The Freedom Not To Practice

I have been haunted over the last couple of weeks by this video of these North Korean Kindergartners playing the snot out of these full sized guitars while smiling- if those gap-toothed grimaces can be called smiles- into the camera. It is both creepy and wonderful and has caused me to think a great deal about how we teach music to our children in this country.

I think it comes down to the difference between having freedom and not having freedom. I have shared this video with many of my students, at least one of whom went immediately to her violin and practiced. The conversation I have had with them goes something like this: You do have the right not to practice. You have the freedom to do something else with your time. Facebook, video games, soccer, watch TV, whatever. These children probably do not have that freedom. Since they were very small, someone has probably been making them practice- a lot. These children can probably also dance, sing, recite poetry, multiply 3-digit numbers in their heads and tell you many interesting facts about the life of Dear Leader. This is because their parents must have amazing children to keep up with all the other parents who are having amazing children, because they are expected to do so. And being amazing doesn't necessarily mean cute, or fullfilled or even happy.

Anyone who has seen any of the patriotic displays of North Korean dancing with flags and colored lights can imagine that these five guitar players are not particularly unique in a country where keeping up with the Joneses means pushing your child to excel to the brink of abuse. But do these children look unhappy? Are they proud of their accomplishment? Does that accomplishment have any context in a nation of overachievers? Does that accomplishment come with any compensatory reward such as cash or parental prestige? A better house, perhaps, or a car?

Music is truly a universal language, and while I can understand WHAT these kids are doing, I'm not sure I understand HOW they have done it. What kinds of carrots and sticks are used to push what is developmentally possible into the realm of actually possible? I wonder about all the kids who started playing guitar in the same class with these five. Did they drop out because their parents decided they could be superstars at something else? Or is there a whole army of these almost-toddlers with flying fingers? Maybe children are examined at birth and found to have particularly long and agile fingers and are channeled into the study of guitar without any regard to what the parents want.

The secrecy of the North Koreans only makes me wonder more. If this video had come from Japan or China, you could be sure that there would be someone hawking a method for teaching that would get the same results. But this video is just out there. Not much explanation, not much context. But one thing is sure. I can get more out of my own students. Just by seeing this video I have raised the bar of my own expectations of what my students can do. They do have the freedom not to practice. But I am going to remind them from time to time to revisit this performance and contemplate their own potential. Maybe they will practice more. Maybe at least they will have fewer excuses for not doing so.

Shuffle, Step, Shuffle, Ball Change

This is the mantra I keep saying to myself as I undertake to master at least ONE step of the tap routine we are doing in my Tappercize class. Over and over again, on my springy board in the living room which I bought just for this purpose, I try to get my feet to match up with what my mouth is saying. Not so easy. Shuffles require that you finish with a foot in the air, uncommitted to the next thing, ready to shift weight, or not. Slowly, I isolate the messages between foot and brain, and try to build up to doing two in a row, however slowly. Somewhere between the brain and the foot, a wire crosses and I am saying "shuffle", but actually "ball changing".

This wire crossing seems to multiply as I try to string the steps together, mutant DNA in my helix of instruction. I stop. Try one. Try one starting on the other foot. Try doing two in a row. Got it. Now try to keep it going. Wires cross again. This puzzles me. Why can't I tell my feet what to do? I am SAYING it out loud, for pity's sake! I back up and try one. Try one on the other foot. String two together. Try to keep it going. Say it out loud. Eventually, I manage to get maybe 4 to 6 in a row. The instructions repeat in my head, getting, finally, correctly, to my feet. Whee! I'm flying! Oops. As soon as I think ABOUT what I'm doing, instead of staying in the mantra, I goof up.

