Monthly Archives: August 2011

Exploring Being Wrong To Find Improvement

5 Replies

The errors of the great mind exceed in number those of the less vigorous one

– William Stanley Jevons, Economist

If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough.

– John Coltrane, Jazz Saxophonist

There is no musician in this world who has flawless technique, because there is no such thing as flawless technique. For an artist, technique is the means toward self expression. As the artist continues to grow, the technique must evolve to serve this expression.

The pursuit of perfection is more a direction to move toward rather than a destination. (It’s not about perfection so much as it is about improvement.) To paraphrase the great cellist Janos Starker describing his continued growth:

“All of the sudden, everything I worked so hard for is wrong, because I’ve found an even better way. A new level. But when I work hard and finally reach that new level, it too will become wrong.”

The fact that even very accomplished musicians still practice, still study, still strive, is, in a sense, an admission that they’re not completely right  about their approach to playing music. There is always more. There is always a different way other than the way they already know.

The only way you can possibly reach your potential as a musician is to explore the possibility of being wrong. (But keep in mind that wrong  might be nothing more than your immediate reaction, your perception, of something that is unfamiliar.)

The sound I currently have on tenor saxophone is a result of lots of physical changes and equipment choices that were wrong  at one point in my development. And as right as they are now, they (thinking of what Janos Starker said above) may possibly become wrong at another point in the future.

Much of your sense of what is right is based upon belief and habit. F. M. Alexander  (the founder of the Alexander Technique) said:

Everyone wants to be right, but nobody stops to consider whether their idea of right is right.

In regard to postural and movement habits, Alexander found that most people’s sense of right was based upon something he called a “faulty sensory awareness.” In essence, an inaccurate sense of what’s really going on in your body as opposed to what you think is going on.

Alexander found that because people are creatures of habit, they’ll typically cling to the feeling of their habit, whether or not that habit is counterproductive to their desired intention. They’ll do so because their habits always feel familiar. They feel right.

To change, Alexander said, you need to go from the known, to the unknown. (From the habitual and familiar, to the new and unfamiliar.) This can only happen by exploring the possibility of being wrong. By allowing yourself to explore wrong, you set the stage for change.

According to the principles of the Alexander Technique, the only time you’re ever actually “wrong” is when you interfere with the natural poise and coordination that you already possess to function well.

If you make something more complicated by excessively straining muscles, rather than using a more efficient coordination based upon your bodily design and its relationship to gravity, you’re probably wrong, whether or not it feels right.

Your wrong because ultimately, it doesn’t help you play any better. It in fact makes good playing even less likely. You’re wrong only because your reaction is in conflict with your desire (and with your design).

For many, it’s not always easy to notice habits in this way. (This is where a good teacher can help immensely.)

But if you can learn to avoid a few of the truly wrong things (according to this Alexander principle) you’re left with a vast field of possibilities of things that might be right, might be better.

And of course being different isn’t necessarily wrong.

In fact that’s part of the point I’m trying to make here. Paul Desmond had a sound on alto saxophone that was as different as could be from David Sanborn’s alto sound.  But that doesn’t mean that one sound is right and the other wrong. They’re just different (and both highly unique and beautiful).

You can apply this same kind of open-mindedness to your own exploration of right and wrong as you practice.

Here are a few  other things to keep in mind to help you explore your musical practice in this way:

