What Recorder Players Can Learn from NASA

My son has gotten really into space lately, so we’ve been watching some shuttle launches on video. And while my kid been enraptured by the plume of liftoff, the astronaut gear, and the space ice cream, I’ve been enthralled by something else entirely.

The pre-lauch checklist.

Basically, before any shuttle can launch, the team must make its way through a massive to-do list, examining and double-checking every system. Sure, everyone involved might already feel like everything is ready to go, but if you’re launching into space, readiness should probably be more than a feeling. The checklist ensures that everyone, and everything, is truly ready to proceed.

Other industries make similar use of checklists. There’s a pre-flight checklist for pilots. A pre-surgery checklist for the person cutting into your chest.

Why not a pre-music checklist?

I know I’m not the only one guilty of picking up my instrument and plunging into playing. I try not to, but when I’m feeling short on time, the temptation is real. And I see many students –maybe even most students– beginning to play before they’re fully prepared.

Sure, we’re not astronauts or pilots or surgeons. (At least, most of us aren’t!) If something goes wrong nobody dies, and we might not need a 47-step safety check before we begin to play. But readiness -real readiness- makes us better musicians. And taking the time to run through a quick pre-music checklist before playing is a great way to prime ourselves for musical success.

Try it out next time you pick up your instrument. Before you make a sound, run through the following:

1) Check posture and positioning

2) Check key signature

3) Identify and finger the first note

4) Feel at least one full measure of your tempo

5) Inhale in time and with musical purpose.

I’m betting your checklist improves your launch.

Dealing with Difficult Notes: Four Strategies that Work

Some notes on the recorder are relatively easy. Set your thumb and two fingers down on the alto, for instance, and out comes a nice, round, ringing D. Raise one finger up from there and get a bright, clear E. Even some notes with more convoluted fingerings, like high A, are forgiving, accommodating a wide range of air pressures and thumb positions.

These are the notes that suck you in! They’re the friendly family members: the kindly Aunts, the twinkling Grandpas. They welcome you to the party, take your coat, ply you with peanuts and Mai Tais. You’re just starting to have a good time!

…and then you’re accosted by crabby Uncle high F. And demanding Cousin low F-Sharp. Not to mention enigmatic Great Aunt G-sharp and her coterie of cross-fingered notes– will they ever warm to you?

Suddenly the party seems a whole lot less comfortable.

Just as in families, some notes on the recorder are more difficult to deal with than others. And when we encounter them, it behooves us to be deliberate in our approach.

If you’re struggling with the a difficult note, what can you do? Let’s talk through four strategies:

1) Accept its essential nature.

Just like family members, you can’t make a note into something it’s not. If you expect more from a note than it is capable of giving you, you are signing yourself up for disappointment. Low F-Sharp is never, ever going to be loud, and trying to make it loud will get you nothing but an ugly squawk. Highest F can only be made so delicate before it cracks. And cross-fingered notes like G-sharp, C-sharp, and E-flat share a certain muffled, covered quality that is impossible to eradicate.

What’s the solution? Learn to appreciate the singular beauty of each note on the recorder, and don’t try to force it to be something it cannot be

2) Figure out what it wants.

Difficult notes are difficult because their wants are particular. Highest F, for example, needs not only the perfect thumb opening (the size of which can vary by recorder!), but also a very specific way of blowing (focused, rapid; strong but not too strong), and even a particular tongue stroke (gentle but not tentative). Whereas less difficult notes might accept all kinds of abuse, difficult notes want only what they want– and they want it now.

But take heart! Although it may not be easy to remember what I’m going to say next when you go to pluck a gorgeous high F out of the air and emit, instead, a strangled squawk– difficult notes are your best teachers! Unlike more forgiving notes, they force you to acquire finesse and control. Even the easy notes of the recorder want to be played with care and attention, and it’s the difficult notes that will teach you how.

Name the notes you have trouble with. Start to think explicitly about what each of them wants– and write it down.

3) Spend time with it.

If you barely ever spend time with your abrasive cousin, how can you expect to develop a relationship? For any difficult note, part of your essential work is to spend a lot of time there, and to do so in a sustained, relaxed, and observant way.

Working on highest F? Spend time every day sustaining that note. Notice what you have to adjust –or not– in order to make that possible.. Start to become aware of what it sounds like and feels like to have a relaxed, successful production of your difficult note, and begin to train your muscle memory to expect, and return to, that beautiful, easy production.

4) Make it home.

We know we’ve truly managed to befriend a difficult note if it is happy to see us when we arrive. To this end, once you have spent enough time sustaining the note to get comfortable with what it should sound and feel like, you should begin to practice moving away from it– and back.

I’ve dubbed my favorite difficult-note exercise the homing exercise, and you can do it with any note as your home base. Once you’ve selected home, practice successively larger leaps to and from your difficult note, first one note away, then two, then three, etc., always returning to home in between.

If you picked highest F, say, the exercise could look like this:

F

F-E-F

F-D-F

F-C-F

F-B-flat

F-A-F

F-G-F

F-F-F

And then back up….or further down! In the above example, you’re outlining a major scale, but you could also try a minor scale, a chromatic scale, or really anything your heart desires. The point is to practice moving both to and from a note that gives you trouble, and to do so in a way that is relaxed and controlled.

Applying this strategy– and the others outlined above– will take time! Dealing with difficult notes isn’t quick or easy. But over time, your efforts will bear fruit.

No, You Aren't Going Backwards

Have you ever felt like, in spite of all the effort you’ve expended on a musical task, your performance has actually deteriorated?

I know my students have felt this way, because they tell me so. “I feel like I’m going backward,” a student will say, after experiencing some musical frustration. “Am I getting worse?”

The answer is, in almost every case, no.

It’s not that I’ve never seen a student get worse, but the few times I have there’s almost always some kind of otherwise obvious physical or neurological degenerative process at play.

The reassuring truth is that, If you invest practice time in something, especially in partnership with someone offering quality guidance and feedback, you are pretty much guaranteed to get better at that thing.

So why on earth can it seem like you’re backsliding?

There are many reasons! Let’s take a closer look.

1) Sampling Rate. If you practice regularly, you hear yourself on such a regular basis that you may not notice many of the positive changes that are taking place in your playing. This is because your sampling rate (how often you assess yourself) is so frequent that the amount of change between any two specific samples is so small it’s difficult to perceive. On the other hand, I, as your teacher, hear you every couple of weeks–a lower sampling rate that means the gap between any two data points will be larger, and the gains more perceptible.

What can you do about it?: Try out a longer sampling interval by going back to things you played a year ago. Or try recording yourself every couple of weeks

2) Task Difficulty. A related issue is difficulty of your task. As you grow as a musician and a player, the difficulty of the material you are trying to master will (or at least should!) increase alongside your skills. And while you may have been able to play Hot Cross Buns with ease and panache, you’re probably going to struggle a bit more with the Handel Sonata movement in front of you now. Please don’t worry! Increasing the difficulty of what you attempt is a necessary part of skill-building.

What can you do about it? Maintain awareness of increasing task difficulty and reward yourself with periodic returns to material you’ve already mastered.

