The Process

Let me tell you about one of my newer students.  Lilah.  Piano is not her main love or interest.  She is a hockey goalie.  This is where her spirit dwells, at least for now.  I learned this when she came in to a lesson, smiling.  I asked her how she was doing, and she simply said, "I won the hockey match last night."  

The statement wasn't arrogant, but full of joy and pride.  It was one of those close games, and defense saved the game.  You could tell that this was REALLY important.  And she told ME!  I always remember that with teens, I may be one of the few adults during the week that is totally focused on her, and when a teen voluntarily TALKS to you, you know you have a relationship that is working.

I spend most of our lessons working with Lilah on the PROCESS of practicing.  This is probably the field where I excel.  I love practicing.  I believe its an art, and a science.  Its a mystery-solving thing.  Its an athletic thing (yes! I did say athletic), what with the mental-muscle control, the learning of efficient movements, and the stamina that it takes to perform.

Since I know that Lilah's time at the piano is limited, I want to make her time productive and efficient.  I want her to know the power you can feel when you identify a problem, and solve it.  I want her to find a way to think of herself as a success at the piano.  I want these things to be in place for the time in her life when she no longer plays hockey.  I want her to still love the piano, and be playing as an old lady with hockey photos in an album somewhere.  

I know she loves music, and especially the piano.  This school year she was faced with a problem caused by the Minneapolis Schools.  They decided to start school earlier.  She already was taking her lesson at 7:30 in the morning so she could have enough time to do her workout here and still get to school on time.  The earlier start time was not going to leave enough time for a lesson and travel time to school.

An after-school lesson was not going to be possible due to hockey and soccer practice daily after school.  Her first idea was not, "Oh well, I guess I can't take piano."  She asked if she could come at 7:00 am.  This is a high school girl.  They are famous for always being tired, and not wanting to get up early.  To get here for a 7:00 lesson she gets up around 5:30.  Are you impressed yet?  You better be!

I had all these thoughts today as I was making Gumbo.  I make it the real way, like a Cajun.  I lived in Louisiana for 20 years, and cooking creole and cajun food is one of the lasting loves from those days.  I thought about Lilah, because PROCESS and CREATIVITY is what drives piano practice.  It is the source of the joy and love we take away from the piano.  And, its the very same for cooking.

By Process, I'm not talking about a recipe.  I've had to write my "recipe" down before, but is excruciatingly difficulty.  Because lots of cooking is improvisation.  It is creativity, embodied.  But it is also a process.  You envision the product and you work your way toward that product.  There are things that you learn, efficiencies that you adopt, and many, many inefficiencies that you insist on to make the product PERFECT!

Like Seymour Bernstein says in his book, With These Two Hands, learning how to practice at the piano creates superior individuals that can organize their thoughts and actions, diagnose and solve problems, think creatively on how to achieve a goal set in their minds.  Piano Practice can teach you to accomplish totally unrelated things.  

Thanks Lilah, for reminding me of all this, and inspiring the Gumbo that I am creating today.

Boxes! We Don’t Need No Stinking Boxes!

I sometimes get tired of hearing about the delights of “thinking outside the box.”  This probably has to do with the fact that I have trouble thinking inside boxes.  If I see a box, I run the other way.  For any given activity, I would rather invent my own method than read the directions, or get advice as to how other people have proceeded.  Maybe I’m just sensitive about being odd!

I noticed this sensitivity creeping up to the surface the other day as I was clearing leaves from my lawn.  We have just finished the first stage of the landscaping of our front yard.  The wonderful trees that we planted, four altogether, shade the lawn so efficiently that any attempt to grow grass has ended in calamitous failure.  We had a retaining wall built along the sidewalk, and the lawn filled in with black dirt and wood chips.  In the spring we will have lots of new plants installed, and the grass can just take a flying leap off a short pier!

However… as you know, with every solution come new problems.  The multifold dead leaves that drop every day are now lying on a bed of mulch.  You can’t rake them up because the mulch would dislodge, too.  I decided to try the leaf blower.  Huge success!  The leaves blow away and the mulch, much heavier, stays put.

In Minneapolis we’re now using the biodegradable leaf bags.  They are really nothing but huge, heavy grocery bags made of brown paper.  They stand up a little better than plastic bags, but they sag, especially when you have a bunch of leaves you want to drop in.  Dropping leaves seems to offend my OCD nature.  Luckily some “out of the box” mind invented a leaf funnel made of cardboard.  It inserts into the bag, helping said bag to stand rigidly.  The funnel part allows the leaves to flow down, where they can be packed into the bag.

