This is the second of a series of posts on the teacher-student relationship. If you haven’t seen Part 1, it’s below.

Your Energy Level 

It’s been said that a performer uses as many calories on stage in an hour-long concert as a runner does in ten miles. Any performer can tell you this must be true. What about teachers? Many people don’t realize that prolonged concentration and speaking will burn calories. That means teachers do well to prepare as though they were training for marathons; not only eat right and always get enough rest, but exercise regularly. The stamina and the mental clarity you’ll gain will make you a better teacher.

I used to joke about getting all my exercise hauling my instruments and baggage through airports, but it was actually true. It was hard work and it was aerobic, and it made me physically strong. I did it often enough to equal regular workouts at a gym.  Also, for a few years I lived about three blocks from the grocery store, bank and post office, and walked to them almost every day, carrying home my groceries without the aid of a cart. I did this on purpose because it was great exercise. If your usual activities don’t include some form of strenuous exercise, invent one!

I don’t schedule students during the hours when I am least bright (for me, that’s late afternoon and evening) because they deserve my best. It’s no fun to teach when you’re tired, hungry, or worn out. And it’s unfair to your students when you’re not at your best.

The same is true for students; it’s respectful to your teacher to be awake and aware at your lesson. Also, never, never, go to a lesson if you’re sick or think you might be coming down with something, or if someone in your family has a contagious illness (you can carry germs even if you’re not sick yourself). Exposing your teacher to any illness, even a cold, is terribly unfair; private music teachers are self-employed and don’t get paid sick days, so when they’re sick, they can’t make a living, and you can deprive your teacher of substantial income if you pass your illness along to him or her. Teachers, likewise, should respect their students enough to refrain from teaching when sick. Sure, you need the income, but it’s just plain mean to pass illness to anyone.

 

Technical Terminology 

Teachers need to know and use our technical terminology correctly and comfortably. We have to be able to spell and pronounce all terms correctly. This makes our teaching credible. But beware of using technical terminology to sound like you “know a lot”. It’s much more kind to your students to use language they already understand than to use technical terms when they aren’t necessary. One cannot teach a subject using language that is part of the material to be learned (just as the dictionary definition of a word never uses the word itself). You can explain key words and terms that are important, but constantly using unfamiliar technical terminology can cause eyes to glaze over.

Students, if your teacher uses any term you don’t fully understand, ask what it means. There’s no such thing as a dumb question. It does make you look dumb, though, if you can’t follow an instruction or grasp an idea because you’re missing a definition. Don’t let a teacher make assumptions about how much you know. No one is smart enough to understand lingo they’ve never heard before.

Many people make the mistake of assuming that everyone should already know what we know, and that if they don’t they are ignorant. This is our own self-esteem issue. Most of us have a tendency to think that the sum total of what we know isn’t much beyond what any normal person knows. That’s a mistake. Everyone knows different things. Assuming that everyone should already know, for instance, what a diminished chord is, would be like believing everyone speaks Sanskrit.

When I was new at my very first job, I learned how prevalent the above attitude is. I had been a college-prep student in High School, but found myself working temporarily at a lunch counter at Woolworth’s. I had no idea how to make fries or how to fill the coke machine. The other employees thought I had no brain whatsoever, and treated me like an idiot. They didn’t remember that at one time they had to learn those things, too. The pain of that experience has led me to be very careful to never treat anyone that way.

 

 Be Prepared but Flexible

For private lessons, I found out early in my career that planning each student’s lesson in advance doesn’t actually work very well. And that when teaching adult students, requiring a specific amount of work to be mastered between lessons is unrealistic. Young students make progress at different rates, and this not only varies from person to person but from week to week, depending on what else is going on in their lives. Adult students require even more flexibility, as they often have more responsibilities that supersede practice time.

It’s good to have specific goals and assignments, but since you can’t guess how much practice someone has actually had between lessons, it works well to allow them to continue from wherever they are. I simply say at the beginning of each lesson, “Play for me what you’ve been practicing.” Then we take it from there. Progress happens at their speed. Of course, if no progress is made for a long time, I might have a talk with them about the benefits of regular practice, or perhaps ask if they need a break from lessons. But there have only been a handful of students (in over 30 years of teaching) with whom I’ve had to have those discussions.

Continued next time…

We are all teachers and we are all students, whether or not we realize it. We are each an example to others whenever we play, and whatever we say. And we are constantly learning. Sometimes we teach or learn on purpose; sometimes just by being who we are. Learning requires as much integrity as teaching.

A bit of background on my perspective: I grew up with several influences, listening to many kinds of music including classical, pop, folk and ethnic styles. Each has its own way of being passed from player to student. In the folk tradition, a person learns their skills from as many people as possible, and pretty much everyone is willing to share their knowledge with newer musicians. In the classical world, a master teacher bestows technique and the knowledge of music-reading. In traditional and ethnic music, children grow up constantly (daily) exposed to the music of their culture and participates from earliest childhood.

I learned a great deal from people who weren’t formal teachers, and picked up a huge amount through observation and “osmosis”. For various substantive reasons I could not study formally until I was an adult. I was already a professional musician by the time I finally had access to professional instruction, which was immensely satisfying.

As a child whose family automatically followed certain cultural traditions, I was exposed to music all day every day, except when I was at school. In older cultures in almost every country of the world, most people grow up with good music as the atmosphere, the sound-track, the background and the foreground of their lives. We modern Americans may be the only ones who don’t  –  we get ads and MTV and AM radio. Without the high-quality and live music influence, it can be harder to develop a musical brain.

