How Fast is the Fast Track Really?

I was struck by an article in today's Boston Globe about Red Sox prospect Jose Iglesias.


I find this situation fascinating as an example of a larger cultural trend, particularly this aspect of the story:

“It takes time,” Pedroia said. “He has the hand-eye coordination that will allow him to put the bat on the ball. People say he can’t hit. But how many at-bats has he had in the minors?”

Good question. Iglesias has played 261 games in the minors and had 1,076 plate appearances. To put that in perspective, Pedroia played in 270 minor league games and had 1,216 plate appearances before he stuck with the Red Sox.

Pedroia also had the advantage of playing three seasons at Arizona State, a premier college program, and played 42 games at two levels of Single A ball and 66 games for Double A Portland before he was promoted to Triple A Pawtucket.

Iglesias played only 13 games of Rookie League ball in 2010 before the Sox pushed him to Portland for 57 games. 

He started the next season at Pawtucket. Perhaps it should be no surprise that Iglesias has hit .251 in Triple A with a .589 OPS given his quick route there.

“To start at the level he started at, he kind of missed out on some things that other players go through and he missed that learning curve,” said Red Sox first base coach Arnie Beyeler, who managed Iglesias in Portland in 2010 and the last two seasons at Pawtucket.

“Because he was so gifted when he arrived, he got to skip some of that stuff and we forget about that. Sometimes that comes back on you in the long run.”

We seem to be so concerned with a fast track focus that we are often putting the cart before the horse, trying to rush to goals rather than letting a process take its course. I see this all the time with young musicians who are trying to master orchestral excerpts before they have really spent the time to learn to play their instruments and understand the music they are playing. Most orchestral excerpts are not that difficult to play IF you have laid the groundwork for them with scales, etudes and solo repertoire. At that point it becomes about making musical choices and practicing for a consistent mental approach.

If I had my way we would not hear orchestral excerpts for undergraduate admissions to music schools at all. Except for an extremely rare few, they're just not ready. Even in the best undergraduate auditions I've heard, the excerpts have been the weakest part. 



I'm afraid I also see this phenomenon with young conductors who are fast-tracked to big careers. There was a time when many talented young conductors from the United States would go to Europe to work in the opera houses, where they had no choice but to learn to be a good traffic cop with excellent baton technique. Now we seem to want conductors younger than ever, so this step is skipped; they get in front of the major orchestras, who don't need a particularly good traffic cop to play together, and never really learn how to do it. This makes it very difficult for the orchestras that do need a clear baton to find a music director.

I'm sure there are many other examples in other fields. College admissions now have to talk about job placement before anything else, rather than the tremendously valuable experience of a liberal arts education for its own sake.

I don't know what to do about it except tilt at the windmill in my own little way.

Sometimes it's the simple phrase

A good and trusted friend got in touch to let me know that I had missed my intended tone on the original version of this post, so I've decided to edit it. I really didn't mean to get up on a high horse, but to provoke some thought and maybe some fresh ideas.

Basically, my point is this: we trombone players, particularly when we play orchestral excerpts for auditions, often choose to play something other than the natural, simple phrase structure of a passage, in order to accomplish or demonstrate some other aspect of what we are doing. Often, for some reason, it seems to me that we are trying to play simple phrases as if we were staggering breaths with a group of other players, in order to string together several phrases in a row and make a much longer statement.

I would like to suggest that in many cases the breathing strategy that would convey the music best and make it most logical and meaningful to the audition committee - and any other listener - would be to follow the phrase structure and breathe where it falls naturally.

Berlioz' Hungarian March is a great example. Once you get through the scale intros of the standard excerpt, you are faced with three 3-bar phrases. Many people breathe in the middle of the 2nd bar in each phrase, and then blew through into the next phrase without acknowledging the transition. I think it actually would make a tremendous amount of sense to play a complete 3-bar phrase, followed by a breath on the barline, followed by another complete 3-bar phrase, and then breathe in the middle of the third bar of the last 3-bar phrase in order to make the transition into the next set of phrases. We are consistently taught not to do that, and I can understand why - it's very easy to lose time that way, and we want to make sure the low note is long enough to speak clearly.

So, if breathing on the barlines is awkward for you, you can catch a quick breath somewhere else (I suggest the middle of the third bar of each phrase rather than the middle of the second), keep time, and still play the phrase convincingly.

I suggest deciding on a phrase structure and then practicing each phrase by itself for it's own shape. Find that shape, understand, it, convey it. Practice an entire passage with each phrase isolated. Take as much time as you need to breathe between phrases, and then start putting them together so that your sequence of phrases tells a complete story, each phrase like a perfectly structured and punctuated sentence. When you put it all back together you might need to breathe in different places, but for me it's a lot more useful to plan phrases and then figure out the breaths I need to do to to best serve those phrases.

That reminds me of the one lesson I had with J.J. Johnson...I'll write about that sometime later.

Frequency Bone

I have been very lucky to have great teachers, and the one that has always made me think most deeply is Norman Bolter. His own blog, Frequency Bone, is a wonderful resource for anybody who truly seeks to be a better, more fully integrated musician. His most recent post touched me deeply. 

Thoughts on Auditions

"strive to EX-press not IM-press" – Buddy Baker

The best advice I can give to anybody getting ready to take an audition is to fill your mind with musical thoughts.

First, be sure the tempo of everything you play, and start the inner metronome going at that tempo as soon as possible after you've finished playing what comes before. At the start of the audition, of course, fill your mind with the pulse of the first tempo even before you walk into the room. A steady pulse is a great kind of focusing thought.

Have a reason for everything you play. Know something about every piece - have a visual or psychological image. For example, when I play The Ride, I imagine the monsters flying in attack formation. At the B section of the B Major (F#, G#, E, G#, B...), where the dynamic is marked louder, I imagine a second squadron joining the first.

Know the high point of the phrase and show the listener what that is. Know the softest and loudest thing you will play in the audition.

If you're going to monitor anything physical during the audition, try making it your breath (if you are a wind player). The only downside of monitoring your breath is that sometimes nerves make the breath wobbly, and thinking about it only makes it more wobbly. It can be extremely helpful to find useful visualizations for the most delicate physical activities you have to carry out. For soft playing on a wind instrument, I like to imagine the air rolling slowly down a gentle slope; I control the angle of the slope with the embouchure. Sometimes finding a way to think about your body's activities without thinking directly about your body is the best way to get around the unwanted nervous reactions.


Some other thoughts:

Show how much you love the music you are playing and maybe how much you love your instrument. Demonstrate your joy!

As you get closer and closer to the audition, think more and more about great phrases and less and less about perfect notes.

Tell, don't ask. Don't play anything, ever, wondering how it will come out. Direct it, tell it, be in charge of what comes out, sing it in your brain. If it doesn't come out the bell the way you imagine, that's something to work out practice methods to improve. But keep your imagination in charge, not your body.

All of this needs to be practiced. You can't just turn on these thought processes for the first time when you walk in the audition room. Practicing is for your brain just as much as it is for your body.

And for that matter, follow JayFriedman's advice: dedicate a portion of a practice session every day to getting it right the first time. At some point you will want to play for somebody else, but you don't need to have somebody else in the room to practice the mindset of commitment to the moment. Evaluate what went well and what didn't (a recording device is essential for this), and then figure out how to do detailed practice on the things that didn't.