This is the fourth in a special series of episodes on how to tackle the biggest sticking points in your music learning. We recently surveyed our audience to learn about their experiences with music practice. The results were astounding! Across several hundred responses, we found a handful of really common and painfully frustrating practice issues – including, “I feel bad because I don’t practice enough” http://musl.ink/pod235
To answer these big burning questions, we invited Gregg Goodhart, The Learning Coach, back on the show. Gregg is a leading expert on how to apply all of the latest scientific research and understanding of how the brain learns to skill acquisition, including in music.
After watching this episode you’ll regain your enthusiasm for learning music.
This is the fourth in a special series of episodes on how to tackle the biggest sticking points in your music learning. We recently surveyed our audience to learn about their experiences with music practice. The results were astounding! Across several hundred responses, we found a handful of really common and painfully frustrating practice issues – including, “I feel bad because I don’t practice enough”
To answer these big burning questions, we invited Gregg Goodhart, The Learning Coach, back on the show. Gregg is a leading expert on how to apply all of the latest scientific research and understanding of how the brain learns to skill acquisition, including in music.
After watching this episode you’ll regain your enthusiasm for learning music.
Christopher: Absolutely. One thing that really hit me in the heart reading through these responses was about enthusiasm and motivation. And people who were clearly passionate about their hobby, passionate enough to spend five, 10 minutes writing survey responses for us about their music practice, they would be talking in terms of blaming themselves and getting very down on themselves about not following through with practice. “I should be doing this much, or if only I could keep at it, or I’m lazy, or if I just had the discipline.”, and definitely seeing it as, “I must put in this work every day and I’m not doing it therefore I’m bad.” And I wonder if we could talk a little bit about motivation and what people can do to help themselves feel enthusiasm and eagerness to practice rather than always feeling like this burden that they have to do.
Gregg: Well, it’s very, very hard to continue with the bucket inside of the boat getting the water out when the boat is sinking much faster than you can bucket the water out and you get less and less enthusiastic as the boat goes down. And at some point you say, “I just accept my fate. The boat is going down.” But that’s not what has to happen at all. In fact, there’s a misunderstanding out there that I think many people believe, I think some teachers believe, I’ve heard it expressed as where there is enthusiasm, there is achievement. It’s actually the opposite. Where there is achievement, there is enthusiasm.
Gregg: And small ways, such as applying contextual interference, that’s why I do that, in practiclasses, when you realize in a few minutes, when I say, not three minutes, but 10 or 15, when you realize that in a few minutes, you can become insanely better than you’ve been able to do with months of practice, that provides a whole lot of motivation. I’ll give you an example from the research. There was a researcher, I believe he did this in the UK, Barry J. Zimmerman, and I’d be happy to share this information with anybody, who did a study and he took two groups of women and I believe he went to a pub, and it was dart throwing. And he took one group to throw darts and just said, “Figure it out. Enjoy yourself, figure it out.” I don’t think they were drinking at the pub because not that you shouldn’t have a good time, but that would-
Christopher: I don’t think you know the rules of darts in the UK. If you don’t have a pint in the other hand, it doesn’t count.
Gregg: Yeah, no pints in your hand when you’re practicing. And so anyway, he had one group just try and of course they improved a little and they had an okay time. And he had another group specifically following, and who wants to learn darts that way? Specifically follow instructions, where they were shown by someone who knew what to do and what to teach, “Do this, do that, hold it this way, throw it that way.”
Gregg: And these were people, these women had no interest in darts whatsoever. They did not like it. They had no desire. And so, they knew they were doing experiments and they participated. What he found that happened consistently was the group that got better through instruction very much wanted, not only to play darts, because they had increased their skill, they wanted to learn more. They didn’t just want to play with the skill they had, they wanted more of the tedious, “Hold your dart this way.”, thing and do it five times in a row. They wanted more of that instruction, because they felt internally the results of that.
Gregg: It’s one thing to practice and practice. Again, I’ve called this the play and pray method, where we go into our practice, and we just aren’t sure what to do. And we hope we get results. And you know what? Sometimes three days later, we can play something. And a lot of times we can’t. I don’t know how anyone… I admire all the people who somehow stay motivated and keep looking when you can’t find the answers. Imagine what happens when you can find the answers. And that’s what the research shows, and as I say, where there’s achievement, there is interest. So once you start to achieve, so it’s a small hump, it just takes a little bit, if you look at my practiclasses, 20 or 25 minutes, a small hump to do that when you realize that every minute of your practice doesn’t have to be a mystery, it can be a problem solved. And you can guarantee that you’ll get to the next place. That creates motivation like crazy.
Gregg: What will happen if you have trouble getting yourself to practice? And I’m sure we may talk about that. If you have problems getting yourself to practice, there are ways to go about doing that, such as working on orienting selective attention. But one of the reasons is because you’re not getting out of it what you want, and the only reason I stayed with it is because I’m stubborn. And I just wouldn’t stop even though, as many of us feel, the universe is telling me, “Sir, you don’t have talent. Any reasonable person would give up by now. Just be happy you can go get a job being a teacher and stop trying to be so good.”
Gregg: And that’s what the universe will tell you. That’s what it feels like. When we flip that feeling to, “Oh my gosh, my capabilities are far more than I thought. And the reason I believe this is because I actually did something I could never do before.” And it looks like there are solutions for everything, and then when that solution runs out it turns out there’s another solution on top of that. Your practice minutes will increase without you knowing it. What happens is you enter into a flow state. We’ve all been there where you work on something, whether it’s practice, or a woodworking project, or working on your free throws in basketball, whatever it may be, where we do it and we think it’s been 10 minutes and we look up and it’s been 50 minutes or an hour.
Gregg: That is the highest state of learning. And there is a researcher, his name is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, spelled just like it sounds, his name is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and he spent his career figuring out what that is. How do you get into that state where learning is actually you’re wrapped up in it so much? He calls it flow, and what it is is you have to gain some skill first, and then your skill navigates the problems like this. My skill is better, now my skill is worse, not my skill is better. To get there you have to acquire some basic skill where there is achievement, then there is interest you enter into flow. And this is totally creatable if you follow the right process
Struggling to get that complex section up to tempo?
This is the third in a special series of episodes on how to tackle the biggest sticking points in your music learning. We recently surveyed our audience to learn about their experiences with music practice. The results were astounding! Across several hundred responses, we found a handful of really common and painfully frustrating practice issues – including, “How do I break through plateaus?” http://musl.ink/pod234
To answer these big burning questions, we invited Gregg Goodhart, The Learning Coach, back on the show. Gregg is a leading expert on how to apply all of the latest scientific research and understanding of how the brain learns to skill acquisition, including in music.
Enjoy this episode and unclock your music learning super powers!
Struggling to get that complex section up to tempo?
This is the third in a special series of episodes on how to tackle the biggest sticking points in your music learning. We recently surveyed our audience to learn about their experiences with music practice. The results were astounding! Across several hundred responses, we found a handful of really common and painfully frustrating practice issues – including, “How do I break through plateaus?”
To answer these big burning questions, we invited Gregg Goodhart, The Learning Coach, back on the show. Gregg is a leading expert on how to apply all of the latest scientific research and understanding of how the brain learns to skill acquisition, including in music.
Enjoy this episode and unclock your music learning super powers!
Christopher: One thing that came up time and time again in this survey was, “I make progress for a little bit, but then there’s just something I can’t crack or I can never get my fingers around this passage, this technique, I just, no matter what I do, my body doesn’t do the right thing, or my brain can’t keep up.” There’s some kind of plateau or sticking point people hit. What can you do in that situation?
Gregg: Well, once again, the science gives us answers. There’s something in the research called the power law of practice. And this applies to academics and everything else. And what it shows, and I think all of us have experienced this, myself included, and I know the pain of working, and working, and working, and not getting it. I went all the way through graduate school and a performance degree on my instrument before I figured this out. The power law shows that each repetition is slightly less effective than the previous repetition. Now, I don’t think it takes an expert in math, which I am not one at all, to understand that if you keep losing, as it gets up, you’re going to get less, and less, and less and they have a curve. They’ve actually studied this, and it shows this power law curve, as far as improvement, improvement, improvement, less improvement, less improvement, less improvement.