Because of this, many musicians who are completely self-taught often lack important skills and are unaware that they do. How can you know that you lack something you don’t know exists? There are exceptions, of course; I think, for instance, acoustic fingerstyle guitarist Steve Baughman is an example of a self-taught musician who, because he wasn’t influenced by limits, and was willing to spend all his free time practicing as he was growing up, and who had good musical influences to develop his musical brain, became an amazing musician. In fact, since he was self-taught, he didn’t know how good he was until he started playing in public and quickly became famous. But this is very rare!

There are many ways to learn and many ways to teach, and the person in a teaching role can influence the learner profoundly. As I’ve said before, I think all musicians do best when they learn both aurally and formally. It’s a teacher’s responsibility to see that their students are aware of that, and to teach ear-learning and music-reading skills, or at least refer to other teachers so the student has access to both. Learning from as many teachers as possible is optimally beneficial, and if any teacher says theirs is the only way to learn, they are mistaken. I’ve met students who have been told that playing without sheet music in front of them is “cheating”, and I’ve met new musicians who get upset when sheet music isn’t handed out at folk or traditional jam sessions. What a shame that they didn’t have the influence of responsible teachers.

In addition to the above, every teacher has a style all their own, related to their personality. Among the variants of teaching styles, let’s look at a few:

1. Sharing or Showing?

We’ve all had teachers who gave us a sense that their subject material or their instrument required special talent to learn, and we have emerged from the classroom or lesson thinking, “I may never be able to do that”. Hopefully, we have also had teachers who easily took us to new heights, and we emerged saying, “I can do that!” and we felt eager to deepen our skills.

What is the difference between these teaching attitudes? The former is show; the latter is share. When the teacher is in his/her head instead of his/her heart, you get show. When the teacher is fully present in the moment, connecting with the students, and coming from his/her heart, you get share, the inspired and inspiring kind of teaching that is full of life. If we are to assist students in touching souls with their music, their own souls must be touched first.

It has been said that a teacher can only verbalize 50% of what he or she knows, that a student can only understand 50% of what he or she hears, and can use only 50% of what he or she understands. I think this is a fair assessment. Given this dynamic, a teacher’s job is challenging; one must put forth a great deal of energy to present the material in a way that is exciting enough to capture the imaginations of students with different personalities, abilities, and attitudes.

I’ve had some brilliant teachers and some dull ones  –  the dull ones taught me how not to teach. I always wondered why they were teaching at all; if they didn’t enjoy it, how could the student? Perhaps they thought knowledge was not for enjoying. But the brilliant teachers were full of life, genuinely cared about my learning experience, and presented the material in interesting ways.

2. Aloofness vs. Making Friends With Your Students

IMHO, being aloof and unreachable does our students no favors. I think one of the most helpful things a teacher can do for a student is to become a friend. The student-teacher relationship is based on trust and respect, and what better way to gain it than to be a good friend? As you develop a friendship with a student, you come to see aspects of their lives and personalities that help you to teach them better. And of course these friendships are rewarding on a personal level. Being friends doesn’t mean your students will have less respect for you. It means they will enjoy their learning experience more, and that you, like the music they are learning, will be a part of their lives in deeper ways than just the notes they play. A student’s relationship with music is intimately linked with their relationship to their teacher. If you don’t connect with the student on deeper levels, they may never connect deeply with their music. Being a friend to your students can actually make them better musicians.

     3. “Coyote Teaching”

Among the wise teachers in American Indian traditions, there is a style of teaching referred to as Coyote Teaching. Coyote is a character who is considered clever yet fun-loving, and one does not always understand his actions until one sees the results. Coyote Teaching means leading the student to learn through their own innate wisdom, bringing that which is intuitively known to the forefront of their awareness to be recognized, so that learning can take place easily.

I once attended a workshop with Jon Young, a master naturalist who runs the famous Wilderness Awareness School in Washington State. He took our group to a field on the edge of a woodland, instructed us to listen quietly, and asked us what we heard. “A bird”, said one man. “What is the bird saying?” asked Jon. “He sounds agitated”, said the man. “Yes. Why?” asked Jon. “Because we are here”, guessed the man; and as Jon’s questions went on, we realized that the bird was warning other birds and animals of our presence. Jon could have told us that, but instead he asked us. He asked us a lot of questions that day, and as a result, we learned a great deal, and it was easy, exciting, and not at all a lecture.

Jon could have put us in a classroom and just told us what he knew. But he made it real for us by pulling it out of us, by putting us in the environment, by letting us have successes right from the first minute of our class. He is a Coyote Teacher.

Have you ever noticed that many people think that if they know about something, they know it? Have you ever experienced the difference between reading a cookbook and the reality of what really can happen in your kitchen? How can people really absorb something, rather than just intellectualize it, if not experiencing it while learning? Teaching by asking is a skill that makes students think, absorb, and remember.

How does one teach by asking? We don’t need to ask trick questions or begin with esoterica that no one has a clue about. We can, however, ask questions that lead the student into the subject material in a thoughtful way. Let’s say you are teaching, for example, music theory. I like to start by saying there are no wrong answers, and asking, “What is music?” After a bit of discussion, groups usually decide it is a combination of tones with specific pitches. Through that process, they get to discuss what tones and pitches are, and whether or not the combination must contain rhythm, melody, and harmony. Then we move on to “What is harmony?”, “What is an interval?”, “What is a chord?”, and so on until we have covered basic theory. I always have them do whatever we talk about on their instruments. Through continual discussion and application, they see all the relationships and aspects of music theory. It’s great to see the lights turn on, the “Aha” happen again and again. And they never forget their theory.

Continued next post…

What exactly is excellence? Webster’s Dictionary gives these synonyms: “distinction, greatness, perfection, preeminence, superiority”. But these definitions seem unfair, since one can achieve excellence without being “the best”, or greater than, or preeminent. Excellence really is being the best you can be.

