The world of music is full of attempts to get the ‘right answer’. Just thinking about flute playing…
What’s the right way to play Bach on the flute? What’s the best make of flute? How do I play high notes quietly? What angle should I hold my flute at? Where do I put my thumb? How should I breathe? I belong to a few Facebook groups and online forums, and whenever anyone asks a question about any aspect of flute playing, strong opinions are expressed. You should definitely do it like this, hold it like this, blow like this. This make of flute is the best. People go to teachers or to masterclasses and are told to do things a certain way, and do their best to follow the instructions, and don’t understand why it’s not working for them. You buy a tutor book and it says “you must do it like this” and “you should not be doing this” (with my linguistics head on, the language of tutor books fascinates me - there's another research project in there bursting to get out one day). I am generalising here of course, for there are voices out there saying “try this”. “This works for me, so you could try it, but also you could try these different ways”. “Go and try lots of different flutes and see which one feels best to you”. Experiment. Some people go to one teacher and take what they say as gospel and never question it. Some people read everything they can on the subject, go to workshops and masterclasses and hear about many different ways to do the same thing. This can be overwhelming and confusing – who are we supposed to believe? Or it can be a springboard for experimentation, finding out what works best for you. I’ve worked on flute playing in detail with quite a number of teachers, from extended periods of lessons to one-off masterclasses or courses, so I’ve come across quite a variety of views on the way to do things. None of them, I would say, have been wrong, but some have worked better for me than others. I look at my own students and I see such variety. As a flute teacher, you spend a lot of time looking at people’s lips and hands, and there are incredible differences (thumbs, in particular, fascinate me – so many different lengths and angles they’ll bend at!). I see my job less as telling people the ‘right answer’ and more as giving them as many possible ways to try as I can. I can show you how I hold my flute with my short thumbs and my hypermobile fingers, but that won’t necessarily work for you if you have long thumbs and your fingers bend a different way. I can help you try different ways of holding it and see what’s happening with your hands when you can’t because they’re stuck out to the side of you. I can suggest a range of different ways to ‘blow’ or to position your lips, so you can try them out and see which one sounds best for you. And I understand the tendency to want to sound like someone else, flute players you admire whose sound you love, but you are you, and even doing exactly what they do (if that was possible) is unlikely to make you sound exactly like them. Your sound is made up of your physical attributes, your particular technique, your flute - and that's a good thing. If you like something about someone else's sound - the richness, for example - then play around to find out what brings about richness in your own tone. There's no 'secret' that anyone can tell you that will magically make you sound the way you want to sound. By extension, that means me reading about different approaches to playing, going to events to find out what other people are doing, and learning new things myself. For me, it also means helping flute players have access to other players and teachers, because with all the will in the world I can’t know everything or be able to demonstrate or explain everything. It’s one of the reasons why I arrange flute days. I run workshops and concerts for my students and flute choir members (pictured above just a few days ago), get-togethers where people can play in a big group, meet other players and share ideas (next one in August), and ones where I invite people with expertise in particular areas to share that with us. The next one of those is with Dr Jessica Quiñones in October – Jessica has listened to my rants, er, impassioned speeches, about the tendency to seek ‘right answers’ and has designed a day where we can “explore and experiment with a variety of methods” of approaching different aspects of flute technique. It’s so valuable to be able to take ideas from different people and try them out for yourself. It's good to meet other players and hear about their struggles with the same issues, and the things that have worked (or not) for them. To see what they do and how they sound. A lot is said in music education about ‘independent learning’ – equipping students with the skills to plan their own development and practice – and I think that’s also as much about learning to experiment with and assess other approaches, to ‘pick and mix’ and find your own way.