Gregg: And this indeed is the dreaded plateau that most musicians experience. It’s expressed in the literature. Sometime later, there was a paper done called The Power Law Applies to Strategy and Tasks. What that meant is, if you take what you’re doing, and then figure out a way to challenge it to do it slightly different, basically vary the context, which is a little more complex than it sounds, you can reset the power law.:So when you experience this plateau, you can go right back to the beginning and get the same gains again, and again, and again. That particular paper was on contextual interference, which is amazing. I’ve called it the steroids of practicing music with no bad side effects.
Gregg: And once you learn to apply that, which some of the exercises are easier, but it really is a complex thing, a complex, nuanced theory, because the exercises become less effective, then you have to put exercises in, but once you do that, you can break plateaus, left and right. There are other ways to do it besides contextual interference, but the answers are clearly in the science. And that’s what I do, for instance, if you see my practiclasses online, and I’ve done several with Musical U, people show up having struggled with something for a long period of time. And sure enough, in 20 minutes, 25 minutes, we make it so it’s faster, cleaner and easier to play.
Gregg: And that’s really crucial. It’s better faster, and usually we’re struggling, pushing at the edge. Instead, it feels much easier. This is possible for anyone. This is just the way the brain works and it’s in the literature, yet it requires doing something that actually looks like you’re getting worse to get better. And I would encourage people to watch the practiclass videos to see how this works.
Gregg: And then, it’s just a matter of, I want to caution people, it’s not, “Oh, I’ll do that exercise.” Because certain exercises work in certain places for certain situations. It’s where you are in the learning process that you do that exercise. And what is very powerful is understanding the why and how of why these things work, then you don’t just follow the exercise, you actually internalize what the exercise is trying to do and you can make it your own and come up with your own strategies, which is what I always encourage in my teaching, to get rid of me at some point, please, and start doing it on your own.
Gregg: And to do that it’s not enough to drive the car, you need to know how the car is built to have a great car. And in practicing, we’re generally driving the car, doing little bits of maintenance to keep it going down the road hoping, what you really want to learn about is every aspect of how the car is built to then have a great car. Now you can’t do that. The driver can’t be the mechanic. That’s what I do. I’m the mechanic. I give you enough information about the mechanics that you can then drive the car and win the race.
Christopher: I love that metaphor and this is definitely one of those things in music education, where I just wish I could implant in every music learner’s brain, because if you understand that power law of diminishing returns and you realize there is a strategy, there is a set of techniques you can use to bust through that and reset the clock, that’s huge because if you look through these survey responses, the number of people that are just feeling so down on themselves because they can’t crack this thing-
Gregg: I know.
Christopher: … or many saying they’re losing their enthusiasm, or they’re wondering if they should even keep going. And to know that you can bust through that with a very practical step-by-step methodology is killer.
Gregg: And it’s 100% effective. That’s why I feel comfortable walking on stage, whether I’m at a great school like the performance program at Florida State University. There’s videos of that, or Indiana University, or whether I’m in an inner city school with kids who don’t get that much attention, I’m never afraid. I never know what instrument I’m going to see. I never know what music I’m going to see. Sometimes it’s fiddle tunes. Sometimes it’s someone playing Rush or The Beatles on guitar, many times it’s people doing the Elgar concerto, or the Haydn Trumpet Concerto. It doesn’t matter. It’s 100% effective in skill development all the time and it always works. To know that’s out there is very liberating.
Can you get results from only 10-15 minutes of practice?
This is the second in a special series of episodes on how to tackle the biggest sticking points in your music learning. We recently surveyed our audience to learn about their experiences with music practice. The results were astounding! Across several hundred responses, we found a handful of really common and painfully frustrating practice issues – including, “How do I get the most results out of my practice time?”
To answer these big burning questions, we invited Gregg Goodhart, The Learning Coach, back on the show. Gregg is a leading expert on how to apply all of the latest scientific research and understanding of how the brain learns to skill acquisition, including in music.
In this episode you’ll learn a 3-step process you can use to get the most out of every minute of your practice. Start supercharging your learning today!
Christopher: So, if it’s not a matter of just having enough time, what are we meant to be doing in that time, if it’s true that we can make progress in just 10 or 15 minutes a day, how do you spend that 10 or 15 minutes in order to get the results we’re talking about?
Gregg: Well, the good news is, and this is especially true when working in small periods of time, is that learning is simple, it’s just not easy. The simple part is a three-step process I used to represent the idea of deliberate practice which is the way all high efficiency learning works, and please, I encourage people to just look up deliberate practice and read about K. Anders Ericcson’s works since his first publication on the process in 1993.
Gregg: It’s a three-step process. You make a plan, think about it, of doing repetitions, you make a plan, “I’m going to work on this measure.” You do it, and then you reflect, “What could I do better?” It is that simple. “Well, maybe my finger went to the wrong place, it went too far to the left. Next time I’ll go try too far to the right.” It’s like watching a child learn to walk. And then the next time I went to far. And eventually, you end up where you are.
Gregg: However, it does become a little bit more labor intensive when the reflect piece is, “I’m not sure what to do there.”, and I think that’s where a lot of people end up. You get to a point where you plateau and you don’t know what to do next.
Gregg: In this area, cognitive science is extremely helpful. The answer is very varied depending on the situation and the student in any given time. It could be we need to apply contextual interference, which is the miracle plateau-breaker. It could be an issue of mindset, Carol Dweck’s work on what I call, why humans can’t get out of their own way when it comes to learning.
Gregg: Once you start to see, “Oh, it’s because of how I felt about doing this.”, and you put it in perspective. It could simply be understanding why accuracy is important in how neural networks are built in the brain. It could be building certain bits off self control in your pre-frontal cortex. And even any of those, for instance, when I say contextual interference, that has a good 30, 40 strategies underneath that heading too, which then need to be taught in their own right.
Gregg: So yes, it is very simple, Apply deliberate practice, but it is not easy because you will have to go looking for answers and that’s why I’ve gotten into what I am doing. The art of teaching really is, where and when, with people, do you apply what? And the art of that is putting everything in the right place at the right time so that progression happens, so that as deliberate practice continues, you are never left without an answer in the reflect stage because becoming good or great is simply about solving the problem in front of you.
Gregg: Don’t worry about 16 problems or where I’m going to be. Can I perform? As the great jazz pianist Bill Evans says, “Approximating the product.” Don’t worry about approximating the product. You’re learning. The person you see doing the product was there right with you at one time. The exact same place. They had to go through it, there was no miracle jump. So don’t worry about approximating the product, find the solution to the problem in front of you and that happens by using deliberate practice and having access to the best science-based information.
Christopher: Tremendous. I feel like I should go back and record an extra segment for our interview with Professor Anders Ericcson and our episode about deliberate practice to point out, it’s not your fault if you try doing deliberate practice and you struggle. As you say, it really came through in the survey results. People have heard of this, they get the idea, but then they just get stuck trying to apply it and they don’t know how to do that reflect stage or they can’t figure out how to do the next iteration of the loop. So I think it’s going to be valuable to them to know that there are specific strategies to apply in that situation.
Gregg: If I may, there is a huge gap between the research and the actual practice and there is enough Dunning Kruger to go around on both sides. The Dunning Kruger effect, which says the less you know about something, the less you’ll realize you’re doing it wrong. People, and I want to say this correctly, people in the research field are very proud of their work and should be. It’s amazing. But they think it’s the be all, end all. Sure. Deliberate practice is everything if you have all the right information.
Gregg: He’s studying people who are going to the best music conservatories, going to lessons with some of the best teachers, so when he finds deliberate practice, of course it works with all that information. There is a great gap in researchers explaining what needs to be done in a way people understand and understanding the other elements besides their research that’s necessary.
Gregg: On the other side, teachers are not trained, our schools of education are separated from cognitive science, teachers are not trained in this, the best most teachers do is they see some report on the news about, try this or that and we try a little bit of it. But we don’t do enough. And we don’t know the big picture of learning how it works. A great example of this is Carol Dweck’s Mindset work, which I think is crucial. And hers is one of the top three books I recommend for people to read about learning. I will say I’m aware that there are issues with replication going on now. I’ve read the divergent opinions. I’m very comfortable recommending Mindset still at this point.
