The Art of Lazy

Is it possible to start with a digression? Sure, whatever. Lets do this.

I always scratch my head when I hear people complain about scientists doing research and then concluding “the obvious.” It's like these people don't know what science is. You don't know something is obvious until it has been confirmed, yo. How many times have scientists made startling discoveries that upended what we thought was obvious? I don't know the actual number, but I'm pretty sure it is “lots.”

Digression over! Speaking of the obvious, I have been wondering over some received wisdom. It goes like this: “Practice everyday. Are you practicing? No. Is it a day? Yes. Then why aren't you practicing?”

Why aren't I practicing? Maybe because, possibly, practicing every day isn't the best way to do learn something. Do I know it isn't the best way to learn an instrument? No. Is mayonnaise an instrument? That depends on how much you practice with it. Horseradish, however, is most certainly not an instrument. Get that wanna be poser outta here.

Bear with me. I may not know that practicing everyday is not the best way to use your time, but I have a suspicion. And I would like it tested. Here is how my suspicion goes.

First! Let us say you are training for a marathon. What do? You start by running not a lot, you start by running a little. And then? And then you rest. And then you run a little again, and then you rest, and then you run a little more, and then you rest, and then... No 'and then!'

I mean, there's more 'and then.' You 'and then' until you've run a marathon. But the key here is, you regularly rest your muscles as part of the training. If you don't rest your muscles, you can do some serious harm. You rest or you run until you're forced to rest. Given a choice, I would rather just rest, thank you very much.

*two hours later*

SECOND! Have you ever been working on a problem and got stuck? The answer is yes. We all have come across problems we've got stuck on. You know what usually happens? You work on the problem until you get a nose bleed. Then you give up and go do something productive like play Farmville. Then you go to sleep. Then you wake up the next day and BAM! All of a sudden you wonder why you were having trouble with your problem. It's so obvious! How did I not see that before?!

Turns out, this happens a lot in music practice, too. A particular passage, for whatever reason, just seems intractable. Then you go to sleep, wake up the next morning refreshed, and you find the passage has become tracted. Good job brain! But I've noticed that giving yourself distance from even pieces you “know” helps.

Weird.

Third! This doesn't have to do with learning so much as balance. There's more to life than music. In fact, I wonder if our musicianing is in fact hampered if you don't have a life outside of it. I once read that Stravinsky, Poulenc, and some other musical cats got into a giant drunken pillow fight at a soiree. Arnold Schoenberg played tennis. Mendelssohn traveled. A lot. Mozart partied all the damn time. And yet, somehow, they all managed to produce masterpieces, this despite wasting their time doing so many non-musical things. How 'bout that.

In any case, I'm not making any definite conclusions. I'm just sayin'. There's a physical aspect to music, and we know that physical rest is important, especially for injury prevention (Leon Fleisher is out there somewhere, finding himself nodding in agreement, to what he does not know, but he knows it is important). There's also a mental aspect to music, and we know that rest is often a crucial part of problem solving (what, you think Newton was sciencing under the apple tree? No way. He was napping). And we know that having a social life is important for basically everything (this is more for those people who are in music school practicing 20 hours a day: seriously, go home and have a drink).

So it strikes me as not only possible, but very likely that we, as musicians, do not need to practice music everyday, and that we shouldn't feel guilty if we miss a day or two. In fact, if you do miss a day, you probably did yourself a favor. But I don't know that. I'm just pondering on something obvious that may not be as obvious as it's cracked up to be.

The Great Musician Appearing Act

Yesterday, I wrote about community in the classical music world. More specifically, I wrote about the lack of any kind of community between the musicians and the audience. Today, I shall write about the most important aspect of building a community: presence. Presence is a larger concept of which Happy Feelings Time is a part. Basically, it comes down to the question: Do people know who you are?

In the case of, say, the Dallas Symphony, many people in the Dallas area know the Symphony exists. Very much fewer are the people who know the man who conducts it, or who the concert master is. Can you imagine a sports fan not knowing the names of their favorite team's members? No, you can't. Why? Because those people are invested. And just as importantly, a sports team is present in the lives of their fans. It is that level of attachment we must try to build, and to do that, we must be in the public eye as often as possible.

The Advertising Fallacy
Advertising provides presence. That can't be denied. However, it is wrong to assume advertising is the solution to all of our problems. I hear advertising for the Dallas Symphony all the time... on the Classical station. And audience levels are still rather low, excepting large performances of Carmina Burana or Britten's War Requiem.