  • Notice how you respond-What do you do when you play something that didn’t come out they way you intended? Did your body become tense? Did you stop breathing? Did you make a scowling face?  Learning how to accept the unintentional with grace and balance is a great skill to cultivate. Besides making you a better performer, it will keep you much more open-minded in your practice. If you find yourself getting tense after trying something in a different way, stop and do it again with a less tense, less reactive  response. You might be surprised to notice that it doesn’t seem so wrong after all, and is perhaps even better than what you had before.
  • Don’t rely exclusively on what feels right-Like Alexander said, what often feels right is your habit. Sometimes to really find what’s “right” (or at least better) you have to allow yourself to feel wrong (out of your habit). In exploring new techniques, approaches and equipment, try to base your assessments on discernible, objective criteria. “Am I able to control the pitch more accurately?” “Am I able to play with less strain on my entire body?” “Can I more consistently produce my altissimo?”, etc. Make a list of your objectives with of anything new that you try. Keep track of the pros and cons. Take your time and use your reasoning.
  • Understand why you do things the way you do-If you hold your posture, position your instrument, form your embouchure, practice in a certain sequence, etc., because some well-respected expert told you to do so, I encourage you to ask the deeper question of “Why?” The better you understand the physics of your instrument, your bodily structure and design (and your thinking),  the better you’ll be able to discern the best choices for you. This is where honest self-inqury and basic scientific reasoning come into play. If you’ve been doing something the same way for years because of your deferment to a respected source, explore the possibility of not doing it that way. See what happens. Measure the results.
  • Let yourself sound bad-Sometimes to find a better way to play, you have to let go of your desire to sound good . If you start with discernment instead of judgement, you might find that sounding “bad” doesn’t really sound bad at all, just different. And even if you do sound bad (bad intonation, articulation, etc.) understand that it might just be a matter of you getting used to a less seemingly familiar coordination. It could be that as you get to know this new coordination, you play better than ever. (The current mouthpiece I play on tenor saxophone is a prime example of this. The only way I could make this mouthpiece work for me was to play in a more efficient, less strenous way than I was used to habitually.)
So as always, let yourself explore, have fun, be different, be wrong. Aim for a right direction (growth and improvement) instead of a right destination (perfection, which, as Janos Starker might say, doesn’t exist). Being wrong might just be the right thing for you. Let me know what you think!

Transcending Your Skills To Improvise More Expressively

Leave a reply

Learning to improvise music means learning to respond immediately to the stimuli of the moment (time feel, harmony, song form, other players, etc.) in such a way as to produce cogent, sincerely expressed music. There’s lots of reflexive activity going on here. Stuff seemingly below consciousness.

If you ask many highly gifted and accomplished improvising musicians what they’re thinking as they improvise, you’ll likely be met with something like a blank stare.

Then, “I’m not thinking of anything. I’m just playing.” (this and its variations are what you might often hear.) And though it’s not true that they’re not thinking, it is very likely true that they are not self-conscious in the improvisational process.

More specifically, when an artist is making music spontaneously, there is little conscious thought of the materials of the musical medium: pitch, time, rhythm, harmony, etc.

In truth, the accomplished improviser has transcended these materials when improvising. This only occurs through considerable discipline, reflection and time commitment. It’s as if the improvising artist is practicing mastering these musical materials in order to forget them and just get down to the business of making music.

And I think that that’s the entire aim of practicing diligently: To transcend the self-consciousness of acquired skill.

For sure, the same thing can be said about great interpretive musicians. They, too,  have to transcend their skills to get to that high level of personal expression.

But what makes this especially relevant ti the process of improvisation is that to improvise you have to supply the actual “text and flow” of the composition itself (what you actually improvise) in the moment.

You have perhaps even more balls in the air to juggle: Note choices, rhythm, harmonic color, the length and shape of the phrase, the overall “story” of your improvisation, pushing or following…Not to mention the response and connection to those with whom you’re playing.

Whenever I hear a less than satisfying improvisational soloist (particularly in jazz played over harmonic forms), I always notice this one common characteristic: I can always too easily hear what the improviser has been practicing (the patterns, licks, etc.)

I don’t want to hear that. I want to hear music. I want to hear expression. I want to share a journey. I want to be surprised.

In short, I don’t want to hear the musician in the practice room. I want to hear the artist in the moment.

And I’m not alone here. Whenever we hear the practice room musician, we are hearing a disconnected, undeveloped, somewhat shallow form of self expression. That’s not necessarily bad. In fact, it’s probably necessary in the growth cycle of the emerging artist. Passing from ignorance and lack of skill, to self consciousness, and finally (if we’re fortunate) to self actualization and deep expression.

