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Yesterday I had the honor of talking with Sidiki Dembele and his wife, Vivian who helped translating some more difficult concepts (thanks, Sidiki and Vivian!).

Sidiki Dembele

Sidiki is a fantastic musician from Abidjan, Ivory Coast in West Africa and now living in Manchester, UK. He plays many instruments (ngoni, balafon, kora…), but his main instrument is the djembe. He overcame some serious hardships and put in an amazing amount of time practicing, and it shows.

But what I found most awesome is the way that Sidiki is trying to give back, to help out disadvantaged kids both back home and in his current home in the UK. He’s been teaching since around age 14 back home in Abidjan with a group known as Denifari, and he has started a similar group in Manchester. Here’s what his website says about it:

Denifari literally means a new way for youth – and that was how the story began. Growing up in a slum area flanking the great commercial capital of Cote d’Ivoire, Sidiki was all too aware of the social and economic restrictions under which the community struggled to survive; and of the temptations faced by local boys and young men whose families strove to provide against all odds, under conditions most of us here in Europe can only guess at.

Poorly educated, sometimes malnourished and dressed in worn tee shirts and jeans, the group moved into a rented shack, provided by Sidiki, where they lived, learned and prepared for the future. Now those original members are amongst the most acclaimed musicians in Cote d’Ivoire, playing at community and cultural events and concerts throughout West Africa, and continuing to manage the day to day affairs of the school on Sidiki’s behalf.  Despite now living in England, Sidiki remains the lynchpin of the organisation and no decisions are made without his input. Denifari is still at the heart of Sidiki’s life and endeavour.

Sidiki has begun a similar endeavor in Manchester and needs help with both space and funding. If you are at all in a situation to help him do this important work, please visit his web site and get in touch with him. (Also, you’ve got to check out his music: full-length samples. My favorite is Ambeh sini)

I hope to put up the interview in the next couple weeks.

Here’s Sidiki playing solo djembe on Jarafoli with the group Anante at Drumroots Live in Manchester, 2011.

And here is Sidiki playing kora with Baba Gale who plays the African flute.

Related articles

• Côte d’Ivoire and West Africa (chocojavasocialjustice.wordpress.com)

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Well, after a good deal of thought and several years of research and loads of the hard work of writing,  I took some time to do something more playful, more fun: designing a cover! With help from a graphic designer, the cover design is finally finished. It’s exciting to see a project begin to shape up.

I’m still looking for a worthy subtitle and once the manuscript is complete, before the end of the year, I’ll have a better idea of what will work best, but I’m totally open to suggestions. Feel free to comment. If you have a great idea and I use it, I’ll give you credit in the book and a complimentary copy.

Here it is:

Have fun, and good luck with your practice.

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Wow. I’ve always been a fan of Max Roach as soon as I first heard him, but this is some of the best playing you’ll hear anywhere, not only from Mr. Roach, but from everybody in this quintet.

Eddie Kahn, after flying through some nimble-fingered walking bass delivers one of the most interesting upright bass solos I’ve heard in a while, and the way he locks in with Max Roach on drums is tighter than close friendship.

Abbey Lincoln recently passed away, but her gorgeous contra-alto voice lives on powerfully in this music. Chills.

Clifford Jordan’s fat tone on the tenor; Coleridge Perkins (I think) and his artful comping on piano, accentuating hits with Max Roach, who kills that drum set in the tastiest way: clean, and with total respect and communication with the other musicians, and even at these speeds is so relaxed and easy-sounding.

Wheeew! This is great stuff. This is what practice sounds like.

Another great version is here: Max Roach 5 Tet with Abbey Lincoln

Sample/buy Max Roach’s recordings (Freedom Day)

Sample/buy Abbey Lincoln’s recordings

Related articles

• Max Roach: Drums, Front And Center (npr.org)
• Ol’ Skool Sunday: The Power of the Drum (soularadiance.wordpress.com)
• Remembering Paul Motian: The Drummer Who Quietly Shook Things Up (Column) (popmatters.com)
• Jazz At The Philharmonic in Amsterdam 1958. (bobvaneekhout.wordpress.com)

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It’s the time of year that we think about goals more than any other, because what is a resolution but a goal writ large? When we think resolutions, we usually think big picture, end results, bold and dramatic changes. And this is a necessary part of the process, and for me, not only the most fun, but also the most fraught with booby-traps. The reason is that long-term goals aren’t usually something that can be brought about with one simple action; they’re reached through many small actions. This is the difference between a resolution and resolve: resolution is a long-term goal, and resolve is something both more immediate and more lasting.

