Watch Your Students- Watch Yourself: Knipping Bad Habits in the Bud!

Yeah Yeah, I just loosely quoted Barney Fife.



    If you have read any of my recent blogs you might have seen me mention my own struggles with fixing some bad habits. It's a process and it actually improves a bit each day! It got me thinking, though, about how easy it is to miss things in our playing as well as the playing of our students even when we try to be really observant....even when we watch closely.
   

   HERE'S THE DILEMMA-

    Ok, so.....anyone with any experience in any skill driven field knows that the best way to master anything involves tons of work on fundamentals. That's an easy answer, right? Sure, sort of...except when pounding there are basic set up issues; even minute ones, even ones almost impossible to catch. So, back to that dilemma.

  Pounding fundamentals with issues in the set up only reinforces those issues! The player learns to make it work doing the wrong things....and it's really common!

  The human body is amazing like that. Most of the time, if we ask it to perform a task, we can make it work to a certain point. Take farmers, for example. I doubt many have ever taken a course on proper lifting technique and yet there they are, as they have for centuries, slinging heavy bales of hay and equipment around....because it needs to be done and they just make the body do it.

  The same thing holds true in saxophone or any other musical instrument. You can have 'hitches' in your technique and still make things work to a point. At some point, though, two things are likely to happen 1: You are going to hit the proverbial wall in your skill development and/or 2: You are going to develop some sort of overuse injury. Neither are very fun. Both, however, can be dealt with.

   Ok, so how to deal with this before it becomes an issue.....(and I don't claim to have all, or even many, of the answers here).

    The issue, colleagues, is twofold. 1: There is stuff we cannot always see and 2; You see your students (or yourself) playing enough from day to day, week to week, that you are going to inadvertently overlook things that aren't completely in your face. Here's a good non-music related example. I was diagnosed with A.D.D. when I was 21. It took them 21 years to figure out that I had the disorder. My mother, a well trained and highly regarded Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a Masters in Clinical Social Work, didn't notice for 21 years that I had A.D.D. She's really good at her job, folks. Do you know why she didn't notice? It's because she saw me every day. Had I not been her son and she encountered me it might have stuck out more to her. Even then, because I don't have the hyperactivity component of the disorder, it would have been harder to see.

 So, solutions- 1: Communicate with your students constantly through the lesson. Watch their hand position. Watch their embouchure. Watch their posture. Listen to any 'hitches' in their technique. Are they voicing some areas in an unusual way or are they over-voicing (In an effort to emulate my heroes I'm guilty of that)? Talk to them. Get feedback from them on anything that might feel weird. When they're practicing have them video themselves but have them do some where the camera is focused on their hands or their embouchure. Ask colleagues to watch the videos and see if they catch anything. In your own playing do the same. Don't do what I did and just think "Ok if I just keep working on technique these issues will work themselves out.". Often technical shortcomings are more than simply a lack of time in the practice room. They are a symptom of the bigger issue.


I would LOVE to hear thoughts on this, folks. It's my goal to not only be the best player I can possibly be but also a very fine teacher. This blog is simply one vehicle to help me down that path. Please comment. I'd love to hear any ideas!

Lend Me Your Ears- Rethinking Your Listening Skills

     I  had an interesting discussion with my professor, Mark McArthur, a few weeks ago. I believe it was our second lesson together and we were dicussing a Ferling etude (number 20, if you're wondering). We each discussed features of the etude and it was apparent that we heard very different things in the etude....not in how I had played the etude but in how the etude was written. There's a simple answer why...


   It's because we listen differently.

   When I say that we listen differently it has nothing to do with skill level or talent. I mean our brain, for whatever reason, tends to focus on one aspect of the music over the others. For me, what jumps out is harmonic and melodic movement. The other aspects of the music are there and I hear them but it's the movement of the melody and harmonies which really jump out. This also explains a lot of the music that appeals to me. Works like Lauridsen's O Magnum Mysterium and Miles Davis' Flamenco Sketches are things that I can listen to repeatedly without tiring....because they are so full of interesting and beautiful melodic and harmonic movement. Ok, back to Ferling.
    When we were discussing how the etude was constructed my thoughts had to do mostly with harmonic and melodic movement (yes, there is harmonic movement implied in such an etude. Look at leading tone movement, for example). Mark then asked me about rhythmic structure to which I replied "There isn't much. It's pretty much straight sixteenths.". Kids, I wasn't even close to correct. There was plenty of rhythmic motion. As Mark explained, it was in the articulations. The combination of slurs and articulated notes MADE the rhythms. I simply didn't hear it at first because that isn't how my brain is wired.

So, what's the point?

   My point is that I'm going to try something for a while. When I do any sort of critical listening on a new work (or even revisiting recordings with which I'm familiar) I'm going to keep a notebook next to me and force myself to listen to rhythm first. Hopefully, by doing this I'll be able to improve my listening skills and it will translate to a better understanding of the music.