3) You Know More. This is a big one. Ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect? Basically, people with lower ability on any particular skill tend to overestimate their competence at that skill. Whereas people with greater ability tend to do so less. I find this to be especially true of musicians– because, as you develop your playing ability, you’re also developing your awareness of the many and varied dimensions that make up quality music-making. And you may start to be able to perceive– and fret over– some of the distance you have yet to travel.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you tend to play sharp. When you first start playing, you can’t hear that you’re consistently sharp, and everything seems great! (Well, at least to you.) But then your ear develops a bit, and you begin to sense a difference between your tone and your neighbor’s. And the difference doesn’t sound good! What is happening? Are you getting worse???

No. But your ear has gotten better, which means the accuracy and scope of your assessment has increased.

What can you do about it? Recognize that your ear and your awareness grow alongside your physical skills. And embrace your increasing motivation to improve!

4) Skill is a Range. OMG! You just played your exercise perfectly and now it’s falling apart! What the heck is wrong?? Are you getting worse??

No. You’re just exploring a lower portion of your ability range on that particular exercise. Think about your abilities as a box. Next time you might perform higher within your box, or lower, or the same. But your box itself hasn't dropped, and experiencing the range of your performance within it shouldn’t disturb you overmuch. Think about if you played baseball. Sure, you could get hung up on how many runs you scored in any individual game. But a more meaningful distinction is whether you’re playing in Little League or the Majors

What can you do about it? Concentrate on moving your whole box up, as opposed to dwelling on where any specific run-through falls within it.

5) Progress is Not Linear. Hey, nobody said we were guaranteed to progress in a nice, linear fashion straight up the diagonal at a constant rate of change. Sometimes it’s two steps forward and one step back. Sometimes we zoom ahead and sometimes we crawl. Sometimes our progress stair steps; sometimes it gently climbs; sometimes it plateaus. And musical ability is not unitary- it’s vast constellation of intertwined skills. Sometimes we’re so busy developing one skill that others have to take a back seat for a while.

And there are also times when things really do need to get worse before they can get better. Say you’re trying to move to a second octave technique where you bend your thumb instead of toggle your wrist. At first, as you learn your brand new way of playing, your high notes are going to be worse than they were before. But persevere, because the change will make your high notes better long-term.

What can you do about it? Accept progress as complex and multi-faceted; just keep moving forward.

6) Unrealistic Expectations. You understand exactly what you need to do to make your tone smooth and beautiful– so why can’t you just DO it? What is wrong with you?

Making unrealistic demands of yourself is common, and leads to a whole lot of frustration. I have noticed that this tendency is especially common among highly skilled musicians who are taking up the recorder, and among people who are high-achieving experts in other fields. Musicians get frustrated because of the mismatch between their extensive musical awareness and what they are able, physically in the moment, to achieve. Experts in other fields have often forgotten what it was like to feel incompetent. Music encompasses many complex psycho-motor skills that take time– lots of time, distributed over a long period– to acquire. And every instrument has its own, individual set of these skills. These are not quick and easy acquisitions.

What can you do about it? Give yourself grace– and time.

All of that to say– no, you’re not going backwards. It’s a (very) long game.

How Not to Breathe

I may be dating myself, but I used lo love watching a reality show called “What Not to Wear.” Each episode, Clinton and Stacy, the tough-love, unfailingly stylish hosts, would attempt to wreak a fashion transformation on some poor fashion disaster who’d been nominated by their nearest and dearest.

Each makeover was different, but there were thematic through lines. Effort spent on one’s appearance was to be reinterpreted as self-love (since I watched most episodes in ratty sweatpants, I’m not sure this lesson stuck). Cargo shorts were unacceptable at all times. And one directive graced nearly every episode: “Dress for the body you have, not the body you want.”

I think about Clinton and Stacy sometimes when a student tells me they yet haven’t developed a plan for breathing in a particular piece because they want to wait until they’re able to play the piece faster. Usually, this means the student still doing what I call “freelancing–” breathing whenever they run out of breath and damn the musical consequences!

So often, in my best fashionista voice, I bust out my What Not to Wear line: “Breathe for the tempo you have, not the tempo you want!”

It’s a simple concept, but it’s important. Breathing does so much more than simply replenish your oxygen stores. Breathing, for a wind player, is musical punctuation, as vital to your musical message as periods and commas are to your words. When you postpone integrating your breathing into your piece, you are jettisoning a vital piece of the musical puzzle, something that should always be a part of your playing, no matter how fast you’re going– or want to go in the future.

And to be frank, when you do speed the piece up, a lot the breathing work you’ve already done will carry over. It’s possible you may ultimately omit some breaths, but you’re unlikely to change their location, and it may just be a matter of keeping the same number of breaths but recalibrating how much air you take in on each.

The time to think about breathing isn’t some distant musical future when your fingers are flying over the holes.

It’s not the day you click the metronome up to the magic number. The time to think about breathing is now.

It is always, always now.

Four Shortcuts to Get You There Faster!

Since last month’s post focused on shortcuts you really shouldn’t take, I thought I’d turn it around this month and share four musical shortcuts you can take guilt-free! Yes, that’s right: I’m about to give you permission to cut some corners. Enjoy it, because it won’t last!

Shortcut #1: Don’t play the whole piece every time you practice. Although playing through an entire piece IS an essential type of practice, you should also be making time for focused, high-frequency practice on the specific areas that need work. Not every part of every piece is going to need the same amount of your time and energy, and you want to allocate accordingly.

Shortcut #2: Write it down. Sometimes I get the impression that students think writing things down is cheating. It’s not! Do you keep missing a note? Write in the letter name. Do you keep forgetting an ornament you really want to do? Write it out. Do you have trouble with a tricky rhythm? Mark where the beats fall within the phrase. What your music looks like doesn’t matter. What it sounds like does! So use the tools at your disposal to prime yourself for success!

Shortcut #3: Listen. It’s OK to listen to a piece you’re learning on Youtube! Really it is! While it’s absolutely true that you never want to use listening as a crutch (i.e., you shouldn’t HAVE to do it in order to tackle a piece), listening to a piece you’re learning as you follow the score can be a fantastic way to preview the journey ahead of you- or to get ideas as you go.

Shortcut #4: Prioritize intent. We recorder players often play music that is not intended for recorder. And when we do, we can bump up against some of the limitations of the instrument. Like the need to breathe. Or the fact that, no matter what we do, many recorders are never going to be really loud in the lowest range. In these cases, I think it can be valuable to prioritize intent over content. What the heck does that mean? Well, let’s say that it’s clear that the composer wants you to be very loud and trumpet-like as you play a series of low As on the alto recorder. You could spend hours trying to (minimally) increase the brassiness of your low notes… or you could decide to take that section up an octave or two and be done. Or let’s say a composer wants 32 measures of gentle, rolling sixteenth notes. You could devote a month to playing every single one of those notes, gasping like a dying fish every few measures, or you could decide to judiciously eliminate a few unaccented, harmonically redundant notes to sneak in sips of air. By prioritizing the intent of the music, as opposed to playing every single note exactly as written, you could actually be conveying the composer’s intention more powerfully.

Three Shortcuts That Aren't

I love a good shortcut!

If there’s a faster back road, I’m taking it. If there’s a walking path that cuts across the grass but gets me there in less time, I’m getting my shoes dirty. And perhaps my proudest high school accomplishment was managing to turn in the same ten-page paper for two different courses.

So, I empathize —profoundly!— with my students’ yearning for shortcuts. The idea of a shortcut (faster, less work!) is intuitively appealing, but perhaps even more so in a field like music which makes you work, hard and consistently, for any rewards.

