Building Skills 15

More from Daniel Coyle: Tip #24, Visualize the Wires of Your Brain Getting Faster.

 

In this tip, Coyle is referencing his earlier book, The Talent Code. In it he looks at research into the way the brain works with particular reference to myelin (you may have read about the "myelin sheath") that surrounds the axon of a neuron in the brain. It is an electrical insulator and as you repeat actions, the myelin sheath grows (myelination) and increases the speed with which electrical impules flow from one neuron to another. In essence, it's the way practice—repetition—makes those repeated actions easier, more automatic, and better. In the appendix of The Little Book of Talent Coyle quotes Dr. George Bartzokis, a scientist at UCLA: "What do good athletes do when they train? They send precise impulses along wires that give the signal to myelate that wire. They end up, after all that training, with a super-duper wire—lots of bandwidth, a T-3 line. That's what makes them different from the rest of us."

 

To get back to Tip #24, Coyle suggests, "When you practice, it's useful and motivating to visualize the pathways of your brain being transformed from simple copper wires to high-speed broadband, because that's what's really happening."

 

In much the same way as telling my choir about the difference between "drill" and "scrimmage," and increasing what I've called the "density" of their rehearsals, I suspect that their understanding of myelination and what's really happening in their brains as we practice (or they practice individually in the practice room) could also increase the focus and effectiveness of their work.

 

Something to think about—and also useful for us individually as we work to improve our own rehearsal and conducting skills.

Building Skills 13

More from Daniel Coyle: Tip #17 Embrace the Struggle

 

Coyle:

In all of the talent hotbeds, from Moscow to Dallas to Brazil to New York, I saw the same facial expression: eyes narrow, jaws tight, nostrils flared, the face of someone intently reaching for something, falling short, then reaching again. This is not a coincidence. Deep practice has a telltale emotional flavor, a feeling that can be summed up in one word, "struggle."

Well, I don't want my singers having tight jaws (!), but I do understand the image—one of individuals or a group focusing on doing something they can't yet do.

 

Much like teaching your choir to embrace drill—not as something to avoid, but as a way to internalize and make automatic music or a skill—we need to teach them to embrace that which is truly difficult for them. Coyle again,

Most of us instinctively avoid struggle, because it's uncomfortable. It feels like failure. However, when it comes to developing your talent, stuggle isn't an option, it's a biological necessity. . . The struggle and frustration you feel at the edge of your abilities—that uncomfortable burn of "almost, almost"—is the sensation of constructing new neural connections.

I remember working with a voice student years ago and sensing his growing frustration in the lesson. I finally asked him what was bothering him. He replied by asking why I was so negative and spent so much time working on the things he couldn't do instead of praising him for the things he could. I answered that I did recognize (and told him) all those things he did well, but if we spent most of our time on things that were easy for him, he wouldn't make progress. We then worked together to find ways for him to feel good about his accomplishments, but also to put up with spending most of his time practicing those things that weren't easy—which were, in fact, a struggle.

 

In the same way, we need to find ways to teach our singers to embrace struggle. This is a great lesson for them not only in the choir, but in the rest of their lives as well. And of course, it's a lesson to us, too—not to be content with those things or the repertoire which we already know and do well. We need to explore, to push boundaries, to try new things—to live with uncertainty and the possibility of failure. Those things that are worthwhile do take struggle, but that's the only way we grow.

Building Skills 12

More from Daniel Coyle: Tip #16 - Each Day, Try to Build One Perfect Chunk
 

Coyle notes, "In our busy lives, it's sometimes tempting to regard merely practicing as success. . . But the real goal isn't practice, it's progress. As John Wooden put it, 'Never mistake mere activity for accomplishment.'"

He then goes on, "One method is to set a daily SAP: smallest achievable perfection. In this technique, you choose a single chunk that you can perfect—not just improve, not just "work on," but get 100% consistently correct.

I think that's a useful thing to remember in our rehearsals. Find something in the music that you can get the choir to do as you want to hear it in the concert. It doesn't have to be much, but something that gives them a vision of what they can (and should) sound like. By perfection, I'm not talking about making your high school choir sound like whatever university choir you love, or making your university choir sound like the Swedish Radio Choir . . . but in terms of what they're capable of doing, get them there, even if it's for a chord or a phrase.

This serves two purposes: it gives them an idea of what the goal is and it builds a skill they haven't yet achieved. 

