Category Archives: Teaching

What is calling out for this?

22 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by in Knowing, Performing, Practicing, Teaching

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At a recent lesson I noticed the above statements at the top of my student’s assignment. I remembered writing these words, but a week later stared at them as my student warmed up, startled by how directly they spoke to my own practice. My approach to practice is changing because it needs to as I get older, and as my playing changes so does my teaching.

My practice needs to change because I seem to be more nervous about performing these days. My fingers are likely to feel anxious and unsure with material that I haven’t prepared exceedingly well, whereas in the past they would have more confidently sailed through. My current theory is that a loss of innocence that comes with maturity is the increased awareness of what we don’t know.

These three ideas help me focus my attempts to override nerves. First idea: It’s surprisingly easy to do things we are accomplished at without thinking, and we need to counter this tendency to be comfortable in performance. If I’m not mindful of what the positions look like on the keyboard under my hands, what they feel like as my hands and fingers fit in their hundreds of unique places within a given piece, and what the music sounds like…well, I’m sunk. I need to notice these things with a high degree of consciousness when I’m playing alone to be secure with the material when under the pressure of others listening.

Second idea: If I’m not paying attention to what in the music is calling out for repetition, I’m sunk again. It all needs lots of repetition to be secure, but there are sections, some very small, that need an absurd amount of repetition to be really known, especially in nervous conditions.

The third idea is more elusive, referencing a phrase I remember from my childhood. When my family lived in Kingston, Jamaica, we sometimes took “mini-buses” (large vans) as public transportation. A mini-bus would typically look impossibly full as it approached the bus stop, but the driver’s assistant hanging out the door gestured for us to climb on and would holler, “Small up yourselves!” to those already in the seats and in the aisles. Sure enough, more room could be made.

At the piano it’s easy to let tension settle in the hands, and some of the demands of the music require the hand to linger in an awkward stretch. The natural state of the hands when we shake them out and let fall at our sides is quite supple and compact, and the more we maintain this as we play, the better. Reminding myself and my students to “small up the hand” is now a familiar technical point of reference.

It amazes me how much I keep learning about playing and teaching piano, after some 20+ years of active work in the field. This month most of my individual practice has been for a temporary job at a church that integrates the keyboard into its service in a way I find very rewarding. When I think back on big pieces I played in my twenties, the shorter form classical works and hymn arrangements I’m practicing now can make me feel apologetic. I scold myself when I feel this way, because this music contains the essence of all I have learned to do – evenness, clarity, voicing, phrasing, articulation, characterization – and deserves my best effort.

Now in my mid-forties, these pieces that aren’t as difficult as the big pieces I played more than two decades ago can still be plenty demanding. At the piano it’s maddeningly easy to crash into a wrong chord or to stumble through a run. I have to ask myself more honestly where the music is calling out for repetition. And I have to pay better attention to my body, to keep it relaxed and to find the fingerings and maneuvers that allow my hands to stay in their naturally small and relaxed state.

Since the blog started as a project about Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier Book One, I’ll close by verifying that I’m still working on this. On a good day I am obedient to the daily plan I have for the Bach, which is to review a set of four preludes/fugues assigned for that day. They are all in my fingers now to varying degrees of comfort. They need a lot of time to settle and develop, more time for mindfulness, more repetition where it is called for, and more discovery of how a small and relaxed hand can make the work of playing Bach look, feel and sound easier than it is.

Making the awkward not awkward

03 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by in Learning, Practicing, Teaching

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I’ve been thinking about the idea of awkwardness lately. “Awkward” is common in the lexicon of my daughters’ generation, and not necessarily seen as a negative.  “It was so awkward,” my older daughter once said with delight after finding herself on a dorm floor full of college boys as she and her friend looked for her friend’s older brother. Some of our best stories come from initially awkward encounters.  I wonder if what makes the outcome of these stories ultimately positive is that we were able to push through the awkwardness to something better on the other side.