But the thing is— not all shortcuts actually do get you there here faster. Others speed your progress at first, but over the long haul you end up paying a price. These are the two kinds of shortcuts that, however tempting, you’re better off if you don’t take.

Dissuading people (and myself!) from taking shortcuts is not my favorite part of being a teacher, but it is part of the job.

So here I go! Here are three common shortcuts I recommend you avoid:

Using Easier Fingerings

“Is there an easier fingering for that?” I could fill an ocean with the number of times I’ve heard this question. And the answer is….well, yes, often there is an alternative fingering that is, at least at this particular point in your musical development, easier. But there’s usually a reason why it isn’t the standard fingering, and that reason is tuning. Meaning if you take the easier route, your tuning will suffer. Now, you may or may not hear the difference yet, but you will begin to as your skills develop— and I can pick out an alternate alto “E” at fifty paces with my eyes closed.

In addition, you use up both brain power and practice time learning and remembering to use the “easier”fingering. Your cognitive resources are incredibly valuable, and so is your time! I strongly recommend that you take the time you would have spent learning alternative fingers and working them into your playing, and put it toward developing ease and automaticity with the original fingering. It may take a while, but I promise those difficult fingering transitions become more relaxed and synchronous with time. And any practice you put in with them is money in the bank: It pays off big in the long-term.

If you’re performing the piece in two days, that’s a different matter… but most of the time, you’re not.

Transposition “Tricks:”

Okay, so you want to learn to read bass clef. Easy! All you have to do is transpose what you see up a third, and you’re there. Or what about g alto- it’s just a step up, so you can transpose as you go.

DANGER! I speak from personal experience (ahem- g alto) when I say that ultimately, transposition is not your friend. Rather than attempting to use it to shortcut the process of learning to read in a new clef or on a new instrument, you are better off learning, from scratch and by rote, the new association between what you see on the page and where your fingers go. You did it the first time you learned to correlate the two, and I promise you can do it again.

Why? Cognitive resources again. Like other complex psycho-motor tasks (driving, sports), music-making requires us to maximize automaticity. Our brains are not powerful enough to hold all the pieces of what we need to do consciously in mind unless we automate, or place below the threshold of conscious thought, as many pieces of it as we can. Transposing adds an extra cognitive step (“let’s see, that’s an a; I need to read that as if I were playing a g”), and we don't want extra steps. Plus transposing causes lots of confusion when you’re trying to talk to other musicians.

Memorize the new reading system from the beginning. It will take longer at first, but in the end, it will pay off.

Rest Skipping

Guess what skill never improves if you don’t actually practice it?

That’s right, counting rests.

This one is personal for me. I spent far too many years suffering the consequences of my “efficiency.” Practice resting. It will get you there faster in the end.

Yours on the long road,

Anne

Want to Play More Musically? Hop Aboard!

Have you ever fantasized about taking a cross-country train journey?

I can’t be the only one. I imagine staring out the window, sipping a mysteriously good coffee while taking in the countryside as it unfolds.

Always, on this fantasy train trip, I am scrupulous in my attention. I take care to notice and acknowledge each and every wonder in turn: the stubborn hills and the endless plains, the sudden startle of the mountains and their spill toward the sea.

In reality, the trip unfolds differently.

Your three-year-old needs the toilet, which is dirty. The scenic vista sidles past while you’re standing in line for hotdogs, and the hotdogs are not that great. You can’t contemplate the vastness of nature very effectively over the dueling strains of Justin Bieber and thrash metal. And somebody, somebody quite close by, smells.

You really do want to appreciate the world’s marvels. In fact, you invested a lot of time and money and energy into getting yourself into a position to appreciate the world’s marvels. But there are distractions.

If you are a musician, your job is to take the fantasy train trip.

Playing a piece of music can be, and should be, a voyage of appreciation. In real time, you lavish your awareness on one marvel and then the next, dwelling on a juicy dissonance here, an exciting rhythm there, a worrying interval, a particularly delightful repetition to close..

You are- you must be- admiring the scenery each and every step of the way. Because your awareness and wonder is the only way to spark awareness and wonder in your listener.

But the three-year-old! The thrash metal! The toilets and the hotdogs and the Biebs!

Right. On your musical journey, there will always be things that can tear your attention away from the window. You miss a note or three; you’ve gone out of tune; you start thinking about your laundry. Maybe you’ve taken this particular train journey before- in fact, you’ve taken this particular journey so many times before that you just kinda glance at the mountains as you fire up your laptop.

Close it down. Look away. Seize your attention by the scruff of its neck and direct it back to the unspooling wonder of the world.

Our work is the window. Eyes up.

Why Stopping at "Does It Work?" Doesn't Work

As a teacher (of myself and others!), I am extremely interested in efficacy.

What’s efficacy? A fancy word for the vital question that marches unceasingly through the mind of anyone who is interested in the process of improvement: Does it work? If I assign a student a particular series of exercises to do to help facilitate tone production, will it work? If I assign myself a particular method of tackling a tricky passage, is it working? If I try out a particular image with a student, did it work?

Note the mix of tenses: This is a question I’m asking myself at every part of the process, before, during, and after I ask a student (or myself) to complete a task or task sequence. I think (hope!) almost all teachers do, whether consciously or not. And if you’re teaching yourself, you should do the same!

But what happens after you answer the question? If you stop at yes or no, I’d argue that you’re missing a key opportunity for reflection and growth. Because for me, each answer -yes or no- gives rise to a sequence of additional -and important!- questions.

Does it work: Yes!

You asked if it worked, and the answer is yes. Fantastic. Now you want to ask the following.

Is it working for this particular student? Sometimes as teachers we discover something that works, put it in our toolkit, and then leave it there without conducting ongoing reassessment. Not every intervention or technique is going to work for every student, and when your teaching technique is not working as it has in the past, I believe it is up to the teacher, NOT the student, to make a change. Once you write lack of progress off as your student’s fault (they aren’t practicing enough; they’re not motivated; not talented; they don’t get it, etc.), you’ve missed a HUGE opportunity for growth, and quite frankly, when I see teachers do this, it makes me sad. In my opinion, the onus remains on the teacher. Is there something you could do to help the student practice more? Is there a technique that would reach the student more effectively? What could help motivate him or her? Don’t let the fact that something generally works blind you to whether or not it is working now.

Is there a way to get the same results faster? This question is really about efficiency. Say a student plays long tones on every note of the instrument every day, and their tone improves. Terrific! But it took that student two hours, and a future student might only be able to carve out 30 minutes. Is there a more efficient way to achieve the same goals?

Will gains be maintained? Is the student able to independently and effectively monitor themselves moving forward? Can they carry the strategy forward without consistent teacher input? If not, you need to work the development of self-assessment skills into your teaching.

Does it work: No!

Curses! Things are not going well. But before you throw everything out the window, there are some important follow-up questions to ask.

Is it a dose problem? Sometimes it’s not a method issue. Sometimes, especially with a strategy that is generally successful, what you’re trying will work or is working- the student just hasn’t done enough of it AND/OR the student hasn’t done it for a long enough time span. This is particularly true when students are working on skills that typically have longer time horizons, like tone production or free ornamentation. Alas, it can be difficult, as a teacher, to assess whether the issue is dose or method. Getting an accurate picture of the student’s practice routine can help, as can increasing the dose (number of times you ask a student to complete a task each session, e.g.,) and seeing if you get a result. If you’re seeing at least some progress, there’s often a dose issue involved.