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Last week I found myself on the way to Leeds, twice. On Saturday I played with Yorkshire Wind Orchestra in the lovely surroundings of 'Arts@Trinity' - a hub of music and other artistic activity right in the busy centre of the city. We had a lively flute day with lots of visiting flute players, followed by an equally lively concert of 'Music from the Americas' inspired by the Rio Olympics. On Sunday, I felt as if I'd taken part in the Olympics (if flute playing was an Olympic sport, which after a session on the bass flute I felt it should be)! A few days earlier, I headed over to the Yorkshire College of Music and Drama, an amazing community centre for music and drama lessons, headed by principal Tim Knight. I met Tim some time ago through the wonders of the internet, but we first worked together when he wrote the fabulous 'Steel City Shuffle' for Sheffield Flute Choir. We worked on the piece over a few rehearsals, then Tim came to workshop it with us - him telling us about his inspiration for the piece, how he intended it to sound, and us advising him on what is really quite hard to do on a bass flute! The result is this tremendously fun piece for flute choir. The flute choir will be joining one of Tim's (singing) choirs, the Heritage Masterworks Chorale, for a concert in Rotherham Minster this September, and I expect the 'Shuffle' will get an outing there. This week I visited YCMD in Leeds to play through and record some of Tim's works for flute and piano. The College was a hub of activity, being the local ABRSM exam centre - and such a buzzing, welcoming place. I lost count of how many different music groups and lessons they have going on every week! Lots of Tim's work seems to be inspired by the British landscape - we played Celtic melodies, his Lakeland Suite and Moorland Suite amongst others. Being a Scottish person who spent many happy holidays in the Lake District, and now enjoys a wander out of Sheffield to the moors, this felt a bit like a musical journey through different stages of my life. The Lakeland Suite in particular makes me think of childhood holidays with my grandparents, sadly no longer with us, and of my grandad's paintings of the scenery of that area (one pictured above). You can hear some of the results of a really enjoyable morning over on Tim's YouTube channel and copies of the sheet music are available from Spartan Press. I awoke this morning from a dream where I was running off stage in the middle of a performance. I wasn't fleeing a disastrous moment of playing, or a terrifying audience, but a nightmare about page-turning for a pianist. The huge pile of music for the concert had, in the way that things do in dreams, turned out to be printed on pieces of soft fabric, which was flopping all over the place and falling into the piano. Despite this obvious challenge, the pianist was angry at my inability to turn the pages properly, and I left in shame...
Possibly the weirdest thing about this dream, is that it happened the night after I had page-turned for a concert, rather than the night before, and said concert had gone perfectly well, with, strangely enough no paper that turned into unmanageable floppy stuff, and no anger or shame anywhere to be seen. Still, as I lay awake this morning, wondering what my brain was trying to tell me, I remembered that I'd long been meaning to write a blog post about page-turning. The 'job' of being the person who turns pages for piano players is the subject of occasional online articles - the most recent that I've read debates whether page-turners are "a charming relic of an amateur age." Technological advances mean you can now have music on an iPad (or other tablet) and turn by means of a wirelessly-connected foot pedal. Adoption of these seems slow, however, so there is still, currently, room for those people who sit to the side of the piano. I can't actually remember when I first turned pages. My first flute teacher was also a pianist and I think I did it for her when she was accompanying other students for concerts. As a teenager, I was part of a choir which had junior and senior sections, and I remember occasionally page-turning for the accompanist while the adult group were singing. The occasion which most sticks in my head is doing this in a church, when the accompanist was playing the organ - I was fascinated by the instrument, and the extra challenges - both to player, and for the page-turner in trying to keep out of the way! - that it presented. I did some page-turning at Uni, for odd other concerts and shows. And then I didn't, for quite a while. So, fast-forward to a few years ago, when I was looking for some music-related voluntary work in Sheffield. The website of the wonderful Music in the Round popped up, and I filled in the form to register as a volunteer. I happily ticked the boxes to say I would do admin, ticket selling, help at concerts etc, but I hesitated over the 'page-turning' option. I had done it before, but did I want to do it again? I told myself that I could always say no if I was asked to do it, ticked the box and hurriedly sent the form off before I changed my mind. It was a while before a request came through, and I was definitely nervous about agreeing that first time. I don't think I had any anxious dreams, but I did worry about being able to do a good job of it. It's a funny task - most people will describe it as 'quite a responsibility' or something along those lines. It's important, in a way, because you're helping things to run smoothly, but at the same time you're the least important person on that stage. You're part of a performance, but I always feel that my role to 'perform' is to be as invisible as possible. Despite enjoying performing in the traditional sense, I think I'm also pretty good at being unobtrusive (or "too quiet" as I was often told when I was younger). So, in 2014, Music in the Round got me 'back into' page-turning. I realised I was OK at it, I actually really enjoyed it (a friendly welcome from Ensemble 360's brilliant pianist Tim Horton hugely helped) and have lost