Beware the Dreadnought!

Can Do Attitude

While looking up tai chi videos on Youtube, I came across what must be the most sensible piece of advice I have ever heard. It was one sentence: “Focus on what you can do.” In this case, he was discussing a hamstring stretch. If all you could manage was to get your hands down to your shins, then that was enough. If all you could do was get your hands to your knee, then that was enough. Do what you can do long enough and eventually you can do what you couldn't. That is the phrase. “Focus on what you can do.”

The Rebuttal

But what about all the things I can't do?!?!?! What if I'm trying to learn an instrument I've never played before? If I've never played the instrument, then I can't play it yet, so I can't even focus on what I can do because what I can do doesn't even exist yet!

The Rebutted Rebuttal

Yeah, sure, but that's totally not an accurate representation of how learning works. Think Mr. Miyagi. The Karate Kid needed to learn him some karate, and learn it fast. What did Mr. Miyagi do? Did he have the Karate Kid doing Flying Crane Style Judo Chops? No, of course not. He had the Karate Kid wax his car. Why? Because wax on wax off turns out to be an essential basic movement in karate, or most any martial art. The Karate Kid could do the movement, but not yet the art. Once the movement was perfected, he could then learn to use it in a different context.

Take playing the cello. Can you make your left hand into a “C?” Yes? Then you've got the about the right shape for the fingering hand. Can you do the Longhorn or the heavy metal \m/ symbol with your right hand? Then you're about half-way to a decent cello bow hold. Not all the way, mind you, but you're a good chunk of the way there. Congratulations! You didn't even expend any effort!

The point is, whatever you are attempting to learn must sprout from the seeds of knowledge that are already at hand even when you are a small child. If this were not so, it would be impossible to learn anything at all. How does a baby learn to speak? For a whole year, the child is doing little more than listening to the environment and to their family. Then what? The child does what the child can do: babble. The child babbles and babbles their way through a huge number of phonetic variations and, with a bit of encouragement from a kind parent or teacher, is nudged in the direction of the “correct” babbles.

At no point does the child think, “Oh no! I don't know what antidisestablishmentarianism means! Whatever shall I do?!?!” NO! The child babbles until something clicks, then practices what clicked until more sounds make sense, and then practices those until finally the child manages a coherent sentence.

So it is with writing: the child begins scratching scratches with a crayon; over time, and with direction, certain scratches are rewarded as the “correct” scratches; soon, the child has learned an alphabet, or the start of an enormous pictogram vocabulary; not long after, the child is writing “i luv mommy!” with an adorable backwards 'y.'

So it is with math. And science. And music. The germination of every subject comes from the observation of the external world, followed by the steady application of the instinctive advice, “Focus on what you can do.” It hardly ever occurs to a toddler what the toddler can't do, except insofar as the toddler is constantly seeing people do things that look kind of neat and, hey, maybe I should try that, too because that would be even neater.

The Dreadnought

At some point in ones life, however, one encounters a nasty monster: the Dreadnought. It is a combination of “cannot” and “ought” and “dread,” and it stands as the nemesis of all things beautiful and true. It begins innocently enough: One ought not run into the parking lot without looking around first because you'll get hit by a car and killed. I suppose, now that I look at that sentence, that is not a particularly innocent though, but that's where it starts. It starts with self preservation.

As long as the Dreadnought is confined to the world of self preservation, then everything is fine. The problem is, the Dreadnought is a terrible, vicious, greedy, gluttonous monster that will stop at nothing until it consumes all things in its path. When a young student is ridiculed for incorrectly answering the teacher's question, there is the Dreadnought. Wherever is a standardized test also lurks the Dreadnought. Wherever there is shame or guilt or embarrassment over the acquisition of skill or knowledge, you can bet the Dreadnought is there, waiting to feed upon a poor soul resigning itself to the infernal circle known as Iquit.

The Dreadnought says that a mistake is a failure. The Dreadnought says that one ought to know something even if one's foundation is unprepared for such knowledge. The Dreadnought says that knowledge Ought to be learned out of obligation, for status, rather than for the pleasure of learning and knowing. The Dreadnought says that if one ought, but one also cannot, then there not only no “do or do not,” there is not even try. The Dreadnought does everything in its power to trick, deceive, harass, and browbeat its victims into the Infernal Circle, Iquit, for exiting Iquit is infinitely more difficult than entering it. Indeed, once the victim has stepped into Iquit, it is likely the victim will remain to be forever feast upon by the Dreadnought.

