Don’t wanna read the whole post? Scroll to the end for the course description and details!
Many of you know I stream my practice semi-regularly. Why? I suppose I’m trying to demystify the process a bit and build on one of the more novel (as it has been described to me*) aspects of my professional profile: being vulnerable in public.
It’s important, especially in our increasingly on-display social media ecosystem, to push back against the way it makes us feel. Every aspect of social media deserves the same assumed skepticism we have come to treat what we see on television with. So much is staged, edited, manipulated, or chosen to represent the average when really it was a single exceptional moment captured after lots of attempts. You can walk away from an hour on Instagram or YouTube feeling pretty hopeless.
There’s also a weird inverse but equally unproductive phenomenon where folks post really rough sounding stuff (which is fine, in an of itself) and folks come in with over-the-top reassurance, compliments, and outright lies. The reason I think this is unproductive is that it attaches too much significance to what practice really is and what “good” practice looks and sounds like. Practice is work. A task we must return to over and over again with the express purpose of encountering stuff we are not good at. If you’re being genuine in your practice, it should sound, if not rough, slow. But also, a lot of the time…rough. 😉 It’s not something you should go looking for praise for. Practice is ordinary, and not good or bad. It’s research. Would you expect a scientist to look up from her petri dish and expect a high five when the cultures grew? Or when they didn’t? Or when she put her lab goggles on correctly?
Hear me when I say this: my worst, least productive practice sounded amazing. I was also playing with tension, fear, running from things I didn’t like about myself and my playing, often times in pain. When I started being more focused and disciplined in my practice, it was a major reorganization. What I really needed was to get the mechanics absolutely clean, soft, and confident before trying to make music. And because I had spent my entire development and a year or two of my pro career not really practicing properly, it was something of a shocking transition. But all these years later, I can state with absolute confidence that the more you’re able to tease apart the realms of practice and performance and treat them differently, the more robust both will become.
The idea for this class came out of questions I kept being asked during and after other practice streams; I realized I was focusing on one part of the process at the expense of another. So this class is all about learning how to recognize and parse the adversity a piece presents.
Summer School, part 1: learning a piece from scratch
When: Sunday, June 29. 5pm Eastern time. Expected duration: 80 minutes
Where: Zoom
What: an open practice session where I show you the way I approach learning a piece I have never played and don’t know how it sounds. My previous practice streams have focused on spot work and general technical housekeeping, but the first few hours spent with a piece are where you set yourself up for success. Questions are welcome and often enhance the quality of the lesson! A recording will be made available afterward for people who cannot attend at the time or would like to re-watch.
How much: $25, whether attended live or viewed via recording later. A Zoom link will be provided a day or two before the event.
*it has also been described as terrible, cringe, unnecessary, silly, pitiful, and one guy even sent a death threat and told me to quit. The reason I am including this stuff is twofold. I’ll admit that it still bothers me. I’m not triggered to some huge extent, but it just makes me angry that someone could have been doing a beach clean up, or softly patting a cat, or practicing their own instrument, but they went and took the time to watch me, misunderstand, and write, often at length, to tell me about why I am garbage. What a waste of everyone’s time, putting bad energy into the world. So sometimes I just feel better saying it out loud, maybe sharing helps a little? But the better reason to share this is because these awful things embody exactly the type of cruelty our own brains come up with when we are dissatisfied with our playing. And it is just as inaccurate and unhelpful as when some troll decided I should quit or die because for a sloppy movement of Dvořák. Be dissatisfied if you must. High standards are part of what we do. But don’t do a troll’s work for them, and don’t mistake punishing yourself for accountability. Practice is about facts. Focus on them.