Here's the thing. Advertising is there to let people know you exist. But if your presence in the public sphere doesn't extend beyond that, you cannot expect advertising to do all your work for you. Think of Coca Cola. They advertise. A lot. But they are also everywhere. Coke in McDonald's, Coke in restaurants, Coke at ball parks, Coke at the movies. Everywhere you can go where you can buy drinks, Coke is there. Coke's presence is as much part of that company's success as the advertising reminding people they should drink Coke. Reminding people "Yes, Coke is still here. Keep drinking."

Now, I doubt an orchestra can expect to have the same level of presence as Coca Cola. Unless you can put our Symphonies into liquid form and export that. Somehow, I do not expect such a thing to be palatable. Not only would it be a pulpified meat smoothie, it would also have to be served at such a temperature for the metals of the brass section to be melted. That is far too hot. The strings would make such a temperature a veritable fire hazard.

Playing for the People
The trick is, you have to get yourself out there. Sports teams, for instance. They have a game. They play on a field. How do fans know what's going on? They broadcast it. Why aren't orchestras broadcasting their concerts? Perhaps because of a fear that, should the concert be broadcast, people wouldn't bother to show up. And yet people go to sports games. Why? Because it's always better live. And what about the people who don't go? They're likely the people who wouldn't have gone anyways. But now they're watching, and you're making advertising money off of them.

Broadcasting helps people keep in touch, but orchestras have an advantage over sports teams: we don't need a rival team to play. Much better is to make sure to keep playing in very public areas. Dallas now has Klyde Warren Park, which has a stage, which could be used to the Symphony and Opera's advantage. There are always charitable events which could be played for. Churches are another popular place in Dallas. Bars and pubs. Etc. Etc. The list goes on.

"But how do we fit an entire symphony in these places?" Don't be so dense. You don't need to. You break the symphony into smaller pieces, and make sure the audience knows they are playing on the symphony's behalf. Chamber music shouldn't just be a treat that pops up from time to time. It should be happening as close to always as you can get. And there's no lack of opportunities, either. You just have to make them.

The great part about this is, you get extra advertising space. Fliers can be passed around, email lists can be signed, posters can be hung, shirts can be bought... Oh right, there's that. Hold on.

Merchandising!
Imagine! Dallas Symphony shirts, Symphony hoodies, symphony lunch boxes, Jap van Zweden figurines with judo-chop action, Symphony flame throwers! The sky's the limit!

And now back to our regular paid programming
But more important than the expanded advertising space is the fact that the players in the symphony are seen. They are heard. They are perhaps, occasionally, sniffed a little. People all over the city get the chance to meet the symphony not as a monolithic entity, but as individuals. The audience gets to shake hands with actual people, and the performers get to actually play the solos they always wanted to play. It's win win!

And also, they are still performing, which means lots of Happy Feelings Time after. So much Happy Feelings!

Granted, there are issues with monetizing events and paying performers. Ideally, these events would be as cheap as possible, or even free (gasp! goes the Board of Directors). But it could be done. I'm sure of it.

Now go out and play! Happy Feelings Time everywhere, with everyone! Whee!

The Art of Programming Conclusion: Just Look at Them Bones!

Our intrepid flatulaphonist has made it this far. He has decided whether he is acquiring audience members, or retaining the ones he's got. He has two rubrics in hand: machine guns and sniper rifles; rabbits and turtles. Now it's time to arm the troops for glorious combat in service to the motherland.

Context is everything
First off, the two extremes of the rubrics do not line up exactly with the two goals I have listed. For example, it could be that the machine gun style of programming is better suited to audience acquisition. Perhaps. But that does not mean that is its only use. Similarly, turtle pieces are perhaps better suited to audience retention, but not necessarily. Low risk pieces can also be an audience draw because they're probably pieces the layman has heard or can more easily identify with.

This is part of why programming is so difficult. Everything changes depending on what you're trying to accomplish. And we haven't even considered understanding the strengths of the conductor and the orchestra, yet. But lets ignore that and just think about how programs might be made with audience acquisition in mind. It is highly unlikely anybody has even heard of a flatulaphone, much less thought of attending a flatulaphone recital. We should name our heretofore anonymous flatulaphonist. His name shall be Fred.

Accuracy by Volume
We'll start with high variety programs. The idea here, if you will recall, is to present a large and diverse group of smaller pieces with the hope that something sticks. You don't particularly care that individual pieces resonate with the entire audience, just that everybody gets something they can walk away with going "Yeah, that Claire de Lune is such an awesome piece. I had no idea a flatulaphone could be so transparent and beautiful!" You also get the added benefit of discussion as audience members argue over which pieces were more worth their time. "What do you mean you like Claire de Lune?! That piece is such overplayed tripe. And it was in the Twilight movie! How can I possibly take it seriously? No, no, the Moonlight Sonata is where it's at."

You get bonus points if a fistfight starts, or you have to call security. This is in general, but nothing sells tickets faster than a good old fashioned audience riot.

