opinion

Do you have one? I surely do. We all do. You know the joke. Here’s the thing though, why do we care so much about other people’s opinions of us and what we do and how we play and how we dress or cut our hair? Why, when we think so much of ourselves as humans, do we care what some nameless bloke on insta or fb or the comment section of youtube says or even quietly thinks about us?

“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”

– Marcus Aurelius

How strange it is that we waste so much time and energy worrying about the opinion of others. Of course we would like for our mentors and teachers and parents to be proud of what we do and who we have become…but strangers? People who have no real knowledge of us or what we’ve been through? People who probably fold their towels wrong and like weak coffee and believe what they saw on faux news? Why do we care?

My guess is that we are constantly vacillating between loving ourselves more than the rest of men and feeling like absolute fakes. Somewhere between the Dunning Kruger Effect and Imposter Syndrome. We are looking for validation. Acceptance into the tribe. But, the reality is that we likely sit somewhere in the middle and the worry is not only wasteful but detrimental to our well being.

So, we should own it! Here I am doing what I do, looking as I look, playing how I play! Instead of worrying, our time will be so much better spent focusing on making improvements that will make us happier with who we are. Action and growth and improvement.

time>$

Having stuff means worrying about losing stuff. It is no surprise to me that the happiest people I’ve ever encountered were those who our culture would consider as living in abject poverty. They had just the clothes on their backs, a roof (such as it was) over their heads, and just enough food to eat. But they weren’t worried about someone stealing or scratching the paint on their new car. Let me be clear, I’m not anti-progress or anti-money or against the ideal of financial comfort. My point is that living your life for the money and worrying more if you’ve been overcharged by a few dollars or that inflation has made your budget tighter is entirely missing the point of life. Money can and will come and go. But, you’ve only a certain number of days left in your life. You can’t earn more time. Or save it up. Yet, strangely, as humans, we squander this most precious resource and don’t seem to be worried about losing it at all. We doom scroll. We watch mindless shows and sporting events that are really nothing more than bread and circuses. We worry. We fret. We sleep in and take extra naps. We piss away the one thing that we have a finite amount of. The one thing that we actually truly own. Our time. WTH?!

Memento Mori

Remember that you too shall die. We all do.

Consequently, your time is worth so much more than your money. Be conscious of the ways that you spend it and be careful of ‘killing’ time.

Flexibility

If there is one attribute that we can all work on, which allows us to weather the buffeting storms of life, it is flexibility. Not just physical flexibility, though that is incredibly important for longevity and ease of movement through life, but cognitive and emotional flexibility, as well.

Can we bend over to pick up that grocery store receipt without throwing out our back? Sure, that’s important. But, can we weather the ice storm and live without power, heat, or internet for 3 days without throwing out our peace and joy? Can we pivot and recover when our world view or deeply held beliefs come up for review and we find that we’ve been wrong all along? Are we flexible enough in body, spirit, and mind to be the best humans that we can be or are we rigid and brittle and ultimately fragile? How do we test for that? And, if we find that we aren’t so flexy in one area or another, how do we train to become more resilient?

This needs our daily attention if we plan on protecting our spine, soul, and mind. The physical stretching is easy enough to comprehend. Download a great app and get to work doing some deep stretching each day. In order to have a flexible spirit we need to have a philosophy to check each event in our lives against. We’ve all interacted with folks who swing from ‘everything is amazing’ to ‘all is shite’ and back again a dozen times a day. It’s exhausting to be around. Knowing that we are in control of very little other than our own perceptions and reactions allows us to moderate those swings. Victor Frankl says it best:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” -Victor Frankl

Flexibility of mind, cognitive flexibility, is the ability to shift gears and see another solution to a problem. Without it, the rigidness of thought can be harmful to the point of getting us killed. Think Again, Adam Grant’s newest book is all about this skill and why it might be one of the most important attributes in our lives. Here’s a powerful nugget:

“Thinking like a scientist involves more than just reacting with an open mind. It means being actively open-minded. It requires searching for reasons why we might be wrong—not for reasons why we must be right—and revising our views based on what we learn.” -Adam Grant

Here’s another:

“A hallmark of wisdom is knowing when it’s time to abandon some of your most treasured tools—and some of the most cherished parts of your identity.” -Adam Grant

This ability to know when it’s time to drop the load and just run is the root of cognitive flexibility.

