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The hands teach the head.

1/17/2019

I'm back to my life-long effort to learn how to play guitar with a flat pick, and I'm getting somewhere. The secret for me seems to be using the pick without first trying to figure out how.

I've always started with some clear idea of what the right way was – the right way to grip the pick, the right way to position my wrist, the right angle for the pick to cross the strings. (These “right” ideas were different each time I took up this challenge, by the way.) Regardless of which element I focused on, I always ended up with a sore wrist and no progress, and went back to using my fingers instead.

Then, about a year ago, I started playing regularly with a group of friends. There are usually five to ten of us. The songs we play are mostly swing-ish tunes from the 1930s or country songs from the 1950s. The repertoire works best with a pick, and it's fairly straightforward. If I play the right chords, keep the beat and don't drop the pick, I'm doing the job. This is fine until I switch from playing chords to playing a melody; then it's a train wreck. This has brought pick technique back to my practice schedule.

Again, I started with clear ideas about grip, pick direction, wrist position, pick angle, and the like. That approach still sounds good, but since it has never actually worked for me, I'm coming at it from the reverse angle this time.

Now my goal is not to move the pick a certain way. My goal is to get a clean, clear sound with relaxed, pain-free hands. I'll practice with that goal until I get there; then I will look and see what my hands have decided is the right way to do it.

This changes a lot. Before, I was relying mostly on my eyes for information. Now I pay more attention to how my hands feel and how the notes sound. My posture is better, because I'm not looking down at my picking hand. I can practice longer, because my focus on having relaxed hands keeps tension from building up in my wrists, arms and shoulders. Focusing on relaxation also keeps me thinking about playing smoothly, rather than playing fast. (“Fast is not the target. Smooth is the target. Fast is the bullet hole we make when we hit the target.” - from First, Learn to Practice)

I enjoy this process more as well, for all those reasons plus another. This way of working is creative; I'm creating a technique by trying things and keeping what works. The things I try are hard to describe in words, but I can tell how they feel and that's enough. It's a very satisfying way to work.

The old way didn't feel creative at all; it was an effort to conform to an idea, to fit into a box. Even if the box was right (and I'm not sure it was), trying to fit into it felt – well, like trying to fit into a box. There may be some satisfaction at the end, when you're in the box, but you can't prove it by me.

Finally, I think this approach is truer to experience. Practicing is about motion; we're searching for and mastering the ideal motions necessary to create music. It is always going to be the body that determines the most effective technique. The head can offer suggestions and encouragement, but it's the body that has to actually do the work.

So for now, at least, the hands are teaching the head.

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Do it anyway.

12/10/2018

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Lots of people have an inspiring slogan taped up where they work. I have one right by where I practice. It says: DO IT ANYWAY.

Here's how I use it:

“I don't want to practice now.” DO IT ANYWAY.
“I'm tired.” DO IT ANYWAY.
“It's my birthday.” DO IT ANYWAY.
“I'm just not feeling it.” DO IT ANYWAY.
“The sun is out.” DO IT ANYWAY.
“[Anything at all.]” DO IT ANYWAY.

Practicing depends on consistency. It works best if you do it every day. Why? Because what we practice is movement, and that means muscle work. Muscles learn through consistent repetition. This is not a moral judgement, or a musical judgement. It's just how muscles work. And not just repetition, but consistent repetition. Every day works best.

Practicing is also about building habits. There are habits to our playing – for example, always holding (or sitting at) the instrument a certain way. There are habits to our practicing, too, like always starting at the same time every day. Habits are built and reinforced through consistent repetition. Every day works best.

Finally: even when you enjoy practicing, it can be hard to get started each day. When you don't want to start something, any little excuse can derail you. So it's good to develop the habit of starting regardless of any excuses. The more often you say, “Do it anyway,” the more quickly it will become habitual. And the more habitual it becomes, the easier it will be.

So: DO IT ANYWAY.

PS: I understand that there are things in life more important than practicing, and that these things come up often. Practicing every day is a target that we can't always hit. But the value in a target is not in hitting it. The value of a target is in aiming at it. Yes, it's good to know whether you hit the target, but only because that information prepares you for the next time you aim at it.

DO IT ANYWAY.

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Ricky Jay

11/30/2018

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About four and a half minutes into Ricky Jay: Deceptive Practices, there's a quick shot of the great magician practicing card flourishes in front of three table-top mirrors. Over and over he fans the cards out, smoothly, gracefully and effortlessly. He's already one of the best in the world, and here he is, practicing.

