerrilla practice.

Hatian Relief

The tragic circumstances in Haiti need our attention. Give if you can.

Because Evan Tobias is both eloquent and informed, and says it better than I would, I’ve provided the following image linked to his post on some musician’s response to sending Haitian relief :

Thanks, Ev.

Catalysts & Connections: Evan Tobias

Evidence of Motivation

In every artist there is a touch of audacity without which no talent is conceivable. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Success is the child of audacity. ~Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: You don’t give up.    ~Anne Lamott

——

The last couple posts were both dense and long, so the next two will be light and short.

Do you imagine that the odds of reaching your musical goals are great? I know I often do. How do you keep yourself going? Inspiration can be found anywhere, sometimes in things that have nothing to do with music. I just found some inspiration I’d like to share.

Imagine if, in 1974, your goal was to walk on a tightrope between the World Trade Centers in New York. Does that give your own goals any perspective? Philippe Petit did it. I just watched the movie Man on Wire (available for instant viewing on Netflix) and was filled with inspiration by a story that contains audacity, imagination, close friendship, danger, and a tinge of tragedy at its conclusion. It’s a fantastic documentary, and a wonderful example of the power of motivation. (It also sort of explains the cover of an album I loved in 1985, Steps Ahead’s Magnetic.)

Petit’s walk was also a background event in one of the best books I’ve read in years, winner of the 2009 National Book Award: Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin. Both the movie and the book are highly recommended.  Hope you enjoy the trailer for the film. The next post will be on Guerilla Practice. Stay tuned, have fun, and good luck with your practice!

It IS about you…

“I looked always outside of myself to see what I could make the world give me instead of looking within myself to see what was there.”  ~Belle Livingstone

—-

Have you ever been out in the world, going somewhere, sure of the direction you’re headed when in a flash you realize that you’re actually headed in the opposite direction? It’s such an odd and sudden shift of perspective, as if the entire world suddenly snaps to a new orientation. But it’s not the world that shifts, it’s you. Every now and then I get that same feeling from something I read. It could be the first time I read a new author (Bradbury, O’Connor, Vonnegut), or some piece of research, like a study by Carol Dweck, the subject of this post.

Last week I discussed how ego goals (proving your worth/ability or seeking to avoid disproving your worth/ability) are less productive and less helpful than task goals (focusing on a specific task to be completed/learned). Although the evidence is pretty clear that focusing on yourself isn’t the way to go, it’s also good to take Plato’s advice: “Know thyself.” In this sense, it’s kind of a personal inventory. What you think and believe about intelligence (and music) has a profound effect on how you learn, and even whether you learn. Do you think your intelligence is fixed? Is your IQ a number that doesn’t change? How about talent? Do you think some are simply more talented than others? It turns out that your answers influence whether you tend to adopt ego goals or task goals as discussed last week. Did I mention motivation was a complex issue? Sheesh, we’re only scratching the surface here!

Anyway, Dweck’s article is all about the implicit (that is to say unspoken–even unconscious) ideas you hold about intelligence (and, as Smith (2005) points out for music, “talent”). Your ideas about what intelligence is has a profound impact on the way you learn. In a 1986 paper (the one that had such a powerful impact on me a few years ago), Dweck identified two systems of belief about intelligence: entity theory, and incremental theory. In  entity theory, the basic idea is that you believe intelligence is fixed. Immutable. A stable entity. The smarts you have are the only smarts you get. This is a pretty common belief and it’s reinforced by our culture and by labels such as “IQ scores,” or even the words “smart” or “stupid.” If you hold an incremental theory to be true however, this means you believe that intelligence is NOT fixed, that you get smarter the more you learn.

As with any theory, it helps to separate things out with clear distinctions, but in messy reality, we are a jumbled mix of all these things and more. And depending on the situation, or the teacher you’re with, or the people you hang around, these can shift and change. Again, Plato’s advice to “know thyself,” is really the only answer. You’ve got to figure these tendencies for yourself. So, what does it mean to hold either entity or incremental theories of intelligence?

