Time and Crime (or, "You can call me Al")

In other posts I have discussed the benefits of a prescribed practice routine. A process and not a goal. It builds a foundation on which your musical interpretations can stand. If one gets bogged down worrying about technical details, a musical-rhetorical presentation is not possible. Once you and your instrument become one with each other, you may begin a dialogue with the music and your listeners.

In another post I've given detailed instructions for practicing, the flute player's prescription, with an underlying message of "if you do this, it will come," that is, a relaxed physical technique. The other part of that message is that if you do exactly as prescribed, you will make progress.

And in yet another post, I pointed out that there has been one student who has done exactly what was prescribed and guess what? He has made excellent progress. In fact, in the past few months student Al Pha has taken it "to the next level," as people say.

I recently heard Al Pha play in a house concert. The loud cracking sound you all heard was me, breaking my arm patting myself on the back again. One small suggestion made a couple of months ago turned into a huge leap in playing technique.

The downside to Al's recent leap in physical technique is that he now finds himself in the cracks, so to say. He's a "'tweener," now too advanced to get any benefit from playing with a current local group of players, but not yet in the place to work with people who are driven to play professionally. Two comments here: 1. Al could benefit from working with the current group if he chose to work on leadership skills, and making musical analyses in real time (with some prep work in advance, of course), such as "the bass line moves in this direction at this rate, so the treble lines need to do X"); 2. Mr. Pha could get to the place where he could work professionally; Al just needs to decide whether or not he wants to do that. Number 2 comes with several steamer trunks of less-than-fun things, such as dealing with the gross insecurities of people who get threatened by anyone with a musical backbone, ensemble leaders who feel obliged to put everyone in their place, or my favorite, inferior players who feel a need to try to "lead" in their section, and point out any flaws (real or imagined) of the person sitting with them, regardless of their own ability.

It is one thing to go through this apprenticeship of dealing with the neuroses of other people when you are in your twenties and perhaps still in college, trying to figure out what you want to do. It is quite a another to deal with this when you are an established and well-respected professional in an unrelated field. Or even when you are an established professional in mid-career (my bacon continues to get burnt to a crisp when I sign on for a gig and I hear the conductor say something like, "I've always thought it would be fun to do this piece with a Baroque orchestra," and "I'm going to conduct this section in 8." Yeah. Right. I bought a scalpel on eBay and I think it will be fun to practice appendectomies on people. And, yeah, right, the ALLA BREVE mensuration symbol of course means that it must be conducted in eight. Eight what? Eight slaps upside the head because you are too lazy to do anything but indulge your ignorance? Eight times I dunk your head in the privy (and only pulling it out seven times) because of yet another uninformed decision?

There are, to be sure, some positive aspects that Al Pha can look forward to. For one, musical decisions are, in theory, not based on someone's technical limitations but on what the group feels the music has to say. And music can be made with minimal effort spent on playing together, working out cues, and playing in tune. In retrospect, the musical benefits reaped in the past twenty-five years far outweigh the Gauntlet of Psychos that had to be run in order to get to where I am. And, in the same way that mushrooms have a symbiotic relationship with trees, insecure knuckleheads have their own symbiotic relationship with good gigs and players. They will always be there but, as noted in David Arora's Mushrooms Demystified, these toxic fungi are "better kicked than picked."

Stay tuned for further Al Pha updates.

The Magnus Liber

The Magnus Liber Pineda Dictae:

• I can take this guy (respect every piece but fear none; observe, think, then react and you can play anything you want).
  
• Speed doesn't kill if you know how to drive (musical decisions are never based on technical limitations).
  
• No guts, no groupies (This needs no explanation).
  
• Carpe per diem (seize the per diem)
• Just brew it (or, as Mark Twain put it, "Talk about a war by a soldier who has been in one is more interesting than talk about the moon by a poet who has never been there;" or, simply, put up or shut up).
  
• If in doubt, get off the stage (or, as the Boy Scouts of America say, "Always be prepared;" if you are not prepared, what the heck are you doing on stage?).
  
• The car is a Zen-do, not a weapon (the vehicle is for transportation, not for venting anger; "Don't drive angry" -- Bill Murray in Groundhog Day).
• Eat your crow while it is piping hot (own up to your mistakes right away; crow tastes really bad if you let it get freezer burn; a nice temperanillo or a sip of Cuervo helps it go down).

Less is more (or, Let your fingers do the walking . . . )

October 15, 2009

I've been in a weird mood the past three months. A wee bit grouchy, feeling a lot of stress, perhaps have been a bit curt, short, or otherwise abrasive with people. Three days before our wedding anniversary (which is the same day as the Feast Day of San Lorenzo and the Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico in 1680), the MCAT got some bad news. My life now revolves around three things: taking care of the MCAT until her recovery is complete, taking care of the house/yard and dog, and keeping my head above water in my musicology studies and teaching duties this quarter.

As much as we wanted it to, the world and time did not stand still while we started running the gauntlet through the treatment and recovery. I still had other things to do, such as play a concert with the gang in Seattle. The concert meant that I had to practice and prepare, write program notes AND a pre-concert talk/lecture-demo sort of thing (piece o' cake; "no problem, Mr. Binkley").

I started doing what needed to be done in order to meet my own personal standard for public performance. I was working on fumes, not fuel, emotionally and physically. Yes, I have been working out in earnest since the anniversary, yes, I enjoy practicing and getting ready for a concert, and I love playing concerts. But the MCAT is/was foremost on my mind.  As mentioned above, there was a bit of a grouchiness factor to the rehearsals for the concert, and I just did not feel in a compromising, collaborative mood. I had made up my mind on how I wanted things done and I just did it that way and didn't care if there was any resistance.

Speaking of resistance, there is nothing like exchanging a bunch of cheesy movie dialogue with friends to demonstrate the rhetorical principles of Geoffrey de Vinsauf ("How are you going to land on Venus using fractions?").  It took a Taurean attitude and effort to make me realize that resistance, is, in fact, futile in certain circumstances. No matter how resistant I was to my situation, and no matter how much I tried to control my pre-concert environment, things were going to be the way they were going to be and I was not the entity to control them.

I let go. I was just going to play. Lean back, stand up straight, and not force the music or musical issues. It was going to be a standing meditation while playing the flute in a public concert. From the first conscious thought of letting go to the actual release of my illusion of control and authority over the musical situation, there was more music coming out through less effort. I consciously said to myself during the concert, "let go; just play, your body knows what to do, the rest of you is unimportant." It was one of the most relaxing experiences in my life, to stand there and make a conscious decision to do as little as possible, physically. I video taped the concert and watched it about two weeks after the event. The person playing flute looks much taller than the same person in the same concert series a year earlier. The earlier incarnation is very intense, and had to play something that comes in at around 168 for the quarter note. Pretty fast stuff, and watching that video recording you can see the effort being put forth.  In the most recent concert there were several passages of intense technical work, but on the video looks (and it felt) as if the player is doing nothing.

I checked my grouchiness at the door, along with a couple of steamer trunks worth of emotional baggage for the concert, and it was pure musical joy. My body was doing as little as physically needed, and a tremendous amount of music was realized, including by the other players. Doing nothing was, apparently, infectious and stimulating to others. Who knew?

Now during my practice when I notice that something is bogging down or that I'm just pushing too hard, I put myself back in the "resistance if futile" attitude and just let the music happen.

Did I mention that the concert was incredibly fun and relaxing at the same time?