The Accidental Teacher, Part 2

I’m a natural note-reader.  I learned quickly, thoroughly, and with virtually not work or struggle on my part.  It is truly a gift, and I am appropriately thankful.  I have had to keep this natural ability in mind, as a teacher, because many of my students struggle with various aspects of note reading.  To teach effectively, we teachers have to be very introspective.  With note reading, which is highly perceptual, this can be especially baffling.  I have delved into eye-hand coordination, spatial perception, peripheral vision, ad infinitum.  Over the years I have been fascinated with the idea of analyzing something that I can do with no conscious thought, turning that ability into qualitative and quantitative procedures, and helping my students read music and play the piano.

The ability to play “by ear” was NOT one of my gifts.  Possibly due to the ease with which I learned to read music, improvising was not a necessity and I had no reason to learn.  I do remember my first teacher remarking that I seemed to “jazz up” pieces.  This really was not improvising.  I found that, with the guidance of a musical score, I could make some changes, elaborate on the harmonies, and transform what I was seeing into something else.  Take the music away, however, and I was frozen into inaction!

My high school did not have a jazz program, or a jazz band.  The first such ensemble I ever heard was in college.  I would sit on a balcony overlooking the band room while the best jazz band in the Midwest rehearsed.  I was amazed, inspired, and left in total incompetence.  My first “lesson” in jazz improvisation came from a trombone player named Carl; he was a nerdy little guy that had written some really hot arrangements for the jazz band.  He sat down with me and gave me an ostinato of parallel 7^th chords and told me to “play around” to find melodies that fit.  “Keep the ones you like, and throw the others away.”  OK, Carl.  Sure thing.  But gradually I developed some ideas that sounded good.

At this stage of my life I have learned to improvise pretty well.  I felt, somehow obligated to acquire these skills.  Learning to improvise has definitely helped me with the composing and song writing I’ve done.  I’m definitely not ready for a prime time jazz club, but I understand the principals, and have freed myself from the fear of the unknown.  Well… not really.

I have been musing about the very nature of teaching students to play the piano.  What I want, as my own goal, is to have people that think of playing the piano as a lifetime occupation.  I want my students to learn to read music well enough that they can and will go to a music store, find something they would like to play, and have the ability to discover how to create music… from scratch.  Accomplishing this goal is not an easy task.  There are countless neural, ocular and motor abilities that comprise piano playing.  We are, literally, athletes in every sense.

When I began teaching I had it all wrong.  I thought I could just explain to my students how I did things.  I would prepare lesson plans that I thought would cover all of the aspects needed for any given piece.  I thought I could break the whole down into manageable parts, communicate effectively, and sit back to watch the magic unfold.  Yes!  And pigs will fly, won’t they.  I thought it was all about MY TEACHING, when it really was about THEIR LEARNING all along.

With experience I learned that I would have to be, rather than a lecturer and human audio-visual aid, a diagnostician.  I learned to listen and watch my students play their assignments.  I learned to analyze what was preventing them from playing well.  I learned to start with their reading, the ability of the student to process what is on the page.  From there, we trace the entire process of reading and responding to the written score.  It learned that it has to be my experience that is active, and not any prepared lesson plan.

But wait!  What I'm talking about now is improvising.  This is why I still get nervous before lessons.  I have never gotten quite comfortable with the demand that I must think, and act, instantaneously.  I still wonder if I’ll be up to it.  The outcome is not insured, or predictable.  I am not in complete control, as I would be with a prepared lecture.  I fear the lack of control, and yet like with improvisation, learning can happen spontaneously.  It is a thrill when something unexpected happens in improvisation, and the same is true with real teaching.  We, the teacher and the student, can meet in a place beautiful, unpredictable and unexpected.  It’s why I love my job.

I Can't Stop My Leg

The other day my wandering mind took me back to a comedian named Robert Klein.  I stumbled upon Klein in one of those early days of cable and HBO in about 1980.  I’d never heard of him and when I heard his stand-up act he had me from his first song.  For those of you who don’t know Robert Klein, or have forgotten him, his most famous monologue is a song called I Can’t Stop My Leg.  {click the link to hear the song} The thing that struck me was that Robert Klein had MY LEG.

