One of the earliest musical memories I have is of wanting to play the trumpet. My mother rented me one through my school. I can still remember the feel and smell of the trumpet and its case: the plush lining and hard leather exterior, the polished brass and the smell of valve oil, the sensuously smooth movement of the valves as they were depressed and released. I remember sitting in school and mastering the first three notes, sitting on a stool with a black institutional music stand before me.
I also remember the three-block trudge to school, the weight of the trumpet case shifting first to one hand, then the other, as I tried to make it comfortable to my first-grade body. As much as I loved the instrument, the weight of the case determined for me that I would not be a trumpeter.
Years later, I have the usual regrets about not keeping up with the trumpet. Learning its rudiments in a brass techniques class in college brought back all the wonderful feelings I had about it as a child. I still love the instrument, but never gained the knack of playing it. In first grade, I turned to the piano, an old friend that had stood in the living room all my life, and that didn't need to be carried to school. I played the piano because it was there.
When I discovered the guitar, the piano was relegated to secondary status - my "other instrument." I was older, and my passion for the six strings added to my growing muscles made hauling the guitar case no great matter.
Today, I play a large variety of instruments. Besides guitar and piano, I sing, and play percussion, harp, recorder, and bass. I have studied the violin and made up instruments of my own. I love to find pieces of junk and make musical use of them.
Through playing such a variety of instruments, have learned things about the process of learning and relating to instruments in general that I might not have otherwise known, and that add immeasurably to my understanding of music.
Learning an instrument is like learning a foreign language - you are learning a means of communication, and once you learn the art of communication in one language, other languages come easier. It is relatively unimportant what language - what instrument - you learn first. The function of that first instrument is to excite you, to motivate you to learn music, to develop a sense of pitch and rhythm and to learn the rules governing the systems of music that interest you. Once you have gotten the harmonies in your ear and the rhythms in your body, learned that a. ninth is a unit of harmony even though a sixteenth is a unit of rhythm, picking up a second instrument is relatively easy. You have most of the tools you need, lacking only the specific techniques needed to produce sound from the instrument.
I believe strongly in the value of being able to play several different instruments, especially for the composer or arranger, who needs to be able to think from the point of view of all instruments. I would divide instruments into five categories: string, wind, percussion, keyboard, and voice. Everybody who wants to understand music should learn at least the rudiments of one out of each one these five categories.
Much as learning a foreign language gives me insights into the thoughts and feelings of other cultures and puts perspective on my own culture, so every additional instrument I have learned has broadened my perspective and understanding of music in general, and given me insights into my chosen instrument that I might not otherwise have come upon.
Once you have chosen one instrument to concentrate on, you are
faced with the problem of choosing one and buying it. Many people
receive an instrument as a gift, or rent one for awhile to be
sure it is what they want to learn, but sooner or later you make
that trip to the music store, or answer an ad, or come across
an instrument in an unexpected place and are faced with the option
of buying it. Many people buy and sell instruments over and over,
looking for the one that best suits them.
I fall in love with a new guitar every few weeks. Every one is different. Two guitars made side by side with the same wood, same patterns, and strung with the same strings, can have completely different personalities. They are as individual as human beings, and like people they have their own idiosyncrasies. I'll return to this idea later in the chapter.
The ultimate end of learning your instrument is for it to become an extension of your body, and therefore an extension of your mind and soul, so that you can give full expression to the creative energy that comes through you when you play. This is why correct instrument practice habits are so important.
The first stage in learning an instrument requires a frustrating degree and amount of concentration. Often, you are trying to remember to do several things at once. On the guitar, you are thinking about your posture, right and left hand techniques, and trying to count time, all at once. My students invariably think I'm joking when I say "now, do that and keep your thumb behind the neck." How, they wonder, can anyone possibly learn to think of all those things at the same time? The answer is simple: it's impossible. The function of practicing is to make those motions automatic, so that you don't have to think about them. When these things become part of your subconscious processes, your higher brain functions are free to tell the lizard-brain(1) what to play, without having to think about how to play it. In this way, your body, under direction from the lizard-brain, under direction from your consciousness, becomes a part of the instrument. So, the creative parts of your self, giving form to Eros, can play music through you.