Yet you’re probably never going to go out and buy the latest recording of a jazz musician whose primary focus is on trying to show you all the hip ideas she or he has practiced in the past two or three weeks . The fully realized artist has no interest in showing you this type of sophistication. The aim is much deeper. And musical sophistication is only useful if it serves the bigger goal of personal expression.

So if you wish to aim high, as the great improvising artists have, Aim toward transcending your musical skills and knowledge. Here are a few things to keep in mind to help you:

  • Aim for deep mastery-Jazz piano genius Kenny Werner addresses this perfectly in his book Effortless Mastery. Rather than continually adding new, only partially internalized material (new scales, new chord shapes, tunes, etc.) to your practice repertoire, consider spending a great deal of time mastering the most basic material. If it’s a set of scales, for example, work on an endless amount of patterns and variations based upon the notes of the scale. You’d be surprised at how exotic and beautiful a major scale can  sound if you explore and find the interval combinations. There’s no limit to the beauty of diatonic music.
  • Don’t keep practicing what you already know-Once you have really mastered a particular pattern (I mean really mastered it) stop practicing it. Trust that it (and more important) its variations will organically reveal themselves in your playing as a part of your true musical gesture.
  • Allow time-When you practice new material, you must consciously use it as you practice improvising. But on the bandstand, don’t give it a thought. Trust that as time goes by, all the things you’ve worked on will contribute to your improvisations in a natural and beautiful way.
  • Follow your ears-Make sure you can easily sing any idea, scale, chord or interval shape that you’re practicing. Go back and forth between singing and playing. You strongly internalize your musical materials this way, and take them out of the self conscious realm. You play what you hear, not just what you think.
  • Practice not knowing-Put yourself into situations where your improvisational skills don’t easily fit in. For example, if you’re primarily a straight ahead jazz player, try improvising with skillful “free jazz” improvisers. Even if you never want to play “free jazz” you’ll have a great chance to see if you can make music without your prefabricated arsenal of musical ideas. (It’ll make you a much more spontaneous, adventurous, powerful jazz improviser, I promise!)
There’s a well-known story about the great jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker: It is said that a young, aspiring saxophonist once approached Mr. Parker and asked him what he (the young musician) needed to do to become a great jazz musician. Parker’s reply (and I’m paraphrasing here):”Well you need to learn all your scales, major, minor and altered, from all degrees, throughout the entire range of your horn. Then you need to learn all the chords, including all the altered extensions, in every inversion. Then you need to learn all the standard songs that are being played in jazz these days in all 12 keys. Then  you need to learn how all these scales and chords you’ve learned fit into these songs. Then, you have to forget all that sh*t and just play.”
I don’t disagree at all.

Learning To Trust Unlearning

Leave a reply

Seven months ago my daughter Julia was born. One of the deepest joys in my life is watching her grow and develop. Of course that’s no surprise for anybody who has reared children. But what has surprised me is how much I’ve learned about movement and balance from observing her as she develops. And today that got me to thinking about why this is good news for musicians.

Skills, such as balancing her head on her spine, sitting up, turning herself over, coordinating her hands with her eyes, crawling…even the coordination of her breathing, are all being learned by trial and error. She tries certain things that don’t work, and she stops trying them. She tries other things that do work and she adds them to her movement and posture repertoire.

All of this seems to happen practically below the level of conscious thought. And as her skills improve, she moves with greater ease, efficiency, control and fluency. Her natural coordination emerges.

There is no other option: For her to function best in relation to gravity, she has to learn to move with respect to her structure. This “ideal” movement is what she has to default to. F. M. Alexander would call it a good use of her “primary control.”

It’s this natural coordination that she’ll bring into all her activities. That is until she gets older and starts (like most people do) to develop habits of mal-coordination that interfere with the beautiful natural coordination that she is learning now.

That’s not as bad as it seems. You see, if she does begin to lose this natural poise, all she (or you or anyone else) has to do is to unlearn her habits. Then her natural coordination will emerge, revealing itself to her as an old, reliable friend.

