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.

Teaching Orchestra Classes

Continuing with my educational theme, today I'm going to discuss orchestra as a school class. I make the distinction between a 6th grade orchestra and a college orchestra because at the college level at least the players know how to play their instruments. Although, after having lived through numerous college orchestra rehearsals, I sometimes wonder if that is a fair assumption to make.

Anyways. After hearing a student orchestra rehearse the same piece for five weeks and not really ever get better, I began to think maybe we're doing something wrong. Is it possible that perhaps we don't know as much about teaching music as we think we do? I think it is.

So lets get cracking.

Problems Facing School Orchestras

1. Class size. It is well known by now that class size is an important factor contributing to student success. Large classes tend to hinder learning, smaller classes tend to help it. Or at least, not get in the way. The book "Boys and Girls Learn Differently"(a book which I recommend with reservations... it's a whole article unto itself) says that the optimal classroom size for middle school is around 20.

Twenty.

Excuse me while I vomit out my nose from laughing too hard. I'm not saying this is unattainable, but 'good' orchestra programs, even at the 6th grade level, rarely if ever have fewer than 30-40 kids in a class. It's not surprising, as orchestra is by nature a group activity. But still.

2. Lack of teacher's aides. In absence of low class size, "Boys and Girls etc" recommends the help of one or sometimes even two teacher's aides. These teachers are able to provide individual assistance where the head teacher cannot. When staring down a battalion of 6th graders, allies will at least give some moral support. But in an orchestra, you are far outnumbered, and they can smell your fear. Just say to yourself, "This. Is. SPARTA!" and go down in glory.

No. I mean, get some additional help.

"But what about money?"

Money? Oh right. Money...

3. There are other problems, but I'm going to stop with a big one here. When learning music in an orchestra or a band, there are actually two subjects going on. There's the subject of the instrument, which is obvious. It's the thing you just dropped $500 on for a ten month rental. Then there's the subject of music. Which is less obvious, but mostly because it's so obvious nobody thinks to think about it.

See, music isn't just playing notes. It's also knowing how notes are put together. Learning patterns. Reading notes. As it is, we're teaching those kids the ABC's without teaching them how to string them into words, much less how to string words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into whole compositions. Imagine trying to read Les Mis one letter at a time, and you'll get some grasp of what we're expecting orchestra classes to accomplish.

Ultimately, it is problem number three which poses the most difficulties to a student orchestra and their director. They are really trying to learn and teach two different subjects in the same amount of time as one. Problems 1 and 2 exacerbate this problem greatly, as individual help cannot be provided to struggling students in real time, and the class is usually far too large to facilitate group discussion of music or problem solving.

So it's no wonder orchestras take so long to learn a piece. The students are reading one letter at a time without comprehending words, there are more students making mistakes than a single teacher can reasonably be expected to keep up with, and that teacher somehow has to try and divide 45 minutes worth of time into teaching instruments and teaching basic music theory. Yeesh! Even Sisyphus had it easier than school orchestra directors.

Possible Solutions

1. There's not a lot that can be done here because orchestras are, by nature, usually rather large. There are some things that immediately spring to mind, however. The first is the divide orchestra classes into sections, rather than the full orchestra. This will not only reduce the class size, but also make it easier on the teacher as he or she will not have to deal with all of the little idiosyncrasies which plague each instrument. Other than that, I don't know what to say. This is the most intractable of the problems.

2. Get aides. No, not AIDS. The other aides. This is only problematic insofar as it requires money, but the benefits would be well worth the cost. The size of the classes almost requires additional assistance for effective teaching. And I don't just mean "Let's divide the orchestra into sections and have the assistant teach one and the head director teach the other." I mean the class is going on with two teachers: the head director giving the large scale instruction, and the assistant weaving in and out helping individuals with their own unique problems in real time.

I cannot stress this enough. Mistakes must be addressed quickly as the mistake is being made. Otherwise, it is highly likely the student will not even realize there is something wrong and keep on doing what you don't want them to be doing. Not that they weren't doing what you didn't want them to be doing in the first place, but... you know what I mean.

In addition, assistants can provide much needed moral and psychological support. "Is it me, or does Jimmy's intonation sound worse than a donkey getting eaten by a velociraptor?" "No, it's not just you. But at least his tone is good. Emily's violin sounds like it needs an exorcism. I keep expecting the scroll to twist around while spewing out obscenities about my mother." "Ha ha! I know, right?" (This is totally not an actual conversation I have had with an orchestra director. Totally not at all.)

There. Don't you feel better now? This way, you can relieve all your frustrations without ever taking them out on your students.

3. And now the radioactive elephant in the room. I mean, I don't even know where to start. However! There is some hope. At the 6th grade, beginners level, I highly doubt students need more than 15-30 minutes of practice a day. There's just... not enough to practice, you know? They know all of three notes. Only so much you can do with that.

Keeping this in mind, it is entirely possible orchestras spend far too much of their class time teaching the students how to play. Given a 50 minute class, if you divide up the class into a 25 minute theory class and a 25 minute practice, we can probably cover everything we need to cover so long as we are exceedingly efficient about it. This is still far from ideal. Music theory is a class of its own, but it is progress.

Another possibility is the use of computers. "How People Learn" describes an experiment wherein students learning physics are allowed deliberate practice through a computer-based tutoring program. The students exposed to this program were able to reduce the time it took to reach real-world performance criteria from 4 years to a paltry 25 hours.

I mean. What? Really? Is this real life? Did I seriously just read that? Well.

I can attest to the usefulness of these programs, as well. One of the private schools I teach at has several computer modules where piano students go to learn their music theory. It would not be difficult to adapt those kinds of programs to the specific needs of string, wind, and brass players (and singers who, judging from performance at the college level, seem to need help the most).

So like I said. There is hope. But we have a lot of work to do. Now lets hunker down and prepare for the onslaught. It's a long night, and Gandalf isn't guaranteed to show up.