Lately there has been more and more discussion about how classical music is going to survive.  Those discussions are certainly valid, given the seemingly endless battle to keep the arts alive in our society.  Keeping music (as well as the other art forms) intact as a viable career option is obviously hugely important to most people reading this blog.  You can browse the internet, finding tons of proposed solutions for keeping arts afloat, but one of the most common suggestions is finding alternative performance spaces.

From bars and restaurants to parks, boats, warehouses, coffee shops, and art galleries, it seems like almost everything has been suggested.  Let me start off by saying that I don’t believe there is anything inherently wrong with performing music in any of those spaces.  I think there’s room for music almost anywhere in life.  If we could give real musicians jobs playing in elevators to do away with Muzak, then I’d be all for it.  However, I think we’re getting so caught up on WHERE we can perform, that we’re forgetting to ask ourselves WHY we’re playing there.

It seems to me that art galleries are one of the new “go-to” performance spaces.  I’m not really sure if the economic downturn has hit the visual art world square in the groin or not, but regardless, many musicians have decided that art galleries are the new “it” place.  Perhaps they heard that art galleries have money to blow on music (not sure that’s true…), or maybe it’s all based on the assumption that someone who is interested in art would probably be interested in “art music,” but whatever it is, you can’t turn around without running into someone booking a performance at a gallery these days.  Freelancers are cold-calling art galleries like the Zombie Apocalypse is tomorrow, and they need to get that one last gig booked.

Like I said before… I don’t think there’s anything wrong with art galleries on their own, or even as potential spaces for music performance.  Here’s my problem though… What’s the motivation for booking a gig in an art gallery (or any other space, really)?  I get the overwhelming sense that for 99% of people, it’s just another bank account to tap into so that they can make their rent payment.  I get that.  Paying rent is necessary.  However, what I’m not seeing nearly enough of is a real artistic purpose for these art gallery (or other alternative space) gigs.  Most people are missing the opportunity to develop a really killer inter-disciplinary presentation/performance.  The music world is absolutely saturated with connections to other forms of art.  Visual art, sculpture, photography, cinematography, architecture, and many others have overt ties to pieces in our repertoire.  People in those disciplines know about the composers who are writing our pieces.  Why are we not taking advantage of those potential connections?  Why are we not creating something meaningful?

All too often people show up to play in an art gallery, and maybe they get put in a contemporary gallery (to match their contemporary repertoire), but they could care less what’s on the walls around them.  To them it’s just a room to fill and a check to take home.  So what kind of connections can we make?  Well…  One of the most obvious examples is Xenakis’ music.  Most percussionists know of Xenakis’ background as a mathematician and architect.  If you’re in school, do some research and find a building on your campus or in your town that relates to Xenakis’ work.  Arrange a performance in that space and talk about how the pieces you’re playing relate to the construction of that very building.  Or, arrange a viewing of some Kurosawa films, paired with performances of Takemitsu’s music.  Takemitsu scored some of Kurosawa’s films, after all.  Seems like a pretty easy connection to make, and it could be really interesting for an audience.  The connections go on and on, but you have to make them.

What’s going to “save” the music world isn’t going to be finding new places to do the same old thing.  It’s unreasonable to think that if someone doesn’t understand Bach in a concert hall that they’re going to have some incredible epiphany about it when you play it in a bar.  We have to find new ways to engage our audience, stimulate all of their senses, and help them make big-picture connections between artistic disciplines.  Where we play can certainly be part of that, but it should only be one aspect.  If we want our audiences to “get” what we’re doing, and ultimately want to hear/see more of it, then we have to work harder to show them why it’s important and how it’s relevant to the world around them.

First of all, I know what you’re thinking, and this isn’t that type of website…  So, now that we’ve cleared that up, onto the post!

I, like many college students, have spent the last few years of my life living in an apartment.  Honestly, I can’t wait to move out and buy a house.  Without going into my thoughts about apartment living, and all of it’s good and bad qualities, let me make one observation…  Living in an apartment has been one of the best things to ever happen to my marimba playing.

