FBSMC11, Making the Most of What You Have, One Note

Since the material is getting very dense in these videos, I've decided in this video to focus on how much we can make of one note.

Here is where life can get very interesting! If we are only focused on our beautiful sound, are we going to be willing to experiment to find other qualities? The series of exercises in this video could challenge one's concepts. This subject, for those of you who have followed my videos, will know this is not a new topic that has been discussed! These exercises work on expanding our concepts and ideas mentally and also give us the opportunity to broaden our basic embouchure and breath control. In fact as much as we can get into mental ruts, we certainly get into physical ruts too. This makes sense from several viewpoints including the idea of sticking to one beautiful sound. How many ways can we make that one beautiful sound nuance? At that point, is it the one beautiful sound or is it enhanced or changed to the point where it moved into other shades, colors and timbres?

If there is a high quality ice cream for example, the quality is tasted and recognized whether it is chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, maple walnut and so forth. So is quality independent of the particular flavor? Is quality it's own 'flavor' regardless of what kind it might be? I think this is more to the point isn't it? There are many flavors of trombone sound out there but we can all sense quality even if we like some more than others. But, it does get tricky because our own opinions 'color' the picture. We can solve this apparent contradiction by saying as an example, "a darker more low -over- toned -covered sound fits Mahler more than Mozart." At least this kind of putting together has a purpose that  goes beyond someone's personal "I like or I don't like" as the only criteria.

How are we gong to discover if we never venture outside of our own backyard???

Video 8

https://youtu.be/8qStyB4LEfk

FBSMC11, Making the Most of What You Have, Video 7, Your Experiences

Connecting to Nature is a wonderful way for a human being to feel more unity with life outside of usual urban day to day life with its speeds, timings and agendas. We all have experiences and relationships with color, people, plants, rocks, animals and more! We can connect to these experiences and put them into our music making. Nature is the Living Art and when putting our connections with nature in our music making, our music becomes a living Art as well. 

Now a person does have their internal goings in our psychologies, mental wiring, emotional waves, physical body stuff on all levels and all of these interacting with our environment and various relationships. We can have our art, music making, be a wonderful way towards our own personal development and deepening of our art's content. Our art can become more nutrient dense with more substance the more we bring the fullness of our life into it. 

Starting with our experiences, gives us a chance to feel something that is in us. This is usually more graspable than something outside of our personal experience. So this video really encourages that exploration which can be a useful way of linking our life into our music making.

Video 7 Your Experiences link:

https://youtu.be/yQ1ox7qRMTs

FBSMC11, Making the Most of What You Have, Companion Notes for Video 6, "The Juggler"

If everything is going fine in our playing, we don't have a need to break it down into parts. If  we are starting out, there are a lot of parts to 'juggle' with aren't there?  The teacher needs to be sensitive to each individual student and their specific ability to take on more and more. Think of what it takes to get a sound out of a brass instrument. Vibrating of the lips, a good inhale and exhale of air, air support. When we want to be more specific about quality of sound, other things need to be put into the picture like: an example we can hear and try to reproduce, a better structure in our embouchure, the quality and speed of the air might need to alter, mouthpiece placement might have to come into it and so on.  It certainly can feel like a juggling act. This is where a good example to have as a model can be useful. Also a concept, eventually a personal concept, that makes it real for us and comes from a feeling within ourselves.

Once a player has a basic foundation where they have basic command over the foundations of playing, they can start to add more to their repertoire of various kinds of articulation, timbres of tone, musical nuances and more. This is an expansion of what they have and certainly can produce another kind of juggling act. Improving and adding more to what we can already do challenges our playing and what is comfortable for us. Once some people get comfortable, the thought of making changes doesn't sound very appealing! But, there are those that want more out of their playing because there is a need to express more or frankly, they get bored with what they have and want to be challenged. This is because at some level, for those who want to go further with their art, there is a sense that more is called for, for they are feeling unsatisfied and sense something is missing in their art.

This video talks about tone color using the elements, water, earth, air and fire and finding how to express these natural elements of nature to our playing. It also gets into expanding our kinds  articulation listening to other instruments and so much more... My recommendation is to try to catch the way of it instead of trying to memorize the words of what is being said.  Build relationships with rhythm, pitch, timbre, other instruments, the elements of nature, everything,  and see how they can enhance and teach you much on all levels about your music and technique as living thing which will certainly help you in making the most of what you have!