Applying this knowledge to your practice regimen yields some interesting observations. The most important is that if you practice wrong, you will play wrong. One of my piano teachers, Gwendolyn Moore, illustrated this with a story about another student. The student, in his practice, consistently made a certain mistake. She had told him that his mistake was ingrained - having played it wrong so many times, it was not his lack of technical expertise that was keeping him from playing it right, but the fact that by repetition he had taught his muscles to expect and reproduce the mistake. In essence, he was making the mistake on purpose. When the student scoffed at the idea, the teacher challenged him to a test. He was to close his eyes and visualize himself at the keyboard. He was then to play the piece in his mind on the imaginary keyboard. When he did, he was chagrined to find that he made the same mistake that he habitually made while actually playing.
The body is like a computer, in that we can program it to perform certain tasks (like walking, to use a familiar example) automatically without our having to think through each steps Like a computer, it will put out only what is put in. If your practicing is sloppy, your playing will be sloppy as well. It is better to spend fifteen minutes a day practicing correctly than to spend an hour learning bad habits. This means practicing slowly, making sure that everything is right. (2) It means taking care to stop playing after you have played an exercise correctly. The last time through imprints itself strongly on your mind, and if it is a correct performance, you will repeat that performance the next time you play, and every time.
Practicing and playing are not the same thing. Practicing an instrument is Logos activity: you are consciously teaching yourself the technical aspects of the instrument so that you don't have to think about them later. Playing is Eros activity: having learned your instrument and the music by practice, you open yourself up to the creative possibilities, and give expression to your soul.
Practicing is dull and repetitive. It's no fun. However, it is
necessary to advance your ability. This is not to relegate your
playing to a far-off time when you have "perfected your craft."
At all levels of skill, you should be practicing and playing.
Without playing, practice becomes monotonous, and your connection
to creativity withers. Without technical practice, you limit yourself
in your ability to give form to what you hear and to what comes
through you as a result of that connection.
In chapter four, I pointed out that there is a limited amount of energy available to you for concentration. Every bit of energy you expend in playing your instrument draws from this same pool. To maximize the energy available to you, then, your practice should strive to make your playing as efficient as possible. Every move you make should accomplish something. These habits need to be part of your practice routine. When your playing is as efficient as possible, and automatic, you have a solid base from which to build.
Many beginning musicians don't understand why they are learning what they are learning. They reject the idea that there is a right and a wrong way to play. As a largely self-taught musician, I can sympathize with this view. However, if you examine your playing from the point of view of efficiency and conservation of energy, you will see that proper technique is nothing less than the most efficient way to play. As this knowledge grows, technique grows.
An example of this is the evolution of drumstick grip. The drum
set largely evolved out of the marching band, and drum technique
evolved from marching band snare technique. Since the snare drum
was hung at the side of the drummer's body, marching drum technique
called for an overhand grip in the right hand(the hand furthest
from the drum), and an underhand, side-stick grip in the left.
Drummers moving to the set would bring the learned grip with them.
Since drums in the set are arranged so as to be equidistant from
each hand, this mismatched grip requires the left arm to be held
at a very awkward angle in order to reach the right-hand drums.
Strangely, though, this traditional grip continued to be taught
for many years, even in cases where the student had no inclination
of need to learn marching band techniques. It has only been in
the last ten years that drummers have begin to learn that a matched
overhand grip is much more efficient and better suited to the
drum set, even though the mismatched grip had been traditional
among the best drummers for decades.(3)
There are so many possibilities inherent in an instrument that few people really begin to exploit all of them. To really know your instrument, it is important to know as much as possible about it. How does it work? What sounds can it make? What is its personality?
Your relationship to your instrument is like a love affair. What happens when you play depends intimately on how you and it interact. Many musicians treat their instruments as human friends. Many name their instruments. An old joke among guitarists has them leaving their girlfriends to sleep with their guitars. If rumor and legend are to be believed, quite a few relationships end when a musician, asked to choose between their instrument and their mate, choose the former(6). Andres Segovia referred to his guitar as a woman, claiming it was she, not he, who was tired at the end of a night's performance. B.B. King books a separate airplane seat for his guitar, Lucille, when he travels.
