Is it happening?....

Is it true? Has Summer actually ended? Are we actually starting the Fall Semester at Peabody? It would appear that it's actually happening... While details are hazy, I do distinctly recall hearing four hours of ensemble auditions the other day... and my teaching calendar does seem to have actual lessons scheduled on it. Alright, I'm a believer - let's do this thing!


This year is going to be an action-packed one at Peabody Bassland as per usual. 22 bass students will be haunting our little square block in Baltimore this Fall, attending classes and generally being amazing. As things are currently structured, there will be either a recital, solo repertoire class, or teaching day with Hal Robinson once every two weeks. And that's just for starters - once students begin scheduling degree recitals, playing in chamber groups, and thinking up other crazy projects, the schedule will grow even denser. And that's not counting all the weekly lessons, orchestra classes, and orchestra rehearsals.

As with last year, our four days of classes with Philadelphia Orchestra Principal Bass Hal Robinson will no doubt end up as highlights this year. While the class details are still being finalized, we're pretty excited about the topics and concepts that he will be addressing with all of us. And I do mean all of us, faculty and student alike - I have absorbed some great new ideas myself from hearing what Hal is exploring in his own playing. Check our Facebook page for all the details regarding Hal's classes - many portions are open to the public and well worth checking out.But Hal's not the only excitement we've got going on. As mentioned before, Peabody bass students are a busy bunch, full of plots and schemes. I'm quite certain they'll be cooking up some good stuff! As far as scheduled good stuff, be sure to make a note of our four departmental bass recitals, on October 17th, December 5, March 6, and April 17th. We'll keep you posted here and on Facebook as other events get scheduled.

The Toughest Question, Part 3

It’s been awhile since I’ve had a chance to post! My apologies....

In the first part of this series, we look

ed at things that might keep us from asking ourselves the following very challenging question:

Do I have what it takes to be a professional bass player?

In the second part, we moved on to considering how and from whom we might collect information that could help us answer this question.

So.... it’s decision time! How do we get a grip on this question and start coming up with an answer?

Let’s start with the logic part. Here are some parts of this question that actually have an empirical element - that is, they actually relate to things that we can verify in the real world.

Talent: OK, this is of course partly subjective - there are many parts of musical talent out there and no two people agree exactly on what they are! That said, some aspects of musical talent are not so subjective. If you are consistently told that you play well in tune and have a good ear, that is a big plus for your musical future. If you make relatively few mistakes when sightreading (a skill that researchers increasingly think isn’t all that teachable), that’s another plus in your column. If you can consistently count and play in rhythm, another plus! Please don’t think we’re talking about perfection in any of these areas - no person on Earth is perfect at any of these skills. But people who are still struggling with the basics in these areas, especially by the time they are applying to music school, need to take a hard look at why that is and what that may mean for their future.

Money: This is the toughest part of this decision for me to write about, because it’s inherently unfair (since talent and money aren’t always distributed in equal amounts to everyone!). But it would be unfair to ignore it or pretend that it wasn’t a real factor. Being a musician is expensive. Taking private lessons is expensive. Getting a reasonably good bass or bow is expensive. Going to college is expensive, even if you manage to get a big scholarship. Going to a great summer music festival instead of working at CVS over the Summer is expensive. Flying around the country to auditions with your bass is expensive! While none of these things on their own have to be an obstacle to your musical career, it’s smart to consider what your financial options are, even before you go to music school. Especially in the performance area, you should not assume that you will be making much money in the years immediately following your graduation from school. I have seen bass students go to college with no realistic plans in place for how they will pay for their future instruments or for further training, with frustrating and often embittering results later when they can’t make ends meet. This doesn’t mean that you have to be rich to be a musician (although it doesn’t hurt), but it does mean that you shouldn’t be a Pollyanna about how you will manage your money.