We've had classes for less than a week at UNT (classes started Tuesday last week, after MLK Day) and my University Singers rehearse MW from 2-3:20 and Th from 2-2:50. So we're in the early stages, just two rehearsals. Thursday, among other things, I was working on Javier Busto's Ave Maria and the first short section is gorgeous with beautiful harmonies and asking for a pianissimo dynamic. So Thursday I spent time on just that opening section, working for the sound I wanted, for the balances in the chords, on tuning, and on beautiful phrasing. We spent most of that time at about a mezzo piano level—when they're learning, I don't want them trying to sing too soft and get off the voice—and near the end of that part of the rehearsal I asked the sopranos to sing senza vibrato (which they can do quite well). Then I asked the whole choir to sing a true pianissimo, but to try to stay on the voice. It took several tries, but they did it beautifully. I think this is important because it does give them a sense of how they can sing the whole piece, and it also builds a skill (which will need more practice and reinforcement) of how to sing a beautiful pianissimo. That can be transferred to other music, most particularly for the women, who will sing the offstage chorus for the Neptune movement of Holst's Planets in less than two weeks on Feb. 4 with our Symphony Orchestra.

We have lots of music to learn this semester: besides the Holst, my TA, Robert Ward, is preparing the choir for Mozart's Coronation Mass for a performance with the Concert Orchestra, our 2nd orchestra at UNT, under their conductor Clay Couturiaux. Robert will not only prepare it, but will get to conduct a 2nd performance with the orchestra himself as well, with soloists from the choir (for the other performance it will be faculty soloists). Later we have a concert, shared with the Concert Choir (so we only have half a program to learn) with three contemporary motets: James MacMillan's Sedebit Dominus Rex, Busto's Ave Maria, and a Crucifixus setting by one of our undergraduate composers, Ronald Harris, who sings in the choir; Jan Sandström's Biegga Luothe, a wonderful piece based on a Sami Yoik (the Sami are the indigenous people near the Arctic Circle in Scandinavia—when I grew up I knew of this as Lappland); then, for the 50th Anniversary of Professor Peter Schickele's "rediscovery" of P.D.Q. Bach, the Liebeslieder Polkas. If that isn't enough, we also combine with all three mixed choirs at the end of the year as the "Grand Chorus" to sing Vaughan Williams' Five Mystical Songs and Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

So it's important for us to know that in every rehearsal that we're singing something at concert level, no matter how small. Most of our rehearsals will deal with lots of note-learning, but as I've stated before, even at that stage we need to start making music very early. And I'll try to remember Coyle's tip to make sure every rehearsal sees something that we perfect.

Building Skills 11

More from Daniel Coyle: Tip #14 "Break Every Move Down into Chunks."

 

This is something that most conductors know how to do, whether or not they know this terminology.

 

As Coyle says, "From the time we're small, we hear this good advice from our parents and teachers: Take it a little bit at a time. This advice works because it accurately reflects the way our brains learn. Every skill is built out of smaller pieces, what scientists call chunks."

 

His advice in terms of skills is to, "first engrave the blueprint of the skill on your mind." (see the post on Tip #2 "Then ask yourself:

1. What is the smallest single element of this skill that I can master?
2. What other chunks link to that chunk?

"Practice one chunk by itself until you've mastered it—then connect more chunks, one by one, exactly as you would combine letters to form a word. Then combine those chunks into still bigger chunks. And so on."

 

This is, of course, what we do when we rehearse. But I would also stress rehearsing the transitions from one chunk into another. That way you don't have chunks the choir can do easily, but can't string together. It doesn't take much time. Practicing one section or one phrase, just make the transition into the next one and then go back to practice again.

 

I remember that Lloyd Pfautsch, in his chapter on rehearsing in the Decker and Herford's Choral Conducting—A Symposium, suggests ranking the sections of a larger work by difficulty, then learning the toughest portions first to make sure they get more rehearsal time, rather than mindlessly starting at the beginning and working your way through in order. So, if there are 10 sections of a work and numbers 3, 6, and 9 are the most difficult, you'd begin by working on them, then gradually work on the others, connecting as you learn adjacent sections. Seems like common sense, but it's really a brilliant statement about how to approach larger pieces (this doesn't only mean major works, but any work which is multi-sectional).

 

Of course, you can also do that with your whole program, even if it's all shorter pieces: rank them in terms of which ones will take the most rehearsal time and plan accordingly. This is probably what most conductors do, but somehow in rehearsing larger works it can be forgotten.