count of how many times I've done it since. It shares aspects with performing as a musician - a high level of concentration on a piece of music, precise physical movements and 'playing your part' at the right time - but at the same time is very different. You're not expressing yourself or communicating with the audience. You're not moving with the music, although the tempo does affect what you do - somehow it feels that a quiet and slow moment requires a different page-turning action to the middle of a 'presto' movement that needs the pages whipped over quickly. You need to be aware of the structure of the music, rather than the details, to know broadly what's coming next, and if there's any repeats - turning back pages instead of forward is always fun (by 'fun' I mean a bit of a challenge and slightly worrying, especially if you've got to grab a handful of pages to get back to the start of a long movement). Like playing music, the challenges are both mental (concentration) and physical (getting stupid pages to stay open when they want to flip back over, and you can't take the stupid book off the piano in the middle of the piece and bend the spine back), but they're embodied in a different way. Almost every time I page-turn, people ask me questions about it. Do I get nervous? Yes, a little bit, because of the responsibility of not messing up something for someone else. It's similar to the feeling of being nervous when accompanying a flute student's exam - yes, I am, but the occasion is about them not me and I have a responsibility to support them (so, actually, both experiences are very useful about learning how to manage nerves, and, dare I say, ego?!). Do I rehearse? I have been in rehearsals sometimes - there are page-turning 'conventions' but it's good to get to know how a particular pianist works. Do they indicate when they want you to turn? How close to the end of the page do they generally want it turned? (You get more of a sense of this the more you work with the same person too). But normally it's a quick look through the pieces beforehand to grasp what's going on and pick out any awkward bits. Did I enjoy the pieces? Yes, but not in the same way as you do as part of the audience. I enjoy being 'involved' in the process of the pieces coming to life, but I don't exactly 'hear' them - I'm listening to them, and I'm concentrating on following them on the score, so I'm far more aware of the overall structure than the details. I've been introduced to new pieces by page-turning for them (recent highlights being Ligeti's Musica Ricercata/ Six Bagatelles, and Volker David Kirchner's Lamento e Danza d’Orfeo for French horn and piano), and subsequently gone home and listened to them, and sometimes wanted to be cloned/ time-travel as I've enjoyed the page-turning but would also have liked to hear the live performance by those musicians. Have I ever had any page-turning disasters? If you believe YouTube, there have been many of those around the world! Music flying off all over the place, page-turners falling off the stage. I've once or twice had a blip in following the music and missed a turn, which the pianist has then had to quickly do themselves (nobody's ever got angry like the one in my dream, though). I once wore a cardigan which fell at just the right angle to clatter its buttons on the piano every time I turned a page, and spent most of a concert holding on to it with my non-turning hand - I'm now quite careful about clothes, to avoid a repeat of that or anything flapping in the way of the pianist. If you've never page-turned, it probably looks either incredibly easy or like some sort of mysterious magical art. It's neither really. It's a performance which is completely not-about-you, but about someone else's performance. It almost feels odd writing about it in this much detail, because it's so much about being in the background, drawing as little attention to yourself as possible (I decided not to add any pictures to this post - I don't think there are any of me page-turning, and that seems quite appropriate, given that sense of being almost invisible). There are few, if any, professional page-turners as such - they tend to be volunteers, students, or people who work at concert halls who are asked to do it as part of their job. But I think those of us who do it regularly probably do analyse it a bit (especially when we're frequently asked questions about it). Despite the strange considerations of appropriate cardigans and the frustrations of non-compliant sheet music, it's a curiously intense experience and a privilege to be in the midst of excellent musicians making music. What's going on in this picture? Do some of those flutes look a bit... big? What are those giant silver drainpipes doing in the corner? This was the view at our Low Flutes Day in Sheffield a couple of weeks ago - a day of playing all those flutes that are bigger than normal! Although the alto flute was invented in the mid-19th century, and all the 'big' flutes are increasing in popularity in the flute world, they're still not particularly mainstream instruments. My first encounter with an alto was, I think, at university, where I played in a flute quartet - despite being the smallest player, I somehow ended up with the biggest flute (I loved it though)! Fast-forward to now, and at Sheffield Flute Choir we have a growing number of altos and a couple of basses between us (including mine that nobody ever wants to borrow because it's a chunky heavy old thing!). I'd become increasingly aware, though, that few of us had really got to grips with the differences between these low flutes and the normal ones - everyone's automatic reaction is to pick them up and try to play them like a 'C' flute. And then to get a bit frustrated that it's hard to get certain notes out, hard to get much volume, the tone sounds thin in places, it seems to react slowly to tonguing, and "oh my goodness my arms really ache after five minutes playing this thing". Some people didn't want to try it at all, because these giant instruments were a mystery. To the rescue - low flutes expert Carla