Author: musicalitywrld

We’ve all learned so much and were really excited to share some of our a-ha moments with you! We are so grateful to have the honor of gaining insight from such powerful musical minds — and we don’t want you to miss any of the golden nuggets of information and inspiration packed into the vaults of the Musicality Now catalogue.

Dive in to this special Rewind episode and unlock an excitement for musicality to propel you to your musical goals!

Watch the episode:

Links and Resources

• • Musicality Now — How to Earn Your Inspiration, with Mark Cawley
  • Musicality Now — More Mindful, More Musical, with Susanne Olbrich
  • Musicality Now — Boosting Musical Brainpower, with Josh Turknett (Brainjo)
  • Musicality Now — How Composers Improve, with Matthew Ellul (School of Composition)
  • Musicality Now — In Perfect Swinging Harmony, with The Quebe Sisters
  • Musicality Now — Nature, Nurture, and your Duvet of Music, with Robert Emery
  • Musicality Now — How to Learn Like a Genius, with Gregg Goodhart
  • Musicality Now — What Music Practice Really Means, with Jonathan Harnum, PhD (The Practice Of Practice)
  • Musicality Now — Emotion and Efficiency, with Marc Gelfo

Transcript

Adam: Hello and welcome back to a special end of the year episode of Musicality Now. My name is Adam Lee, Director of Operations for Musical U, and I’m so happy to be joined by the other members of the musical youth team for this special look back on the last year of the show, and what a year it’s been. Just to recap, we started the year by beginning a new video format and publishing the show on YouTube. We talked with over 30 top music learning experts from a wide variety of backgrounds and disciplines. Beatles Month was our first featured month, and we dove deep into the musicality of The Fab Four with several renowned Beatles experts. And of course revisited our favorite records and songs from the band while doing It.

Adam: And in the last part of the year, we unveiled our new Pathways series, where we interview normal, everyday musicians that have unlocked a new musical path with musical you. If you haven’t listened to our Rewind episode before, we’ll be playing short sound bites from previous interviews from the course of the year. And then we’ll talk about how we’re able to use these tips and tricks in our actual musical life. Perhaps you’ll hear something that you missed the first time around, or discover someone new that could change everything for you. In any case, we’ll link to the full episodes in the show notes at musicalitynow.com. I’m particularly excited by this episode as I begin thinking about new things that I’ll be doing in the coming year with my music and my life. Well, I’ve talked for long enough, why don’t I bring the rest of the team in? Andrew, how are you doing today?

Andrew: I’m doing great. For those of you don’t know me, I’m Andrew Bishko and I am the Product Manager at Musical U.

Anastasia: Hi, I’m Anastasia Voitinskaia and I’m a Content Creator and Graphic Designer here at Musical U.

Zac: =Hi, I’m Zac Bailey ZSonic on the Musical U. I’m a Community Assistant and I’m feeling real good about being here today.

Adam: Great. Thank you so much for joining me today. I know I was looking over the list of the clips that you all brought, and there’s so much goodness in this episode, I really just want to dive straight into it. So we’re going to start off with Episode 195 with Josh Turknett, who runs a website called Brainjo, and he had some really awesome stuff to say.

Josh Turknett: So, I think there’s enough evidence to indicate that when we learn new things, the brain takes that as a signal that we need to keep this apparatus around that allows us to do this. So it sort of keeps that machinery in good working order. Whereas, our brain is not stupid. So if we stop using it, it literally just down regulates, there’ll be the genes of things that are required to maintain that, and that has consequences. Has consequences on our cognitive function, but it also likely has consequences in terms of how protective we are against degeneration and disease. So there’s reasons from that perspective.

Josh Turknett: So the other thing that comes out, if you take this perspective, is that if you’re optimizing for brain health and brain function, then it’s actually great to be terrible at something. You want to choose that thing where there’s the most capacity for growth. So this can completely flip on its head how we might typically feel about things. So from this perspective, if you’re terrible, there’s a huge gap between where you are now and some idealized version you want to be down the road. That’s fantastic. Because that means there’s a tremendous amount of growth that can happen, which will then translate to all these cognitive benefits that you can accrue for it.

Adam: So that clip was really personal to me. In the past couple years, my grandmother has had degenerative brain capacity and Alzheimer’s and it’s a reminder to me that we learn music not just because it’s a part of our lives, but it actually is good for us to be learning music and to be learning new things. And I know in this coming year, I have a couple personal professional challenges from my music life and my business life and just being a dad and all these new things that are happening all the time. And it’s a good reminder that it’s okay to learn. It’s okay to not be the best at something right away. It’s okay to be terrible, as Josh said. And by being terrible, it actually gets all those synapses firing and gets your brain working in a new way.

Adam: So as I’m constantly being pulled into new directions, just reminding myself that that’s okay. That really inspired me as I go planning my goals and the things I’m going to be doing in the coming year to remind myself push myself harder and farther than I have in the past.

Andrew: That’s so true, Adam. It was reassuring to me that particular episode, that particular quote, I’ve been a lot more at peace with being terrible at stuff. I was really inspired in terms of my own self-improvement by this next quote. This is The Quebe Sisters who are professional musicians and touring musicians, is a little bit different than our usual podcast guests. We usually have people that have some kind of a toe in the water about education, music education. But in this case, these are from musicians all the way but their story was really inspiring and it’s something we can all learn from.

Quebe Sisters: And yes, I don’t think that we’re musical prodigies or anything. Not at all. But if you enjoy it and you are into something, you can learn almost anything. That helps immensely to already have an ear that was sort of trained for harmony, to listen for parts when we went to start singing, but we were terrible. We said to ourselves, now sing if we like it and if we sound good. It was really a struggle at first. Neither one of those happened in the beginning. We used to record all of our stuff on tapes, just like tapes and a tape player. And we get those little Sony cassettes. Thank you. That’s the word. We have our early singing tapes labeled as wretched singing tape number one. Wretched singing tape number two. We recorded everything.

Andrew: So you’re hearing right now from a group that’s known for their vocals. In fact, that’s what first attracted our attention to Musical U. Christopher was a fan of their vocal harmonies. And so, here you have they went from zero to hero on the singing scale. One of the things that I’ve undertaken myself is learning a new instrument. I’m pushing 60 pretty soon and I started a new instrument, it’s a Mexican instrument called the vihuela. I thought I was crazy for doing it. I really wanted to do it. It’s something I just wanted to do. When I first started it, it took me a while. Like, I’d pick it up and I’m like, this is hard. I don’t really get this.

