History is instructive. We have so many thousands of years of people doing things to learn from, how could it not be? (Don't answer that. I'm trying to maintain my faith in humanity today) Yes, we have much to learn from the ancients. Mostly, history seems to be an uninterrupted line of things that should have killed us, but didn't. Or it did, but it was ok because they had kids. Or it did, but it was ok because what they did was so stupid it made us stronger by removing idiots from the gene pool. This is why history is important: we learn to avoid the stupid things our ancestors did, like putting mercury in our hats, or think that green rooms made people ill because they were green and not because there was arsenic in the pigment.
Or we can learn from what the ancients did right, which was a surprisingly high number of things considering how frequently people were dying of diseases that could be prevented by taking a bath every now and then. One of those things they did right was (are you ready for this? I'm going to blow your mind), composing music and performing music used to not be separate things.
Say whaaaaaaat?
Yeah, that's right. If you were a performer, you were a composer, too. And vice versa, because there wasn't a distinction. To be sure, it wasn't a distinction because nobody thought to make a distinction. But to be fair in the other direction, nobody really could make a distinction because nobody really had a way to write down words for a really long time, much less write down musical notes and rhythms. It's hard to compose a tune for some spoony bard to play accurately if you can't put it on a stone tablet for them to read from.
What did people do? Well, they learned general rules of how things ought to work, and just sort of made things up as they went along. So every instance of performance was, in some way or another, an act of composition as well. Everything you played or sung followed rules, but those rules were really more... guidelines. It just wasn't anything you ever wrote down because that not only didn't exist, there existed people who thought that writing music down was literally impossible. Really? Yes. How quaint.
Now. Where am I going with this? As a teacher (if you are a teacher of musical instruments), we face two problems. First is teaching the instrument. You would expect that goes without saying, but you would be surprised. Second is the teaching of music. Again, you would be surprised. Part of teaching music nowadays is teaching music notation. Think, as a music teacher, how many times you have had a student mess up because of a basic reading error? How many times has a student flipped the letters of two adjacent lines or spaces? How many times have you had a student forget how to count a dotted-quarter note?
If you can answer those two questions with an actual number, you are either guessing, lying, or only just started teaching. The truly honest answer is, “Pretty much all the time is how much.” We then, as teachers, complain about the state of youth these days, and wax poetic about how good the good ol' days were when people walked to school uphill both ways, in the snow, then didn't bathe because that's how one caught typhus, and look at all the cases of typhus nowadays! It's a wonder anyone survives childhood anymore. Honestly!
But lets think about this problem for a moment. Imagine you have a literature class. Now imagine you ask the class to read a story. Now imagine all of your students only know the alphabet and they're trying to read this story. Now you have a good sense of a beginning music student's mind. Is it any wonder these note misreadings happen if the student doesn't even know how to form basic musical words? Playing Beethoven's 5th one note at a time is comparable to reading a Dickens novel one letter at a time. That is to say, in neither case are you reading, nor are you playing. It is entirely possible the information gets stuffed into your head one way or another, but since the information is without context, without pattern, without semantic meaning, there is no understanding. And without understanding, you find yourself easily falling into the trap of miscounting dotted-quarter notes, or misreading an F as an A, or any falling for any number of simple errors that are easily prevented once one learns to actually read.
That brings us to composition. Learning to compose a melody is not unlike learning to write a sentence. But in order to write a sentence, you have to know words and how to spell them. Here's the trick. We have an alphabet for music much as we have an alphabet for phonemes. A great many errors in musical practice have nothing to do with the instrument and everything to do with misreading the music on the page. But let me ask you this. Once you have learned to spell with any competence, do you ever feel in danger of forgetting the alphabet? No. Of course not. It's inconceivable! The otherwise random information of the alphabet has been organized into the far less random structures of language, and then used to the point that the alphabet is learned by rote. One hardly needs to think of the alphabet while writing, except for figuring out less known or particularly tricky words.
So it is with music. Once one has learned the “words” of music, once one has learned chords, scales, motives, and such and such and such, reading individual notes on the page becomes a trivial task. Reading errors will occur, of course, but much in the same way as a very literate person will correct a misspelling as soon as it is written, a musically literate performer will catch a note or rhythm misreading as soon as the error is played. And because such errors are found and corrected immediately, and because such errors are prevented from happening in the first place, less time is spent on what must be played and more time is spent on how one should play it. That is, one spends more time playing music.
“But Adam!” I hear the audience perhaps protest. “When does one begin teaching music composition? Teaching just the instrument is hard enough as is!” The answer is, “Immediately.” The trick is, don't tell them they're composing. Most students balk at the suggestion of being in any way creative because creativity is a thoughtcrime in schools throughout America, and the students are reminded of that every time they have to answer a multiple choice test question. What I have done with my students is, I put a sheet of staff paper in front of them, then draw four empty measures, give them a starting note, an ending note, and rest here or there. I then ask the student to pick some notes from the ones they know. As they name them, I ask them to write the note down.