I have always had trouble with my left leg, for some reason.  Early in my piano studies I discovered the soft pedal.  I used it obsessively, and it became an addiction.  I had no idea why, but as soon as my fingers touched the keys my left foot stomped down on the soft pedal.  It seemed to comfort me in some manner, but it disturbed my teacher more than it comforted me.  She was in a rare assertive mood when she told me (jokingly, I think) to tie that leg behind the piano bench.  Be an obedient, Lutheran boy, I did just that.  I think it helped.

Not long after that a dear man, the father of a new friend, introduced me to traditional Dixieland jazz.  He had been stationed in New Orleans during his tour in the U.S. Navy.  He got his jazz chops there in the womb of all jazz, and he somehow taught me what I needed to know.  I remember listening to hours of old, scratchy LP’s of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven bands.  Louis’ wife, Lillian, played piano with the band for some years.

I played Dixieland jazz in a couple of different bands in my life.  Almost as soon as the first gig my strange left leg found new purpose; it bounced rhythmically, but uncontrollably, when I played jazz.  The leg understood the music, and it danced.  It danced so much that people began to comment on it.  This was almost like a prayer answer for my left leg’s rehab from the soft pedal chastity belt that I had imposed.  My leg now had an addictive, but non-threatening habit to replace the bad habit.  So, although Robert Klein wrote the song, I Can’t Stop My Leg, I think I have a few years’ claim on the invention, thereof!

For those of you who have read some of the other posts in my blog, Fingers Dancing, {link} you know of my early struggles with piano performance in college.  My sophomore year was a virtual seething pit of incompetence and failure.  Most smart young men would have moved on to a law degree or some such.  For some reason I knew in my heart that I wanted to perform and I knew equally well that I could.  After some soul searching and rearranging my outlook, my Junior and Senior years were triumphs.  I can still remember the first time my left leg came to life during a real, classical performance.  I had been assigned the Third Piano Sonata by Norman Dello Joio, an American composer.  I loved it, and it loved me.  It had an intriguing; mystical sound and embedded in every page was the primal rhythms that woke up my “jazz leg.”  I was invited to perform Dello Joio’s Sonata on an important program of American music, and I eagerly accepted.  I was vaguely aware of “the leg” doing its magical dance, and afterward I remember the now-familiar comments about that incorrigible appendage.  Evidentially, it went crazy in some of the more rhythmically demanding sections.

This event was the largest audience that I had ever performed in front of; the 300-seat hall was full, and there were people standing in the back.  I remember peeking out at the audience before I went onstage, and instead of scaring me, I couldn’t wait to get out there.  But the most significant thing that I took away was that my leg could love classical music, as well as traditional Dixieland jazz.

Even in graduate school my mentor was a little offended by my Dixieland band.  Somehow, for him, my efforts on behalf of jazz were, at best, a waste of time, and at worst, a betrayal of concert hall music.  We simply agreed to disagree on that point. I have since learned that good music is good music, no matter the style.  Classical music was born of folk music:  Haydn’s Symphonies are rife with peasant dance themes and rhythms; Brahms and Liszt would have lacked for ideas without the music of gypsies and Hungarian peasants; and Chopin constantly went back to his Polish roots for ideas.  In the 20^th Century Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein wrote concert music, ballets oratorios and operettas using blues and jazz themes and rhythms. 

Music is not sterile and no music deserves to be deified and placed into a museum.  In my twenty years as a college professor and piano recitalist I took the message of my leg to the concert platform with me.  If my leg was engaged in the dance, I could be sure that the story I was telling my audience was bona fide.

After having spent twenty years as a college teacher playing two or three classical programs every year, it is interesting that today the people that I see regularly only know me to play jazz.  My students’ parents know, at least on some level, that I play and teach classical music, but they sometimes seem surprised or amused to find that my musical tastes run the gamut from blues & bluegrass to traditional jazz and Celtic music.

This should not be a surprise.  Those forms of music are attractive to my leg!  They have the rhythm of the heart and soul.  Classical pianists should marvel at the technical prowess of a bluegrass banjo player.  Around the year 1946, when Earl Scruggs was first recorded, people heard a vastly strange, new and exciting sound coming from a banjo.  It became known as “three-finger style,” and was based on a roll pattern of three fingers with banjo picks, playing a broken chord.