Turns out that if you believe intelligence is fixed, you tend to adopt ego-oriented goals, and remember from last week that these goals aren’t very conducive to deeper learning. Ego is the focus because you’re identified with the label “smart” or “not smart” and because you believe that’s a fixed thing, it becomes part of your identity. Nobody wants to appear dumb, and those of us who hold this orientation (probably all of us to some degree or other) seek out situations that prove our intelligence (or our musical “talent”), and we seek to avoid situations which show us as “dumb” (or musically “untalented”).

However, if you believe that intelligence/talent is mutable, that you can get smarter/more “talented”, then you tend to adopt task goals. You tend to persist longer, and especially after failure, because with this orientation, failure is not a reflection of your ability or lack thereof, but an indication that you need to know more. Like James Joyce said, “Mistakes are the portals of discovery.”

It’s a good idea to take something you don’t understand not as a sign that you’re dumb, but as a sign that you haven’t learned enough yet, and seek out that new knowledge. This is a HUGE difference in worldview! It caused a radical shift in my orientation: I became much more aware of the areas where I seemed to hold an entity theory. I’ve seen a gradual change into an even broader incremental theory in myself, both in thinking about my intelligence (and others’–very important for teachers out there!) and about musical “talent.” Subsequent studies have more or less confirmed that the implicit theories we hold and have a significant impact on our behavior and how we learn. The good news is that evidence has also shown that one’s implicit theories can and do change. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s the woman herself talking about these ideas:

So, your implicit theories about “talent” will likely have an impact on the goal orientation you adopt (task or ego), and that will have an impact on how you practice. Talent is a myth! Talent is little more than accumulated practice time. Talent is learned ability. Those who show “talent” in music usually have had significant exposure from a very early age, even from within the womb! All this musical experience adds up, so those who get their exposure and practice at an earlier age seem to have some magical, God-given “talent” when in fact they’re simply showing the incremental nature of skill acquisition.

John Sloboda, an important musical psychologist, quoted by Smith (2005), said that Sloboda looked at the relevant research literature and “eloquently deconstructed what he calls the ‘talent account’ of musical ability–however, his conclusion that there is little or no evidence of any measurable aspect of function that could be interpreted as ‘talent’ is a message that has yet to resonate in the culture as a whole” (p. 51). Yep. Still a true story. Smith quotes another researcher immediately afterward and it’s a good quote so I’ll do the same:

“Americans generally accept the premise that the most common way, if not the only way, to acquire artistic talent is to have it bestowed upon you at birth, rather than through the successive influence of nurturing individuals and environments over time” (Austin, 1997, p. 168). Don’t forget that one of those “nurturing individuals is yourself!”

Talent as some magical thing you’re gifted with is a myth. Talent can be earned through work. You can get smarter, and better over time. Want to be talented? Go practice!

Have fun. Good luck.

—-

Austin, J. R. (1997). Conceptions of music ability in American society: The influence of competition and other sociocultural factors. In R. Rideout (ed.) On the Sociology of Music Education, pp. 166-179. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma School of Music.

Dweck, C. S. (1986). Motivational processes affecting learning. American Psychologist, 41(10), 1040-1048.

Sloboda, J. (1996). The acquisition of musical performance expertise: Deconstructing the talent account of individual differences in musical expressivity. In K. A. Ericsson (ed.) The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports, and Games, pp. 107-126. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Smith, B. P. (2005). Goal orientation, implicit theory of ability, and collegiate instrumental music practice. Psychology of Music, 33(1), pp. 36-57.

It’s not about you…

Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called “Ego.”    ~Friedrich Nietzsche

I measure what’s going on, and I adapt to it. I try to get my ego out of the way. The market is smarter than I am so I bend. ~Martin Zweig

————

Happy New Year, everyone! Hope you had a wonderful holiday season and may the next 52 weeks be filled with learning, adventure, and growth, whatever your motivation and goals may be. Speaking of which….

Motivation is the grease and the ball bearings in the wheels of our music practice. Without motivation, absolutely nothing would happen. It’s as essential as the breath you breathe. Thing is, motivation is a slippery notion that tends to slip away when you try to wrap your mind around exactly what it is, where it comes from, and how it works. There are the usual (and essential) things that help musicians stay motivated, like listening to great music, going to see musicians live and talking to them if possible, but this is surface stuff. Motivation goes much deeper. There are two important aspects of motivation I’d like to throw out for you to chew on: goals (specifically what researchers call goal orientation), and your implicit theories on both intelligence and “talent.” When I wrote this up, I thought I could put both subjects in one post, but that made the post too long, so today’s topic is goal orientation, and next week’s topic will be about how your beliefs have a profound impact on your motivation to practice. Important stuff.