Thus far, the student has no idea they are actually composing. They think they are doing a writing exercise. Little do they know, their devious teacher has a scheme! At some point as they write, I simply ask them to write the next measure the same as a measure they have already written. This is important, because recognizing patterns is crucial to reading music, words, or just, like, you know... existing in general. Once they have written four measures, I ask them to play it. They will make a couple of reading errors here and there. Then we draw four new bars, and I have the student pick some more notes, ask them to repeat a measure somewhere in there, and have them play that. After three or four of those exercises, reading errors are almost completely eradicated. All this in the space of a single lesson.
A whole lesson? Yes. And then another once the student learns some new notes. And then another. And then another... But think of the lessons you will rescue from the dregs of that dreaded question, “So what note is that again?”
Showing posts with label teaching music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teaching music. Show all posts
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Words Not to Say
One day, I will settle on a writing schedule that will allow me to write, teach, practice, compose, and sleep more or less consistently. Today is not that day. Instead, I'm going to write a few words about a few words that I don't say while teaching any more.
Back up. I try not to say anymore. I have expunged a couple of these words from my teaching, and the effect has had a subtle impact on how my students receive my teaching. Namely, they listen more closlier, which means I repeat myself less often, which means I teach more in a lesson, which means my students get more better faster.
Before I go on, let me explain. This isn't about censorship. A good teacher will know not to say much outside of what they are teaching anyways. We've little time to spare for anything else. Nor is this about words of encouragement or discouragement that may or may not have the intended effect of encouraging or discouraging, depending on your personal attitude towards the student and/or any misguided attempts at reverse psychology.
No. These are little words. The littlest words are always the most importantest words. In this case, I mean to discuss the little words that are important because of their singular unimportance. They convey nothing, clutter up your teach-speak, take time away from actual teaching, and melt your student's attention span into a confectionery glaze which, while metaphorically delicious, is unhelpful to both long-term health and learning.
I of course do not mean to imply you use these words. No, you are far too erudite for that. I simply mean to imply that I have used these words, and that I have heard others use these words, and the results have always been less than ideal. Thus, my good reader, I wish only that you read these Words Not to Be Said, nod sagely, and say to yourself, "Yes, yes, this is quite right. One should never say such tripe in a lesson!" Now, onwards! To Excelsior!
Words not to say #1: "So."
I caught myself saying this today. Such a little word. Such a useless one. So easy to say so often. Look! I just wrote it twice without even trying! DAMN YOU LITTLE WORDS! "So" is perhaps the least offensive of these Words Not to Say. The problem is encapsulated by the Star Trek episode, The Trouble with Tribbles. A tribble is a little fluffy piece of cuteness that, unbeknownst to the Starship Enterprise, are cute, fluffy psychic parasites that multiply faster than rabbits at an Easter orgy. By the end of the episode, the Enterprise is filthy with the damned things, and much of the crew has been reduced to a drooling mass of whatever arcane fluid is produced when tens of millions of people watch a cat video on YouTube.
Such is the word "so." Individually harmless, when "so" catches a teacher unawares, it breeds until the speaker can hardly speak a word without prefacing it with the dreaded "So." Be wary, dear reader!
Words Not to Say #2: "Pretty."
I do not mean "Tabatha, you are very pretty today," although you should avoid saying such things lest you come off as a total creeper. Instead, I refer to the adverbial form of the word. "Pretty good." "Pretty bad." "Pretty alright." "Pretty pretty." "Pretty" is a word one uses to blunt the impact of the following word. Its entire purpose is to pull a word's meaning from extremity to the mean. The end result is language which is pretty boring.
Music is not supposed to be boring! Music is supposed to be the opposite of boring! You almost have to actively try to make music boring, and here you are doing just that by blunting your diction with a piece of tribble. Imagine saying, "That attempt at Beethoven's 5th was pretty good, but it should really be pretty awesome." NO. "THAT ATTEMPT AT BEETHOVEN'S 5th WAS PRETTY GOOD, BUT IT SHOULD BE AWESOME. WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?"
Using the word "pretty" communicates low expectations. Not only that, it is quite difficult to use the adverbial "pretty" without also using words that suck ass, like "good" or "bad" or "sauerkraut." I take that back. I've used the phrase "That melody was pretty sauerkraut," and I got the point across. Regardless. Remove the adverbial "pretty" from your language, and your language will become much more pretty.
Words Not to Say #3: "Make sure."
Words consistently fail to express how much I hate this fucking phrase. Every time I hear a teacher say it, I want to rip my ears off and stuff them up my nostrils. Teeth gnashing just doesn't get it done. Believe me, I've got the flat molars to prove it.
"Make sure" prefaces some instruction which a teacher wishes not to be taken seriously. "Make sure you keep your bow straight." "Make sure you play in tune." "Make sure you don't take a huge dump on the carpet." God dammit, just say what you mean already! Look, here. I'll show you. "Keep your bow straight." "Play in tune." "Don't crap on the carpet." See what a difference that makes? And again, "make sure" is, like the other listed words, a tribble. While you're typing grades into your grade book, the "Make sures" are off humping in the dark corners of your brain. The next day, you say "Make sure you..." a few more times. Six months later and your tongue is a veritable shag carpet of tribble, and the "Make sures" have sucked the brains of you and your students into vacuous oblivion.