A memory from over a year ago, captured in the photo above, points to this – with a college class in September 2013 I found myself spending the day volunteering at the nursing care facility at our local retirement center.  Our tasks were simple – to sing songs, play games, take walks, and generally interact with the residents – but felt anything but simple as the 20 of us stood in that initially awkward space. As a collective shyness permeated the room, one young woman moved towards an old woman, grasped her hands, and began a conversation. Claire’s model empowered the rest of us to spring into action.  There was more awkwardness throughout the day, to be sure, but we now had more trust in ourselves to push through it.

This memory helps me identify two ways of thinking about awkwardness.  First, we can embrace rather than avoid awkwardness, whether the awkward moment is humorous or just difficult on the way to something better. Second, we can be confident in our ability to make the awkward not awkward. In my piano practice and teaching I think about this when there is a technical quandary – a part under the fingers that doesn’t feel, look or sound right (or usually all three at the same time).  In my own playing my first tendency is to deny or avoid this awkwardness and keep playing without addressing the issue, with a foolish hope that it will eventually take care of itself.  My teaching requires me to be more mature, which in turn strengthens my practice.  Identifying the awkward and exploring how to ease it leads to a time of experimentation at the keyboard – with hand placement and fingering, with gesture, with phrasing, with repetition and drill – until that beautiful moment when the awkward no longer feels awkward and has emerged into something smooth and authentic.

Holy Pursuits

16 Thursday May 2013

Posted by in Teaching

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The other day I gave a Humanities class session about what I called Holy Pursuits in Music, featuring the music of J.S. Bach and U2. I asked students to write down one of their holy pursuits now or in the future. What they shared is a nice glimpse into the hopes and dreams of some of today’s college students, representing about a dozen countries of origin and more than twenty majors. Holy Pursuits

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Paradoxes

05 Wednesday Dec 2012

Paradoxes

For a while I’ve been fascinated by the written assignments piano teachers give their students. Whether or not these are closely looked at, they are valuable artifacts of the term of study. Here is one for a chemistry major taking his second semester of lessons with me. I enjoy thinking about some of the paradoxes I find on this piece of paper — ideas that I hope to remember in my own practice and life:

• Detail work leading to more freedom, less care
• Slow enough for forward motion
• Heavy and relaxed
• Mindful repetition

 

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From Smug to Chastened

02 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by in Learning, Teaching, Time

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Around midterm I was feeling smug about how busy we keep our students in my department.  I was fully aware, but newly reminded, of how much our music students are balancing.  They are working diligently at their full-time course work, have part-time employment, are involved in multiple ensembles, and practice their instrument several hours per day alone or chamber groups.  They say yes to opportunity and rarely complain. I find out from time to time about ways they are involved in non-musical ventures across campus and am further impressed. I am amazed at how well they balance these demands.

I was also feeling smug about my own level of activity and that it is good that I model the juggling of teaching and administrative work, a family life, involvement with a church community, and a commitment to my own writing and musical growth.  Sure, I deal with stress, don’t always get enough sleep, and wish I could give more time to most tasks, but generally it’s good.  Life is good.  I’m blessed to be busy and fulfilled and there is a certain thrill at that manic part of the semester when the pace is fast and ridiculous.  I thrive on it.  At least, I think I do.

There is this nagging worry, though, that maybe we are teaching and practicing the wrong thing. What if this ability to manage so many varied responsibilities, more than are really possible in one day, is not what we should be nurturing?  Too often any real exploration of an idea or in-depth problem-solving doesn’t happen because there simply isn’t time or space for the immersion that is required.  Too often we are doing too much with not enough sleep, exercise, time, or focused attention.

I know this extreme busyness is part of the semesterly cycle.   Papers, exams, juries, and grades will soon be done, next term a safe distance away, and we will all breathe. We will have, as a friend once described it, a good collapse.  We may even find some time to focus on a task we yearn to explore more fully.