At this point in his life he's been doing these same flourishes for fifty years or more; he's not trying to learn them. Maybe he's still trying to get better. Maybe he's practicing smoothness, grace and effortlessness. Or maybe he's just enjoying how it feels.

Ricky Jay did not share his secrets. I'm sure he was asked “How'd you do that trick?” thousands of times. Had he asked me to write an answer for him, it would have been this: “I spend my whole life developing and maintaining small, difficult, essential skills. Then I imagine a trick, and then I spend a few more years figuring out how to do it, and then I spend a few more years practicing how to do it. That's how.”

But “How'd you do that trick?” would not have been my question for him. I don't want to know how he did it. I want to know how he practiced it. And not the trick itself, but the basic underlying skills - the shuffles, cuts, passes and palms. It's the mastery of these things that makes an impossible trick become possible.

It's the practicing, not the learning, that interests me. Anyone can learn a false cut or a one-handed shuffle. All the information you need about them is available for free, knowable by anyone who wants to know. To do it exactly right, over and over, every time, to make it look smooth, graceful and effortless – that's the hard part. That takes lots of practicing. I'd love to know what Ricky Jay learned about motion, about patience, about concentration, about mental stillness, about how hands move most efficiently, about smoothness, grace and effortlessness, on the way to mastering those gorgeous card flourishes.

Most of us practice something until we can do it pretty well, most of the time. But what else do you learn if, like Ricky Jay, you practice something until you can do it, not just correctly, but beautifully, exquisitely, iconically, every single time? What happens when you decide that “good enough” means “better than anyone else in the world” or “so good people will believe it's magic”?

I see those cuts and shuffles and passes and palms as the equivalent of scales and arpeggios for the practicing musician. These are the things of which everything else are built. All the information you need about them is available for free, knowable by anyone who wants to know. John Coltrane started with the same information that everyone else had. What did he learn on the way to My Favorite Things?

What if I decided, as I practiced my scales, that “good enough” means “so good people will believe it's magic?”

Ricky Jay died on November 24, 2018. Several documentaries made about him are available, as is his one-man show, Ricky Jay and his 52 Assistants.

Update 12/2/18: In a New York Times article published on 11/28/18, Ricky Jay's friend David Mamet wrote this: "He spent five or six hours a day practicing. He did it for 60 years."

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Playing is the apple. Practicing is the tree.

8/29/2016

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I've been giving some thought to the question, "What do I believe about practicing?" Here's where I am:

1. Practicing is essential in two ways:

The word “essential” can mean “absolutely necessary.” It is absolutely necessary for people who play musical instruments to practice.
“Essential” also refers to the most basic, real, and invariable nature of something – what it is at the core when you boil everything else away. When you boil down the universal human activity of trying to get better at something, what you find at the core is practicing.

2. The essential process of practicing can be described like this:

Decide what you want to accomplish
Try it
Assess how you did
Make adjustments
Repeat

3. For most of us who cultivate the skill of playing an instrument, practicing is our primary experience of music. It requires more time, more energy, more conscious thought, more physical activity, more emotional commitment than anything else in our musical lives.

4. Practicing as important as the music we play.

5. Practicing is teachable, and it's too important not to teach.

6. Good practicing displays and develops good character.

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Exercising.

8/1/2016

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I was struggling with an exercise designed to help me develop consistent speed with a violin bow (and thinking about how useful a bow speedometer would be) when this occurred to me: An exercise is not a series of notes. An exercise is a series of movements. The idea sounded good, but I couldn't tell at first how useful it was.

An exercise, as opposed to a piece of music, is usually written as a way to help a student learn or practice something – how to control bow speed, for example. The musical content is secondary at best, and in my view that's fine. I don't want to be distracted by the music when I'm working on my bowing. The bowing, not the music, is the point of the exercise. The music will eventually emerge from the bowing, but it will never emerge without the bowing. And if I knew the bowing so well that I could play the music, I wouldn't need the exercise in the first place.

A good exercise is one that gets you to execute a specific set of movements over and over, with some musical window dressing to keep you from getting tired of working on it. My bowing exercise, for example, has a measure of slow movement, with four notes per bow stroke, then a measure of faster movement, with two notes per bow stroke. That bowing pattern repeats for the whole exercise, another 15 measures. There are variations in the notes played and the strings on which they are played; that's the window dressing. But the core of the exercise – fast bow, slow bow – is the first two measures. You could play those two measures alone over and over again and get 80% of the benefit of the exercise, without playing past measure 3.