Worse, "Make sure" fails at every turn to communicate why we do something. Why do we keep the bow straight? So our tone doesn't sound like ass. Why do we play in tune? So our ensemble doesn't sound like ass. Why do we do anything I tell you to do? So that... Ok, look, if you can't get the picture at the third pass, work on your pattern recognition skills. Point is, nothing glazes a student's brains faster than "Make sure you..." Gah. Just typing it makes my tongue feel fuzzy.
Words Not to Say #4: Try
How many times do you have to see The Empire Strikes Back before you get it into your tribble-addled head? THERE IS NO TRY. There is only "Do," or "Do not." When you say "Try playing that phrase again," you not only take the impact out of your sentence with a totally unnecessary word, but you also imply your student could fail, which is counterproductive for the very reason that they will fail. Nothing wrong with that except that fear of failure has an uncanny ability to convince a human to stop doing something. Also, a student can walk away from trying with a clear conscience. As in, "Oh well, at least I tried." Don't try, do it. If it didn't come out right, do it again. It's not hard. "Play that phrase again!"
Trying takes you out of the task. Trying is the enemy of flow, effortlessness, and good taste. Trying is safe, which is why people try. It keeps failure at arm's length. Screw that. Get in, get your hands dirty, and screw up already. Then keep screwing up until you don't screw up so much anymore. Then keep doing that until screwing up happens less and less. Then keep doing that until you're so far up, you've forgotten what screwing up even smells like. Welcome to the Layer Cake.
(Aside: Layer Cake is a pimpin' movie. You should watch it.)
Sorry, I lost myself a minute thinking about Daniel Craig. Where was I? Right. Try not to say try. I mean, hell. If the sentence "Try not to say try" doesn't convince you not to say try, nothing will. Not even Daniel Craig.
Words to Say
This depends upon context, but ultimately, say what you mean and say only what you need to say. A student's bow isn't straight, just say "Your bow isn't straight, fix it." A student is out of tune, say, "Was that in tune?" If they answer "Yes," then you have your work cut out for you. A student isn't watching you conduct, then don't say anything, just put on that creepy clown mask you have in the closet and conduct right in front of their stand. Because sometimes words just aren't good enough for the job.
Back up. I try not to say anymore. I have expunged a couple of these words from my teaching, and the effect has had a subtle impact on how my students receive my teaching. Namely, they listen more closlier, which means I repeat myself less often, which means I teach more in a lesson, which means my students get more better faster.
Before I go on, let me explain. This isn't about censorship. A good teacher will know not to say much outside of what they are teaching anyways. We've little time to spare for anything else. Nor is this about words of encouragement or discouragement that may or may not have the intended effect of encouraging or discouraging, depending on your personal attitude towards the student and/or any misguided attempts at reverse psychology.
No. These are little words. The littlest words are always the most importantest words. In this case, I mean to discuss the little words that are important because of their singular unimportance. They convey nothing, clutter up your teach-speak, take time away from actual teaching, and melt your student's attention span into a confectionery glaze which, while metaphorically delicious, is unhelpful to both long-term health and learning.
I of course do not mean to imply you use these words. No, you are far too erudite for that. I simply mean to imply that I have used these words, and that I have heard others use these words, and the results have always been less than ideal. Thus, my good reader, I wish only that you read these Words Not to Be Said, nod sagely, and say to yourself, "Yes, yes, this is quite right. One should never say such tripe in a lesson!" Now, onwards! To Excelsior!
Words not to say #1: "So."
I caught myself saying this today. Such a little word. Such a useless one. So easy to say so often. Look! I just wrote it twice without even trying! DAMN YOU LITTLE WORDS! "So" is perhaps the least offensive of these Words Not to Say. The problem is encapsulated by the Star Trek episode, The Trouble with Tribbles. A tribble is a little fluffy piece of cuteness that, unbeknownst to the Starship Enterprise, are cute, fluffy psychic parasites that multiply faster than rabbits at an Easter orgy. By the end of the episode, the Enterprise is filthy with the damned things, and much of the crew has been reduced to a drooling mass of whatever arcane fluid is produced when tens of millions of people watch a cat video on YouTube.
Such is the word "so." Individually harmless, when "so" catches a teacher unawares, it breeds until the speaker can hardly speak a word without prefacing it with the dreaded "So." Be wary, dear reader!
Words Not to Say #2: "Pretty."
I do not mean "Tabatha, you are very pretty today," although you should avoid saying such things lest you come off as a total creeper. Instead, I refer to the adverbial form of the word. "Pretty good." "Pretty bad." "Pretty alright." "Pretty pretty." "Pretty" is a word one uses to blunt the impact of the following word. Its entire purpose is to pull a word's meaning from extremity to the mean. The end result is language which is pretty boring.
Music is not supposed to be boring! Music is supposed to be the opposite of boring! You almost have to actively try to make music boring, and here you are doing just that by blunting your diction with a piece of tribble. Imagine saying, "That attempt at Beethoven's 5th was pretty good, but it should really be pretty awesome." NO. "THAT ATTEMPT AT BEETHOVEN'S 5th WAS PRETTY GOOD, BUT IT SHOULD BE AWESOME. WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?"