Andrew: And then when I started getting into it, I started to just absolutely love it. I love it. I listened for in music. I love the sound of it. I love doing it. It feels really good. I’ve never played a string instrument before. So it’s that’s a new thing for me. And I realized, hey, this is not the last instrument I’m going to learn because it’s such a wonderful process, and if I love it like they said right in the beginning, if you love it and you want to do it, you can learn almost anything.

Zac: Yes, really nice. Really nice clip, Andrew. I love that episode, The Quebe Sisters, they are so pleasant and happy. And yeah, that recording yourself when you’re terrible and just pushing through it for the love of it, it will really take you very far. I actually think that those recordings, even though they might seem terrible at first when you record them, they might actually lead you to something bigger and better in the future. And that kind of ties in to my clip that I chose from Mark Cawley who is a very well established and successful songwriter. So yeah, let’s go ahead and take a listen to that.

Mark Cawley: You’ve got to find the inspiration, you can’t wait for it to hit you. So you need tools, not rules, but tools. One of the best ones I ever heard early on was to look for titles. That can be lines, that can be titled. But the way to find them, I’ll share the value of them but to begin with, what I’ve done over the years always is take, now it’s an iPhone, but it used to be a pad and pen and go to a bookstore. Walk up and down the aisles endlessly. Library, do the same thing. Watch TV and movies, same thing. Anytime something caught my eye or my ear, it’s on the list. I just keep adding them, adding them, adding them, adding them. Then when I sit down to write, rather than go, okay, I’m here, inspire me mews, I’d go, what do I have on the list? There’s a title. There’s an idea. There’s something kind of fun. That’s the difference to me, is to … And that’s what Rodney Crowell alluding to, is that it’s earned. I earned that inspiration by spending, how would I put it, intentional time. I intentionally went and sought things that might come into play in my summary all the time.

Zac: Yes. Mark Cawley talks about finding your inspiration there and spending intentional time cultivating ideas and collecting ideas. So for me, I do definitely collect titles, but also other musical ideas, rhythms from people talking or just nature sounds. Anything that happens to me in my daily life that could be a musical idea, I’ll write it down or record it into my phone. What I do is I think of them as Lego blocks. So when I go into my creative brainstorming sessions, my creativity comes from, how can I put these different ideas together like blocks, instead of trying to just come up with ideas. I already have a bunch of ideas. I collect them throughout my whole life, just like Mark Cawley talks about all the time.

Zac: And so that way when I go into my creative sessions, I don’t have to spend any time thinking of ideas and I get into my flow state much quicker because I have all these ideas. I pick one or two and see how they fit together. Does this is lyric go with this rhythm idea? Does this title go this chord progression? Does it sound like the mood of the title or whatever? So I just kind of do creative brainstorming where I put these Lego blocks ideas together that I’ve been listing out, basically. It could be text lists or audio recordings. So I’m really excited moving into 2020 because I’m building my repertoire of my own compositions and songs. So it’s really going to help me to like just have all these ideas ready to go and then I jump into my creative sessions and I just piece these blocks together. It really helps me flow.

Anastasia: I really, really love that Zac, especially your Lego block analogy. I’ve a really similar kind of approach to making music too and it’s so great to have like this catalog of inspiration before you, even like sit down to write a piece of music or play or whatever. I love that kind of intentional and deliberate path to inspiration rather than just kind of waiting around for something to hit you. I think that’s really great. I think this nicely segues into my clip which is from our episode with Robert Emery, episode 204.

Robert Emery: I believe in something that I made up, which is called the duvet of music, or the blanket of music, or whatever analogy you want, which is surrounding yourself with so much music that you have to fight your body and your mind and your heart and your soul to be able to not have that music penetrate you and affect you in a positive way. And I was really seriously lucky that when I was young, at my primary school, we had a dedicated music teacher. We had assembly every morning where we sung every morning, there was a school orchestra that performed pretty much every morning. It wasn’t a private school. I didn’t come from a wealthy family. This was just a local Church of England school down the road in my little village.

Anastasia: So I love this duvet analogy and I love duvets, and I think he makes a really great point when he says to surround yourself with music until it’s quite literally coming out of your ears. And the more you look for opportunities to do this, to push the borders of your own musicality by connecting with other musicians, by joining musical communities like the one that we have at Musical U, just by engaging with music really in as many different ways as you can. Really, the better off you’ll be, particularly when it comes to music communities, even something as simple as playing with someone else or playing in a band.

Anastasia: I found that in my own practice, immersion is just such an effective learning technique that gives you the gift of musical appreciation alongside kind of like all the technical skills and the ear skills and the background that you want. And just like he says in the clip, there’s just this ultimate positive impact of music. It’s just, it’s good for the soul. So in this coming year, I’m excited to kind of like immerse myself even further in my music community that exists in my town, for example, into just diving into learning more history and facts about music. Spending more time on forums, including the ones that we have at Musical U. I just know it’s going to be really, really, really great for my musicality.

Andrew: I love that idea too. This being wrapped up in music and I’m really blessed that I’ve been able to design my life that way in so many ways. I don’t know if it was intentional which came first, the music or the duvet, but it’s nice and warm and cozy. One of the things that I’ve been thinking about a lot this year is there’s certain places where I feel like I’ve achieved plateaus where no matter how much listening I do, no matter how much practicing I do, there’s certain places where I just wasn’t getting the results that I wanted to in my music. This next clip, Gregg Goodhart, has helped me tremendously in moving past those.

Gregg Goodhart: We already learned those, they’re not working anymore. So what happens is, and it all is in the communication, how we teach deliberate practice as you were saying. What happens is, is their teacher taught them a manifestation of the concept of desirable difficulty. They did not teach them about desirable difficulty. That they gave them a fish and they ate for a day, instead of teaching them how to fish so they can eat for a lifetime. And so yes, it works because you can bet when they first showed it to these people, it works spectacularly well. And then what happened? It worked less and less and now we’re right back where we started. How is it you didn’t give them the, we’ll just keep looking for something different to do. And so that’s what we do in the Practiclass.

