Tartellog

As it’s the beginning of the school year, now is a great time to think about how and why we practice.  If you’re in school, there is a lot asked of you.  There are the time commitments of being in all of your classes and rehearsals.  Then there’s the work associated with classes, rehearsals, and lessons.  All of that is important.  But if you only focus on what’s right in front of you, it’s possible that you can get frustrated and lose track of why you’re doing what you’re doing.

This can happen in our daily lives, especially while we’re in school.  It can be frustrating to sit in a practice room working on whatever is most difficult for you (for me it was piano- learning the proper fingerings for scales made me want to throw the piano out the window).  It is very easy to go to the “will I ever really need this?” question about any single aspect of school or work that you find tedious or difficult.

That’s because all of that is the Little Picture.  Don’t get me wrong- the Little Picture is important.  This is what you’re doing right now for the immediate future: homework, learning music for an upcoming performance, learning material for your lessons.  You want to do well in school, sound good in performances, and be prepared for your lessons.

Here’s the hard part- You shouldn’t let the Little Picture obscure the Big Picture.  The Big Picture is the overarching reason you’re doing all of this work.  You get to decide what the Big Picture is.  Please let me offer some advice:

• Make the Big Picture a concept, not a goal.
  • If you make your big picture a goal, like winning a certain job, then as soon as you achieve it, you’re done.  My big picture is to be a great trumpet player, musician, and teacher.  If my goal was to play lead on Maynard Ferguson’s band, I would have been done with my Big Picture before I was 30.  If it was teaching trumpet at a great music school, then I would still have been done before I was 40.  Make no mistake, those are things I wanted to do and am happy to have done.  But those were all Little Picture things.
• Stay aware of both the Little Picture and Big Picture.
  • When you lose sight of the Big Picture, it can feel like what you’re doing is pointless, and you’ll never get anywhere.  My career is going well, but it wasn’t exactly a straight line.  I worked at America Online for a short period of time, taught kindergarten for a year, and worked for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Education Department.
• Invest heavily in every Little Picture.
  • As hard as it can be, take every step in your potential growth seriously.  I have lots of rules.  One of those is:  Knowing is generally better than not knowing.  When you encounter those parts of your education that you don’t like, don’t care about, find difficult, or any combination of those- take the time to do the work and, even if you never see any concrete benefit from it, you’ll be the better for it.

If you can operate this way, you can’t help but continue to grow.

Now get to work.  And never forget why you’re doing it.

Recently I met with a high school student who was visiting IU.  As he was packing up, he asked me if I had any advice on developing confidence.  As our time was short, I hope that my answer didn’t come off as flippant.  I told him:

No one can give you confidence.  It’s something you have to build.

As a teacher, I can give advice and tools to help build confidence, but eventually the student has to take ownership.  If I give a student tools and exercises, telling them that once they complete them that they will be confident, I’m lying.  What is most important in the process is that the student is aware of how they’re doing.

I try to make confidence into a logic problem.  Let’s say there is an etude a student has never seen.  I will ask how confident they are in their ability to perform the etude.  Usually, it’s fairly low.  Then I will give the student one week to prepare it, with tools on how to prepare.  After the week, I ask how confident they are.  Some will say very confident, while others will still say they are not confident at all.  What’s the difference?  The students who used the preparation time to not only learn the etude, but understand and believe that they are able to play the etude, have done themselves a great service.  Too many people ignore the second part.

So here’s the logic:

If you are practicing something, you should be getting better at it. 

If you’re getting better at it, you should have more confidence in your ability to perform it.  

So….if you believe that you are practicing well, but you’re not gaining confidence, you have one of two problems.  Either:

1. You aren’t practicing as well as you think, or
2. You aren’t paying attention to the progress you’re making.

It can be easy to focus on the nuts and bolts of:

• playing all the right notes in the right order
• playing dynamics
• playing in good time
• playing musically

because all of those things are important.  Too often we focus exclusively on what still needs work, instead of also including what has improved.  Make sure you’re looking at the big picture.  After working on a piece of music, ask yourself if it’s better than when you started.  If the answer is yes, then give yourself some credit for doing good work, and realize that you should now have increased confidence, as you know you’re heading in the right direction.

If this sounds overly simple- good.  It’s not complicated (that doesn’t mean it’s easy!).  I’ve found that people like to make concepts that they find difficult as complicated as possible.  Making difficult concepts as simple as possible helps me know that a solution is not only possible, but something I can achieve.

Usually the first thing I do after a student performs something in a lesson is ask a question:

“What did you think of that?”

Often I get one of these two responses:

1. “I thought it was good.”
2. “I thought it was terrible.”

Usually the truth is somewhere in between, so I’ll ask more detailed questions, like:

“What were you happy with?”

AND

“What still needs work?”

Once both of these questions are answered, a clearer picture of what to do next can emerge.  Too often, there is a tendency to focus on only one of them.  When feeling particularly good, it can be easy to ignore details or small mistakes because of how much is going well.  When feeling bad, it’s too easy to throw your hands in the air with an attitude of “I suck!” and walk away.  Neither of these approaches is ideal.