Using the word "pretty" communicates low expectations. Not only that, it is quite difficult to use the adverbial "pretty" without also using words that suck ass, like "good" or "bad" or "sauerkraut." I take that back. I've used the phrase "That melody was pretty sauerkraut," and I got the point across. Regardless. Remove the adverbial "pretty" from your language, and your language will become much more pretty.
Words Not to Say #3: "Make sure."
Words consistently fail to express how much I hate this fucking phrase. Every time I hear a teacher say it, I want to rip my ears off and stuff them up my nostrils. Teeth gnashing just doesn't get it done. Believe me, I've got the flat molars to prove it.
"Make sure" prefaces some instruction which a teacher wishes not to be taken seriously. "Make sure you keep your bow straight." "Make sure you play in tune." "Make sure you don't take a huge dump on the carpet." God dammit, just say what you mean already! Look, here. I'll show you. "Keep your bow straight." "Play in tune." "Don't crap on the carpet." See what a difference that makes? And again, "make sure" is, like the other listed words, a tribble. While you're typing grades into your grade book, the "Make sures" are off humping in the dark corners of your brain. The next day, you say "Make sure you..." a few more times. Six months later and your tongue is a veritable shag carpet of tribble, and the "Make sures" have sucked the brains of you and your students into vacuous oblivion.
Worse, "Make sure" fails at every turn to communicate why we do something. Why do we keep the bow straight? So our tone doesn't sound like ass. Why do we play in tune? So our ensemble doesn't sound like ass. Why do we do anything I tell you to do? So that... Ok, look, if you can't get the picture at the third pass, work on your pattern recognition skills. Point is, nothing glazes a student's brains faster than "Make sure you..." Gah. Just typing it makes my tongue feel fuzzy.
Words Not to Say #4: Try
How many times do you have to see The Empire Strikes Back before you get it into your tribble-addled head? THERE IS NO TRY. There is only "Do," or "Do not." When you say "Try playing that phrase again," you not only take the impact out of your sentence with a totally unnecessary word, but you also imply your student could fail, which is counterproductive for the very reason that they will fail. Nothing wrong with that except that fear of failure has an uncanny ability to convince a human to stop doing something. Also, a student can walk away from trying with a clear conscience. As in, "Oh well, at least I tried." Don't try, do it. If it didn't come out right, do it again. It's not hard. "Play that phrase again!"
Trying takes you out of the task. Trying is the enemy of flow, effortlessness, and good taste. Trying is safe, which is why people try. It keeps failure at arm's length. Screw that. Get in, get your hands dirty, and screw up already. Then keep screwing up until you don't screw up so much anymore. Then keep doing that until screwing up happens less and less. Then keep doing that until you're so far up, you've forgotten what screwing up even smells like. Welcome to the Layer Cake.
(Aside: Layer Cake is a pimpin' movie. You should watch it.)
Sorry, I lost myself a minute thinking about Daniel Craig. Where was I? Right. Try not to say try. I mean, hell. If the sentence "Try not to say try" doesn't convince you not to say try, nothing will. Not even Daniel Craig.
Words to Say
This depends upon context, but ultimately, say what you mean and say only what you need to say. A student's bow isn't straight, just say "Your bow isn't straight, fix it." A student is out of tune, say, "Was that in tune?" If they answer "Yes," then you have your work cut out for you. A student isn't watching you conduct, then don't say anything, just put on that creepy clown mask you have in the closet and conduct right in front of their stand. Because sometimes words just aren't good enough for the job.
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Beyond Good and Bad Musicians
At a pub with a friend. Irish folk band playing Irish folk music. Music is out of tune, the singer's tone is a warbler, the bass is out of sync with the drums, and everything about the music is objectively terrible.
Friend says, “Oh god, they are terrible.”
I says, “What are you talking about? They're awesome!”
At an open mic. Some beginners are playing beginner music. The music is out of tune, the singer's singing is swinging, the bass is trying to follow the drums but this is problematic because there aren't any drums, and everything about the music is objectively terrible.
Afterward, beginner says to me, “Oh god, I was terrible.”
I says, “What are you talking about? You were awesome!”
Let me be clear. I teach music. And when I teach music, I have to point out all of the missed notes, the wonky intonation, the miscounted beats, and all the rest of that nonsense. That's what my job is, kind of. It's just that somewhere along the way, we forget that all of that is nonsense, and we miss the point entirely.
In fact, we not only miss the point, we set ourselves on a one way track towards musical masochism.
“I'm not playing good, therefore I'm not good, and therefore I can't do other stuff good, too.”
I mean, when I put it like that, learning to play music suddenly sounds like an awful idea. “But wait!” you say, putting on your best Billy Mays impression. “I don't mean the person is bad! I mean the music is bad!”
Sure, but here's language being tricky again. If that's really what you mean, then why don't you say what you mean rather than hope people guess you mean what you mean. The music is awful. But we don't say, “Wow, this music is terrible.” We say, “Wow, they're bad,” or, “This composer is terrible,” or “What a shitty band!” We rarely talk about the music. We talk about the people making it.
The most common musical critique is not a musical criticism, but a moral one.
Step back a bit. If I'm paying some of my hard earned money to hear someone play music, I would rather the music be something well done than poorly performed. I get that. But that's not what I'm talking about, straw man. You and your head full of straw... no wonder you get so confused.