OK, so now you’re probably REALLY confused.  What the heck does living in an apartment have to do with getting better at marimba?  Allow me to explain.  A few years ago I took the plunge and decided to buy my own marimba.  It has been huge in allowing me to make large strides in my marimba playing.  I never have to worry about fighting for practice room time, which most students realize is half the battle when you’re trying to get better.  When I first got the instrument I was living in a townhouse in Florida, with no neighbors on either side, nobody above, and the only thing below was my own living room.  Basically, I could play at any hour of the night and not have to worry about making anyone angry.  Perfect!  However, that wasn’t the case when my wife and I moved to Texas two years ago.  Rather than a townhouse, we found ourselves in a normal apartment, and one with many neighbors.  We’re on the bottom floor, but we have people across the hall, above us, and next to us with an adjoining wall.  Fortunately, my wife is an amazing woman, who understood my need for a second bedroom that would serve as a practice space, but I wasn’t convinced that our neighbors would be as sympathetic when it came to constant noise from my practicing.  Wanting to be a good neighbor, I decided to do something that I hadn’t done before, take the resonators off my marimba to allow me to practice without disturbing anyone around us.

Now, for most percussionists, a practice marimba isn’t a revolutionary idea.  Multiple companies make instruments that don’t include resonators, explicitly to cater to the people who are seeking a cheaper and quieter marimba to practice on.  Generally speaking, these instruments aren’t really meant to ever see the concert hall, but not many people are actually choosing to go the opposite direction and make their beautiful instruments less resonant.  Obviously, if I could have it my way, the resonators would be on, but after spending the last year and a half doing the majority of my practice on an instrument without resonators, I’ve noticed some pretty significant advantages to this situation.

The biggest, and most general observation is that when you don’t have resonators your sound is completely exposed.  The marimba is one of those instruments that people, percussionists and otherwise, easily fall in love with.  It has a warm, mellow, resonant sound, and even though that draws in listeners, it doesn’t help us performers get any better.  All too often, we “fall in love” with our own sound.  We count on the resonance of the marimba to make up for our lapses in technique, touch and bar placement.  The same thing happens on timpani, and just like on timpani, if you want to improve your sound you have to eliminate that resonance and deal with only your stroke and how the implement is contacting the instrument.  On timpani, we put towels or books on the drums to eliminate the resonance and work on evening our strokes, rather than using the resonance like a crutch to make up for our technical deficiencies.  The marimba equivalent is taking off the resonators.  Without their help, you’re on your own to sound good.

With the resonators on, it’s relatively easy to hear the difference between playing over the strings on the upper manual versus playing in the center or on the very edge.  However, once the resonators come off, it’s like night and day.  There is absolutely no forgiveness.  If you aren’t playing in the correct spots on the bars, you’re not going to get ANY sound.  The only thing that could be more startling than hitting one of those “clunkers” would be if they were accompanied by some sort of electric shock.  Honestly, hearing a sound that is that strikingly out of character is jarring enough to make you notice, and hopefully make the proper adjustments to your playing spots.

Bar placement may be the simplest problem to diagnose, but problems with technique and especially with touch can also be discovered on an instrument without resonators.  The  only way to achieve a resonant sound (relatively speaking) without the instrument’s help is to have a relaxed stroke that allows the bars to vibrate freely.  Frankly, if you can sound good on an instrument without resonators, when you go to one that has them, you’re going to notice a major change in your tone production (in a good way).  The same goes for articulations, which can be magnified by resonators.  But, when they are perfected without that additional help, the player becomes even more expressive and flexible when transitioning to a normal instrument.

This principle can also be applied to ensemble rehearsals.  Besides all of the advantages for individual sound and technique, taking resonators off of instruments means that players are only hearing their attacks.  If you’re a director who is looking for a way to really maximize your group’s uniformity and rhythmic interpretation, this could be a useful tool for some rehearsals.  Obviously it’s not practical to rehearse this way all the time, but it may come in handy during sectionals or for a percussion ensemble rehearsal early on with a lot of detailed work being done.

Hopefully some of you get a chance to try this out and find it useful.  I know it’s done a lot of good for my own playing!

Well everyone, it’s been too long since my last post.  With the semester getting underway, and lots of stuff going on here in Austin, blogging has slipped down my priority list.  That’s not to say that I haven’t been mulling over some potential topics, but time to write them has been severely lacking.  However, here’s one quick thing I wanted to get out there.  Maybe this will propel me back into regular updates…

We (as in musicians) talk about practicing all the time.  That’s for good reason, since practicing is one of, if not the single, most important things that we do to improve.  There are all kinds of resources out there dealing with how to practice.  I’ve written about it at least a couple times in the past.  Right now Dave Gerhart has a great article up at DrumChattr about metronome tips.  A few years back Percussive Notes ran a whole issue devoted to practicing.  Advice about how to break down difficult passages, memorize quickly, improve technique, and just about every other practice-related topic abound.  However, there is one thing that I feel is rarely mentioned when we talk about practicing.