 

Skills, not just rehearsals can (and should) be taught in this way, too. This analogy comes from a short article on coaching Lacrosse: "Think about how small children become mobile. First they crawl, then they learn to stand and eventually they take those first steps. Once they have mastered walking, the pace increases and they’re off and running."

 

In teaching young singers to sing properly you have to start with fundamental skills and master them (which also means constant reinforcement): first posture, then breath, then learning to use the breath to phonate, etc. Steps are taken gradually to build up the skill of making a good vocal (and choral) sound.

 

Look to see if some of the things you're trying to teach your choir have been broken down into small enough chunks for the choir to learn them properly. It's the way skills (and music) are built, from the ground up, one chunk at a time.

Building Skills 8

More from Daniel Coyle: Tip#11 "Don't Fall for the Prodigy Myth."

 

Coyle makes the point that prodigies (talent expressed at an early age) aren't really predictors of ultimate success. He gives some examples:

Many top performers are overlooked early on, then grow quietly into stars. This list includes Michael Jordan (cut from his high school varsity team as a sophomore), Charles Darwin (considered slow and ordinary by teachers), Walt Disney (fired from an early job because he "lacked imagination"), Albert Einstein, Louis Pasteur, Paul Gaugin, Thomas Edison, Leo Tolstoy, Fred Astaire, Winston Churchill, Lucille Ball, and so on.

He then mentions Carol Dweck, whose research I profile here and here. Her work involves two mindsets, one that is fixed and where the individual assumes that their talent is fixed (and therefore failure is not a good thing); and one that she calls the growth mindset, where growth (and the failures that go with the attempts to do things one can't yet do well) is valued.

 

He also speaks of various sports "talent hotbeds," where they are, "not built on identifying talent, but constructing it."

 

While this feeds into our own skill building (and our willingness to explore things we don't yet do well and accept failure as a way to learn new things), I think it goes more to the development of our own singers'/students' skills.

 

It tells us that we must be careful not to assume too much from the current level of some of our students. We don't really know who will develop and who won't. It's our job to do everything we can to build the skills of each and every student. Coyle quotes Anson Dorrance, head coach of the University of North Carolina women's soccer team, who's led his team to 21 championship wins: "One of the most unfortunate things I see when identifying youth players is the girl who is told over the years how great she is. By the time she's a high school freshman, she starts to believe it. By her senior year, she's fizzled out. Then there's her counterpart: a girl waiting in the wings, who quietly and with determination decides she's going to make something of herself. Invariably, this humble, hard-working girl is the one who becomes the real player."

 

What does that tell us about how we treat our young singers?

 

Think about it!

Building Skills 7

More from Daniel Coyle: Tip#10 “Honor the Hard Skills"

 

From Coyle: "As you probably recognize, most talents are not exclusively hard skills or soft skills, but rather a combination of the two. For example, think of a violinist's precise finger placement to play a series of notes (a hard skill) and her ability to interpret the emotion of a song (a soft skill). . . The point of this tip is simple: Prioritize the hard skills because in the long run they're more important to your talent."

 

This goes to the challenge of building hard skills—whether in yourself or in your singers—while still making progress in the creative soft skills. Coyle's saying to prioritize the hard skills . . . but how do you do this?

 

We can relate it to research on the imagined ability of the brain to multi-task. I say "imagined," because all recent research shows that there is no such thing as multi-tasking, but that your brain has to switch back and forth between tasks. And that switching is not efficient. There's even a recent study that suggests that multi-tasking can damage the abilties of the brain!

 

So, the skills we have to teach our singers have to be prioritized: vocal skills, ensemble skills, musicianship, etc.

 

This is a challenge, because our groups also have to perform . . . and they also need to learn how to sing musically and creatively. We can't work exclusively on exercises and hard skills.

 

This was perhaps possible in an earlier era—for example, the stories (probably exaggerated, of course!) that the famous voice teacher Porpora had the singer Caffarelli train on a single page of vocalises (and nothing else) for five years, then saying, "Go young man. You have nothing more to learn. You are now the greatest singer of Italy and the world."

 

And in a contemporary version of this noted by Coyle, "At Sparktak, the Moscow tennis club, there is a rule that young players must wait years before entering competitive tournaments. 'Technique is everything,' said a coach, Larisa Preobrazhenskaya. 'If you begin playing without technique, it is big mistake.'"

 

So, what do we do? I think we have to follow the research about "multi-tasking." In other words, there's no such thing as being able to practice both soft and hard skills at the same time. But we can alternate work that allows both (and not in such a quick way as to pretend to multi-task and do both at once).