Anyways. There's two directions I see that are valid. One is to take this type of program and fill it with turtles. The much maligned Andre Rieu does this all the time. He plays waltzes, polkas, and other generally popular and/or inoffensive pieces. The end result is a concert which appeals to just about everybody... at some point or another. But it's like cold calling. People don't remember the misses. They remember that part where it seemed like the medium communicated with them personally. That's where it's at.

The other direction I see is to take the opportunity to sneak in some rabbits. Higher risk pieces which may not resonate with many audience members, but you can get away with it because there are other sure hits which will cleanse the palate for those who found the rabbit's antics distasteful. There's probably a limit to what you can push on the audience. And yet consider: if you are specifically targeting newer audience members who are not yet acclimated to classical music culture, they will not know Schoenberg is almost universally maligned. Without previous expectations, they are more likely to listen with open ears. That doesn't mean they'll like it. But it does mean they'll probably give the risky piece a chance simply because "they don't know any better."

I personally like the second direction better because it will open up your programming options in the future. If the audience expects you to introduce pieces they've never heard before, but feel they can trust your taste in selecting them, you'll have a much easier time getting people to come back for more.

The Household Name and the Sniper Rifle
Lets say you want to attract audience members but still want to play big pieces. This is trickier, but not impossible. The best course of action here is probably turtles. If somebody is going to a concert featuring one or two pieces, they don't really want to spend their evening listening to somebody they've never heard of. Heavy hitters like Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, or Shostakovitch are all big draws.

The main issue here is, you can easily stagnate your repertoire if you're focused only on turtles. Over time, you become predictable, which isn't a bad thing in itself, but can lead to disinterest as you aren't presenting anything new and shiny to hold attention. It's all about the contrast. To that end, it's best not to focus entirely on one or two pieces. You might have one big symphony in the program, and then the rest of it is divide up machine gun style to keep things fresh.

A word of caution: it is tempting to view soloists as audience draws. While it's true the virtuosity brought by a concerto generally leads to good audience reaction, you cannot expect any random soloist to attract the attention of new audience members. Soloists draw sales because people can identify with them, because there's a face and a story that is familiar. Rostropovich wasn't world famous just because he was the best cellist of all time. He was also a political mover and shaker, had a personality, had gravitas. Soloists today usually just have a list of awards. That's not a story. That's a resume. If you're trying to attract new people with a soloist, you'll have to do better than that.

The Rabbit in the Rain
It may seem like the rabbit gets the short end of the stick, here. It's difficult. Risk is always difficult. But risk must be taken to keep the art form alive. The best way to turn a risk into not as risky is to make it a regular feature. If people come to expect modern and contemporary pieces, then they will come for that. There are, however, some difficulties. Certain repertoire is so difficult for the audience that it will simply never get performed, even if those pieces are masterworks. Here is where a well designed educatory program can help the most. That's another discussion, though.

Conclusion
Audience attraction will depend greatly upon a balance of pieces they are familiar with and pieces that are new to them. You want pieces that are riskier in your programs because you can't become staid and predictable. That's where the audience retention part comes in. If people always know what to expect, they'll lose interest. At the same time, you can't be doing random things all the time. Familiarity and novelty are your two main tools, within whatever program structure you choose.

Finally, a word about pacing. You want to start strong and end strong. Stuff in the middle can be whatever, but should still have shape. Programming is a lot like composition. You're taking the audience on a ride with ups, downs, curves, and loops. Slow pieces and fast pieces and middling pieces should all be carefully placed to help keep the audience's interest. Modality is also a big issue, because it lets you create progression through the program. What I'm trying to say is, if you've got a piece in Brown Note Minor, you should save it for the big climax at the end. It'll make for a performance no one will ever forget.

Teaching Movement

I read. A lot. One of the books I have been reading lately is titled "How People Learn." This book is amazing in so many ways. It is well researched. It is clear. It cites its sources. It's bibliography is 80 pages long. And it admits where more research needs to be done before definitive conclusions can be drawn. I mean, really. What more could you ask for from a $20 book? Almost nothing. Except what today's article is about: movement.

Specifically, skilled movement. Stuff like walking, dancing, typing... playing an instrument. You get the idea. "How People Learn" focuses mostly on knowledge based learning, like math, history, science, language. Great! Thank you! This is very helpful when I am teaching my kids music theory! It does absolutely bupkis for movement based learning. Or does it? I don't know. That's the problem. The book just doesn't talk about it. Maybe it's the same, maybe it's not. I have a feeling its similar, which is an evasive way of saying "they're different." But today I am going to assume they are the same. Or at least similar enough you can generalize principles of knowledge based learning towards movement based learning.