We do, however, need the inspiration of good example so we can strive to reach certain levels of ability according to what we know is possible. How we choose to relate to examples of excellence makes a difference; comparing is beneficial if you use it as inspiration and accept that excellence takes time and dedication to achieve, while comparing doesn’t work if you use it to bemoan your perceived inadequacies. In other words, saying “I don’t yet play as well as (whoever)” can give you the impetus to move forward, while saying “I never will play as well as (whoever),” is not at all productive and can prevent you from moving toward your personal best.

I am often surprised at how many aspiring, or even semi-professional, musicians have no idea how skilled they could be. Sometimes it’s just difficult to imagine what you have not yet experienced, but perhaps too many of us don’t give ourselves permission to imagine. It’s a neurologic fact that we can’t create what we can’t (or won’t) imagine. Therefore, using the imagination is important because what we vividly and consistently imagine becomes an integrated goal that automatically directs our actions.

If you have no idea what your potential is, please… don’t aim low. We all have pretty much the same capabilities unless we’re physically or mentally handicapped, and even then we can usually do a lot more than we assume we can. Those who accomplish much are those who don’t buy into smallness.

It’s essential to be genuine and passionate about developing skill. Some people just take up music or art because it will give them an intriguing persona. Years ago, someone I knew bought a beautiful instrument and assumed that simply owning it made her a musician. She learned only a few skills, thinking she would soon be “discovered” and made famous. She’s still waiting. That was the wrong kind of imagining. Had she dedicated herself to learning, there might have been a different outcome by now.

There are some societal paradigms that tell us we must not be “too big for our britches”, we must not excel, and that the nail that stands up gets hammered down. What does this belief accomplish? Lots of unhappy, mediocre people who assume that no one of any consequence can possibly come from their town or their family. Yet when some highly  successful person comes to town from elsewhere, they are put on a pedestal. How strange is the belief that excellence is inborn and therefore the successful person is somehow superhuman. Such beliefs only hold us back from being the best we can be.

Excellence is not superhuman or magic. It doesn’t happen by osmosis or even just by “talent”. It happens by working on it. When we deeply believe ourselves capable of excellence, our actions automatically fall in line to make it a reality. We don’t get side-tracked or distracted from the goal, and we make no excuses.

“If I became very successful, I might have to change my lifestyle,” or “I don’t want to be different from other people,” or “Someone might think I’m a fraud”, or “My mother didn’t encourage me,” or “I don’t have time,” are passion-killing thoughts. Making excuses is how we give ourselves permission to be mediocre. It’s much easier to wallow in mediocrity, and perhaps even to blame something or someone for it, than to do what it takes to achieve our dreams. But do you really want to wake up some morning when you’re very old and realize you wasted your life making excuses instead of doing what you were capable of?

A friend of mine who was born with one arm became a very fine professional harper. She had a prosthesis made with one finger curved just so, with which she plucked bass notes while she played melody and chords with the other hand, which had to be very agile to make up the difference. She never advertised herself as a one-handed harper; she demanded of herself the same excellence a two-handed harper. And she succeeded. (Now how do your excuses look?)

In the famous words of Marianne Williamson, quoted by Nelson Mandela in his inauguration speech, “… We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? …Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine… And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same…”

Being the best you can be at music or anything else raises the level of excellence, enjoyment, and self esteem in everyone around you.

It’s been requested that I write about how to understand, find and use harmony. First, let’s look at what it is: how do we define harmony? Essentially, it’s the simultaneous sounding of two or more notes that sound pleasing together. Of course, what sounds good to one person can differ from what another finds pleasing. Aside from cultural differences in what is familiar to certain people, there’s also the fact that any interval creates some kind of harmony, though we may have to redefine what we think of as “harmonious”. But for this article we’ll stick with the concept of notes that sound well together.

Harmony is, obviously, used in musical accompaniment to melodies. Combined with tempo and rhythm, it gives a piece of music its mood. You could use different harmonies in different arrangements of the same melody and come up with completely different moods. To demonstrate this, use harmonious but unexpected chords with any familiar tune and see what happens.

When I was about four years old, my siblings and I were riding in the car one day with my parents, singing songs in unison. My mother’s ears were probably hurting (although we had good pitch, unison gets old after a while), so she said to me, “Laurie, why don’t you sing harmony?” I asked, “What’s harmony?” She replied, “Notes that sound good with the melody.” She demonstrated. I tried it. From then on I was the harmony singer in the family. She never said it would be hard to find harmonies, so for me it never was, nor should it be for any musician; there’s nothing esoteric about it. I had no concept of music theory; few four-year-olds do. Much later when I did learn theory it helped me understand why harmonies work as they do, but the technical knowledge didn’t enhance the hearing and using of them. I think that if you have an accurate sense of pitch and can hear melody, you can hear harmony; you just have to trust your innate ability. (“But how do I know if it’s right?” you might ask. Well, if you’re the one arranging the piece, and it sounds right to you, it’s right.)

As I was growing up, whenever there were sing-alongs at festivals and get-togethers, people sang harmonies in pretty much the same way I did. It’s what folk and traditional musicians do. And we all made up the instrumental parts to go with our songs. Soloists composed or arranged their own music. Almost no one played tunes exactly the way they had been played by someone else  –  what would be the point? You’ve probably noticed that very few well known musicians do “cover tunes” (play songs or pieces exactly as originally recorded by someone else); they do their own songs or they change the arrangements of familiar ones. A great example, IMHO, of making tunes one’s own in a skillful way is Willie Nelson’s ability to take some old turkey of a song and make it wonderful.