 

I've written before about drilling a particular passage, for accurate pitches, rhythms, vowel, intonation, etc. (some of which may well have to be isolated one element at a time), but then after that (see my various John Wooden posts about drill), work with the choir on singing that passage musically and expressively. Or being able to conduct them with freedom of tempo (rubato) or different phrase shapes and dynamics, since the singers are now confident enough to be able to watch and respond. Some of this can be practiced fairly soon—after even a few repetitions in some passages, the choir can master enough of the music necessary to focus on musicality.

 

And also important is that work on basics (most likely through vocalises or other exercises) is something even an advanced choir needs. Again from Coyle: "The cellist Yo-Yo Ma spends the first minutes of every practice playing single notes on his cello. The NFL quarterback Peyton Manning spends the first segment of every practice doing basic footwork drills—the kind they teach twelve-year-olds."

 

This means finding ways to carefully balance basic work on hard skills (some of which are basics which need continual repetition, no matter what the level of the choir) and working on the soft, creative skills of musicality and projecting the emotion the composer attempts to express.

 

It means re-thinking our rehearsal technique. It means rehearsing with an eye towards balancing the absolutely important building of hard skills (see my earlier post relating to Robert Shaw's techniques) and the need to build in musicality early on as well. It's part of what makes what we do endlessly fascinating. Rehearsing is craft, but the combination and balance of techniques can also be art.

 

P.S. speaking of mentors, Robert Scandrett died on Tuesday—Bob was another important mentor to me. You can find my response to his long and meaningful life here. An amazing musician and person, the study tour of England he planned and led in 1975 changed my life in many ways—take a look, you won't believe what we got to do, who we got to meet, and the performances we heard.

Building Skills 6

More from Daniel Coyle: Tip#9 “To Build Soft Skills, Play Like a Skateboarder”

 

As Coyle says:

 

Soft skills catch our eye because they are beautiful. Picture the soccer star Lionel Messi improvising his way to a brilliant goal, or Jimi Hendrix blazing through a guitar solo, or Jon Stewart riffing through a comic monologue. These talents appear magical and unique. In fact they are the result of super-fast brain software recognizing patterns and responding in just the right way.

 

While hard skills are better put together with measured precision, soft skills are built by playing and exploring inside challenging, ever-changing environments. These are places where you encounter different obstacles and respond to them over and over, building the network of sensitive wiring you need to read, recognize, and react. In other words, to build soft skills you should behave less like a careful carpenter and more like a skateboarder in a skateboard park: aggressive, curious, and experimental, always seeking new ways to challenge yourself.

 

After this, Coyle uses some great examples from Brazilian soccer players, Chicago’s Second City improvisational comedy troupe, and the (!) Brontë sisters to show how in different situations, flexibility and creativity are developed. He then closes with:

 

When you practice a soft skill, focus on making a high number of varied reps, and on getting clear feedback. Don’t worry too much about making errors—the important thing is to explore. Soft skills are often more fun to practice, but they’re also tougher because they demand that you coach yourself. After each session, ask yourself, What worked? What didn’t? And why?

 

As always, I highly recommend getting Coyle’s book yourself.

 

But the question is, how does this apply to a conductor? As recreative artists, where does our own creativity come in?

 

One is in learning how to be expressive and teaching your singers the same. Of course we all bring our training and lifetime in music (however long that is!) to our understanding of interpretation, whether generally or specifically in understanding performance in various periods, national styles, the particular style of an individual composer, languages, poetry, expressive diction, vocal color, varied use of vibrato, etc., etc. This is part of our never-ending learning process, which also includes listening to great artists (not just great choirs), whether singers or instrumentalists, or conductors of the past or present (one of the great things about the wealth of recordings available to us). This never-ending learning process is one of the reasons I love what I do . . . no worries that I can learn it all—and I should never get bored!

 

In your own preparation then, as you learn a particular piece of music, besides the usual research about the music, composer, and text, once you begin to really learn the piece, it’s time to experiment (without worrying, as Coyle says, about errors) with different tempi (and variation in tempi, ritardando/accelerando, and rubato), shapes of phrases, colors, articulations, places to breathe, etc. I do this by literally singing phrases myself, but also purely in my own internal musical imagination (which is a great thing to develop—the ability to imagine and hear the whole score: texture, voices, instruments, harmony, dynamics, etc.). Sometimes it can help to isolate different elements one at a time: experiment with articulation (legato, marcato, staccato and everything in between), with vocal color (bright to dark), and so on. With rubato, when is it appropriate, when not? How much rubato works with the composition—or does too much rubato destroy the structure of the music?

