Getting a good return in the long run

Performing musicians: Today I'm going to talk to you like I'm your financial advisor.

You need to diversify your portfolio.

It's a complex, competitive world out there, and if you want to be able to survive as a musician--I'm speaking here to people who want to do music for something other than a private hobby--you have to be open in the first place to the fact that you will probably end up doing some things that have nothing to do with what you thought you'd be doing, even in the field of music.

In the second place, however, it is almost certain that even in your specific vision of what you've got in mind you will find that the logistics, deadlines, and uncertainties of day to day operations make it necessary to really on every skill you've got in your arsenal. Unless you've just got the one, then--look out.

It's become sort of a joke around here lately that I like to play the piano with one hand while taking pictures with the other, but I've actually been cultivating my skills at multitasking a lot these past few years. When you perform with ensembles, particularly amateur ensembles, you generally need to be able to help them while helping yourself at the same time. And on Sunday morning during a church service you never know what will happen and how you will need to deal with it. I've been learning to perform distracted--and to consider that what I'm hearing and how to deal with it is an important part of music making, and not something I need to screen out.

On the other hand, I've also been honing my concentrating skills, which is the complete opposite. I used to tell my students that even if the Blue Angels flew overheard during their recital they had to ignore it and keep going. I once kept on playing through a fire drill, so I think I've got the cred. I figured if things were really on fire they'd come back for me anyway.

Anyhow, the important thing is I'm still here.

The other important thing is that, in a given week, I do plenty of sight reading, plenty of playing by ear, plenty of making things up on the spot, composing, and especially problem solving to figure out how I'm going to get everything done and done well. This week I did all my recording on Monday because I knew it was going to be 4 below zero the rest of the week and I like to record with the heat off temporarily so there is less hum on the recordings, and at those temperatures you can't maintain any semblance of heat for more than a couple of minutes. So I've spent the rest of the week composing three pieces a few weeks ahead of their deadlines, and jamming in rehearsals as needed. Basically you have to size everything up, figure out when your opportunities present themselves, and do what you can do when you can do it. I've gotten better at that over the years.

It's a pretty diversified life, and I like the challenge. Which is another skill you'll need. Challenge-loving. Along with discipline and hard work, it means you'll always get better at what you do, because what you are doing is always dealing with challenges. You can only improve what you practice, and the more you see something as an opportunity to practice it, (instead of complaining about it) the faster you'll improve.

A union of opposites

I've been writing and thinking about what does and does not constitute a good church musician. Last week I dared suggest that having a personality and/or an ego wasn't all a bad thing, despite everything I've ever read on the topic. The point wasn't to encourage self-centered attention grabbing on Sunday mornings, but to suggest that having to be mediocre in everything so as not to be noticed was not a very good solution, and that there are ways both to be excellent in what you do and even be noticed for it that need not be interpreted as interfering with the larger picture. As beautiful as stained glass is, it needs to have light shining through it in order to accomplish its purpose. On the other hand, there is something uniquely beautiful about the rays of light being refracted through all the ornate glass. Get it?

Something else that Mr. Nevin, our guest from last week, said, is this: that too many people use church positions to advance their careers. and become puffed up from holding such important positions. I found this rather amusing, because I never thought of having a church job as an indication that one is a great musician. Perhaps this is because there are so many of them (churches), and all but the largest generally do not have great music programs. Instead, in Bach's day as well as our own, the best, and often most career driven musicians head for the concert hall or the university, and leave the church to founder on its own.

As a musician of both the concert hall and the church, however, I have to say that very often what I do on Sunday morning is actually more challenging than giving a concert. The concert arena may be more prestigious, but the challenges of a Sunday morning require, at least in my set of circumstances, a greater variety of skills in order to do the job well.

First there are a number of skills which I learned at the conservatory. I learned how to practice and prepare sometimes difficult music quickly and well, to play accurately, fluently and musically, from the attack on the first note to the silence after the last, to pay attention to detail, to balance the parts, to listen to the sound and make constant adjustments so that the musical though was clearly articulated, stylistically accurate, emotionally satisfying, and sometimes viscerally exciting. This applies to playing on one's own as well as with others. It requires both technique and understanding, disciplined and thoughtful preparation and being in the moment.

Then there are a number of things that I did not learn at the conservatory. I have learned to create my own music, on the spot, and on reflection, sometimes writing it down. When I am improvising with others I listen to what they are doing and try to compliment it rather than getting in the way, taking the lead at times and following at others. I can play pieces in different keys if the soloist can't get up to that high G that morning. I can add a beat or a measure if the singer(s) didn't come in on time, probably so nobody will notice. I may have to add a few measure to the morning prelude if the acolytes didn't get started on time or communion took longer than we thought it would. If the offertory is in one character and the doxology is in another I try to make an introduction to the doxology that transitions smoothly between them. If the choir is in fine voice I let them sing a verse of the hymn with little or no accompaniment, adjusting my part as my theological imagination and the sureness of the singing allow.