Gregg: Anyway, she has this, if you’ll just stick with it, if you won’t get frustrated, you’ll get it. And one of the complaints is, “Well, she’s not accounting for what it is you’re doing during that time.” She takes for granted and doesn’t realize, and I love her work, and doesn’t realize that that’s not enough. It’s not. You need to be doing deliberate practice. You need to have the right information, you need to know what contextual interference is.
Gregg: And this is a wide, wide gap, and I’m now in it, and I can’t find anyone else here because I’ve been looking. I’m looking for friends in this area. And it’s something that I think is the great revolution in teaching now. This idea that some people can study music and get good and some can’t. Some people can study math and get As and some get Cs and bless their heart, they all tried.
Gregg: No, they didn’t all do it the same way. And this is very nuanced. So a lot of this if is you say, “I found deliberate practice and I am trying it.”, for instance, did you know the plan, do, reflect model? Erickson never talks about that. I came up with that to explain it. And I’ll tell you, when I went to Florida State and did a residency there, he showed up at one of my lectures. And as I got to that slide, I realized, he didn’t do this. I did. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I hope he…” Anyway, we talked later and he said it was a fine representation and he endorsed it. He was fine with it.
Gregg: But it’s this explaining of it. It never occurred to him to explain it in a simple three-step process. And it’s that where there is a great lack and need and education. And it is in there that people experience working, but not making progress.
Can you get results from only 10-15 minutes of practice?
This is the second in a special series of episodes on how to tackle the biggest sticking points in your music learning. We recently surveyed our audience to learn about their experiences with music practice. The results were astounding! Across several hundred responses, we found a handful of really common and painfully frustrating practice issues – including, “How do I get the most results out of my practice time?” http://musl.ink/pod233
To answer these big burning questions, we invited Gregg Goodhart, The Learning Coach, back on the show. Gregg is a leading expert on how to apply all of the latest scientific research and understanding of how the brain learns to skill acquisition, including in music.
In this episode you’ll learn a 3-step process you can use to get the most out of every minute of your practice. Start supercharging your learning today!
This is the first in a special series of episodes on how to tackle the biggest sticking points in your music learning. We recently surveyed our audience to learn about their experiences with music practice. The results were astounding! Across several hundred responses, we found a handful of really common and painfully frustrating practice issues – like, “How do I find time for music?”
To answer these big burning questions, we invited Gregg Goodhart, The Learning Coach, back on the show. Gregg is a leading expert on how to apply all of the latest scientific research and understanding of how the brain learns to skill acquisition, including in music. In this episode, we talk about what to do if you feel like there’s never enough time for practicing music.
After this episode, you may well find time that you didn’t even know existed, as well as ways to supercharge the time that you do have for practicing, and get better results faster.
This is the first in a special series of episodes on how to tackle the biggest sticking points in your music learning. We recently surveyed our audience to learn about their experiences with music practice. The results were astounding! Across several hundred responses, we found a handful of really common and painfully frustrating practice issues – like, “How do I find time for music?”
To answer these big burning questions, we invited Gregg Goodhart, The Learning Coach, back on the show. Gregg is a leading expert on how to apply all of the latest scientific research and understanding of how the brain learns to skill acquisition, including in music. In this episode, we talk about what to do if you feel like there’s never enough time for practicing music.
After this episode, you may well find time that you didn’t even know existed, as well as ways to supercharge the time that you do have for practicing, and get better results faster.
Christopher: Hi, my name is Christopher. I’m the founder and director of Musical U and welcome to Musicality Now. Have you ever been frustrated or disappointed with your music practice? Maybe you felt like there is just never enough time or you don’t seem to make any progress even when you do find the time and put in the work.
Christopher: If you’ve ever wondered what lets some musicians achieve the highest levels of worldwide success while others remain forever a struggling hobbyist, it’s not down to talent and it’s not purely about putting in the work. Science has shown over the last few decades that so-called talent is almost entirely a myth and there are actually very specific practical things that can make a dramatic difference in how fast anybody learns a skill, including in music.
Christopher: Despite that research, almost no music learners are actually able to put that into practice and get the benefits. I’m joined today by The Learning Coach, Gregg Goodhart. Gregg has been a guest on the show before, so I won’t give a full intro here. You can find the link to his past interview in the show notes for this episode at MusicalityNow.com. Suffice it to say, I consider Gregg to be the world’s leading expert on how to apply all of the latest scientific research and understanding of how the brain learns to practical knowledge and skill acquisition including in music.
Christopher: Gregg, say a quick hi, if you would.
Gregg: Hi, it’s great to be here with you.
Christopher: We’ve been working with Gregg on a brand new and unique course designed to help any music learner shift into high gear in their learning simply by adjusting the way they practice. As part of preparing that course, we surveyed our audience to learn about their experiences with music practice, and across several hundred responses there were a handful of really common and painfully frustrating sticking points that came through. I read through each and every one of those responses personally and I can tell you I felt your pain on a visceral level.
Christopher: I can relate, from my own experience to that frustration, that struggle, and that feeling of self-doubt or even inadequacy that comes up when you feel like you’re just not seeing the results from your music practice that you expected to.
Christopher: So I’ve invited Gregg to come on the show today and share his insights on how to tackle each of these big sticking points.
Christopher: We’re going to talk about what to do if you feel like there’s just never enough time for practicing music. We’re going to talk about how to get the biggest bang for your buck, how to make the most of the music practice time you do have. We’re going to talk about how to break through any problem or sticking point you might encounter in your music learning. How to stay motivated and interested and keep up a consistent practice habit, and how to always feel clear about how you should be spending your practice time.
Christopher: If you’re like most music learners, then you are ready and willing to put in the time and energy required to improve, but at the same time, you probably wish there was a way to make sure you were doing it right and would get the maximum payoff from the effort you do put in.
Christopher: As you’re about to discover, that payoff can actually be several times greater than what you’ve probably seen in the past, even at your very best. Shifting your practicing into high gear like we’re going to be talking about today, you just might discover you have a lot more apparent talent than you ever thought possible. So without further ado, let’s dive into the big questions and challenges that came up in that survey and get some expert insights on what can do to get better results faster.
Christopher: So if I had to name the number one point of frustration for people that came through in our survey it was, “I don’t have enough time. I can’t find enough time. I can’t seem to make the time. I can’t keep up putting in the time.”, and one fascinating thing was that we also asked people how much time they were spending, and I was shocked to see just how consistent it is, and keep in mind, we have some teachers, we have some pros in the survey responses, but for the most part they’re amateurs of one stripe or another, hobbyists, people who are passionate about music, but it’s not their full time gig.
Christopher: We had answers across the spectrum from five minutes a day to 5 minutes a week, to two hours a day and no matter how much time people were spending they were saying they did not have enough time. So Gregg, how is this possible, that however much time we seem to put into music practice, it always feels like there’s not enough time or we’re not getting the results we thought we would from that time?
Gregg: Well, it’s natural to feel that way when you have lots of things that are putting demands on your time, your mind has all these open loops that it’s trying to close and we don’t particularly close them.
Gregg: One helpful way for me. I thought private Catholic school for many years and there were kids on the football team, and they were on the debate team, and they were in AP classes, and they would tell me they didn’t have time to practice. And I’d say just allot a time inventory, not with specifics of what you’re doing, I go to school here, I do football here, just black all that stuff out. Black everything half hour that you’re obligated, even if it’s just meeting my friends down at the park every Saturday to shoot some hoops.
Gregg: And inevitably, what we found is you start closing that open loop of scheduling and you see your schedule from afar. And we’d always find, no matter how busy they were, we’d always find these white spots.
Gregg: Now, I was dealing with high school kids, but when I’d say, “Geez, what are you doing with those white spots there? That’s a couple hours. And we’re not even looking at the weekend. There’s a couple hours.” And the answer was almost always, “I don’t know. Texting?”
Gregg: And the truth is is that we do have more windows in which, and no, it’s not, “I’m going to find 15 minutes between the other 12, 15 hours that I’m working.”, it’s not that. We do have little windows so that’s the first thing.