For me, the most amazing thing about three-finger banjo technique is the elaborate patterns and sounds that arise out of minimal movement.  Watch a banjo player with his calm, almost bored demeanor, and then look at the mandolin player, flailing… almost seeming to play with his whole body.  Good piano technique is efficient, uses a rotation of the forearm to bring the fingers into contact with the keys, and should be calm.  Flailing fingers are not good piano technique.  Good music is good music, and good technique is good technique.  Style does not enter into the equation.  I work hard to help my piano students develop their techniques, and watching and hearing a good banjo players keeps me focused on basics. 

Have you even hear the cornet playing of Louis Armstrong?  Most that have can identify the sounds of Satchmo’s playing.  He had an almost unique phrasing, and gave an articulation to his melodies that would make Chopin stand up and notice.  It is doubtful that Louis spent much time in a conservatory practice room, or under the tutelage of a master teacher.  He invented his sound, born out of the folk music around him.  His “jazz leg” was his lips and that satchel mouth.  Listening to ancient records of his bands gave me my most basic instruction in traditional jazz.  But good phrasing is good phrasing.  Phrases have shape, and inflection.  Phrases are goal oriented.  Phrases combine in ways that create, and relieve tension.  Louis Armstrong knew this intuitively.  Conservatory pianists would do well to let their ears dance a little, and understand that melodies are not collections of notes to acquire, but living breaths of air and melodies that soar on the wind.

Musical ensembles of all sizes, from duo sonatas to full symphonies, work to blend their sounds.  Decisions have to be made about which instruments, at any given moment, are the most important.  Ensembles with and without conductors work to make sure that they are rhythmically “tight” and the world famous ensembles are just that.  Many other fall short. 

But have you ever listened to a New Orleans-style jazz band?  With no music stand or sheet music, they take turns with solos, and then for the last couple of choruses, they blend into the most amazing crazy-quilt of sound.  Giuseppe Verdi worked hard to write ensembles that blended three or four characters, singing their own individual stories, together into show-stoppers.  They are amazing, but no more so that the instant creations of a jazz band.

Have you ever seen a bluegrass band?  The choreography alone is worth any price you might pay.  Traditional bluegrass bands use one singel microphone.  As the various instrumental soloists come to the mic, the other musicians move out of the way in an elegant pattern.  They accomplish something that the directors of plays do with hours of rehearsal; they call it blocking.  Bluegrass bands just call it a night’s work.  And then, the singers come together in harmony, three or four singers on the one microphone.  They accomplish, in real-time, what a sound engineer takes hours to do… create the proper balance of sound between solo and accompaniment.

And Irish Music!  What can I say?  I think this style is buried in my genes.  Bluegrass music has its roots in Celtic music, and they are similar in many ways, yet distinct.  My wife and I traveled this summer to several music festivals… all non-classical music.  We heard bands from Ireland that maintain the traditions of Irish and Scottish music.  We heard uilleann pipes, great highland pipes, pennywhistles, bodhrans and spoons. 

We heard the Del McCoury bluegrass band; they maintain the purest traditions of bluegrass (McCoury worked with Bill Monroe before he died.)  And we heard traditional dixieland bands from all over the country.  These, my friends, are not the fat, old men in pinstripe vests of yesterday.  These are bands headed by virtual musicologists that have gone back to listen to, and analyze the style of some of the best Dixieland bands in history.  They were authentic and true to the sounds of the greats.  And they made my leg go crazy!

I only hope that whatever music I endeavor, be it classical or not, and that whatever music I teach, makes legs dance, and hearts sing.

The Friend of My Friend is My Pool Mentor

I’m pondering the feasibility of appealing to the federal government for a grant.  I want to buy a pool table for New Horizons Music Studio.  No, I’m not joking at all; if scientists can get grant money to find out why mice like cheese, why can’t I… I mean New Horizons, of course… get a simple pool table?  I would like to teach all of my students the basics of a good billiard strategy.  Bear with me now, as this all will tie together with the brilliance of a Bill Cosby monologue.

