Cross Training

The busy holiday season has struck once again.  Between all of the gigs, the baking, the ugly sweater parties, and the traveling, we still somehow have to find time to practice.  The gigs will certainly help keep us in shape, but since it is rare that those are our only obligations, we are forced to find creative ways to squeeze productive practicing into our busy schedules.  Whether it be from lack of endurance, lack of time, or neighbors who do not appreciate you playing through Mahler 3 at 11:00 at night, there are any number of reasons why we may not be able to practice according to our usual routines.  And let's face it, sometimes we just need a day off from playing to let our bodies rest.  It is times like these that I am a particular fan of productive practicing without playing the instrument itself.

Finger/Air the Music
Much of the time that we spend cleaning technical passages is devoted to coordinating our fingers with our tongues.  Finger through these passages without playing in order to listen for your coordination.  Listen for clean valve changes without being distracted by your sound from the bell.  Finger through while airing the part to improve coordination between fingers and tongue.  There is no need to waste precious endurance when much of your work can be done silently.

Sing/Buzz
Sing or buzz through your parts to ensure that you are hearing the correct pitches and intervals.  Many times when we miss something it is a result of not being able to hear the pitch properly in relation to the surrounding pitches.  If you can sing and/or buzz it (and you're using the correct fingerings/technique), you should have little trouble playing it.

Listen
Take the time to listen to recordings.  Turn on your favorite recordings when you're driving from one party to another and sing along with them (yes, without words).  Familiarity with a work can remove much of the frustration associated with learning something new.  Even if you cannot listen to a specific piece on which you are working, listen to other works by the same composer or another composer of similar compositional style.  Combine listening with a little score study to really maximize your productivity (not while driving, of course).

Practicing tonguing
Practice your multiple tonguing as you walk around.  Many of our coordination issues without "t's" and "k's" are best improved upon away from the instrument anyway.  If your tongue gets tied in knots while double tongue a string of 8th notes on a single pitch, go back to the basics.  Take things slowly and work with just your tongue and a metronome without complicating things by adding an instrument into the mix.

Do nothing
Give your ears, mind, fingers, and body a break.  Instead, read a book, watch a movie, learn to knit, pet a kitty, do yoga, meditate, take a nap, meet a friend for coffee, go for a drive.  Do ANYTHING but think about playing.  We can be so busy and driven that it's easy for us to forget to chill every now and then.  If you don't have time to practice, maybe it's a good time to take a break anyway.  Warm up as you need to in the morning, play your jobs as required, and put the instrument away long enough to recharge your batteries a little.

Read
Take a few minutes to catch up on the latest Horn Call, or another music journal, to see what you've been missing in the horn world.  You may learn something new, or at the very least be reminded of a technique or exercise that you can use in your own playing.

Blog
Writing here is one of the ways that keep myself honest with my playing.  If I have the audacity to advise others to do something, it would be awfully hypocritical of me to not follow my own advice.  Sometimes I realize that I need a little reminder myself and writing it down makes it seem as though the words are coming from an external source.  It's harder to ignore your nagging shoulder angel when anyone can read about it.

Victory

When, in one practice session, you conquer both Beethoven 7 and the Long Call in one shot:

Remembering to Sing

The last few months I've been spending a rather extensive amount of time working on solos and excerpts for upcoming DMA auditions.  Most of the works (all but 1 excerpt to be exact) are from principal parts, directed toward principal players.  This has been mildly problematic for me over the last few weeks considering the fact that I am primarily a low horn specialist.  Yes, we all have to be able to play the full range of the instrument, and yes, I do still need to be able to play all of the excerpts, but some players are built to be principal players full time whereas I most definitely am not.  I am happy to play Don Quixote or Shostakovich 5 all day, every day with no complaints whatsoever.  To give a running comparison, some players are meant to be sprinters (high hornists) and others are meant to run marathons (low hornists).  Sprinters still have to work on their endurance and marathoners have to run sprints to maintain balance in their training.  However, both types of runners still manage to maintain their focus on their individual strengths instead of trying to fit into the mold of being something that they are not.  I had somehow allowed myself to fall into the trap of being a marathoner who was working on her sprints 100% of the time. 

It was actually a colleague of mine who pointed this out to me after I had broached the subject of the frustration that has been building since starting my full-time work on my audition music.  Remembering where your strengths lie is such a simple idea and I had allowed my focus and drive to blind me from it.  The need for technical and mechanical perfection had completely over-ridden the ability to hear and cultivate a beautiful, characteristic, horn sound.  Basically, I had forgotten how to sing.