Grand-master musician (tuba) and expert teacher Rex Martin talks about goals in terms of long-term, medium-term, and short-term goals. It’s the short-term goals that are the most concrete ones, because those are the things that we can do right now. It could be an abstract short-term goal like resolving to sit in your chair until you have a passage as beautiful as you can make it, or a more concrete but equally short-term goal to simply move from one chord to another on guitar (a frequent short-term goal of mine). It might even be something as simple as carving out 15 minutes to sit in the practice chair at all, regardless of what you actually do when you get there. It’s important to set goals that are so easy to reach that you’re (almost) guaranteed success, especially at first. But there is a danger: if your goals are too easy, too simple, you won’t be pushed much and your improvement will be slow at best. But on the other hand, if your goals are too ambitious, you’re doomed to failure in the short term.

In astronomy, we’re searching for other planets that might be earth-like in what’s known as the Goldilocks Zone: not too hot, not too cold, but just right. There may even be a galactic Goldilocks zone. As far as short-term, immediate goals go, the Goldilocks Zone is a goal that will make you work, make you think, make you strive a bit beyond your current abilities, but which you can achieve in the time you’ve got. If you’ve got 15 minutes, pick one easily-achieved short-term goal and pursue it. All this abstraction isn’t all that helpful, so let me give you a real-world example.

Yesterday I had 15 minutes to practice guitar, so my short-term goal was to play through a new Gypsy jazz tune I’ve learned, For Sephora and to play it without mistakes. But goals are funny things. They’re a bit like fractals: you can dive in deeper and find even more of them and they all have a similar structure. Thus, a short-term goal like this can be broken down even further into what I call micro-goals. Micro-goals are like atoms: just about as small as you can get and yet still have some kind of cohesion.

So I turned that short-term goal into a medium-term goal even though it only involves 15 minutes of time. In order to play through the tune without mistakes, I first focus on the areas that I know are tricky: In the B section of the tune, the chords move more quickly and in particular, there is a Gmaj7 to Cmaj7 to F# half-diminished passage that is the most difficult of the piece for me. That’s where I start, and I move so slowly that it’s impossible to tell what the tune is, and so slowly that it’s perfectly executed from the very beginning. I ensure that I make the changes perfectly, first from the Gmaj7 to the Cmaj7 a few times, then the Cmaj7 to the F#half-dimished a few times, and then, still going ridiculously slowly, through all three chords.

Already, you can see that each of those actions is a micro-goal in itself, all of which help to build up to my ultimate goal of playing the whole tune without mistakes (and in this case, a “mistake” also includes muted notes within a chord that muddies the clarity of tone). Approached like this, that 15 minutes is absolutely packed with focused effort. Toward the end of the 15 minutes, I begin to put the whole tune together, eventually playing the whole song. It might still be so slow that it’s just about unrecognizable, but that’s okay. My goal isn’t to play the tune up to speed (like the example below, played by the tune’s composer), but to play through without mistakes. It’s achievable but also a challenge because I know myself, I know my tendencies, and I know how much I can take in 15 minutes. After a week of only 15 minutes a day, I can play the tune almost up to tempo, and that is a thrilling thing for me. I love it! My long-term goal for this piece on rhythm guitar is to play it in performance up to tempo. As inspiration, I watch Nous’che Rosengerg play it (video below).

If you have experience practicing, you’ll know much better where that line is between too easy and too hard. If you’re a beginner, or just starting out, it’s better to set very, very easy goals at first, until you have enough experience that you can begin to push yourself a little harder and explore where your failure line is, where your Goldilocks Zone ends and you stray into the Too Hot Zone. At first, make your short-term goals low-hanging fruit. Make it easy! If it’s easy but a little challenging, it’ll be fun! But if, as a neophyte, you’re trying too hard and failing to reach your goals, you’ll be frustrated, dejected, and maybe even angry or depressed because it won’t feel like you’re making progress. You’ll feel like a loser, and nobody can continue in the face of that. Better is to set simple, easily reached goals to bolster your sense of progress toward your ultimate goal.

