Where does music come from?

Evolutionary Neurobiologist Mark Changizi argues in a thought-provoking piece, that music is the result of "cultural evolution." The idea is that through evolution, our brains developed structures and abilities which, once in place, allowed for music to develop. I am with him up to this point. Changizi is not alone in this view, though perhaps he is more specific in his exploration of the types of earlier functions or abilities that may have allowed for music to develop. I do not, however, subscribe to the view that he and others seem to hold that music is "auditory cheesecake," and unimportant for survival or evolution. Music clearly serves social functions and in my view was an integral element in the social bonds that created our culture in the first place.

Ghosting

Ghosting is a practice technique that helps free the left hand. Pick something to play, such as a scale, easy review song, or passage you are working on. Keep the bow heavy, but only lightly touch the strings with the left hand. The sound will be awful, but this is about the ghostly, light feeling in the hand. Next play the selection again, but sinking barely into the string. I suggest thinking of bending the string, but less than half-way to the fingerboard. The sound will still be terrible. Remember to keep the bow heavy even though the left hand is so light. For the third time you play the selection, sink in more into the string with the left hand, but not all the way to the fingerboard. The sound will be better, but not really clear yet. Then for the final time sink into the string, just to the fingerboard.
This increases your awareness of excess tension in the left hand, and really feels good. It is also a disassociation exercise, since the right arm will stay heavy even as the left is so light. I encountered this exercise through Richard Aaron, who produces such beautiful students. They all play with such ease up and down the fingerboard. Enjoy!

Tonalization: Waking-Up the Cello

Continuing my ongoing study of tonalizations:

Often a tonalization is about one specific thing to focus your awareness on. In this one, the point is to notice the feeling of the vibration traveling from the string, through the bow, into the hand, and up the arm as far as you can feel it. It is helpful to soften whatever muscles you can, so this tonalization helps with relaxation. As with many of these, I'm not sure whom to credit with the idea. I am passing it on as I learned it, but in my own words.

Swing Your Bow Arm

The ability to play with the weight of the arm released into the string is wonderfully freeing. When playing in this way one feels ease and power. This is easiest to feel closer to the frog, but the feeling can be transferred throughout the bow. The following idea helps quite a bit:

Dancing Trolls

I have a new favorite image for pretty much any tonalization. Elaine Fine writes a wonderful blog I have started to read, and she suggested there the idea of imaginary trolls that live under the bridge. By using the "mental image of directing the vibrations of the string towards the bridge," one finds rich deep tone. The idea holds potential for so many creative variations, such as 'feeding them' the vibrations or 'paying them a toll' in order to enjoy the rich sound, or just trying to 'make them dance.' 
Anyway, for me, the idea of directing the vibrations toward the bridge or trying to send them into the bridge makes me want to play close to the bridge, and wanting the most vibrations possible makes me try to balance heavy weight and speed almost automatically. I've tried it with a few students already as well, and it just works so much more easily than saying things like "play really close to the bridge and keep a full sound." It also has this simple and rich cue built in that can work as a quick reminder: "make those trolls dance!" Try directing the vibrations and get those trolls dancing.

Settling in to the Sofa

This is a follow-up to an earlier post on a tonalization I love, called the "sofa exercise." It's a great warm-up that involves dropping released arm weight into the frog from above the string. At least ten down bows on each string reveals a lot of opportunities to improve body use.


The follow-up exercise builds on the heightened awareness of released weight, but extends slightly more toward expressive gestures. Instead of just doing a simple, released down bow, try starting closer to the string (or lightly on it), and slipping in an up bow just before the down bow as you are releasing the weight.  It should sound like a pickup leading to a beat, so that the down bow is still the loudest and heaviest part of the gesture. Think of a sixteenth before a half note, with a crescendo to the half note. Feel the weight reach the bottom as you make the down bow, with it still on its way down during the short up bow.