Do you know what the Dreadnought hates most? “I can.” It hates the person who says, “Well, I can't do that yet, but I can do this.” It hates the person who says, “I can't do calculus yet, but I can do advanced algebra, and that gets me a long ways there.” It hates the person who says, “I can't play Flight of the Bumblebee at tempo yet, but I can play it at 30 beats per minute.” It hates the person who says, “I can't speak Chinese fluently, but I can say 'Hello,' 'Goodbye,' and 'How are you today?'”

The Dreadnought hates all of these statements for one reason, and one reason only. It hates them because they represent another step in a the Stairs of Knowledge, the stairs that lead the Dreadnought's dinner up and out of Iquit. It hates all of these statements because it knows that the person who says them will not stay on that step; the person who says them will soon see the next step they can take, and then another, and then another, and then, one day, the Dreadnought's dinner will have left Iquit completely.

“I can do advanced algebra” becomes “I can derive this function, and now that one.” “I can play Flight of the Bumblebee at 30bpm” soon becomes “I can play Flight of the Bumblebee at 60bpm.” “I can say 'Hello,' 'Goodbye,' and 'How are you today” soon becomes “I can say 'Hello, nice weather we are having! Want to join me for lunch?”

Yes, my friends, the Stairs of Knowledge are long and arduous, but at the end of them lies a sweet, sweet reward. You avoid getting eaten by the Dreadnought.

If that's not reason enough, then also consider when you learn to do something cool, everybody will be all like, “Oh, wow, you can speak Chinese? I'm sooooo jealous! I can barely speak my own language with any amount of competence, much less two languages! Teehee!” So, you know, there's that, too.

It's Not the Ears, but How We Hear

“Teaching takes patience.” I thought this thought. I even thought this thought was thoughtful. But what I thought I thought was not what I thought I should thought. Think. Not what I thought I should think.

Wait.

“Teaching takes patience.” This is a truism. I think it is true... ish. What I have been finding with my own teaching has been slightly different. I'm not actually patient. I mean, I am. But that patience is not the result of some inherent virtue that I have. Although it is a virtue...

Dammit.

“Teaching takes patience.” Yes. Yes it does. But where does this patience come from? That's the important bit. Some people might be patient because they have a high sense of mission. Their clear sense of purpose allows them to slog through to the greater good. I am not really one of those people. I suppose that makes me terrible, but I don't care. Haters gon' hate. Instead, some people are patient because they enjoy the job, like me.

But the more I think about it, the odder and odder that statement becomes. “I enjoy teaching.” It's a bit like saying “I enjoy getting flogged by an 800 pound gorilla.” Especially when it comes to music. How many parents out there have literally told their kid to stop playing for five goddamn minutes because jeezus, that violin sounds like a toddler in a fist fight with a fennec fox.

Not in so many words, I mean. Just, like. “Hey, I think you should probably stop for today, you have math homework to do,” except you didn't really care about the math homework, it was just a convenient excuse at the moment. Don't lie. You know you've done it.

I'm not even the kid's parent, and I not only hear that kid play for thirty minutes, I also hear pretty much the same thing in thirty minute increments for 4-5 hours a day. And yet I say, “Oh yeah, I enjoy teaching.” At face value that seems like the height of insanity. This is not something a normal person says.

But what I have come to realize is, I am not patient as an inherent virtue. I am patient as a result of a mind-set. It's a kind of mental misdirection. When I hear a mistake, the something I sometimes say to the student is “Yeah! That sounded awesome! It wasn't right, but sure sounded cool.” This is especially true for missed pitches, or weird sound effects the cello can make if you're not careful (or if you're supremely careful to make that sound on purpose).

Usually, the student hears this and is at first amused. They laugh, because that's not what teachers are supposed to say. Teachers are supposed to say, “Oh my god that was awful, you're awful, everything about your life will be awful until you do that again and do it right. … [student messes up again] … Oh. My. GAAAAAAWD.” So, you know, it's funny and, I must imagine, somewhat relieving to hear that while they didn't play what they set out to play, they at least made me say something weird.