Gregg: The second is, how are you using that time? There should definitely be no one who is practicing two hours a day who is not making progress and it’s what you’re doing in that time, but even short little bursts of practice, and I think most people would be amazed, if you manage it right, if you put the right things into your practice, starting with just 10 minutes, finding that 10 minute time, will get you much better at things within five days or so. That’s usually the plan that I use.
Gregg: And that will create motivation to do more. One of the reasons we think we don’t have time when we practice is we tend to think, especially if we’re older and dedicated and really want to do something, “I’ve got to find 30, 60, 90 minutes here because I’m going to buckle down and get it done.”
Gregg: That’s very hard to get started. What we’re talking about there is something in your brain called orienting selective attention. Going from what you were doing to what you are doing. And the harder the task it is that you’re going to undertake, the harder it is to actually do that.
Gregg: So if you reduce the time and say, “I will be perfectly satisfied with five minutes of practice five days a week.”, or 10 minutes of practice, that itself won’t be enough. And your natural reaction is going to be, “Oh, that’s not going to work. I’m not even going to start.
Gregg: However, if you put the right things in that time and really manage the way the brain learns, you will begin to notice improvement which will make you look forward, and there’s science on this, make you look forward to doing more practicing. So it really, I think finding the time might not be as hard as people think. It’s not being willing to put in five or 10 minutes because we think it’s worthless.
Gregg: You can really, and this isn’t, “Well, if you do it for a month you’ll get it.” Within a matter of days, you will notice how much better you get if you apply things like deliberate practice.
We’re joined by violinist and Suzuki pedagogue, Laura Nerenberg. Laura is founder of Rideau Falls Violins where she teaches based on the principle that all children are born with the potential to develop a high level of instrument ability and creative ability. http://musl.ink/pod231
Laura shares the inspiring story of how she learned to combine improvisation and classical violin – and how improvisation has impacted her teaching.
In this conversation we talk about:
– Laura’s upbringing learning violin with the Suzuki method – and some of the myths and misconceptions people have about Suzuki’s ear-based approach.
– How Laura didn’t realize until later in life that she had learned a lot about improvisation growing up with a jazz-pianist father.
– The Creative Ability Development framework which empowers learners to improvise from the outset, and in a way that focuses on listening and personal expression.
Even if you’ve never improvised, or you’re an avid improviser keen to learn more, you’re going to love this conversation.
Watch the episode: http://musl.ink/pod231
Links and Resources
Laura Nerenberg – Rideau Falls Violins : http://laura-nerenberg.squarespace.com/
Laura Nerenberg with Triptych Piano Trio – Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/triptychpianotrio/
Shinichi Suzuki – Nurtured By Love : https://www.amazon.com/Nurtured-Love-Classic-Approach-Education/dp/0874875846
Suzuki Association : https://suzukiassociation.org/
Alice Kanack – Kanack School Of Musical Artistry : http://kanack.org/alice-kanack/
Art of Improvisation Workshops : https://www.musicforpeople.org/wp/events-music-improvisation-workshops/art-of-improvisation-2020/
David Darling : https://www.daviddarling.com/
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We’re joined by violinist and Suzuki pedagogue, Laura Nerenberg. Laura is founder of Rideau Falls Violins where she teaches based on the principle that all children are born with the potential to develop a high level of instrument ability and creative ability.
Laura shares the inspiring story of how she learned to combine improvisation and classical violin – and how improvisation has impacted her teaching.
In this conversation we talk about:
Laura’s upbringing learning violin with the Suzuki method – and some of the myths and misconceptions people have about Suzuki’s ear-based approach.
How Laura didn’t realize until later in life that she had learned a lot about improvisation growing up with a jazz-pianist father.
The Creative Ability Development framework which empowers learners to improvise from the outset, and in a way that focuses on listening and personal expression.
Even if you’ve never improvised, or you’re an avid improviser keen to learn more, you’re going to love this conversation.
Laura: Hi, I’m Laura Nerenberg from Rideau Falls Violins and this is Musicality Now.
Christopher: Welcome to the show, Laura, thank you for joining us today.
Laura:
Thank you. It’s my pleasure.
Christopher: I’ve been so looking forward to this one because you got in touch after hearing our interview with Diane Allen. And what you have in common with Diane is that you are a violinist and a violin teacher with a particular interest in improvisation. But actually, I think that’s maybe where the commonality ends in that you have very different backgrounds and very different ways of approaching things. And I’m super interested to unpack this with you, and hear some of your insights on improvisation and classical music and violin and how all of those things can go together. So before we dive into all of that, let’s start out at the very beginning, if we could with your own background as a violinist, when did you get started? And what kind of violin learning did you do?
Laura: So, I started violin when I was three and a half, using the Suzuki method. And the reason for that was we were living, my parents and I, I was an only child at the time, we were living in Canada’s Arctic, and there was a fiddler in our village. I was a toddler at the time, and my mother was really entranced with fiddle music. And simultaneously she heard an item on the radio about Suzuki violin. So when we moved to the big city after that, she signed us both up. And she quit soon after, but I obviously kept playing and the Suzuki method was a good fit for me. We moved cities a lot, and then I was no longer a Suzuki students after a few years just because we moved cities and found a different teacher.
Christopher: Got you. And longtime listeners and viewers of the show will have heard us mention Suzuki in passing, but it’s not something we’ve really covered in depth before. So I wonder if you wouldn’t mind taking a minute or two just to explain what is that particular approach to learning violin in particular, but I believe other instruments too.
Laura: So Suzuki method actually started with a violin. Shinichi Suzuki himself was a violinist and a violin teacher. And the basic premise that the core philosophy is that every child can learn. And so given the right environment created by the teacher, and by the parents at home, that every child can learn to play their instrument to a very high ability. Going along with that is the idea following the way we learn language, the idea that young children learn to speak before they learn to read, and so young musicians using the Suzuki approach, learn to play their instrument before they learn to read the music off the page.
Laura: Now, this has so many misconceptions because unfortunately, many stereotypes became attached to Suzuki trained individuals, especially concerning reading. My students learn the names of the notes on the instrument and the real names of the strings from the very start, the first few lessons, the first few lessons where they get the instrument. And in fact we’re singing the A Major scale with real note names from the first lesson. So the only thing is because the children are so young when they start, my beginners are age three to six, that it’s important for them to get comfortable on the instrument, learning music by ear by listening to recordings at home and developing a sense of the inherent logic of the instruments.
Laura: So they figure out the pieces by ear, we may give them a starting note the parent or I may give them a starting note. And then they experiment and they listen, is this, does it go up or down? Does it go to the next string? Does it skip or does it use stepwise motion? So we talk a lot about the building blocks of melodies while they are figuring out that logic in the instrument, and then I introduced reading using other materials. I don’t use the Suzuki books for reading. They weren’t intended to teach reading. It’s not a step by step approach for reading. It’s a step by step approach for the technique of that specific instrument.
Laura: I found it a really great fit for me now as a teacher, because during graduate school, I studied in performance. But I also took Suzuki pedagogy courses for two years, covering the beginning stages all the way through the end of book eight and there are 10 books for violin. And then I went and got teaching jobs after grad school. And I found that it gave me such a solid sense of how to start a beginner, but also how to transition through the different phases of a developing violinist.
Christopher: Got you. And one of the myths and misconceptions, or at least fuzzy topics when it comes to Suzuki that I’ve encountered is, I think often it’s associated with these very serious high level virtuoso musicians. And if you put your kid into Suzuki class, it’s because you expect them to become a concert master. And other people saying, because it’s ear based it’s all about perfect pitch and they have to have perfect pitch or it doesn’t work and there’s a lot of confusion about those two topics, but from your description just then, it doesn’t really sound like either of those things is particularly the case.
Laura: What I neglected to mention is Suzuki’s goal, his goal for himself and I believe that’s my goal as well, is not so much about producing top level players, but it’s about developing beautiful heart and about helping children through the study of whatever instrument is chosen, developing a noble sense of humanity. And I think a lot of this comes from Suzuki’s reaction coming out of World War Two, we kind of have to look at it from a historical context because he was Japanese and World War II decimated Japan.