I will also add that assuming the problem is method, and not dose, is a an extraordinarily common error made by students who are teaching themselves. Many skills simply require a timescale of months or even years.

Is it a comprehension problem? Sometimes you think you’ve successful explained a concept, but the student doesn’t quite have an accurate grasp of what he or she is to do, or loses their grasp after the lesson is over. This can lead to mis-practicing, in which a student thinks he or she is practicing the assigned skill, but is in fact practicing something different, often to his or her detriment. One way to winkle out comprehension issues is for the student to restate, or “teach” you the desire concept or exercise. Recording is another useful tool. The student can record the entire lesson to refer back to. Or you can provide a short video of a particular task for reference.

Is there a constraint? If there is, you don’t want to miss it! Maybe the student is playing an Adler recorder from the 1970s, and someone’s dog chewed on it. Perhaps the student has short-term memory weakness, or arthritis, or compromised lung function. If it’s a constraint that can be removed, remove it (goodbye, Adler!) If it’s a constraint that can’t be removed, you must think about how to accommodate.

Is it a motivation issue? Sometimes a student just doesn’t see the utility of what you’re trying to do, but is reluctant to tell you so. This can come into play both with goals (e.g., you want to help the student control his uncontrolled vibrato but the student actually likes the way it sounds) or with strategies (e.g., the student doesn’t *really* believe the tone exercises you’re asking her to do are going to work). If it’s a motivation issue, you need to address it. Can you use recordings, or a discussion of tuning, to convince the student of the beauty of a clear tone? Would the student prefer to work on something else for now? Can you ask another student to talk about how similar assignments improved her playing?

What are you going to try next? If it doesn’t work, and it’s not a dose or compression or motivation issue, you have a moral imperative to move on and try to find another way of meeting your goals. What’s next?

Three Top Breathing Mistakes....and How to Avoid Them

Ah, breathing! Breathing is literally the one activity we are all doing all the time….so you’d think breathing as we play would be simple, right?

Alas, breathing for recorder playing is a more complex process than breathing for, say, Great British Bake Off reruns. And as with any complex process, it can go awry in multiple ways.

Fortunately or unfortunately, these ways tend to be fairly predictable. (As an aside, I can almost always tell if another wind instrument lurks in a student’s past by observing them breathe- and a good chunk of the time, I can even tell which one!)

So what can go wrong? Here are three of the patterns I see most often in the wild.

1) Nose breathing In a world of near-infinite complexity, sometimes it’s nice to be able to give a nice, straightforward answer to a question.

So: Should breathe through your nose to play recorder?

No.

No nose.

Your nose, for the duration of your playing, is dead to you.

Why? A couple of excellent reasons. First, your nasal passages are a heck of a lot smaller than your oral passage, which means that moving air through them is much less efficient. if you breathe through your nose, you are resigning yourself to taking in less air in more time- never a great idea.

The second reason is less intuitive, but also important: It has to do with your velum (otherwise known as the soft palate). In order to achieve a resonant tone, you want to raise your velum as you play. Want to know how to raise it? Yawn- you’ll feel how your velum lifts to close off the nasal cavity from the oral cavity, increasing the size of your resonating chamber and preventing the movement of air between your mouth and nose. If velum is raised, as it should be, nose breathing is not possible.

Instead of breathing through your nose, gently release your top lip from the instrument to take in air through your mouth.

2) Assuming less is more. Repeat after me: There is no trophy for fewest breaths taken.

I feel like many of us carry around the unspoken idea, perhaps formed in the bowels of 7th grade band, that the longer you can go without taking a breath, the cooler you are. Alas, not so! Striving, consciously or subconsciously, to take as few breaths as possible can get have many unfortunate consequences, from inhaling so deeply the air becomes difficult to control, to squeezing out uncomfortable-sounding notes at the ends of breaths, to “hoarding” breath and consequently producing a weak tone, to skipping over important musical phrase breaks.

Breathing is an integral part of playing a wind instrument- embrace it!

3) Doing too much. All sorts of breathing woes fall into this category, but they boil down to this: Breathing for recorder should feel relatively easy. If it feels arduous or effortful, chances are you are overfunctioning, doing more muscular work than you need - or should- do.

Instead, try to find a way of breathing that allows for the minimum of muscular effort to meet your needs. I promise you’ll be happier.

******

(Want to go more into depth on breathing? I loooveve this topic, and have a whole webinar on breathing for sale here.)

(Bonus tip: fire does not improve things.)

Instead of "Don't Rush," Try This

Do you rush? Do your students?

I’m guessing that for many of you, the answer is yes. Sure, a lucky few of us seem to have been born with a metronome welded to our hearts, but most of us have a tempo tendency: we either push forward, or pull back. And of the two tendencies, rushing is far more common.

In fact, I’ll go ahead and confess: pulling forward is my own tendency, and I have worked very hard over the years to mitigate it. Which is why I know how frustrating it sometimes can be, as a learner, to be told, simply, “don’t rush.”

Sure, sometimes “don't rush” is all it takes. There are times when merely having an awareness that you’re rushing allows you to direct your attention toward playing in better time. But this generally only works with experienced musicians who have already developed the skills to monitor and alter their playing in relation to an internal beat. They might have momentarily been distracted from doing do, but once their attention is called to that fact, they’re fine.

But for other learners, hearing “don’t rush” is a bit like like hearing “be happy.” I mean, sure, yes, OBVIOUSLY. Be happy. And don’t rush. But. how???

Over the years, I’ve worked with many, many rushers, and I’m constantly on the hunt for new ways to help them master keeping time when “don’t rush” isn’t enough. Here are three of my more successful strategies:

1) Feel the pulse Sometimes rushing arises from the fact that the student has not yet learned, or been taught, to keep a conscious pulse (or in some cases, any pulse at all). These students feel adrift in the rhythm, often able to memorize the approximate rhythmic contour of a melody, but unable to pinpoint where the beats fall and prone in particular to eating time during longer note values. With these students, I work specifically on developing the ability to keep a pulse while simultaneously receiving or generating auditory input. We choose a way to physicalize the pulse (my recommedation is often to tap a big toe, though any small, unobtrusive motion will work) and then build up: First listening to a known piece while tapping the pulse, then speaking the rhythm while tapping the pulse, then playing while tapping a pulse. Working on pulse is not a quick fix, but it helps to shore up a vital foundational skill.

2) Think about vowels One of my favorite tricks (I use it with myself) is to ask the student to think about notes they are rushing as consonant-vowel-consonant words, paying special attention to the vowels. When you’re speaking, if you don't leave enough time for the vowel, the words sound clipped and strange, and since the experience of speaking is near universal, most of us have a ready-made mental template we can access to help us learn to leave enough time between our beginnings and endings. It’s just a matter of calling it up.

3) You’re James Dean! If rushing is part of general over-functioning, tension, and/or nerves, adopting a nonchalant body posture, as I discussed in this post, can be immeasurably helpful. If your overall body positioning is broadcasting ease and comfort, as it might if you pretend you’re a very cool cinema idol just noodling around, your'e much less likely to rush. Along these same lines, I often tell myself “there’s no hurry,” as I play, which helps me achieve a feeling of confident calm.

Student-generated bonus strategies!