When you practice, how do you organize your time so that you can achieve the maximum results.  Now I’m not talking about organizing time to get to everything you need to do, including your daily sight-reading, technique building, solo rep, etc.  What I’m talking about is organizing things in a way that allows you to stay on task and engaged throughout the process, which will yield much better results.  For example, have you ever gone to practice, only to get continually frustrated by something that you’re trying to learn?  The next day, you try again and pick it up immediately.  Some might say that that’s happening because you practiced it yesterday, got the first day difficulties out of the way, and had processed it overnight.  That may be a small percentage of it, but I (and others) have found that the timing of certain types of practice within your daily practice routine can greatly alter your productivity.

Let’s look at a pretty common scenario.  A person is juggling a few different pieces that they’re trying to learn.  For this purpose, let’s just say they’re all marimba pieces.  Pieces A and B they’ve had for a while now.  They can play through the pieces slowly, but they need some more shedding to get all the kinks worked out and get them up to tempo.  Piece C is already at the level where it could be performed at any time.  They’re working on big picture stuff.  Refining phrasings, balance, and developing consistency, etc.  Piece D is brand new.  It’s hard, and it’s got a lot of notes and stickings to work out.  It’s not a lot of fun to work on at the moment because of how daunting it is.  So… What’s the best way to organize those pieces during your practice session?

Well, if you’re me, and I will say that this is purely personal and others may have different ways that work for them, I have to attack D at the start of a session.  Personally, repping short sections to increase tempo and consistency (pieces A and B) is sort of a mindless thing.  Obviously I’m mentally engaged in the process, but I know the music, at least in short sections, and I’m just trying to build muscle memory.  However, starting a session with an hour and a half of repetition like that is still tiring.  When you’re done, it’s not the time to start the most tedious and demanding portion of your practice.  That’s like getting up and running a 10k in the morning and then going an hour later to run a marathon.  You’re nowhere near your best.

Ideally, you’d put your work on piece D at the start of a session, when you’re fresh and motivated.  Follow it up with piece A or B, and finish with some of C, which should be relatively easy to do since you’re not struggling through it.  Another good idea is to schedule multiple practice sessions throughout the day, so that you can have two or three times a day that you’re walking into the practice room fresh and ready to attack whatever you’ve been struggling with.  Limit this intense, focused block of time to show bursts, say 20 minutes, to keep from burning out.

Hopefully, when combined with all of the other practicing and time management advice available, using this method will save you some headaches and let you make significant process in your practicing!

I’m really lucky.  Like, REALLY lucky.  I have had three teachers who I am absolutely convinced are three of the most amazing people to study with anywhere.  Coincidentally, they all share at least one common belief: Put yourself out there, take lessons with other teachers, take advantage of the multitude of guest artists that are brought in, do festivals, seminars, and masterclasses, go to PASIC, and basically get as much knowledge as you can, from as many sources as you can, so that you can distill it all down and integrate it into your own playing.  It’s that philosophy that has pushed me to explore many opportunities over the years, one of which will serve as the topic of this post…

In the summer of 2007 I participated in both the Duff timpani masterclass, as well as Michael Burritt’s seminar at Northwestern.  It was during one of Prof. Burritt’s discussions that an interesting, and very important, point was made.  You are your own best teacher.  Think about it for a minute… Let’s say that you practice an average of 4 hours a day.  In a week that’s 28 hours.  Now let’s estimate that you are in rehearsal for about 2 hours a day, Monday through Friday.  That’s 10 more hours of playing in a week, for a total of 38.  Most students receive a one-hour lesson each week, so call that 39 hours total.

Now, let’s do a little math.  During the week, you are getting one-on-one instruction from your teacher 1/39 hours.  That equals slightly more than 2.5% of the time.  If you practice or perform more often, that percentage drops.  For example, an average of 6 hours of practice and 3 hours of rehearsal per day would give you 42 hours of practice and 15 of rehearsal, meaning your lesson is now 1/58 hours in the week.  That’s 1.7%.