Gregg Goodhart: Sometimes it will be a different situation. Sometimes I want them to play it backwards. Backwards is great. Usually after we did that, played backwards, I can usually tell I’m backing it right when someone goes, that’s what I wanted to do. If it’s going to cause you that kind of distress, that’s what you’re looking for. And we just go through whatever variations we need to go through. They will struggle. I point it out to the group, look at them struggle. I talk about the universal sign of learning. There really is a universal sign of learning. For instance, this, everyone around the world knows what this is. It means you’re choking. It’s universal. A smile is universal. Everyone knows that means happy everywhere. You don’t need language. There is truly, and I’m not joking about this, a universal sign of learning. And you can see my videos when I point to it, it happens. It looks like this. The brow froze, the eyes narrow, that lips pursed. When someone starts doing that, losing track of their facial expressions and has to focus so hard, then you know you’ve hit the sweet spot. I call it the international sign of learning and that is the manifestation of desirable difficulty

Andrew: Okay, universal sign of learning. Perhaps I should have given a little more background in the beginning here. He’s talking about this idea of desirable difficulty. One of the best ways to get past a plateau in your music is to make things harder. Because our brains get bored, just doing endless repetitions, and they don’t really learn all that stuff that Josh Turknett was talking about. Where when something’s really hard, the brain just lights up. When it’s just only kind of hard or just repetitions, your brain just shuts down. It’s designed to be very efficient. So we want to keep our brain really active. And so making things harder is the best way to make things easier, in a sense.

Andrew: When he was talking about this idea, and I had learned these kinds of techniques when I was younger in terms of you play through a passage with dotted rhythms or with triplets or something like that. When he’s you saying that a lot of times people learn to do that, but they don’t learn what that whole idea behind it is, the idea of desirable difficulty. If you understand that, it’s really fun, you can get really creative about making things harder. Like one of the things he said, playing something backwards or playing something with a different rhythm or change the rhythm. I remember from Marc Gelfo’s podcast, he even will do a different emotion, he’ll play something with a different emotion. And he’ll change his emotional repertoire like he’ll play something where he’s feeling shame. Try that. Or happiness or joy, but he’ll even do the negative emotions where if these are all different ways to engender desirable difficulty.

Andrew: And it’s something that I want to be a lot more creative with because it’s actually while it’s kind of like not fun, you can get creative about it and it becomes fun to do that. It’s like, okay, how can I mess with myself today? I’ve learned that I don’t have to perfect something when I’m doing that. It’s like I just work on it, work on it. It’s like playing something backwards. I don’t have to perfect playing it backwards. And then also the next day, bam, I can play it a whole lot better. So it’s working with these really weird ways in which our brain learns and understanding them, counterintuitive ways in which our brain learns something that is helping me break through some of the plateaus in my music, and I’m really enjoying it. In fact, so much that I’ve started taking lessons with Gregg. We also have a masterclass coming up with him in January. So, flag the masterclass. We’ll be seeing more Gregg coming up. He’s fantastic.

Adam: There will be a link in the show notes to register for the master classes, go to Gregg’s interview. So if you’re watching on YouTube, the link is down there. Yeah, thank you, Andrew. That was a really powerful clip and I love Gregg’s approach and how he does that. It reminds me of like making something more difficult than it has to be. For some reason, what sticks out my mind is, I ran my first marathon last year. And I knew it was going to be … It was a very rural marathon, not in the city. So I would do my training runs like 10, 12, 14 mile training runs on a track to train my brain to deal with the boredom and to push past that.

Adam: So that’s just like one of those little methods that I had to use my own training to become stronger so I could actually do what I had to do. So for my next clip, I selected something about practice as well, and it’s from guests we just recently had the show Jonathan Harnum. And he brings this idea that I never heard of before, and it’s called guerilla practice. So let’s hear what Jonathan had to say.

Jonathan Harnum: Yeah, so guerilla practice is something that I’m using almost exclusively right now. It’s the idea that you can get things done and you can learn things in just short little chunks, five minutes, two minutes, one minute. And it’s a really powerful idea for a couple different reasons. One is that there’s a lot of research that shows the more that you recall an idea, let’s say I’m working on, say, piano fingering and I have to do, I don’t know what it might be. Well, when I’m sitting in line waiting to, I don’t know, get a coffee or whatever, I can practice that finger motion on my leg.

Jonathan Harnum: Maybe I practice it for two or three minutes or less, 30 seconds, maybe two or three run through. I’m not at the instrument, but that’s not necessarily … There’s nothing wrong with that. You can still practice the motion. So there’s lots of times during the day where you can get in short, little bursts of practice. Whether it’s, say, a difficult spot in a melody or remembering lyrics to a tune, I mean, could be a million different things. And just taking that moment in your car or wherever you are, to do this little short bursts of practice. I mean, it all adds up. 

Adam: Cool little concept. And where it appealed to me is I just returned to music. I had an eight-year break where I did not play music at all. I was busy doing a different career. And when I came back to music finally, I wanted to get back into the habit that I was able to have as a professional musician and as a student, where I would have practice sessions. We all know what we mean by that. Were these long, two to three hour expansive practice sessions where I’d have a proper warm up and I’d go through some etudes and then some prepare pieces, and some sight reading. Just had this like system, this formula I was working in. And I still need to play. I need to express myself musically, but I don’t have the time to do that anymore.

Adam: Between professional obligations, family and community, I mean, if I get an hour away and I try to take it off to practice, my phone’s going to ring or something’s going to come up on Instant Messenger, it’s going to happen. But I do have five minutes. I have five minutes at multiple points throughout the day. And I can find those five minutes and instead of wasting it on Facebook or watching another YouTube video, I can have my trumpet right next to my desk and pick it up, play a little bit, put it back down, go back to work. Good enough for me. So I definitely plan on doing that to the point I now keep my trumpet in my office. And it’s the first thing I take out when I get to the office. I take out my trumpet, put it on stand, and then I take out my computer. So it’s very intentional that I’ll be doing this in the coming year.

Anastasia: Cool. I love that. I think a lot can actually happen in five minutes. And even though it seems like it’s no time at all, I think a lot of like flashes of brilliance can happen in those short little time chunks. I know at points when I’ve been writing a song, I’ve just like, come back to it for maybe 5 or 10 minutes, and suddenly I’m like, oh, wait, this is a good idea. I can put this in, which is something that just never happens when I’m at it for like two hours and I’m breaking my brain trying to kind of make something happen. So that’s really solid advice. My next clip actually deals with something tangentially related to this. And it’s from an episode called How Composers Improve with Matthew Ellul, and it’s Episode 198.