One of the great pleasures of teaching adults is that they become partners in their own learning. Occasionally a student who rushes doesn’t respond to my go-to strategies, but, as we tackle the issue, he or she is able to generate a tweak or an entirely new tactic that helps achieve the desired result. Here are a couple of strategies students have self-generated in the recent past. I wouldn’t have thought of either of these off the top of my head, but for these particular students, they worked amazingly well.

4) Commas I have one student whose rushing was immeasurably improved when she drew commas into her music after notes she was shortening. The visual cue reminded her not to move on from that note too quickly.

5) I have a right to be here! Another student saw significant improvement when she told herself she had a right to be playing and a right to be heard. When she said to herself “I have a right to be here,” she stopped hurrying forward in her playing and took her time.

What else have you tried in place of “don’t rush?”

The Most Important Question You Can Ask Yourself

I feel for my students sometimes, I really do. No sooner have they accomplished a task -mastering a specific articulation, say, or getting a tricky ornament under their fingers- than I’m giving them a new one, possibly while yodeling “the reward for good work is more work!” in my most obnoxious teacher voice.

I’m sure at times it feels like I’m Lucy, forever snatching the football away from Charlie Brown as he kicks. But the thing is, with music, there are no touchdowns. There are no field goals. Instead it’s about yardage- constantly moving forward. Maybe you move laterally for a while, or backward for a minute or two, but always, ultimately, you’re headed forward toward the end of the field. Only, as you draw near, you realize there’s another field waiting for you after that.

I try to explain the scope of this, the awesomeness of the endeavor to my students. I’ve been working to improve my playing very steadily for 30 years and there is no end in sight. The day I stop and think “right, that’s it. I’m as good as I’m going to get,” is unimaginable to me at this moment. It may be the day I die.

And do you know what? That’s OK. It’s more than OK. There’s something both beautiful and empowering about a commitment with a very long horizon, a journey with a receding, chimerical end. It forces you to revel in inches, to celebrate centimeters. It makes you grateful for every step.

Which brings me to the most important question you can ask yourself as you approach any given piece. It’s not “am I done?” It’s not “how can I perfect this.” It’s not “am I good yet?” No, the question is simple, but powerful: What’s the next step?

Note that you don’t have to ask this question right away. If you’ve worked hard at a piece, you are entitled to rest on your laurels for while; your labor deserves acknowledgment. Nor can you never leave a piece. But the fact is that there is always, always something left to work on, and that infinitude is, if you think about it, pretty darn glorious.

Asking what the next step is doesn’t mean you’re bad, and it doesn’t mean your’re good. To be honest, whether you’re “bad” or” good” (imprecise words that are almost useless in this context) has zero interest for me as a teacher, unless you are contemplating pursuing a career in recorder. I’m much more interested in whether, as a student, you are moving forward- or not.

And make no mistake: everyone (anyone!) CAN move forward. Some do it faster than others; some do it more evenly than others; some start 10 yards ahead; some start 10 yards behind. But no matter how old you are, or when you start, or what you bring to the musical table, if you consistently ask “what’s the next step?” you WILL keep moving down the field.

I’ll see you out there.

Your Guide to Getting Lost

It’s the nightmare of many a beginning ensemble player. You’re hanging in there, playing your part, when all of a sudden a black hole opens up the musical universe and you are swallowed up. Your fellow players soldier on without you. You’re lost. And you don’t know how to get back in.

Getting lost can feel disorienting, scary, and upsetting. For some players, it can be such an aversive experience that they quit trying to play in groups entirely. And that’s a shame, because playing with others is some of the most rewarding playing we can do.

Unfortunately, playing with others is off the table for most of us right now thanks to the global pandemic. But hopefully there will come a time when we can gather again. Which makes NOW the perfect time for you to brush up on the most important ensemble skill there is- getting lost- well

How do you practice getting lost well? Here’s my guide:

1) Accept that you will get lost. Look, you’re going to get lost. My students get lost. I get lost. My colleagues get lost. When you get lost, you have three choices. You can panic, flooding your body with adrenaline and making it much more difficult to do the kind of focused processing you need to get back in. You can tantrum, using all spare brain power to silently or not so silently excoriate yourself. Or you can roll up your sleeves, embrace this great new opportunity to practice getting back in, and go to work.

2) Get used to hearing other people play while you play. For beginning ensemble players, the sound of others playing can be disorienting. Playing your part while you are receiving a lot of auditory input from other people playing is a skill, and skills must be specifically practiced. Few of us have live partners to practice with at the moment, but you can simulate other players using recordings. Find (or make) a recording of the piece you’re working on. First, just try following your part in the score with your eyes as you listen. Then, try playing along.

3) Learn your music. You probably thought this was supposed to prevent you from getting lost. And it does- to a point. But knowing your music also helps when you when you inevitably do get lost, by giving you a better understanding of what is supposed to be happening in your part, now and in the future.

4) Learn everyone else’s music. It’s not nosy! It’s survival! If you learn the line of your duet partner, listening to it will be more helpful to you as you attempt to find your way back in.

5) Stop playing. One of the most common mistakes I see people make is to keep on playing even though they know, or suspect, that they’re lost. This isn’t smart. First, it takes up brain space you need to figure out where you are and how to get back in. Second, it produces lots of confusing auditory input that muddles the musical waters for both you AND your ensemble mates. If you know, or suspect, you’re off, stop playing and take a pause to orient yourself.

5) Track the beat. When you get lost, the beat is your life preserver. If you hold onto it, it will keep you afloat in the musical ocean until you can drag yourself back onto the boat. You need to keep it in your body, but you also need to keep it visually, tracking where are you move on the page with each pulse. How do you practice this? Embrace your mistakes! Mistakes are an organic opportunity to practice keeping the beat while you fumble around. Treat each one as a practice opportunity and you will improve! You can also create opportunities for yourself to practice this skill by purposefully dropping out, even putting the recorder physically down, while keeping a pulse in your body and your eyes on the music.

6) Find the most audible line. If you haven’t managed to keep visual track of where you are in the music, you need to open up your ears. What’s the line that’s easiest to hear? It can vary, depending on spacial placement, range, and musical material, but the line you can hear most clearly is the one you want to use to orient yourself. Latch onto it, locate the material your colleague is playing on the page, and once you have, get ready to hop back in.

7) Make appointments. What if you don’t have the score, or what if the things you’ve tried haven’t worked? This is when you want to set up a series of appointments with yourself, throughout the piece, in advance. What are appointments? They’re music’s mountain peaks- big, easily recognizable locations in the musical geography that clue you in to exactly where you are. Think group rests, everyone playing in the same rhythm, cadences….anything that grabs the ear can make for a great appointment.

8) Get back in, no matter what. It doesn’t matter that much if you get lost. What matters is that you get back in. Ideally you do this quickly as possible, perhaps within a few notes. But if not, you get back in a few measures down the line. Or you get back in at your next appointment. Or the appointment after that. Missed all those? Jump back in when you hear the final note of the piece, and end with grace and pride. Getting lost is inevitable. Giving up is not.

What is Priming, and How Can it Help You Play Better?

I was a triple major in college. This wasn’t because I was industrious. It was pure, unadulterated indecision: I was REALLY INTERESTED in a lot of different things, and it seemed impossibly wrenching to narrow it down. This caused me a lot of angst when, after five years, I graduated with not one, not two, but three degrees of questionable utility (recorder performance, psychology, and creative writing) and couldn’t figure out what the heck I was supposed to do next.