Then I play it back at them, and that's when they realize I'm not just blowing smoke out my ass. What they had done was honestly, truly cool. And sometimes, the “mistake” they made sounds better than whatever is written in the part. I mean, not on its own, necessarily. Usually I take what they did and recompose what we're playing to include and expand upon the “mistake.” Have you heard that insufferable Suzuki vl.1 French Folk Song played in an Arabic scale? It's kind of neat.

I don't do that all the time. I only do that when it's actually cool, otherwise it will lose all its value. But what the student doesn't realize is, I'm actually doing that a lot in my head. Nothing they ever play is anything I don't want to hear, because while they're busy trying to figure out how reconstruct sound from a bunch of squiggles and dots, I'm hearing techniques Kaija Saariaho uses in her pieces for solo cello; I'm hearing musical indeterminacy the likes of which would make The New York School blush; I'm hearing Ives as melodies from different practice rooms overlap; or Ligeti as the orchestra warms up.

That's how I can be patient. When I'm teaching, I'm not hearing a student screwing up. I'm hearing music. It may not be the music on the page, but that doesn't matter. That is totally, utterly, impossibly inconsequential. The student may or may not ever play that page correctly, and all we can do is make some changes and try again. If they do, great, if not whatever.

So they didn't play what was on the page. But what they did play... What a sound!

Valuetown

I'm going to spin a riff off of yesterday's post. Yesterday was about going out to less competitive waters. Today is about something different, but related. I'm going to talk about building value.

One of the critical problems we classical musicians are facing is, people don't value our stuff. Oh, they may say they value our stuff, but similar to the way Congressional representatives will say they value education, their spending habits don't match what they claim. If we are to move forward, we will have to change people's minds about classical music, and start to build value in the eyes of our customers. We must appear to be musicians worth spending money on.

Valuetown

I'm not going to be shy. I play Magic the Gathering. I know, what a huge nerdy thing to do, right? Well, yes. But it's also incredibly good for your brain in so many ways. I just wish the players in general were a little more socially graceful. And bathed.

That's beside the point. The point is, players who play Magic for a living (or attempt to) talk about "getting value." What they mean is, they spend X amount of resources, and they get X+Y amount of resources back. I will grant, this is an incredibly important definition of value. I'm going to talk about it sometime. I just want to make clear: if this is your concept of value, that's not what I'm talking about at the moment.

The value I'm talking about this post is, other people view your profession as something worth spending time and money on. A plumber is valued because he knows how to fix pipes. A banker is valued because they safehold your money against theft (in theory), and provide other convenient services along the way, like loans and such. Etc. Etc. Etc. You get the idea.

Right now, us classical musicians have a bit of a problem. I talked earlier about building a new audience, as well as audience retention. What we have now is, we retain audiences fairly well. Our fans are quite dedicated and devoted, to the point where some are vociferous about classical music being "the only music worth listening to." Which is wrong, but hey, I love the enthusiasm. If we're going to build an audience, then we're going to have to build value in other people's lives. We can't just play music, we have to make our job something essential, something that can't be replaced by anything else.

Whistle While We Work

One of the first issues we need to address is the idea people have in their heads that musicians "just happen." Not that they don't think we practice. Just that they don't realize how much we practice. The problem here is one of visibility. Audiences only ever see the concerts, the end product. But unlike a regular product where people have a strong idea of "well, people put in five 9-5 days a week to produce this," they don't have as strong an idea of "those musicians practice 4 hours a day on top of 3 hour long rehearsals... plus driving time. Oh, and they teach."

This is really simple to fix. It's mostly an educational problem. The easiest way is to just acknowledge the work you put in. Another, perhaps better, way is to sell tickets to open rehearsals. That way, audience members can see first hand how work intensive a rehearsal is. Still more is to make sure music programs are available to as many students as possible, because it's one thing for a parent to be told "we put in 3-4 hours a day," and quite another for that parent to actually experience. Not that young students should put in 3-4 hours a day, not at all. Just that even listening to their kids struggle through 30 minutes of practice will help make the practice WE do that much more clearly difficult.

There's more we can do, of course, but I will stop here for now.