Matthew Ellul: If you compare, and I did this back then, if you compare the first works and the last works by anyone, any non-composer, we can see a huge difference that they continued to grow. And so that’s what we should aim for, I think, this continuous growth. Not comparing my level to someone’s level or this work to that work. No. Let’s just keep learning. Let’s keep improving. Let’s enjoy the process. And let’s all hone our skills, just like the greats before us did.

Anastasia: Just like the greats before us did. I love that and I think it’s a really necessary reminder that Mozart was not, in fact, born Mozart, and his dad did have to show him where middle C was on the piano. So I think the stop comparing is kind of certainly easier said than done. But I do think that it’s absolutely essential for music practice, sorry, and in some cases, you almost have to force yourself to put your blinders on and stop looking to the left and stop looking to the right. Because when your blinders are on, that’s when you’re totally focused on your own skills and your own craft. I think that’s when practicing becomes this like totally engrossing like involved activity. And that’s really like when the real magic happens.

Anastasia: In my own practice, I’ve noticed that really nothing kills inspiration and my enthusiasm and my exploration quite like looking around me to see what and how everyone else is doing and drawing comparisons to myself. It’s just like the easiest way to kill my mood and make me want to put down my instrument, which is such a shame. And increasingly, I found that, conversely, my best practice, my best work, my best flashes of inspiration, come to me when I’m not thinking about anybody else, but instead I’m fully and totally focused on my own art.

Zac: Really, really beautiful on the stage, really. I agree with that. I’ve had same experiences. You got to really just put those blinders on and get in your zone. That’s really awesome. And about Mozart, that ties into Robert Emery because Mozart definitely would have had to do via music. He was definitely music all the time. So that’s saying something there. I think that really helped him become Mozart. But yeah, just getting in your zone and working on you and not worrying about anyone else. That really ties in well to the clip I chose here from Susanna Olbrich, who specializes in mindful music practice. And so let’s go and listen.

Susanne Olbrich: It’s a very receptive approach. I guess, in our culture, we have a very go-getting approach. So even in music practice, there can be a lot of striving to get this right, to improve technique, to get better gigs. And in mindfulness, for example, we also talk about non-striving to come from a place of letting things come to you. Sounds pretty revolutionary, doesn’t it? In our culture. And deep listening has a strong emphasis on rest, being receptive to really sit and listen and see what … Becoming curious of what’s happening. There’s so many sounds that go unnoticed, and then, there are also listening to your own creative impulses. There are so many creative impulses that go unnoticed just because we’re busy with the next email, with the next phone call.

Zac: I really love this episode with Susanne and there’s So much I could say about just that one little clip. So I’m going to try to like hold myself back from just like … That whole idea of just being receptive, really changed my life and help me find a lot more ease and a lot more flow. And like when I’m in my creative zone, if I’m just being receptive and aware to the things that are happening my body with the sounds, I’m naturally not even going to have brainpower to even think about what other people are doing, because I’m just so focused on just being receptive. And this really led me to kind of a golden rule that I’ve been using in my musical practice. I actually wrote it.. there’s a little note right here. I quite can’t read it, but it says, “Don’t try too hard.” Don’t try to learn. Don’t strive too much. It says don’t try too hard.

Zac: So when I go into my creative brainstorming sessions, when I’m putting those Lego blocks together, I don’t try too hard. I be receptive and I try to notice when I start trying to, when I to start trying too hard to do a certain technique or I start trying too hard to do a certain music theory or I started thinking about what people are going to think of this performance, I’m trying hard to impress someone who’s not even in the room. And then I start noticing what happens with my mind and my body when I start trying too hard. And then I notice how that affects the music that I’m practicing and playing. And then I noticed how that change in the music starts affecting my mind and body again.

Zac: So it’s just a cycle and the more I become receptive and aware of what’s happening in my practice, the more relaxed I become, the more focused I become, and the more things just start happening easily. I feel like I’m just getting started with this since I heard that interview, and I’m really excited to see what the next year of just being receptive has in store for me and my creativity.

Adam: Tremendous. I look forward to being there with you, Zac. We look forward to getting some recordings from you again. Zac has these most amazing recordings. Find him on Instagram. He’s got some really cool stuff out there. So one thing that we really like to do at Musical U is talk about light bulb or aha moments. And I know just listening to the rest of the clips and talking with the rest of you, I had a couple aha moments myself. So I kind of want to open up the floor and let everyone talk about what they’re walking away from this episode with.

Adam: Me personally, Mark Cawley, his episode, it made me realize that I need to be constantly searching and constantly working towards some of the professional goals I have. We talked about gathering song titles for years and years and years. There’s a story of James Hetfield from Metallica how he had this book of like song titles, and people are like, Enter Sandman, what’s that? He had that song title for about a decade before he actually wrote the song. And now it’s arguably the biggest hard rock song in history of hard rock. But the song title was written way before the song was. So how can I do that in my own life?

Adam: It’s great because we have all these tools now, right? These devices where you can just put anything on, just plop it into Evernote or whatever other doc you’re using, and it’s there. It’ll be there forever. So I’m going to make a more conscious effort to be gathering, always searching, always looking for the next inspirational moment in my life.

Zac: I love that you said tools right there. Because in that Mark Cawley episode, he said, “You need tools, not rules.” Because tools is what helps you facilitate creativity. And then I was also thinking about the clip you chose about the guerilla practicing, and when I was thinking about that while you’re playing a clip, it’s really very freeing. Because if you hold yourself to this idea, I need to practice however much time, 2 hours, 10 hours to be whatever. It kind of stresses you out and it’s limiting you. And this idea of you can get better in a short amount of time is very freeing. And then you start finding all these times and actually it ties into the Mark Cawley episode because in that episode, he says, if you’re a beginner, then maybe spend a shorter amount of time that’s more focused.

Zac: Gregg Goodhart also talks about how when you’re doing this focused practice, and making this stuff challenging for you, you can’t really do it that long, especially when you first start. So I think this guerrilla practice and these things, not only does it help you find more practice time in your day, but it could be the best way for you to practice depending on what you’re trying to achieve and where you’re at. You might only need to practice 5, 10, 15 minutes. And that might be great for you. I think that’s very freeing.