This goofing up when stepping outside my brain is something that has plagued me as a musician all my life. But that's not why I am writing today. I am thinking of my music students. As part of their instruction, I have them say out loud, and in tempo what they are doing. Reading note names, singing finger numbers, saying tahn and shh for quarter notes and rests as they clap a rhythm, or moving their bows vertically in the air as we practice a bowing rhythm are all things we do regularly in my classes. It is my belief that these activities develop an inner mantra for my students that keeps them, or gets them focused on pushing the music along and not getting stuck unable to string two or more notes together. And I think it does help. But as I have been observing my own wires crossing between brain and action, I can see my own students in my mind's eye having the same problem. As bows are going up and down in the air, I can see a couple kids completely backward-even as they are saying "down bow" they are pushing their bows up. Usually if I make smiling eye contact, they realize immediately what they are doing and turn around. Sometimes a student will CLAP on a rest when he should be putting palms out and saying Shh. But if we keep trying, and reminding them to look and focus, eventually they get it.

Once again, my own learning reminds me of how my students learn, and how they can cross wires just like I can. My job is to help them untangle the mess till they can fly too.

Making a Better Violinist

"I may not be able to make you into a great dancer. I may not even be able to make you a good dancer. But if you keep trying and don't quit, I can make you a better dancer".

-Joe Gideon  All That Jazz

This quote struck me as we watched All That Jazz on T.V. the other night. The film version of Bob Fossey's life and times may or may not be an accurate depiction of the real man behind all the great dancing, but I believe in his desire to push the dancers as far as they could go, or as far as they want to go.

We are coming up to our annual All-District Music Festival this next week, and the preparations have gotten me thinking about how the kids in my elementary string classes have separated themselves into three distinct groups. The music for the elementary string players is especially challenging this year, as we are combining the elementary and middle schools to make one large string orchestra. My middle school string players had no trouble learning the music. The music for the elementary band (which I will be directing!) was chosen to encourage even beginning wind players to participate. So the elementary band kids have had very little difficulty learning the music. But for the elementary string players, the task of getting this music "into their fingers" has proved to be a challenge to which some have felt unequal.

I started noticing it right after we got back from Winter break. Here and there a string player wouldn't show up for class. These classes are "pull-outs", so it is up to the kids to leave their classrooms and come to the music room. We have been striving to see the 5th graders twice a week this year, so if a student missed one day, I would expect to see them the next. But they began dropping away, till there were maybe a third of the original students no longer attending regularly.

The three categories of players separating themselves are like this.  First there are the students who LOVE to practice or whose parents MAKE them practice, and for whom the challenge of this music is fun. They are a small, but enthusiastic group, who are proud of their significant accomplishments. The third of the students who dropped away here are the ones for whom this challenge was just too daunting, and no matter how much we went over it in class, they didn't understand how to work on it at home, so rather than fail, they just quit coming. Then there is the third group. These are kids who have kept on coming, who keep on trying, but have not really learned the music at all. They even tell me they are practicing at home. But as I watch them pushing their bows back and forth over mostly open strings, getting a random finger down here and there, I can see very clearly that they don't know what they are doing. And they sometimes seem truly surprised that I am not going to let them go to the festival.

I feel bad for these kids, and try to make it up to them by telling them I can see that they have been working, and I appreciate the work they have done, but no one is going to help them learn their music during the festival rehearsals, and as of now, they don't know it well enough to get through the first rehearsal. "Can't I have till next Tuesday?", asked one boy desperately, yesterday, as I was hyping the class for this last practice together before the first big rehearsal. After I told him no, that today was the last day for me to decide, and he was clearly not ready, he spent the rest of the class shooting daggers at me from his eyes. I asked another student who had missed a few classes to stay after to audition, because she said she knew the music even though I could see she didn't. I thought maybe if I heard her by herself,  I would be able to see that she knew enough to get through the big rehearsals. But when I sat down next to her to hear her play, she said "Well, I don't know it NOW!",-implying that any minute now, she would.  The students in this group sometimes seem to be completely clueless as to what "playing the music" really means.