Till Next Week

Well, the weekend is upon us again, which means you and I will part company for two whole days. T.T In the meantime, I am going to start ending with music recommendations. Before I get to that, though, I'm going to shout-out Kristin Center's project again, because it's pretty awesome, and you should donate money to it because it's awesome. Oh, and also because if you don't, Schoenberg's Fraternity of Tonebros will know. And, just to make the threat clear, the Tonebros are a branch of the Masonites, who themselves are a large subsection of the Illuminati. Just saying, your donation is a choice, but... if you don't, we're going to have another Great Recession on our hands. Your call.

Recommendation of the Day
Disclaimer: due to copyright reasons, I will not link directly to any recording I recommend. But you have this wonderful thing called "Google." You put what you're looking for in, and what your looking for pops out. It's like magic. Or magnets. Or both.

Beethoven Cello Sonata #3, op.* 69**
Mendelssohn Songs without Words: any, but especially op.* 30

*op. is short for "opus," which means "work." Very large works like symphonies were given their own opus number. Shorter pieces were usually collected into groups, and provided an opus number for the collection. This helps differentiate between pieces of the same name, as well as giving a somewhat chronological ordering. In this case, there are 48 or so "Songs without Words," in 8 groups of 6. The opus number lets you know which your are listening to in relation to the rest.

**(pfffpffpfpfpfpf)

The Doctor is In

So yesterday I talked a little bit about interacting with your audience, and how even a little bit of per-performance talking can go a long ways towards building rapport with the people you want to keep around. There are other ways of doing this, as well. Q&A sessions with people who pay a little extra, maybe with a little wine and cheese. Happy Feelings Time, of course of course. A little brainstorming, and I'm sure you can come up with more ways of interacting with the audience. Today, though, I'm going to talk about something else. I'm going to talk about interactivity in concerts.

Boulez may be a bit of dick, but...

There's this composer you may or may not have heard of. His name is Pierre Boulez. When I was tube surfing on the YouTubes, I came across a fascinating video. If I am not mistaken, it was a concert directed specifically at Conservatoire students, but it appeared to be an open concert, as well. At this concert, he was conducting his own music. Boulez is one of those composers whose music is often labelled "difficult" here in America. That is, his music is not just a rabbit, but a Babbitt Rabbit as well. But here was a nearly full hall, including music students, musicians, and lay people, all gathered to hear his music. Granted, this was in France, and European concerts tend to feature more "difficult" music than here in America, but he was doing something I have never seen in America. He was breaking his music down into its musical parts, and discussing how they all fit together into the piece they were about to hear.

It was a phenomenal use of time. Yes, he took about 20 minutes just laying the nuts and bolts out, but by the end of it all, you knew how to listen to his piece. You knew what to expect, how it was put together. You could no longer make the claim that it was all just "random nonsense," because he was so clear, so lucid, you would have to either be totally, or willfully, dense to not get it. I was blown away. Here was a man who knew how to connect with his audience. True, he was using his own music as an example, but it worked. I walked away from that concert respecting Boulez a bit more than I had before.

Yes, but he's a Stinky Cheeseman Frenchy. What about us patriotic Americans?

Well, here in America we have a similar, but far less avant garde, conductor. We have Michael Tilson Thomas. He is director of the San Francisco Symphony, as well as the New World Orchestra. These are great institutions, but what I really want to spotlight is the TV series Keeping Score. In each episode, he discusses a specific work in its historical and musical contexts, as well as how that piece personally relates to the composer who wrote it. If you haven't seen any of these documentaries, they are really wonderful. Thomas is a genial and, just as importantly, knowledgeable host. He not only discusses the music, but plays some of it as well. He's kind of like... Well, he's kind of like a contemporary Bernstein, who used television to similar effect, bringing classical music into the homes of millions across America.

Concluding paragraph

If you want to connect to your audience, talk with them. Discuss the music. Bring it into a place where the audience feels they can relate to it. Or failing that, at least understand it. Break the music apart. Show how it's put together. Like Boulez. But just as importantly, make the music human again. Like Tilson Thomas. Building understanding will get people to respect you. Building humanity will get people to come back for more. You need both, which is tricky... But it's doable. It must be, or we die. In a fire. While being eaten by raptors. Sneaky, sneaky raptors...

Playing Doctor

Today's post is about interactivity! It's not just enough to play music. It's not just enough to have Happy Feelings Time. Those are both necessary, but it's the bits that fill the cracks that will be the glue holding it all together.