Andrew: My biggest aha moment in this episode, was that we started out with this idea that we didn’t have a set theme, we were just going to look at the podcast for the past year and what inspired us. But look at the themes that are coming out and how all these tie together. When you started, in each episode, when it came up was like, oh, yeah, there’s that. Oh, yeah, there’s that. And just to add what you were just saying about guerrilla practice. When we focus our attention for a short amount of time, we could really focus on being receptive and being mindful in thinking about what we’re doing here. That’s part of the work that we’re doing with Gregg. Is, I’m really thinking very deeply about what it means like to move from one chord to the next, or move all the little details and nuances of something that I’m working on.

Andrew: And by thinking about these, it’s improving my memorization of music, it’s helping me get past plateaus, and it’s making me realize, there’s some music that I’ve been practicing for years that I don’t really know. I can receive it and that could be knowledgeable and receive the knowledge of that music.

Andrew: So thinking about the Quebe Sisters, how they weren’t singers, and yet they love this thing. It’s like, I love this. I want to do this. And not holding ourselves back and not being afraid of being terrible at something, it’s all tied together so beautifully. I really appreciate this time to be together with Adam and Anastasia and Zac, with you guys it’s been really inspiring in my own motion forward and I’m going to remember these inspirations. I want to do some guerrilla practicing right now. Like let’s all grab out instruments and do some guerrilla practicing. But thank you so much.

Anastasia: This I think is my favorite rewind episode that we’ve ever done. It’s been a really special one and all the clips that we chose, all eight of them seem to tie together really beautifully. And I think what kind of separates this episode from our earlier ones is the fact that in this one we’re taking a much more kind of like holistic view of like practicing music and really talking about stuff like joy, whether you’re terrible or not, and kind of just how music makes you feel and how it fits into your life. I think that’s been really cool.

Anastasia: My main two takeaways from this rewind episode and what everyone has shared is, obviously, it’s okay to be terrible and don’t try too hard. No one likes to try hard. But no. I think just keeping those two things in mind and almost not overthinking it, and being able to turn your brain off even a little bit and just kind of let the music flow and let it happen and just play what feels good. And do what feels good. I think that’s a major takeaway from this episode for me.

Adam: Thank you all so much. This has been … I agree, Anastasia, this has been so much fun. I was up late last night, kind of preparing for this and I couldn’t sleep and so I started reading a book again. I’m rereading Michael Hyatt’s, Your Best Year Ever, which I’ve read before, but I don’t think I read it with intention. So this time I was reading it and actually going through, it’s on my iPad, so I am highlighting sections and I’m pulling quotes out that are cool and putting them in my Evernote files for later. That’s something I just started doing. Like, when I find a cool quote, I’m going to dump it into a doc, because you can never have enough good inspirational quotes.

Adam: As we get ready for the new year, everyone sets these new year’s resolutions and then we all fail, because that’s what humans do, we fail and then we try harder and then we fail again, and we keep failing, but it’s okay as long as you get back up. And one of the things that Michael said that I wanted to share with you before we wrap up is, the only people with no hope are those who live with no regrets. So that’s pretty powerful to me just for me to keep moving forward and keep growing as a person and a musician.

Adam: Well, that wraps it up for today. Thanks again to the team for joining me as we reflected back on the last year of the show. We hope that you continue to join us into 2020, as we have quite a lineup ready for you. It’s going to be another incredible year. As always, please drop us a line at hello@musicalitynow.com if you have any suggestions or feedback on the show. We’ll see you soon, ready for new challenges, opportunities and musical adventures. Until then, happy new year from all of us at Musical U.

The post Rewind: Reflections appeared first on Musical U.

We are joined by Musical U member Sharilynn Horhota. Before her engineering career and three children, Sharilynn was headed towards becoming a professional flute player. Now she has returned to the flute in a surprising way.

Sharilynn has been sharing her journey inside Musical U so we had some sense of her interesting backstory and all the cool activities she’s been up to — but as you’ll be hearing, Musical U is just one part of all the resources she’s been drawing on and all the ways she’s been stretching herself since returning to flute.

In this conversation we talk about:

• How studying Alexander Technique in Finland let her feel much freer in her playing and opened up her sound
• The specific resources and exercises that have helped Sharilynn start to improvise, and in a way that feels like she is truly expressing herself, rather than just improv-by-numbers following chord tones.
• And the two clever variants on traditional exercises, scales and long notes, which she now gives her flute students to help them improve faster and enjoy practicing more.

You will surely find a lot to relate to in her story — and pick up some handy ideas and pointers that you can apply in your own musical journey.

Watch the episode:

Links and Resources

• The Complete Guide to The Alexander Technique
• Michael Lake — Alto Bone
• Aimee Nolte Music
• Musicality Now — Explaining the Musical Ear, with Aimee Nolte
• Jeffrey Agrell books
• Musicality Now — Making Improv a Game, with Jeffrey Agrell
• David Reed — Improvise For Real
• David Reed — Sing the Numbers
• Musicality Now — How to Improvise For Real, with David Reed
• Brent Vaartstra — Learn Jazz Standards
• Musicality Now — How to Stop Doubting and Start Performing, with Brent Vaartstra
• Learn Jazz Faster — How To: 25 Great Ways To Maximize Your Jazz Improvisation Practice
• Musicality Now — Boosting Musical Brainpower, with Josh Turknett

Have you picked up useful ideas or techniques in your own musical journey so far that you think could inspire or help others on their path of exploring their musicality? Get in touch by dropping an email to hello@musicalitynow.com! We are always looking for new guests for Pathways and would love to share your story next.

Transcript

Sharilynn: Hi, I’m Sharilynn Horhota. I am a classical flutist in pursuit of Jazz improvisation, and this is Musicality Now.

Christopher: Welcome to the show, Sharilynn. Thank you for joining us today.

Sharilynn: Thank you for having me.

Christopher: I’ve been so looking forward to this because you’re one of our most active members of the Musical U community, and I’ve been kind of watching your journey from afar and found it so fascinating, and inspiring, and I’m really excited to have a chance now to share that with the Musicality Now audience. You have a really interesting backstory in that you began in a very classical direction in a very serious way. And that’s not quite where you’ve ended up today. So I’d love if we could begin with that early backstory, and how you got into playing flute in the first place.