If you have been reading this blog for a while you might remember an article titled Geometry, Pool and Piano Playing.  (You can read that article by clicking the link.)  In this I touched on the relationships I found in pool playing and the art of piano playing.  Recently with one of my gifted students I found myself relating the tale of my pool “mentor”, Gary McCarty.  In this time and in this place I hereby relay the story to you, dear reader.

I do love pool a lot; I never called it billiards.  First, that sounds way to British and proper.  The places I went to learn to play pool were called Pool Halls.  Some of them were called bars and taverns.  They all smelled musty and moldy and I loved everything about them.  The drawback was that they cost money, and I didn’t have much.  I would go with my friend Doug Boyce and we would play as many games as we could.  Doug was always better at it than I was, but I found out soon enough that he was getting extra practice.  He had a friend, Gary McCarty, who had a pool table in his garage.  So, I acquire a “friend of a friend.”

Gary could really play.  He always beat me.  It made me mad; partly because he beat me, and partly because I was a little jealous of his pool table.  But Gary did me a real service.  He taught me, in a few simple lessons, how to play pool and the piano much better.  I don’t think I ever thanked him, but let the good thoughts go out to wherever he is today.

It’s all about the cue ball, you see.  I used to take a shot, hard and aggressive like most things I undertake.  I’d spy the “2” ball, cherry-red… just sitting there on the table.  By calculating the angle, using the cue ball to hit the 2 in just the right spot, I could slam that sucker into the nearest pocket.  Such a triumph!  And then… I’d look around and Gary McCarty’s balls blocked all of my balls.  Damn, such bad luck, and always happening to me!  Curses, Gary McCarty!  I will tolerate you, but only for your pool table.  Is that a superior smirk I see on his face?

I think I must have been overly unobservant back then.  I never could figure out why Gary had so many good shots.  Why?  I asked him.  The master then gave me my first lesson.  He declared that he decided ahead of time where his cue ball should be… AFTER his shot!  I had never thought that far ahead.  I didn’t even know it was possible to “place” your cue ball.  He explained.  He demonstrated.  Did you know that you can make the cue ball freeze at the exact spot where it strikes your “2” ball?  Or, did you know that you can make it move to the right or the left, quickly or slowly, depending on where you would like it to be AFTER you nail the 2 ball, and send it to pocket-heaven?  This gave my game a whole new direction.  Think ahead.  What a concept!

Gary McCarty taught me to think ahead, and plan out my moves.  He taught me the technique of achieving that goal.  I would learn later that this is what has to happen in my piano playing.  And now, I teach my students to think that way.  By the very method that we choose to practice the piano we are constantly targeting wrong notes and wrong rhythms.  

My students’ first reactions seem to be to “fix” the problem by playing the right note, the right chord, and move on.  If they are very persistent they might do that ten times during a practice session.  When they come to their lessons, I listen for these places.  I call them “stutterings” and “hiccups.”  I tell them that if they continue faithfully to practice their mistakes INTO their pieces they will get very good and playing very badly.

The problem is one of strategy.  As in pool, you have to think ahead when you play the piano.  If your wrong note comes up and surprises you every time, you will play the wrong note.  This, it seems to me, is much like taking your one shot in a pool game, and leaving yourself with “no shape.”  When I make the object of my practice the AVOIDANCE of the wrong note, I am thinking ahead to where I want to be. 

I am positive that I learned to practice better by making the association between pool playing and piano playing.  This is the notice to all government grant-givers that piano teachers are now entitled to one pool table, and private lessons from one Gary McCarty.  I’m sure the government will be able to find him.  Please thank him for me when you do.

Bertha Burgundy

Several years ago Marian and I decided to buy a rain barrel.  We plant and water quite a few flowers, herbs and tomatoes every summer, and it just seemed like such a good idea.  Its free water and somehow we just knew that rain water would work better.  We were right, and the plants thrive.  The barrel is amazing; ¼ inch of rain will fill this huge barrel that started life as a wine barrel.  When we went to choose her, we could actually smell the Burgundy wine odor in the car on the way home. 