No, what I'm talking about is something more fundamental. Which is music, which was around for a really long time before money stepped into the picture. “How is it,” I think to myself, “that such a natural human expression as music, sung to babies, played at dances, in farm fields, in churches, on pirate boats... How is it that such musical expression has become an indictment of a person's character rather than a person's ability? Oh right, Plato.”
Actually, I don't think it's Plato's fault. I'm pretty sure he was just clearly expressing a sentiment that was widely intuited. That is to say, music alters behavior so music can be used to instill virtue or vice. To be doubly fair to Plato, I'm fairly certain he was also talking about what the music expresses rather than how well the music is expressed. It was all that “Darned kids, get off my lawn!” kind of stuff.
In short, there's no getting to the wherefores in a short blog post like this. But I can say it's taken a wrong turn somewhere along the line. I have had to assure not a few students that just because they are not playing good does not mean that they, too, as a person, are therefore not good. Few of them believe me. I know they don't believe me because after I reassure them, they nod their heads and then return to the music in wide-eyed terror or dismay.
So here's the problem, writ large for people who wear bifocals. Nobody starts good at anything. You have to learn. But the way we talk about “not playing well” is to instead say “you're bad at playing,” which if the human brain actually processed statements in their entirety wouldn't be so bad, but it usually just stops at “You're bad,” and then slinks off in shame.
If we follow that logic to its not at all distant conclusion, we must therefore acknowledge that not only are our children terrible, terrible, truly awful people for not knowing how to do much of anything well, but also that everybody is terrible because there's always something you're not going to be good at. In my case, I am not good at not ending sentences prepositions with.
Oops, I did it again.
Friend says, “Oh god, they are terrible.”
I says, “What are you talking about? They're awesome!”
At an open mic. Some beginners are playing beginner music. The music is out of tune, the singer's singing is swinging, the bass is trying to follow the drums but this is problematic because there aren't any drums, and everything about the music is objectively terrible.
Afterward, beginner says to me, “Oh god, I was terrible.”
I says, “What are you talking about? You were awesome!”
Let me be clear. I teach music. And when I teach music, I have to point out all of the missed notes, the wonky intonation, the miscounted beats, and all the rest of that nonsense. That's what my job is, kind of. It's just that somewhere along the way, we forget that all of that is nonsense, and we miss the point entirely.
In fact, we not only miss the point, we set ourselves on a one way track towards musical masochism.
“I'm not playing good, therefore I'm not good, and therefore I can't do other stuff good, too.”
I mean, when I put it like that, learning to play music suddenly sounds like an awful idea. “But wait!” you say, putting on your best Billy Mays impression. “I don't mean the person is bad! I mean the music is bad!”
Sure, but here's language being tricky again. If that's really what you mean, then why don't you say what you mean rather than hope people guess you mean what you mean. The music is awful. But we don't say, “Wow, this music is terrible.” We say, “Wow, they're bad,” or, “This composer is terrible,” or “What a shitty band!” We rarely talk about the music. We talk about the people making it.
The most common musical critique is not a musical criticism, but a moral one.
Step back a bit. If I'm paying some of my hard earned money to hear someone play music, I would rather the music be something well done than poorly performed. I get that. But that's not what I'm talking about, straw man. You and your head full of straw... no wonder you get so confused.
No, what I'm talking about is something more fundamental. Which is music, which was around for a really long time before money stepped into the picture. “How is it,” I think to myself, “that such a natural human expression as music, sung to babies, played at dances, in farm fields, in churches, on pirate boats... How is it that such musical expression has become an indictment of a person's character rather than a person's ability? Oh right, Plato.”
Actually, I don't think it's Plato's fault. I'm pretty sure he was just clearly expressing a sentiment that was widely intuited. That is to say, music alters behavior so music can be used to instill virtue or vice. To be doubly fair to Plato, I'm fairly certain he was also talking about what the music expresses rather than how well the music is expressed. It was all that “Darned kids, get off my lawn!” kind of stuff.
In short, there's no getting to the wherefores in a short blog post like this. But I can say it's taken a wrong turn somewhere along the line. I have had to assure not a few students that just because they are not playing good does not mean that they, too, as a person, are therefore not good. Few of them believe me. I know they don't believe me because after I reassure them, they nod their heads and then return to the music in wide-eyed terror or dismay.
So here's the problem, writ large for people who wear bifocals. Nobody starts good at anything. You have to learn. But the way we talk about “not playing well” is to instead say “you're bad at playing,” which if the human brain actually processed statements in their entirety wouldn't be so bad, but it usually just stops at “You're bad,” and then slinks off in shame.
If we follow that logic to its not at all distant conclusion, we must therefore acknowledge that not only are our children terrible, terrible, truly awful people for not knowing how to do much of anything well, but also that everybody is terrible because there's always something you're not going to be good at. In my case, I am not good at not ending sentences prepositions with.
Oops, I did it again.
Monday, June 9, 2014
Playing Music is Hard
Fair warning: I am about to split a hair to make a point. It is true, splitting hairs is a past time not a few find tiresome, but considering a point is a definite space of no dimensions, I would say that a split hair is entirely too generous for the task.