In the meantime, what types of lives are we modeling and promoting?  I told a colleague about my smugness leading to a chastened state and she laughed and said, “Well, smugness is usually a warning.”  College students struggle with anxiety like never before.  I may post articles about the benefits of caffeine on Facebook, but just as much research is out there about the dangers of inadequate sleep.  What if some normally dependable students turn in sub-par work a little too often, have too many weeks of weak practice, or show signs of substance abuse or other harmful ways of handling the stress?  At what point will I demand that there be less on their plate and less on my own so various tasks get the quality time they deserve?

As per usual, I offer no real answers.  And I don’t want a conclusion that says a liberal arts degree scatters our attention too much, nor a finding that we need to lower expectations of our students’ musical growth.  I’m convinced that one can experience meaningful study in one’s primary discipline while being broadly educated and involved. I also recognize that any discussion of scattered attention today is incomplete without addressing technology and constant connectivity. I’m encouraged by ways we do have of capturing immersion and enabling focus in education. Certain projects, like a senior recital or thesis, demand it.  Intensive January or May terms and curricular requirements like a Study-Service-Term in another country are the definition of it.

But during the primary seasons of life we keep asking for more and glorifying the ability to do it all.  Chastened a bit, I will keep thinking about what current and future habits we are shaping with this glorification.

Ways of Knowing

23 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by in Knowing, Learning, Music Theory, Practicing, Teaching

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The older I get, the more I know what I don’t know.  In high school and college I played piano with a clueless bravado that allowed my fingers to fly confidently over notes my brain did not fully understand.  Somewhere along the way I became a good sight reader. Was it those adolescent years in Kingston, Jamaica where I had more free time to practice?  Was it the high school choir accompanying I eagerly did?  My piano teacher in high school required regular playing from the hymnal — did this make me a good sight reader? Did it have anything to do with my constant intake of the written word?  The mysteries of why some pianists become good sight readers of Western notation and why others (often some of the best musicians) need more time to absorb the page in front of them are an ongoing hot topic in music pedagogy circles.  Good research is pointing the way to a combination of experiences and strategies.

However the mysteries are solved or remain, I better understand the downfalls of my sight reading abilities and sometimes wish I read less well. In college I was greatly challenged and wonderfully taught, and I played a lot.  But, perhaps in part because there was not enough struggle to read those notes, my knowledge became technical fairly quickly and theoretical awareness rarely surfaced in my individual practice.  My moment of truth (I think each musician has one) occurred in the spring semester of my junior year when I crashed and burned in a public performance of a Beethoven Sonata movement (it was Op. 10 No. 3, movement one, if you must know).  I had played it through from memory many times on my own and in front of my teacher, but I didn’t really know those notes on an cognitive level. I went into the high-stakes environment with an unfamiliar feeling of unease, perhaps finally mature enough to be subconsciously aware that other ways of knowing weren’t there to reinforce the motor-muscle memory in the fingers. The disaster and ensuing tears of mortification led to some of the most important conversations I had with my professors and began a turning point in how I practiced.  The innocence of clueless bravado lost, a new path was needed.

And yet, this turning point seems to be one of the longest curves of my life.  Now more than twenty years later, I still struggle to really know.  Today while practicing Bach’s delightful fugue in A major from WTC book one I felt that familiar learning-too-quickly habit take hold, the notes coming easily and my fingers and ears giddy with what they were doing and hearing — too much intake, too fast, without enough struggle to understand.  Of course the brain can’t be truly bypassed in this situation, and enough repetitions will eventually result in some actual knowing.  But, if I bypass the knowing struggle as my fingers weave their way through the material, I’m only inviting future trouble. So, I keep working at deepening the ways in which I know the music, in essence making sure the struggle is early in the process rather than late.

Here are the ways of knowing I now try to activate.  (These ideas are gathered from my teachers, my students, and various readings, but were particularly solidified when I read Geoffrey Haydon’s chapter “Memorization via Internalization for the Intermediate Student” in Creative Piano Teaching by Lyke, Haydon, and Rollin, 2011.)