We have a rule in our house; anything that has a certain presence, an aura… a personality… must be named.  We have named our rain barrel Bertha Burgundy.  Big Bertha for short.  Online we saw all kinds of rain collection devices; some were made out of plastic.  Some were made to look like wine or whiskey barrels, and others look more like trash barrels.  Bertha is made of oak, and has the traditional metal bands around her.  She has been retrofitted with a spigot, and overflow outlet, and a small intake that allows rain to run from a flexible downspout right into her big belly.

There have been only a couple times that Bertha has been running low; they say that the Twin Cities have been in a mild drought, but Bertha seems oblivious.  That ¼ inch of rain is not too hard to come by, and the water has helped our tomatoes, hanging baskets, and two large garden areas for three summers.  I, and the flowers, worry periodically about the drought devastating Bertha’s moxy.  She has never failed us yet… and, yet…

I am that rain barrel.  I, too, feel a drought and the danger of running dry.  As a piano teacher, I expend tons of energy (my rain water) on my students.  When they have their dry spells… their droughts… I have to water them.  I have to urge, manipulate and cajole.  I have to motivate them to practice and get them so close to success that they can tell the difference between my “water” and the tap water of trophies and parental mandates.  I feel the of drought most clearly in the spring.  All of the recitals, contests, festivals and major repertoire have been mastered.  At times all teachers feel the weight of pushing their students, up hill and at times, pushing dead weight.  We know the pushing is necessary, and our investments will pay out; but still, the energy saps us, and we feel drained, much as Bertha must at the mid-point of summer (her peak time.)

The rain always comes, and Big Bertha Burgundy is replenished; as am I.

The Ghetto

One of the more interesting elements of music is the principal of dissonance and resolution.  Like a good novel, or a drama, music has to build tension, which ultimately will be treated with the resolution of that tension.  Part of a musician’s study is in how to recognize musical tension, and how to elegantly resolve that tension.  We musicians must become manipulators of that element, and we thus become manipulators of our audiences.  Hopefully we are kind and generous manipulators!

As a full-fledged musician, I totally believe in dissonance and the need for resolution.  I believe in harmony and the life-pulse of rhythm.  I find these elements in perfection within the music I love:  Brahms (God, how I love Brahms), Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and even the curmudgeonly Ludwig van Beethoven and the smarty-pants Mozart.  I’m being facetious; they all were geniuses at building a perfection we rarely are able to find in life.

I have made my life’s work the conveying of musical dissonance, and hopefully, the masterful resolution of all that tension.  I firmly believe that the dissonance that we find in other aspects of our lives is as important as in music.  I also have to believe, then, that every day dissonance can be resolved.  I find that musicians are constantly frustrated with the lack of harmony in life, and the erratic nature of rhythm we find in the people around us.  We instinctively retreat into our music, where we can control things and we rail against the non-understanding we find in non-musicians.  I would like to tell you a tale that not many have heard beyond my closest circle of friends.  This is a true story of dissonance and resolution that I found myself engrossed in.  I believe my heart and mind were shaped by the study of music and by my time practicing the piano.  I think this story is a time when my two hands touched the sky.

Back in 1981, before I had acquired tenure in my position on the faculty of Louisiana Tech University, I put the wheels in motion to sue my university and its president in federal district court.  This probably wasn’t the smartest career move a lowly Assistant Professor could make, but it was my move, and I gladly made it.  At the time I was the College of Arts & Sciences representative on the Faculty Senate.  Interested in the way the elements of the university worked as a whole, much as I was interested in the blending of the elements of music in my repertoire, I became very active in university governance. 

During my second year on the Senate I was alerted to a disturbing rumor.  It seems that the university, in their wisdom, decided that all international students (non-citizens) would be housed in one dormitory on campus.  I immediately didn’t like the sound of this; over a quarter break I took it upon myself to call the housing office to ask the head of that office if the rumor was true.  The person answering the phone was a staff member of the housing office, and he confirmed what I had heard.  I asked a few questions of detail, and he gave me enough information that I knew a basic timetable, exactly which students would be involved in this change, and even a basic rationale. 

After a short period of rumination I decided that I didn’t agree with either the changes being considered, or the rationale.  I called the President of the Faculty Senate to see what he thought; I called a couple of friends that were also on the Senate.  It seemed that a few people were disgusted by this new idea, but that the Faculty Senate had no say in this particular item.  The President assured me that he was empathetic to my feelings, but I should not count on them to make inquiries.