Rees. I invited Carla to Sheffield to run a day de-mystifying the low flutes, helping flute players understand what was different about these flutes. To simplify a lot, the answer is... lots! A great mix of people came along, some having never played a low flute before, whilst others owned their own altos and basses. We started off playing group pieces, all sitting up nicely, trying our best to hold altos and basses up straight, trying to get a nice sound out. Very quickly we discovered that we needed to forget pretty much everything we knew (or thought we knew) about 'good' posture. Carla guided us through ways to hold the flutes, the different embouchures, air speeds... we experimented with leaning back at different angles, putting the flutes in different places on our chins. I won't go into every detail, but I will highly recommend Carla's blog for starting to learn about these techniques (or even better, her teaching in person - described by one of our participants as "a great teacher and motivator", and I couldn't agree more!). We had a fantastic Q&A session around all sorts of aspects of low flutes - including which makes of instrument to try as a beginner, and to think about progressing to if you find yourself advancing with them (I was pleased to find out that my chunky heavy beast - a Monnig alto - is not a bad place to start, and will definitely help build stamina!). We heard about Carla's training regime before her first alto recital - practice, running and weightlifting! Various players tried out bits of repertoire (including some brave sightreading on the spot) - it was lovely to see really good flute players relax into trying out techniques that sometimes felt quite alien! We also had the chance to try out a wonderful selection of instruments, thanks to Just Flutes who brought a stand packed with exciting things - lots of low flutes, and a few rather nice 'normal' flutes too, plus a great selection of sheet music. Huge thanks to Jonathan for bringing - and unloading, a lengthy task - a van full! This also meant that we were able to have a go on a couple of those giant drainpipe creatures - the fairly unflattering picture to the left is me playing a contrabass flute. These are BIG, heavy, and take some serious 'huffing' down, but they make an incredible sound (two octaves below the normal flute). They're also quite expensive, which is the only reason one didn't come home with me on the day - it's now a long-term savings project though. The day finished with a chance to try out all our newly-learned techniques on one of Carla's arrangements of Bach for low flutes. The sound and the feeling of 23 people all playing alto and lower was utterly incredible - the room resonated with deep harmonies. We definitely still had achy arms by the end, but we all left full of enthusiasm for low flutes and feeling equipped to make a start on learning to play them as instruments in their own right. Thank you Carla for that inspiration and the tools to go and do something about it!
Future flute days in Sheffield are in the planning - go here to find out more and sign up to the mailing list for updates! This quote, shared on Twitter this morning by @ScaleBoxApp, reminded me that I've had a blog post brewing in my brain about competitions. It was mainly sparked by the BBC - the announcement of the Young Musician of the Year finalists, and their new 'Great British Amateur Orchestra' series/ competition.
I have such mixed feelings about competitions in music. Professional music IS competitive - winning performance competitions, winning a place at a prestigious institution, winning auditions, winning audiences to come to your concert rather than someone else's - although this is simplifying the music world a lot, there's a huge element of having to be 'better' than someone else. Many of the Young Musician participants will go on to professional careers, and no doubt being part of this competition plays some part in that. Equally for aspiring musicians, 'winning' local/ regional/ national competitions, getting into ensembles where you have to be one of the best at audition - these things do help with making your way to a university/ conservatoire place. As a teenager I took part in a few competitions. My favourite was the Edinburgh Competition Festival - although it was competitive, the emphasis seemed more on the 'festival' side of things. It was a great opportunity to perform in front of an audience and get some outside feedback on your playing, and it always felt to me like a celebration of the music-making going on in the city (I'm pleased to see it's still running!). Obviously it was nice when you did well, but I think well-pitched events like this have much more to them than the idea of 'beating' other people. On the other hand, sometimes competition doesn't seem so healthy. Perhaps it's natural in an activity where there is 'progression' (in particular where a series of grade exams are available), that people will compare their own and others' level of progress. I remember going on music courses where the first few conversations always seemed to revolve around who had done which grade and what mark they got and which youth orchestras they'd got into - it was as if musical teenagers had to work out a hierarchy amongst themselves, again, maybe something teenagers always do to some extent, but there could be a lot of looking down on others and ego-boosting based on being 'better'. High profile competitions on national TV do, I suspect, add to this competitive nature of the music world. Young Musician showcases some wonderful players, but I do feel that some of the 'hype' around it focuses too much on 'talent' rather than the immense amount of work that these musicians must have put in to get to this stage. I've posted about the idea of talent a few times before, so I'll refrain from my usual rant, but suffice to say that I think it's important that young people watching this programme are told that the participants didn't get there by some 'magical gift' alone (and I think in fact that claiming it's all natural talent is insulting to their