I mean this in both the literal sense of using my voice to sing as well as the figurative voice that we use to sing through our instruments.  As I drove home after the aforementioned conversation, I realized that I could not remember the last time that I sang along with the radio at the top of my lungs.  My primary source of inspiration for playing a beautiful melody is opera, especially arias in the bel canto style.  While I am certainly not an opera singer myself, I can belt out show tunes with the best of them.  I used to always be singing along with Beauty and the Beast, The Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, or Ragtime, to name a few.  I started singing along with Phantom and was quickly reminded of just how much singing can help your breath support, phrasing, style, vibrato, and so on.  It felt fantastic and it was extremely liberating to rediscover this part of my voice.

The focus on principal solos and excerpts had consumed my practice sessions to the point where I would literally play nothing else outside of my warm-up routine.  It was a much needed reminder that the ultimate reason why we play this instrument is the beautiful sound, not the technical aspects of performance.  I needed to rediscover the sound that I loved.  It was time to slow down on the long tone exercises and use them to perfect my tone rather than as a launch pad to more technical exercises.  Milk the Arnold Jacob "Beautiful Music" exercise for all that it is worth (many thanks, my tuba playing friends).  Play through some of the big movie themes (i.e. Star Wars, Star Trek - new one, Star Trek: First Contact, Jurassic Park, etc.).  I had a particularly splendid time reading through the Rochut trombone Melodious Etudes books as well as the Shoemaker Legato Etudes based on Concone's Vocalises and the back section of the Arban's book for trumpet.  It was an extremely pleasant way to remember why I love to play in the first play.  Air was moving, my sound was returning, and both physical and mental stiffness finally relaxed.

The ultimate lesson that I received from all of this was to remember that there is always time to remember why you play.  No matter how soon or how far away an audition may be, you cannot forget to work on your sound.  The required music will always work as long as you love what you do.  Stiffness, anger, and frustration are some of the biggest barriers that you can face on the road to an audition and you have the power to do something about them.  Trust yourself.  Trust your horn.  Trust your heart.  There is always the time to play something simply for the sake of making music.

Transposition

When you get a part for horn in E, and someone penciled in the wrong transposition through the entire piece...

Opera for the Average Idiot #3 - Siegfried

After extensive inbreeding...

the saga continues....

Siegfried, part III of Wagner's "Ring Cycle"

Act I
Scene I
The scene opens with the dwarf Mime attempting to forge a new sword for his foster son, Siegfried (the son of the brother/sister pair Siegmund and Sieglinde from Die Walkure).  Being the sneaky little bastard that he is, Mime took in Siegfried after Sieglinde's death in order to train him to defeat the dragon Fafnir and win back the Ring.  Siegfried barges in with a live bear that he just defeated.

Siegfried:  "Look at me!  I'm awesome!  I cannot be beaten!  Mime, where is my new sword?"
Mime:  "Here it is.  I've been working on it all day."
Siegfried: *breaks sword*  "This is shit."

Siegfried knows that the only reason he sticks around with Mime is because he wants to know about his parentage.  He forces Mime to tell him all that he knows about his parents, which also leads Mime to show him the broken pieces of his father's sword, Nothung.

Siegfried:  "Fix it for me!"
Mime:  "I am too weak!"
Siegfried:  "Definitely not news to me..." *stomps out of the cave with his temper tantrum*

Scene II
Wotan comes to visit in his guise of the Wanderer.  In exchange for the traditional hospitality that is due to all guests, he challenges Mime to a riddle contest.  Wotan answers correctly all 3 of the questions that Mime asks him ("What is your name?...What is your quest?...What is the capital of Wiseria?"), but Mime still refuses him hospitality.

For the insult, Wotan makes him answer 3 riddles as well:  What is the name of Wotan's favorite race? (the Wolsungs)  What is the name of the sword that can destroy Fafnir? (Nothung)  Who is the person who can reforge the sword?  Mime correctly answers the first 2 questions but misses the third.  Wotan reveals that the sword can only be reforged by "he who must not be named" "he who knows no fear."  He also reveals that this is the same person who will kill Mime.

Scene III
Siegfried returns from his pouting and throws another hissy fit when he learns that Mime has made no progress on reforging Nothung.  Mime realizes that "he who knows no fear" is Siegfried and he scrambles to convince him that he should be afraid of something.  Siegfried decides that he wants to know what fear is about and Mime agrees to take him to see the dragon Fafnir so he can learn.  Siggy gets all excited and decides to repair Nothung on his own.