It was at this moment that I decided that I would have to do something, or nothing would get done.  I found the telephone number of the ACLU chapter in New Orleans, and using the “watts line” I called N.O on Louisiana Tech’s dime.  My initial conversation with an attorney in New Orleans was about an hour long.  He took all of my information, gave me an idea of what options there were, and told me, “I’ll get back to you.”  I have to admit, I was more than cynical, and I thought I was probably done with the whole exercise.  I was ecstatic when, a few days later, I received a call from a different man at the ACLU.  He had instructions for me.  I wasn’t qualified to complain, legally, about this.  A dormitory that forced all international students to be isolated from the American students they came to study with did not affect me. 

Before I could descend all the way to crestfallen, he told me that they needed me desperately to do something.  The international students, themselves, were legally qualified to bring a class-action suit against the university.  They needed me to contact students, to have them sign a document that would be prepared at the ACLU, and get the document back to them.  One of my close friends was a professor in the foreign language department; at this point he joined me in my efforts, and sent a student from Nigeria to my office. 

I remember Robert as a gregarious young man, and he fully understood what was required.  Although he expressed a little fear about any retribution he might receive, I gave him the assurances that had been passed down from the ACLU lawyer.  He would find students that were willing to sign the document gathering plaintiffs, and they would come to my office to sign the document.  Before the episode was over I had hosted over 300 non-white, non-citizen foreign students in my office.  I held the document until it was full of signatures, telephone numbers, etc. 

The big moment was when we all met with the ACLU lawyer when he made a trip up to Ruston.  We co-opted a classroom in one of the university buildings and the lawyer explained to everyone what the steps would be.  Robert and one other student were selected to be named on the class-action lawsuit.  Papers were filed in Federal District Court, and the process ensued.  I have still in my possession articles from the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Philadelphia Enquirer and several other newspapers that picked up the story of the International Student ‘ghetto’ planned by Louisiana Tech University.  In the end, there was a consent decree that admitted no malice on the part of the university, but the revocation of the International Student Dorm.  (This would have been the oldest building on campus, and one with no air conditioning in Louisiana.  The building had not been used for a residence hall, but the plans were to reconfigure it, without the addition of air conditioning.)

In the end, I received a call from the Clerk of Court, with a follow-up letter and copy of the Consent Decree.  He told me to watch out for any retribution the university might take against the students… or against me.  I was to call him directly if I suspected anything.

Dissonance-Resolution.  How does one handle these musical elements?  How does one handle the same in a life-situation?  I find little difference in the handling.  This remains one of my proudest moments.

To Touch the Sky

I think the shape of my whole life has been a fluke!  Or, maybe it’s fate… some ingenious design I knew nothing about and had no part in setting up.  I feel lucky, or blessed, but naïve as I am, I have just proceeded with the whole thing, and here I am.

I am positive of one thing:  my life really started with my musical training.  That was all something that I stumbled into.  My little red accordion, with fourteen bass keys, was the beginning.  Or was it?  My mother likes to tell the story that almost as soon as I could talk, I was singing.  Sitting on my potty-chair, “It is no secret what God can do; what he do to udders, he do to you too!”  I almost remember it, but I think that’s because she tells it to everyone; I’ve heard it so often it just seems that I remember it.

So, when the accordion was placed on my lap it didn’t take long for me to hug it and learn to get something out of it.  I didn’t play it for long, due to a move away from the city.  I can’t remember much about what happened, but there I was playing the accordion, and then I wasn’t.  When I was in sixth grade I bought a piano with money that I had saved by setting pins at a bowling alley.  It was really nothing I had thought about much, but when the piano was suggested to me, I kind of went with the flow.  Somehow, right from the first, the piano felt natural to me.  I virtually had no trouble learning to read music, and I loved practicing.  I still do.  I have made practicing one of the focuses of my life.  And I try very hard to teach my students HOW to practice, hoping that they may grow to love it as much as I love it.

I’ve never thought of practicing as being the same as playing the piano.  I instinctively warmed to the process of self-evaluation; of diagnosis; of corrective action.  I loved the repetition, but I don’t think I ever thought of practice as mindless repetition.  I’ve learned that although this is exactly right, not every piano student understands this, or feels compelled by the practice effect.