Laura: And when he developed his theory about using a nurturing approach and praising every small step a child makes, but also practicing in a disciplined daily fashion. This was met with resistance among Japanese parents, especially mothers because of course at that time, it was mainly the mothers bringing their children to lessons and practicing with the children at home. Because the idea of pairing a very high respect for the teacher, which was already there in Japan, with showing sincere love and nurturing care for your child, and praising each of their small accomplishments was new, new to Japanese culture.
Laura: And in fact, I think that aspect really has been one of the ones that has made it so appealing for North American and Western culture is I think we typically already had this nurturing attitude toward children. I’m sure I’m throwing in such broad generalizations it’s almost illegal. But this is my perception and having spent time talking with many Suzuki teachers and teacher trainers over the years that I think it can be easy, in fact, in the Suzuki world, to get so nurturing that we kind of forget that we also have to have high standards, and ask our students and our children to repeat things many times which is required to acquire a skill.
Laura: I teach my own daughter, and I’ve been teaching her since she was two and now she’s 10. And even though we practice every day, I can’t say it always go smoothly. You still have to remind them to stay on track, and you still have to guide them. But to do it with love and sincere appreciation for those small steps is a cornerstone of the Suzuki approach.
Christopher: Terrific. Yeah, I have this really vivid memory and you’ll have to forgive me I forget the name of the book, but I read Suzuki’s own book on kind of the philosophy of the approach not one of the method books, but the short volume he wrote that kind of introduced-
Laura: Natured by Love.
Christopher: Yes, thank you.
Laura: I’m sorry. Natured by Love.
Christopher: Natured by Love. I remember it, probably eight, nine years ago, reading that book on a holiday and I have such a vivid memory because it was so striking the kind of language he uses and the kind of way he presents the whole journey of learning music. And it’s not at all what I was expecting from these little tidbits I gleaned about Suzuki method over the years. So I’m glad we unpacked that a little bit for those who are new to the area. And having heard my introduction, talking about improvisation and then I heard you talk a little bit about this ear start that the Suzuki method focuses on. Probably some people are like, “Oh, so they just naturally improvise from day one?” I don’t think that’s the case, though. So can you talk a little bit about your own experience, you were learning you use this ear base approach, but were you improvising back then in the early years?
Laura: Well, that’s a fairly interesting question, because I think my upbringing, musically speaking was a typical. I mean, I was a Suzuki trained student, but my parents had this approach of not having TV in the house at least till I was a bit older. And I only had records vinyl records. And my father is an amateur jazz pianist. So the concept of improvising was there in the house, I fell asleep to him improvising on the piano for his own relaxation every night for over a decade.
Laura: And so even though I didn’t improvise on my violin, I was aware of improvisation. In fact, I started improvising vocally when I was really young and I don’t even think I was aware, except that I have very vivid memories of my parents asking me to stop singing sometimes because I think it just drove them crazy. And I would listen to Vivaldi’s four seasons so often, this was one of my favorite LPs. And I have memories of singing it and singing one of the concertos I think spring and then deviating and kind of inventing my own melodies, but not really differentiating the two, not really packing Vivaldi and Laura. And that was probably the first time I’ve ever improvised.
Laura: Absolutely I never… I didn’t have a lot of facility on the violin. And this comes as a surprise to some of my students, but I found violin extremely difficult as a child and as a team. And I think it was only through sheer force of will and the fact that I loved making music so much that I ended up pursuing it in university because it never would have occurred to me to improvise on my violin. Now, I think if I had had a teacher who had introduced it to me in a way that made it approachable and doable, I would have done it because I was a pretty beautiful student.
Laura: But I did improvise on the piano. I studied piano starting at the age of six or seven. And when I was a young teenager, a little bit full of angst I’d come home from school and just sit at the piano when I was supposed to be practicing, and I would start my practices by improvising, again, not fully aware that that’s what I was doing, not labeling it. And I had invented a little chaconne, and I didn’t actually know what a chaconne was. But now in retrospect, I remember having done that I’d created a little baseline for myself. And I think it was in D Dorian again, not knowing modes. And I would play the bass in the left hand and just improvising the right over and over. And it was just a way to funnel whatever the stuff from the day when you’re 14, 13 and you have emotion to process. And then I would get into my practice, usually with a little prodding from my mom.
Christopher: Got you. And so how did you get from there to where you are now? Where did an improvisation on the violin enter the picture? Was it a natural extension of what you were doing on piano?
Laura: It was absolutely not a natural extension of what I was doing on the piano. At the end of graduate school, I had had some colleagues who had participated in a program in the US, I, of course live in Canada. And it was a program that specialized in improvisation jazz and fill music. And I thought this would be so great. Plus it was free. If you could send an audition and they accepted you, all you have to pay was airfare. And you had four weeks in sunny California, which really appealed to me.
Laura: And so back in 2001, I was accepted to this four week program. And I went so excited to dip my toes into improvisation. I could play a few jazz standards just by ear with my dad, but I never improvised, I would just play the melody, and then he would improvise. And then I play the melody again at the end. So I was really excited to learn about this. And I went there with huge high expectations. And it turned out to be a really interesting program in that we had a big chunk of our time devoted to just being in an orchestra rehearsal, which after years of youth orchestra and university orchestra that was really familiar, only we played jazz arrangements, but still you’re not improvising, you’re reading the part.
Laura: And then there were these jazz classes for the newbies because this program had very seasoned improvisers, and also straight classical musicians, which I was a part of. And I remember going to… There were some jazz swing classes, which basically just consisted of us playing a descending mixolydian scale over and over to a swung beat, it didn’t really feel like we were learning anything. And then we would just watch really good players play but not really play ourselves. And then there was a blues class and I was so excited because I really liked the blues. And I was like, “I think I could do this if weren’t a key that weren’t too crazy,” because improvising in harder keys on your instrument is harder even if you’re a good player.
Laura: And I got there and there was a Grammy Award winning coach, I think this is going to be so great. And they had some great backup players playing a groove for us. And they explained the blues and they put it up on the board and what the notes were that we could play. And then they went around the room to the newbies, then I realized I was about fifth, and there were about 10 of us, that this so called wonderful coach was yelling. If he perceived that you didn’t quite know what to do, if you were searching and you didn’t quite have a confident approach from the start, he would just yell a note at you and tell you to play that note.
Laura: And when he came to me, because I hadn’t quite decided what note I was going to play, and perhaps I looked a little hesitant. He just yelled a note. “That wasn’t really the note I want to play, but just give me a second. I have a few notes to choose from. I’m just looking and I’m listening and you’re interfering with that process.” Now, hindsight it’s 2020 and I realized now what was happening that he interfered with my process, not only because he was being aggressive about it and truly yelling to cut through the sound of the band, but also he didn’t give me a chance to just listen, see what my options were. Or not even see my options were, so just use my ear and see what it was I chose to play.
Laura: And so I left that class so dis-heartened. And I mean, I had looked forward to it so much and so it was like plummeting, an emotional plummeting, and a musical plummeting and thinking there must be a different way. And I think I probably just went and got a coffee and read a book for while to try to put it out of my mind. And that evening, came back to the practice rooms to practice as one does in these summer music programs, and one of my colleagues who was actually there to study violin, but was also a really fine pianist. He was in a practice room, playing piano, and I think heard a while and I knocked on his door and we started chatting about the day and I just told him about this experience that I found very disappointing. And he said, “Just a second, just a second. I’m developing a new system. I’m actually a jazz pianist. I know I’m here for violin but jazz piano is my main thing.”
Laura: And he said, “You’re good player. You know E major, you know how to play an E major. Mendelssohn Concerto last movement. I know you know that.” So he just started arpeggiating and he would record with no really perceptible sense of time and no change. It was just E major and here he is on the keyboard. And I unpacked my violin and I started to play and time stood still, or time went by really fast, I lost complete sense of time, which I didn’t know what goes on in the brain when we improvise, and we’re in that flow. I know that’s because the prefrontal cortex shuts down and the medial frontal cortex lights up and so we do lose a sense of time. And also I felt an overwhelming sense of calm and bliss and capacity to do this.
Laura: So we finished playing and again, I have no idea how long we played for. It felt like no time at all and it felt like hours and I’m sure I had a huge smile on my face and maybe I even welled up a bit. And I thanked him and we talked some more and then I just went on my day, I probably didn’t even go and practice I probably went back to the dorm just to revel in that. And that experience sat with me for years. After that California four weeks intensive program, I participated in some jazz camps, pure jazz camps outside of Ottawa, which is where I live.