*insert forging song here* *P.S. it's AWESOME*

 (photo courtesy of Wikipedia)
 While Siegfried belts out his forging song, Mime prepares to poison him once he has the ring in his possession.  Siegfried finishes Nothung and demonstrates the strength of the new blade by slicing an anvil in half.

Act II
Scene I
Both Wotan and the dwarf Alberich show up at Fafnir's cave, Alberich to try to get the ring back, and Wotan wants to observe the shenanigans that are about to ensue.  Wotan wakes up Fafnir from his hibernation for Alberich so he can try to bargain for the ring.

Alberich: "I want the ring back."
Fafnir: "You didn't say the magic word."
Alberich: "Please?"
Fafnir: "Nope."
Alberich: "But someone is coming to kill you for it."
Fafnir: "Bring it on."

And Fafnir goes back to sleep.

Scene II
Siegfried and Mime arrive at the cave and Mime immediately shows his cowardice by leaving Siegfried to face Fafnir alone.  Siegfried decides to befriend a little woodbird sitting in a nearby tree and makes several attempts at carving a reed flute to communicate with her.

*insert the most glorious bassoon/English horn/oboe/clarinet solos EVER*



Failing to produce a reasonable sound, he gives up and switches to playing his horn (The Long Call) to communicate with her. In doing so, he wakes up Fafnir. They argue, they fight, and Siegfried kills the dragon.  With his dying breath, Fafnir warns him to beware of treachery.  Siggy retrieves his sword and accidentally gets some of the dragon's blood on his hand.  He brings his hands to his mouth out of reflex and tastes some of the blood, giving him the ability to understand the speech of animals.  Per the woodbird's instructions, he pulls the ring and the Tarnhelm from the dragon's horde (see: Opera for the Average Idiot #1: Das Rehingold).  Mime reappears and tries to poison our hero, to no avail.  His new-found ability to understand animals helps him understand that he has been betrayed and he kills Mime.  His little bird friend starts singing about a sleeping woman, surrounded by fire, who would make a perfect wife for him, and they head off into the sunset to find her.

Act III
Scene I
The Wanderer wakes up a very confused Erda and proceeds to tell her:

Wanderer:  "I no longer wants to prevent the end of the Gods.  I'm cool with it.  We can leave the world to Siegfried and Brunnhilde."
Erda: "oh...um...sure...whatever you say..."

Erda is dismissed.

Siegfried arrives and unknowingly sasses his grandfather when he is blocked from reaching Brunnhilde.  He breaks Wotan's spear with Nothung and continues on.

Scene II
Siegfried finds the ring of fire and enters to find a figure dressed in armor who he thinks is a man.  He removes the armor and is very surprised to find a woman instead. 

Keep in mind that up to this point in his life, Siegfried has never actually seen a woman.  He chooses this moment to finally be afraid of something (i.e. someone with breasts).  He kisses her out of desperation and wakes her up.




Brunnhilde:  "I love you!"
Siegfried:  "I love you too!  Even though I'm your nephew!"
Brunnhilde:  "Whatever!"

They renounce the world of the gods, and The End.

Bowing and Breathing

Last week I was fortunate enough to be in San Francisco when the SFSO was playing Mahler's Ninth Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas.  Over the last decade the SFSO has very much made a name for themselves with their release of all of the Mahler symphonies with Tilson Thomas conducting.  I've been a fan of those recordings for some time now thanks to the fact that not only are their performances superb but I feel his Mahler interpretation is impeccable.  I was particularly excited to hear the ninth symphony live since it spans the whole gamut of dramatic emotions (anger, excitement, joy, peace, etc).  That kind of work is best experienced in the live setting where the visible energy and intensity of the musicians can greatly influence your perception of the piece.

My seat was in the terrace, right behind the orchestra, less than 10 feet behind the bells of the horns.  As far as I was concerned, there was no better seat in the house.  It was as close as I could get to sitting with the horn section without actually being on stage.  Within the first bar of the 2nd Horn solo at the beginning of the first movement it was painfully obvious to me that it had been several years now since the last time I was able to hear an orchestra of this caliber in person.  It made me long for the time that I lived in Cincinnati a few years ago, when we would go down to Symphony Hall on a weekly basis to hear the CSO for the affordable cost of a student ticket.