Music is ultimately about human connection. If the people in the audience don't feel like the musician is an actual person, the audience will not relate as well to the player. This happens with some frequency, as symphonies bring soloists in to perform concerti. The hope is, the sheer virtuosity presented will be enough to draw people. Problem 1. Most people don't know who Liszt is. Problem 2. Most people don't know who the soloist is, either. That's two strikes already. The third strike is the feeling that the value of the concert is not worth the ticket price. And out.

Happy Feelings Time is a great way to start. It allows lay people to meet the musicians in question, shake hands with them, realize the musicians are actual people. But there's a lot more we can do to help connect the audience to the stage. One is talking to the audience. Another is interactive concerts.

Table Talk

One of the simplest ways to create interactivity and bonding is to talk to the audience. Here is what happens in a concert today: Orchestra sits on stage. They warm up, and there's general cacophony for fifteen minutes. Curtain call happens, and the orchestra settles down. Lights dim. 10% of the audience falls asleep because the chairs are comfy and the lights are out. Concert master walks out to halfhearted applause. Orchestra tunes. 20% of the audience is out like a light. Conductor walks out to slightly more than halfhearted applause, but only from the people who have managed to stay awake and from the somnambulists. Conductor bows, then utterly ignores the audience. 30% is dozing. Baton lifts. Concert starts.

What's missing? That most basic of human interaction: talking. The best part about it is, at a concert, you likely don't have to cater to deaf people. I mean, maybe you want to cover your bases. Just in case. Anyways. It's amazing how much connection can be accomplished if the people in the audience actually feel like they are being addressed personally. You don't even have to talk that much! Thank them for coming out. Tell them why you like the piece you are about to play, why you are passionate about it, and that you hope to convey that same passion to them. Maybe throw in a joke or two. Like this: What's the difference between Beethoven and a cat? The cat can sing in tune. And make sure to shake it up. Remember Durdle the Turtle. You don't want him around too much.

Happy Feelings Time is, by nature, talk oriented, as well. It's even better because people are drinking alcohol. Speaking of which! You should be allowed to bring alcohol and drinks into the concert hall. All music gets better when you are a little bit toasted. The drawback is, you get old couples playing footsie with each other rather than listen to your performance. But no. Don't think of it as a drawback! Think of it as a goal! If your music can draw the attention of footsie playing elders, you're doing really, really well.

Until Tomorrow!

I have decided to make my blog posts shorter. People are busy. I'm busy. I still want depth, but it will be spread out a little more for my sanity and yours. If I'm writing 5 days a week, I want to pace myself. So! This is all for today. Have a great day. If you don't have a little coffee, or meditate a little, or pray or whatever it is you do. Then listen to good music. It's amazing what good music will cure.

Headbanging with Beethoven

I'mma let you finish, but Beethoven is the best composer of all time. Of all time!

There. Post over.

... ... ...

Ok, so not really. Beethoven is among my most common go to composers. It's really not hard to figure out why, either. He speaks clearly, directly, and passionately. He's not afraid to get up in your grill and shake you by the collar until you break a vertebrae, but then he'll show you the most sublime stuff afterward that you realize that's what he was trying to get you to hear all along. You just weren't listening and he got frustrated. That's all.

If there's one thing I can say about Beethoven, it's his ability to speak to an incredibly wide range of people. Did you know the Japanese sing Ode to Joy, like, all the time? Did you know Beethoven is usually listed among the favorite listenings of metal heads of all stripes? Heavy metal, Death Metal, Black Metal... In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize metal heads have a somewhat peculiar affinity for classical music in general, not just Beethoven.

Perhaps it's the fact that metal is more virtuosic than your average bear. They don't just want the picnic basket, they also want the ranger's head on a pike. Not to say that metal is more complex than pop or regular rock, necessarily. It, like almost everything in life, depends on the case. But usually, metal solos are wickedly difficult to perform. Listen to the riffs of Metallica in their prime and compare them to Beethoven's Piano Sonatas, and you can probably hear some resemblance. The primary differences are modality and amplification.

Speaking of amplification, there is no doubt in my mind if you gave Beethoven a tube amp, he would blow the thing out in, like, 15 seconds.