In the ‘70’s I sang with a band called Frostwater (www.frostwater.com). We toured around the East Coast. Our style was sort of a cross between Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Robin Williamson and His Merry Band. We composed and arranged all of our songs, most of which had four-part harmonies. As we created our arrangements it was often my job to find those harmonies. I had studied music theory in college but didn’t remember much because it had been taught on a blackboard rather than in actual practice. So I still depended on my ear. I noticed that for any melody note, there are always four notes that can be sung harmoniously with it; three that harmonize and one that is an octave from the original note. If you duplicate any note in another octave, you get more than four parts. If you change one harmony note up or down a step or a half-step, the mood of the harmony changes.

In the language of very simple music theory: if you call any note “1”, the notes 3 and 5 will always harmonize with it to create a major chord , and you can also add the octave (8). Three-part harmony creates triad chords or inversions thereof, and four-part harmony creates full chords. You can move the 3 note down a half step if you want a minor chord. You can move the 8 note down a step for a jazzy 7^th chord, or to 6, or to 9 (the octave of 2) or even 10 (the octave of 3).

Additionally, to find chords to go with a note: for any note there are three basic chord choices to go with it because they that contain that note; it will be at the top, in the middle, or at the bottom of the chord. (i.e. for the note C, the basic chord choices are CEG, ACE, and FAC.)

Of course it’s easy to teach harmony by teaching theory, but if you teach it on paper or on a blackboard, the person you’ve taught may forever only see the harmony relationships instead of primarily hearing them. IMHO, it’s better to learn to hear and integrate them before seeing them. I’ll repeat what I said a few posts ago: if a child were not allowed to speak before he could read and write, he would never learn to speak well. Music is a language, and language is learned first by ear.

One can learn to sing harmony by learning to sing major chords by choosing a note, calling it “1” and then singing 1,3,5,8, ascending and then 5,3,1 descending; starting on, say C and then repeating the pattern starting on D, and so on. Then you can do the same making the chords minor by dropping the 3 note a half step, and maybe then make them into 7^th chords, 6^th chords, and 9^th chords. It’s really fun to get together with a group and sing sustained notes while taking turns changing one note at a time, so the chords morph.

Bobby McFerrin did a marvelous participation demonstration to show an audience that they could intuitively sing harmony. See this site:  http://www.ted.com/talks/bobby_mcferrin_hacks_your_brain_with_music.html

There are billions of people around the globe who create harmonies without consciously knowing anything about music theory. Some of the most beautiful harmonies I can think of are sung by women in certain tribal cultures in Africa. (If you’ve ever seen “The Gods Must be Crazy”, you’ll remember the gorgeous greeting song sung in multi-part harmony by village women upon the arrival of visitors. I can assure you that such traditional songs are learned “by heart” rather than from a choral director.)

If you can hear melody, you can hear harmony. If you can hear harmony, you can play it or sing it. It may take a little practice, but the brain loves harmonious sound and is willing to integrate it.

 

 

Margi wrote: ” I have one further question. For me there is a big difference between what I can memorize for my left and right hands (I am right handed, mostly). Whereas I can easily memorize the melody I play with my right hand, I am totally hesitant and unsure about what I play with my left hand, even if it’s just chords. Any hints or clues on why this might be so and how I can compensate for it?”

(Margie, I don’t want to make assumptions, since my blog posts are for all traditional and folk instruments, but I’m assuming from what you’ve written that you play the harp. However, the answer I’m providing can also apply to piano. )

There can be a few reasons for it to be less obvious how to memorize left hand parts.

First, the right hand plays the melody, which is easily remembered because it’s “sing-able”; even if you don’t actually hum or sing it out loud, you can “hear it in your head” as melody. The left hand accompaniment is not as melodic and also usually contains more complexity of note combinations. So you simply have to work harder to remember left hand parts, since they don’t come as automatically.

Secondly, you might not be recognizing patterns. Left hand parts often contain patterns and should be memorized as such rather than thinking of them as a sequence of unrelated notes.

Thirdly, if you don’t know your music theory well, you won’t know why the left hand part is arranged the way it is. Ask your teacher for lessons in music theory; it will help you  understand and therefore more easily remember left hand parts. Music theory isn’t just “how to read music”  –  not at all.  It’s a complete overview of how music is structured. Music notation is based on music theory, not the other way around (and it’s best to learn your theory on the instrument you play rather than from a blackboard or just reading about it).

Fourth, any chord you play in an arrangement will almost always contain the melody note that falls on the same beat as the chord. That makes the chords easier to remember.

Lastly, if you learn the left hand part first, you’ll probably never forget it. The left hand on harp is the foundation on which the melody is placed. So it makes sense to learn it first.

Cherie said,

“I like your suggestion to practice “known” songs on a rotating basis (1, 2, 3 on day 1; 2, 3, 4 on day 2; and so on). How many times do you recommend playing each one? I find that when I play a tune I haven’t played in a week or so, often the first time through goes great, but the second time through, it falls apart. I usually play each 3 or 4 times, or until it’s back to being as good as it was the 1st time…”

Cherie, it sounds like the first time you play it you’re going on autopilot and muscle memory, and then on subsequent play-throughs you’re using conscious memory. Since you need both, it’s good to do what you’re doing: play it again and again until it comes back.

For the tunes that you lose in the middle and can’t pick up again, your idea that “Maybe learning the song in shorter chunks… would give me more ‘starting places’ throughout the tune where I could pick it up after getting lost.”

Yes, tunes should always be learned in little chunks, rather than playing them all the way through when learning them, for exactly the reason you state above.

Always play a new tune daily for at least 21 days. Research has shown that’s how long it takes for a new skill or tune to be permanently set in memory. Chances are that the reason you’re forgetting tunes and parts of tunes is because you didn’t play them every day for the requisite 21 days when you learned them.

Laurie

To build a repertoire, two things are obvious: first, it helps to learn your music in the easiest and most efficient way; secondly, to maintain the repertoire you’ve learned, one must find a way to remember it reliably. Needless to say, practice is key in both cases, but let’s look at some nuances of both learning and remembering, in detail.

