Intonation is a Social Skill

"Intonation is a social skill."

I posted this quote on my Facebook Page a couple of days ago and it got over 100 likes.  I believe I first heard this said by Rex Martin but I'm not sure.  Playing in tune with others has just as much to do with social skills as it does with the length of your instrument.

We have all played with "that guy" who thinks he has a pretty incredible ear and yet always seems to have trouble playing in tune with others.  Sometimes "that guy" blames others with their words and other times they simply convey their disappointment with those around them through their body language, eye rolls or any of a plethora of non-verbal communications.  No matter how great that player is, no one ever wants to play with "that guy."

You have to be flexible with your intonation always in all situations.  100% of the time.  No exceptions.  You can have a PHD in intonation and if you are "in tune" and the other four members of a quintet are all equally "sharp" you've got a problem.  No audience member would ever hear you as in tune and the others as all sharp.  You are flat.  End of story.

The best set of ears I've ever played with belong to a trumpet player and my former colleague in Boston Brass, Rich Kelley.  I describe him as having "beyond perfect pitch."  He is blessed (cursed?) with the ability to exactly identify whether any note is sharp, flat or in tune and by exactly how much.  Every single time.  I know he is not unique in this regard but he is as good as I've ever seen.

Coincidentally, playing in tune with Rich is easier than with anyone I've ever played with.  And that's not because he tries to steer the intonation ship from the top of an ensemble.  He agrees with Pythagoras on this one and listens down.  It's because he has one goal and one goal only: for the music to sound in tune.  He is incredibly helpful with rehearsing and being able to identify immediately whether a player is sharp or flat in any given chord.  But in the moment, he will do whatever it takes to make a chord sound in tune, which is the only goal any of us should ever have.

A very important part of playing in tune is also playing well with others.

Rex Martin's Tips to Playing In Tune (Part 1 of 3)

My senior year at Northwestern University, my tuba professor, Rex Martin, gave the studio a handout he had written titled "A More Natural Intonation." This article is packed full of really useful tips for playing in tune.  I'm really glad that I still have it laying around over 15 years later.  There's enough great stuff in this article that I'll break it up into three posts.

"It is counterproductive to think in terms of intervals being lipped up or down.  If we do so, we are reacting to something we have already done wrong and are trying to fix it, instead of simply hearing what to sound like beforehand.  It is important to imagine the sound as a specific quality of tone, not simply a pitch.  If we hear the sound in our head as we play, our instrument will resonate those pitches and produce that tone, as long as we have the correct valve combination or slide position."

- Rex Martin

The above passage underscores the importance of clearly hearing exactly what you are trying to sound like in your head while you are playing.  When working off of a clear mental image, absolutely every aspect of your playing is taken care of.  Articulation, tone quality, musicality, note endings, and yes, intonation.

More often than not, when you are playing a note out of tune it is with a less than ideal tone quality.  This is why imagining a specific quality of tone in our heads is very important.  You can be blowing a pitch sharp on a brass instrument that is the proper length while either lipping it down or pulling a slide to make it in tune.  While it is certainly possible to play a note in tune in this scenario it is not possible to do so with a good sound.  Imagining the note in your head with a great tone in the first place would have fixed this scenario immediately.

Hearing the sound you are striving for in your head goes for brass, woodwind, percussion, strings, vocalists, everyone.  All of the greats hear a world class version of what they are performing in their heads as they play or sing and everything else, intonation included, takes care of itself.

Start Small

"Overwhelmed? Stop. Assess. Tackle one small thing. One step in the right direction. Rinse & repeat." - One of Lance LaDuke's daily practice tips on Twitter

If you are anything like me, when faced with an apparently insurmountable task your first instinct is to put it off.  This can absolutely happen to the best of us in the practice room.

The above quote is a great reminder for all of us when it comes to practicing.  Identify a small thing to improve, then tackle it.  Do that over and over again and you can learn an entire recital's worth of music in due time.

Rome wasn't built in a day either.

Silence Can Not Improve

"Start with bad sounds and make them into good ones. Silence can not improve." - Arnold Jacobs

As with almost all Arnold Jacobs quotes, this one is so simple yet says so much.  You have to sound bad in the practice room to improve.  Avoiding problems with your playing (silence) does not improve anything.