Throughout the concert, there were two things that were particularly enrapturing from a visual standpoint:  the bowing of the strings and the breathing of the brass.  Playing as an ensemble is a skill that is often overlooked in our musical training.  So much of our time in school is spent learning how to be a soloist.  Yes, we learn excerpts, and yes, we spend time playing in ensembles, but how much of that time is completely devoted to learning to perform as a cohesive unit?  I feel like the woodwinds and brass have a slight advantage over the rest of the orchestra simply because of the increased emphasis on involvement in multiple ensembles in universities.  Many of your wind instrumentalists are members of both the bands/wind ensembles and orchestras at the same time in addition to any chamber music opportunities.  We also have the tendency to spend drastically more time on excerpts as a required part of our lesson repertoire.  It was an incredible experience to have my breath taken away by the purely visual aspect of watching the strings perform.   Each of the individual string sections were moving in complete synchronization.  Every performer used the bow to its fullest extent.  Down bows.  Up bows.  Every movement happened in exact unison.  All of the string players were playing their individual parts at the top of their individual abilities, and then threw all sense of individual identity out of the proverbial window.  It didn't matter that they were a group of individuals from all different backgrounds and schools of music.  The only thing that was important was to think, move, and perform as a single unit.  It was so enchanting to watch that you could have completely muted every sound coming from the stage and the performance would have been just as enthralling to observe.

The breathing of the brass section was just as mesmerizing, but more from an aural standpoint than visual.  Every attack was precisely together using the same style and articulation.  As impressive as that was, I was moved even more by the precision of their releases.  Every performer played the end of every statement and phrase the exact same way as the rest of their compatriots.  There was not a single release where someone would breathe out of sync with the rest of the section.  Every phrase was seemingly approached with the idea that the end is always the goal and is therefore the most important part.  The releases became the most awe inspiring aspect of the entire concert.  Individual identities were gone and nothing was more important than sharing and utilizing a single musical mind.  The communication that can occur silently in the span of a single breath was mind boggling to observe.  It was as if I had been specially invited to observe a sacred ritual.  This kind of performance cannot be captured in a "canned" recording.  The amount of editing that occurs on modern albums completely eliminates these magical moments that can only be observed and felt during a live performance.

My re-inspiration.  That's what I'm calling this concert.  This performance gave me back some of the spark that had been missing from my own playing for quite a while now.  I had forgotten what it really felt like to be a part of a larger whole, the bigger picture, or whatever you want to call it.  We get stuck in our practice rooms playing the same music the same ways over and over again and it is too easy to lose sight of the amazing things that can be accomplished when we belong to an ensemble.  I am not trying to belittle soloist or solo work at all.  There is simply a level of enlightenment that can be attained when you give up your individual musical self in order to achieve the musical and mental harmony that can only be found when truly playing as an ensemble.

Finding your Focus

We often forget just how much of the quality of a performance is based on our ability to maintain focus.  Music is a mental game.  Just like a chess champion trains to out maneuver their opponent, we must train to out maneuver our minds.  The mind is a fickle thing.  If we are constantly concerned about our "shoulder angels" telling us what to do or think, we can easily be distracted from maintaining our focus on what we are physically doing here and now.  I've always found Yoda from the Star Wars franchise to be a particularly apt music teacher.  Before agreeing to train Luke in "The Empire Strikes Back," he comments on how "All his life has he looked away...to the future, to the horizon.  Never his mind on where he was.  Hmm?  What he was doing."  This is a perfect example of how our minds are prone to wandering.  We worry incessantly about superfluous things instead of focusing on what we are playing this moment.  Our shoulder angels are constantly whispering to us as we perform: Damn! I missed that again!, I always have trouble with that passage, Don't screw up!, and so on.  This stream of discouragements force us to avert our concentration away from what we are actually doing in each moment of a performance. 

I am the last person to advise any kind of micro management of muscles as we play because it will only lead to getting so tangled up in ourselves that we cannot move.  Analysis paralysis can be fatal to any performance when too much  thinking occurs.  The kind of focus that I am referring to  pertains to concentrating on only one thing at a time, such as: allowing your body to stay relaxed, concentrating solely on what your air is doing, ensuring that your fingers are moving at the appropriate speed, etc.  The busy society in which we live has convinced us that we must multi-task in order to be considered successful.  Smart phones, tablets, and other electronic devices are supposedly designed to streamline our lives so we have more time for other pursuits.  Unfortunately, they also have taught us to depend on a constant stimulus.  It seems to be increasingly more difficult for people to be comfortable with concentrating on only one thing at a time.  Instead we listen to music, while using an e-reader, while talking on the phone, all while we drive from one life event to another.  We are determined to find success by our ability to check things off of our to-do lists, regardless of the quality of the work we perform.  Focusing on one thing at a time, and being comfortable with focusing on only one thing, is a skill that requires us to work our mental muscles in the same way we work our embouchures, arms, fingers, and voices when we perform.  Focus must be practiced daily in order to stay in shape.