It may be a relief to know that musically there is no such thing as “cheating”; that’s a word used by those who for some reason have an investment in one and only one way of doing things. Any way that works for you is fine as long as it produces optimal results: as much repertoire as you can reasonably expect to build, all of it played well, and a reliable memory for all of it.

Learning:

Two ways of learning music are from the page (notation or tablature) or by ear. Both are equally valuable, and a well rounded musician uses both skills well.

Learning from notation is important if you want to be able to play a piece as it is written or arranged, note for note. It is also very useful in ensembles if you don’t do your arranging aurally. As I’ve said before, the written music is a tool  –  if you want to change it, you can, unless it’s a classical piece, or a composition (in any style) by a living composer, in which case you need to get the composer’s permission to if you change the arrangement. Those who can read and write music notation can also pass pieces on to others accurately on paper. One simply has to be careful not to let the paper be The Law when it’s acceptable or preferable to be creative.

If you can read notation, why bother playing by ear? Because sometimes the notation or tablature isn’t available at the time, sometimes your aural source is the only one, sometimes you’ll want to arrange the piece yourself, and because for some styles of music it’s traditional to learn by ear. Learning “by ear” means learning by listening (not, as is a common misconception, by rote).

Some view the ability to play by ear as awesome and esoteric. Some see it as inferior to note reading, the “lazy musician’s way”, or “cheating”. Those attitudes are not based in reality, and such intimidation is unfair. In truth, those who can play by ear often have an easier time learning, composing, arranging, and improvising, and … the sophistication of the music is dependent on the ability of the individual musician, not the method they use to learn, arrange or compose it.

To learn by ear, there are four easy steps:

1. Listen to a tune over and over until you get it in your head and can hum it to yourself. You can listen while you are doing other things; it will sink in.

2. Remember:  Hum the melody to yourself until you are sure you know it. (If there are lyrics, sing them to remember them.)

3. Find the Notes : On your instruments, find the notes to the tune as you remember them. When you are fairly certain you have found a full section of melody, check it against your source. Then continue in sections, until you have done the whole tune. Then you can create your own arrangement to go with the melody, or you can learn the arrangement you’ve heard.

4. Practice: Play it until your fingers stop asking questions.

 

Remembering:

Professional musicians are sometimes asked, “How do you remember all those tunes?”

It would be easy to say that the answer is never to stop practicing the tunes or songs you know. But that would be impractical; if you have a sizable repertoire, there’s no way to practice every piece every day.

I practice the tunes I enjoy most or that I need for upcoming gigs (which change from week to week or month to month). The rest of my repertoire can be played reasonably well on short notice for informal situations, but requires a bit of practice for serious gigs.

Actually, there’s a difference between being able to play your music well because it’s in practice, and being able to remember it. There are countless paper-trained (no insult intended!) musicians who play extremely well while reading their music. but put the paper away and often they think they can’t remember it. Usually they’re mistaken; I’ve seen many paper-trained folks play through entire pieces without looking at their music at all, yet they freeze when it’s not there. It’s psychological.  (However, for very long orchestral pieces it is often a necessity to read the music no matter how well you know it.)

IMHO, the paper gets in the way of the three-way communication between you, your instrument and your audience. It adds a distraction both psychologically and visually. If for no other reason, I believe most music should be memorized. This is so easy, yet I sometimes hear people say they have trouble memorizing. Unless you’re having significant aging issues or a neurologic disorder, the inability to memorize is usually just from never having been taught how. Can you remember “Twinkle Twinkle”? Of course! Because when you were a toddler you sang it again and again and again. Even though you were just singing for fun, repetition is an important element for memory. Any piece of music can be remembered with adequate repetition and focus on the aural and kinesthetic qualities of the music and/or the way the finger patterns look on the strings or keys. Memorizing can, by the way, be done whether you learn from notation or by ear.

To memorize, play just a phrase at a time over and over, and when you know each phrase well, put them all togather. If memorizing from notation, don’t try to play the whole tune all the way through; take it in very small increments and repeat them until you remember them. Start to memorize every piece the very first time you play it. By the way, memorizing becomes easier with each consecutive piece you learn.

Pitfalls for those who believe they can’t memorize are: trying to remember how the notes look on the page, and/or trying to remember the names of each note in the piece. Instead, remember how your finger movement patterns look and feel, while paying attention to the sound of each pattern/phrase. Almost all music consists of patterns. For instance, melodic phrases and rhythmic accompaniment parts will often be repeated several times in a piece, sometimes with variations.

In ages past, a Bard could recite from memory, word by exact word, incredibly long odes and poems, and also an aural history of his people, and play memorized music pieces as much as six hours long. Needless to say, audiences back then had longer attention spans. Actually in Africa, the Griots of certain tribes still do this and their listeners still have long attention spans.

Although I can remember the lyrics to about 400 songs and play maybe 300 instrumental arrangements, compared to a Bard that’s pitiful. Most professional musicians have at least as much committed to memory. Some old-time musicians know thousands of tunes; can sit around playing maybe eight or ten hours and never repeat a tune, and do it again the next day with all different tunes. (How they do that without getting carpal tunnel syndrome, I don’t know.) It’s a no-brainer that they’ve done their requisite 10,000 hours of playing (the amount of playing-time said to be requisite for musical success), and it has probably not been drudgery for most of them  –  they’re doing what that love. They, and the ancient Bards, are and were simply human, which means that you, too, can memorize a lot of music.

Building Your Repertoire

Let’s talk about just developing and maintaining a repertoire sizable enough to do a full-length concert. That’s about 16 tunes. First, try not to abandon any of the tunes you’ve learned (except the ones you don’t enjoy playing). Many students make the mistake of practicing something until the teacher assigns a new piece, then dropping the old one. If you do that, your repertoire will always be limited to the pieces you’re currently working on, and usually what one is currently working on isn’t yet well enough practiced to play for an audience.