Improvement starts with bad sounds.

The Power of Doing

"You don't learn something when you hear about it.  You learn something when you do it or teach it." - David Cutler (Author of "The Savvy Musician")

These wise words came from my good friend and colleague, Dr. David Cutler, at the beginning of The Savvy Musician In ACTION Retreat back in June.  As another school year begins, these are great words for all teachers to remember, from elementary school to college.  I know I can occasionally fall into the trap of telling my students all about something at great length rather than giving them simply a general idea and then making them try it themselves.

Students learn a little bit about a new concept by listening to an expert speak about it.  But they learn a lot more about it by actually doing it.  That includes succeeding and failing.  The power of our students doing the very skill we as teachers are trying to impart is simply priceless.

And the second half of the above  quote is why all students, no matter what level they are, should be teaching someone something about what they are trying to master.  It's amazing how well you have to know a subject in order to explain it to someone else in a succinct, understandable manner.  I started teaching private lessons when I was a senior in high school.  The experience I had teaching those three students (4th, 8th and 10th graders) was invaluable to my development as a musician.

The power of doing (and teaching) is simply priceless.

Recording Your Mistakes

"A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in on the experience." - Elbert Hubbard

When I was younger, I was very hesitant to record myself unless I sounded really good on a piece of music.  I would then use the recording to refine my performance - the finishing touches if you will.  This is a great use of a recording device but to limit it to only this scenario is borderline criminal and it was all only because of my ego.

Anyone that tells you they enjoy listening to a recording of themselves screwing up is a pathological liar.  No one does, period.  But great musicians are always efficient musicians.  And great music educators are always efficient music educators.  Identifying mistakes early in the process, whether in your band or in a passage you're learning, is by far the most efficient way to correct them.

"Failures do what is tension relieving, while winners do what is goal achieving."

- Dennis Waitley

The great band directors listen to recordings of their band's rehearsals when they sound great, when they sound horrible and everything in between.  A great performer listens to countless attempts at a difficult passage and constantly checks in via recording themselves throughout the process.

We all need to be reminded to bury our egos, listen to recordings of our mistakes frequently and get to a better finished product sooner as a result.

The Little Details

"It's the little details that are vital.  Little things make big things happen." - John Wooden

The above quote is from a famous basketball coach but it might as well have been from a famous musician.  Oftentimes, as performers or music educators, we tend to focus only on the big things - "hitting" notes, rhythms, intonation.  But like in a magnificent church, it is the little details that make all the difference in the world.

How consistent are your note endings in all registers at all dynamic levels?

Even if your band is starting and ending a crescendo at the same volumes, are they all crescendoing at the same rate throughout?

Are your dynamic levels consistent relative to each other throughout an entire work?

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There are countless ways that you can make a performance more refined.  Truly inspiring performances are always the sum of those very small refinements.  Think globally. Act locally.

Charles Lazarus Master Class Quotes (Part 3 of 3)

Here is the final installment of the wonderful Charles Lazarus trumpet master class at the National Trumpet Competition at George Mason University this past March.  I always love going to the NTC master classes and this was one of the best I've ever seen.

In case you missed them, here are Part 1 and Part 2 of the quotes from his class.  So many nuggets of wisdom!

• Minnesota Timberwolves physical trainer: "It takes 10,000 repetitions for someone to learn how to swing a golf club or shoot a basketball. But if you are trying to relearn something the right way, double that."
   
• "Slow, methodical practice. You can slow things down. You can add a note at a time. You can play an entire phrase and slowly take one note away at a time. You can change the rhythm."
   
• "There are eight aspects of practicing: high, low, loud, soft, fast, slow, articulate, slur."
   
• "There are three ways to play them: through the range, interal studies, isolate the ranges."
  
   
•  "I’ve started writing a practice book 20 times but then realize that everyone’s needs are going to be different.  It’s just important that you touch all the bases every day."
   
• "I’m a big fan of short practice sessions, often."
   
• "Adolph Herseth told me he never practices more than 30 minutes at a time."
   
• "It is better to practice 15 minutes, 4 times a day than playing for one hour straight. Then you have to wait 23 hours until you play again and there is a lot of muscle memory."
   