 

I’m having a great time with the Mozart Vesperae solennes de Dominica, which I’m doing with my Collegium Singers right now. It’s the much less known of the pair of Vespers settings Mozart wrote, and an absolutely wonderful piece. But it’s music which needs careful work to shape expressively: varied dynamics, articulations, attention to text (both meaning and diction) and text accent (which does not always fall on strong beats), length of final notes, and (of course) tempi. These all feed into phrase shape, which I think of as the heart and soul of expressive interpretation.

 

All of this experimentation gradually builds an interpretation. Now does this finalize it? Of course not! The ensemble will affect what you do—perhaps a tempo you’ve imagined simply doesn’t work. And the room where you sing will also make its own contribution. When I tour with choirs, the different rooms can make a big difference in tempi, in how much time you take at the end of a section of music. Music is a live art—it’s an interaction between you, the ensemble, room, and audience. I’ll always remember a concert in the Stanford University Chapel with the Choir of the West from PLU—and the great reaction of the choir to the room after we cut off the first chord we sang! For that particular performance I had to allow much more time at the end of sections and it made an impact on my tempi, as well. But any different room will have its own effect.

 

Another thing young conductors need is practice controlling what the ensemble does with just gesture (unless you’ve decided its fine to talk to your ensemble in performance!).

 

When rehearsing, even early in the process, particularly if you’re drilling a phrase or section of the music, start varying what you do (tempo, ritardando, dynamics) and show changes with your gesture, expecting the singers to follow. This gives you many more reps in learning how to control what the singers do with gesture alone. Don’t wait until the dress rehearsal to experiment! Do it as soon as you can—you can also explore your own creativity, exaggerate various things (dynamics, tempo rubato, etc.) that you’d never want to do in a performance.

 

But the idea is . . . find ways to practice your creativity as an interpretive artist!

Reply »

 

Improving Skills 5

More from Daniel Coyle:  Tip #8 - To Build Hard Skills, Work Like a Careful Carpenter

 

To develop reliable hard skills, you need to connect the right wires in your brain. In this, it helps to be careful, slow, and keenly attuned to errors. To work like a careful carpenter. . . . Precision matters early on, because the first reps establish the pathways for the future. Neurologists call this the “sled on a snowy hill” phenomenon. The first repetitions are are like the first tracks on fresh snow: On subsequent tries your sled will tend to follow those grooves. “Our brains are good at building connections” says Dr. George Bartzokis, a neurologist at UCLA. “They’re not so good at unbuilding them.”

 

This can have to do with building conducting skills, but has more to do with teaching our choirs.

 

As we rehearse, we help our choirs build all sorts of hard skills: the rhythms and pitches of the music we’re teaching, the way they approach a high note vocally, proper intonation, etc.. It means making sure that you build each of these correctly. It’s necessary at some points in the learning process to isolate elements to do this.

 

It’s one of the keys to Robert Shaw’s rehearsal process, which developed through his work with his large symphonic choruses (the Collegiate Chorale, Cleveland Symphony Orchestra Chorus, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus) in order to build in all the different elements correctly. He’s been known to say, “You have to clean the floor before you hang the drapes.”

 

Pamela Elrod Huffman, who sang with Shaw, has written about Shaw’s techniques and done workshops on them. Here’s an article by Dr. Elrod from Southwest Musician (the journal of the Texas Music Educators Association).  Think through what this means in the careful building of the skills (rhythm, pitch, dynamics, text) to sing a given piece of music.

 

As I’ve stated before, I use some of Shaw’s techniques but work in a different way—and in doing so, run the risk of moving too quickly and the choir learning some things incorrectly (and then having to spend time unlearning them). It’s definitely something for me to think about!

 

One of the areas I’ve learned you have to be very careful is in working with intonation (you can find my Intonation series on this blog). Allowing your ensemble to sing (even for a surprisingly short period of time) under pitch can build that in so it’s very difficult to overcome.

 

Think carefully about those hard skills you teach your choir . . . and how you can work more “like a careful carpenter."

Improving Skills 4

From Daniel Coyle’s The Little Book of Talent: Tip #7 “Before you start, figure out if it’s a hard skill or soft skill.”