Researchers and theorists identify two types of goals: task goals and ego goals. Task goals are simply based on the improvement of a particular skill or ability. They’re also called process-, learning-, or mastery goals. For example, your focus on getting that ii-V lick in Db under your fingers at 120 bpm is an example of a task goal because it’s focused on the specific task. Ego goals are those that involve comparison with others. This includes all forms of competition, whether it’s a formal competition with prizes or the inevitable comparison with others that exists only in your head. Examples are chair auditions in your band, solo/ensemble competitions, or hanging out at a jam session and comparing your skills to those of other players. Ego goals are broken down further into two types: ego approach (seeking to demonstrate high ability in relation to others), and ego avoid (avoiding demonstration of a lack of ability in relation to others).

It’s important to note that these goal structures aren’t points anchoring a continuum–that is, either you have one or the other–but exist simultaneously in a person as separate orientations. You can be focused on a task, and focused on not looking bad at the same time. Turns out however, that one focus is better than another. You can probably already guess which one.

Research in goal orientation usually highlights the positive outcomes of task goals when they’re based on “improvement, progress, mastery, creativity, innovation, learning…” (Pintrich & Schunk, 1996, p. 240). Ego goal research most often associates negative outcomes: anxiety, surface learning strategies, feelings of failure (this last especially with ego avoid goals). The ego approach goal (demonstrating high ability relative to others) can be a wonderful motivating factor but very few get those benefits and never 100% of the time. Ego approach goals are like Sigfried and Roy’s white Bengal Tiger: it’s great and glamorous and powerful but it might turn on you and rip your throat out. Ego avoid goals are never helpful because if we always avoid that which makes us “look bad” (a subjective term), we’ll never grow past our fears.

So, although ego-approach goals and task goals can both foster the motivation that leads to great musicianship, the ego goals shift the focus to the individual, away from full immersion in- and engagement with the music itself. Task goals make it about the music, and not about you. Both can and do work, but ego-approach goal orientations are tricky and they can turn on if you fail, or even if you only perceive failure where none may exist. Task goals are also more adaptive. If you don’t make that Db ii-V lick at 120 bpm, you can shift your goal to 110 bpm. Of course, it’s also nearly impossible for anyone but a Buddha to do away entirely with the ego goal orientation, but awareness of what it is and how it affects you is pretty important, at least it has been in my own practice.

And this leads to a final point, made by another researcher, but shared by many musicians and teachers, including myself, because it addresses my own proclivities, and the point is this:

If competitive structures pose little problem…to students with perceived high ability, we still need to ask what effect such practices have on the very young, the shy, the talented but insecure, the ordinary, the less aggressive, or otherwise “noncompetitive” student (Thomas, 1992, p. 431).

In my experience as a musician and a teacher, Music is more about collaboration and communication and community than it is about competition. These are the primary reasons that Music exists. The task versus ego dilemma is a delicious paradox because competition still holds an important place. Without cutting contests, jazz musicians might not have been pushed to achieve even greater mastery of their horn, and of Music. In general, it seems best to focus on a specific task at hand, and make your goals as much about the specific task, as much about Music as you are capable of doing, and use competition as a bit of spice to add some flavor or a little heat to the entire dish. A little goes a long way.

Next week, I’ll introduce you to how your own beliefs about intelligence and talent tie in to all this motivation business and how these notions you hold have a profound impact on your own practice.

All the luminaries mentioned in the video below were task-focused. If ther goals were based on ego, the adversity they faced would have crushed them and we would not even know their names. Focus on the task. Let the ego take care of itself.

Practice smart. Have fun.

—

References

Pintrich, P. R. & Schunk, D. H. (1996). Motivation in education: Theory, research and applications. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Thomas, N. G. (1992). Motivation. In R. Colwell (ed.) Handbook of research on music teaching and learning, 425-436. New York: Schirmer.