Alas, it must suffice.
Speaking of tiresome things, allow me to point to the point that will point to my point. I have a general sense, as a teacher, that many people have an intuitive understanding that playing an instrument is not easy. This may seem a small thing to be irked by. And it is. But it is not the mindset that I find irksome, it is the conclusion towards which such a mindset inevitably leads.
The problem is this. Saying “Playing an instrument is not easy,” really amounts to saying almost nothing at all. Because, for sure, you have said what it is not, but neither have you said what it is. I could say, for instance, “Playing an instrument is not easy, but... it's not that difficult, either.” Such a statement is a perfectly valid statement. Hence the hair. Assuming something is “not easy” is not the same as assuming something is “difficult.”
If I return to my previous statement, now with my updated assumption, I can say “Playing an instrument is difficult, but,” but I cannot follow that but with “...it's not difficult.” I mean, I can. “It's difficult but not difficult.” There, I did it! Hooray me! If you wish to stop here, I wish you the best, but I don't have high hopes for your future prospects.
For the people who continue on because they are not satisfied by statements of utter nonsense, compare “It's difficult” to “It's not easy, but it's not difficult,” and you can see how framing the problem in the positive (it is this) as opposed to the negative (it is not that) makes for a statement rather more clear.
“So what?” cries the, I must imagine, increasingly exasperated reader, who has not yet grasped my true point because I have not yet pointed it out. “So it's difficult and not not easy. No need to be pedantic. I know what you mean!” But that, there, is precisely the point. You do not know what I mean, because if you did, you'd understand why I, as a teacher, find a student who assumes learning an instrument is merely “not easy” far more difficult to teach than a student who assumes that learning an instrument is, in fact, immensely difficult.
For you see, or are about to see after I tell you, that a student who begins with “It's not easy” can slip, with great ease, into the territory of “but it can't be that difficult.” And as soon as they make that step, and they almost all do, they have started down the path which ends with the instrument being almost impossible rather than simply difficult. Because if “it can't be that difficult,” then that means it won't take that much effort, which means I don't need to practice how my teacher says I need to practice, so I won't because what my teacher is suggesting is to put lots of effort into something which, while not easy, is surely not so difficult as to require the kind of effort my teacher is requesting of me.
That logic may sound so convoluted as to be unlikely, but it happens every time. Every. Time. To illustrate, this is a summation of every teacher-student conversation ever after the student comes to the above conclusion:
“Student, did you practice your scales?”
“Yes.”
“Good, then this shouldn't take too long. Play a D major scale for me.”
“I'd really rather not. Lets play Beethoven, instead.”
“-.-”
“Ugh. Fine.” *student fails to play a D Major scale*
“Oh. Ok. Sure. Uhm. Look at this piece by Beethoven. What is its theme?”
*student shuffles uncomfortably*
“It's a SCALE. How can you play this piece by Beethoven, which is infinitely more difficult than playing a scale, if you can't play a scaaaaaaaaale?”
And then you waste an entire lesson going over D Major again because they didn't think it was that important, and they didn't think it was important because their mindset led them to believe it was not important. Because it's not easy, but it's not hard. It's just something in between. So lets cut out all the boring stuff and short cut ahead to Magical Christmas Land where everybody only eats cake and never gets diabetes and vegetables are regularly assembled to do all your math homework.
Unfortunately for them, and every teacher who teaches them, learning to play a musical instrument is not “of middling difficulty.” It is “of excruciating difficulty.” The human brain being what it is (that is to say, both lazy and full of its own self importance), anything “of excruciating difficulty” is rather inconvenient to its notion of preconceived greatness. Also, anything “of excruciating difficulty” represents a rather uncomfortable amount of work. So I sympathize. Anything “of excruciating difficulty” represents exactly the anti-thesis of what the human brain is all about.
So the brain shoots itself in its metaphorical foot. Again. Starting from “It's not easy, but it's not hard” may seem to be a better place to start, psychologically speaking, than “It's difficult,” because if it's difficult we may not ever start at all. There is some truth to that, but it comes at the price of great harm to one's future efforts. You wind up making it more difficult on yourself than it is, which is already quite difficult. So how to begin?
Like this.
“It's excruciatingly difficult... but it's also possible.”
Once you reconcile yourself to the difficulty of the task, everything becomes possible. It becomes possible because you realize there are no short cuts, that, in fact, the short cuts take you the long ways around back to where you started. That if you sit down and do the work that is required of this difficult task, it is merely difficult. And once it is merely difficult, it is simply a matter of doing what needs to be done, and nothing more.
Start by doing what is necessary. Then do what is possible. And suddenly, you are doing the impossible.
--- St. Francis of Assisi
Alas, it must suffice.
Speaking of tiresome things, allow me to point to the point that will point to my point. I have a general sense, as a teacher, that many people have an intuitive understanding that playing an instrument is not easy. This may seem a small thing to be irked by. And it is. But it is not the mindset that I find irksome, it is the conclusion towards which such a mindset inevitably leads.
