Random Notes

So, I was all fired up about having finally set some concrete goals, ready to dig in to those pieces and my scales and focus… and now it’s after 11:00 two days later and I haven’t picked up my horn. Hmm, what happened?

When I set out on this little “practice rehab” journey, I was prepared to face some frustration, and I had a pretty good idea that I’d need to formalize my goals more so than I had when I was active. What I’m realizing, though, is the extent to which I need to rethink some of the priorities in my life so that I can get back on the track I want to be on.

Ten years ago, saxophone was an automatic priority. My entire life revolved around playing and studying saxophone. I studied music theory, history, education, saxophone literature, instrumental pedagogy. I paid my bills in part by teaching saxophone, and the rest were covered by a pretty crummy job managing at a McDonald’s in Bloomington. But once I was out of that environment, other priorities started to creep in — my wife, pets, my kids, a career, a house, more kids. Five months ago, when I decided to start getting back into playing, I either hadn’t thought through or didn’t fully understand how challenging it would be to re-prioritize all these things to create the time I need to practice.

Goals are a wonderful thing to have. So are things like motivation, desire and talent. But before those goals can be achieved, all the other “stuff” has to be prioritized. Many of the priorities I have in my life are out of my control. I can’t change the fact that I have to work to pay the bills. I can’t directly control the needs of my family. One of the best resources I have come across when it comes to setting priorities and achieving goals are some of Steven Covey’s books. The two that come to my mind are “The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People” and “First things First”. He talks a lot about differences between the urgent tasks we deal with versus the important ones. I don’t want to get into a review of his books — you’re free to read those on your own. This is a great over-simplification, but underlying all he has to say is the idea that it is very easy to get trapped by the urgent priorities — the emergencies — and to get caught in a vicious cycle of constantly putting out fires, thereby loosing sight of what is truly important. If the emergencies are pushed aside for at least part of the day to focus on what is truly important, not only do we have a better chance of achieving our goals, but the urgent tasks start to occupy less of our time. Simply put, it’s the idea of responding on a proactive basis rather than a reactive basis. I’m not really sure exactly where I’m going with this, other than that I know I’m in a very reactive space right now, which in turn means the emergenices are keeping me away from my saxophone. Something to think about….

So, I followed through and didn’t practice today. And I have some goals for when I pick up my horn tomorrow. I had originally planned to discuss my approach to setting goals in this post, but as I started writing, the post started turning into an article, so watch for an article on setting goals on my website shortly. (I’ll link to it as soon as it’s done.)

Since my article discusses the importance of setting long-range, mid-range, and short-range goals, I’ll preface this by sharing that I had long and mid-range goals (the next year and the next few months) in mind as I developed the short-range goals I’m writing out here. I’ll touch on those later. I’m currently working on four primary pieces: Alois Haba’s Partita, Victor Morosco’s Blue Caprice, Ryo Noda’s Mai and Joan Tower’s Wings. I’m at very different places with each of these pieces. I’ve performed the Haba, Noda and Morosco at different points in the past, and the Morosco and Noda are in fairly decent shape. Haba … well, I played it on my first doctoral recital somewhat less than what I considered successfully about 10 years ago. I’ve avoided it since! I have a good aural concept of the piece, but the technique isn’t there. The Tower piece is new to me. I’ve never heard it performed, and I actually just received the piece about 4 days ago. In addition to these pieces, I’m working on regaining the consistency in my technique — it’s there, but not consistent or as clean as it should be. With that said, here are the goals I have set for the next few weeks.

Technique: focus on one key center per practice session, moving chromatically starting on B-flat. Since I’m relearning everything as I go, my technical development time will focus on major and harmonic minor scales by step and by third. As time permits, I will be including the corresponding keys from Larry Teal’s “Daily Exercises” and as needed, I will also include exercises from Trevor Wye’s flute technique books (primarily book 6 – Advanced Practice). Starting tempo mm 96-100 with a goal of at least 120 by this time in June.

Morosco: since this is in pretty good shape, I will focus on maintenance and cleaning details. Entire piece needs to be played daily. In addition, about 10 minutes of focus on one page each day.

Noda: also in fairly good shape, so again, focus on maintenance. For those familiar with the piece, I’ll be using the glissandi as tone exercises daily and spending about 5 minutes on page 2. Days my kids aren’t in bed yet when I practice, the multiphonics and altissimo sections on page 3 will need about 5-10 minutes of attention. When the kids are asleep, I’ll have to leave these alone.

Haba: focus on the first movement for the next 2 weeks with a goal of playing the movement cleanly at a minimum of 80% of performance tempo. Movements 2-4 identify the problematic sections and revisit appropriate goals for these movements in 2 weeks (by May 21).

Tower: page one and the first 4 lines of page 2 to minimum of 80% of performance tempo. Read at least one additional page per day to develop an aural concept of the piece.

There is a method and a logic to these goals that I won’t get into right now — have to save something to write about for tomorrow! More to come….