A couple of decades later, I’ve discovered that recorder teaching is a fabulous fit for me, allowing me to roll all my skills and interests into one endlessly fascinating bundle! I especially enjoy when I can make connections across fields, which is one of the reasons I’m so excited to talk to you this month about priming, and how it can help you learn and play better!

In the field of Psychology, priming means changing how you react to a thing by previewing something else- usually something related. If you prime a person with the word “taxes,” he or she will subsequently react more quickly to a related word like “accountant.” In other words, exposure to the first stimulus changes how you respond to the second.

The great news is that you can harness the concept of priming to improve your playing. Here are three examples of how I use priming in my playing and teaching:

Prime difficult notes

Are you having trouble leaping to specific high notes during a difficult passage? One thing that can help immensely is playing a long, beautiful tone on the note you’re struggling with immediately before you attempt the passage. Having the experience of producing a beautiful, resonant tone on, say, high F on the alto immediately before you have to leap to it can make accessing that F feel more natural and less risky. It diminishes the urge to clench up or push that difficult notes often evoke, and helps pair the note with the memory of success in the mind of the player.

Prime a clef or key

Are you struggling with a piece in a key you don’t play a lot in, like E major? Or maybe you have to read a difficult piece for bass, when you’ve only recently learned the clef? In cases like these, you can improve your success by priming yourself immediately prior with an easier selection in the key or clef in which you’re struggling. Ground yourself in bass clef by playing through the bass part in a hymnal, for example, or play through an exercise in E major before you tackle the main event.

Priming in Van Eyck

Van Eyck’s collection for solo recorder, Der Fluyten Lusthof, is one of our masterworks, containing sequences of variations on a host of different themes. These variations become quite complex, and as they do so, it can become harder and harder to hear the tune amidst what becomes a forest of notes. That’s where priming come in. My favorite way of practicing Van Eyck, for both myself and my students, is what I call phrase-by-phrase practicing. Instead of playing the theme all the way through and then the variation all the way through, try matching each phrase of the theme with its corresponding phrase in a variation. Play these matching phrases side by side, with the theme coming first, to gain a deeper understanding of how Van Eyck is transforming his tunes.

Can you think of any other ways to prime yourself for increased success?

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Recorder Players!

Photo credit: Lisa Scherrer

What are the habits my most upwardly mobile recorder students share?  

I often invite my students to engage in self-reflection when it comes to their own learning, and over the years I’ve learned a few things about the habits that help students thrive.  

What I find exciting is that all of these things are habits that can be deliberately cultivated  by YOU, right now, whether or not you’re studying formally. (I’m working on a few myself!)

So what do highly effective recorder students do?

1) They have a practice routine

Students who are able to make practice a habit, engaging in it for at least a few minutes most days a week to the point where practicing becomes hard NOT to do, make faster progress than those who have to choose to practice every time.  Put in bald mathematical terms, practicing 10 minutes 6 days a week is better than practicing 60 minutes one day a week.

2) They develop goals

Developing goals for and with students is part of the work of being a teacher, but I’ve noticed that my most driven students often supplement our jointly generated goals with goals they’ve come up with on their own.  Whether it’s playing for a local church service, forming an ensemble, or showing off for their own students, there’s something about the self-generated goal that seems to be extra motivating.

3) They listen….

Upwardly mobile students are have their ears wide open both during and outside of lessons.  They listen attentively to their own playing, to my playing, and to our conversation.  They are also listening outside of lessons- to other players, other perspectives, other ways of making music.  All of this helps them grow

4) …and they talk

Effective students listen deeply; but they also know when it’s time to speak up- telling me they don’t’ understand a particular explanation, for example, or clueing me in to something I could do to help them learn.  I especially love when students bring me questions.  It means they are actively engaging with the material, and that kind of engagement leads to progress. 

5) They get comfortable with discomfort

Learning is change, and change can be uncomfortable.  In lessons, I am frequently asking a student to do things that are new and, at least at first, difficult or even scary.  Students who can learn to accept feeling uncomfortable, unsure, or incompetent have a major advantage, in that they are more willing to experiment and evolve.

6) They play with others

Playing with others is a fabulous chance for students to implement all the new techniques they are learning in lessons.  It is also highly motivating- there’s nothing like wanting to be able to play the bass part in your ensemble to get you to learn to read the clef.  I see big benefits to almost every kind of group playing, from casual get-togethers to hour-long chapter meetings to immersive week-long workshops. Alas, this habit is mostly off the table during pandemic times, but I hope that at some point it will be possible to cultivate it again!

7) They treat mistakes as data

Mistakes may feel agonizing iin the moment, but they are, at their core, information. And my most successful students realize this. Rather than becoming upset when you make a mistake, treat it like what it is: incredibly valuable data you can use to help improve your playing. For example, you might be distressed by the small blips and disynchronies that occur between notes when your fingers don’t move exactly at the same time. These are irritating, but they are also real-time, important auditory feedback that, over time, can help you learn to synchronize your movements. And if you embrace them, as opposed to trying to avoid them, your playing will improve faster.

The Hidden Curriculum: Four Essential Musical Skills You Might Not Know You Need to Practice

In school, there are a whole bunch things you' are explicitly taught- what fractions mean, how volcanos erupt, how to tell time. And then there a whole bunch of things about which you never receive explicit instruction, but which, nevertheless, you absorb: how to follow the teacher’s instructions, how to know what to listen for in class, how to care for your things and navigate the school environment.

In the field of education, these silent lessons are called “the hidden curriculum,” and for better or for worse, your level of mastery of the the hidden curriculum can determine your educational fate.

Music is no different. Just as in school, there are musical skills that aren’t often explicitly taught, but that, nevertheless, you must learn. I think of this as music’s hidden curriculum: skills you might not even know you need to practice. Sometimes these skills evolve instinctually, especially in young players, but the more years I teach, the more I’ve found value in spelling them out.

Here are some examples:

1) Flexible subdivision. One of the shifts many players from more traditional classical music backgrounds face when moving into early repertoire is a change of pulse- I have a colleague who jokes that everything in early music is either in one or two, and he’s not far off. But feeling a more infrequent tactus (beat) can present difficulty in rhythmically intricate music. This is where flexible subdivision comes in. You might start out feeling the piece in whole notes, then swap to feeling a quarter note pulse when the going gets tough- then swap back. Flexibly subdividing (changing the pulse you feel midstream) is an essential skill, but if you don't practice it, you won’t be able to use it in the moment.

2) Counting rests. As I discovered far, far, far too late in my musical life, you actually do need to practice counting rests. You can’t just skip them in practice and expect to be able count effectively in performance.

3) Getting back in. Leaping back onto the musical train after getting thrown off is one of the most vital skills any musician can master, and yet we often waste our opportunities to practice by throwing silent (or not-so-silent) mini-tantrums. And it’s true, getting back is no joke, but rather, a complex skill made up of many subskills. First, you need to identify that you are off. Then, you need to quiet your emotional and physical response. Next, you need to listen and look, matching what you hear in the other parts to what’s on the page. Finally, you need to forecast ahead, identifying the place where you will make your re-entry. Getting back in is a far, far more useful skill than the mythical musical skill of “never getting lost in the first place,” and yet we don’t often talk about what it takes to make it happen, let alone deliberately practice it.