You can keep a full repertoire in practice by separating your performance-ready pieces from the ones you don’t yet know as well, and rotate those daily. If you know, say, ten pieces really well, you could play pieces 1, 2 and 3 on Monday; pieces 2, 3, and 4 on Tuesday; pieces 3, 4 and 5 on Wednesday, pieces 4, 5 and 6 on Thursday, and so on. Notice I didn’t say “pieces 1, 2 and 3 on Monday; pieces 4, 5 and 6 on Tuesday…” because playing a tune more than one day in a row keeps it in memory better.

To add new repertoire, it’s a good idea to learn no more than two pieces at a time. Play the two you’re learning every day until they are firmly in muscle memory and are performance-ready. Then put them into rotation with your other known pieces.

Using the above practice formula, a good practice session might look like this: play through three pieces you know well, followed by working on the two pieces you’re learning.

Many folks expect to learn too fast. Give yourself time! It can take several months for a new piece to become part of your repertoire. There are no shortcuts.

We’ve all heard performances where we were awed by the music. Usually this happens when the music seemingly transcends the musician, and sometimes even the composition, when some kind of magic seems to happen. The musician may be awesomely skilled, but beyond technical prowess there is also an indescribable quality that goes far beyond the notes being played.

What is this elusive thing? It’s as though the universe holds a secret that only pours through our music when we’re in the ‘zone”. We are not its masters; it drives us… as long as we let it. Let’s call it “heart”. I like that term because “learning by heart” is an old Irish phrase that describes a way of learning and playing music that suggests bypassing analytical ways of learning and playing.

Many musicians prevent access to “heart” by thinking too hard, being too data-logic oriented,  playing from the left brain all the time. Learning cannot be forced; it’s a process of opening ourselves to information and focusing on absorbing it as we practice its technical aspects. Yet we might put so much angst into the process that we can sabotage the learning process and also prevent ourselves from playing expressively.

The most effective way to access “heart” is, as soon as you can remember and play a piece accurately, put away the notation or tablature, and concentrate on feeling the music. Feeling produces expression. Expression can’t be faked (it sounds obvious and trite when it is), so connecting with the soul of the music is the path to real expression.

Notice I said “as soon as you can remember and play a piece…” implying that if you can’t remember it, you don’t know it. If you can’t hear it in your head, you probably really don’t know the piece yet (see my last post). Just being able to read through it isn’t knowing it. Many musicians never do the work required to actually learn their pieces!

Interestingly, I’ve found again and again that it’s often the simplest pieces I play that get the best response from audiences. Complex pieces may be impressive, but they are showpieces that highlight the musician’s abilities, whereas the simpler pieces are where one is often more able to  access and express the heart within the music.

If you feel your music lacks heart, try to remember the feeling that made you choose to be a musician in the first place. So many of us lose sight of our musical passion as we concentrate on  just learning the pieces. Sometimes we learn pieces we don’t even like! Once you get beyond beginner pieces, you can choose to learn music that touches you. Otherwise, why play?

There are certain things that can be done to assist you in playing expressively:

1. Dynamics: modulate volume to express important phrases, just as you would when speaking.
2. Emphasis: accent specific notes and passages. Emphasis often goes along with lyrics (whether sung or not), such as “This land is YOUR land, this land is MY land”. Even though some tunes never had lyrics we can still learn emphasis. Emphasis can include dynamics, or it can be done by simply holding a note slightly longer than its indicated value (in some cases you may have to shorten the following note accordingly).
3. Keeping the Tempo Reasonable: Many musicians play pieces way too fast. It’s obvious at sessions, but less obvious in solo playing and even less so with “slow” tunes. If the entire purpose of a piece is to be fast and pyrotechnic, fine, but if it’s supposed to be an expressive piece, keep the tempo under control. It’s amazing how just slowing a piece down a little will bring out the melody and the mood.
4. Chord Rolling: on a stringed instrument, rolling some or many of the chords can be very effective. On a harp or keyboard, this is the equivalent of a very fast arpeggio that starts before the beat and ends on the beat. On a guitar, banjo mandolin or other fretted instrument, it’s a slowly executed strum.
5. Ornaments: adding grace notes (notes that take no extra time in the beat), turns, trills, snaps, cuts, and so on, to a melody can really spice it up. Ornament types vary from culture to culture, so it’s a good idea to take a class in ornamentation for Irish, Scottish, Nordic, and other ethnic styles because each is different.
6. Manipulating the Beat: in some pieces you can play ending phrases slower than the rest, or pause for emphasis here and there  –  but not in all pieces. Some musicians think playing with no discernable tempo is the only way to express. Not so. Often, playing with a very steady tempo but lots of dynamic modulation is more effective.
7. Changing Keys: Occasionally, changing keys in the middle of a piece can be exciting.
8. Changing octaves: You can play a tune once through in one octave and then once through an octave higher or lower. Don’t do this with every piece, though.
9. Plucking near the bridge (fretted instruments) or the soundbox (harp): This produces a nasal, bright tone that’s nice for occasional accentuation of a phrase.
10. Changing plucking angle: in clawhammer-style banjo in particular, if you play with the fingernail parallel to the string, you get a mellower tone, and if you angle your nail a bit you’ll get a more nasal tone. On a harp, if you pluck with the middle of the fingertip you’ll get a different tone than when you pluck with the side of the fingertip.

… But those are all formulae. They are necessary and helpful, but the heart of expression that makes music compelling is feeling it first.