Video 6 "The Juggle" link:

https://youtu.be/0Od-s53dRiE 

FBSMC11 Making the Most of What You Have, Companion notes for videos 2,3,4&5

Hi everyone!

FBSMC11 is well on its way! One of the themes that is emerging from the videos so far is how everything is so integrated.

In video 2, I'm talking about making the most of your  T.E.A. time. No, not the nice relaxing time they enjoy mid afternoon in Great Britain, but how you are spending your time, energy and awareness in your practice sessions. When we spend time practicing we are also using energy. When we put our awareness (attention) on something, it takes time and uses energy. This can lead to some very fascinating contemplations! Think about it: time is a specific amount of space, energy is fuel that is needed for awareness, awareness is consciousness even though we can be conscious but not aware! Beware!, meaning be aware that you are 'in' when you are engaged in practicing (and other activities), so you are not just unconsciously acting out of habit when you don't want to be.

Some suggestions to help this along:
1. Practice in shorter time periods paying attention to what you are doing
2. Know what you are trying to get accomplished
3. Ask yourself questions like, "Is this closer or further from what I want?' "Do I even know what I am looking for?"
4. When you feel yourself not 'in'(meaning with what you are doing), STOP and collect yourself in a calm matter.

Try this method:
1. Set  an alarm for 10 minutes
2. Focus on an aspect of playing
3. Stop each time you are unsatisfied with it.
4. End the session when the timer goes off.
5. Rest for 5-6 minutes then start the session again.
NOTE: During the rest sessions, walk in place taking breaths through the nose or mouth for 5  counts in and then 5 counts out. Think thoughts that inspire you and give you energy and enthusiastically remind yourself why you are doing what you are doing.

Video 2 link  https://youtu.be/_VCa3CxDyVw

The above exercises also go well with Video 3 which is called Practice Time. This video takes the concepts of T.E.A. time  and applies it to our individual practice sessions. Video 3 emphasizes the need to prepare ourselves for more productive engagements in our practice sessions and gives some ways and means to hep this come about. Tuning to the task at hand is a surely a way to have more awareness and energy to make the most out of our time. 

Video 3 link  https://youtu.be/bvUCX6_Ixqw

 Videos 4 and 5 focus on the tripod of music's physical body rhythm, pitch and timbre. Video 4 centers around tone (timbre) and video 5 focuses on rhythm. But!! In video 5 something amazing happens when I realize that if we are working on rhythm playing our horn, how can I ignore or not think about articulation? Rhythm speaks of clarity and specificity and so does articulation and of course pitch does too! So feeling the interrelatedness of all these things triggered an explosion of awareness in seeing everything as one thing and the value of a concept being a compact unified idea made up of many working parts. All the parts come into service and under the banner of the whole. So, within the one (concept in this case), lies the many. The other videos 6 and 7 will dig into this in more detail with more practical exercises!

Video 4 link  https://youtu.be/2KWdtv5sfuw

Video 5 link   https://youtu.be/XOHWqVQSXKI

FBSMC11 link to video 1, Overture and Companion Notes

Hi everyone,

It is that time of year again for Frequency Bone Summer Music Connection, and this is number 11! This first video is an Overture heralding this summer's video series called "Making the Most of What You Have."

If you think for a moment, it really is simple but no one can proceed with a truly fulfilling life without it. To get the ball rolling, here are a few questions to ask yourself:

1. What do I have?
2. What does it really mean to make the most of what I have and how do I go about it?
3. What is the purpose for making the most of what I have?
4. How will I use what I have?

We will be looking into these questions throughout this series with some very practical methods and exercises to help you make progress in this very important and fundamental territory.

How to make the most out of these videos.
1. Take your time with them. Let yourself feel and think about them and apply it to your practice and playing
2. Don't expect answers to just come to you without working on the subject matter.
3. Be continually finding value and appreciation for journey into your Art. Write them down in a notebook, this helps a lot of people.

FBSMC11, "Making the Most of You Have", Video 1, Overture

link

https://youtu.be/V8GcOXHihIM

FBSMC10, The Art of the Student, Video 5 and companion notes

I was just thinking that a serious student is always looking to get better. Improvement is quite an amazing thing to be a part of and when one starts getting into it for real, they start to see and appreciate their improvement which acts as its own encouragement.