1. There is the technical knowing, which I value more and more for its importance as I get older, even as I recognize it was too often my only route of knowing back then.  My fingers need more accurate repetitions than ever, to really have it.  I’m better at recognizing where they are close to faltering even if I can get through that moment, because under just a little bit of pressure, stumbles will happen in those places. There is no room for doubt in my fingers.

2. There is the theoretical knowing, which can seem overwhelming (so many notes!) until I remember that theory is any way of naming what I am doing.  I need ways of talking about musical passages, of identifying beginnings, middles, and endings.  Western music theory is my best path for this, even if I name a passage as simply as, “The place where the hand does the back-and-forth thingy with the E major triad.”  I have to be able to talk my way through an entire piece in one way or another.

3. There is the visual knowing, which has two parts.  First, I am increasingly aware of the photographic memory that develops when I’ve read a page of notation so many times.  (This is a useful way for me to review my knowledge, though not what I want to focus on in a memorized performance).  The other visual is recognizing and knowing the way my hands look on the keyboard when playing a given passage — the amazingly diverse topography found within those black key groups surrounded by just seven white keys.  Away from the piano, I find time to picture myself playing the piece; where I lose the view are places I need to better reinforce in my practice.

4. There is the aural, the knowing of the ears.  I’m learning to sing various melodic lines and practice improvisation on the patterns and harmonies from the music I’m learning.  Being able to trust my ears and improvise my way out of a trouble spot helps me integrate what is written. In the same way I envision myself playing the keys, I close my eyes away from the piano and hear my way through a whole piece to check my aural knowing.

And, finally:

5.  There is the body’s way of knowing.  Awareness of the physical gestures in use is an important part of this.  I am trying to pay attention to how different mechanisms are at work as the body plays various passages, from the feet to the sitz bones to the shoulders, head, face, arms, and fingertips.  Exploring and refining what feels best as the body experiences the music helps helps me recognize and trust the body’s knowledge of the musical experience.

Two final connections.

Until the most recent general education revision, the liberal arts curriculum at my college required each student to take one of two Bible courses  — either Reading the Bible or Knowing the Bible. In my advising sessions I often needed to remind myself that Reading the Bible was for students with previous biblical study background; it seemed to me that the other way around made more sense — that the more advanced course would be Knowing the Bible.  Our Bible/Religion department’s rationale was that you cannot read the Bible until you know how this canon was formed and organized.  Reading the Bible went much deeper into content and interpretation, and was for students who already understood the structure of the volume of books and how to approach a reading encounter with it.  This paradigm reminds me that much knowing goes into reading.  I know a lot already to be able to sight read music well, and it is a vital skill in my line of work. Knowledge makes reading possible. Repeated and mindful reading of any text leads to greater insight and satisfaction.

Recently I’ve noticed a change in how I respond to a familiar comment from students in their lessons. “But I know this.  I don’t understand why I’m not playing it better here.”  In the past I used this as an opportunity to explore nervousness and how to play through it.  Now, recognizing that insecurity about knowing (knowing what you don’t know) is often the main source of anxiety in performance, I respond, “You must not know it as well as you thought.  Let’s look at how you can practice so you know it exceedingly well, in a lot of different ways, and we’ll see if that makes a difference.”

I am still one who needs this lesson the most.

I am not that important. I am loved beyond measure.

24 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by in Knowing, Learning, Teaching

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A shift has happened.  Schedules are fully in place — kids’ school and activities, full-time work, and evening meetings or events.  Summer was a gift, especially this first one in five years without doctoral demands and with children old enough to do their things while I did mine.  I am thankful for what we had, but the structure we inevitably needed has inevitably come.

Time at the piano and time to write about it will require more commitment and planning than before. When I set out on this project, though, I added the “and other adventures” to the title so if the practicing wasn’t happening I could write about what was happening.  This week one of the happenings was this:

These notes are from yesterday’s teaching faculty workshop.  Some years guest speakers give the workshop and these individuals are often inspiring and provoking.  This time we heard from our own colleagues on three themes under the meta question, “What is Unique about a Goshen College Education?” — Philosophical/Religious Underpinnings, International Education, and Pedagogies Within and Across Disciplines.

