Monday Morning Check In: What's in Your Season?

Written by Paula E. Bird ©2012
Happy New Year, everyone! This is one of my favorite seasons in a year. This is the season when I plan my next twelve months, and the clean slate that lies before me is fraught with possibilities. For many people, the act of making (and breaking) New Year's resolutions has become so commonplace that the thought of goal setting seems almost trite. This is not so for me.

I love to set goals. I love to make plans that break down my goals into manageable steps. I love to measure my progress from day one until the final goal achievement. I love the whole idea of goal setting. As of this moment, I have worked out my top ten goals and annual plan with the Best Year Yet program, as I enjoy doing each year. This year I will be working with the program online. Already I have noticed a change in my perspective about my current life situation, and I know it is due to the act of setting goals and gaining the sense of control over my life that the goal-setting process provides.

But enough about me. How about you? Where do you stand on the issue of goal setting and resolutions for the coming year?

One of my university colleagues has an interesting twist to his goal setting, and I thought you would enjoy considering his perspective. My colleague, Dr. Ian Davidson, is one of the top music professionals in his instrument area (oboe and English Horn), and we work together several times each year in recital and symphonic performances. He has a pie chart hanging on the wall of his studio with the caption: "What's in Your Season?" The pie chart is divided into three equal parts. The three parts are labeled: Lead, Share, Follow. My friend's philosophy is that when planning out the year, the season should include equal elements of all three areas.

Lead refers to those activities where you are the leader. You might be giving a solo performance or conducting a group. The purpose of this portion of the pie chart is that you are in charge of others. You are responsible for making decisions about the direction to take and how the project should run. You are the person in charge.

Share refers to those activities where you share the responsibility of leadership. You might be performing in chamber music performances. The purpose of this portion of the pie chart is that you will join others in making the project come to life. You will focus on collaboration. All members are in charge of decision-making.

Follow refers to those activities where someone else assumes the leadership role, and you are cast in the follower role. You might be performing as a member of an organization, such as a symphony or community orchestra. You are a member of a team, but someone else is at the helm of ship, and your responsibility is to follow direction.

Do you see the value of thinking of thinking about your life in each of these three areas? Each area requires a different set of skills.

Leading requires you to step up and show others how something is to be done. Leading teaches you to learn the power of responsibility, as you will need to consider the people you will lead and their needs in order to build a successful outcome. Leading provides you with an opportunity to build your self confidence, as once you have successfully completed your leadership role, you will have another memory of having achieved something. This memory will serve as a springboard for achieving other worthy projects in the future, and the memory will provide you with a wellspring of courage to do things that might seem scary.

Sharing requires you to work and play well with others. Sharing teaches you about the ebb and flow of collaboration, about how a sailboat navigates with the currents and the wind. Sharing reminds us to be considerate of others if we are to work together toward a common goal in a pleasant and satisfying way. Sharing will provide you with an opportunity to learn much about yourself, as sharing will reveal those areas of your character and personality that are weak and need work. You cannot be successful in a collaboration if you harbor selfish motives, exhibit arrogant attitudes, or rely on dominant behavior to get your own way. Sharing requires you to put your focus on the common good of the group. Sharing will teach you how to be a better person if you approach this part of the pie chart with a teachable mind.

Following requires you to learn submission. Following teaches us how to let others lead. Following will also teach us much about ourselves and our personalities. In the process of learning how to follow someone else, we will learn the art of showing others respect, courtesy, and graciousness. We learn to put our own personal desires to the side momentarily to allow someone else to direct us.

Some of us will find difficult prospects in each of the three areas. The beauty to using my friend's system is that it will help us to find balance. We need to learn how to work well within each of these three areas. We need to learn how to use the skills that each of these three areas will teach us.

Some of us will find leading to be a scary proposition. Eleanor Roosevelt said: "Do one thing every day that scares you." Leading will teach you how to face your fears. Fear will only enlarge if we try to ignore it. Facing fear squarely will shrink it. We need to step up and assume leadership positions in order to learn how to rely on ourselves. We need to learn how to lead others in order to learn how to lead ourselves.

Some of us will find sharing to be difficult because we are impatient about the speed that collaboration may require. The author Brian Adams said: "Learn the art of patience. Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal. Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success." Sharing will teach us how to be patient with others as well as ourselves.

Some of us will find following to be difficult because we naturally lead rather than follow. We are comfortable with our own opinions and decisions. We find it easier to be in charge and to charge ahead on our own course. The author William Paul Young wrote: “Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect." Following will help us to learn how to give respect to others as well as build relationships for ourselves.

As you contemplate the new year, pause momentarily to consider what is in your season. Do you have a good blend of all three areas -- leading, sharing, and following?

Happy New Year! See you in 2013!

Quick Practicing Tip: Long Bow Day!

I hereby declare today to be "Long Bow Day!" If you are not a string player, do not despair! You can still participate in  Long Bow Day! You may want to change the name to suit your instrument, but the concepts will basically be the same whether you play the violin, the piano, or the trumpet.