Easy to see improvements for a student is when our range gets bigger, our tonguing gets faster or our endurance lasts longer. There are so many areas to gauge improvement aren't there? The physical is easier to see and work for in certain ways. But what about the music making? How our we assessing that progress?

I talk a lot about vibrato in this video 5 and my journey with it. is vibrato needed to make music? Well, I guess it depends what style we are talking about. As it says in the video, I use about 5 different kinds on a regular basis. The "u"vibrato is created by the tongue and sounds almost like the early electronic stringed instrument called the theremin. You can hear it in the old science fiction movies, high pitched with a lot of fast vibrato. However if you go on YouTube, you will be amazed at how beautiful it can sound playing some of the great classics. For me, the theremin, perhaps because of my association with the old movies, has a very eerie and unearthly sound. So for me, vibrato would express some character of the essence of the music. 

This a big subject because many musicians have strong views about vibrato in terms of what too much is and how wide or narrow it is. The same is true for legato. There are many opinions on what is good legato but in general it seems people like smooth fast slide action between notes without any gliss. To me, this kind of legato sounds like an incredibly smooth tenuto articulation. So we then could say that lyrical does not mean a certain kind of legato or vibrato. Music is beyond those 'techniques.' They are expressive nuances that emote from that which is being expressed. 

Th personal journey is vital. The student, at any point in their development, can start to feel their own lives making their way through the music that comes out of their instrument.

Video 5 link:  https://youtu.be/rL7MX3UBl1M

FBSMC10, The Art of the Student, Video 4 with companion notes

Attention Teachers! :-) In my view, you have such an important function into human life. And with this comes a lot of responsibility. You are engaging at close range, sometimes for many years with another human being, another life that is living on this planet and looks to you for guidance. And let's face it, as teachers we are learning an absolute ton from the students we teach. So in a sense, we are at another level of student. It's just that the student isn't always aware of how much we are being student to them in the exchanges we have in our lessons. 

In this video, the infamous 'box' came up. The 'box' from the standpoint of a student was brought but what about the 'box' of the teacher? Does the teacher have the ability to draw out the deeper arts of the student? This depends on what the teacher's 'box' is made out of. For example, does this 'box' have a window? Does the teacher's automatic system, (habit of teaching with fixed ways and means), let them actually see the student-person? not just the potential as a trombone student, even though that of course is part of it. Like the student, the teacher has aptitudes and really can't be expected to act as a parent, therapist, fountainhead of inspiration, wise-person and so on at all times, let alone having the qualifications to do so. Teachers have a combination of roles that are at play in a private lesson. This is a very involved subject and it depends on the reason the teacher teaches. What is the principle motive behind the teaching? Very important to contemplate this. 

Drawing the art out of the student might not be every teachers' forte. But the great teachers I know and have worked with had a way of doing so, at least for me. Not all teachers work for all students and the other way around of course. But let me give a preliminary list of some ways and means that might help in regards to a teacher being able to draw more of the student's art out of them.

1. Acknowledge the absolute fact (as obvious as this sounds), that this is a human life you are dealing with and all that means.
2. Instead of always just showing how it 'should' be done, listen to what the student is doing and assess it from, 
a) the physical level 
b) level of determination and potency of desire
 c) is there a feeling in it and what kind or kinds of feelings? 
d) experiment with the student and work together in a process of discovery.

So much more could be said! Perhaps the other videos will touch more on this but this leads us to the teachers 'box.' This is for each teacher to look at. It can start with making a list of what you think are your best aspects as a teacher. You can even assess it using the basics of the Overlay System. Here is an example:
1st Overlay: How are you at addressing physical aspects of playing? (some people might be good with air others with embouchure or articulation.. ).
2nd Overlay: How are you at assessing the decision capabilities of a student? How much do you take into account and what is your level of patience in this process? Do you come at them with a 'club' if you get impatient with them or understanding? Do you teach everyone the same????
3rd Overlay: Can you get a sense of their purpose and if so can you adjust to an individual's need and purpose if it is different than your own?

Again this is just to get you started if you are interested. I'm sure  many of you experienced teachers have thought of this before in your own language and terminology. Hope some of this is a way to get the ball rolling. As teachers we also have to be honest with what we can and cannot do and to at least be aware of our own 'box' and the potential biases and limitations that can cloud our perceptions and abilities.

Link to video 4  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-6Ng5DS2ao&feature=youtu.be