I have been known to say "fake it 'til you make it" to encourage struggling students to keep trying. For the first group, this mantra helps them get through the hard parts, and persevere until they can jump in and keep going on the parts they know well. They WILL make it, eventually. It seems the second group, the dropouts, DO know the difference, and recognize their own limitations, and have decided to drop rather than keep on faking. But this third group seems to think that the faking is the same as the real, and some seem surprised that I don't think so too.

I really love our District Festival. It gives us a focus to our teaching, and ALWAYS brings up the level of the playing of the kids who stick with it. Even the third group grows from working on hard music. This year, with my elementary strings, though, I feel I will need to do some real re-recruiting when it's all over. It will be time to dig out some easier music that everyone can succeed at, and get back to the fun of making music together. I want all those students who fell by the wayside to jump back in with us. We will be able to move a little slower then, hopefully keeping them all swimming and not sinking.  They may not ever be great violinists, or even very good violinists, but if they will keep trying and not quit, I might be able to help them become better violinists.

Fierce Trouble All Day

Not really. This was something I overheard one fifth grade boy violinist tell another after he'd been shown, by the other boy, how he'd been closing his violin case incorrectly. The second boy gave a little demonstration,and then the first redid his case muttering something about "fierce trouble all day". What a line!

Thing is, for me, it was a dandy day. The upside to having only fifth graders - at least this year- is that there are very few beginners. We are making music from day one, without the usual ritual of those first painful weeks of blowing in headjoints, trying to get a buzz going in a trumpet mouthpiece, learning how to hold a bow, or how to bite the reed just right to play a clarinet (which, don't get me wrong, I love because of the lights that come on in faces when they GET IT). Most of the kids this year had that instruction last year, so here we are, picking up where they left off last year, everyone that much more focussed and able.

Having said that, there are a few beginners strewn in, and here's a funny thing: even without the benefit of last year's instruction, most of them are jumping right in, playing along, making music, seeming to have skipped that first step entirely. This phenomenon deserves further attention.

A couple weeks ago, when I finished the fifth grade class, I realized that I still had a couple hours before I had to get to my middle school class, just up the street. So I approached the principal about adding a fourth grade Beginning Band to the schedule and she was thrilled. She escorted me to the two fourth grade rooms and introduced me to the teachers who were also thrilled. Last week I visited the classes and talked to the students, whose eyes lit up when I told them who I was.

We sent permission slips home and, no surprise, almost every single fourth grader returned a slip. Yesterday I met with them- well half of them. It's always something. One of the two classes was having an art lesson in clay that had had to be postponed due to a district-wide earthquake drill the day before. So those kids couldn't come to music. But those who did filed into the room quietly and sat down and waited for me to tell them my spiel.

My first meeting with students is always about two things: Putting a face to a name on a permission slip, and finding out if the child needs a school instrument or has some other source. At this point, too, I can converse with kids about their choices, talking them out of saxophone, for instance, since that is an instrument in short supply in our inventory, and in high demand among the kids.

Finally all my talking done, it was time to pass out instruments. This group of fourth graders sat patiently as  I called forth each child for his or her contract. I handed an instrument to each child along with the paper, and instructed each to sit and just hold the case, closed. Even with that, the excitement was in the air.

After all the passing out was done, I stood back and looked at them. And then came the question from a soon-to-be trumpet player: Are we a marching band? Not yet, I told him. But if you play all year, remember to bring your instrument on Friday, practice at home every day, and then keep playing next year, when you get to Middle School, there is a good chance you WILL be a marching band. Oh, the excitement then. But there's more, I told them. After Middle School is High School and then the fun really starts. You can play for football games, maybe even the Rose Parade. Sometimes High School Bands go to Disneyworld, or London. They were practically jumping out of their seats when they heard that. And then....when you are done with High School, you can go to College, and learn how to be a Musician for your job, and do music every day. 