 

Coyle divides up the skills we learn into two basic types:

“Hard skills are about repeatable precision, and tend to be found in specialized pursuits, particularly physical ones.” He then gives examples, such as swinging a golf club or tennis racket, learning the multiplication tables, or a worker on an assembly line. “Here, your goal is to build a skill that functions like a Swiss watch—reliable, exact, and performed the same way every time, automatically, without fail. Hard skills are about ABC: Always Be Consistent.”

 

“Soft, high-flexibility skills, on the other hand, are those that have many paths to a good result, not just one. These skills aren’t about doing the same thing perfectly every time, but rather about being agile and interactive; about instantly recognizing patterns as they unfold and making smart, timely choices. . . With these skills we are not trying for Swiss watch precision, but rather for the ability to quickly recognize a pattern or possibility, and to work past a complex set of obstacles. Soft skills are about the three R’s: Reading, Recognizing, and Reacting.”

 

It’s an interesting and helpful way to think of particular skills we want to master, or those we want our choir to master. In the next two tips, Coyle talks about how to develop either a hard or soft skill and I’ll deal with that in the next couple posts.

 

However, I think that one builds on another. You can’t be truly creative until you’ve mastered some of the underlying hard skills.

 

I’ll go back to John Wooden again, drawing from Ronald Gallimore and Swen Nater’s book on his teaching/coaching: "drill for Coach Wooden is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Drilling is intended to achieve an automaticity or mastery of fundamentals that opens up opportunities for individual creativity and initiative.”

 

In other words, the soft skills can’t come until the hard skills are well established.

 

If you want to improvise well, you have to have an incredibly thorough understanding of the fundamentals and great technique with your instrument. A friend told me a story recently about the late Gerre Hancock (marvelous organist and choral musician who was a prodigious improvisor) going to Paris to study improvisation with the noted pedagogue, Nadia Boulanger. He came to her apartment the first time, expecting a lesson on improvisation, but instead she handed him a fugue subject and asked him to go write a fugue. He was a bit confused, but did so (one wouldn’t argue with Madame Boulanger) and came back at the next appointed time, fugue in hand. She corrected it, then handed him another fugue subject. This continued for months. One week, after bringing his fugue, he took the subject she handed him and began to leave. “But no,” she said, “now you will come in and play a fugue based on this subject.” In other words, he’d so thoroughly mastered the art of writing a fugue that he could now begin to improvise one on the spot.

 

For conductors, clearly, developing the hard skill of a reliable conducting technique is a necessary prelude to being able to improvise gesture that fits the music one is conducting. As I tell my conducting students, I rarely think about my gesture—but if I know the music really, really well—have internalized it—then my gesture should do what it’s supposed to do, elicit the music I hear internally from my singers and instrumentalists.

 

The same is true of rehearsal technique. I’ve written about it here, here, and also here. As your rehearsal technique becomes more and more secure, it allows the freedom to improvise in rehearsal. Just as mastering the skills of cooking and an understanding of how different ingredients will combine allow a great chef the freedom to modify a recipe to great result.

 

In this sense, so much that we do is both craft and art: we have to work incredibly hard to develop our skills, our craft . . . but after that art has the possibility to flourish.

 

One of my fondest memories at PLU was taking the choir on tour and getting to that point where the details of performing our repertoire were secure in such a way that on a given night I could “play” with the music and the choral "instrument." But this was always a two-way street—the singers’ response (to the room, to the music) could also influence me—in that way at its best, performance becomes a complex, creative, and artistic dance between conductor and ensemble (and room and audience). Those are the moments (not always present, of course) when the experience transcends our usual music making. And those transcendent moments and performances are what makes it all worthwhile.

Improving Skills 3

From Daniel Coyle’s The Little Book of Talent: Tip #5 - Be willing to be stupid.

 

The point, of course, isn’t to be stupid, but to be willing to fail, to take risks. Coyle uses the example of Wayne Gretzky falling in practice and says, “As skilled as he was, Gretzky was determined to improve, to push the boundaries of the possible. The only way that happens is to build new connections in the brain—which means reaching, failing, and yes, looking stupid.”

 

There is a great Nike ad with Michael Jordan, which you probably already know, but it makes the same point: without taking risks (and failing) you won’t fail . . . but you’re unlikely to grow either.

But what does this mean for the conductor?

 

It certainly means challenging yourself. How can you push yourself beyond your current boundaries, your current skill level?