   So, what do you hear first? Find a piece and listen. Afterwards do some self analysis. What did you hear? Maybe write down the first few things that jumped out at you. What did you NOT hear as much. Go back and listen again. Make the goal to hear those aspects this time.

   Honestly, I don't know how critical this is to our development as musicians. I just believe anything that helps make me a more complete and well rounded musician is worth my time.

Give it a try.


   

Everything is Everything- Why it all ties together.

Greetings from graduate school!

Should I change the name to Ye Olde Grad Student? Nah! We'll leave it like it is.

   First, shameless plug for my new major professor, Mark McArthur, and his podcast The Modern Saxophonist. Mark has fabulous interviews and roundtable discussions and the info which can be attained from listening is worth your time. Besides, it's FREE! Free is good!
   I don't put this as a kiss up to my professor. There is a point to me mentioning the podcast. I'll get to that in a minute.....



   Anyone who reads this blog knows that the articles I post are a combination of things. First, there are random musings that I have about anything music related. Second, things that I've noticed with my students or classmates and third, and perhaps most importantly, my own struggles down the path to mastering this instrument.

   Let's be frank about my level on the instrument. I'm ok. Clearly, I was good enough to get a degree in saxophone pedagogy and was also good enough to get attention from a few graduate schools; eventually even getting an assistantship. NO trained musician, though, is going to mistake me for a virtuoso, at least not yet. That is, after all, the goal here.


   Now, there are some things I do well and there are some issues that I still need to work through.  (This might be a long blog. Hang in there!)

     I'm a very musical player and in lyrical passages from niente to forte I have a good, no, REALLY good sound. Where my problems arise are my fingers (more to the point, the amount of pressure I use), my air (to this point I've treated air as a blunt object...just a ton of air all the time) , and my tongue. Thanks to a recent podcast by Mark, there was a point that I likely knew to a degree subconsciously which was really driven home.

Those problems all tie in together and, moreover, they affect my sound in a very negative way!


So, here's what happened....

I was in a fairly frustrating lesson with Mark. It's frustrating because Mark is pragmatic and direct enough to say "These are areas keeping you from being what you could be. Let's just get them addressed before anything else happens." Great, I get it. The road to mastery ain't paved, folks. That said, it has been a frustrating first few weeks here due to fixing issues that I should have addressed years ago.

At one point in the lesson Mark said "I did a podcast yesterday with James Barrera on the Lindeman Method. You should listen. I think it would be very beneficial to you." I took his advice and following my lesson I popped in the ear buds.....



   So, James Barrera is the professor of saxophone at California State University - Long Beach. He's a former student of Leo Potts and Otis Murphy and received his Master's degree from Indiana. More important to this blog, he's a proponent of 'The Lindeman Method'.

So, what is the Lindeman Method?

Henry Lindeman was an early saxophone/woodwind guru who, among others is reported to have given lessons to jazz legend/great/deity Charlie Parker.  One of the major tenants of his philosophy was one that the fingers, air, and tongue, though being separate, all tie in together and that the fingers actually have a huge impact on tone production. You know what? He's absolutely right and I don't know why it took me so long to internalize it. So, how do fingers affect tone? It all comes down to tension...


Let's take my situation for example. When I face any really challenging passages, my body's reaction is to try to go into HULK SMASH mode and muscle through things. As a result, my left hand clamps down like a set of vice grips. This large amount of tension in my hand then causes tension in my forearm, upper arm, shoulder, and neck. What's part of the neck? That's right, the throat! Oops, my throat just got tense. For tone production, kids, that isn't good!

Look, to go into a full blown dissertation of Lindeman's methods would be beyond the scope of this blog but the moral to the story is this:

Your air, embouchure, tongue, and fingers are all separate parts of technique BUT......they all work together and each impacts the other. If your tongue and air don't match, it affects your sound. If your fingers and tongue don't match, your sound becomes for lack of a better word, spastic. If your air and fingers don't match up, sound issues.

It all adds up. Everything is everything.

Pay attention to the details, not only in your music but in your fundamentals. The earlier this is addressed the easier it is to correct and the more quickly you move down the road to mastery.

Get in there,
Get it done.

PS- Seriously, check out Mark McArthur's Podcast http://themodernsaxophonist.libsyn.com/ . You'll get a ton of valuable information.

Scales.....and scales....and scales...Time for some advanced work.

Hello from graduate school, folks!


I've been in the practice room a lot lately and as I'm always trying to reinvent the wheel from a pedagogy came up with a new thought as far as scales for folks who have been playing them for years.

Let me add the disclaimer before proceeding. I think most folks should play through all twelve major keys (as well as their relative minors) as often as possible; preferably daily. What I'm discussing here is for folks who want to get a little more in depth with their buddies in the scale world.