Performance as Practice

The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won’t keep. Something must be done about them. ~Alfred North Whitehead

———-

Nicholas Barron says he’s never practiced. A lot of people can say that, right? But how many are musicians who can play, sing, and write songs like this:

The idea of “practice” is a meme, an idea that sticks in our collective consciousness and can continue for generations like Santa Claus, or briefly, like lolcats or other fads of the intertubes. The meme we think of as “practice” is sitting alone in a room, hammering away at scales or some other boring and repetitious exercise. We keep this meme separate from the meme of “performance,” and this could be a hindrance. You’ve probably made the connection that Nicholas Barron got as good as he is (and he has some serious guitar chops that the vid above doesn’t show), not through the conventional idea of practice, but through performance. He started as a street musician, performing from the word go, and sat in with other, better musicians, in order to learn by playing with them, always soaking up what he could and paying attention. This, too, is practice and it should be clear from Barron’s skills that it can be effective. In an earlier post I mentioned that performance is a hyper-focused musical experience that may teach you some things more quickly, similar to the way playing futsal can make for a better soccer player, as Dan Coyle mentioned in his book, The Talent Code.

Barron is exactly the kind of musician (in addition to those with a more traditional approach) whose stories need to be told and they’re the type of musician I’ll be interviewing for my PhD dissertation project and for my next book The Practice of Practice. We need more models of practice than those of the Western classical musician, and Barron is a great example. However, not everyone has the gregarious chutzpah that is evident from even a brief conversation with Barron. I don’t. I actually need time in the practice room honing my skills because I’m shy by nature and it takes a lot of effort to screw my courage to the sticking point before I’ll step into the spotlight. Which brings me to the point of the post.

In The Talent Code, Coyle relates a great quote from football coach Tom Martinez, who says, “The way I look at it, everybody’s life is a bowl of whipped cream and shit, and my job is to even things out. If a kid’s got a lot of shit in his [or her] life, I’m going to stir in some whipped cream. If a kids’ life is pure whipped cream, then I’m going to stir in some shit.” It’s brilliant. Now say the sentence again and substitute “practice” for shit, and “performance” for whipped cream. In my own musical life, I’ve got way more practice than performance and so, for the past eight years, I’ve been trying to stir in more performance into my musical life. In fact, after a brief little jam session, Barron has invited me to sit in at one of his many gigs in the Chicago area and I’ve gladly (though nervously) agreed. It’ll be a fun, spontaneous time and I’m looking forward to it despite the nerves.

In nearly every endeavor, balance is crucial. The balance between practice and performance is something only you can figure out for yourself, but it’s something you should consider. If you’re shy, try to push yourself to get out there and play for people. If you’re gung-ho and only perform, try to spend some time alone really honing your skills. You’ll probably find that either approach will help you improve a lot more than you would otherwise. Balance is the key.

Good luck and have fun with your practice (and performance)!

Your Plastic Brain (redux)

Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. ~ William James (American Philosopher/Psychologist, leader of the philosophical movement of Pragmatism, 1842-1910)

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side. ~ Hunter S. Thompson (American Journalist/Author, 1937-2005) [Remember that the art of music is quite different from the business of music.]

Generally students are the best vehicles for passing on ideas, for their thoughts are plastic and can be molded and they can adjust the ideas of old men to the shape of reality as they find it in villages and hills of China or in ghettos and suburbs of America. ~ Theodore H. White (English Journalist, Historian and Novelist, 1915-1986)

—————————————————————————

Learning changes your brain structure. My own plastic brain underwent some serious alteration this weekend, all naturally induced, thank you very much. One of the world’s foremost grand masters of the djembe, Mamady Keita (vid to follow), was in Chicago to give beginning-, intermediate-, and advanced drum workshops. I’ve never had a djembe lesson before. I signed up for the beginner session and would learn very quickly what “beginner” actually meant to this crowd. Good thing I didn’t know that Keita’s definition of “beginner” is most people’s definition of,  ”I know what I’m doing.” If I’d known this, my stomach would’ve been in an even tighter knot because I was showing up with little to no real djembe experience. There’s nothing like a good challenge to get oneself to really pay attention.