But moving on. The main reason I bring this up is simple. The old guard of classical music was, and still is in many ways, quite exclusionary. Either it was classical and good, or it wasn't. Nowadays, that is changing, but I think we can do a lot to speed up the process. I think the main thing getting in the way of classical music's popularity is image. The idea that classical music is some stuffy, moth-balled, hoity-toity music that is irrelephant to the demands of contemporary culture.

Some of this is valid criticism. Stuffy? Perhaps. In fact, likely. Classical music performances are rife with hidden rules and rituals that are not intuitive to newcomers. Also, for some reason, clapping between movements of a longer work is received like somebody just kicked a puppy. Harumph harumph harumph! Clapping between movements! What an ignorant neophyte! Go to your shame hole and think of what you have done! Harumph harumph harumph! As for moth balls, well... It is not unlikely some sort of artificial preservation is going on with certain people in orchestras nowadays. I'm not going to point fingers, but maybe possibly we should rethink our idea of tenured musicians.

But irrelephant? First, that's not even a word. Second, I will paraphrase Steven Fry: "If you cannot find a way to connect with music of the past, that is more a reflection of your own lack of creativity than a fault of the music of Bach." Now, I personally think Mr. Fry is being a little harsh, there. People walk into a concert with assumptions about how music works, and sometimes classical music can, in fact, be rather overwhelming to a new listener. Heck, I didn't like Brahms until I was 25, and that was after studying music for 14 years. However, I think Mr. Fry has something of a point. What we have, here, is a failure to communicate.

How do we bring people into the fold? The primary focus has been on 'music appreciation.' This is one of those well-meaning but utterly misguided attempts to connect with people that has plagued classical music since the late 20th century. Lets put it this way. Do you think people "appreciate" the music they listen to over and over again? No! They love it. Otherwise, they wouldn't listen to it more than once. Do we want people to merely appreciate classical music? No! We want them to love it! That's what really brings people back, is the connection they make to it. Trying to educate people about how classical music works might open some doors, but the interesting details lurking beneath the surface (things like form, melody, harmony, progression, counterpoint, etc) are all secondary to the fact that the composers loved the music they wrote. All of those details are merely technical points which are incidental to that underlying state of mind. Bach wouldn't sign ever piece "With thanks to God" unless he really, really loved what he was doing.

So if not music appreciation, then what? How about this. One of my friends learned of my utter distaste for opera. He told me: "Look, full operas are dumb. You don't really go for the whole thing. You go for the one or two arias that you really like. Then, after a while, you start seeing how those arias connect to the other stuff around it. Pretty soon, you won't think opera is dumb any more."

Arias: They're like gateway drugs.

But he has a point. When you look at concert programs, they usually focus on one or two large pieces, with maybe a smattering of smaller stuff. But if we're trying to attract new people, this is exactly wrong. They've never heard classical music! They don't know what's out there! They don't realize how diverse and multifaceted classical music is! If you only ever present one or two pieces at a time, and new audience members don't connect with them, they're not coming back. But if you present a sampler platter... Now we're talking.

Then, a new audience member will hear the stark contrasts between Baroque and Romantic, Classical and Modern, Empfindsamer Stil and aleatory. Then, maybe, just maybe! One or two of those pieces will hook them. They'll go, "I want to hear more of whatever the heck that was." And you give it to them.

This is all well and good, but ultimately, it comes down to one thing. Passion. And this brings me back to Beethoven. Beethoven, more than any other composer I can think of (except possibly Shostakovich) knew how to cut to what was important. As musicians trying to bring these pieces alive for a new generation, we have to do the same. It is not enough to play the notes. It is not enough to play with feeling. We must play like our lives depend on it, like we will die if we do not say what we have to say. We have to pick people up by the collar, shake them, and show them the heights and depths classical music has to offer. We have to try again and again with piece after different piece to find a way to connect with each audience, one person at a time. And we have to trust that the composers we near worship truly had something worthwhile to say.

And if we find we can't perform in such a way? Then perhaps we'll have to admit that the composers we deify didn't have something worth saying. How do I know that's wrong? Because every fiber of my being revolts against such an idea. But it's not the audience's job to find the connection. It's ours.

Post-Script:
People head bang to metal because they're lost in the music. When people literally move to classical music, we'll know we're on the right track.