Academic Skills: “Wait!”, you say. “Isn’t the whole point of going to music school that I won’t have to take all those academic classes?” Well, yes, to a point. But the reality is that you do indeed have to take academic classes to get a bachelors’ degree, even at the most elite conservatory. And even if you don’t much care for those classes, you still have to pass them - and you certainly don’t want them causing you unnecessary stress or distracting you from your performance work. And of course, you may be attending a university for your musical studies, where your academic load will be more challenging. Plus, many of the skills that help you do well in academics - organization, quickly ingesting new data - are a huge help in some aspects of music. Besides, no matter how many musicians say otherwise, I feel strongly that having good knowledge of things like theory and music history are actually pretty helpful in building and hanging on to a good performance career. Not to mention being able to do things like write a good grant proposal for your chamber group....

Now, on to the less logical part. These two questions depend on your view of yourself and your personality, as well as how other people see you:

Organization/Problem-Solving: Musicians have to be problem-solvers, always trying to find answers to further improve their skills as a player. Unlike some academic classes, where often merely memorizing and recycling information given to you by a teacher is enough to do fairly well, a musician has to be able to figure out how to use their own body and brain to accomplish very tricky and complex tasks. If you are a more passive learner, this can be make growth and success as a musician more difficult.

Musicality: Are you a “musical person?” This question is meant to cover the non-empirical side of music-making - that quality that shines through in a good performer even if their chops aren’t in the best of shape. Do people like to hear you play? Do people seem to have a (hopefully positive!) emotional reaction to your playing? We need to rely on others’ views of our playing in this area to get a sense of our own innate musicality, but also to remember that this is a very hard thing to get a solid answer on.

And finally, we tackle the big one:

Passion and Drive: It’s certainly one of the most-repeated cliches in the business, but it’s true: perseverance is the #1 trait that I see in successful music students who move on to be happy in their careers. This perseverance can be seen in various areas:

- a passion to have a certain musical career (“I always wanted to play viola in a string quartet more than anything”);

- a passion to perform at the highest professional level (“I’m gonna solo with the New York Phil someday!”)

- a passion to finish what you start (“I’m gonna figure out this bowstroke if it kills me!”)

- a passion to play a certain type of music (“without bebop in my life every day I can’t function.”)

- a passion to play your instrument as much as you can (If I don’t practice 4 hours a day I get grumpy!”)

- a passion that expresses itself competitively (“I wanna be the best player in my school.”)

- a passion for always exploring and improving your playing (“I found four new fingerings for my concerto today.”)

Not everyone will have all of these passions - if you did I think you’d be a pretty unpleasant person to be around. However, most successful musicians have a very deep need on some level that drives them on to constantly work towards their musical goals, especially when that means making personal sacrifices in other areas of their lives. You’ve gotta want it bad!

So: look at all these areas. Do you feel like you’ve got ‘em all covered? If you see some areas where there are struggles, do you feel like you can make a plan to improve in or overcome whatever issues or problems you face? Going into music as a profession is a bold and somewhat foolhardy act, even under the best of circumstances, and no one goes into it with any sort of guarantees of success and an easy cruise to full employment and musical satisfaction. But taking some time to think through your own skills, strengths, and weaknesses can help you figure out if making that leap is the right choice for you.

The Toughest Question, Part 2

In Part 1, we looked at fears that keep us from asking ourselves the toughest question that we all must face as musicians looking to have a professional career:

Do I have what it takes?

In this part, we’ll look at the next step in the process:

After we ask ourselves, who else should we ask this question?

I think that the best way to start looking at this is to flip it over and look at it from the other side. What do we need to have in order to succeed as a professional musician? Here are few I think are important. Some are more essential than others, and some aren’t strictly necessary, but they all make success in music more likely:

- Musical talent, including but not limited to a good ear, a sense of good sound, and rhythmic skill. We all can work to improve in these areas, but if you have major deficits in any of them it can be very tough to catch up to the necessary levels for career success.

- An ability to effectively organize one’s own work and practicing.

- A strong drive to succeed - this can mean having a competitive nature, but it primarily means an intense need to complete any task that one starts, and a desire to always do one’s very best.

- A supportive family and friends.

- Adequate financial resources to help pay for school and to afford a good instrument and necessary supplies.

- Good academic skills so that your school work doesn’t take up too much time or effort.