Beware of trying to over-express with your body instead of expressing through the music. We’ve all seen rock stars who dance better than they sing, and I recently saw a clip of the group Kiss which was amusingly overdone: extreme makeup, extreme costumes, extreme body posture and facial expressions  –  all to hide what wasn’t there musically. Joan Baez used to stand alone in the spotlight and hardly move at all  –  her exquisite voice and the lyrics were all she needed to be mesmerizing. That said, it’s good to move in a relaxed but not exaggerated way with your music, it helps the feeling to happen. Joan is a rare phenomenon.

Lastly, make the music your own. Trying to sound like someone else, no matter how much you admire them, never works. Bring out your own soul in your music  –  that’s what people want to hear.

This post builds upon last week’s post, so to get the most out of it, please read last week’s first.

One of the most common questions many musicians (even long-time ones) have is, “Why am I not progressing beyond a certain plateau and why doesn’t playing come more naturally?”

In many cases, the answer is that after learning a tune and practicing it (a lot) to get all the notes and the technique right –  which requires left-brain effort  –  it’s time switch over to allow the fingers to do what they know how to do by muscle memory while you concentrate on feeling and expressing the music. It’s nearly impossible to be expressive or lyrical when you’re thinking too much about the technical aspects of the piece. Too many musicians don’t trust our fingers and our subconscious, when in fact those are our best tools for smooth and natural playing.

While you’re learning new music, the neurologic system continually “files” the information in your subconscious (and this continues even between practice times). This allows later accessing of the skills merely by “hearing” the music in your head. If you’ve practiced well, the fingers can just play what you “hear” without your consciously telling them where to go. (I can hear the groans of protest… “Not ME. I can’t do that.” If you can’t, it’s because you’ve never learned how, not because there’s some shortcoming in your genes.)

Your hands will know what to do because a direct connection develops between the muscles and the subsconscious mind, bypassing the conscious mind. At this point, thinking too much about the logistics of playing it (“Now I put this finger here…” or “next is a G note”) can actually sabotage the process. It’s like tying your shoes: when you were a little kid you had to concentrate really hard on learning that skill, but soon you could do it on autopilot. Now if you tried to think about how you tie your shoes (“This end goes over that end and through this loop…”) you can’t do it as quickly as you can when you just turn your fingers loose to do it. Relying on muscle memory is far more efficient than trying to think it through when you already know it.

For those who must read the music while playing, seeing the notes substitutes for hearing the piece in your head, but after a certain amount of practice the fingers should learn to play what you see on the page without your consciously directing them there. Some musicians can also think about expression when they’re reading the music. But unless a piece is exceptionally long or is part of an orchestral arrangement, continuing to read the music after you’ve learned the piece usually just gets in the way of being able to play it expressively, because constantly looking at the page interrupts the direct communication between you and your instrument. I never consider a piece “learned” until I can play it from memory. (More on memorizing in a future blog…)

By the way, the subconscious and the right brain are not one in the same. The subconscious allows muscle memory to take over in playing your tunes, while the right brain is where expression arises. Therefore, you can purposely play expressively while also playing from muscle memory, because it’s possible to engage the right brain and the subconscious at the same time.

If you’re not sure you can allow your subconscious to work for you musically, start in little sections. For instance, you can start with the most difficult parts of a piece: when you know there’s a difficult passage coming up, just take a deep breath as you play, and let the breath out slowly. By the time you’ve done that, the passage has been played without your thinking about it (because you were thinking instead about your breath) and your hands simply did what they knew how to do. Once you’ve experienced this several times, you can turn the rest of the piece over to muscle memory as well.

In some musical circles, accuracy is considered more important than expression, such as in orchestral or ensemble playing where you’re part of a group that expresses as a whole instead of as individuals. But in solo playing, expression is essential. (Of course, don’t use this idea to justify sloppy playing; if a tune is a mess there’s nothing to express!) It’s important to be so well practiced that mistakes are unlikely, so your concentration can be given to expression instead of technicality. But an occasional floop doesn’t detract that much from the music if it’s being played beautifully, and interestingly, those who in performance think about expression tend to play more accurately because they are not sabotaging muscle memory with unnecessary technical thought. Though I personally strive for perfection, I will not sacrifice expression for it. And when I’m listening to other musicians I’d much rather hear a beautiful performance than a lifeless one that happens to be accurately rendered.

In the days when people played live music to pass the time, they exposed the whole family and/or neighborhood to it constantly. So, getting back to the idea of “hearing the tune” in your head, this is something you can do if you’ve heard it enough times outside your head. This means listening to it often, live or on a recording. If you can find good  recordings of all the pieces you’re learning, and play them in the background as you go about your day, your progress will be much faster. You don’t have to actively listen, just expose yourself to it over and over and over as you do other tasks such as housework, desk work, social networking, cooking, driving, working out, walking the dog, etc.

If you aren’t exposing yourself to a good recording or other aural source of a tune you’re learning,  you may come to “hear” the tune they way you’ve been playing it while it’s new to you: imperfectly, with all its hesitations and such. When you hear it that way in your head, it can actually prevent you from ever playing it better. It’s not that you don’t have the ability to play it better; it’s that your goal-image isn’t the best version of what you can potentially do. The best way to become a better musician is to imagine yourself playing the music the way you ultimately want it to be heard. That provides a goal, and it also makes use of the fact that what you feed your mind is what it believes.

One caveat, however: when what you hear in your head is the tune as you want it to sound, it should enhance your playing, but don’t let your imagination deafen you to what you’re actually playing. Too often we think that somehow, magically, our listeners will hear the music we’re imagining even when it’s not coming out on our instrument. This problem is characterized by flubbed notes or skipped notes that you may not realize weren’t properly executed; you heard them in your head but you weren’t listening to see if they actually happened. Be truthful in hearing yourself, and practice with focus until it matches your goal!