It’s too easy to think that because something went well for you that you’re through with it.  Here’s what I want you to do:  Once you’ve practiced something so that you believe it to be ready for performance- record the performance.  If you have a smartphone, video record it.  Wait until the next day to watch and listen to the recording.  When listening and watching the next day, ask yourself this question:

Would I buy that recording?

If your honest answer is yes, then it’s time to move on to another piece of music.  If not, then you have to answer one more question:

Why not?

Once you’re honest with yourself about what is lacking in that performance, whether it is technical, musical, or both- you now have a plan for what to practice.

But remember to recognize what was good about your performance as well.  If, when asked why you wouldn’t buy the recording, your answer is “Everything!”-that’s not productive.

The caricature of the cocky trumpet player is one with which I’m sure we are all well acquainted.  We may even know some people that come close to that awful stereotype.  There do seem to be some players that think that whatever comes out of their bells is amazing by definition.  It seems obvious why having this kind of attitude is a bad idea.  It makes a player difficult to work with, unpleasant to be around, and generally a bad colleague.

There is a good part of that caricature.  It’s the confidence.  Having confidence is a good thing.  Cockiness is just confidence taken too far.

On the other side of the spectrum are the players that don’t think they do anything well.  They have an easy time recognizing what others do well, but can’t recognize that they have any strengths.  These people are also bad colleagues, because, although they might appear to be easier to work with by constantly deferring to others, their constant putting down of themselves makes them difficult to work with and generally mopey people to be around.

Humility is a good thing.  The idea of “I’m terrible and everyone else is great” is humility taken too far.

Both in the practice room and in working with others, knowing your own strengths and weaknesses is vital.  In the practice room it will keep you focused and getting better.  In your professional career, it will make you someone people want to be around, as you will be confident in your abilities, while recognizing the strengths of others around you.

Each year I ask every one of my new students this question:  “When you graduate, if you get to choose exactly what you get to do, what would that be?”  It’s shocking to me how many times the answer starts with, “Well…I guess it would okay if….”  Before these students have even started, they’re settling.

Let’s be clear: I’m not saying that by saying it out loud, you magically walk out of school with your dream job.  What I am saying is that without having an idea of what your dream job might look like, it’s nearly impossible to get there.

So how do you get there?

First-Choose Something.

 You might think that because you don’t know what you want to be doing forever that you don’t have any decisions to make yet.  This is a dangerous road to travel.  Remember this:

Not Making a Choice is a Choice.

If you choose nothing, you’re making the choice to be stagnant.  I don’t know anyone that enjoys that life.

Second- Give It Everything You’ve Got.

This can be the hard part for a lot of people.  Most of the time the first job you get is not the one you will want to keep forever.  This should not change how you approach it.  One sure way to stagnate is to give the bare minimum.  Treat every job like an opportunity to show how well you can do it.  Be the best person who has ever held that position- no matter what the position is.

If your first choice turns out to be the right thing for you, then keep at it.  If not, then choose something else, and give that everything you’ve got.  Keep doing this…forever.

Keep Asking: What Do I Want To Do next?

To get to the job you want usually takes more work than the job you’ll settle for.  You must be willing to do the extra work, both at your current job and in striving for your next.  And once you have the job you want, you’re in the position of deciding what your future holds.

There Is No Right Answer.

This is the most difficult part to discuss.  It can be difficult to realize that your dream job is one someone else settled for.  Similarly, a job that you might settle for could be someone else’s dream job.  One of the most common, and dangerous, examples is this age old gem:  “You should major in Music Education, so that you have something to fall back on.”  I’d like to officially call for the retirement of this ludicrous sentiment.  Here are just a few of the problems with that statement:

• There are people that really want to teach…if you’re not one of them, please don’t teach.
• The last thing students need is teachers who think of their career choice as a “fallback.”
• You’re now working really hard on something you know you don’t want instead of on something you do want.

Be an Individual

Just because a lot of your colleagues may want similar things doesn’t mean you’re wrong to want something different.  There can be a peer pressure to go a certain direction because that’s what you’re “supposed to do.”  There can also be a certain macho attitude of “I only work in my chosen field” that looks down on anything not directly related to “The Chosen Path.”  All of that is garbage.  Here are a few jobs that I’ve had, in chronological order:

• Lead Trumpet- Maynard Ferguson’s Big Bop Nouveau
• Customer Service Representative- America Online (that’s right, the person that answers the phone to help you change your billing info, cancel, etc.)
• Kindergarten Teacher
• Education Department- Chicago Symphony Orchestra (a part time office job)
• Assistant Band Director-St. Joseph’s College, Rensselaer, IN (among many duties, I ran the Girls Basketball Band, which I enjoyed immensely.  Go Pumas!)

Make your own decisions, then work tirelessly to give them the best chance of leading you somewhere positive.