Laura: And they were really focused on jazz, and we would be in a combo and that experience of just knowing that I can access that freedom, that that was available to me, given the environment. So there is a link, of course with Suzuki that the environment shaped the outcome. Knowing that that was accessible to me, really made everything else possible. It made it possible for me to be in a jazz combo, not be too sure of the chords because they’re going by fast and deciding not to let that worry me too much. And just using my ear and listening and finding notes I could and I took lots of lessons and participated in these camps, that that first experience with that colleague, sowed the seeds for seeing that capability in myself, and I’m sure it sowed the seeds for seeing that capability in all my students.
Christopher: Fantastic. Yeah, I think it can’t be underestimated how important that mindset is when it comes to improvisation. It depends on your background for sure. But we literally, we call our first improvisation module inside musical you approaching improvisation. And it’s mostly just about mindset and about thinking about making mistakes and about taking some ownership and agency of the sounds you’re going to make on your instrument, because I think until you flip that switch, and you say I can improvise, there’s no point learning all the scales and the rules and the vocab is there.
Laura: No.
Christopher: So I think it’s so interesting to hear you had that critical, pivotal experience. And what I’d like to know most is you mentioned those ongoing jazz workshops, but could you tell us a bit more about how you built on that, once that gateway had been opened for you? I’m sure people listening and watching they’re like, so was she just magically a great sounding improviser after that or did she still have to learn how to improvise or how does that work?
Laura: So I think that all of us as musicians, and I think this is regardless of level, I think there’s a lot that we can access that we don’t access when we play. And I think that experience of feeling that I could with that colleague in that practice room, then gave me this courage, but also allowed me in circumstances that followed being in a jazz combo at a camp or because of the experience at the camp, a musician hearing the play and saying, “Oh, she’s kind of good. She plays jazz violin, but it’s not like Stephane Grappelli. It’s her own thing,” and then asking me to come play. I started playing for these brunch, jazz brunches at this little restaurant in Ottawa. So very small audience, very small band and I play on just a few tunes.
Laura: And what that did was, because I had grown up listening jazz I already knew the language without knowing I knew the language. It had already been sown. Those other seeds, the seeds of understanding the jazz language had been sown. And my father had never formally taught us very much, but he did explain a little bit how jazz works. At first we play the tune through and that’s called the head, and then each player in the band might do a solo over the chord progression or the chord changes of that. So I knew that again, these are things he had mentioned when I was young. And sometimes with parents you selectively listen even when they can be just brilliant lessons and things you’re going to use later on.
Laura: So he had said these things and then it was like a part of my brain opened up and these ideas came back, reinforced by my experiences at these jazz camps, and then playing with actual jazz colleagues. And I started going to jam sessions in Ottawa. And it’s not like New York City. I mean, there’s some great players, but there’s also room for less experienced players at the jam sessions, and definitely I was a very experienced classical player, but definitely less experienced. And I had a good friend who was a bass player and we would go up and do totally experimental stuff at the end of the jam session when people were not really paying attention and enjoying a few drinks.
Laura: And that was, again, that was great, because it just gave me the chance to play. And so I think it’s a combination of luck, because there’s luck involved, but also having had the early experiences of being exposed to jazz. Now, that doesn’t say that if you didn’t have the early experiences of being exposed to jazz, that you can’t compensate for that I had them all accidentally because I thought to play jazz and play jazz albums in-house. You can certainly do that intentionally and listen to jazz on your own and go to shows and listen to recordings and nourish your understanding of jazz harmony that way. And then through listening it will inform the choices you make when you play.
Christopher: Cool. Well, I knew we were kindred spirits to begin with. But so much of what you just said is perfectly aligned with the kind of philosophy we take at Musical U, where we really encourage people to believe that they have a lot more musical knowledge dormant inside them than they realize. And with the right tools in the right approaches, they can really leverage that to sound good quickly, rather than needing to study everything from scratch. But I want to make sure we clarify something for those following along and you emphasize jazz there and the importance of that early jazz education. Were you doing that because jazz is particularly important for improvising in general, or is it because in those years, your improv was in a jazz context?
Laura: More the latter. In those years, my improv was more in a jazz context, in part because that’s what was available to me. In the early 2000s, it was jazz that was available to me and it didn’t occur to me to introduce improvisation to my students until I was invited to participate as a teacher to a teacher workshop. There was a guest teacher. Her name is Dr. Sarah Smolin and she’s based in Ithaca, New York. And she came up to Ottawa to give a workshop to one of the big Suzuki schools in town and I’m an independent teacher, and they very graciously invited me to participate.
Laura: And she talked about this philosophy called creative ability development, which focuses on teaching improvisation to classically trained string and piano students. And I stat with… I mean, I don’t think I breathed for the whole workshop, it was so in line with what I was doing with jazz, and it was the perfect timing for that. And so right away, she and I really hit it off and I invited her to come listen to some jazz with me. I had a friend who was playing and we went and we talked so much and she encouraged me to nourish my own creative voice by attending a wall-to-wall five day improvisation workshop not focused exclusively on jazz, but really focused on the gamut, called the art of improvisation.
Laura: And I did that in the summer of 2003. And that made it so that I wasn’t able to just improvise in jazz, but because I had all these classical chops when we go to school and learn all our concertos, I was able to improvise in a classical setting, or put down my violin and play the drums. I mean, it was such a magical five days and it left me feeling like I was even more capable than before. And so much so that I kept looking at the calendar every year to see the next time I could go and I did end up going again in 2007. And having an even better time because by then I’d already been teaching improvisation to my students more regularly, I’d been performing more, and I was more confident in my abilities as an improviser.
Christopher: So something we’ve covered a fair bit on this show before is the apparent mystery of improvising, because for those who don’t do it, it can seem so mysterious, so magical. And when you look around, there are various schools of thought on how one learns to improvise. And I won’t take us down a rabbit hole there, but it prompts me to want to ask, thinking of that art of improvisation workshop you attended. You mentioned that five days back-to-back all improv focus different genres, but what were they teaching? What were they equipping you with to take you from, I’m doing improv to I’m now better at doing improv?
Laura: So I have a confession to make. I peeked at one of the instructors notebooks, I think we were laying our cases down on a table and I saw some open notebooks, and I saw my name and of course, anyone who sees their name is drawn to it. It’s possible not to be I think that’s psychological. And somehow, I don’t know if they still run the the workshop this way because there must have been 50 of us or 70 of us participating, it seemed quite large. There were notes about what my goals were because when I’d registered, I’d said, one of my goals as an improviser, was to be comfortable in the higher positions. Was for my improvisation technique to be at the level of my playing technique, because I felt like my playing of orchestral music was here and my improv, like I never went past third position or below. I really stayed in the lower part of the instrument where I felt comfortable.
Laura: And so incredibly at certain points in the workshop… At one point in the workshop, one of the instructors had me stand. I’m pretty sure it was in front of everybody. We’d have these big sessions every morning and then we break up into smaller groups throughout the day. And he had me play and sing at the same time, in fourth position on the A string on the violin and my voice is not as high as it was in 2003. But he said, “Just sing what you play, or play what you sing,” rather. And there must have been some background something maybe he said at the piano. I don’t really remember. And all eyes were on me. It was a very weird experience. But he was David Darling who’s one of the great improvising musicians of our time, Grammy Award winning Renegade cellist, maybe renegades the wrong word, but I think he was seen as a renegade for at least part of his career.
Laura: And here, he was telling me to do this. And so I did it. And that connection between my voice and my playing was very meaningful. That was another very meaningful experience. And I’m going to pair that with four years later when I returned in 2007. I had a private lesson with him, I said you could sign up for private lessons. And I didn’t really know what we were going to do if he was going to have me do exercises and he said, “Oh, you, you can play.” We were sitting with his cello and I unpacked my violin, and we played for an hour. There was no format. There was no talking there was only laughing we would finish something and then we’d laugh. And I think it was like two enormous 30 minute pieces that we just created spontaneously, and was so incredibly inspiring.