I’m sure that you can think of more things to add to this list, but these are a good group to start with. Ask yourself: Who from among my friends, teachers, and family knows me well enough to tell me whether I have some of these things? The answer may be different for each item on the list. Your music teacher is probably a good source for an assessment of your musical talent, but may not know much about your financial situation or your academic talents. Your parents may be highly supportive and you may have lots of financial resources, but they may not be well qualified to tell you whether you have good intonation.

As you think of people whom you feel could offer you some insight on these questions, go ask them. When you do, try to be specific and explain that you’re trying to figure out whether to choose a music career - this way they can make sure their answers reflect on your goals and don’t end up getting off topic. I encourage many students to ask for answers in a written form - usually email. Face-to-face or telephone conversations by their nature can sometimes make it difficult for people to express thoughts that they might be uncomfortable with, and it can also be harder to organize your thoughts when you’re in a conversation with someone. You want to person you’re asking to have a chance to reflect and pick the right words to express their feelings and opinions. It also can help to have a written text to refer to later. When we don’t have a written record, we can forget or even unconsciously reinterpret what someone said to us.

No one person knows everything about you or completely understands you, and you shouldn’t base your decisions about your career on any one person’s opinion. It’s even possible that someone may give you an incomplete, biased, or even dishonest answer to your questions, for reasons good and bad. But it’s just as true that none of us can ever have a totally accurate picture of ourselves! We need the opinions of others to help us make important decisions, and by collecting the views of others we can start to get a sense of whether our own self-image is accurate or whether we need to reconsider some of our beliefs about ourselves.

In the next section, we’ll take a look at how to start to use all this information and self-reflection to make the best decision we can about our futures in music.

Must-read post on DBB.org

I had actually just finished the next segment of the "Toughest Question" series when I read this incredible post by Jason Heath. This post is a must-read for aspiring musicians at almost any place in their careers - deciding whether to be a musician, in the midst of their studies, or even an old wizened professional like me! Check it out.... I'll post my new stuff in a couple of days.

The Toughest Question, Part 1

I’ve addressed a variety of topics here on PBDB, and almost all of them are based on conversations with bass students that I have had over the years. People ask me for advice on music school choices, technique questions, instrument purchases, teacher options, and almost any other question that could possibly seem relevant to a young bassist who is looking for ways to grow and improve as a musician. I certainly don’t always have the best or even a useful answer to their questions, but I try my best to be as helpful as I can based on my own experiences and knowledge.

However, there is one question that students very seldom ask me. This question is incredibly important, so much so that sometimes I choose to ask it of the students themselves. It’s no surprise that this question is often avoided by even the most inquisitive students. It’s a question that we all ask ourselves, but seldom do we feel sufficiently comfortable with anyone else to ask them:

Do I have what it takes to be a professional bass player?

I want to look at three aspects of this question:

- what keeps us from asking it in the first place,

- when and to whom we should and shouldn’t ask it,

- and how we can evaluate others’ responses to find the best and most complete answer.

The short answer to what keeps most of us from really asking this question is a four-letter word that starts with F - fear. If you’re even asking this question of yourself, you probably already want to be a professional musician on some level. Our society generally doesn’t steer lots of people into classical music or jazz careers. Even if you have a supportive family or teacher who are encouraging you in music, there are still lots of other societal pressures pushing almost all of us in the other direction! Asking ourselves this question means that we are acknowledging that there might be an answer other than “yes,” and no one likes to hear the word “no” when they truly want something. This is actually even more true when our own teachers and parents are telling us that we do have what it takes for a musical career. These people are usually people that we love and respect, and their opinions mean a lot to us. Asking ourselves these questions might also mean confronting the possibility that these revered authority figures might be wrong, or at least misinformed, about something important to us, and that can be a scary realization in and of itself.

This question is also hard to ask because it is fundamentally a question that asks people to tell us what they really think of us, and regardless of who we are and what our passions and interests are, that is a tough thing to do! It requires some trust and even intimacy with the person we are asking. If we feel that we are organized and mature people, and someone tells us that they think we aren’t, that can affect or even destroy our relationship with that person. For most of us, our feelings about music are deeper than our feelings about our skills at arithmetic or essay writing. Music is (among other things) about expressing ourselves and communicating our deepest feelings to others. Our self-image and our self-esteem can be intertwined with our feelings about our musical abilities, and finding out that others’ image of us isn’t the same as our own self-image can be a jarring and sometimes painful experience.