The Perfect Swing

Another sports one here. I was reading a Sports Illustrated in a waiting room last week, and found an inspiring article by Tom Verducci. The article is about Albert Pujols, perhaps the best hitter in the history of baseball. Excellence in any discipline is always attractive and fascinating, and Verducci delves into much of Pujols life, providing insight into his motivations, practice habits and struggles. You can read it here.


My big take away is the way Pujols starts every day working on his fundamental technique as a hitter, his swing. He starts early at the park by hitting off of a tee, trying to "put that perfect swing on it, and repeat it." Of course, he has some rather specific characteristics that define a perfect swing. He knows what it feels like, sounds like, how the ball behaves in flight, where it goes, etc. His swing is used as a template for other hitters by major league hitting coaches. It is efficient, "a technical wonder, a kinetic event that causes the most mayhem with the least effort. But if you had to reduce it to its most astonishing element, it would be this: He brings his hands to the baseball faster and more directly than perhaps any other man who has ever lived."


This reminds me of how a top performing cellist practices as well. Early practice goals each day should be about achieving physical ease and released body use.


Pujols is also brutally analytical, having every swing he has ever taken in a major league game on video on his computer. They are all indexed by year and results. He compares what was going on at different points in his career, noticing things such as the angle of the bat head just before it comes forward, the relative position of his elbows, and his weight distribution.


Musicians need to do this kind of work as well. There is so much useful information that we can use to get better that we simply don't have access to while we are in the act of playing. Audio and video are so easy these days. We really have no excuses.

Disassociation Exercise

Lately in my teaching, I've been particularly aware of technique problems that arise when two of the things we are doing are affecting each other. The example that triggered my exploration was to do with interruptions to a continuous vibrato. Often in practice we are trying to coordinate different movements so that they can become fluid. Other times, however, we need to do one kind of thing with one part of the body, and another somewhere else.

More Communal Singing Please

Karen Loew, writing in the Atlantic, laments the lack of communal singing from our culture: How Communal Singing Disappeared From American Life. I heartily agree. Loew suggests, "in these divided times as much as ever, we need to do some singing and feeling together, united as both citizens and amateurs."


As I read, I was reminded of Steven Mithen's book, The Singing Neanderthals. Mithen explores the origins of music and language, arguing that a holistic musical protolanguage actually preceded language as we now have it.

dancing or clawing?

I heard a little interview the other day with Steve Young, the Hall of Fame NFL quarterback. He was being asked about the potential problems on a team (the Jets) with two quarterbacks that fans may want to see play. Young is particularly able to speak to this since he began his career backing-up Joe Montana. In talking about his experience, he said something that of course for me connected with cello practice.


He said, "every great player...claws their way to it. nobody dances their way to it. It is a clawing against all odds, everybody is out to get you [mindset]." He also said that those players "fight for those reps. Nothing is given--everyday is a competition." He said that he was completely annoying in his back-up role, always asking the coach for more repetitions in practice, and pushing to get on the field.


Really effective practicers will identify with this. I think of really effective practice as practice that accomplishes a lot. Practice should be judged by how much better you get, nothing else. This kind of practice will be full of struggle and frustration. I don't mean that it is overwhelmingly difficult, and without any success, but that it is staying difficult enough that we are at the edge of our ability. There must be a strong motivation in order for us to put ourselves into this kind of place over and over. The great athletes like Young love to compete and that motivates the attitude toward practice he described. When a person really loves music, they have strong ideas about how it should sound. It is very bothersome when it doesn't sound that way, and they are frustrated by it. Then the clawing comes naturally, and the progress comes fast.

Stop Practice

I use and teach a practice strategy that I call "stop practice" that is terrifically effective for certain types of problems. This post will be my attempt to lay out the basic strategy as I use it, and I expect to write future posts elaborating on various more narrowly focused aspects of the strategy. Perhaps the most common example of a problem well-suited to Stop Practice would be executing a particular shift correctly, consistently, and with ease. Stop Practice can be applied, however, to any kind of problem where a specific transition can be identified as needing work.

I call this strategy "Stop Practice" because it involves playing up to the transition, stopping in order to think, then going on.

Arts Education=Civil Right?