There was a time, while in the U.S. Army, that I didn’t get to practice very much.  I missed it.  I was in a military occupation that had me working with 1970’s level of computerized equipment.  My job was to maintain that equipment in a high level of order; that equipment ciphered classified military telephone communications and it would have been a breach of national security if the equipment failed.  I had never had any electronics training, and I found myself, the ubiquitous piano major/practice room nerd, studying along with guys that had Electronics Engineer degrees.  I never questioned why I was attracted to this field, or why I was able to succeed so easily in it.  I found out later.

When I left the Army and started graduate school I found that in some mysterious way I had improved at the piano.  I’d had no instruction and virtually no practicing.  I was a little rusty at first, but after a month I found that something had happened.  I even understood music theory better.  It seemed to integrate with my playing; as an undergraduate I had thought the theory just an irrelevant evil that took time away from my piano.  Although amazed, I really didn’t question why this happened.  I found out later.

Soon after I started my life as a university professor in the Department of Music at Louisiana Tech University I began voraciously buying books on music, and specifically books on piano performance.  I went to workshops, conferences and seminars.  I became a virtual convention-junkie.  One of the presenters that attracted me was Seymour Bernstein.  He was a gentle man that seemed to love his teaching and his students.  I witnessed him teaching in a master class; he interacted with the students in such a stunning display that it seemed he had taught them for years.  When I learned that he had just written a book, titled With Your Own Two Hands, I ordered it immediately.  And the earth stood still.

Seymour’s book, I found, was an amazing homage to practicing the piano.  His main premise in this book is that while many people will agree that life’s experiences influence the way one practices a musical instrument, he finds the reverse is true:  the skills gained from practicing influences our lives.  Practicing, for Seymour, is a path to the integration of one’s person.  Wow.  The more I read, the more I loved this book and this author.  I could see, no… I could FEEL so many points he makes in my own experience.  Practicing changes our brain.  Practicing affects our thinking processes, and in doing so, we find we have learned things, approaches, processes that we have never endeavored.  Fingers Dancing has been, for me, a description of how life has intersected with music.  I have often found a relationship of my music, my piano, to other facets of life.  I have described some of these particulars in previous blog entries.  This particular entry is to preface some rather important milestones in my life that came about, I completely believe, as a result of positive changes in my thinking skills due to practicing the piano for tens of thousands of hours.

The title of this blog entry refers to a quote of Sappho that Bernstein places in his book, With Your Own Two Hands:  I never dreamt that with my own two hands I could touch the sky.

The Accidental Teacher

Most people that know me, even in passing, know that I have deeply held ideas and opinions.  Its just part of my DNA.  Since I have always loved words and imagery, I often take my opinions into the “verbosphere” (like that?) and this is another of those well-intentioned rants.

I’m an accidental teacher.  I really never had opinions, positive or negative, about the profession of teaching.  Teaching was never what I imagined myself doing.  I dreamed of being a lawyer; but I would have only accepted being Perry Mason, and the job was already taken.  I could have imagined myself a journalist, writing impassioned stories, exposing injustice and corruption.  The problem was always that I loved to play the piano.  My first piano teacher disabused me of the idea that most professions would allow time for the amount of piano playing I required; all except one:  if you become a college professor you will be expected to play the piano as part of your job, she said.  The idea was like offering me my own warehouse of dark chocolate.  Yes, I’ll become a college professor of piano!

{Cut to 10 years later}

I had two interviews set up; the first was to be at Louisiana Tech University, in Ruston, Louisiana.  The second was to be a week later in Flagstaff, Arizona.  Both seemingly nice, hot places; I didn’t think I would miss those days where the ice coated the trees of Iowa City.  I didn’t have a Plan B.  My high school piano teacher had assured me that what I needed to sustain my life was in one of those two places.  I would become a college piano teacher, and play the piano to my heart’s content.  I didn’t even question myself when I learned in Ruston that there had been over 200 applications for my job.  It did occur to me that I was one of 5 semi-finalists.  Instead of spending my time worrying about the application process, I looked through the yellow pages of the phone book in my motel room:  wow!  50 Southern Baptist churches in the parish (county) the university was in.  I went to the university library and tabulated the books specifically dealing with piano music, piano literature, piano teaching, etc.  I found that my own library was far superior.  I knew I would have to fix that.