This was a great moment yesterday. We have talked a bunch in our Pasadena District about showing students career pathways, and I have always said that you can't just decide in your Junior year to be a musician, if you have never played before. This particular career pathway has to start much earlier.

So here we go, kids. We are on the road, you can decide how far you want to follow it.

A Room With a View.

Since Sierra Madre School expanded to include grades 7 and 8 a few years ago, the middle school part of the school population has occupied the farthest east campus in the Pasadena Unified School District. Originally called Sierra Mesa School, it was, for many years home to Maranatha High School which leased the property from PUSD. The District reclaimed it to use it for the expanded Sierra Madre grades, and the Instrumental Music program found a home in one of the many aging portable "bungalows" on the site. For awhile the Music Theater class occupied the other half of this double long structure, and it became affectionately known as "The Palace".

The Palace roof leaked, the floors has spongy places that felt like they could fall through, and at least one window a year would be broken by a stray soccer ball, but over the five or so years we were in that room, the orchestra grew from a handful of kids to a rowdy, talented group numbering almost 30. We made music in that room. Little by little, note by note, squeak by squeak, the year would progress, and by spring we would sound pretty good. Kids who could barely read notes in 5th grade got it by the end of 6th, and then they were off and running.

Each year the orchestra has gotten bigger and better. To build the program, I took to accepting pretty much anyone into the class who had a mind to be there. This could be anyone, including kids who had never played anything but maybe a few weeks of violin somewhere back in third grade and wanted to learn drums, a number of obsessed guitar players, some kids who had never played any instrument ever, and some who had not played for several years.

To accomodate this rag-tag group I would do things like take band or orchestra arrangements and pull out a part for the guitars to play, or tell the budding drummers to make up a part. French Horn parts became alto sax parts, and String Bass parts sometimes were played on Electric Bass. Sometimes I just let those guitar players sit on the porch and jam while the rest of us worked on orchestra music. Some days I opened the room at lunch and let the rockers hang in there and play electric instruments and drum set. Anything to keep the music going, to keep the kids coming back, and to make them feel that the Palace, funky as it was, was theirs.

Then in 2008 a bond measure passed in Pasadena allowing for upgrades to all the schools in the district, and, miraculously, a complete new school on the Sierra Madre Middle School site. In the plans is a whole Music Suite, with ample space for both the Instrumental Music and the Choral/Theater programs. As exciting as this is, it was still with a bit of nostalgic sadness that I packed up the Palace last spring so that we could move to another, smaller, portable on the upper edge of the campus beyond the construction zone.

Jury Duty at the end of this summer prevented me from getting into the room much before school started, but when I finally set up chairs and stands I stood back and thought, if we get 25 we'll be fine. Any more and it will be tight. Well, thirty kids signed up for Instrumental Music, and for the first three weeks the Air Conditioning in the tiny room didn't work at all. Part of that time the temperatures were hitting triple digits in the afternoons, so the orchestra decamped for a few days to the 8th grade Science teacher's room where we played Rhythm Bingo and listened to orchestral music and learned some theory. Tuesday this week, I arrived to find the AC guy just finishing up, and the room COLD!

So here we are, in our new room. 31 Students now, as we have added a couple more violinists. Our windows (which overlook the construction site where the old Palace still sits awaiting removal or demolition)  will not be broken by soccer balls, because they are far from the PE field. The roof does not leak. There is barely room to bow, and the trumpet players were shy about playing out at first, because they were blowing directly into the back of the flute players' heads. But note by note, and squeak by squeak, we have started to make some music. This week we have been doing playing tests, with each student playing exerpts from the one piece we have focussed our attention on this month. This testing, which sends jitters and nervousness through the whole group, results in sudden leaps of improvement in the overall sound. Whether it's due to the extra practicing that goes on in the days before the test, or just the attention I am able to give each player when his or her turn comes to fix little problems, I don't know. But the shiver that stands my arm hairs on end when I hear this group, in October mind you, is not coming from the AC.