FInally, another reason that we hesitate to ask this question is that we are asking ourselves and others to predict the future with this question, and we all know that predicting the future is a highly inexact science at best. My best friend in college and I used to periodically play at predicting where each of us would be in twenty years’ time or so. We tended to get pretty ridiculous with our fortunetelling, often seeking to transplant one or the other into some bizarre, exotic location or weird relationship. I speak for both of us when I say that our lives and musical careers have both turned out in ways totally different than either our “realistic” predictions or our bizarre fantasies! No one who heard me play bass when I was 17 years old could ever have been accurate in judging the course of my musical life. However, many of the predictions that my private teacher and other musical authorities in my life at the time offered have largely come true. The collective wisdom of the people who truly knew me as a person and a musician was largely trustworthy, and I’m glad I listened to it and took it.

So, should we ask this question? Yes! If we want to have the courage to pursue a musical career, we need to have the courage to overcome all the obstacles that I’ve listed

above and collect the information that will help us make a good decision. Success in music requires us to “grow up” faster than a lot of our non-musician friends. High schools and colleges are designed to help and support students who are unsure of what they want to do with their lives. In fact, they are organized around the idea that you will use high school and college to begin to figure out what you want to do with your life. To decide to go into music as a career usually means that we need to make these sorts of decisions - and have these sorts of tough conversations - years before our society makes most young adults decide on a career path. It takes maturity and a realization that you’re on a slightly different path than everyone else to go into music. Looking at your suitability for this career in an honest way is essential.

In the next chapter, we’ll look at the next aspect of this topic: Whom we should ask this question, and what specific questions we need to ask to make sure we’re collecting good information that can help us sort out our choices.

Getting the Most out of Orchestra, or: You're Already Sitting There, Right?

Any music student of even a moderate degree of seriousness ends up spending some time in orchestra rehearsals. In fact, usually they end up spending a LOT of time in orchestra rehearsals. There’s lots of very good reasons for this. Many bass players are drawn to orchestra for the artistic pleasure of playing the great orchestral repertoire. Others are “made” to play in orchestra for a variety of reasons: parents or teachers make them, they have orchestra as an assigned course in school, or perhaps they’re even sent off to a music camp or festival where they need to play in orchestra.

Playing in orchestra is at the heart of what bass playing is about for a lot of us, and the orchestral repertoire offers us a chance to play some of the greatest music ever written. I got into music as a career because I wanted to play in orchestras, and that is still true of most of my students. I’m happy to say that I still love playing orchestral music after quite a few years of doing so, and I hope to still be enjoying it 30 years from now!

However, loving orchestral playing and orchestral music is not the same thing as loving every single orchestra rehearsal and concert that I’ve ever been involved in. Despite one’s best efforts, sometimes playing in orchestra can be a total drag. Conductors can be clueless or boring. Repertoire can be uninteresting or just something you’ve played a few times too many recently. Your fellow musicians can be grumpy, clueless or just plain bad at their jobs, or you can simply be distracted by illness, tiredness or life events.

I’ve gotten pretty good over the years at finding ways to make my time playing in orchestras as personally productive as possible. I realized fairly early on that it was asking too much to expect every rehearsal to be an amazing experience. Once I figured that out, I decided to try to find some way to get something worthwhile out of orchestra even if that thing wasn’t always artistic bliss. While I haven’t always been successful, I’ve been pretty good at finding useful things to do while the conductor is droning on at the first violins or the brass are finding new ways to play very very very loud.

During orchestra we can focus on a few areas beyond just playing our part and following the conductor. Four of my favorites are: our own playing, the playing of the orchestra musicians, the conductor, or the music itself.