Laura: And again, it’s a situation where you suddenly feel this is possible and accessible to me, given the environment that I’m in. I know for a fact I’m a person who feeds off the musical energy of my colleagues, chamber music is my absolute favorite thing to do. And I have a trio and I always feel so energized after we rehearse. And so I know that practicing alone with recordings is not the same. But between those chances that you have to have those really great experiences with colleagues, you do have to find a way to keep nourishing your own creative voice. And so I feel very fortunate that I’ve had these incredible group experiences, and one on one experiences. But also I’ve found a way through the creative ability development approach to keep the creative juices flowing, so to speak.
Christopher: Yeah, so let’s talk a little bit more about that if we may, because I believe it’s a big part now of how you teach improv to your students. What is the creative ability development framework?
Laura: So the creative ability development is a philosophy that uses musical improvisation to nurture and grow the creative side of the brain. So just the way the Suzuki philosophy is about helping children become noble adults. The creative ability development is about developing the creative ability in the brain, over and above its use in music, but it uses music improvisation as a vehicle as a tool for that. The person who developed the philosophy, her name is Alice Kanack, K-A-N-A-C-K and she has her own school in Rochester, New York and you can definitely look her up online.
Laura: And she came up with this philosophy in the 1980s when she was teaching violin in New York City. Her background is as a violinist and violistin composer and she had in her teaching studio someone who I’m sure she would agree because she told me this, we would call the unteachable student. I use air quotes, and that’s a horrible thing to say, but it’s a student who doesn’t seem to be able to learn, given any approach, whether it’s scales, or just read a basic orchestra part. And so I think this was a student who’d been passed from one teacher to another. And so here the student arrived in her studio and she mentions the student in her own philosophy text, which is found at the beginning of all her music publications.
Laura: And she just thought, okay, maybe he needs a different approach. And because she had a composition background, a master’s in composition, she just started playing on the piano some basic chord structures in the easiest key for violin, which is A major, that’s the first key violinists learn in. And pretty soon he was able to play in tune because he was tuning to the piano and choosing the notes he wanted to play. And so if he wanted to C sharp if you mind said, I want to hear C sharp, he would adjust his finger to make sure the C sharp was in tune with the chords she was playing on the piano. And so she had kind of an aha moment where she thought, wait a second, this is not just a way for us to pass the time in the lesson. He’s actually getting something really profound out of this.
Laura: And so she developed a full methodology, including pre-recorded tracks, and at the time, cassette tapes, and now CDs and hopefully in the future MP3s, where children play along with a given track for two to three weeks as a creativity etude. And the tracks range from two to five minutes long. And the child does it for about as long as they want. Sometimes I have students who want to do it twice when they’re at home and others, it’s a longer track, they’ll just play for 45 seconds or so as long as they do it regularly the same way we ask our students to play scales and etudes and other technical exercises.
Laura: And the approach is so step by step and mirrors the key structure of Suzuki book 1 for violin and then she wrote and recorded one for viola and cello so it mirrors the key structure for viola and cello, which is a fifth lower than violin. And then she wrote one for piano, and I believe for piano it focuses on F sharp pentatonic and then C major in the mode of C. So for violin for instance, it starts in A major and then goes to D pentatonic and B minor blues, and B minor blues and D pentatonic is the same notes. It’s really easy on the violin, actually. You don’t have to think about it too hard. You just say what fingers to use and what strings and suddenly the violinist is improvising in D pentatonic and everything sounds good because in the pentatonic scale, every note sounds good with every other node. So it’s incredibly satisfying.
Laura: And then it’s until the end, there are 28 tracks in that first book. At the end, it’s all G major and the modes of G. So the way the recordings are structured, you’re playing in G major first and then you tell your student, it’s still in G major, but then it’s in A Dorian, or D Mixolydian. And they don’t have to know that. They just have to know they still stick around in G major, and you could suggest it’s in G major, but you might want to start on an A, you might want to hang around A if it’s an A Dorian, for instance. But I’ve sort of gotten a few steps ahead, but that’s a little bit of the approach. Did you want me to give a little demonstration?
Christopher: Please do, yeah.
Laura: Okay, so I’m going to turn on my Bluetooth speaker and my iPad here. So the very first exercise that I get my students to improvise with, the first track has a title and it’s called What’s The Answer to My Question? And that’s because the violin on the track plays a chord progression, a baseline, but plays it in a soprano register. And all my students learn to sing that before they play. So they start by singing it. And there’s a periodicity to this particular track. So first, the violin plays that baseline in a soprano register, and then it gets transferred to the cello in the left hand of the piano and there’s different harmonizations. No, the harmonizations are the same, but different textures of accompaniment.
Laura: And when you hear it, it’s going to sound quite thick, because beginning improvisers need a place to hide. They need to go into the music to find what their voice is, and this process can take up to three years of daily practice of the exercise so that we’re not getting, right away, hardcore playing. In fact, it often surprises parents that they’ll have a very outgoing child who plays their pieces like this and then they improvise like this. One other thing I want to say before I play is, Alice came up with three rules that I have passed along to my students as well. And when it’s time to improvise, we create a bubble protected by these three rules.
Laura: Rule number one is that there’s no such thing as a mistake. And that includes technique on the instrument. So once we get everything set up beautifully, the mom can’t come and fix the wrist and can’t say, “Your pinkie is not curved.” We leave the child alone and of course, we want everything set up beautifully before we start. Rule number two is applause and silence. So we keep quiet while that child is playing and we clap at the end to show appreciation for the effort and for the creation. And when we play together when I do improvisation games with all my students, we clap to say thank you for sharing your idea with me, because of course, we know great improvisers borrow from each other constantly.
Laura: And then rule number three is never criticize a friend. And this is a very important rule for parents, especially the most diligent parents, who will say, when the child’s searching for a note, “Why don’t you just play a C sharp? Just play an open string,” and who get to feel a little bit of anxiety. And I know it seems like I’m parodying, but the anxiety is real. They really want so much for their child and they don’t realize that this is like watering a seed that you water the seed and give it sunlight, but you don’t yell at it if you don’t see a sprout right away. Because of course, it’s developing the root first. So a lot of the work is going on behind the scenes and very quietly as the child’s voice emerges.
Laura: So, with that long preamble, I’m going to play what is called the creative ability development twinkle. It’s what’s the answer to my question and you’ll pardon my voice because I’m going to sing the way I asked my students to sing. Then I’m going to play like a somewhat beginner student would play, a students who can play the A major scale and Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.
Laura: (Plays Vioilin)
Laura: It’s a pretty long track it’s about four minutes long. And it’s so lovely because the periodicity of the chords allow the child to experientially understand the concept of a passacaglia without burdening them with the label passacaglia when they’re five. We can attach a label later on.
Christopher: And for those who aren’t classically trained, what is a passacaglia?
Laura: Oh, the passacaglia is a composition based on a recurring bassline. Usually, it’s in three. This passacaglia is in two so usually a passacaglia will be 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. And over top of the bassline, the melodies and the counter melodies will change, but the harmonic structure will stay the same.
Christopher: Thank you. And I think that gives a really great taste of what this approach can look like and what you might be doing in your lessons with your students. I wonder if we could use that maybe as a way to pick apart what matters and what doesn’t in this world view on improvisation because as I alluded to earlier, there’s a lot of different schools of thought. And in particular, what I’d love to hear you speak on is the relationship between improvising and instinct and music theory rules and memorized vocab and ear training skills. When you’re teaching your students improvisation, what’s the balance between those or which feature and which don’t?
Laura: So the younger the students is, the less information you give them that is not relevant. And that is not relevant, I know is subjective. But with a student that starts with me. So let’s say it’s a five or six year old beginner, we allow the setup to happen, I will probably do some improvisation using the piano with a different book, just as we wait for the physical to gel on the instrument. And then when we move to the violin, because at that point, they’re only playing in A major, I may say stick to the A and the E strings just so they don’t go on the low strings.
Laura: So they’re the three rules that govern how improvisation happens in the studio. And then there are rules or parameters for each of the exercises. And it’s hard to balance those two because sometimes a child will make what I call ugly sounds on purpose. So they know there’s no such thing as a mistake. So they’ll look, sometimes they’ll stare right at their mom, which is a bit of another topic. But as long as the instrument is fine, we know that there is music out there that is not beautiful. We know that there is art, great art that is not about beauty, but it’s about a search for truth, or it’s about sarcasm, or cynicism. And I think it’s okay to let a child do that.
