My Biggest Predicament

My Biggest Predicament

The first cello lesson I taught in Seattle was with a woman in her mid-forties. We'll call her Susan. Susan is a truly petite (4'6,) soft-spoken, mom with a pretty lively daughter. Her profession put her in a pretty consistent context of silence, sensory touch, and listening.

Susan had already been playing cello for a couple years, so had the general technique down. After we warmed up and got comfortable with each other, she played me a couple lines of a solo she had been working on with her previous teacher.

It sounded pretty good. In tune. Correct bowings. Posture straight and somewhat relaxed. I could tell her previous teacher was good at her job.

It was, in the technical sense, perfect. But…

Me: "Susan, Can you play it again for me? There seems to be something missing. Let's see if we can find it together."

Susan: "Sure."

[Played again, almost exactly the same way with the same sound.]

Me: "Wow that was exactly the same. That’s impressive. It's hard to replicate sound like that. But it still sounds like something's missing. Your cello sounds scared of making sound. So let's work on your tone today."

I won't bore you with the details of how to create good tone, that's for another blog post.

What's most important in this story is what happened the following week...

Susan: "I really got a lot out of what we talked about last week. I practiced that tonalization stuff a lot."

Me: "Wonderful! Well, let's start today out by warming up with a C scale while thinking about creating that really good beautiful tone."

We play it together. I began by playing a little quieter than normal so I could hear her. You see, the previous week she was SO quiet I had to change everything I did. I talked softer & played softer, just so I could hear and communicate with her well.

[Remember this was only my 2nd lesson after a several year hiatus of teaching, and even before then it was just for fun and in highschool. Some might even consider this my 2nd lesson to give ever.]

And a few notes into the C major scale I realized, she was right, something really did stick in our previous lesson. I could really hear her! And it sounded gorgeous! So I increased my own volume to encourage even more "oomph" from her cello. It worked. She sounded almost impossibly awesome.

When we finished the 2-octave scale, she looked up at me with tears in her eyes.

after playing a C major scale. tears. in. her. eyes.

You guys! The only time I'd ever cried over scales was when trying to play a 4-octave G-flat major scale. (I still cry over that one.)

Okay back to precious Susan with tears in her eyes.

Me: (Praying to God that I wasn't about to get sued for emotional duress...) "Susan, what's going on? Did I do something wrong?"

Susan: (With tears now running down her cheeks and with the most astonishment one could muster...) "No, no. That sound... It’s so big! & It's coming from me!"

Me: (I was now in tears too…) "Yeah! It is! You made that sound! And it did sound beautiful."

I don't remember clearly what was said next, or how the rest of the lesson went. I don’t even remember which song we were working on, but I do remember thinking a couple of things after our lesson concluded.

First I recognized that Susan has gone her whole life being shorter than almost everyone around her. If there's a power play or stress occurring in her life, she hushes up and listens. And here we were sitting eye to eye. We were the same height while sitting. And I was asking her to speak up. It was easy for her to do because 1) she had all the tools to do it, 2) I wasn't asking HER to speak up, I was asking her CELLO to speak up.

I sensed from her tears and how the lesson went after, that that tearful moment was from living her whole life as the one who is shy, quiet, petite, short, and easy-to-please.

The tears were probably from having her secret-dream come true, and being shocked by it because she didn't outright ask for it.

I mean think about it. You've wanted something your whole life, but you've never felt like it was the time or place to ask for it. Maybe you've never even formed the words with your lips. One day, you're just going along with life and BAM! Someone hands it to you.

I would cry too!

Okay. So the second thing I thought was, "wow. I was so NOT ready to receive that kind of response from just playing through scales. The C major scale nonetheless. I hope I said the right thing and did the right thing."

I've had way too many of moments like these with my students. I don't go seeking them, but I am super sensitive when I experience them. Every time it happens I just cross my fingers that I don’t say or do anything wrong.

So all this brings me to my point. What would the world look like if music teachers knew how to handle moments like these? Could they ever feel empowered to support their students during an emotional break-through or rough spot? The teachers I know do what they can, which is to usually respond in fear. I don't think that's the answer. I even know a teacher who has put “No crying” into their Studio’s Policies.

When I was taking private lessons, I had a few awkward tearful moments with my teachers/professors; usually because I was disappointed in myself, or too hard on myself or just flat out stressed out with life. I remember feeling like my tears were this huge taboo. I would hold them back for almost 30 minutes until the urge was too big and strong to hold back or swallow. The awkwardness of my tears feeling unwelcome made me forget why I was crying in the first place.