Sharilynn: Okay, so the backstory is typical for kids pursuing music, started in the 6th grade band. I wanted to play clarinet, and so I listened to everything that had clarinet in it. And when I showed up to band class, he said, “You’re playing flute. I have too many clarinets.” Okay. So there we go. I’m playing the flute, and went through the typical high school band. I excelled at it. I practiced a lot, and I know we always have the talk about talent. I learned quickly. And then if I got something, I just went for it more and more, and continued to practice.

Sharilynn: So our high school band director was phenomenal. He was one of those special band directors, and he was truly my inspiration for staying in music. I have a number of friends that I still have contact with from my high school that are also still in music. So he was truly an inspiration. Band directors really have a bigger influence than I think anyone can imagine. They see these children, especially the high school band directors see these kids for four years. And they see them grow. A lot of growth happens over those four years. I have a couple high schoolers, so I see it. And he has to deal with it again and again. I’m happy mine have grown. But I was very inspired by him and didn’t know what I want to be when I grew up. My mom wanted me to be a travel agent, and I was a rebel. I don’t think I wanted to be anything my mom wanted me to be.

Sharilynn: But I loved music, and I needed money for college, so won a music scholarship. So there you go. I went into music, and a local community college had a very gifted flute teacher. And I had the blessing of going there. And she was phenomenal. And she was very connected in the flute community. So went there for two years, and she was the one that introduced me to my teacher in Hartford, Connecticut, who’s at the Hartt School of Music. His name is John White, and he’s the principal of the New York City Opera. So I transferred there, and I sent an audition tape and all of that, and I got in.

Sharilynn: My background was nothing like these kids I went to school with. I started flute lessons as a sophomore in high school. Most of them had had lessons throughout middle school and high school. So I was behind, but she was such great foundational teacher, Darling Davian was such a great foundation at that junior college level that I was ready for it, and then when I got to Hartt, I ended up doing fine as principal of the wind ensemble. And he told me, “I’m going to put you in orchestra because you’re a strong player. I want you as principal player.” So that’s what I got to do, and my conductor was the father of one of the top flute players there. And so the extra pressure was there to do well when I had a solo. And he’s a very intense man, so the look he gave me when he would bring me in for my solos was highly intense, and I just love him. He’s just a great musician. And met many great musicians while at Hartt.

Sharilynn: But what happened with me, I worked with some of the best.. two of my chamber music coaches were… one was a chamber music player throughout New York, Frank Borelli, I’ve seen him somewhere in podcast land interviewed, so he’s still out there playing. The other one is Bert Lucarelli, who, I attended one of his recitals at Carnegie Hall. So going from small town to this was a big deal. They are great people.

Sharilynn: I had the opportunity to have master classes with Julius Baker, who my first teacher knew, well. She knew him well, and she was the one that got me going to his master classes in the summer. And he’s a legend. He’s absolutely a legend, and he did me this huge favor. I played for him at one of his master classes, and the opportunity to either play once or play three times. And I think that particular time, I played for him three times.

Sharilynn: And on the first time I played, he looks at me and he goes, “You’re nervous, aren’t you?” And I said, “Yes.” And we were in this beautiful church, and he looks out the back door, which was open, and he said, “Oh, look. I think I see a squirrel out there.” It’s like the movie Up. Squirrel! Everybody got up and looked because he said to do that. And he said, “You feel better now?” And I said, “Yes.”

Sharilynn: Well come to find out, my teacher says. He does not do that for everybody. A lot of the people he would just let them play and not say anything. But he let me play and he proceeded to rip me apart. He showed me where my weaknesses were, and then I went to work. And I just, for the next two days, because I had two days in between, it was a week long master class, I shedded. I just shedded, Practiced my butt off, and when I came back and played for him again, he just sat back, folded his arms, and he nodded at me. And what a gift. So love that man, love his playing. Now that he’s gone, I realize what a huge blessing it was when it was going on. You have no idea. High school, college, everything’s good. So I went from that into my work at Hartt, and I got some gig opportunities there. We’d go out and play for parties and things like that.

Sharilynn: But I remember talking to my teacher and I said, “You know, this is all really great, and I like playing and stuff.” I said, “But something’s missing.” And he said, “I don’t know. I have no idea what it is.” And he says, “You know, I got an idea. Let me send you up to Bryan and Flutes, which is a custom flute maker in Boston, and he goes, “I got some connections up there. Why don’t you go spend the day with them and see what they’re up to?” So I spent the day with them. They were great, let me take a flute apart completely. I loved it. So that was my first introduction to that. Nothing went on after that. I think it was just a little planting of the seed. After I graduated from Hartt, I wanted to continue to study because I didn’t feel like I was ready.

Sharilynn: I had some opportunities to play with the Norwalk Symphony Orchestra while I was getting ready to go to Finland. I spent a year working so I could raise the money, I met a teacher on the summer prior to graduating that was from Finland. That’s how I ended up there, and loved playing. She used Alexander technique along with her playing, and I think my teacher was very well aware of the tension that I had in my playing. I just wanted to do it so badly, I guess. And so he said, “I think this lady’s perfect for you.” And so he sent me to her master class.

Sharilynn: And I think what impressed me the most was everything she played gave me goosebumps. Such a musical player. And that was kind of, I guess my vibe, is that if I was going to do anything, I wanted to move people with what I play. I didn’t want to sit there and listen to them flap their fingers around, or… I wanted them to feel something either I’m communicating what the composer had asked of me or within an ensemble that we all band together and play together. I wanted that. I wanted what she did. So I ended up putting the money together to go to Finland for a year, and then I ended up getting a scholarship so I was able to go for two years.

Christopher: And I wonder if I might interject there — because you mentioned something in passing which was Alexander technique and how to relates to tension. If someone watching or listening isn’t familiar with that, could you explain what that was, and why it was relevant to this?

Sharilynn: Yeah. Alexander technique is basically a study in how to use yourself properly. So you’re getting into how the body should naturally function. Alexander, I believe it’s Matthias Alexander is his first name. He was an actor on stage, and he had a situation in which he got up on stage, went to say something, and nothing came out. And so, horrifying for anybody, and he went to town to see, well, what is this about? And he began to research that.