 

Repertoire is one logical area—it’s the basis for all we do, after all. Eric Ericson always maintained that his choirs (and he) grew through the challenges of particular repertoire:

You asked how technique and proficiency developed, and I can almost mention certain pieces which were "rungs on the ladder" . . . because that's how I feel so strongly when we've learned a difficult and very good piece. I'm thinking naturally from the viewpoint of the Chamber Choir with [Lidholm's] Laudi from 1947, Fyra körer from 1953, then the big pieces of Stravinsky, Nono . . . Dallapiccola perhaps most of all, which is where we learned to read notes and rhythms. And then of course we have a Swedish piece, again by Lidholm [1956--Canto], that we struggled with for half a year. I have a certain sense that, when you "come out on the other side" after having done a piece like Lidholm's Canto, you are a better musician, a better conductor, a better chorister. Canto feels like a final exam for the '50s choral life . . . early pieces that were difficult tonally and rhythmically became less so. Canto combined all the difficulties one was thrown between.

What repertoire will push your musicianship, your conducting technique, your ability to teach a particular style? The risk of failure or looking stupid is there, but believe me, it’s worth it.

 

Coyle says, “Feeling stupid is no fun. But being willing to be stupid—in other words, being willing to risk the emotional pain of making mistakes—is absolutely essential, because reaching, failing, and reaching again is the way your brain grows and makes new connections. When it comes to developing talent, remember, mistakes are not really mistakes—they are the guideposts you use to get better."

 

Another worthwhile book I’ve written about is Mindset by Carol Dweck—the full post is here.

 

It deals with two different mindsets regarding learning. From that blog post:

Dweck says, "Everyone is born with an intense drive to learn. Infants stretch their skills daily. Not just walk and talk. They never decide it's too hard or not worth the effort. They walk, they fall, they get up. They just barge forward."

 

Somewhere along the line, though, some children learn that they are being evaluated and become afraid of challenges (and paradoxically, continual praising children as being smart or supremely talented can lead to the fixed mindset).

 

She tells of a study where they offered four-year-olds the choice between redoing an easy jigsaw puzzle or trying a harder one. Even at this age, kids who had a fixed mindset--that is, they believed in fixed traits--chose the safe one. They told the researchers, kids who are born smart "don't do mistakes." The other children with a growth mindset--who believed you could get smarter--couldn't imagine doing a puzzle they'd done before. One girl said, "I'm dying to figure them out!"

 

Again from Dweck, "So children with the fixed mindset want to make sure they succeed. Smart people should always succeed. But for children with the growth mindset, success is about stretching themselves. It's about becoming smarter.”

All of us have things we’re comfortable with: our conducting technique, rehearsal technique, our usual way of doing things. Sometimes in order to grow, we have to give up our comfortable ways and change our technique—in a very real sense, change who we are. This almost certainly will mean that for a period of time you’ll be uncomfortable and, in fact, probably won’t do as well. But you need the time to grow those new connections in your brain—and perhaps, feel “stupid” for awhile. But if you’re not willing to go through that process you won’t grow.

 

So, if you want to grow and improve, don’t be afraid of mistakes and failure: "be willing to be stupid.” Challenge yourself, put yourself in situations where you’re certain to struggle. And give yourself the opportunity to change and grow.

Improving Skills 2

Daniel Coyle's The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills Tip #3 is, "Steal without apology." This is something I've long believed—it's one of the best ways to acquire new skills. When you see a fine conductor do something—gesture, rehearsal technique, etc.—that works, follow the advice given in the first post, quoting Coyle, "Many hotbeds use an approach I call the engraving method. Basically, they watch the skill being performed, closely and with great intensity, over and over, until they build a high-intensity mental blueprint." Then . . . add it to your repertoire. As Picasso says, "Good artists borrow. Great artists steal."

 

An interesting example is given:

Linda Septien, founder of the Linda Septien School of Contemporary Music, a hotbed near Dallas that has produced millions of dollars in pop music talent (including Demi Lovato, Ryan Cabrera, and Jessica Simpson), tells her students, "Sweetheart, you gotta steal like crazy. Look at every single performer better than you and see what they've got that you can use. Then make it your own. Septien follows her own advice, having accumulated fourteen three-ring notebooks worth of ideas stolen from top performers. In plastic sleeves inside the binders, in some cases scribbled on cocktail napkins, reside tips on everything from how to hit a high note to how to deal with a rowdy crowd (a joke works best).

I know I can trace some specific gestures or rehearsal techniques I use to particular teachers, mentors, or conductors I've observed. But you have to find a way to make these skills yours. That comes with practice. You have to absorb it so thoroughly that it now belongs to you. And, of course, to quote Ecclesiastes, "There is nothing new under the sun." Those you "steal" from have no doubt "stolen" it from someone else.