The problem is this. Saying “Playing an instrument is not easy,” really amounts to saying almost nothing at all. Because, for sure, you have said what it is not, but neither have you said what it is. I could say, for instance, “Playing an instrument is not easy, but... it's not that difficult, either.” Such a statement is a perfectly valid statement. Hence the hair. Assuming something is “not easy” is not the same as assuming something is “difficult.”
If I return to my previous statement, now with my updated assumption, I can say “Playing an instrument is difficult, but,” but I cannot follow that but with “...it's not difficult.” I mean, I can. “It's difficult but not difficult.” There, I did it! Hooray me! If you wish to stop here, I wish you the best, but I don't have high hopes for your future prospects.
For the people who continue on because they are not satisfied by statements of utter nonsense, compare “It's difficult” to “It's not easy, but it's not difficult,” and you can see how framing the problem in the positive (it is this) as opposed to the negative (it is not that) makes for a statement rather more clear.
“So what?” cries the, I must imagine, increasingly exasperated reader, who has not yet grasped my true point because I have not yet pointed it out. “So it's difficult and not not easy. No need to be pedantic. I know what you mean!” But that, there, is precisely the point. You do not know what I mean, because if you did, you'd understand why I, as a teacher, find a student who assumes learning an instrument is merely “not easy” far more difficult to teach than a student who assumes that learning an instrument is, in fact, immensely difficult.
For you see, or are about to see after I tell you, that a student who begins with “It's not easy” can slip, with great ease, into the territory of “but it can't be that difficult.” And as soon as they make that step, and they almost all do, they have started down the path which ends with the instrument being almost impossible rather than simply difficult. Because if “it can't be that difficult,” then that means it won't take that much effort, which means I don't need to practice how my teacher says I need to practice, so I won't because what my teacher is suggesting is to put lots of effort into something which, while not easy, is surely not so difficult as to require the kind of effort my teacher is requesting of me.
That logic may sound so convoluted as to be unlikely, but it happens every time. Every. Time. To illustrate, this is a summation of every teacher-student conversation ever after the student comes to the above conclusion:
“Student, did you practice your scales?”
“Yes.”
“Good, then this shouldn't take too long. Play a D major scale for me.”
“I'd really rather not. Lets play Beethoven, instead.”
“-.-”
“Ugh. Fine.” *student fails to play a D Major scale*
“Oh. Ok. Sure. Uhm. Look at this piece by Beethoven. What is its theme?”
*student shuffles uncomfortably*
“It's a SCALE. How can you play this piece by Beethoven, which is infinitely more difficult than playing a scale, if you can't play a scaaaaaaaaale?”
And then you waste an entire lesson going over D Major again because they didn't think it was that important, and they didn't think it was important because their mindset led them to believe it was not important. Because it's not easy, but it's not hard. It's just something in between. So lets cut out all the boring stuff and short cut ahead to Magical Christmas Land where everybody only eats cake and never gets diabetes and vegetables are regularly assembled to do all your math homework.
Unfortunately for them, and every teacher who teaches them, learning to play a musical instrument is not “of middling difficulty.” It is “of excruciating difficulty.” The human brain being what it is (that is to say, both lazy and full of its own self importance), anything “of excruciating difficulty” is rather inconvenient to its notion of preconceived greatness. Also, anything “of excruciating difficulty” represents a rather uncomfortable amount of work. So I sympathize. Anything “of excruciating difficulty” represents exactly the anti-thesis of what the human brain is all about.
So the brain shoots itself in its metaphorical foot. Again. Starting from “It's not easy, but it's not hard” may seem to be a better place to start, psychologically speaking, than “It's difficult,” because if it's difficult we may not ever start at all. There is some truth to that, but it comes at the price of great harm to one's future efforts. You wind up making it more difficult on yourself than it is, which is already quite difficult. So how to begin?
Like this.
“It's excruciatingly difficult... but it's also possible.”
Once you reconcile yourself to the difficulty of the task, everything becomes possible. It becomes possible because you realize there are no short cuts, that, in fact, the short cuts take you the long ways around back to where you started. That if you sit down and do the work that is required of this difficult task, it is merely difficult. And once it is merely difficult, it is simply a matter of doing what needs to be done, and nothing more.
Start by doing what is necessary. Then do what is possible. And suddenly, you are doing the impossible.
--- St. Francis of Assisi
Monday, May 20, 2013
First!
EDIT: There used to be a couple links in here. They went to Leroy Anderson's 'Typewriter' recorded by the BBC, Dvorak's 'Silent Woods' performed by Jacquelyn du Pre, and Miyoko Shida balancing a feather on a bunch of sticks. Alas, they are copy written material, which AdSense does not take kindly to. I'm not complaining, it's reasonable, but I wanted to make a note so if you wanted to find this stuff, you can.
I started a blog. It is going to be about music. And teaching. And maybe other random stuff. But mostly music and teaching, because I play music and I teach. Specifically, I play and teach cello, the best of all possible instruments. There are some who will disagree with that on personal grounds. I don't care about them so much. There are some who will disagree on philosophical grounds, because Dr. Pangloss. Those people may have a point. Upon further reflection, however, they are still wrong. Why do I say this? No particular reason.