4) Relaxing during mistakes. Similarly, we don’t often explicitly teach, or practice, how to make mistakes with ease and grace, and yet it is of vital importance that when we make a mistake (which, yes, we will!), we do it with skill. Mistakes often cause us to tense up, flooding us with adrenaline, and stiffening our fingers and minds. This is not conducive to accurate or musical playing. So the next time you make a mistake, consider taking it as an opportunity to practice relaxing into the error- and keep on playing.

What other examples of music’s hidden curriculum can you think of?

Six Tips to Improve Your Sight Reading

Usually on the blog, I write about whatever has lately been catching my interest as a player and a teacher.  But recently I had a reader (I am continually surprised to discover I actually have readers!) write in with a request. She wanted to know about sight reading: how could she improve?  

Initially, I buried the suggestion deep in my “later” pile. After all, who was I to talk about sight reading?  Sight reading has been my bugbear throughout my life as a musician. In my first years of lessons, I used to make sure to get my teacher to play through whatever piece I was supposed to learn so I wouldn’t have to actually read it.  I’ve wildly improved since then, but I still take care to be as rigorously prepared as possible- preparation being the secret weapon of the weak reader.

Then I figured: Who better to offer tips than someone who has struggled- and improved?

The truth is that poor sight reading is a vicious cycle: If you are not a good sight reader, you tend to avoid sight reading- which makes you a yet weaker sight reader.  And on and on.

So the first step in improving your sight reading is simple:

Do It!

You must practice sight reading in order to improve at sight reading.  And you must practice it regularly, ideally every time you pick up the instrument.  Set aside 10-15 daily minutes of dedicated reading time and you WILL see improvement over time.  Even if you read no further down this tip list, this is the thing to try.

Orient

Before you start reading a piece, take a moment to orient yourself.  What is the key signature?  Time signature?  Are there any difficult passages to note in advance?  Are there repeats, or first and second endings?  It will help to get the lay of the land before you plunge in.

Start Right

Each time you begin to play, count a full measure in your head first, inhaling in time the beat prior to your first note.  Even more important, make this starting process a habit- something you do each and every time you pick up a piece.

Rhythm

For many struggling sight readers, reading rhythm is a big part of the problem. If rhythm is difficult for you, make a practice of reading the rhythm of a piece first, before you start, by speaking or clapping to the beat.  This will allow you to improve your rhythmic accuracy without the distraction of having to move your fingers and vary articulations. You can also practice rhythm away from the music with flashcards, a rhythm reading book, etc.  Use a metronome to help you keep a pulse.

Find the Weak Points

Sight reading is not a monolith- rather, it is made up of many different subskills that must be practiced separately. Practicing in one clef is not going to make you a whiz at rest; practicing in one time signature won’t necessarily help you in another.  Figure out where your weak points are.  Is it sight reading with a whole note beat?  Sight reading up the octave?  Sight reading in sharp keys?  Tailor your reading practice accordingly.

Ensemble Skills

When recorder players tell me they are weak sight readers, they often mean that they have trouble keeping up in a group.  Reading as part of an ensemble is very different than reading on your own, and requires practicing several additional skills. 

First, practice keeping going in tempo after you make a mistake.  If you allow a mistake to derail you rhythmically in a group, you’ll be lost.  But if you err and pick back up in tempo, you’ll still be with the group. This is a skill- so it must be practiced!   

Second, get used to reading while hearing the auditory input of other parts.  This can be a real adjustment- and is one reason players new to group playing struggle.  Simulate playing with a group at home by playing along to a recording, or even just listening to a recording while following your part in the score.

If you get off, treat it as opportunity to practice my very favorite ensemble skill, hopping back in!  This is seriously the most valuable reading skill there is, and every mistake is an opportunity to practice!

Happy reading- you CAN improve. I’m proof.

The James Dean Technique

One of the things I like most about teaching is that you can have decades of experience and STILL discover new ways of helping your students.

A couple of months ago, I had a lesson with a student with whom I’ve been working for several years.  Over those years, we’ve worked toward many different goals from many different angles, with a particular emphasis on air consistency.  My student, who is extremely musical, had made very considerable improvements, but the air consistency still took focus.

At this particular lesson, she was working on a difficult solo selection that required fast fingers and active interpretation.  The air consistency was slipping, and I tried reminding my student to feel the forward motion of the air, not accent with breath, etc.  It got a little better, but her whole system still looked tight and constricted. Then I had a brainwave.

“You’re James Dean!” I yelped

My student, being a reasonable human being, said “what?”

I put down my recorder and got out my computer.  To the thrill of recorder devotees everywhere, there are a number of photographs of James Dean playing recorder.  A quick Google search will pull up an image or three. In some of them Dean is shirtless.  In all of them, his posture telegraphs nonchalance and a profound sense of cool. 

“Try pretending you’re James Dean,” I told my student.  “Look at his body.  He’s leaning back in his chair.  He’s easy. He’s casual.  He’s just playing around. That’s how you want to be for this piece.”

My student, who is nothing if not a good sport, said she’d try it out.  And the change in her playing was profound.  As soon as she began to telegraph ease in her body, her air smoothed out.  Her tempo fluctuations clamed.  Her fingers ran more smoothly and her very strong natural musicality was able to shine through.

At this point I think I said something very intelligent and teacherly, like “woah.”  Placing her body in a position of nonchalance had short-circuited a number of ways in which she was over-functioning, and the change in her playing was pronounced.

Obviously this is not a panacea. Aping James Dean is not a shortcut to recorder virtuosity, and it is far from the only skill you need.   And pretending to be James Dean was somewhat uncomfortable for my student, who said, after the initial couple of run-throughs, that she felt straight-jacketed.  We talked about feeling easy instead of frozen, smooth movements instead of no movements.  But it’s something she, and I, will continue to have to fine tune in the months to come.

But “The James Dean Technique,” as my student has dubbed it, is powerful, and reminds me that sometimes you need to change your body before you change your mind.  I’m excited to try it out in my own playing (I’m also a forward-leaner) and with some of my other students. 

As my thoughtful student wrote in a lovely post-lesson reflection, “Bravery, and perhaps some swagger, is necessary in order to live life from the heart rather than according to the expectations of or defense against others.  The same is required of the highest level of artistry.” 

Three Exercise Books I'm Enjoying Right Now

A pandemic is a splendid time to discover the pleasures of a good exercise book!

 (Add that to the catalog of sentences I never thought I’d have to write.)

So many musical avenues are closed to us these days, but exercise books, with their siren song of self-betterment, still beckon.

And truth be told, I’ve always loved a good exercise book. They are straightforward, promising a direct path to improvement if only you put in the time. And after spending enough time scrabbling in the weeds of musical interpretation and performance practice, mere repetition can be a relief.

Of course, the best exercise books reward your effort not only with increased skill, but with loveliness. 

Here are three exercise books I’ve been enjoying lately. One is a longtime favorite and two are recent discoveries- but all of them are worth your time.

Hans-Martin Linde: Neuzeitliche Übungsstücke für die Altblockflöte.

I’ve owned and loved this exercise book for so long that my copy is quite literally disintegrating (see above- no cover!) But every time I return to it, I discover something new.  The 22 exercises, written in a modern idiom, are musically satisfying while, almost incidentally, making a bullseye of specific skill areas.  I have shared this book with many students over the years, and to my surprise, I have found that it can be polarizing- students either adore it, as I do, or try it and shy away.