I blew the leaves out onto the sidewalk, and proceeded to gather them up with a leaf rake and a free hand.  The rake is wide, and gathers up lots of leaves, but it was too wide for the funnel.  The leaves continued to drop around the bag, back onto the sidewalk.  Now understand, the sidewalk was an intermediary destination, and I had just a wee bit of trouble allowing them to fall back onto the sidewalk after I picked them up the first time.  Now is where the story gets interesting…

I went to my shed and got out my snow shovel.  The snow shovel gobbled up a huge pile of leaves, and by turning it to the side, I was able to get the leaves into the funnel with no spillage!  The shovel held more leaves than the rake, it scooped them up efficiently from the sidewalk, and my problem birthed a bouncing new baby solution.  Yea!

Now, I know there were probably neighbors on both sides of the street, peering out from behind curtains, looking at the strange piano teacher, shoveling leaves.  But, they’re really the same people that have seen me leaf-blow the first light layers of snow from my walk.  Who was it that said to use the “right tool for the job?”  He probably wasn’t thinking of me.

I’m sure I’m not the first, or the only, person to shovel leaves.  I really don’t care because I solved my problem in the most efficient manner I could imagine.  It made the mundane job of removing leaves intellectually stimulating, and satisfying to the inner efficiency-expert in me.

This, I told myself, is the essence of practicing the piano.  Yes!  Find a problem.  Determine the nature of the problem.  Find a tool that addresses that problem directly.  This eliminates the mindless repetition that many believe is piano practice.  If that were true I could understand those that don’t like to practice.  I wouldn’t either.  But defining a problem, finding a solution, and giggling at the amazing outcome… that is compelling!

I try to teach my students, in every lesson, to think of practice as an Emergency Room experience.  Assess and diagnose.  Practice TRIAGE.  Always do first-things first.  The piano equivalent of “opening the airways, stanching the flow of blood.”  When they learn to think and plan, set goals and take direct action, they start to play music.  That, of course if good, because if they came to me merely playing notes, I would be bored silly!  Practicing is nothing but defining problems and finding elegant solutions.

Ranger Rory

I remember camping and hiking with some of my Sinfonian Brothers years ago.  I chose the site, led the hike and other activities.  After all, I was the Province Governor.  They began calling me Ranger Rory after I contracted one of the most severe cases of poison ivy in existence… on this planet or any other!  I think they found it amusing that a Professor of Piano at Louisiana Tech University liked to go out in the wild, away from the comfort of his piano and his studio domain.  The juxtaposition of what they saw when they viewed me, and the Rory before them, canoeing, hiking and tent camping, was too much for them.  And of course, they didn’t contract poison ivy.  I led in that aspect as well.

My wife and I just returned from one of our annual and ritual sojourns to the north shore of Lake Superior.  We camp up there every summer at least one time.  We sleep in tents.  We live with the mosquitoes and bugs, and the threat of rain, because the reward is greater than the sacrifice.  The scenery and the hiking trails are something to behold.  This year we chose Cascade River State Park.  It might very well be our favorite.  It was our first north shore experience, and the combination of Lake Superior and the wild river is wondrous.

The trails at Cascade River State Park, near Grand Marais, Minnesota, are not beginner trails, and not for the faint-of-heart.  They are rough-hewn, with many exposed roots, downed trees, and glacial rocks strewing the way.  A three hour hike after breakfast can easily burn the calories from those eggs and Canadian bacon, and even in the cool air along Lake Superior, you should plan on drinking at least two 20 oz. bottles of fluid to replace the sweat that burns your eyes and floods your mouth.

Along the trails there are always options.  You can take the higher trail, or the one along the river.  I usually opt for the river trail, as the water sound is so like music to me.  When I’m lucky the trail is low, and I can even get out on the lava rocks in the middle of the river.  Cascade River is interesting because there is so much kinetic motion.  The rocks create the cascades and whitewater.  In other places the river is placid, and almost halted, like two contrasting themes in a Beethoven Sonata.  At other times the trail is perched high above the river.  Down below are steep cliffs and across the way you can see “potholes,” and “kettles” in the river bed, and even little caves in the side of the bluffs.  The textures of the river are interesting and compelling.  They seem like the fabric of a Debussy tone poem, with subtle changes and yet a continuity that makes the mind wander.