Our playing: A famous description of armed combat says that it consists of long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of terror. Orchestral bass playing can often match this description pretty well! While there are certain difficult passages that require our full concentration, there are often long stretches of playing that are not technically challenging for most of us. These stretches can feel like a long, boring eternity of half notes in half position, but they can also be a great opportunity for us to practice. This is especially true for students who are working on some element of their technique. Are you working with your teacher to correct some element of your bowhold? Focus on doing it during your orchestra rehearsal! Are your shifts too fast? Coordination not what it could be? Use your orchestra parts as left hand etudes! It’s amazing how much quicker we can make needed changes when we keep our brains on during orchestra rehearsals, correcting technique problems as we play. After all , we may be in orchestra for literally hours a day - often a longer span of time than we actually practice by ourselves...

The playing of fellow musicians: During the long rests, tacets, and whole notes that so often occupy us in orchestra, look around at what your orchestral colleagues are up to. To play well in any orchestra or other ensemble, we have to have some sense of how the other sections of the orchestra work. I always pay close attention to the wind soloists and principal strings in particular. What little motions does the principal oboe make as he/she starts a solo? Maybe you notice that, when the principal viola is absent, that the viola section seems to play more together. What is the assistant principal doing (or the principal not doing) that is helping the ensemble? When the percussion section plays especially well together, are they looking at the conductor, or at each other, or at their music? Orchestras are very complicated machines, and figuring out some of how they work can help us do a better job as orchestral members - and can improve our own ensemble work.

The conductor: They are mysterious creatures indeed, those conductors. It is our responsibility as musicians to follow them and to do what they ask of us, yet sometimes they seem like a hindrance rather than a help. We all need to figure out what makes for a good conductor and what makes for a less-good one. When I’m working with a conductor I like, I try to figure out why I like them. Is it their clear beat? Their expressive gestures? Their cruel, caustic comments about our playing? Their LACK of a clear beat? The funny stories they tell during rehearsal? Even trickier than analyzing why I like them is trying to figure out if their ideas and gestures are actually creating a good performance or not. Sometimes, I’m having an awful time in rehearsal, but then when I just focus on what’s coming out of the band I have to revise my opinion of the conductor upwards! Since the ultimate goal is not just to make the musicians happy, but to create great musical performances, it’s important to figure out not just what makes me feel like I’m making great music, but rather what is making great music for the audience.

The music: Besides just enjoying the music itself, we also need to learn how the music fits together and “works” if we are going to be able to play it well. Listen to the playing of the orchestra and figure out what you really need to listen to in order to fit in with your colleagues. I often listen in particular for two things: Where the melody part might take some rubato, and what is happening rhythmically in the inner voices. Once I figure out what these parts are doing, I can often cue into one or the other of them to make sure that I don’t lose tempo. There’s too much going on in orchestral music to focus equally on everything, so we need to work out how we can be a help to the ensemble rather than a hindrance. The benefits of this kind of listening can pay off in unexpected ways; if you get called at the last minute for a gig and you know what to listen for in the piece, you can manage to pull off a solid performance even if there’s little or no rehearsal time.

By focusing on all these, perhaps you can turn those hours of orchestra into useful hours of musical work and practice.... Or at least reduce the boredom level when it starts getting unbearable!

Care and Feeding of the Bass Teacher, Chapter 3: Should You and Your Teacher Break Up?

Okay, so you’ve analyzed your teacher type and you’ve studied the owner’s manual. Things are going great with your teacher now, right? Everything’s humming along nicely? What, you say things aren’t perfect with your teacher? You feel some vague dissatisfaction? Or perhaps it’s more than that; perhaps you even feel like your teacher may be failing to help you achieve your goals? Not sure what to do?

If you spend enough time with almost anybody you’re bound to find something that you don’t like about them, and your teacher is no exception. From their hairstyle to their teaching style, parts of your teacher’s personality are virtually assured to annoy you eventually. It can be hard to figure out what things about your teacher are just annoying and what things may indicate bigger problems. Here are a few broad guidelines for assessing your teacher conflicts.

Eeeew!: The first category of teacher annoyances includes anything that is definitely not music-related and not inconvenient to you in any way. This would include odd clothing choices, gross personal habits, weird odors, or bizarre accents. If you are otherwise happy with your teacher, it’s usually wise not to let these kind of things bug you too much, since most of us only see our teacher once a week at most. It’s also a good exercise in kindness and forbearance, as all human beings have some weird quirks that others have to tolerate. You can regale your friends with stories of the one ratty sweater that your teacher wears to every lesson, or the smell of cabbage that permeates their studio. That said, there are indeed some things that might be so gross, or push your buttons so badly, that you can’t concentrate or learn around them, so in extreme cases this might be a deal-breaker for you.