This brief article (reprinted at the blog link below) by Anthony Brandt is fascinating. Brandt draws on one of my areas of high interest, brain science, to make a case for another interest of mine, arts education, as a civil rights issue. He makes a compelling argument. I have long felt that the developmental benefits of early arts education are so powerful as to make it in society's interest to invest in it for the public good. Taking it another step, to the level of a right is at least an idea worthy of provoking discussion.


See what you think:


It’s About Freedom of Thought: Why Arts Education is a Civil Rights Issue

Changing a Habit?

I've been working with an idea for my students for when they are trying to change a habit, such as a different bow hold (the example I'll be using). The problem with a habit is that once whatever you are playing is sufficiently hard, not only are you back to playing with the old habit, you aren't even able to notice it, and you can't correct anything you aren't aware of. In order to make the new habit, you need to correct the old one many, many times. So, as I've come to put it, in order to change a habit, your goal is to be able to 'notice while hard.'

How do we work on this?

Whole Body Awareness

Teaching groups this past weekend, I tried a riff on some ideas from Carey Beth Hockett. She's one of my favorites. She's big on using movement to discover freedom in body use. I chose five large muscle group movements to do while playing French Folk Song (one-at-a-time).


They were:


Body Bowing. This is essentially twisting the shoulders to move the bow while keeping the arm in one shape. It helps connect with back muscles, and has numerous implications.


Sinking and Floating. Collapsing the stomach and lower back, then 'floating' back to a tall posture. I love Carey Beth's terms here. I ask the students to keep the instrument in contact with the chest in the same place throughout. This means letting the knees be off the sides.


Rocking on the Sitz Bones. I also like "one buttock playing." This one is pretty self-explanatory. We rocked by the measure. Helps connect with the feet and feel the different coordinations of the lateral movements in the whole body with those of bowing. It is good to explore rocking in the same direction as the bow, in the opposite direction, and at a pace that requires variation.


Head Down, Head Up. Keeping the frame tall, drop the head forward from the base of the neck. Then let it fall back, looking straight up at the ceiling. Again, change each measure.


Feet Out, Feet Back. Reach feet out as far as possible, heels on the floor. Reach them as far back as possible behind the legs of the chair, toes on the floor.


So we played French Folk Song once doing each of these things. Then we played it switching with each phrase. I did it with three different groups. With the younger groups I didn't do much explaining, letting them just do it and feel some of the implications. With the older ones I suggested a bit more to ask them to be aware of. As I do these myself, I feel better playing and am more aware of my body as I continue playing.

Coaching

Recommending this excellent article, Personal Best by surgeon Atul Gawande (also included below).


Gawande writes about his experience with asking for coaching from another esteemed surgeon in order to try to improve his skills. My own experience in a teacher training program at the School for Strings was that the practicum was most valuable. It does indeed require humility to actively seek criticism, especially once one is accustomed to being the authority. On the other hand, if Tiger Woods continues to have a swing coach, and Renée Fleming a voice coach, shouldn't anyone who wants to keep improving?


I think this is the point. If we want to get better, not just be good, then we have to be willing to work on our weaknesses, and at a certain point we will not be able to see those areas or know what to do in order to keep improving without outside perspective. Uncomfortable? Yes, perhaps. Worth it? If the coach is good, definitely.

PERSONAL BEST

Top athletes and singers have coaches. Should you?

by Atul GawandeOCTOBER 3, 2011

No matter how well trained people are, few can sustain their best performance on their own. That’s where coaching comes in.

I’ve been a surgeon for eight years. For the past couple of them, my performance in the operating room has reached a plateau. I’d like to think it’s a good thing—I’ve arrived at my professional peak. But mainly it seems as if I’ve just stopped getting better.

During the first two or three years in practice, your skills seem to improve almost daily. It’s not about hand-eye coördination—you have that down halfway through your residency. As one of my professors once explained, doing surgery is no more physically difficult than writing in cursive. Surgical mastery is about familiarity and judgment. You learn the problems that can occur during a particular procedure or with a particular condition, and you learn how to either prevent or respond to those problems.