Basically, there are two major areas going on here that do not apply in the concert hall. One relates to working with amateurs, for which there are any number of useful skills which really require a high level of musical understanding so that you can bring out the best in people of widely differing ability, and so that everyone, regardless of their skill, sounds better with your help. You can achieve this subtly. The other is that because of issues of timing and because there are so many different kinds of music required in each service, one has to continually be thinking, making decisions during the serice itself. Playing a concert, as highly skilled as you have to be, can in essence be a replication of decisions you have already made about how you are going to approach the music. You can't get through a church service that way. What ends up happening is that you have to plan ahead as well as you can, know your stuff, and then know how to deal with all manner of predictable and unpredictable situations that continually call on you to make it up as you go. You have to have something to contribute and you have to listen to what everyone else is contributing and help them to do it well. This calls for a combination of skills that deal with the written note and the unwritten note, creativity and re-creativity. It is a union of what seem to be opposing skills, particularly when one considers that the nature of each of them is to make it unnecessary to have recourse to the others (for instance, planning well seems as though it would leave nothing to chance and no room to improvise; planning to improvise does just the opposite!) and yet, when one's best efforts in one direction inevitably break down, there are the other skills to prop you, and everyone else, up.

I realize I've said enough in the last paragraph to introduce about 50 blogs on the topic, and eventually, I'd like to do just that. In the meantime, I'll finish up with a little anecdote.

This summer we had a guest pastor. I was trying to be helpful before the service and pointed out to him that ordinarily on weeks that we have communion (as we did that Sunday) we only sing one hymn; however, probably by mistake, all three appeared in the bulletin. However, I told him I was not only flexible but was ok with last minute decisions. So if you'd like to sing the hymn, just announce it. You can decide right at the time, I told him. If you announce it, I'll play it, and if you don't announce it, I won't play it.

Well, about a minute before the hymn, as the liturgist is reading the scripture at the other lectern, the pastor whispers over to me, "let's not do the hymn." ok, I said. I closed the hymnal. I was this close to leaving the organ bench to join my wife for the upcoming sermon. Then the liturgist announced the hymn!

One of the skills I forgot to include above is that it helps to be able to play hymns from memory. Or, failing that, to be able to play with one hand while finding the hymn with the other. Or, you can just make sure you talk to the liturgist before the service, if you can find them in time! There is generally more than one solution. But they don't always work, which is why you always have to be thinking ahead to plan B, and, for heaven's sake, have a good time with it!

Doesn't this sound like something you'd like to do on a Sunday morning? Believe me, you'll never be bored. Not if you're doing it well.

You have my sympathy

Sometimes, before I gave a new student his or her first piano lesson, I would get up from the bench and look at the keyboard this way:

That wasn't just to get a different perspective. It was because from that angle the keys dissolved into an ocean of identical looking plastic levers, an endless horizon of black and white. Viewed from the normal direction I cannot help feeling that each key is different from its neighbor--I don't just see keys anymore, I see a cotillion of individual keys, each of which somehow looks different from the others. It is as if all the Cs are a different color than the Ds and the Es. I am instantly at home and instantly know how to find my way around. A new student, of course, does not, and it is good to remind oneself of what that must feel like every now and then, and to be intrigued by the possibilities, as well as a little daunted by the unfamiliarity. It is an exercise in disorientation.

There is more than one way to achieve such disorientation, however. Last week I started work on a contemporary sonata for trumpet and organ. The concert is under just under a month as I write this, so I basically tried to come to terms with the entire 28-page expanse in four days. It was an experience.

The reason I am writing about it is that, for the last three weeks on the Wednesday portion of this blog we've been talking about the importance of seeing music--of understanding music--in groupings, in whole words and phrases, as both an aid to interpretation, and as an aid to learning. First I offered an apologia for why this is very necessary, and then some brief examples on how one goes about doing it. It has become instinctive for me, but it is noticeably not that way for many of us, and when it isn't, the playing suffers by at the least being uninteresting, and in some cases, rather incompetent. (The first three parts of the series are here, here, and here.)

Having offered advice, which, depending on your skill level, might either seem self-evident, revelatory, or daunting, I'm going to take a detour from the practice of finding such patterns in the music to offer some personal experience with the musical equivalent of flying blind. This is because the internet offers such a large and completely unsorted audience, from all kinds of backgrounds, which means that there is always the possibility that, in the midst of what I hope will be helpful hints toward the furtherance of an individual's journey, what will happen instead will be some head shaking and the phrase "easy for you to say." In other words, I've built up a lot of different skills over time and they work together well to allow all manner of playing difficult music in fairly large volumes, and the human tendency to expect such results without the same work over the same length of time might lead to a good deal of frustration and the sense that what I am saying is not particularly relevant to you. In such a case, consider this a bit of empathy.