Yes, the natural beauty, to me, is like varied pieces of music I have known and loved.  I hear through my eyes when I experience these awesome sights.  But, I feel there is more to my attraction for hiking than the enjoyment of nature.  It occurred to me as I was hiking a couple of days ago that the challenge of a strenuous hike is so much like the challenge of practicing on a challenging piece.  I think back to the “exposed roots” and “jutting rocks” in the Liszt Sonata in B Minor.  Along the trail of that piece I could easily have tripped if I had not focused totally.  Like taking a wrong turn on an ambiguously marked hiking trail, many times I had to turn back to meet the challenges of Franz Liszt.  But therein lies the beauty.  A paved trail … a simply mastered piece of music … neither one holds much attraction for me. 

On the trail, you put one foot in front, incessantly.  You work to find your balance.  You alter your rate of motion to match the terrain.  Liszt demands the same.  When you learn to respond to the immediate demands before you, you begin to see the beauty of your endeavor.

Ear Worm

Anyone that has been around me for any length of time knows that I am always either humming or beating a rhythm on various and sundry body parts.  This latter only is a problem when the body happens to be someone else’s body.  I’ve often told my wife that she makes a wonderful percussion ensemble!  I just about always have music happening in my mind.  This has even caused discord when I have simultaneously heard music playing through speakers when other music was playing in my mind.  OK… I’ll admit to a certain degree of "weirdicity".

Recently, one such earworm has boiled over into a compulsion to create.  The Middle School choir that I accompany twice a week is preparing an arrangement of the spiritual, Joshua ‘Fit the Battle of Jericho; as I drive back to my studio each Monday and Wednesday, I have been singing the tune for myself; after a few sessions of this, I have begun improvising variations to the tune, the words to the extent that I have a whole arrangement tucked up in my head.  I hear soloists, back-up singers, and of course, a trumpet.

Although not an everyday experience, I have done this before.  I wrote one piece as I was driving from central Iowa to Chicago.  When I arrived at my uncle and aunt’s apartment, I clamored for scratch paper, so I could write down the basics; I knew if I didn’t I would forget the whole thing.  And, then there is the choral piece I wrote while mowing the lawn.  At one time I would have said these incidents were a mystery to me; I’ve now decided that it really has to do with the war & peace between the “right: and “left” brains.  When I am forced into a left-brain mode, my right brain fights for supremacy.  It seems to feel the pressure of the back burner, and if ignored, it finds a way to disrupt meals, sleep and any waking moment… until it gets the attention and control that it seems to require.

Before I explain further, I have to say that I thank up to a hundred thousand hours of piano practice for the fact that I can use both a right and left-brain.  I believe I was born mostly right-brained.  The right brain is the intuitive, creative part of the human mind.  The unfortunate fact is that discipline is lodged in the left-brain.  If both spheres are not developed, even superior creativity might never come to fruition.  In his wonderful book, With Your Own Two Hands, Seymour Bernstein discusses how the act of practicing the piano changes a person.  The creativity of a dominant left-brained person can be unleashed through hours of good piano practice.  For me, my unruly right-dominant brain was plenty creative and imaginative; what I needed was the logical and disciplined side that was mostly dormant.  Bernstein makes a very interesting case for the amazing results of piano practice.  I quite agree.  I have learned to accomplish things that those who knew me in my tender years never would have imagined for me.

I am eternally grateful for the activation of my left side.  When pressed, I can be quite logical; I have learned discipline, although it often seems totally bland, robotic and unimaginative.  When I need it, I can call it up.  It’s just that my right brain wants to stay in charge, with assistance from the left.  That, unfortunately, is not always possible.  Since September I have been forced into allowing my left-brain to dominate too often.  Piano teachers MUST be organized.  Getting a school year launched successfully means organized planning, and thinking ahead well into the future.  It requires familiarity with deadlines & schedules.  And we have to command those traits well enough to teach our protégés.  I have been busy planning repertoire, recitals and contest engagements for most of my students, as well as ushering several students through the necessary, but often boring task of studying for music theory exams.