So music. Classical music blogs are woefully lacking. I don't know this for sure. Maybe they are hiding. It amounts to the same thing. I'm positive this is not such a good thing. There's so much wonderful music to be heard, and I know from personal experience many people want to hear it. But they don't know where to look. Well, look no further. I will discuss classical music here, hopefully in a clear, non-pedantic, non-judgmental manner. Ok. Maybe a little judgmental.
What will I discuss? Mostly composers, classical music culture, and other things that come to mind. Also contemporary musicians/performers/composers, because an art only survives if it is alive, and it is only alive if new compositions are created and performed. Otherwise it's a museum. There is a difference between a museum and a gallery. Mostly money. But partly the artist's age, give or take a few centuries. Granted, both are important, just for different reasons. Right now, classical music is only museum music, or mostly so in the large cultural centers. This must change.
But why? You don't hear anything about the dwindling Grateful Dead audience. It's a catastrophe, really, when you think about it from the Grateful Dead's point of view. They're hemorrhaging audience members faster than a patient losing blood in an episode of House. Do people still watch House? I don't know. I don't. Some of you know what I'm talking about. That's the important thing. Where was I. Right.
Because classical music is better than the Grateful Dead. Deadheads will disagree, but their nickname implies, well... I don't want to judge too much. Everybody has their thing. Go have some fun watching Grateful Dead cover bands. What does it mean, 'Classical music is better.'? It means it has more depth. It has more interesting things hiding under its surface. Its more clever, sometimes too clever by half. It has more variety. Sometimes it has more of everything. Like, sometimes it uses a typewriter.
Not to say it's all better. Classical music also tends to be long. And require focus. And possibly some amount of knowledge to fully appreciate it. Possibly. I'm not 100% convinced of that. Probably. But I go to an Open Mic dedicated almost exclusively to classical music. Almost nobody in the audience is a trained musician. Other than the musicians, who are highly trained. But other than them. Few of them know much about classical music, or music at all other than the Top 40. And yet they love it. And they come back. And they tip.
As it turns out, people like seeing things that are done well. It really doesn't matter what that thing is. It could be somebody balancing twigs on a feather. Or sports. Or anything, really. As long as it's done well, people will like it. But you also have to show it to them. You have to let them know it exists. You have to bring it to them. That is a full article in itself, but really: You cannot expect your audience to come to you. You must go to them. Symphonies are quite poor at making this happen. Maybe that is why symphonies are failing.
Ok. That's enough. Now go listen to music.
I started a blog. It is going to be about music. And teaching. And maybe other random stuff. But mostly music and teaching, because I play music and I teach. Specifically, I play and teach cello, the best of all possible instruments. There are some who will disagree with that on personal grounds. I don't care about them so much. There are some who will disagree on philosophical grounds, because Dr. Pangloss. Those people may have a point. Upon further reflection, however, they are still wrong. Why do I say this? No particular reason.
So music. Classical music blogs are woefully lacking. I don't know this for sure. Maybe they are hiding. It amounts to the same thing. I'm positive this is not such a good thing. There's so much wonderful music to be heard, and I know from personal experience many people want to hear it. But they don't know where to look. Well, look no further. I will discuss classical music here, hopefully in a clear, non-pedantic, non-judgmental manner. Ok. Maybe a little judgmental.
What will I discuss? Mostly composers, classical music culture, and other things that come to mind. Also contemporary musicians/performers/composers, because an art only survives if it is alive, and it is only alive if new compositions are created and performed. Otherwise it's a museum. There is a difference between a museum and a gallery. Mostly money. But partly the artist's age, give or take a few centuries. Granted, both are important, just for different reasons. Right now, classical music is only museum music, or mostly so in the large cultural centers. This must change.
But why? You don't hear anything about the dwindling Grateful Dead audience. It's a catastrophe, really, when you think about it from the Grateful Dead's point of view. They're hemorrhaging audience members faster than a patient losing blood in an episode of House. Do people still watch House? I don't know. I don't. Some of you know what I'm talking about. That's the important thing. Where was I. Right.
Because classical music is better than the Grateful Dead. Deadheads will disagree, but their nickname implies, well... I don't want to judge too much. Everybody has their thing. Go have some fun watching Grateful Dead cover bands. What does it mean, 'Classical music is better.'? It means it has more depth. It has more interesting things hiding under its surface. Its more clever, sometimes too clever by half. It has more variety. Sometimes it has more of everything. Like, sometimes it uses a typewriter.
Not to say it's all better. Classical music also tends to be long. And require focus. And possibly some amount of knowledge to fully appreciate it. Possibly. I'm not 100% convinced of that. Probably. But I go to an Open Mic dedicated almost exclusively to classical music. Almost nobody in the audience is a trained musician. Other than the musicians, who are highly trained. But other than them. Few of them know much about classical music, or music at all other than the Top 40. And yet they love it. And they come back. And they tip.
As it turns out, people like seeing things that are done well. It really doesn't matter what that thing is. It could be somebody balancing twigs on a feather. Or sports. Or anything, really. As long as it's done well, people will like it. But you also have to show it to them. You have to let them know it exists. You have to bring it to them. That is a full article in itself, but really: You cannot expect your audience to come to you. You must go to them. Symphonies are quite poor at making this happen. Maybe that is why symphonies are failing.
Ok. That's enough. Now go listen to music.
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