One of the things that makes it easier for me to learn a piece of music is the ability to understand what musical materials the composer is using. Information like the key signature isn't just a fact to be known, it tells me what to expect in the piece to come in terms of the feel of the key's hills and valleys, or the rise and fall of the melodic patterns. If I can see what harmonies are present in each measure, I can even fake parts of it if I don't get the page turned in time, or my sight reading skills fail to provide me with all the detailed information in time. I can paraphrase if I forget something while I'm playing from memory. But my memory is in turn strengthened by the ability to hear the piece in my head and to be able to reconstruct it from the recording that is playing in my head--in other words, I can play by ear while I'm playing my sight (reading the notes in front of me) or playing from memory. And I improvise, which means I can fill in any information that fails to come by those means by simply making it up until the crisis is safely past. This sort of redundancy is like having four engines on a plane making a transatlantic flight. If one fails, you still have three to fly with. If two fail, you still have two left. Vastly different musical skills compliment each other.

But consider the problem of learning a largely a-tonal composition in a few days. There are no predictable scale or chord patterns in such a piece. Instead, the composer seems to like to play a D major chord in one hand with an F natural in the other. Or a G# will be present in the right hand, with a G natural in the other, and a G-flat in the feet. Such discords cause two problems:

One is that I have been training my hands and feet to "think" in traditional harmonic patterns and they instinctively avoid notes that are dissonant. The advantage is that even when I'm totally guessing at notes because my brain isn't working fast enough to properly read everything I'll still fill in with something that sounds harmonically acceptable. That is a large part of the reason some people think I don't miss any notes. I miss more than they might think, but most of them don't even sound bad. It's a nice habit to have built up over time, but in this case I have to virtually rewire myself to be able to play what is in the music.

The other is that wrong notes don't sound any more wrong than the right ones, which means it takes longer to figure out whether I'm playing the right notes since I can't hear them right away. It took me several days to be able to tell when I was playing wrong notes. This was an advance--even though I was still making errors in practice, at least I could tell! I'm not used to having to wait several days for this to happen. Granted, if I could "sight read the shit off fly paper" as one colleague memorably said about another when I was in grad school, I might not need to rely on those other skills as much. In this case, pattern recognition is, at first, getting in the way. Until I learn the new patterns.

The long and short of this is that I basically had to play each musical gesture a large number of times in order to "get it under my fingers." The principle way this occurs when your ear is not able to help you "hear" each gesture is by feel. You hands have to memorize the feel of each chord, its special topography. This is a slower way to learn, but it eventually works. I still recall the summer I spent before my junior year of college trying to learn a Scriabin sonata entirely by memorizing the feel of each chord, each gesture. The harmonies were at the time way beyond my comprehension: I could only come to terms with the piece by sheer repetition. Even at the recital I was frightened of the piece and was playing it with the sense that I could only get through it by remembering each detail from force of habit. These days I would understand and recognize the patterns used in the piece and would be able to breathe much more easily, and to even paraphrase if I got lost (which, in turn, makes it less likely that you will get lost in the first place--funny how that works).

Muscle memory is an important way to learn, but I find it works much better if it is accompanied by the ear being able to recognize each musical element by the sound of it. That way, when you are away from the piano or organ, you can perform the piece with your ears closed by both seeing yourself perform it, feeling the keys beneath your fingers, and hearing the sounds. If all three of those things are in working order, you are ready to play the piece. Not to mention you can still get in practice time on an airplane.

Not being able to do all of these things, or to integrate the various skills, makes learning that much harder. I got a reminder of that last week when I began work on the sonata. It was like doing a bit of time traveling, back to a time when those skills were less developed, my musical understanding much less keen. This was in college, mind you. Every year since I've graduated I've improved in some direction. Working hard and working smart will do that. But suddenly, a different sort of musical experience will throw one back on his heels, and some of your assets actually become liabilities, or are at least canceled out. It can be frustrating. And even that can be helpful in its own perverse way.

First, it helps to refine my empathy skills, and to be able to say to musicians who have not developed either their ear-training/hearing/playing by ear skills or their sight-read like heck skills or their instantly memorize anything I come across skills, I understand. It's a long process, and a difficult road at times. But the more you are able to do these things the more time you will save in the long run and the more time you will have to actually make music and enjoy life because you will spend less time being tripped up by the mechanics.

So let's say I've come back from the future to warn you. The time is now. It is always now. Do what you can to shore up you weaknesses, even a little at a time, because they will come back to haunt you. They always do. Bwahahahaha!

Happy Halloween.