What does that mean?  Well, basically it means that (using the conservative estimates) you are completely on your own approximately 97.5% of the time that you are playing.  You have to self-diagnose and correct problems that arise.  You have to make decisions about how you’re going to organize your practice time in order to get the most out of it.  For all intents and purposes, you are your own teacher.  You might have chosen a particular school because of the percussion teacher that you really wanted to study with, but regardless of where you are studying, we’re all teaching ourselves more than anyone else is teaching us.  The ironic thing is, the harder we work and the more we practice and perform, the further removed we become from our “teachers”.

Consider this scenario… You’re a senior in college and preparing for your senior recital.  Imagine that your teacher decided that they weren’t going to work with you that semester.  You would probably panic.  You’d be nervous and unsure of all of your musical decisions.  You would wonder how you were ever going to get through this performance without the guidance of your teacher.  Well, what if your teacher came to you and said, “OK, you can study with me, but I’m only going to work with you 2.5% of the time that you are playing.”  Still you’d panic.  2.5% is hardly anything.  You might think, “Well gosh, if I’m only going to see you 2.5% of the time, why see you at all?”  Realistically though, that’s exactly what’s happening, but nobody seems to realize it.

Maybe you have already come to this realization, and if so, great!  You’re probably ahead of the curve.  If not, it can be pretty startling.  So what does it all mean?  Do you look for a college program to attend that has longer lesson times?  Do you practice less in order to increase the ration of teacher/student-led practice time?  Well, no, you don’t do either of those things.  There are really only a couple of things to do in response to this…

1) If you’re a student, try to get the absolute most out of your hourly lesson with your teacher.  You only get 15 lessons a semester.  You have to make them count.  This can mean anything from making sure you show up on time, to coming prepared with good questions to ask about issues that you are having, and definitely putting in the individual practice time to make your lessons worthwhile.

2) If you’re a teacher, remember that your ultimate goal is to make your student self-reliant.  As much as teachers would like to, you cannot shift the ratio of individual/teacher-led practice time back into your favor.  You have to equip the students with the tools that they need to address their own issues.  There simply isn’t enough time to discuss every note of every piece, especially if students are covering the amount of repertoire that they should be in a semester.  You have to think big picture.

3) If you’re a student, look for guidance however you can.  Let’s be honest.  It’s hard to evaluate your own performance while you’re playing.  Recording devices are extremely helpful in this scenario.  However, there are other ways to get feedback about your playing.  For example, one of the biggest assets to a student percussionist is their colleagues that they are in close contact with.  Play for each other and give constructive criticism and/or praise when it is warranted.  Maybe one of your peers has had a lesson with your teacher on the piece that you’re learning.  They can give you a lot of insight before you even take it into your lesson, which means that you can spend your lesson time going to the next level of depth.  You can also find help online through video lessons/tutorials, message boards, and other mediums.  Be creative and don’t just rely on your one hour lesson for all of the guidance that you need.

4) Also for students… Keep in mind.  This is how the real world works.  You don’t have a teacher over your shoulder coaching you through all of your professional engagements.  If you take an orchestra gig, your most obvious source of feedback is going to be the conductor, which is an employer/employee relationship, rather than the less-stressful teacher/student.  If you have an issue in the professional world you are responsible for solving your own problems.  That could be anything from mallet choice to interpretation to instrument selection.  Get used to figuring things out on your own.

Like I said at the beginning, I’m fortunate to have had three amazing teachers to guide me thus far.  Despite the mathematics of the situation not being in our favor, I valued our lessons and did the best I could to take advantage of our time together.  You can’t find world-class instruction just anywhere, and when you do, you should make the most of it.  But, don’t forget that ultimately, it’s up to you.

“Cleaning”

It’s one of the most often-heard words in the percussion world, especially when it comes to marching percussion.  ”Clean up those rolls.”  ”We need to play clean.” etc.  It also happens to be one of my biggest pet peeves.

Too often I hear people talk about “cleaning” as if it’s this mystical process where teachers take students and suddenly make them play well and together.  Cleaning is somehow being separated from the learning process, as well as from the technique-building process.  I don’t understand how that makes any sense.  The best groups and players do it right the first time.  They learn the music one time, slowly and methodically, emphasizing the proper technique and musical effect.  I am constantly reminded of the famous John Wooden quote:

“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”

That’s the problem.  You DON’T have time to do it over.  You can either do it once, correctly, or not at all.  Learning music, whether it’s for marching band or any other setting, is not something that should be divided up into stages.  As another famous quote goes…

“Begin with the end in mind.”