Sharilynn: And he came up with this technique. What he first discovered was that the connection between the head and the neck, so it’s right if you nod your head, that portion right there, that connection has to be free. And if you think anything about the brain, a brain has to communicate to the rest of the body. So he said, or what he discovered, then, was if this connection is free, then we are able to freely do what the brain is asking for the rest of the body with nothing in the way. So I took Alexander technique lessons while in Finland, and I spent a lot of time, actually, the initial lessons, they teach you how to stand and how to sit, seriously.

Sharilynn: And Alexander technique is about giving yourself direction, so you give yourself direction with the head. The head goes forward and up. If I had room to stand, I would stand. But you have to stand forward, like have to lean. You’re not leaning, but you’re giving yourself this direction that your head is going to go forward and up as you stand. So you’re not putting pressure down as you lift yourself or anything like that. And then on the sitting part, he would get on my knees and just kind of remind me, knees forward and away, so that your knees just go down. So you’re not trying to make anything happen. Your body will naturally want to do these things. After a lot of that, then they get you on the table and they start working on your shoulders. They’re trying just to release that tension as he’s working with me, maybe pulling arms, almost like a chiropractor may do if they’re working your ligaments. As he would work on me, he himself was releasing tension. So has a little bit to do with energy.

Sharilynn: And I have pictures of myself after having Alexander technique, and my shoulders are probably about this much lower. Because we keep so much tension in our shoulders. So much tension in our neck. And as a flute player, it comes out here. And so you’re doing some funny things with your neck trying to get that flute where it needs to go. So I have continued to practice that. It was incorporated in my lessons really early on. She did not use Alexander technique, but it was always about how you use yourself. Getting out of your own way was her motto to me most of the time. So the Alexander technique was huge for me. And I think, just a sense of, it’s a mindfulness about your body, if that gives the right context for it.

Sharilynn: So I would have to say, the Alexander technique is still around. I know someone just up the road from us about 35 miles is an Alexander teacher. So it is still out there. It’s still around. Primarily it was in New York at the time. I don’t know how I got this guy in Finland in Helsinki. But he studied New York. So it’s something that you have to go to a centralized location to study, and they’ve got something close to that now, and I don’t know if you’ve run across it. It’s called body mapping.

Christopher: No.

Sharilynn: You haven’t run across it? It’s a similar type thing where they’re looking at the true anatomy of the body, the true physiology of the body, and incorporating that into the instrument you’re playing, or how you’re using yourself as you play. And I know that’s pretty much what my teacher had taught me. Darlene Dugan, my first teacher that I had in a junior college. I talked to her about that, and she was kind of cynical. She said, “Yeah, I’ve been teaching that for years.” Love her. But it’s basically, and I see it all the time in kids, this bad posture, and bad positions, and all of that. And Alexander technique may be sensitive to that in that sometimes I can feel it in myself, that I’m literally uncomfortable as I watch and listen to this person play. And my teacher in Finland could literally say, “Release your ankles.”

Sharilynn: And that note would pop out. I’m like, “Really? Release my ankles, and that works.” Yeah, it’s crazy. But she just was that good, and it’s that sensitivity you get from practicing it for so long. She was quite good at it. She didn’t even need a massage ever. But she could-

Christopher: Fascinating.

Sharilynn: Alexander technique, you’re talking to yourself, saying, “Release your shoulders, release your neck.” It’s weird, but it works. There’s just so many things that we do where we talk to ourselves and it does work. So it’s not that far out there. But go ahead.

Christopher: So it sounds like that was a great help to you. Was that part of the secret behind why this teacher could play as movingly as she could, so musically? Or was this unrelated and just a side perk of going to study with her?

Sharilynn: No, I bet you it was very much like me. That she needed it, would be my guess. When you’re a very sensitive person, like I’ll cry at a commercial. You’re sensitive to everything. So if somebody’s next to you, and they’re glaring at you because you got the chair in front of them, I feel that. And I feel it very strongly. And Alexander technique is one thing you can use to help through that.

Christopher: Interesting, And so how did those studies in Finland go? How did it develop you as a flute player?

Sharilynn: Oh goodness. It just opened up my sound like crazy. I had a good sound coming in. A lot of flute playing is about your sound. But it really opened up my sound, it made me feel more confident in my technique, the playing fast that we have to do as flute players. It just really opened up all of that for me, and it opened up my expression where I could take on certain pieces and really allow myself to let go more than I could before.

Christopher: And did it kind of scratch that itch, or fill that gap for you? You said that you heard this teacher play, and she was able to put such emotion into it and make it so moving. Did you start to feel like you were able to do that same thing?

Sharilynn: Yeah, I think I was getting there. Definitely. And some of the things I got to do while I was there were extra special for me. I didn’t do a lot of orchestral work outside of the symphony I played in before I left for Finland. In school, there just wasn’t an opportunity. But when I got there, there was a conductor’s orchestra, and there I had the opportunity to play Sibelius. To play a Finnish composer’s music in Finland, and that just… And then I got to see what he saw when he wrote some of his music. And coming from the lessons I had with her, her approach, incorporating the Alexander technique, and then having that constant experience to go through the repertoire, yeah, I felt like a player.

Christopher: Fantastic. Well, I feel like so far, this could be the beginning of an interview with a world leading professional flautist. And that’s not actually how your story continues.

Sharilynn: No.

Christopher: Yeah, so, what happened next?

Sharilynn: Well, I came back from Finland, and I was 25, and I’m like, “Okay, now what? I have to make money.” And I think, at that time, my story would probably be different if I had a mentor. I didn’t know what to do. My parents weren’t musical. They thought I was nuts trying to do this. I just didn’t know what to do. So I took a GRE, got everything ready to work on a master’s degree. I was asked to go to University of North Carolina. And life gets busy. I don’t know why I turned that opportunity down, but I did. When you perform for a teacher and they want you to study with them, they do want you to study with them. And I don’t know if it was money. Really don’t know. But I didn’t end up doing that.

Sharilynn: I went to the college that was in my parents’ town, or in my parents’ state. Because you have to have that residency. And I ended up going back into music education. So instead of getting a masters degree, I guess I was going to finish a bachelor’s. I had my bachelor’s in performance, but I didn’t have it in music. So I went there, and I’d have to say, the first semester I was there, great, great orchestral experiences.