And so it is with playing music. To play any instrument, you have to call upon the repertoire of movements you’ve learned as a small child: negotiating your body’s relationship to gravity, coordinating your lips and tongue (if you sing or play a wind instrument), coordinating your eyes to your hands, flexing and extending limbs and fingers in coordination to create the movement necessary to play. And of course, breathing.

In a sense, you’d already developed all the necessary skills to play your instrument long before you even touched it for the first time. Those skills still lie there latent inside you.

When you watch somebody who you would consider to be a “natural” musician perform, that’s what you’re very often seeing.

Sure, as you learn to play music, you’re refining and integrating these skills even more. But the basic motor skills are already there. You learned them a long time ago.

Often when a musician with pain and/or performance problems comes to me for Alexander Technique lessons, my job is to help her or him rediscover this natural coordination. This (at the risk of repeating myself) involves unlearning.

Unlearning is a different process than learning. (It’s actually a different neurobiological process entirely.) Ask any musician which is more difficult when it comes to studying music: to learn something new, or to un-learn something old. Practically without hesitation she or he will say unlearning is more difficult. It takes more time. It takes more vigilance. It takes more persistence, etc.

Yet these same musicians are often reluctant to really trust this principle and follow it as far as it could actually help them. They’re often looking for some new form of doing.  Some new, yet undiscovered manner of muscular effort to lead them towards growth.

As a musician, you might be looking for some special thing you need to do, perhaps that you’d never done before in you’re life, in order to improve how you play. And maybe that really is what you need.

But if you can keep coming back to the idea that playing your instrument involves nothing more than the coordinated effort of all the motor skills that you’ve already mastered (that’s right, mastered!) when you were younger, it can simplify things tremendously. (Not to mention how it can change your outlook in a positive way.)

You can learn to trust that, as you unlearn some of the not so helpful habits you’ve acquired,  your playing will improve significantly. Your natural coordination will emerge. Combine that with artistic maturity and clear intention, and you have all the necessary ingredients for a great performer.

This morning as I was teaching I witnessed this yet again. As I was working with a new student on his singing, I simply helped him to stop interfering with his natural ability to use his voice. As I let him experience what it was like to sing without his habitual mal-coordinated efforts, his singing instantly improved. In a big way.

It was easy for both of us to hear the difference. More resonance, clearer intonation, beautiful color. This required no new vocal techniques, now new way to “imagine the sound”, no new form of effort, no new doing of any kind. Just undoing. And beautiful music emerged. He realized his path to improvement: Unlearn the habits, so the dormant, good coordination can be set free.

So if you wish to improve your technique, your sound, your time, your precision…learn to trust the process of unlearning and see what surprises await you.

 

 

To Really Hear Your Sound, You First Have To Accept It

Leave a reply

The other day when I arrived at the studio where I practice saxophone, I was told that I had to use a different room than the one I usually practice in. No big deal. The room I typically use is somewhat dead acoustically. I like practicing in it because it gives me brutally honest feedback about the center of my sound, my articulation and my technical fluency. But mostly I like it because I’m used to it.

Truth be told, I don’t actually enjoy the sound of my instrument in that room (as I said, dead and dry), but I’m familiar with it, and play comfortably in it. I’ve grown to accept the sound of me playing saxophone in this room.

The room I switched to was considerably brighter acoustically, and actually much nicer sounding than the other room. My sound came pouring out powerfully, resonating the room and my entire body. You’d think I’d be delighted.

Yet strangely enough, at first I couldn’t play very well in this room. It’s as if I didn’t even recognize my sound (although it sounded rich and beautiful).

I was surprised by my reaction. I mean, after all, when I go to rehearse or play a gig, I rather easily adjust to the room I’m playing in. Sure, there are some acoustic environments that I prefer over others. But since I have no real expectations it doesn’t create any kind of problem. In short, I accept my sound in the room I’m playing in. That’s my rehearsal and performance habit.