Ok,

 Here's what has been going through my mind. A cycle here will take three months but really get folks deeply immersed in the scale world.

You'll need- A tuner, a metronome, and a copy of Ferling's 48 Famous Studies.

Here's the plan:

Each week is going to be centered around one key. You'll be doing a combo of scales, arpeggios, scale variations, and two Ferling Studies. The great thing about Ferling is that the etudes are laid out by key and it makes this simple. Ferling is also cool in that even though there is a suggested tempo for each etude, they are generally written in a fashion that allows for a great deal of interpretation and allows for a ton of cool musical decisions.


Here's what I would suggest each day for a week. Set daily and weekly tempo goals for the scales. You may also decide the range of the scale.


First up- Arpeggios. I would perform Major, Minor, Dim7. Do them slowly, like long tones, with the tuner set to drone on the tonic. Listen.....REALLY listen.

Next is scales. Remember when I used terms like 'immersed' and 'in depth'? Yeah, I wasn't kidding.

• Major
• Relative Natural Minor
• Relative Harmonic Minor
• Relative Melodic Minor
• Major Thirds
• Harmonic Minor Thirds
• Melodic Minor Thirds
• Pentatonic (starting on tonic of major key)
• Blues (starting on tonic of major key)
• Whole Tone (starting on tonic of major key)
• Octatonic (starting on tonic of major key)

(Optional, you can add scales in 4ths, 5ths, sixths, modes, whatever else if you have time or are so inclined.)

      Following the scales you'd work on the two Ferling studies. They tend to be one etude in the major key and one in the relative minor.

So yeah, this is a fairly high volume of work.....but is it really? I've listed eleven scales and two etudes to work daily. The point here isn't necessarily to get the scales at 154 and etudes at 130 by the end of the week. Rather, it's to give your ear and fingers time to learn together on what the key really means on the horn. Yes, you want to be able to increase tempo each day but increase is a very relative term and progress is progress. 

Jazz guys, yes, the Ferlings have benefit for y'all as well. Etudes are useful for anyone wanting to improve facility on their instrument. 

Let me know your thoughts. Give it a try. See what you think.

SECOND Disclaimer- If you struggle to get through your twelve major scales, have never attempted scales in thirds, or don't know the terms 'natural, harmonic, and melodic' in reference to minor scales....let alone terms like 'whole tone' and 'octatonic'...Perhaps you should bone up on those before trying this practice regimen.

Ok kids,

Set the metronome.....

.......annnnnnnnnnddd....

GO!!!!!

Know Your Audience....and Help Lead Them Along the Way!

Greetings from graduate school at Nevada, Las Vegas *GULP*


  To arrive here required me to do ten hour drives for three days in a row. This gave me plenty of time to think about things saxophone or music related. One of the things I thought about was a performance during a studio recital last spring. I performed Ryo Noda's Improvisation One. This is an unaccompanied piece which, thought not totally atonal, uses some 'interesting' techniques in order to make the saxophone sound like a Japanese Shakuhachi flute. I think it's an interesting piece. Not everyone in the audience was a fan; my dad included. He said 'Well, it's clearly takes a mastery of the instrument to play the piece but I didn't like it.' I expected as much!
   My dad grew up in rural central Arkansas in the 40s and 50s. The music that would have been coming through the family's radio would have been early country artists like Hank Williams, big bands like the Dorseys, a healthy helping of southern Gospel acts, bluegrass, and Texas Swing Bands (a unique genre combining country and big band, look it up!). He left Arkansas after graduating college and went on to complete both a master's and PhD in Math. He taught college for over 40 years. In that time, dad's listening 'vocabulary' has been greatly extended to include orchestral and choral works as well as quite a bit of chamber music. However, it hasn't gone so far to really understand and enjoy pieces steeped in atonality or unusual 'extended' technique.

Great, now you know about my dad and you're thinking 'So what's the point?'

 The point is this. I get it, as you begin to truly master your instrument and learn all of these cool techiques like multiphonics, slap tonguing, circular breathing, extreme altissimo, etc., you want to show them off and have every performance be an outright 'chops-fest'. Here's where the danger in that lies- and I've seen this.

YOU MUST REMEMBER YOUR AUDIENCE.

   There are usually a lot of 'dads' in an audience, especially at the high school or college level. They aren't ready for, nor will they appreciate, an hour's work of squeaks and honks in the name of furthering the possibilities of the instrument or some such. This doesn't mean don't play that sort of music. This means to simply try to better understand your audience and for every Christian Lauba chopbuster, add a Poulenc, Schumann, or Debussy. Stretch their ear, sure, but give them something to musically cleanse their pallet as well. Your ego cannot be totally in control of programming. They aren't there to hear how well you play that multiphonic. They are there to hear music and be entertained. You are simply the medium for providing that entertainment. As much as I love the Albright Sonata, more folks in a general audience are going to enjoy the 3rd movement of the Creston Sonata far more than they are the 3rd movement of Albright.