Back to this: An exercise is not a series of notes. It is a series of movements. Is this useful? I think so. This is why.

It's good to know what you're doing: Playing a song is different from practicing a technique, as different as eating a pie and cooking a pie. If you want to do something right you have to know what you're doing. If it's an exercise, your project is not notes. It's movements. That's what you have to figure out and master.

Finding and then sticking to the point: My bowing exercise is 17 measures long. The core is in the first 2 measures. Usually when I tackle an exercise I first find the core (always a good idea and usually not hard) and work on it for a while before going on to the rest of the exercise. That way I know what I'm working on and don't get lost in the window dressing. In this case, the core involved only the right arm, so I ignored the left hand, notes and all, and worked with my bowing arm using just the open strings. Eventually I added back the notes in the first two measures; then I moved on to playing the rest of the exercise, But the core came first.

Savoring: Maybe it's just me, but I often find the physical aspects of playing enjoyable on their own. I like the contact of my fingers with the strings; I like the glide of the bow. I like the sound of the notes on their own, regardless of how they connect with other notes to form harmonies or melodies. These things can get lost if you don't look for them. An exercise as a series of motions provides an opportunity to look for them, savor them and, most importantly, use them to improve your playing.

Showing the proper respect: If I'm playing a song, as opposed to an exercise, I want to honor the composer's intent as well as I can. However much I work on it, the end I have in mind is to be able to play the song all the way through. Even if I break it into pieces while I work on it, my goal is to put the pieces back together in performance. On the other hand, If I'm playing an exercise, I honor the composer's intent by learning what he/she designed the exercise to teach me. If I master the technique without ever finishing the piece, that's OK. I'm showing the proper type of respect.

Much of what I have learned and written about practicing comes in the form of aphorisms like this one. They're easily understood and easily evaluated. If one of them rings a bell for you, you can put it to work, and if it doesn't, you can set it aside. Often they are no more than slightly different points of view - “Hey, stand next to me for a minute and see how things look from over here.” This one is like that. An exercise is not a series of notes. It is a series of movements.

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Simple ideas.

6/23/2016

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Every now and then I have flashes of insight about practicing, and they usually look like this:

“Practicing is really all about X.”

X is different every time, as you might guess:

“Practicing is really all about repetition.”

“Practicing is really all about consistency.” (Or “doing it whether you feel like it
or not” or “showing up every day.”)

“Practicing is really all about thinking in advance so you don't have to think
when you're performing.”

They're all true enough. And each is useful; each is a simple idea that you can build your practice routine around for a while, just to see what happens.

“Practicing is really all about goals.”

“Practicing is really all about standards.”

Reorganizing or reimagining your practice routine periodically is a good idea.There are plenty of things that can discourage you from practicing; one of them is doing it the same way over and over. There's already a lot of repetition involved in practicing. You really do have to play things over and over for your body to learn them. Varying your routine helps – scales today, arpeggios tomorrow – and varying your approach helps, too. These insights help with that. For example: thinking about goals keeps you focused on your progress, but thinking about standards keeps you focused on the immediate, in-the-moment details of what you're playing.

“Practicing is really all about what you can do, not what you know or
what you think.”

“Practicing is really about two questions: Can you do it? And now, can you
do it better?”

I have been asked to sum up First, Learn to Practice in a few words, and I have been asked, “What do you think is the most important thing about practicing?” And I really think you could use any of the Seven Big Ideas or the Seven Good Habits from the book as the answer to either of those questions.

“You affect everything by concentrating on one thing.”

“Be optimistic.”

Again, simple ideas around which you can design your practice routine. One might make more sense this week than another. One might make sense for you and not for me. They're all easy to try, and each has the potential to make a big difference.

The first Big Idea is, “If you're not enjoying your practicing, change it until you are.” The enemy and the opposite of enjoyment is not displeasure or discomfort; it's boredom. You really do need to change things from time to time, either in response to boredom or to head it off before it arrives. Simple ideas like these can provide a good place to start.

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Peak Performance

6/8/2016

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I'm reading Peak Performance: Zen and the Sporting Zone by Felicity Healthcote. Heathcote was the official psychologist to the Olympic Council of Ireland and worked extensively with the 1992 Irish Olympic team, especially with the boxers. Here are just a few of the ideas I've found so far in Peak Performance that seem to ring true to me for practicing.