Your touch on your instrument is loving and respectful. You know what it needs and wants in order to produce the best tone. You work with it. You make love to it. You and your instrument are a partnership and when you are working well together, you become a single entity. If only people could learn to treat their lovers as well as many musicians treat their instruments
All the instruments I have ever played have had different personalities. Some are difficult and require coaxing to produce music. Some are easygoing; anything I play on them sounds and feels good. Some are happy. Some are somber. Some whisper to me "don't leave," and seduce me into staying for hours, exploring and caressing. Some draw me into intellectual discussions. Some lull me to sleep, while some fill me with energy and leave me refreshed.
I have always felt that it is important to listen to the instrument and find out what it wants to play. While this may sound sentimental, it has its roots in more than mere anthropomorphizing. The instrument that becomes a person is for us an object of projection, the same phenomenon we saw happening to the performer in the last chapter. The piece of wood or metal that we hold and manipulate to produce meaningful sounds becomes for us an incarnation of a part of our own psyche. I would say that for me my instrument represents the anima, the delicate and sometimes devastating female figure that in a man's dreams personifies his soul. This inner woman is the part of me that carries the connection to Eros, the lover with whom I create my child - my music.
Like any other sort of projection, this personification or incarnation of an inner goddess in the instrument can take both positive and negative forms. The instrument can caress or it can bite. I can feel like we are making love, or as if we are having a bitter argument. Sometimes I want to throw it to the floor and stomp on it. It's not working with me, and it frustrates me.
At times like these, it is important to realize that, for us, the instrument is a person, and that person is in fact a part of ourselves. The person I want to stomp on is myself. In this light it becomes obvious that fighting against the negativity gets me nowhere. Just as I cannot force another person to do my will, I cannot force another part of myself to submit to my ego. Rather, I need to open up a two-way dialogue between myself and the instrument, to find out what it wants.
To open up to the suggestions of the inner voice, as personified
by the instrument, is to open up to your connection to everything
around you, for the further you dive into the depths of your unconscious,
the fewer the barriers are between yourself and the world. The
opinions of your instrument become a way to release creative blockage,
to create a dialog between opposites, creating the tension and
juxtaposition that makes the music meaningful for both you and
your listeners.
Above and beyond the personification of the instrument, logic tells us that what you play on is a fabricated device; made, not begotten. No matter how much you let the instrument speak, you can only play what you know, what your fingers have been taught to do. One of the most frustrating things that can happen to you as a musician is for you to hear a musical line and want to play it, only to find that it's beyond your technical capability. Perfecting your knowledge of the instrument is the only way to ensure that everything that comes to you is fully expressed.
The first part of this process of knowledge comes through technical practice and playing experience. The second and more subtle part comes through experimentation with the sounds your instrument can make. There are many possibilities that most people leave unexploited. To learn the notes of a piece of music is only the first part of learning the piece. Any instrument can play the notes. But your instrument has sounds and colors that are unique, that used properly and creatively can add to the music in ways that set it apart from music played on any other instrument.
Music always has to grow. Part of that is an increased awareness and expansion of where lie the boundaries of the possible. Each musician has a chance to help that increase by expanding his own capabilities and techniques, finding new ways to use them. Thus, John Cage has brought us the prepared piano, Jimi Hendrix the creative use of feedback on the electric guitar, and Lenny Pickett the beauty and usefulness of the high harmonic range of the saxophone.
In so many ways, you yourself are the instrument. Your limits
as a musician are set only by your capabilities and knowledge
of music, and your ability to apply them to the music and the
instruments that you play. The more you grow as a musician, the
more you will find that your instrument grows in value. While
you will find that it is ultimately the player, not the instrument
that creates the sound, you will also find that as a companion,
a partner in dialogue, your instrument grows in importance, becoming
an extension of yourself, a means for self-expression, and a friend
that comforts and provides avenues for growth in many ways.