hard work and commitment. Of course, there's a whole other discussion around that level of work/ commitment/ public exposure/ pressure at a young age...). This new amateur orchestras series though... well, my first thought was - can we not celebrate amateur music-making without making a competition out of it?! Maybe nobody would watch that though - people like to see who wins and loses, who gets through to the next round, who they want to 'support'. My second thought was to wonder how they're defining 'amateur'. Thinking of the orchestras I've played in, which have mainly been considered amateur since the players don't get paid, all of them contain some members who make their living from music in some way. So whilst that particular activity is 'amateur', they are paid players (and/or music teachers) in other capacities. Unless the orchestra has a strict rule about its members not making a living from music to any extent (as some competition festivals do for their 'open' classes), then the proportion of actual amateur musicians could vary rather a lot - bearing in mind that it's a blurry line anyway - what exactly does constitute a professional musician? Does 'amateur', i.e. not being a paid musician, necessarily indicate a lower level of skill? (I'd say not always). And surely those orchestras which have higher entry standards in the first place stand a better chance in the competition than those who are open more widely? I haven't seen the full rules for the competition, but having seen comments from those who have it appears to require a big time commitment from the orchestras, which seems incompatible with the lives of amateur musicians (or those with other musical jobs who play in these groups) who have jobs to go to, families to look after, and indeed other musical groups to play in who might not be too happy if you took a long absence from rehearsals! It strikes me as adding a whole new level of stress and expectation, when it can be hard enough fitting musical commitments round busy adult lives as it is. It will be interesting to see whether there are enough groups willing and able to enter under these terms for the series to go ahead. If it does, I'll probably watch, but I can't promise that I won't (OK, I practically guarantee that I will) be shouting at the telly. A phrase (or concept) that comes up in various forms when talking to and about adult learners is that "life gets in the way". Looking at discourses around family in the data for my MA research highlighted a recurring theme around family and work responsibilities restricting how much learners could play, practise or participate in musical activities. Almost half of the teachers I surveyed also mentioned that adult learners' other commitments had an impact on their learning - whether it was time to practise, having to cancel/ reschedule lessons, or just having the 'head space' to concentrate on learning. According to one study, the ideal teacher has “an understanding of the… responsibilities handled by adults, along with a steady insistence that students be challenged” (Roulston et al., 2015) This is definitely a challenge for teachers - judging how much to 'push' when there are other things going on in people's lives. It doesn't only apply to adult learners either. With children we're also balancing it up against other activities, school work, family circumstances, sometimes ongoing medical conditions. There's also working out how much of a priority music is for that individual person - the bigger a role it plays in their life, the more 'challenge' they're willing to take on to develop their skills. But the level of challenge can be both under- and over-estimated, and another of our jobs as teachers is to help students be realistic about that. Existing research highlights adult learners’ high levels of intrinsic motivation (Lamont, 2011, Taylor, 2011) - learning because they want to - but also finds that many struggle with 'unrealistic expectations' and subsequent frustration with their progress. We need to find ways of showing that it is possible to make progress as an adult, but it's not always going to be easy. And there isn't a set 'path' - some people spend weeks trying to get a reasonably clear sound on a flute; others quickly find a nice tone, but take longer to find the right hand position for them to balance the instrument well. Some people easily settle into a pattern of practising every day (one of my adult students works from home and has quick 'flute breaks' throughout the day), whilst others find it harder to fit another activity into their lives. (This has got me wondering about how music learners - both adults and children - manage increasing practice time and what impact that has on their progress, but I think I'll leave that for a future post). So part of the challenge is finding time, and again, how much of a priority music is has an impact on that. Now, I'm not being disparaging about those people for whom music isn't such a priority, or about different reasons for making it a priority - whether that's because they want to 'take it seriously', or because they really enjoy it, or because it's their 'me time' or their ten minutes of fun - I'm not going to judge the validity of anyone's reasons for playing music. My own journey of learning the clarinet - which has given me great insights into what it's like to be a beginner again - has brought up the issue of priorities for me too. I had set myself a challenge to do 100 sessions of clarinet practice in the last twenty weeks. It started well, I had a lovely chart where I coloured in boxes each time I practised, and for the first month or so I was on track. But then I got more students (always lovely - but slightly mystified by a sudden rush of enquiries in October!), I had some concerts to play in, I had the small matter of putting together a PhD proposal. The clarinet practice declined. And then I got a cold, and playing the clarinet with a cold is disgusting. I can cope with playing the flute with a cold, a cough, blocked ears - it's not fun but it's manageable (and I kind of have to sometimes, it's