Emotion can be a really messy thing for folks in a technical profession.

So…

What do we do for the students who have severe low self-esteem? [I encourage them to see that hard work pays off and the work is worthy of their pride.]

What do we say when you can tell their family problems are hurting their progress? [I'm not a therapist, so the only thing I can speak to is their progress. Ask them to focus? Suggest using the instrument to be a release mechanism? Maybe bring it up with the parent? What if they’re an adult and don’t have a parent?]

What do you do when a student is so shy they can hardly think straight? [I either try to make it as fun as possible or just simply play soothing music. Am I free to ask why they’re so tense?]

How do you respond when a student brings up their love life in the lesson? [Again, I'm not their therapist, so I don't feel comfortable giving advice. Instead I funnel that emotion, be it happiness or sadness, into the songs. But could I do something better and more helpful?]

Learning an instrument from scratch at any age speaks to the WHOLE person, but I'm only trained to speak to the PART of that person... Do you see my predicament?

Yeah. Me too.

Dear Students of Mine,

Dear Students of Mine,

3 Ways to Color Your Cello Practice

3 Ways to Color Your Cello Practice

Emotion in Musicality

Emotion in Musicality

Most of my lessons have themes; last Monday, Mindy's lesson-theme was emoting. I began by teaching her a wee bit of preliminary music theory (major scales) and then upon her suggestion and questioning, we transitioned into emotions.

She reminded me that at one of our first lessons I explained that her advantage as an adult is she's able to emote through her cello. Most children aren't aware of what it means to mourn, lament, or be elated. But regardless of age, students are able to play "Twinkle, Twinkle" sad or happily: Long/drawn-out or short/clarified.

Emotion can be clearly communicated when presented with no unintended distractions.


Unnecessary sounds could result from poor tone, poor phrasing, pitchy notes, bad technique. Applied to life, this means when I'm trying to convey an important message to a friend I will be more likely to call them up rather than text them so they can hear my inflection and they won't be distracted by other things.

Try this situation on for size:
Say I have an important meeting with a record label. Said record label is interested in signing my band but we have a few questions and want to clarify a few things. If I'm asking the label reps questions when I am tired (poor phrasing), way too emotionally charged (pitchy notes), and slouching while wearing sweat pants (poor technique) they will respond to my questions/statements with those distractions in their minds. But! If arrive time, alert, dressed appropriately, etc. I am in more control of how my questions/statements are received.

Do you see this?! This means when I'm even simply playing scales, my emotions are clearer (to myself and my audience), if I am able to play without presenting unintended distractions. Practicing your emotional clarity will immensely help your practice of performance.

Here's an exercise to try:
Pick a scale or a simple song. Pick an emotion. Roll a die. Now, play that song with that emotion exactly the same way the number of times the die directs. The trick with this is to tune your ears to the distractions you're playing. Don't eliminate them, repeat them with purpose! If you can replicate the distractions, then you'll be in control of the distractions and able to eliminate them when needed in the future! Cool huh?!

Have any other exercises in emoting that work for you? Share with the class!

Baby Step #2.

Baby Step #2.

[This is the 2nd of a post series on Baby Steps.]

Baby Step #2 - Adding a step & teaching ourselves to fall again: The next thing Glenda and I worked on together on Monday was adding a new note, F#, to the previous note, A. Notes are a simple and tangible way to keep track of baby steps, however even taking one step on the sidewalk has more than one movement in our body. We have to learn how to figuratively "transfer our weight" from one foot to another, muscle by muscle.


Teaching ourselves to learn is a really difficult (but not impossible) thing to do after the age of 4. I've seen through teaching beginning adult students, that learning to learn is a skill that most adults haven't done since early grade school. If you think about it, everything beyond that in school is built upon a previous education. When you pick up the cello (or any instrument) for the first having never touched anything like it before, you're starting from square one. Most of my adult students weren't expecting to encounter that difficulty when they chose the cello, however it seems that the challenge is addicting.

So back to practicing... an important thing to realize here is that we had to take the larger step from A to F# several times before we recognized that doing large step was actually two or three or four baby steps. We added a new baby step by feeling out and hearing out the combination of the current and next notes. ( A, F# (caught the lower string.) A, F# (tone lacked). A, F#(caught the G string). Etc.) By hearing ourselves make a mistake over and over again with forgiving grace and positive reinforcement, we are able to narrow down the source of that speed-bump.