Why should it be difficult for me to play in this new practice room?

For the same reason I can be more flexible and adaptive with my sound at gigs and rehearsals: Habit. I practice everyday in that room. I do come there with expectations (conscious and unconscious) about my sound.

When these expectations weren’t met that day, I was thrown off a bit. I actually started working harder to try to “find” my sound, which is completely counter-intutive if you think about it.

Typically (for me and many instrumentalists), playing in a dead room tempts me to push harder to produce my sound. Through my work in the  Alexander Technique , I’ve learned to easily resist this temptation. But the point is that the more resonant the room (up to a reasonable point, of course), the less physical effort it should take to make a sound.

So what I learned in those strange first few moments  in that unfamiliar practice room was this: I’m not accepting my sound. I’m not even hearing it. What I’m doing is reacting to my sound without taking the time to accept it, to realize it. That reaction was based upon habituated expectations, and was manifesting itself in me as mal-coordinated movement.

So what I did was stop, and redirect my thinking.

I had to shift my aim, my intention. Rather than jumping into my intended practice routine (hoping to awkwardly, yet gradually adjust to the sound), I made it my sole purpose to take in and really hear my sound in that room. I wanted to hear it, not as I though I knew it, but as if it were a welcome stranger that held me in rapt fascination. I shifted from having predetermined expectations to having an almost childlike curiosity.

And of course, practically the very instant I made that shift in my intention, my playing became better…more integrated, expressive, facile, clean…easy again. I ended up having a marvelous practice session, full of surprise and delight.

I find quite often when I teach musicians who struggle with producing sound, that there is this disconnect between what they imagine and what they actually hear. Often this leads to excessive strain, dissatisfaction with the entire music making process, and even injury. All because of a gap between what they imagine (expect) and what they hear.

Part of my job is to help bridge that gap. And as you can see from what I’ve related about myself above, I need to help myself in the same way from time to time.

In fact when I first started playing music, it was on an alto saxophone. I was told to play alto because it was easier to handle than the tenor (even though that’s what I really wanted to play). The first three or four years of study, I could never play more than about 15 minutes at a single practice session without my chops getting totally exhausted. Finally on a lark, I switched to tenor. Playing was immediately easy. I could play hours a day.

In hindsight, I think I was struggling so much on alto because I wasn’t really hearing and accepting the sound of the instrument. I was imagining the sound of a tenor, and in doing so, was fighting the sound of the alto every step of the way. (Nowadays it’s easy for me to get a good sound on alto. I just had to learn how to hear it.)

I’d like to leave you with an excerpt from the book, Integrated Practice by Pedro de Alcantara:

The traditional approach to sound says, “First imagine a sound, then find the physical means to produce it.” The problem is that the search for sound is often predetermined by taste and habit. You like or dislike that which you know already, and the unknown is often unimaginable. Each gesture you make produces its own sound. By simply exploring gesture, you may well be surprised by new, unplanned and unimagined sounds. 

Ah…unplanned and unimagined sounds…the possibility of surprise and delight.  So see if you can approach your sound with curiosity instead of expectations. Accept so that you can hear and explore. It can make quite a difference.

 

 

Listening Better By Consciously Ignoring

2 Replies

Recently I taught an introductory workshop in improvisation to a group of young (mostly high school and college age) musicians. All of the members of my class were primarily interpretive musicians (classically trained) and were already reasonably proficient players. All were quite excited and interested (if not a little nervous) about delving into the act of spontaneous music making.

The aim of this workshop was simply to get them to think about the human process of improvising (and for them to recognize that they already had skills they could use as to improvise).

What I noticed about most of the students in this group was similar to what I notice about many interpretive musicians new to improvisation: 

  1. Fear of sounding wrong (making a mistake, playing something completely non-musical (in bad taste, or “stylistically wrong”), or getting brain stuck and not being to play anything at all…etc.)
  2. A hyper-focused attention on what was coming out of their instruments at the expense of not hearing the bigger picture of the ensemble.