A Long Bow Day is a day when we play songs that require long bows more than any other bows. You know which songs I refer to: Twinkle Theme, Lightly Row, Aunt Rhody, O Come Little Children, Long Long Ago, etc. These are songs that require legato bowing. If you are a pianist, these are songs that ask for legato phrasing, and there are many songs like this in Suzuki Piano Volume One. In fact, a good deal of the Suzuki Piano Volume One is teaching the student how to play legato with one hand while the other hand learns to play staccato or use the wrist drop/lift motion. For us string players, that means that the pianists are learning how to use both right and left hands independently, as we do.

Have you figured out what ten places you need to practice your legato or long bows? There are three possible ways to approach a Long Bow Day:

• Tone and Sound Quality
• Good Form
• Musicality

For string players, a good tone and sound quality stem from a good contact point between the bow and the violin string and from the absence of tension in the body. Is the bow articulating the individual notes well? Is the tone scratchy or just right? Is the bow on the highway or drifting near the sidewalk (fingerboard) or bridge? Are there any points of tension in the skeletal joints? Is the student releasing tension from "inside" muscles and directing attention to "outside" muscles?* Most of all, is the bow straight (parallel to the bridge)? Get a mirror and check this, or have your practice partner help you to know when your bow is on the straight highway.

• My students and I use the numbers game to learn when the bow is straight. If the bow is straight and parallel to the bridge, that is the number 5. If the bow goes crooked inward toward the player, that is a series of numbers going down, such as 4 or 3. If the bow goes crooked outward away from the player, then the numbers go up to 6 or 7.
• As the student plays, the practice partner calls out the number, usually 4-6. This helps to guide the student to know when the bow is straight or crooked and in which direction to move the bow to straighten it out.
• A student can also learn how to look in a mirror and gauge whether the bow is moving in the straight groove across the string. Parents, please note that when the bow is "straight" and parallel to the bridge, that it actually looks crooked from the player's perspective. The player must learn how to see the bow when it is straight, and this is not easy.

Tone production for a string player may include how much bow the student uses. As the student advances in technical skills and ability, the repertoire requires that the student use more and more bow without sacrificing the tone quality. As pianists learn faster note passages and use the right and left hands more independently, the tone quality should remain consistent. In some cases, the student will learn how to balance the tone between the hands so that both right and left hand parts sound equal. In other songs, the student will learn how to voice the left hand or the right hand part in a way that will bring more prominence to that part.

For pianists, a good tone and sound quality is how the student executes the note with the finger on the keyboard. Beginning students do not yet have much muscle development in their fingers, hands, or arms, and in many cases, the families do not own pianos but are using electronic keyboards in the home, so that the students do not develop the appropriate musculature to execute a good tone on a real piano keyboard. In the beginning, I use a lot of imitation with students to help them learn how much weight to drop into the piano keys and the notes of the music.

Good form is always crucial to good tone, no matter what instrument a student plays. Always check posture and the form of execution. Good form also includes whether the student is playing the instrument correctly. If a violin student is not bowing parallel to the bridge or does not place the bow to make good contact with the violin string, then we need to focus on good form, because good form goes hand in hand with producing a good tone and sound quality. When I evaluate a student's form and posture, I start from the bottom and work my way to the top. For violinists, we start with balanced feet. I should not be able to push the student over sideways or backwards. (To learn more about how I set up my violin students' posture, click here).



Balance is always crucial when playing an instrument. Violinists shift weight from side to side and have to hold an instrument before them (off to the side), and this instrument carries weight too. Pianists need to be able to shift from side to side to reach keys at the ends of the keyboard; if a student is not balanced, then the student will topple over or play with little strength and tone in the sound.

Musicality refers to the more advanced musical concepts of phrasing, dynamic expression, and how the human body's mechanics create these things. If a student has the physical capability of executing a musical phrase, I introduce how a good musician would end a phrase. Just as humans let their voices trail off at the end of a sentence (or a voice runs out of steam at the end of a long note), we imitate that sound with the instrument. String players learn to let the phrase tail off in a whisper and which bow stroke accomplishes that best. Pianists learn how to lighten up the finger touch on the keyboard in order to create the phrase.

Now, being good teachers and practice partners that we are, we will follow the one-point lesson. We have our list of ten songs or ten places that require legato playing. Now we will decide which one of the three approaches we will use, and it may be that we use different approaches for different things on our list of ten. For example, a newer song or passage might benefit from attention paid to good form. A more familiar piece might require more attention to phrasing and musicality. And a song that falls somewhere in between might fare best with attention paid to tone production and sound quality. As long as we focus on one thing at a time, we can reap the most benefit from our practice efforts. Remember that younger students will need to focus on smaller segments and may need simpler tasks or smaller steps (baby steps) to work on. You should know your child, so be gracious about forming a practice plan that will encourage and nurture your student's learning.

Happy Practicing!

*"Inside" muscles are those muscles that create tension. Think of a body builder's pose down in a weight lifting competition. The body builder leans forward and makes his or her arms tighten the muscles on the inside of the arms. This squeezing causes all the arm muscles, shoulder muscles, chest muscles, and abdomen muscles to appear. "Outside" muscles are the other sides of the muscles. These muscles cause the tension to dissipate. If a body builder were to turn on the "outside" muscles, the arms would lift out to the sides, and the other muscles would not be showing. If I find tension, I help guide the student to turn on outside muscles instead of inside muscles. This one teaching area is probably the issue where I address most of my teaching time and focus because it affects tone and sound quality, good form, and musicality.