my job!). I don't have to play the clarinet though, so I didn't. I salute you reed players who manage to carry on when your head is all stuffed up. So I got out of the habit a bit. I've got back into it over the last few weeks, but there have been Christmas gigs and other festivities going on too. So I haven't done 100 practices - I can't actually tell you how many I have done as I have to admit I abandoned the chart (it was so colourful too!). The thing is, when I picked it up again, I realised I do enjoy playing the clarinet. It's a different sound, feeling and range to the flute - ahh, lovely low notes - and it's a different challenge as I'm still learning the basics and building up stamina (which I lost rather a lot of and am having to gradually get back). I'm enjoying finding out about the similarities and the differences to flute playing. But it isn't top priority - musically, the flute will always be that for me. And when life gets busy, the things that aren't top priority will drop off for a while. I don't always do as much flute practice as I'd really like - there are only so many hours in the day after teaching, admin, research, writing etc - so I have to prioritise what needs to be done, such as pieces for upcoming concerts (and sometimes that's very concentrated practice on the 'tricky bits' in short bursts). So I understand where students are coming from if I get to their lesson and they tell me they've not done much practice this week - I really do. But I will suggest ways of making practice more effective, and remind them that really, five minutes a day IS better than nothing, and five minutes a day is also better than an hour once a week. Life does get in the way, sometimes completely, and that's - well, that's life! But if you enjoy playing your instrument (even if the idea of practising is sometimes... urgh), then it's absolutely fine, in fact it's very good for you, to prioritise those bits of time doing something you enjoy. I need to remind myself of that sometimes too! -----------
Lamont, A. (2011). The beat goes on: music education, identity and lifelong learning. Music Education Research, 13(4), 369-388. Roulston, K., Jutras, P., & Kim, S.J. (2015). Adult perspectives of learning musical instruments. International Journal of Music Education, 33(3), 325-335. Taylor, A. (2011). Older amateur keyboard players learning for self-fulfilment. Psychology of Music, 39(3), 345-363. Last week I wore a variety of hats - not in a metaphorical sense, but in a real one. There was the mortar board at my MA graduation - a lovely, if rather blustery day celebrating the end of the course and catching up with some of my fellow distance learning students/ survivors! Then there were the Santa hats. (Yes, hats, plural - I have acquired quite a few of them, mainly for flute choir purposes, including some glittery ones and ones with flashing pompoms! So I thought I'd wear a variety of styles...). Firstly the end of term for the baby and toddler music classes I teach at Rhythm Time, where I (and the babies) dressed up in our festive best and had lots of fun with bells! Then at the weekend Sheffield Flute Choir had an outing to play at Weston Park Museum. Twelve (of our total membership of around thirty) flute players all in Christmassy head gear serenaded museum visitors - and the queue for Santa's Grotto - in the fabulous surroundings of the About Art Gallery. Finally, I've been wearing a very cosy bobble hat, a Christmas present from a student last year - which has been much appreciated in the windy wintery weather as I go about between lessons! In the midst of all this hat-wearing, I've been helping students out with pieces for Christmas concerts and handing out exam certificates (well done all of you for so much hard work this term!). It's the end of a year (almost) and graduation felt a bit like the end of an era but I'm so looking forward to what next year has to bring. ------ ps to read a fabulous blog from a lady who wears many (metaphorical) hats, plays the flute and is doing a really interesting PhD project, and who I had the pleasure of meeting at the SEMPRE study day earlier this year, pop over to https://diljeetbhachu.wordpress.com/about When I'm not doing musical things, one of the ways I like to spend my time is gardening. Don't ask me about flowers - I have a few favourites but I don't know much about them - what I really enjoy is growing food. From a few herbs and chilli plants on a flat windowsill, via a back garden vegetable patch, I now have an allotment - a source of much joy, frustration, hard work and satisfaction... a bit like music, but with added mountains of potatoes! One of the topics of discussion at our recent workshops with Dr Jessica Quiñones was what your passions outside music are, and it turned out there were a lot of flute players who like to grow things. We're also quite a crafty bunch - knitting, sewing and baking - creative in all sorts of ways! But let's backtrack for a moment - how did a load of flute players end up sitting in a room talking about gardening? Sometime last year, I came across Jessica online - I can't remember whether it was through Twitter first, or through her blog. I was intrigued by her passion for Tango music, and immediately taken with her fresh approach to flute playing. I read a lot about the technical side of playing, about practising, and about performing, but here was a lady who was talking about shaking up the way you think about making music, about finding your own way of doing things, breaking out of the 'box' of traditional expectations around flute playing, and really sharing your music from the heart. As I began to teach more and more adults, I realised that many of them felt 'stuck' in a pattern of feeling that they 'should' play a certain way, worried about having to 'get it right', and it was getting in the way of them making music the way they really wanted to. Lots of them wanted to try playing folk or jazz or latin, or all sorts of different styles, but they didn't know how to make that step into it, having only played classical music. Now, a big part of