Here’s the Rosenberg Trio playing Stochello’s tune, For Sephora, with special guest, Birelli Lagrene. Stochello on lead guitar, Birelli accompanies the melody and takes a tasty solo, Nous’che on rhythm guitar, and Nonnie Rosenberg on upright bass. Good stuff! (find recordings of their music here)

Happy New Year! And good luck with your practice goals!

Related articles

• Resolution or Resolve? (pixelatedimage.com/blog/)
• Making New Year’s Resolutions You Can Keep (denvercounselingblog.wordpress.com)
• Is the C7 chord the same as CMaj7 chord (wiki.answers.com)
• The Fruits of Practice Sound Like This: Maurice André (talkingtrumpet.wordpress.com)

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I’ve written often about how important mistakes are in the learning process. Not just mistakes, but what you do with them once you discover them. That “discover them” part is the most important. If you discover them in the practice room, you’ve just stumbled on a place that needs attention and focused effort for improvement. All of the professional musicians I’ve been interviewing for my next book say that they do not let mistakes pass by without being fixed. Some stop immediately, some stop after the run or passage is over, but all of them fix what is wrong, even if it’s a tiny mistake and only they will notice it.

If you discover them in your jazz combo during a performance, they’re not mistakes any more, they’re opportunities for communication. Here’s a wonderful video by jazz vibraphonist Stefon Harris explaining and demonstrating this idea. Happy winter celebrations everyone!

Listen to some hilarious trumpet bloopers. Here’s where errors during a performance are NOT opportunities for communication, well at least not the kind of communication Stefon Harris mentions; instead they’re communicating: “I didn’t practice correctly.”

Related articles

• Dewey on Book Work and Opportunities for Mistakes (speedofcreativity.org)
• Surviving Big Mistakes (stephentrepreneur.wordpress.com)
• Mistakes Improve Children’s Learning (psychologytoday.com)
• Success and failure are twins (currentindiaaffairs.wordpress.com)

Here are some gift ideas for the musician or music-lovers in your life. I either have these, or have looked into these items and have chosen what I believe to be the highest quality gear at the most reasonable prices. Hope these help you out! Happy holidays!

iPad, (from $450)

This device has so many applications for the musician that it’s too much to list here, but this great device can do so much. Yes, it’s expensive (I’d recommend the 64GB version for more storage and, of course, more $$ but it’s worth it). The versatility and functionality of the iPad makes it dozens of gadgets in one. Here’s a partial list of what your musician will do with it:

• guitar effects,
• 4-track recording studio
• composition (garage band and many others)
• virtual instruments
• store your music and never have the wind blow pages off your stand again
• scrolling lyrics so you can perform hands-free
• um, the entire Internet
• tuners
• metronomes
• live performance tools
• much, much more.

Hearing Protection ($20)

Protect your musician’s hearing. Playing music, even if you’re a classical musician (many professional woodwind players wear hearing protection b/c they sit in front of brass players), is essential.

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Music by Andrew Zuckerman. This book is chock full of the voice of experience. Zuckerman interviews musical icons from many genres: rock icons like Ozzy, pop musicians like Lenny Kravitz, Iggy Pop, Chrissie Hynde, Ani DiFranco, Rosanne Cash and others; jazz luminaries like Herbie Hancock and Dave Brubeck; classical composer Phililip Glass; Indian sitar master Ravi Shankar and many, many, many more. A total of 50 musicians were interviewed for the project and nearly everyone has interesting things to say about music. The last I checked, this $50 hardcover book was going for less than ten bucks! The pictures are also pretty amazing, just the artist against a stark white background.

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: Abrams; Har/Psc edition (October 15, 2010)
• Language: English
• Product Dimensions: 12.3 x 12.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)

Related articles

• Top 10 Books Written By Musicians (now100fm.radio.com)
• Rosanne Cash opens Miami book fair with songs – Palm Beach Post (pbpulse.com)

Interview: Colin Oldberg, Principal Trumpet, Hong Kong Symphony Orchestra, Axiom Brass

Colin Oldberg is a stellar musician. He plays principal trumpet for the Hong Kong Symphony Orchestra and is a founding member of Axiom Brass, a brass quintet out of Chicago. Colin has toured with the Chicago Symphony and earned a spot in the first YouTube Orchestra. He was gracious to talk about his own experience with practice for over an hour. Thanks, Colin!