Laura: But coming back to the theory, I will just tell them the finger pattern. So if they only play an A major, all I have to say is you can play any note you want on the A and E string. If they play in other keys, if they play, for instance, also in G major, but they’re starting improvisation, and we start an A major I will say just stick to the A and E strings and keep your second finger touching your third finger. And this can seem anti-theoretical, and it’s not that I’m not teaching theory to my students, when my students will learn scales, learn the name of the scale and the name of the notes, and they know what they’re playing. But when it comes time to improvise for young children, that’s too much information.
Laura: Now, the differences with teenagers, I’ve often been asked to teach workshops. I’ve worked with a string program at a local arts high school where I’ve gone several times over several weeks to work with the grade nines there. And in that situation, they need more information. They need information, because for them, it’s a comfort, they need to know why they’re being asked to do this. And of course, teenagers are usually self conscious, particularly when asked to do something outside of their comfort zone in front of their peers. And so when I do work with preteens and teens who have not been improvising from the start, I give them a lot more background information. It’s a little more wordy.
Laura: And when I work with my own teenage students, I do say, “Today we’re going to learn the blue scale.” And we learned the blues scale and I even have some written materials. “We’re going to play it off a page. We’re going to do a B minor blues. And let’s play this B minor blues or we’re going to do D Dorian. And Can anyone tell me D Dorian is in the same key signature as what key?” And they… “Oh, okay,” and they try… I said there’s no sharps, there’s no flats. “Okay, it’s C major.” So we’ve definitely talk about theory with my older students. So it’s about being sensitive to the needs of those children.
Laura: Now, my older students now have all been improvising since they were little. And so when I introduce a key to them, it’s not a burden, because they already know how to improvise and they know that if they play a C sharp in D Dorian or an F sharp, they will hear it immediately, first of all. But me having told them the scale is less important than how they decide… What they decide to do with that note, that “outside note”, note outside of the key. I don’t know. I think that answers your question and then some.
Christopher: It’s really helpful. Thank you. And is there any… How do you help them develop their judgment or their taste or their experiential output in improvising? I ask because we do it a certain way at Musical U and I’m curious to know, is that conversation happening? Are you exploring with them, “Hey, how did that improvisation go?” Or is it kind of respected as a closed bubble that that’s that and they do it their way?
Laura: So that’s a really good question. And if I notice that a student, who… If it seems like a student hasn’t really been practicing their improvisation, and I think that would be when I’ve assigned the exercise, when they come to it, and they don’t really seem sure at all of what their choices are, then the first question is, how often did you do this, this past week? Because if I just assume they’ve done it every day, then that’s not helpful. So, assuming they’ve done it every day then… I have this one student, and he’s a real, real analytical teenager, he’s going to be a brilliant scientist, he’s going to make some fabulous discoveries. And he also plays the violin. He tends to fall into this one bowing pattern that he does all the time. And that’s where he’s comfortable. Now, the notes always change but he’s always doing the same slur pattern.
Laura: So, once in improvisation is over. Like you said, I don’t go back and analyze it with him. We don’t take it apart, but I then add another rule. I’ll say, “Okay, I want you to do this exercise again. And this time, every time the passacaglia comes back, I want you to change articulations.” I said, “It can be as simple as doing one legato, one staccato, one legato, one staccato if you want to do that.” And then he’ll do that. And I’ll say, “Okay, let’s do a different rule. How about this time, you have to change rhythms every time the passacaglia comes back?”
Laura: And so the way you address what could seem to be like a student being stuck in a certain way of playing, this is assuming the student is actually practicing, it’s just to create another rule. It’s just to give them another parameter to be within or I’ll say, “Okay, now this time, it can only be staccato, and you have to put at least two rests in there. I want to hear to rest if you need to take your bow off the string you take your off the string,” or a student who’s really afraid to go in through a position to improvise are up higher than first position, I’ll say, “This improvisation is only in third position. You have the choice of how many notes you want to play,” basically telling them one note is fine, but they’ve got to get in third position and stay in third position for the minute and a half, or whatever it is.
Laura: And of course, even if I say, “You can only play one note, if you feel like it,” they will inevitably play more notes. And maybe try to go down and then giggle. But it’s never seen as a discounting of what their previous improvisation was. I never have had to go there because then what’s happening is they will not feel safe. And, above all, I want them to feel like they’re safe because through that feeling of safety comes freedom. And then the paradox with improvisation is the more strict you make the parameters, the more creative they need to get, and the more that will push them gently, not necessarily totally out of their comfort zone, but I like to think of it as making their comfort bigger.
Christopher: Absolutely fantastic. Thank you. Well, that really adds a lot of interesting detail and ideas, I’m sure for some in our audience to take away and start applying for themselves. You’ve been using this approach in your teaching for over a decade, I believe and working with children and with adults. Recently, you’ve been moving more into helping other teachers adopt some of these ideas. Could you tell us a bit about what you’re up to over on your Facebook page with that?
Laura: Yes, well, I’ve been a creative ability development improvisation teacher trainer and coach since 2016. And I’ve held in-person workshops here where I live and also in Montreal, and informally in the United States. When I was teaching at a Suzuki Institute, some colleagues who knew what I was up to said, “Please, please, we have an hour and a half free, can you give us a workshop?” So we found a room and this camp and without any of my notes, I did a teacher training session. So I’ve been doing these in-person teacher training sessions, and now I’ve started to go online, which has been really interesting.
Laura: So on my Facebook page at Lauren Zarya Nerenberg, if you go to Facebook, and if you can’t remember, my middle name is Zarya, you can just search up my whole name and eventually you’ll find me. I’ve been posting videos about different aspects about teaching improvisation to children. Because I’ve been doing this for so long and I have maybe a slightly unusual background with the jazz having nourished my creative side when I was young. I realized that many, many classical teachers are interested in offering this to their students, but they’re just not sure where to start. And for many of them, they assume improvisation equals jazz. And of course, we absolutely know that’s not true.
Laura: I believe you’ve had Jeffrey Agrell on your podcast. He’s someone that I’m familiar with and I’ve been in contact with him and I’ve heard him on other podcasts as well. And he said something once that really stuck with me, he said, “For the vast majority of the history of music, creating our own music, improvising was a normal way of music making.” And it’s only relatively recently in the history of music, that it’s left the world of classical music and has been relegated to other genres. So jazz for sure and country and fiddling. And then in the classical world, it’s only the organists who still improvise regularly. And that’s great for them and it’s great for the parishioners and for the bride and groom, but I think it’s something that’s lacking.
Laura: And if we think of Johann Sebastian Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, these are the monuments of the world of classical music and they were also incredible improvisers, very much admired for their skills and as improvisers. It just so happened that these three were triple threats. They could improvise, they could play brilliantly and they could compose. Well, that’s great. I think most of us are not going to be triple threats, but that doesn’t preclude us from also doing these other things. Not only playing the music written by another person, but by allowing ourselves to see what we have to create.
Laura: And just because I’m not Stephane Grappelli, or I’m not Wynton Marsalis or Miles Davis, it doesn’t mean that I don’t have something to say, and that it ends there. I think we wouldn’t tell someone to stop learning to play the violin, or you’re never going to be Itzhak Perlman, so you might as well quit now. Thank goodness, you’re not going to be Itzhak Perlman, the world doesn’t have room for millions of Itzhak Perlmans. But I think the same way amateurs feel drawn to studying an instrument, why should improvisation only be reserved for those who may already be creative? More air quotes.
Christopher: Fantastic. Well, it’ll come as no surprise to regular listeners to this show that I couldn’t agree more with everything you just said. I really applaud the work you do and I’ve really enjoyed digging into some of the videos on your Facebook page. So I’d really encourage anyone to check that out. We’ll have a direct link in the show notes. If you can’t remember, Laura Zarya Nerenburg to type into Facebook search, and we’ll also link to the other resources mentioned in this conversation. Laura, it’s been such a pleasure as I suspected it would be to get to unpack some of this and hear more about your teaching approach. Thank you so much for joining us on the show today.
Laura: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure for me, Christopher.
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