my teaching ethos is to encourage people to experiment - not to tell them there is one 'correct' way of doing things, but to help them explore different ways that might work for them. But I also believe that an important part of teaching is knowing your own limitations, being open about the fact you don't know and can't do everything(!), and helping your students to access other ways of learning and people who can give them fresh and different approaches to music. So when I started thinking about running some flute events in Sheffield, I absolutely knew that one of the people I wanted to invite was Jessica. I emailed her asking if she'd be interested, and to my delight (because it's always a bit scary emailing someone you've not actually met to ask them to do something) she was really keen on the idea. More than keen, she absolutely 'got' what I wanted to achieve by putting on this event. One thing we were both clear on from the start was that we weren't putting on a 'traditional' masterclass. You know, one of those days where you stand up and play a piece in front of an 'expert' who then tells you how to improve it and gives you helpful suggestions on interpretation and technique. These have their place, but I feel they can often be intimidating, even downright scary. There can be a sense that you're trying to prove yourself and impress the expert and the other attendees, that it's a competition to see who can play best up there. Sometimes the advice is useful on the spot, but you don't really know what to do with it once you leave. Often it seems that people go along wanting a 'quick fix' to their problems - for someone to tell them "do this and your tone will forever be wonderful". Unfortunately, there are very few, if any, quick fixes in playing an instrument. The same goes for confidence, nobody can magically instil that in you in a day, or even a year of lessons - it's an ongoing process of gaining experience, feeling more secure with your playing, getting to know yourself, and learning what works for you. What I did want, and I knew Jessica could give us, was a day which opened people's eyes to exploring how and why they make music, helped them start to appreciate themselves as musicians (not in comparison to anyone else), and empowered them to feel like they could start to explore different genres and ways of playing, that they didn't need to wait for permission from anyone, or be an expert to give it a go. And that is exactly what Jessica shared with us - in two amazing, inspiring, generous days. The workshops were specially designed around a combination of my vision for the day and what the participants had said (in an anonymous survey) they wanted to gain from it. The two days were slightly different - with different groups of players bringing their own backgrounds, experiences and ways of playing, and Jessica adapting wonderfully to each one. There was less playing than you might expect from a typical flute day, but the point was to explore those things behind our playing, which can make as much difference as all the technical exercises in the world. We experimented with movement whilst playing, drawing on the other favourite activities we'd talked about - walking, dancing, playing the flute whilst pretending to dig the garden! - breaking away from the idea that you must always stand upright and still. We worked through custom-made workbooks, which delved into what we wanted to grow in our playing, what inspires us, what we really love and believe about music. As so many of the players had said they wanted to feel confident, Jessica had designed an activity which dug into finding out what we actually mean when we talk about confidence - what will confidence look and feel (and even taste and smell!) like to each of us? A lot of this work was challenging, emotional, difficult - but assured by our agreement to Jessica's rule that "what happens in Vegas, er, the flute workshop, stays in the workshop", people opened up, let themselves be vulnerable, realised things about themselves and their relationship to music. Before the workshop, Jessica had asked everyone to bring a few items - something which inspired their music-making, a piece of music they'd love to play, and something which represented their alter ego (this last one caused some head-scratching in the week running up to it, I can tell you!). After talking about our inspirational objects, we created an 'alter of inspiration' - a sort of 'sacred space' of those things that meant so much to us. We explored our pieces of music, using a set of prompts about how to approach a score - what can we find out from the printed music, and what can we not? What decisions of our own can we make about how to play it? What shapes, colours, ideas does it suggest to us? Jessica introduced us to some Brazilian Choro, and helped us use the same techniques to look at how to approach an unfamiliar genre (I think many of us may have then rushed home to listen to more Choro and buy some music - what a gorgeous sound!). And the alter egos?! We talked about what we'd brought with us - and indeed how hard it had been to choose something - and Jessica led us through an activity (inspired, if I remember rightly, by The Inner Game of Music) where we tried out 'putting on' those alter egos (and their associated clothing/ accessories - shoes featured quite prominently one day, and what amazing shoes they were!). This was quite remarkable - hearing the difference between people's playing when they played as their normal selves, trying to 'get it right', compared with when they pretended to be another version of themselves, was astounding. Even when the person themselves wasn't sure it had made a difference, those of us listening were amazed. I heard sounds coming out of some of my students and flute choir members that I'd never heard before, saw them lose themselves in the music in ways that actually made me shed a little tear. I was struck by the fact that everyone, no matter what their background and experience, felt that they weren't confident enough, that their playing wasn't 'good enough', that