It was a great day. I geeked out on my love for Goshen College and my love for pedagogy.  Some highlights:

• From John D. Roth’s new book Teaching that Transforms (chapter 3 was one of our readings for the day) an exploration of the dispositions found in good teaching: curiosity, reason, joy, patience and love.  John, Professor of History, offered an Anabaptist theological framework for pedagogies anchored in our senses, and for the act of learning as a sacred act, as an act of worship.

• Kevin Gary, Professor of Education, spoke of a “great spiritual truth” that holds two ideas in tension — 1. you are not that important; 2. you are loved beyond measure.  Experiential learning happens best when we both suspend self and open self to the experience. I also learned from Kevin that I need to read some T.S. Eliot.

• Beth Martin Birky, Professor of English and Women’s Studies, reflected on how leading Study-Service-Term took her outside of her specialties but also deepened her scholarship as she began a multi-year research project about women in Costa Rica. Her commitment to personal engagement with the women she wanted to learn from and her ability to creatively engage college students in her research are models I want to remember.

• Ross Peterson-Veatch, Associate Academic Dean, suggested a working theory for our teaching, a bridging concept to help students: 1. know what to pay attention to and what not to pay attention to; 2. have a structured experience; 3. have time for structured reflection; and 4. make a commitment to what is known now that wasn’t known before.  This theory reminded me of the educational philosopher Maxine Greene’s trio of steps for meaningful engagement in the arts (from her book Releasing the Imagination): 1. exposure; 2. active engagement; and 3. reflection.  Ross deepened this for me and also arranged it as a quartet with the addition of commitment.  Perhaps this commitment helps us avoid outcomes where we “had the experience but missed the meaning” (from the 3rd quartet of Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot — Thanks, Kevin).

There was more to this geek-fest — a “History of Goshen College in 12 Minutes” by Steve Nolt, the story of Study-Service-Term by Tom Meyers, the role of language-learning on SST by Dean Rhodes, and pedagogical vignettes by about ten other colleagues.  Kathyrn Meyer Reimer, outgoing faculty chair, did a masterful job of organizing the day and I’m grateful.

And now, with my head full and my hands too quiet, I will play some Bach this weekend. I will trust that my own art-making will in some way nurture my teaching disposition into more curiosity, reason, joy, patience, and love to offer my students. I will encounter, experience, reflect, and commit to what is learned. I will remember I’m not that important.  I will be ok with this because I know I am greatly loved.

Never ever do this again

11 Saturday Aug 2012

Posted by in Practicing, Teaching, Time

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The other day I was driving home from errands with the girls and I turned down a city street I usually avoid.  As I should have remembered would happen, we found ourselves in a long line of traffic at a stubborn red light.  I said to Greta, “Remind me to never ever do this again.”  She decided to tell Siri to send me a note and so the next day at 9 a.m. I saw this on my phone.

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As I enter the land of more intentional practice my bad habits are on display, habits I wish I would never ever do again:

1. Read music without thinking about what I’m playing, without listening carefully to my sound, or without observing what is happening technically

2. Play the same passage with the same bad fingering, or a different fingering each time

3. Forget to mark the score when I make a reading mistake more than once (“B#, dummy!”)

4. Whirl through a piece without addressing the problem spots, as if they will magically take care of themselves some day

5. Start faster than I can handle throughout the whole piece, resulting in a messy mix of speeds

6. Fill up my practice time with simply “playing” rather than “working” — forgetting to set one goal at a time and work towards an assessable outcome

These habits are human, so human that of course to expect to never ever do again is a set up for failure. Sometimes I need to play rather than work and some mistakes need to be made a few times before I am convinced there is a better way.  But I know my foibles and how much time they can waste.  I also know what I try to teach.  This new project is a good exercise in aligning intention with action and in matching my advice with my own reality, with plenty of grace to balance the “never ever” hyperbole.