Three Aids to Learning
The introduction of the book provides three keys to learning something well. They are as follows:

1. Students enter learning with preconceptions about a topic/task. That is to say, the "blank slate" philosophy of learning is totally wrong. If a student is coming in with incorrect assumptions, and you don't ferret those assumptions into the open, learning will be very difficult.

2. To develop competence, you must have a deep foundation of factual knowledge, understand those facts in the context of a conceptual framework, and organize knowledge in ways that facilitate retrieval and application. In other words, you have to know a lot of stuff, that stuff has to be related into a larger scheme, and it has to be organized in a way that the brain has easy access.

and 3. A "metacognitive" approach to instruction can help students learn to take control of their own learning by defining goals and monitoring their progress in achieving them. So it's best to help the students "get outside of themselves" as they are learning, thereby increasing their ability to learn without aid from a teacher.

Application to Movement
Warning: Hypothetical Territory Ahead
The book goes into a fair amount of detail applying the above principles to knowledge based learning. Here's where I move into an area which I have not specifically read research about. I am merely operating under the assumption that the three principles will work in the same way for movement as they do for knowledge.

1. Assumptions. Believe it or not, students do assume things about how movement works. One of the first assumptions I have come across is that because movement in other areas of life is easy to them (walking, opening doors, etc), learning how to play the instrument should also come easily to them. They are quickly disabused of this notion, and I need to do very little to help them realize how wrong that is.

Another assumption is 'Learning an instrument is different from other physical tasks." This can make things quite difficult for the student as they start to move in very unnatural ways that they would do for other tasks (like walking, opening doors, etc). One of my friends, Brandon Sterrett, reminded me of Mr. Miyagi. When the Karate Kid is first learning, Mr. Miyagi makes him wax cars and paint doors. Why? Because the basic movements in karate are similar to the basic movements in other, simpler tasks. I have found discussing similar movements helps students better understand what is required for the instrument.

A more subtle assumption is "The body moves in blocks." That is, the arms move in one large chunk. This leads to other unnatural movements as they tense up the wrist and elbow and end up moving their arms only from the shoulder. A related assumption is "More tension equals more power," which is pretty much exactly wrong. Tension is necessary, but power comes from relaxed, fluid movement that is coordinated across the whole limb.

There are more assumptions, I am sure, but you get the idea. Moving on.

2. Creating a conceptual framework for movement is proving to be very difficult. I do have some ideas, however. One of the first things I have noticed is: strength starts high in the center (the core) and decreases as you move towards the extremities (hands and feet). The wrist muscles are naturally less strong than the chest muscles. The thigh muscles are stronger than the calves. This is one of those obvious observations that I have never heard anybody point out. It has dramatic applications for something like the cello, because it leads directly to the next concept.

Movement should start with strong muscles and "ripple" out towards weaker muscles. I myself have fallen prey to using weak muscles for movement, particularly in the left hand where the intricate fingering is done. Mark Landson, a wonderful violinist colleague of mine, helped make me aware of other possibilities. Using the weight of the arm in conjunction with the stronger shoulder muscles to depress the strings, for example. What this concept also says is, the weaker muscles should respond to the impetus provided by the stronger muscles. Take advantage of physics, not fight it. I guess this concept could also be phrased as "Let your your body do what it is good at." Wrist muscles are not good as sustained effort, but the larger muscles are. The larger muscles are not good at precise movement, but wrist and finger muscles are. Etc. Etc.

3. Metacognition is an important part of learning. This is a fancy way of saying "being aware of yourself." Metacognition in movement is pretty difficult. I have noticed most of my students are hardly aware of their bodies at all. I have had some success, however, by asking them to focus on specific movements. Move the wrist this way, then that. Notice how it feels when the wrist is flexed. Move your wrist while moving your elbow. Tense your hand, now relax it, feel the difference. Etc.

I have also had some success by using external objects to force the student into playing correct form, like wrist guards for the left hand. Guiding the bow back to center while the student is playing. Etc. It is also helpful to ask the student to play incorrectly, because it makes them aware of what the body needs to do while playing "wrong." In fact, asking the student to play incorrectly often leads to the student playing correctly. When this happens, I often point it out to them: "If it feels wrong, you're probably right." Usually, they return the next week much improved.

Conclusions
It is difficult to draw conclusions at this point. It does seem, however, that applying the three principles outlined in "How People Learn" will help students both with knowledge based and movement based learning. Without experimentation, however, there's no way to know how well it all applies. Still, in the absence of a better way, it seems to work pretty well.

I hope this helps you teach better! Please, share any comments, constructive criticisms, and ideas you may have. If teachers don't help each other teach better, we're doomed. Doomed, I say! So stop sitting in the back row pretending you're not playing Angry Birds and interact!