Usually when I am overwhelmed by left-brain requirements, I satisfy my right brain by practicing, and playing the piano.  When a “brain emergency occurs”, the right brain has a tendency to emulate a protestors mugging for the CNN cameras.  This is one of those times.  I have been busy scheduling the timeslots for the Junior Festival, sponsored by our local club of the National Federation of Music Clubs.  Each student gets scheduled for a specific time to perform two pieces that will be critiqued by a judge.  This is a very positive experience for the student, as they take an opportunity to challenge themselves to perfection… to reach in to their knowledge and musical sensibilities to play beautifully for another human being.  This takes great focus and poise, and is not something that most children experience regularly in the 21^st Century. 

It might seem like creating a schedule for this event would not be too taxing to someone with advanced degrees; unless you consider that there are multiple rooms, with students performing on multiple levels of difficulty.  Also, the times of siblings and carpool members have to match closely.  And then, there are the requests that some students need to perform in the morning while others need the afternoon.  One mother still thinks that her request to carpool her two sons, while giving one a morning time and the other an afternoon, is completely reasonable.  The schedule is further complicated for those really wonderful students who play more than one instrument, or enter more than one event for that day.  It is like a giant, human jigsaw puzzle.  The schedule required every cell of my left-brain.

I have to say that even though this is a demand of our more logical natures, and it seems that an objective way to accomplish the task would be possible, I felt my right brain protesting.  I was tempted to look back at the way I did it last year.  You could save time, I said to myself.  And yet, I couldn’t do more than open the 2010 spreadsheet.  It looked so foreign that I closed it, and decided that I was certainly more intelligent in 2011, and I would just invent a better way.  I think I moved through the various permutations of creating this schedule in the most right brained, intuitive and creative way possible.  I’ll never be able to write down the process, just as I find it impossible to write down a recipe for making jambalaya.

But the real triumph of the right brain is in the way that it asserts the creativity of a full arrangement of Joshua ‘Fit the Battle of Jericho.  I will create this arrangement.  It will be a real, tangible creation; and it will have been created to spite the left-brain, in all of its presumption.  I can hardly wait.

Black Forest Curve Signs

I’m pretty sure, looking back on over sixty years, that Thoreau was thinking of me when he mused that some people“…hear a different drummer”.  I do not warm up to regimentation, shall we say.  It is, then, no wonder that I did not love being in the U.S. Army.  I was very lucky, in several ways during this part of my life. 

I was in the Signal Corps, and worked in a CommCenter.  The walls were thick, the doors were extremely secure, and the droves of officers on my base were not even allowed into my workplace.  We were left alone, to do our jobs, without those nasty formations, kitchen duties, or even PE tests. 

And, I was stationed in Germany; I tell people that I “fought the battle of Stuttgart”.  It was such a lucky place for me to land, and I was blessed to take full advantage of being in Europe.  I had plenty of time and opportunity to travel throughout West Germany; due to the number of high-ranking officers on my base, I was even required to live off-base.  I lived in a small German town, 14 kilometers inside the fabled Black Forest!  Thank you, U.S. Army!  I really mean it.

One of the eventualities of living that far off base, and working from 3:00 pm to 11:00 pm, was that I had to drive through the Black Forest late at night.  In the dark.  With very curvy roads.  My road, I discovered, had no center-line.  Neither did it have the solid, painted lines on the sides of the road, the ones that define the outline of the road, and the shoulders.  My worst discovery was that this road, as charming as it was in the daytime, had NO CURVE SIGNS.

I had never realized how much help curve signs were; they alert you, and let you know which direction you will be turning.  They mean the difference between driving on the road, and plowing through the ditch!  Ultimately, I had to create my own “curve signs”, mental landmarks that would alert me to particularly auspicious events along my chosen path.  It took awhile to develop my landmarks, and in the meantime, I had to drive very slowly.  Add a little fog to this scenario, and anyone would soon learn patience.

Years later, it occurred to me quite clearly, when practicing a Chopin Ballade, that all my technical problems derived from the lack of curve signs in the music.  What we most often see are notes.  But, notes don’t tell the whole story when we are playing a Chopin Ballade.  Chopin's music can be quite physical, and unless the performer understands the physicality, they are lost, plowing through metaphorical, musical ditches.  I decided to develop my own curve signs for my Ballade.  I decided to practice patience.  When I broke tempo in a series of “tempo hiccups”, I forced myself to slow down.  I watched for curve signs.  I prevailed.

Building my own curve signs has become a regular part of my study with any new piece.  It’s exciting, because, music, more than any road in the Black Forest, can have surprising curves, dips, bumps, with virtually no warning.  With the proper respect, I can avoid most of the ditches.