Opening excerpt: The Axiom Brass Quintet: Colin Oldberg, trumpet; Dorival Puccini, Jr., trumpet; Matthew Oliphant, horn; Kevin Harrison, tuba; Brett Johnson, trombone.

here’s the mp3 of Wapango, one third of Pacquito D’Rivera’s Three Pieces for Brass Quintet, courtesy of Axiom Brass Quintet. If you like it, support these fantastic artists and buy the whole CD or mp3. It’s great stuff! Go see Axiom Brass live, too, for an even better musical experience.

CSO principal Chris Martin said Axiom Brass has …beauty and fullness of tone, precise intonation, virtuosic technique, expressive dynamic range, and stylistic flexibility. Axiom commands a repertoire ranging from Early Music and Renaissance to the most challenging contemporary compositions of today not to mention a fluency in the jazz idiom that puts most ensembles to shame. I have been consistently moved by their interpretations and inspired by their expressive maturity. …It is rare to find an ensemble possessing such artistic qualities also so devoted to education and outreach in its community, but this quintet is such an ensemble. They have performed over 100 educational concerts throughout the Chicago area as well as a summer brass seminar. Education is not just a side project for these men; it is one of their driving forces and a cornerstone of their mission.

Go check out Axiom on YouTube: excerpts of Carmen With Salsa is a good one.
Here they perform the D’Rivera movement Wapango and Puccini explains part of Axiom’s educational mission and community engagement.

You can buy Axiom’s recordings here.

Thanks, guys!

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast:

Books:

• Warm-ups and Studies, by James Stamp
• Flow Studies, by Vince Cichowicz (difficult to find, but try here, and here). What you really-really-really should do is find someone who learned from Mr. Cichowicz and take lessons with him or her until you understand and can play the concepts. A book is a dead thing with no ability to give vital feedback. Find a live teacher.
• Musical Calisthenics for Brass, by Carmine Caruso
• Daily Fundamentals by Michael Sachs
• 100 Studies by Ernst Sachse
• Characteristic Studies for the Cornet by Herbert L. Clarke
• Haydn Concerto for Trumpet (sheet music (Bb version), recordings)
• My review of Outliers
• My review of Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner
• Complete Conservatory Method by J.B. Arban (excellent article on himhere)

People

• Yikes. I both misattributed and misquoted violinist Jascha Heifetz, whose words were: If I don’t practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it.
• Professors Barbara Butler and Charles Geyer teach classical trumpet at Northwestern University and play trumpet internationally.
• Chris Martin, principal trumpet, Chicago Symphony Orchestra (interview in TimeOut Chicago)

The Usual Resources:

Education is more important than Capitalism: I’ve given away well over 1 million free music book PDFs worldwide. Get your own free digital copy of

• Sound the Trumpet: How to Blow Your Own Horn
• Basic Music Theory: How to Read, Write, and Understand Written Music
• Basic Jazz Theory, part 1

• The Practice of Practice: a blog on music practice. Soon to be a podcast with more interviews on practice with other instrumentalists and singers.
• Other free printable practice aids
• Trumpet method books

Related articles

• How do you get signed by playing the trumpet (wiki.answers.com)
• Music Review: A Chance to Hear Bruckner Anew, by Himself and With an Unexpected Partner (nytimes.com)
• Music Review: Bernard Haitink and the New York Philharmonic – Review (nytimes.com)

~Beverly Sills, soprano (1929 – 2007)
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Hummel in 1814

The Concerto in Eb by Johann Nepomuk Hummel is a beautiful, inspiring and, of course, challenging piece of music, a pillar of classical trumpet repetoire. One of the most foolish and embarrassing musical moments of my life came in my senior year of high school at a music festival in Alaska for which I played (mangled is a more appropriate term) this piece that  Maurice André plays below so beautifully below. I however, was unprepared for the demands of this very difficult piece, attempted it without help or a teacher (there were no accomplished classical trumpet players in Sitka), and with inadequate practice (I was still flailing away at it just before the performance, yet another lapse in judgment). Anyway, the hapless adjudicator complimented my accompanist, the wonderfully helpful Peggy Brandt, but that’s about all he could say.