At any rate, I believe it’s a classic every serious recorder student should own.  

Where to buy: There are innumerable places to buy music these days. But I tend to order from recorder specialty purveyors like Honeysuckle Music or Von Huene Workshop- both knowledgeably staffed and open for orders during the pandemic.

Alison Melville: Hors d’Oeuvres.

Hors d’Oeuvres, by the Canadian recorder player and teacher Alison Melville, has only been out for a few years, but it’s quickly becoming one of the exercise books I use most with my students.  Like the Linde, the exercises in Hors d’Oeuvres are musically satisfying- absolutely no hardship to repeat.  They are also somewhat easier technically than the exercises in the other books discussed here, so while the book has much to offer advanced players, it is more accessible to players in intermediate stages of their recorder journeys.  And finally, the exercises are neo-baroque in style, so if a student balks at Linde or other more “modern” exercise books, I’ll often direct them here.

Where to buy: You can pick up a copy at Alison’s website.  

Héloïse Degrugillier: Exercises for the Alto Recorder- Mostly

Boston-based recorder player and teacher Héloïse Degrugillier published this book in 2019, and I am really enjoying getting to know it during this pandemic!  What I particularly like about this book is the way in which every exercise takes on a specific recorder issue- and that these issues are not restricted to tricky fingerings.  There’s an exercise for syncopation, an exercise for low F and high F, and exercise for low chromatic passagework—even one for switching instruments.  I also enjoy that each exercise is accompanied by some short but sweet technical instruction.  This one is not for the faint of heart, but it is well worth the effort.

Where to buy: Contact Héloïse directly: heloise.degrugillier@gmail.com

What is a Learning Community, and How Can it Help You Stay Motivated?

It’s amazing how quickly the calendar becomes blank.  In February, I was facing down a whirlwind spring.  Now, a long, bare spring and summer stretch ahead, and I’m wondering if my September and October work will get cancelled, too.

This photo of hands totally makes me low-grade nervous now!

No concerts means nothing to practice for, so in addition to upending my daily life, COVID has blown apart my practicing routine. I literally have nothing for the foreseeable future for which I must practice.  I could do anything- but there’s nothing I must do. That’s a disconcerting feeling!

I know I’m not alone.  Concerts are canceled, recorder societies are on hiatus…we’ve all lost our regular playing outlets.  And without a specific event to practice for, it gets harder to maintain a quality practice routine —at least for me.

For about a week after the last of my spring concerts was cancelled, I drifted.  I played through one thing after another, hopping around, not bothering to invest much time or energy in anything.

After seven or eight days of that, I’d had enough. I needed structure and accountability, and if the world wasn’t going to provide them for me, I’d have to set them up for myself.

I decided to form a learning community.

What is a learning community?  Loosely, a learning community is a group of learners progressing together through a project. (Obviously, these days, your learning community will be online.) Membership in a learning community can benefit your practice by providing structure and social accountability- both powerful motivators. And it can help your fellow community members find the same. 

Interested in forming your own learning community? All you need is a project, some people, a platform, and some ground rules.  Let’s look at each of these things a little more in-depth.

Project

A project helps to focus your endeavor and make your conversation relevant, a little like a book club for music. It also provides your group with a built-in-structure. For my community’s project,  I proposed digging in to Telemann’s solo fantasias for viola da gamba, recently published in an arrangement for recorder by Girolamo. The original facsimile for viol is also available on imslp, which made for a nice opportunity to refer back to the source.

Other possible projects: Telemann’s solo fantasias for recorder, Van Eyck’s Der Fluyten Lust Hof, Bach’s cello suites….the possibilities are legion.  I think a multi-part collection is a good bet, since it looks like we’ll all be immured for a while. And working on solo music seems, at least to me, a little bit less sad.

People

I selected a project first, and then put out a call to other professional players to see if anyone was interested in joining me.  Five said yes, and I am grateful to them.  While the playing levels within your learning community can vary, I do think it’s helpful if you’re all more or less in the same range- it will make it easier to dig into the repertoire and support one another. I also like an open call rather than a specific ask- some people might not need or want a project like this during this time, and that’s OK.

Procedure and Platform

Before you start, lay out some kind of schedule or procedure.  In my community, the plan was originally to tackle one fantasia per week (there are 12), but we’ve since realized we should the window for each fantasia to two weeks.  Within the course of that fortnight (and beyond), everyone is encouraged (not required!) to engage publically in some way with the selected fantasia-.  The engagement could be posing a question or making a comment, submitting a video file or even offering a live performance.  I made a private Facebook group for my learning community, but you could also communicate via email, zoom call, or another method your group finds convenient.

Ground Rules

I think this can be pretty loose, but you might consider agreeing as a group to the following:

1)    What happens in the group stays in the group (no public sharing of private files)

2)    Don’t expect perfection- of yourself or others.  Learning communities work best when you are not afraid to share, improve, and learn.

I’m only a few weeks into my project, but it’s already giving me some of the structure I need, and I’m excited to see it through. And If you form or have formed a learning community, I’m interested in hearing about it- drop me a line at anne@annetimberlake.com

Recorder in the time of COVID-19

In the face of global pandemic, what is a recorder player to do?

As I write this, my upcoming travel plans are draining away- one workshop after another is cancelling or postponing. COVID-19 is hitting the recorder world hard. So many of our activities depend on gathering together, so when we can’t, we face significant disruption.

Seeing as how so many of us may soon be hunkered at home trying to wait out the contagion, I’ve been giving some thought to how we can continue to grow musically during such an isolated and difficult time!

Here are five ideas:

Chain Your Practice

One of the few things we may soon have a wealth of is time. And how better to spend that time than making your practice habitual? Jerry Seinfeld’s “don’t break the chain” method for creative output is focused not on results, but on consistency- you get yourself a blank calendar and X out the first day you practice. Then you do it again the next day. The idea is to keep X-ing, without breaking the chain. Again, the emphasis isn’t on duration of practice- it’s on the everydayness. If you can make practice a part of your everyday, it will pay amazing dividends down the line.

Embrace solitude!

Turn isolation into a plus by tackling some of the wonderful music that’s out there for unaccompanied recorder. The postal system still works, so try motivating yourself by purchasing a quality edition of one of the following…or any other solo music that fits the bill.

• Telemann: 12 Fantasias for Solo flute (recorder version)

• Van Eyck: Der Fluyten Lusthof

• Bassasno: Ricercate

Record and Replay

Recording yourself can be uncomfortable at first, but it pays off. You’ll be able to analyze your own playing much more keenly and deeply than you can in real time, and that can only help you grow. You can also fake a duet partner by recording yourself playing one part, and then playing the other part as you play the recording back. Pro tip: If you do this, DEFINITELY use a metronome as you record. Because you won’t have two parties able to respond to rhythmic fluctuations in real time, at least one part must be rock solid.

Go Online

Facetime, Skype, Zoom, and other platforms help us connect with one another across vast distances. Although the time lag makes it impossible to play simultaneously with another person online, you are able to listen to one another play and talk back and forth with ease. Now is a great time to take some online recorder lessons, or simply call up a friend and take turns playing for one another. No mask required!

Dream

You may not be able to meet up with your fellow recorder players at the moment, but you can start thinking about what you’ll want to play when you can. Explore new music online, either via hunting for scores or listening to recordings. When the pandemic passes, you’ll be ready.