Hey jazz guys, I'm not forgetting about you either.

 One of the biggest things I see hurting the jazz scene is players who spend hours trying to 'out Coltrane' each other. Again, stretch the ear of the audience some but remember that Miles Davis' epic album Kind of Blue is the largest selling jazz album of all time for a reason. It's just inherently listenable to jazz aficionados and neophytes alike. Yes, you can give them 'sheets of sound' and play 'out' for a while but remember to bring it back in. You might actually have an audience start to show up on a regular basis.


It sounds in this like I'm instructing people to 'sell out'. I'm not. I'm simply stating that one of the problems I see in non 'pop' genres of music is that we've tried to become too intellectual, too forward thinking, almost arrogant.....with the attitude of "Well, they aren't ARTISTES. They don't understand. "

    You're right. They don't......and that's why they aren't showing up to hear you play.

The Power of Social Media.....in the right hands.

Social media is an interesting concept.


On the one hand, you have folks who post without fact checking, post pictures of their dinner, and cannot do a bench press without reporting it to the world (and relationship issues broadcast on social media. Man...).


On the other hand, if you know how to work social media properly, you'll get practice tips from seasoned, professional, often big name musicians and even make contacts which can affect your life in ways you couldn't even imagine.


I spend WAY too much time on Facebook. I admit it. I have a problem. Having said that, there have been some major positive impacts on my life. I've met and made friends with a lot of the 'heavies' in the saxophone world. I've gotten to take part in countless great pedagogy discussions. I've even gotten to promote recordings of myself in the hopes that some professors might hear them and be interested in having me audition for grad spots.

Funny I should mention that...

I auditioned for two graduate schools this fall. Both auditions came about 100% due to social media. Neither was I school I might have considered otherwise. Both turned out to be great programs. One, as it happened, was the perfect fit.

So with this I can announce that due to a friendship/working relationship that 100% began on social media, the next step of my journey begins.

In January, I begin my tenure as Professor Mark McArthur's graduate assistant at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Music.

If you are smart about how to market yourself on social media AND put in the work to be a better player, good things WILL happen!

Back to work. I have a Master's degree to worry about now!

My Upcoming Challenges

I graduate this week (12/10/16)

That has me thinking a lot about the next step and the skills and philosophies I need to begin to solidify.

• As I begin grad school there are still some real fundamental issues with my playing which need to be addressed. My undergrad professor has been excellent and has helped to improve my playing greatly. To move to the next level, however, there is still work to be done (and likely always will be). I think this is something I wouldn't have grasped at 18-22 years of age. The first step in improving is realizing that there is still work to be done. I'm ok and my senior recital did include some pretty aggressive lit, including the Dahl Concerto and Fuzzy Bird Sonata. If I wish to include names like Lauba, Bolcom, Berio, and Albright in my rep list, though, it isn't so much extended technique that needs work but simply technique. 
• I need to begin to figure out how to balance the assigning of technique/etudes/literature. Here's the reality. If you get a DMA and IF you are fortunate enough to get a real job you are likely going wind up at a gig where the majority of students are music education majors. Most will end up as band directors or elementary music teachers. That's fantastic (and requires more patience than I have). However, what it often means is that they put the horn in the case following graduation and rarely, if ever, get it out again. Therefore the dilemma is this: Yes, you want to assign enough technique for the student to reach a certain level but.....I think it would be a shame to not allow them to attempt as much of the literature as they can, WHILE they can. Finding that balance is a skill I'm going to have to develop.
• Music Education is a brutal major. My non music major friends might not understand this but music ed, along with nursing, are the two most hours-intensive majors on a college campus. My job as an instruction will include how to challenge my students and give them enough to make them better without burning them out or contributing to an overuse injury. I've seen both and neither are any fun. 
• I need to put things together as an educator so that my students have opportunities to participate in master classes with as many guest artists as possible. I want them exposed to as many teaching styles/techniques as possible. I also need to get them involved in competitions like MTNA and Fischoff early and often. It isn't necessarily about winning. It's about getting literature worked up to a very high level and performing it for people for whom you don't regularly perform.  This goes back to burnout. How does one balance this with everything else the student has to do. 
• I need to learn how to balance genres in my teaching. Saxophone students need to recognize that as a saxophonist, there isn't just one genre to perform and if you learn just one you are limiting yourself as far as personal development as well as JOBS. The challenge is how to balance development in the 'classical' literature as well as jazz and other genres. I'll also be encouraging doubling. I cost myself a ton of money over the years not having learned clarinet and flute earlier in life. Orchestra pit jobs for musicals and shows pay WELL and will also keep my students playing after graduation.

Just some thoughts as I prepare to put on the cap and gown.