they weren't the sort of person who could do certain things, and that all of them to some extent had those perceptions challenged. So, what a weekend... it was exhausting and emotional, but as often is the case, that was surely the sign of an experience worth having. I'm so grateful to Jessica for making sense of my rambling emails and phone calls and creating a workshop that did everything I had hoped for and more - made people think, put the power in their hands and truly appreciated and valued every single person who was there. And as Jessica said at the start of each day, huge kudos to the players, who committed a whole day of their weekend - time, money, mental effort and emotions - to their flute playing, their musical journey and themselves. and joined in even when it was nervewracking. If you don't already follow Jessica's blog, pop over to http://jqflute.com/ now for a dose of beautiful, honest writing about flute playing. And if you loved the workshops, or if you missed them this time, keep an eye on www.sheffieldflute.co.uk/events and come and join us next time! I spend a lot of time sitting in traffic in Sheffield, travelling to lessons, rehearsals, friends' houses, the gym. I do walk quite a bit too, and the effects of that traffic are often quite evident in the air you breathe in the city centre. Sheffield is lucky though, to be home to the research and development of 'catalytic' material, and to be showing that off in creative ways. There's Simon Armitage's 'catalytic poem' In Praise of Air which hangs on a banner from one of the University of Sheffield's tall buildings, inspiring travellers with its wonderful words at the same time as absorbing some of that bad stuff from the air. And at Sheffield Hallam University, opposite the train station, this new bit of catalytic magic has appeared. Good news for those of us attempting to get round the city and breathe at the same time.
But as a woodwind player (and sometimes singer). thoughts of breathing automatically take me back to thoughts of music. I was really struck by the words on these walls - not only do they describe what the catalytic material is doing, but for me they sum up what's happening when we're learning and playing music. We're constantly trying, changing and absorbing new things. Whatever instrument you play, you're 'transforming the air' into music - what an amazing thought. ps want to learn some new things (and maybe see the catalytic poems too) - there's still a few places left on our workshops with the wonderful Dr. Jessica Quiñones in Sheffield this weekend, click here to book. It seems a bit rude starting a blog post with 'shut up'. Don't worry though, this isn't me telling you to do any such thing... unless you want to! In the midst of my Masters, I discovered 'Shut Up and Write Tuesdays' - an online writing group, aimed at academics, which has the simple premise that, for one hour on a Tuesday, you sit down and get on with a piece of writing that you're working on. There are different hours depending on where in the world you are (and if you're feeling particularly in need of writing time you can join in with more than one) and wonderful support from dedicated Twitter accounts which tell you when it's time to 'shut up' and generally cheer on the participants. I found this incredibly helpful when writing my dissertation, especially when it seemed overwhelming. I didn't initially think I could get much done in an hour, but these sessions really helped me to understand the value of short blocks of time. I've also used them to write blog posts! A comment on my previous post (thanks Katherine!) mentioned the same idea around training for sports and practising instruments - often people feel there is no point in going for a short run or squeezing in a short practice, but these small blocks can be surprisingly productive. Something generally is better than nothing, and often a short block can feel a lot less intimidating than thinking you must spend hours on a task. I've found it often works as a kick-start to more work - I think "I'll just do this hour of writing" and find it fires my enthusiasm so much I'm still going several hours later (with appropriate breaks of course, SUWT is a big supporter of cups of tea!). Or it helps me 'break the back' of something I've been putting off because it feels like a huge task, so I feel happier to come back to it later - whether that's a first play through of a new piece of music, or like today, where I got the basics of my first conference poster in place. Having never put together a poster before, I had a definite sense of not knowing where to start, but sitting down for that hour thinking "I'll just do something to get it started" has made it feel much more manageable (rather than it just sitting on my to-do list, glaring at me). Short blocks are also working well for my clarinet practising challenge - just ten minutes regularly (often during breaks from admin and writing - I keep my clarinet near my desk) are definitely making a difference. That might not exactly count as 'shutting up', especially if you heard some of my higher notes... It's very easy to put off writing, or running, or practising, or all sorts of other tasks, because you think they're going to be monstrous, and it's also very easy to come up with reasons (some might say 'excuses') not to do them. But sometimes, you do need to tell yourself to 'shut up' - actually getting on with it is amazingly effective at silencing all those thoughts about how terrible it's going to be! Talking of monsters - the posters I'm preparing are based on the section of my dissertation which examines discourses around adult learners and their teachers - featuring the lovely quote from one learner that their teacher is "not an ogre". I'm looking forward to presenting it at the Manchester Forum in Linguistics and the SEMPRE Study day on Music Psychology and Education later this year. Is there a task you could do with 'shutting up' and getting on with? Image from https://openclipart.org/detail/219746/keep-quiet-sign |
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