That doesn’t mean you have to play perfectly for yourself all the time. That would be impossible, and trying to do so would cause paralyzing stress. No piece is played well the first few times, or maybe even the first hundred times. Let the learning process happen; there is no shortcut. Trying to make it musical too soon can sabotage the process eventually perfecting it. Don’t try to make a new piece sound “like real music” by trying to play it up to tempo, or trying to play through the entire piece at once instead of learning it in sections. And there’s no need to be frustrated when there are hard spots or mistakes. It takes time; enjoy the process!

 

 

 

 

The concept of “right brain” and “left brain” is a proven one; the right side of the brain largely governs creative and intuitive thinking, while the left side largely governs logic, mathematics, and rote learning. The two hemispheres are not like halves of a ball; they are physically separate and are joined only by one fibrous connection (called the Corpus Callosum) which allows communication between the two hemispheres and therefore helps balance our thinking/functioning.

Most people tend to use one side of the brain more than the other. Creative people are said to be “right-brained”; they are usually artistic and intuitive but sometimes not “grounded” in logic. Logical, analytical types who are skilled in math and data-keeping, and are perhaps not as creatively inclined, are said to be “left-brained”. Interestingly, each type may be so comfortable with their way of learning/doing that they may be hesitant to try to learn to use both sides of the brain equally. (After all, if something works pretty well, why try to improve it?) Music, however, is the great equalizer. Becoming a musician requires equal use of both sides of the brain, or it should, ideally.

There is an artificial divide between musicians who prefer music to be learned and played in a formulaic way and those who prefer it to be learned and played intuitively. In our Western culture, where a great deal more value is put on left-brain learning/thinking, that way of approaching music has come to be considered “the only right way”, while right-brain music-learning is often considered inferior or even wrong. But eons of great musicianship in the world’s oldest cultures, some of which had music-notation systems and some of which relied on an aural tradition, show that there is more than one way to approach music “correctly”.

The brain develops according to what we feed it intellectually. Actual physical nerve tissue forms to accommodate the information we take in, especially when we purposely study a skill. Reading music or tablature and rote learning are left-brain skills. Ear-learning is a right-brain skill. The musician who develops and nurtures both abilities is truly well-rounded, and has access to greater inner expertise.

Don’t get ear-learning confused with having someone show you where to put every finger and play every note in such a way that you wouldn’t actually have to hear the tune to play it  –  that’s a form of rote learning. Ear-playing involves learning from what you hear. Rote means (from the Merriam Webster Dictionary) “the use of memory usually with little intelligence; mechanical or unthinking routine or repetition”. Rote learning is what you do if you are simply learning from any system without having heard the tune or understanding how to make it musical, and yes, that includes learning from notation if it’s simply a mechanical reading of notes. Anyone can follow a system or a set of instructions and go through motions, and notes may emerge from the instrument, but they will be lifeless.

In most traditions, music was an everyday thing, a constant accompaniment to life’s normal activities. People grew up with it and absorbed its nuances without conscious effort. It was learned the way one’s first language is learned: first you hear it, and when you have some understanding of what you’re hearing, you try to do it yourself (usually with a lot of trial and error, and a lot of play-sounds involved), hopefully with guidance every step of the way. Eventually you get very good at it. But these days most of us don’t have continually accessible musical mentors, and we don’t necessarily hear live music in our homes constantly. Therefore, tablature and notation have become more necessary as learning tools. But those cannot replace the traditional ways of learning music; even recording and video devices don’t provide all the information or any of the feedback we need. We need to use all tools available  –  notation or tablature, recordings, active and passive listening, and live mentoring  –  which in turn engage both sides of the brain.

A few random thoughts:

Random thought # 1: I’m reminded of a scene in the movie “The Thirteenth Warrior”, in which an Arab-speaker is travelling with a group of Nordic people whose language he doesn’t know, until finally one evening he responds to something in their own language. When asked how he learned to do that, he replies, “I listened”.)

Random throught #2: Imagine if a toddler were told, “No no, you must not speak until you can read.” He or she would never speak well. So why do we expect to read music before we can play it?

Random thought #3: You never hear someone say, “I’m going to manipulate my fingers on my instrument now.” We say “I’m going to play my instrument.” Manipulation is left-brained, while play suggests a degree of freedom, which is right-brained. But we have to learn both or the play will have no structure.

In addition to being able to listen and reproduce on your instrument what you’ve heard, and being able to read music from notation, knowledge of at least basic music theory is a boon to good musicianship. Why? Because it allows us to learn it and play it better. Music theory is not, as is commonly assumed, just “how to read music”; theory explains the reasons behind everything that music is and everything it does. Music notation is based on the structures of music, not vice-versa.

Unbelievably, many students are never taught any music theory! And when it is taught, it’s often presented in the most complicated possible way, and terms are bandied about that are meaningless to those who have never been exposed to them. This creates the impression that theory is very esoteric and hard to learn. IMHO, theory should be learned/taught directly on the instrument before it’s learned/taught from a blackboard or book. It can be learned in a left-brained way, as in a classroom, or in a right-brained way, as in hearing and playing so much music that its structures and laws become second nature without ever needing to define it (this usually takes years, and there are many very fine musicians in the world who never had formal training but who skillfully use the principles of theory intuitively). Ideally, like music-playing, theory should be learned both ways.

Does anyone really play music equally from both sides of the brain? Yes. The finest performers do what they do because they have integrated both sides of the brain; they can use their knowledge, logic, expression, intuition and creativity equally and simultaneously. This integrated ability is available to those who are truly passionate about developing all of their potential. It makes me sad when I hear someone say, “I can’t play by ear,” or “I don’t want to learn to read music,” or “I have no interest in music theory”. What they are really saying is, “I have no interest in being all that I can be.” If you have trouble with one skill or another, it’s usually not because you lack the ability, but because someone hasn’t really shown you how to do it. There’s a world of music out there  –  explore it!