This week tested all of these attributes for me. Ice storm. Power outage. Lifting downed limbs and heavy generators and straining my back. Figuring out how to get the house warm enough to sleep and how to boil water for our morning coffee. How to get in a run when the streets are icy and the treadmill doesn’t have power. All of it was a test. This time I passed. Because I’ve been actively preparing.

photo credit: @CDW21

Stoic concepts as they relate to Music Practice: Euthymia

Those closest to me know that I’ve been journaling daily for a little over a year now and that journaling lead me to the study of Stoic philosophy. This study for me is comprised of deep reading Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius. Regularly, concepts come up that strongly correlate with the lives of performing musicians and music educators. This will be the first in a series of blog posts touching on these principles.

Euthymia as defined by Democritus:

“is a state in which one is satisfied with what is present and available, taking little heed of people who are envied and admired and observing the lives of those who suffer and yet endure.”

Seneca, in his collection Moral Letters, has this to say:

“Tranquility can’t be grasped except by those who have reached an unwavering and firm power of judgment — the rest constantly fall and rise in their decisions, wavering in a state of alternately rejecting and accepting things. What is the cause of this back and forth? It’s because nothing is clear and they rely on the most uncertain guide : common opinion.”

And defines it:

“believing in yourself and trusting that you are on the right path, and not being in doubt by following the myriad footpaths of those wandering in every direction.”

I read these quotes and meditate on our lives as aspiring and professional musicians, all scrambling to keep up with what’s new and hip: the gear, grooves, licks, terminology, social media status, fashion, aesthetics…all of it…all of the time. Chasing after other people’s ideas, ideals, and opinions as if we haven’t some of our own. Looking for the newest thing. The trend. To what end?

I’d argue that this is entirely a fools errand. We are all here with something to offer. Something to say. Of course we need to try to absorb what the masters who came before us did, but we need to find our own voices and let them loose, as well. If, like a dog on the neighborhood prowl, we chase every little scent that comes our way, we will have missed the journey completely and end up lost far from home, from our center, from us.

We need to trust that our chosen path is leading us where we intend, desire, and need to be. In the practice room, that might mean that working on pocket and groove is our personal focus even though our peers are spending hours on that new sick lick or stick trick. It might mean working on our tone, our sonic finger print, when others are working to be the fastest hands in town. It might mean working on the skills that will get us the gig instead of the ones that might just lose the gig. No judgement here. If your personal journey and path are to be an internet video hero with millions of followers, great! Do the work. If you derive pure joy playing for and by yourself in your practice studio, awesome! Follow your bliss. My point is that we all have that inner drive that seems to be sending us on our own journey. Why waste time trying to figure out where everyone else is going? Enjoy your trip!

Eu-thymia means well-soul or well-emotion. It means that you are happy and at peace. Hard to exist in that space when you are chasing after someone else’s dreams… Forget about following those who might be envied and admired. Remind yourself daily that you are so damn fortunate to be here now and making music!

physical activity: for mental focus, attention, stamina, and growing my brain

Caveat: I’m writing this post as much for myself as for anyone else who might happen upon it. Physical activity is good for you. Right? Do the cardio regularly to keep your heart and lungs strong. Do the resistance training (body weight or power lifting) for your muscle mass, bone mass, and connective tissue health. Do the stretching (simple or a deep meditative yoga practice) to stay limber and flexible. Sitting is the new smoking. Inactivity is killing us softly with its song. All true. But, there’s a part that we rarely talk about that is just as important for practicing performing musicians. Physical activity is good for our brains. Specifically the parts of our brains that help us focus and drill deeply into our practice. Check out this short excerpt of Dr. Wendy Suzuki, Neuroscientist at NYU.

Holy Cats! This is game changing. That physical activity that you are doing for your heart/lungs/muscles/joints/fascia and the endorphin rush that feels so so good…it’s also key to strengthening your brain and making it more flexible. I’ve experienced this first hand when I’ve built a schedule that includes mental/academic activities or music practice sessions within an hour of strenuous exercise. Hour on the treadmill doing hills, quick shower and a cup of coffee and then launch into the deep reading or deep coordination exercise. And, reminder that it’s also good for your mood.

broken diddle 10s

Let’s break diddles on a 10 stroke roll that has been crammed into a single quarter note. We end up with a roll speed that is a nine-let.

broken diddle 11s

Here we break the diddles in an 11 stroke roll crushed into a quarter note. Yay quintuplets!! Hip po pot a mus

broken diddle 13

Here’s a look at the same broken diddle concept (rllrrllrrllrl) only applied to 13 stroke rolls.

broken diddle rolls: 9 stroke

Eric Winter, a former student of mine and dear friend, reached out with a question about breaking the diddles of a roll. This is commonly used as a way to place the agogic accent on the second pulse of the diddle. This is a cool way to work on smoothing out your double stroke roll and also to work on that Moeller whip for your Stubblefield/Starks grooves and your shuffles. Dig this excerpt from Wilcoxen’s Accents and Rebounds:

Here, however, Eric was asking about it from the perspective of a fill that he was playing and that he was trying to clean up. So, what started as a series of texts with lots of rrllrrllr and rllrrllrr opened up some ideas and applications that had been stirring in my head for awhile. Nothing earth shattering here. But there are some interesting possibilities and orchestration opportunities on kit or tumbadoras or timbal. Check out the quick sheet that I scrawled out and the quick and dirty video where I demo the stickings for Eric. Note that this could be used as an abanico idea for timbal as just one possible application.

spring forward

While we are technically still in winter, those of us in education are heading into another spring semester. It’s a time for new courses, new rosters, new schedules, new goals, new habits, new gigs, new practice routines. It’s a time to foster forward momentum for ourselves and our students. The perfect time to pick a thing and jump in. Deep dive.

Perhaps you suffer from this as well, but my issue is never the lack of desire and drive to dive in. My problem has always been focus and aim. Which pool is my target? Should I be writing arrangements? Transcribing tunes/solos? Working on an advanced concept on the kit? Basics? Composing? Dang…what instrument should I even be focused on? Or, should my focus be on academic pursuits? Some deep reading? Podcasts? Documentaries? Taking a class or two? Or, should my focus be on my physical well being? Add a second workout per day? Sign up for another race?

To that end, I’m springing forward by challenging myself to focus. I bought a planner. I’m using it. I’m setting goals for myself as a player, an educator, an athlete, a student, and as a human being. One of those goals is to write beyond my daily journal entries. To write in a public space where my words might be read by others. Once a week. Thoughts. Musings. Ramblings. Just like my journal…but for public consumption. I’m walking to the end of the spring board…forward!

gon bops education summit!

I’ve been invited to be a part of a livestream summit with a monstrous team of Gon Bops endorsers this week. Come check us out!!!

why do you practice?

So there it is: the shed. Staring us in the face. Why do we subject ourselves to the routine? What drives us to continue to work on our technique, musicality, vocabulary, time, touch, feel, posture, reading, and all of the other important tasks of the practice room? For many younger players, and likely many pros, practice is a means to an end. There’s an upcoming performance/lesson/session/recital… But what about now, during a pandemic, with so many of those external/extrinsic reasons for continuing to practice?

So, what drives you? Why work on the perfect conga slap or cleaning up that rudimental snare solo or pandeiro technique and sound production if there isn’t an outlet for it?

Here’s my dos pesos at this point in my career: When one starts taking yoga classes, one has started ‘a practice.’ One doesn’t do all of those asanas to get a gig or win the local yoga competition. You do them because they make you feel better. They scratch an itch. Same with meditation: it’s a practice. No end goal. Not really. You keep doing it and getting better at it because it feeds you, calms you, focuses you, connects you to a deeper consciousness. No meditation recital coming up. I’ve grown to feel an intrinsic desire to practice congas and bongó and timbal and pandeiro and rudimental snare (I never even marched) and chart reading and drumset independence and groove and time and touch and feel and all of it because…I enjoy it. It feeds me. It scratches an itch. It calms and focuses me. And, I believe that it truly connects me with a deeper consciousness.

OK! I’m gonna go hit some things!!

who is the teacher?

I’ve been teaching for a really long time. First taught private lessons during my 8th grade year…and…I’m still trying to figure out how to be most effective. It’s a daily work in progress. It’s a practice. Like yoga.

And, weirdly, I feel like teaching has done more for me as a performer and as a member of the human family than it has for my students. Every time I have to think through how to best teach a topic/technique/rhythm I’m forced to reanalyze my own understanding and then apply that to my own practice and performance. Each time a student comes to me with issues well beyond the scope of a percussion lesson (loss of a job, loss of a family member, seismic shift in their world view or of the very world around them: deep heavy thoughts or concerns) I’m made aware of my many blessings and also reminded that I am part of a larger family.

I’ve alway hated the oft quoted quip that “those who can - do and those who can’t - teach”. My teachers have all been world class performers and I’m pretty sure that their pedagogy inspired their performing success. If you haven’t taught, try it. Teach someone to do something that you are good at and that you love to do. Anything. Watch how you juggle the excitement of this sharing, with the impatience of waiting for your student to ‘get it’, with the dread of not having the words to best ‘teach’ your skill. You can’t help but grow from this experience. Sharing your hard earned skill/knowledge/wisdom/insight with someone else is an intimate and deep experience, that when done from a place of respect and love, has benefits for you and the student that reach far beyond the topic shared. I’m convinced that I would not be the person I am today if not for all of the students that have passed through my classroom/studio. Who is the teacher? Who is the student?