 

You can also absorb certain things unconsciously . . . and that can be good or bad. I know some things I learned as a singer in Rod Eichenberger's University of Washington Chorale as an undergraduate—notably a sense of rhythm and phrasing—gradually became a part of me and my approach to music, and for that I'll be eternally grateful.

 

But at the same time sometimes we copy things that aren't an essential part of a conductor's success. If you copy Robert Shaw's rehearsing with a towel around his neck instead of his amazing score study habits, it's unlikely your conducting will improve!

 

So, steal freely. But make sure you practice until the new skill belongs to you . . . and then someone else can steal it from you.

Improving Skills 1

This next blog series revolves around several books and their perspectives on increasing our skills. Those skills can range from conducting technique to rehearsal technique to score study, if we think of our own skills as conductors. It can also mean the skills we teach our singers, which are equally important.

 

As you've seen in the previous series on Books Worth Reading, I often draw inspiration from books that aren't directly about music—they can range from psychology to sports to . . . well, almost anything.

 

I'll start with Daniel Coyle's The Little Book of Talent, which I referenced here. It developed out of Coyle's research (as a magazine writer develping an article) looking at "talent hotbeds" and how some people or schools or organizations developed an inordinate (and statistically significantly larger) number of exceptionally talented individuals. In essence, how these particular individuals showed such remarkable skill growth. The "Little Book" is his series of tips for improving skills.

 

So, let's get to work!

 

Tip #2 is "Spend 15 Minutes a Day Engraving the Skill on Your Brain" (I wrote about Tip #1, "Stare About Who You Want to Become," in the post linked above).

 

Coyle says that in learning a new skill, "Many hotbeds use an approach I call the engraving method. Basically, they watch the skill being performed, closely and with great intensity, over and over, until they build a high-intensity mental blueprint." He uses an example of Timothy Gallwey teaching a woman who'd never played tennis how to hit a forehand, without ever saying a word, in about 20 minutes. He also uses the example of Suzuki teaching, where a particular song is engraved by listening intently (and over and over) in the students' brains.

 

There are many ways to use this idea (which isn't new, of course).

 

I remember learning to do a "kip" on the high bar as a junior high school student (this video shows a kip as a way to get onto the bar—it's only a little humiliating that the person doing the kip—and something much more difficult afterward—is a 6 year old girl!). It wasn't until I'd watched it done by my fellow classmates many times that I could imagine how it felt in my brain, that I could do it myself. I had to internalize and imagine doing the move before I could do it. But it was visualizing the move intensely that made that happen.

 

How can this apply to skill development? Lots of ways, of course!

• Learning a new conducting technique, watch someone intently on the particular technique/move (someone who does it well, of course!). Given today's video capability with our phones, get video of someone (a colleague, your teacher, fellow student) doing it. Spend 15 minutes a day watching intently and absorbing the move until you can feel it in your brain. Then see if you can do it, having absorbed it into your own physical repertoire.
• For singers to recreate certain kinds of sounds we can teach in a variety of ways, but models—sound models—can be the most effective. If a picture is worth a thousand words, can't we say the same thing about sound? Demonstrations (by yourself if you're skilled, by another member of the choir, or by a guest—perhaps a voice teacher) can help create the sound you desire from your choir, often more quickly than other methods. Of course, you have to be careful about this. In any demonstration you may inadvertently create some things you don't want. Intonation is a particular one—a good example of quality of sound may be sabotaged by your not paying attention to your intonation. Recordings can also be used, but care needs to be taken to give examples that are possible for your singers. I wouldn't use the Swedish Radio Choir for a middle school choir! (But I might use a recording of a great middle school choir—for example, a recording of boys singing with the best possible sound for male singers that age)
• Style can also be taught/absorbed through excellent recordings. Long ago, when I was preparing the Brahms Liebeslieder Walzer with my choir at PLU, I began every rehearsal playing recordings of Strauss waltzes by the Vienna Philharmonic. It was to absorb the style (very natural to those musicians) of playing a waltz: the right kind of lilt, where the 2nd beat gets placed rhythmically, the difference between a waltz and a Ländler). How much did it help? I can't separate it out, but I believe much is absorbed unconsciously in doing this kind of listening. I should also say that I had a waltz party with our dance teacher coming in to teach the singers to dance the waltz!

Think of your own examples! Please reply and share your ideas with everyone!