Tips for finding your ability to focus

1. Turn off the TV/Phone/Computer/Tablet/E-reader.
Yes.  All of those little (or not so little) devices have an on/off switch.  Use it.  Many of us fall into the comfortable trap of watching TV while we practice.  Warm up routines are almost perfectly built for distraction, especially if it is a routine that one has used for years.  We get to a point where we go through the motions simply because that's the way we've always done things.  It's so easy to turn on the baseball game, the DVR, or Netflix to help pass the time while we go through those motions.  Then we finish our warm up and we're in the middle of a movie or TV show.  Rather than turn off the TV we decide to leave it running while we "practice" our solos, etudes, or excerpts.  Instantly, our attention is divided.  How are you supposed to actually pay attention to your breathing when you're more concerned with how the Cardinals/Pirates game is going (go Cards!)?  The answer is, you can't.  Our minds are not designed to be able to concentrate fully on two different activities at once.  The moment you try to multi-task, your attention is divided in half for each activity.  Not only did you just play through a piece without actually fixing anything, but you still have no idea what is going on in the game anyway.  Turn off the electronics and give your practicing a fighting chance.

2.  Set immediate and attainable goals.
There was a spectacular article written for The Bulletproof Musician last month here: http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/two-things-experts-do-differently-than-non-experts-when-practicing/

The article discusses two things that experts do differently than non-experts while practicing.  The author cited a study done by two researchers at the City University of New York that compared basketball players, specifically the best free throw shooters to the worst.  The study found that the top free throw shooters set specific goals for everything they practiced, such as keeping their elbows tucked in while shooting, instead of their weaker counterparts who set much broader goals along the lines of simply making the shot.  We can and should do the same thing in our own practice.  Rather than telling yourself, "Don't mess up," decide how you are actually going to not "mess up."  Set the goal of cleaning the movement of your valves.  Work on the the coordination between your tongue and your air so they work together.  Play with a drone pitch to concentrate on improving your intonation.  There are countless goals that you can set to improve your ability to perform any piece of music.  Choose one at a time and clean, clean, clean.  If you continually miss something, determine the specific reason why you miss.  If your answer is just that you suck, you'll always be stuck playing the same thing the exact same way, always missing.  Break things down and use the process of elimination.  Was my tongue getting in the way?  Were my fingers coordinated?  Did I choke off my air supply?  How was my air speed?  Find the specific source of the problem and set about fixing it.

3.  Leave yourself reminders.
The sticky note.  My favorite practice tool.  Sometimes I'm convinced that I single-handedly keep the Post-It company in business.  Pick your favorite color of sticky note and be prepared to use them.  You may laugh at yourself when you open a book to find your lime green sticky note reminding you to breathe, but I can guarantee that you will definitely be focused on your breathing when you work on that etude.  Sometimes we just need that external prodding to do something, even if we have to do it ourselves.

4.  Get physical.
Start running.  Do yoga.  Take up Tai Chi.  Sign up for a Zumba class.  Physical activity is a fantastic way to teach yourself to focus on one thing at a time.  I do actually recommend against the gym setting for achieving this.  Most of your gyms have televisions all over the place and are designed to entertain the gym users who are easily bored by working out.  Running outside or taking a group class gets you away from the TVs and does not give you a choice but to focus on what you are doing at that moment.  Leave the phone at home and find an activity that clears your mind and doesn't allow for the multi-tasking that leads to distraction.

These are only a few suggestions of things you can use to rediscover your ability to focus, or help you find it in the first place.  Don't be afraid to try new exercises, techniques, or activities to find what works for you.  While I am a runner who loves to do yoga every morning, I know plenty of people who cannot stand doing either activity because they get frustrated and angry instead of clearing their minds.  The biggest thing to remember is that we perform how we practice, so we must practice how we wish to perform.  If you allow yourself to be distracted while you practice on your own, you will never be able to achieve the level of focus required to attain perfection in a performance.