Think about this: a baby doesn't take long, gazelle-like, deep strides directly after crawling. There's the cute pulling-up-onto-the-coffee-table stage, the shimmying-around-the-coffee-table stage, the falling-onto-the-nearest-furniture-from-the-coffee-table stage, and eventually, standing and then slow, small steps. But of course, there's lots of falling-on-diaper-cushioned-baby-bottoms. We have to do the same things when we add a new note, including the falling down.

Using the tangible next ladder rung, a note, we are able to feel out that a note (in this case, the F#) just may be too big a step to take next. This allows us to get to the bottom of the next appropriate step for practice, for the right hand in this case, string crossing. But not JUST cross strings. We magnified our "looking lens" to see that we actually need to cross down a string while at the tip of our bow. Therefore, the next step of practice was to simply rock our bows from A to D at the tip of our bow without making a sound but merely feeling and watching the contact point of our bow touch first the A-string, then the D-string.

All in all, adding a step in practice is a series of fallings. Getting back up, & slowly teaching yourself what the true next step of practice is after falling on the ground. Kinda like life, huh? Interesting... ;-)

Baby Step #1.

Baby Step #1.

[This is the first of a blog series on Baby Steps.]

Today I gave a 3-note lesson. It was great! Not as boring as some of you may think, not in the least bit! Glenda and I were talking about baby steps. and 3 notes are the perfect tangible amount of baby steps to take in 30 minutes.

After years and years of driving her own children to music lessons, and now witnessing her grandchildren go to their music lessons, Glenda has taken the grand leap to give herself the time to take the music lessons she's always wanted! She played her first recital in December and played her "Twinkles" with a great twinkle in her eye! Way to go Glenda! Glenda has acknowledged that as an adult beginner she's got a long way to go before she gets to where she wants to be as a cellist.

But! Today she made the exclamation "I want to practice 2 hours a day." (Glenda, I will hold you to this desire, believe you me!) I admire her acknowledgement of exactly how badly she wants to be a better cellist and make the sound she hears from the stereo and inside her heart everyday. Acknowledging the desire is a great part of taking the steps to acquiring the skills.

So this morning Glenda and I sat down to our lesson and we began to talk about how we practice.

• What does it mean to take baby steps in practice?
• How can we divide up the songs we work on?
• Rather than just narrow in on three notes and play them over and over (and over and over and...), how do we provide ourselves with the ladder rungs to play sounds that we long to hear from our cellos?
• Is there a science, a set of rules to the deductive reasoning we use while practicing?

Today we worked on the first 3 notes of "Lightly Row." [A(0), F#(3), F#(3) --. ]

Baby Step #1 - Recycling your checklist: Playing a note on the A-string, the A in this case, does not just mean play A. Playing the first note of Lightly Row means thinking about all types of posture, bow hold, arm swing, prepping the 3rd finger (and 1st and 2nd fingers), flat wrist, curved fingers, sinking & weighty arms, and more! We start at the very beginning of the first cello lesson we ever had and press "play."

The recycling of thought on all your technique is crucial. It's crucial for a number of reasons. We don't want to train our minds to play something incorrectly. The more we practice an idea as simple as sitting at a 90-degree angle, the more innate it will feel as we move on to further baby steps. Eventually you realize that you don't have to go to that check point as often. But as you'll soon read in later posts, you do need to go back to them eventually, if only for brief moments.

I liken this step to "checking in on someone." Call them up. Ask how things are going. Listen. If they're doing well, smile. If they're doing poorly, listen. Empathize. Help.

I'm trying to do this with more friends and even with myself more often these days. I find myself saying in my life, what a lot of my students say in their lessons... "What?! How and why on earth am I sitting sideways?" "Woah. Why are my shoulders so tense?" Sometimes my physical body demands that I check in on myself. "What!? Where did this cold sore come from? What am I so stressed out about? Why am I craving so much sweet stuff?" or "Okay, I'm getting a migraine. What emotionally traumatic moment did I re-live 3 hours ago?"

Because Thought-Recycling is so crucial, this is where it's great to have a teacher. A great teacher, in my opinion, should always check in on their student regularly. "Oh, you still haven't memorized, 7 + 5, let's go back a little then. Before we attempt to swallow algebra." :-) I realize that I might sound like a broken record to some of my students. But! It's for your own precious good. You'll thank me later, I promise. To this day, I can still hear my first cello teacher, Myrna Trent, talk about curved fingers and bow distribution. (Thank you Myrna!)

Okay, back to Glenda's lesson. Playing the first note of Lightly Row has a TON of checklist items to go through. Glenda and I once wrote out a list of ~100 things she thinks about while playing the cello. No joke. Play that first note several times to allow your brain to go through each one. After you've gone through your checklist items and your senses are satisfied then go on to the next baby step...