Stuck in Traffic: These annoyances are not music related but are problematic or inconvenient for you. Some teachers are definitely worth spending an hour in traffic each way, or shelling out $125 per lesson, or climbing six flights of stairs, but some just aren’t. We all have limited amounts of time and money and we nee

d to find a teacher that can be a part of our schedule rather than a drag on it (and our budget!). These issues are tough, but you shouldn’t beat yourself up about them; often your teacher will understand and can help you find another good teacher in these circumstances.

Big Jerk: We discussed the Dictator teacher model in part I, and of course dictators as a rule tend to not be that nice overall. but Dictator teachers are often very kind people; they reserve any dictatorial tendencies for musical activities only. This category instead includes teachers who are just plain mean or rude, who say unnecessarily disparaging things about you, who put you down as a person in some way, or who make racist or sexist comments. There may be a few teachers out there whose musical gifts are so great that you will decide to grit your teeth and put up with them, but overall I think it’s wise to not stick around with these sorts if possible. Again, I’m referring mostly to non-musical issues in this category, although musical bullying can be a problem as well.

Goal Disconnect: This is the primary music-related problem that we’ll address, and it’s the most important one. Why are you taking lessons? Are you an amateur looking to have fun and learn some new rep? A beginner starting out on your instrument? A young professional taking auditions and trying to get work? If your teacher is trying to teach you something different than what you want, and they don’t seem to be able to recognize your goals as their goals in your lessons, you may be ready to change teachers and find someone who will give you your money’s worth. Sometimes your goals change; you start to realize that you want to take music more seriously, or the opposite occurs and you decide to make music more of a hobby in your life rather than a passion or a career choice. Many good teachers can make the transition with you to a different lesson style, but some can’t or simply don’t want to.

Not my Style: Like any two people, sometimes you and your teacher are just really not that compatible. Most of this topic is covered in Chapter One; you need to figure out whether your teacher type is the best one for you. One additional wrinkle of this can play out in a purely musical way. No matter how objective your teacher tries to be in their work with you, they themselves have certain musical preferences that can affect how they teach you. If you love Bottesini and your teacher hates it, you may have to be more proactive to get your teacher excited about working on Bottesini with you. This is seldom a huge problem since we need to be able to play in a wide variety of musical styles and it’s impossible to find a teacher who likes them all. In fact, it is often good to have a teacher with different musical tastes than you so that they can expose you to new stuff. Still, it can occasionally be problematic depending on the intensity of your teacher’s preferences (or yours!).

So, how do we deal with these conflicts? The same three basic ways that we deal with any relationship conflict:

- Talk about it with the other person,

- Just put up with it,

- Or end the relationship.

The most important question to ask yourself before you decide which of these goal to pursue takes us back to the “Goal Disconnect” issues I mentioned before. Are you getting what you want and/or need from your teacher? Are you seeing improvement in your playing? Are you enjoying your musical life? If so, you should probably try to put up with as many annoyances from your teacher as you can stand. If you aren’t sure, then maybe you should discuss your concerns with your teacher. If you are pretty sure that things are not progressing well for you, then perhaps you should consider switching teachers.

If you do decide to consider other teachers, make sure that you know what the consequences could be! If your teacher is the only good teacher in your town, consider how far you may have to travel to find another. If your teacher is a well-connected and influential musical figure in your town, then consider what consequences might befall you if they don’t take your decision well for some reason. If you are in college and want to switch studios within your school, consider what your fellow students might think and be prepared to provide a clear explanation of your decision. Please note that I said “could;” often teachers are more than willing to help students move on if the relationship isn’t working. In many cases the teacher turns out to be feeling the same way as the student! No one likes being in a relationship that isn’t working.

This will probably be the final chapter of this little series. I hope it’s given folks a few insights into obtaining a teacher and keeping it happy!