In other words, if you’re in the learning stages of a piece, then you have to have an idea of where you’re going.  You have to consider the eventual tempo, dynamics, technical demands, phrasing, balance, and all of the other factors that go into great playing.  You can’t take it in stages, and you can’t hope that after hacking through something for weeks or months, you, or your students, are going to magically start playing it perfectly because you finally got a chance to “clean” it.

I know that there is a lot of pressure on us as players and teachers.  For example, band directors want their drumlines ready to run through the opener with the wind players after a 1 hour rehearsal.  For us, that’s usually unreasonable.  So what can we do?  Well, in the case of marching band, we can get the students their music sooner so that they can be practicing on their own, have more outside rehearsals before the pressure is on, have students working on technique and music in private lessons rather than counting on doing everything in ensemble rehearsal.  Is that extra work?  Yes.  But, it’s what you have to do to make things work.  The same things can be applied to our individual playing, or in almost any other musical situation that we may find ourselves in.

No matter what… Can we please just stop talking about “cleaning”?

People always ask me “What’s your FAVORITE instrument to play?”  And yes, they emphasize “favorite” that way.  Anyway, I guess that’s what I get for playing an instrument that is really a bunch of instruments.  I never know how to answer that question though.  I like it all.  However, I do really love snare drum… Like… A lot.

Why do I love snare drum?  Well, because it’s the best of both worlds.  Being good at snare drum requires absolute rhythmic perfection, technical mastery, an understanding of touch and tone, and attention to every small detail.  Most people struggle to just get that far.  Frankly, the majority of people never get there.  They make harsh or inconsistent sounds, rush, drag, and fail to execute passages.

Ahh, but all of that is just the first step.  If this was an orchestral audition that would get you through the first round.  Actually, that IS what gets you through the first round of an audition, which is sort of frightening considering how few people often advance.  All of them being weeded out based on just being able to play the music.  Pretty telling.

OK, so let’s say that you’ve got part one down.  You can execute like a champ.  Congratulations, you’re only halfway there, and THIS is why I love snare drum.  Now all of that artsy-fartsy, interpretive, musical stuff comes into play, but here’s the difficult part, it has to be done within the context of your ultra-perfect execution.  You’ve got to have dynamic shape, musical character, articulation, rhythmic inflection, and everything else that demonstrates your superb musicianship.  That’s what separates a great performance from an absolutely world-class performance.

Too often snare drum gets turned into one or the other…  It’s either SO analytical that it lacks any real musical content or sensitivity, or it’s so “artistic” that things like tempo, rhythm, and consistency get thrown out completely.  Rarely is it both, but when it is, when the two are balanced by a great player, the snare drum can be the greatest barometer of a percussionist’s skill.

I’m certainly not suggesting that I am the world’s greatest snare drummer, not by any means, but recently I’ve found myself both playing and teaching with these thoughts in mind.  It makes me want to spend a lot of time with my snare drum and all of my favorite method and etude books.  I wish that I had the time for that… Maybe I should MAKE time for it…  Regardless, it’s interesting that after all of the years playing percussion and making music on a wide array of so many beautiful and unique instruments, I find myself returning to that old, familiar friend, my snare drum.

No matter how many new method books come out, lately I’ve found myself always gravitating back towards the classic exercises and books that have been around for years.  Frankly, I’m absolutely convinced that no matter how many new-fangled snare drum methods with CD’s, DVD’s, online tutorials, etc, there is just no substitute for George Stone’s “Stick Control,” a mirror, and a metronome.  Same goes for two-mallet playing (Green’s “Instruction Course…”, Bailey’s “Calisthenics”, and the Goldenberg), four-mallet playing (Stevens’ “Method of Movement”), and timpani (Goodman, Lepak, Hinger).  Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t amazing percussionists writing very helpful methods full of enriching etudes, because there definitely are.  Kevin Bobo has his book of crazy exercises and permutations, Mark Ford has his “Marimba Technique Through Music” that I use with almost all of my students who are just starting four mallets, and Joseph Tompkins’ book of French-American snare drum etudes are practically lighting the world on fire.  I love all of those things, and so many other great books, but so often I find that what’s lacking in students are the basic concepts of touch and technique that can be developed in the most (seemingly) elementary books.

That’s really all I was going to post today.  Just this observation.  I find myself going back to those books all the time, and I really wish that the rest of my life allowed me the time to just sit and work through those books over and over on a daily basis.  I’m convinced that the world would be a better place if everyone did 30 minutes of Stick Control every day.