The reason Keita was familiar and something of a superstar in my eyes (he actually is a superstar in the djembe world) is because I’m in the midst of a CSEME study on music teacher excellence and the teacher I’ve chosen to study is Taylor, one of Keita’s foremost students, first to earn the highest degree from Keita’s Tam Tam Mandingue school of percussion. Taylor (aka Michael Taylor) often brings world-class drummers to Chicago for workshops. When I heard this legendary musician was coming to town I had to sign up despite my tiny accumulation of djembe knowledge and very little skill, most of which was acquired from observing Taylor teach (one time) and not from actually practicing. I was nervous before the lesson started and even more so when I realized I was in a circle with over 40 people, most of whom were accomplished players. I remember looking around and thinking, “These are beginners? [insert expletive here]!” Watching the following vid before meeting the man didn’t calm my nerves any. If you’re short on time, skip up to 1:35 to hear Mamady.

Mamady produced a tone from his drum that was full-on mystical and powerful in a way that defies mere description. You have to see/feel/hear it for yourself to understand its power. I survived the lesson, and in an hour and a half learned a piece, though my technique is still hackwork at best.

What stuck with me was something Mamady said about practice and the drum. He looked all of us in the eye and told us in his French-accented English, “You now know this rhythm. This piece of music. But many of you can not play it. You know the rhythm but you do not know the music. You must work on your sound. The drum is no different from other instruments. Piano, violin, guitar, trumpet. It is same. People think that they can hit a drum at the right time and so they can play djembe music. This is not so. You must practice. In djembe we have only three: bass, tone, and slap. But if you cannot do these well, if you cannot make your drum speak with your own voice, you are just making noise. You must practice. Just like other instruments.” Anyone who doubted these words when they walked in the door (which was probably nobody) would certainly be convinced after hearing Mamady amazing sound.

In the hour and a half of practice, I learned a lot and could almost feel my neurons growing new connections. I’ve said it before, will say it again now, and probably will find more research that will allow me to say it again more deeply later: Your brain changes when you practice. Many of the brain studies done look at musicians, and although none that I’m aware of have yet looked at djembe musicians the same rules apply. In one study at the University of Alabama, Edward Taub compared brains of experienced violin players with those who didn’t play an instrument. The region of the brain that controlled the left hand was radically different in the two groups (larger in the musicians) and even though people who started earlier had more difference (some studies say age 7 is optimal), Taub said, “Even if you take up the violin at age 40, you still get brain reorganization.” You’re never too old to learn. Believe it.

So. How do you go about changing your brain to one that’s more musical? It all has to do with memory and memory is built through practice. No big surprise, right? What you might find surprising is that the practice might not have to actually involve playing your instrument! Merely thinking about it can help. At Harvard, Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone scanned the brains of volunteers before and after practicing a simple piano piece. As you might expect, the brains of those who practiced at the piano showed neural growth that reflected this practice. The remarkable thing is that Pascual-Leone had a second group just think about doing the exercise and this group was instructed not to move their hands while doing the mental rehearsal. This produced an equally pronounced change in the same region of the motor cortex as those who actually played the instrument when practicing. Amazing!

A good question to ask is, “How much practice does it take?” Another researcher, Michael Colicos suggests that “the long-term changes in the neurons occur only after the neurons are stimulated four times over the course of an hour.” Through my own experience as a player of various instruments, it seems to me that this is the lower limit for the changes in the brain to take place. Just because the brain has changed doesn’t mean you’ll be able to easily recall the skill. Later that evening as workshop participants and Mamady relaxed and talked at Taylor’s home, I could only vaguely recall the many parts of the piece I’d learned, even though I had played them correctly earlier in the day, many times in a row over the course of an hour and a half. I should’ve spent some time in mental practice to solidify what I’d learned.

Dununba is the lowest-voiced accompanying drum in a djembe ensemble.

In Taylor’s basement, some highly accomplished and diligent students continued to practice pieces they had learned that day, like  funkanee, and the thumping pulse of the large dununba rose up through the floorboards, keeping perfect time, like the bone-deep throb of lifeblood in the veins.

Good luck. Have fun with your practice.

__________________________________________________________________________________

References

Colicos, M. A, et al (2001). Remodeling of synaptic action induced by photoconductive stimulation. Cell, 107(5), p. 605-615

Pascual-Leone, A. (2001). The brain that plays music and is changed by it. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 930 (June), p. 315-329.