Now, for sure, these two things can manifest themselves in many musicians, in many musical situations. But in the world of improvisation these two things literally will hamstring you even more. If you’re interpreting a piece of written music, at least you have the notes on the page, the composition, to carry you through.

But when you improvise, you ARE the composer. So if you’re in a constant state of doubt, and, are effectively ignoring the other musicians with whom you’re playing…well, let’s just say it doesn’t even get off the ground.

To address the fear of “being wrong” I did two things: First, I told them that there is no such thing as “wrong” when you improvise. There are simply choices you make in the moment. Some of those choices are better than others, but you want never to worry about what you just played.

As the great jazz trumpeter Miles Davis said, “If you make a mistake, you might want to play that.” And so it is. It’s a question of responding, moment by moment, to what you hear. My best moments in improvisation are almost always “mistakes”, which lead me to other, uncharted possibilities.

The second thing I did was have the whole group start on a collective improvisation, as opposed to singling each participant out as a soloist with a supporting ensemble, which is more typical in jazz and many other genres of improvisation.

So I set some very easy and clear parameters for them all to follow in order to create a bit of spontaneous music: Simple rhythmic patterns with limited tonal choices. Something they could negotiate with ease without having to be overwhelmed with choices.

I had them all play on their own for a few minutes to master the rhythms and familiarize themselves with the tonality. We did this all together, as if we were “warming up to play” before a rehearsal. Pure cacophony.

After doing this for about ten minutes or so, I could tell that the musicians knew their material well enough to start. I could also sense that they were feeling more playful, bold and unafraid. Great!

Next I asked them all to start playing at the same time under my direction. I told them that the aim of this exercise is for them to listen to the other musicians, to the ensemble as a whole as it made music. Not to think too much about what they were playing.

What came out of this was no surprise to me. It was immediately clear that nobody in that room was listening to, or thinking about, anything other than his or her own process, totally eliminating the rest of the ensemble from consciousness. (I recorded our activity for future reference.)

I let them go on like this for a few moments then had them stop. I began to ask what they noticed about the sound of the ensemble. Silence and blank stares. I asked them more specific questions about the ensemble sound: dynamics, intensity, rhythmic flow, etc. More silence and blank stares.

This was so clearly reflected in what I heard. It was mostly noise, harsh and unyielding, not much different than the earlier warm up. It was apparent that each person was listening, thinking and looking, almost exclusively inward as the music (if you want to call it that) unfolded.

Even though the participants were asked to pay attention to the group as a whole, they became sidetracked by the concern of “what am I playing?”

To quote Pedro de Alcantara, from his book, Integrated Practice, “The desire to do trumps the decision to pay attention.” I was seeing and hearing this first hand.

So I implemented a different tactic. I assigned each person a partner. I told each participant that they could play anything they wanted. They could either play within the parameters of rhythm and tonality that I set, or they could ignore those parameters and play anything they felt like.

There was just one rule: “Whatever you play, it has to sound like it doesn’t fit well with what your partner is playing. It has to sound like you’re completely ignoring your partner. If it’s consonant, you make it dissonant. If it fits rhythmically, you alter your time and/or rhythm. If it sounds dynamically balanced, change your dynamic level to bring it out of balance.”

They began to play, and I immediately experienced  something quite different. I actually began to hear music. I heard tension and release, interaction, dynamics, and playfulness. Communication. Connection. (I recorded this too, for the sake of reference.)

After we finished this, I also saw a different group of musicians. They were excited, laughing, even self-satisfied. We listened to both recorded playbacks, and the participants were stunned by the contrast from the first to the second performance.

And they all learned an important lesson about listening: The only way you can “consciously ignore” somebody is by really listening to them.

As an improviser you learn that you ride upon not just your own intrinsic musical energy, but also, the energy of the group. You respond to the whole. (I think this is the same with all music.)

As fundamental as that might seem, it’s easy for an improviser to lose sight of, no matter how far along the path they are.