I had no business trying to play that piece, but I didn’t know any better. The only good thing that came of the experience is that I learned a thing or two, like how important it is to find a teacher who can help you play better, who gives you pieces you can handle, and who can help set yourself up for successful performances.  I was reminded of my own embarrassing experience when listening to a hilarious recording of the Hummel sent in for pre-audition to the Boston Symphony. Hear it here. (from trumpet bloopers)

Another thing to notice is that André and anyone else who plays this well, is playing on an Eb trumpet. Notice that it’s smaller. The standard trumpet is pitched a perfect fourth lower than the Eb trumpet. This puts the horn in a different key in which fingerings and intonations may be slightly more advantageous to the player. It’s still a very difficult piece, but it’s good to have every advantage you can. The best advantage is, of course, the right kind of practice.

Maurice André plays this piece with so much feeling, flair and bravura. The audience loved it, and so did I. Would’ve been great to be there.  Maurice André is one of the most phenomenal classical trumpet players of this or any age. He practiced for a few hours very early in the morning.  Classical tuba master Rex Martin–who was gracious to talk at length about his own practice–mentioned this about André and marveled at his ability to get all that work done early in the day, then have your time completely free until the gig that evening. And Maurice André performed so much. In 1978 he did 220 concerts! He had to practice early in the day so his lip had a chance to recover before the performance. Pretty remarkable. (find Maurice André’s CDs & mp3s)

Related articles

• Interview w/ Chad McCullough (talkingtrumpet.wordpress.com)
• Hummel At the Opera – Engaging piano arrangements by a classical master (the-unmutual.blogspot.com)
• Pilots honored for aborted Sitka takeoff (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• BSO announces 75th anniversary season at Tanglewood (boston.com)
• Calling all trumpeters! (cakeheadlovesevil.wordpress.com)
• Tuba Fundraising Update: $3700 toward goal of $12,000+ (wbbands.info)
• How do you be the best trumpet player in your section (wiki.answers.com)
• What are some tips on tounging 32nd notes on the trumpet (wiki.answers.com)
• Ethan Bensdorf: NY Philharmonic Trumpeter on Practice (intentionalpractice.wordpress.com)

There’s a reason jazz musicians (and other musicians, and actors, chefs, etc.) move to NY City, Chicago, or other large metropolitan areas. They are places, as Russell Malone says in this short vid, where there are more opportunities to get your behind kicked. And when you’re learning and striving to get better, that’s exactly what you need.

For the past week I’ve been wrestling with the “Where” section of this book I’m working on, The Practice of Practice. I’ve got great information from professional musicians, from published research and other writings, and from my own experience, but the challenge is putting it all into words that make sense and are enjoyable (and informative!) to read. Then along comes Russell Malone. He succinctly talks about one of the great reasons why Where you practice can give you that extra push.

But Where is also a Who. It’s people. Musicians, concert-goers, open-mic emcees. It’s a scene. Of course, who you’re around is tied up in where you find yourself. You don’t have to move to NY City to find musicians and situations who will help you figure stuff out or play with you. I found musicians and situations that pushed me way beyond what I thought I was capable of in Alaska and on a  semi-remote surf beach outside Todos Santos in Baja, Mexico. If I could find them there, I bet you could find something wherever you might find yourself.

You don’t have to travel to find the kind of push you need. A good push may be no farther than your collection of recordings, a YouTube video, or at the local open mic….

This quick interview with jazz guitarist Russell Malone is from a series of interviews I just discovered from the good folks at  iRock Jazz (http://irockjazz.com/archives/category/interviews). Looks like some good stuff!

Have fun, and good luck with your practice.

Russell Malone’s Music (mp3, CD)

Autum Leaves: Ron Carter Trio (Carter,Malone,Terrasson)

RC’s Music (mp3, CD)

Related articles

• Jazz Guitarist Bobby Broom Talks Practice
• The pressures of NYC…that lead to results – New York City, NY (travelpod.com)