It was a good several days; I was feeling very good.  I talked to lots of people and knew that my biggest weakness… not being able to remember names… was going to be ultimately exposed.  I did spend a little time with one of my favorites pastimes; I loved to match people up with their instruments.  It always seems to work.  If you’ve ever met a drummer or a sax player you know what I mean.  They simply become their instruments.  I sought out the tuba teacher (I played tuba in highs school, college, and even in the Army when I wasn't busy with the Signal Corps).  He looked OK, smiling his "Oom Pah" best when he didn't know me from Adam.  I was only slightly taken aback when I was offered the job before I left.  But, what about Flagstaff?  I was able to get a stall of a couple of days, although they really wanted my answer right on the spot.  But, it was my spot that I was on, so I was allowed a decision period of 3 days.  I had decided by the time I got home, so I called and cancelled the interview in Arizona.

It was only after my first day of teaching Freshman Music Theory and meeting the piano majors that were relying on me that the thought struck me:  my boss had no idea if I could teach; I had no idea if I could teach.  What little experience I had was in a guided and protected situation, with lots of talented students that seemed that they would do just fine, with or without me.  Oh, reality, thou cruel, cold, damp towel that… OK, enough of that.  I had to think about how I was going to approach this.

I remembered the first recital I prepared without a teacher.  I was hired to play a whole recital for the Cecilian Club of Freehold, New Jersey.  I had a grand piano to work on, and time to practice.  Life was good.  OK, I know what I want to play.  Now what?  I listened closely, and I could hear the voice of my college teacher.  I knew what he would say.  “That went quite well,” which meant I sucked.  “Your Chopin is ‘growing’, but you haven’t gotten control yet.”  So I let John Holstad teach me that recital, in absentia.  It worked pretty well, so I thought I understood.

When my first piano major came to her first lesson, I observed the score of her Chopin Nocturne.  It was full of colors of many markings.  Joseph’s Coat had nothing on the E Minor Posthumous Nocturne.  She explained that the colors were the “feelings and emotions” that she would apply at the different points.  The look on her face when I expressed confusion, concern and not a little disagreement, showed that she missed her teacher from the previous year.  I, on the other hand, knew why they chose someone from the University of Iowa, rather than another Indiana University elite.  I knew that John Holstad’s wisdom would fall on deaf ears, so I had to think of something.

So I said, “Leslie, where are you having trouble?”  She thought for a while, forgot about her rainbow score, and played one of the phrases with the intense Chopin figuration that everyone agonizes over.  For myself, I just thought, if this were me, and my piece, what would I do?  Practicing is what I do.  Diagnosing problems and determining solutions… that’s what I do.  If nothing else, I know how to practice.  We got to work.  I worked with her for the rest of that year on technical matters that prevented her from playing the best she could, and on other little things that seemed to disrupt the flow of the pieces she had begun.  She had won a regional competition, and I helped her to move on to the state finals.  I helped her prepare for her admittance to the upper division, where she would have to play a short program for a panel of faculty.  She did well on both, and I felt very good about working with her.

Leslie taught me quite a few things; first, I learned that it really had nothing to do with my teaching.  It had to do with her learning.  Most of the information that I have explored since, in over 40 years of teaching, has had to do with how people learn.  It turns out that not everyone learns in the same way.  We, the teachers, have to figure out how each of our students can become… and then address them in that fashion.  There is no method.  There is no solution.  I found that I don’t teach music; I don’t teach piano.  I teach students.

Along the way, in twenty years at Louisiana Tech University, I noticed that something interesting was happening.  I was accidentally becoming a teacher.  My students taught me how to become a teacher.  As I taught, I found that I played better myself.  I was teaching myself, too.  I no longer had to imagine John Holstad.  I used my "closet."  My closet had all of the answers.  I also want to believe that I taught my students to find their own closet.  Oh, wait… I guess a word of explanation is in order?  That will have to wait for the next installment, I’m afraid.