“The ultimate aim of the art of karate lies not in the victory or defeat, but in the perfection of the character of its participants.” - Moving Zen, CW Nicol. Along the same lines, the pianist Seymour Bernstein said that one of the main reasons to practice is that it makes you a better person.

Talking about her study of Persian calligraphy: Only when the artist forgets that he or she is holding the brush – as finally 'it' paints – can perfection occur. This is an experience that is usually associated more with performing than with practicing. I have often read interviews with musicians who say something like, “It wasn't me playing the music any more; it was as though the music was playing me.” In practicing there is a lot of conscious mental effort required – thinking, analyzing, reading, deciding, etc. - and that makes it hard to get lost in this kind of non-rational flow of music. But something similar is available, in smaller doses, when we are wrapped up in motion. When you're repeating a movement over and over in order to develop muscle memory of it, and when it feels right, and when the sound you're producing sounds right, it's easy to get lost in there. When you can stop thinking about how to move and just move, you're getting to the same territory as the artist who forgets he or she is holding the brush.

In a section on the Japanese tea ceremony: The Tea Ceremony is purely about making, drinking and sharing tea – a relatively mundane action; yet each act is carried out as if it were the only thing of importance to be done. Each act embodies a combination of constant awareness and respectful concentration which is carried with one through life, not left behind in the inner sanctum of the tea room. Another angle on CW Nicol and Seymour Bernstein's observations. The things we do in practicing are often simple, mundane, and void of musical power in themselves. But when we accept their importance and do them with constant awareness and respectful concentration they change us, not only as musicians but as people of character. They teach us about discipline, about having standards, about getting better at something, about developing expertise, about knowing more than people who haven't done this work and about being able to do things other people can't do. These are things that are surely too good to leave behind in the practice room; too good not to carry with us through life.

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Short stuff

5/27/2016

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Here are some aphorisms from the earlier draft of First, Learn to Practice that didn't make the final cut. Like most aphorisms, they're not so much Cosmic Truths as signs that say, "For Cosmic Truth, dig here."

Lessons don't make you a musician. Practicing makes you a musician.

You can't accomplish the extraordinary by doing the ordinary.

Every day when you practice, expect it to be enjoyable.

We think about things when we practice so we won't have to think about them when we play.

If you have to think about what you're playing, you don't know it yet.

Forget about talent. Focus on hard work, and talent will show up.

Things improve when you pay attention to them.

One small thing, perfect, over and over, every day.

You are always practicing one of two things: doing it right, or doing it wrong. There's no third option.

Decide today how you're going to play for the rest of your life.

And here's one, from Russ Barenberg, that I would have borrowed if I had heard it when I was writing the book.

An amateur practices until he can play it right. A professional practices until he can't play it wrong.

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Head and hand.

5/24/2016

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I found an early draft of First, Learn to Practice today. Here's a section that still looks good to me, even though it didn't survive intact in the book.

Practicing is about getting the head out of the hand's way. We practice so that, when it comes time to play, we don't have to think, or analyze, or remember - we can just let our hands lead the way, and allow our minds to follow.

Imagine if you had to think about how to run: "First lean forward; then lift my right foot; move it forward; move my right arm backward; move my left arm forward; breathe; start lifting my left foot; set the right foot down..." Hard to get anywhere like that.

You can't run with your mind. You run with your body. Practicing is about learning to play with your body and not with your mind.

Practicing involves moving information into our hands through exhaustive repetition. It's not until our hands have that information under control that we can say we know it. That's because thinking about music, or describing music, or understanding what's happening in a piece of music, are all beside the point if you can't play the music. Doing is what matters most - not thinking, not knowing - doing.

Have you ever said, "I know this piece; now, I just have to practice it." If so, you were almost exactly backwards. You probably meant something like this: "I have a pretty good idea of how the song should go. I've played through it a few times, so my fingers have gone through the motions of playing all the notes. I can get through the easy parts at a tempo that's close to being right. The hard parts still give me trouble, although I've gotten better at them."

What you should have said was, "I'm going to practice this piece until I know it." And by "I know it," you would mean, "I can perform this piece without thinking about it."

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Goals

5/20/2016

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I have found this idea all over the place, attributed to Robert Heinlein, although I have not yet found out where he wrote it. It's usually used in a business context, but it rings true for practicing as well:

“In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.”

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The hands teach the head.

Do it anyway.

Ricky Jay

Playing is the apple. Practicing is the tree.

Exercising.

Simple ideas.

Peak Performance

Short stuff

Head and hand.

Goals

Tom Heany

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