• "Joey Tartell can play quadruple high Q’s but still get a great sound on the Haydn."
   
• "I recommend that you practice with straight tone.  Add vibrato later for musical reasons."
   
• "If you’re phrasing, you can’t really fail. You can miss a note but people won’t really care."
   
• "You can tell by how I’m playing that E that it’s going to go somewhere."
   
• "You don’t need to open up so much to play the low notes. I think of my embouchure as adjusting to stay the same."
   
• (After playing call and response with student on one lick in time) "That one was statement/statement. The first ones were statement/question statement/question."
   
• "For most of my range, I try to stay set. I don’t stay completely set but I don’t over adjust."
   
• "I like to sometimes think of the (previous) note as the beginning of the inhale."
   
• "You played the G like you were testing the note. There’s no testing."
   
• "(Instead of a metronome) I like to practice with the shakers on Garage Band."
   
• "Internalizing the rhythm is the hardest thing for playing orchestral excerpts by yourself."
   
• "In soft lyrical playing, people frequently don’t articulate enough."
   
• "Playing trumpet you want to be fluid and sometimes we can get position oriented."

Time to Get Honest Up in Here

You’ve got to start thinking outside the box. When you have a problem (with your playing), really admit it and address it. You have to be honest about it. You are only as strong as the weakest link in your playing. - Marty Hackleman

Looking back through old notes I was reminded of this call to action.  What is your weakest link?

Lessons Learned from The Savvy Musician in ACTION Retreat

Last week at the University of South Carolina, David Cutler (author of The Savvy Musician) hosted a life changing retreat for everyone who attended.  It was titled "The Savvy Musician in ACTION Retreat" and featured 57 participants (or arts entrepreneurs as they were called) from 21 different states and Canada.  The participants ranged from undergrads to full-time professionals working in every aspect of the arts.  The faculty consisted of five Thought Leaders (of which I was one) from around the US as well as a number of amazing professors from USC. The retreat, as with so many great things in life, is hard to summarize.  In a nutshell, 57 people split up into 10 teams and had to come up with an arts based business model that would both provide impact and be sustainable.  They had basically two days to figure out everything including a name, a logo, where funding was coming from, their target customer base, a comprehensive marketing and social media strategy, and how to pitch this idea to three actual business leaders from Columbia, SC.

Some of the teams were working until 5:00 am the last night in order to finish their presentations which they began setting up at 8:00 in the hall! It was an intense atmosphere for both the teachers and the participants.  I left more energized about my future than I've been since I was a kindergartener dreaming of becoming an astronaut.

What an amazing experience! Thank you to all who were there.  I learned so much from all of you.  I had one student there from George Mason, Andrew Dougherty, who told me he will try to convince the entire studio to come down next year.  I sure hope they do.

I could do a dozen posts (and still might!) just on the things I learned from fellow thought leaders Justin Kantor (of Le Poisson Rouge), Jon Ostrow (of CyberPR), Lance LaDuke (of Boston Brass) and David Cutler.  But one of the coolest parts of the 4 days was when each of the arts entrepreneurs got up in front of everyone and said one thing they had learned over the course of the four days.  Here is a sampling of quotes from that decompression session.  There are so many nuggets of inspiration and motivation in here that I don't even know where to begin.

• Make your goals bigger and the steps to get there smaller.
• Find somebody that knows more than you and just ask them.
• Be willing to pivot instead of hanging on with your claws until you die.
• Doing things perfectly is not nearly as important as getting things done.
• Don't be afraid to pivot and make a change.
• Good leaders need to know what it's like to be a follower.
• Trust your team. They can do great things.
• Dream big and don't apologize for it.
• Life begins outside your comfort zone.
• Knowing and understanding are two different things.
• Choose to go all in.
• Don't let your idea for a project get in the way of letting something become what it needs to become.
• I was reminded of the power of small.
• It's OK to ask for help.
• Having a sense of humor when things blow up in your face is a good thing.
• There's no shame in passing something off to someone who can do it better.
• There's an incredible amount of power in diversity.
• Attempted humor is a great stress relief.
• It is a value to be able to improvise well.
• Focus.
• The more energy you put into life, the more you get out of life.