Sharilynn: Funny story. Can I take an aside, because it’s just too weird. I played in the orchestra, and we had a soloist coming, a violinist playing a violin concerto with us. And then there was a gentleman that came in to rehearse the orchestra, where the real guy comes later. And that guy knew me. He was from the Norwalk Symphony. He was the concert master. That was nuts. Norwalk is in Connecticut. I was at school in South Carolina, and he looks in the orchestra and goes.. so that was just too weird, but it was super fun. But I enjoyed the orchestral experience there, but something was missing.

Sharilynn: And so I took this class, because I had most of my education stuff done. All I needed was some music ed classes. I took physics in the arts. Physics in the arts is basically a really watered down version of physics. In any way it would apply to art. So there was a lot of wave theory watered down. Whether it be sound waves, or visual waves. So I enjoyed that class. That class was great. And he required a research paper, and for the research paper, I did architectural acoustics. It sounded cool. And the author of the book was actually a consultant that practiced in Clemson. So Clemson is an hour away or something from Columbia, from where I was. So here’s this book, and I was so impressed with what he had in the book, and enjoyed the experience so much I called him.

Christopher: Good on you.

Sharilynn: I called him on the phone. I’m like, “Hi, I used your book as a research paper, and I am a classical musician. And I’m kind of digging this acoustic stuff. What’s this all about?” And he spoke to me for an hour and a half, and after the conclusion of that, I was on the way to become an engineer. He said really, that’s the quickest way to do it. You could do a master’s in physics, but I didn’t have a technical undergraduate degree, so that’d be kind of tough. And so I switched my major to engineering. I did it, so I’m not completely cold. I had high level math in high school. I had all the calculus classes and stuff like that. No precollege ones. Just regular high school classes. But I was good at it. So I hadn’t had math in six years. Never took chemistry, never took physics. And I jumped right in, which, you’ve got technical experience. You know that was nuts.

Christopher: A little bit crazy in a good way.

Sharilynn: But I loved it. And I was really well taken care of. There was one gentleman… I must have talked to him. I forget how this happened, but one of the professors there wanted to do an acoustics class, and he said, “You need to take this class.” I said, “Dude, I’m just struggling through calculus right now. But he said, “No, no, don’t worry. You’ll get an A. Don’t worry about it. Just come.” And he did some really great stuff, but some of the practical stuff was super cool. It was before they made… I guess before they got into actual vocal things, where you could give the information, and then it would vocalize what you put in. So that was still early technology. And he did some projects in that. But what blew me away is that he drives the wave occlusion. I didn’t know what he was doing. That was still new to me. So seeing second derivatives and all that craziness was a little wild.

Sharilynn: But I spent a couple years in that, went to University of Minnesota afterwards to specialize in acoustics, and while I was in University of Minnesota, I got to do some acoustical testing. I worked for a company that we tested acoustical panels. We would test them for absorption and transmission. So absorption are the typical panels that you’ll see in a concert hall. They absorb sounds so you don’t have echoes going across the hall. And then there were transmission tests that we would do for certain materials that perhaps if you have a building that you’re making, and you do not want to hear your neighbor next door, then you’re going to get something with a low transmission coefficient. So we tested for that. And so I got involved with that and graduated from University of Minnesota with a degree in mechanical engineering.

Christopher: Got you. And you’re the kind of person that I’m sure we could do a whole hour, if not 10 hours, just on your engineering career, and it would be equally fascinating, but I’m going to try and keep us on the music. And so would it be fair to say your flute got put back in the box for a while? Were you able to keep that up at all alongside the career, or was it just too hard to juggle?

Sharilynn: At University of Minnesota, I still had to work, and I was working at 3M. So I was pretty much working full time and taking engineering courses at night. I’d usually try to do two at a time. So that’s pretty tough, so I really wasn’t playing at all. I tried to do some work at the church there to play for Mass just to kind of keep my chops. But there wasn’t time. So a lot of my skills went by the wayside, unfortunately.

Christopher: If you don’t mind me asking a slightly personal question, was that sad for you? You had this identity around, “I’m becoming a flute player.” Was it a decision to be like, “I’m putting it aside. I’m going to do this engineering thing.” Was it just kind of gradual, and you didn’t reflect on it too much? How were you thinking about the fact that you had been a flute player, and now maybe weren’t going to be?

Sharilynn: I think at the time, I got so focused on doing the engineering thing, I was not sad. But seeing my kids, which hadn’t made it into the picture yet, get into music, then it got sad.

Christopher: Got you. And I’ve seen you make comments, I think within the Musical U community about, I guess, having some doubt along the way. Before we got to that engineering fork in the road, as it were, you maybe weren’t feeling 100% gung-ho about your future as a top level professional flautist. Is that fair to say?

Sharilynn: Yeah. There’s a common Far Side cartoon that shows an elephant sitting at a piano, and he says, “What am I doing here? I’m a flutist.” I kind of felt like that sometimes. I think there are things that I struggled with. I think there were times I got up to perform, and I didn’t want to be there. So I’m learning why now, but there were a lot of times that I don’t know. I don’t know what it was. Actually, I know now what it was. It had a lot to do with preparation and how I got to where I got to. But in the orchestra, it wasn’t so much that way, but the solo performance… I don’t know, it was hard for me to stay focused, and sometimes wanted to be somewhere else.

Christopher: Interesting. And I don’t want to short circuit our conversation, but looking back, can you shed some light on what was going on, what had factored into that? Why weren’t you kind of fully stepping into that role, would you say now?

Sharilynn: It really was preparation. I started late getting those flute lessons, and so, had I had them in high school, that would’ve helped. We played difficult music in high school, so I developed a lot of bad habits. And so instead of playing every note and the run so that you could hear every note, I faked it really well. I had something, my teacher used to call it the Finnegan Smear. Which is my maiden name there. He goes, “We need to fix that.” But that is just not where you fix that. That has to be fixed in high school.

Sharilynn: When you’re fixing it in conservatory, you’re behind. And so I knew that, and that is probably, it was a good thing, because it has changed what I do now. It has changed how I approach everything I do now. My own practicing, my teaching, all of that.

Christopher: Cool. I’ve seen you say, I think in a previous conversation that back then, you just didn’t know how to practice. You knew to practice, but you didn’t know how. And I definitely want to hear more about that, and how you do it now. And how you help your students to do it now. But I’m sure our listeners and viewers are going to be frustrated if I don’t let you finish the story, as it were. So if we can get the kind of nutshell summary, you took this fork in the road towards engineering, and we know not to like, spoiler alert. At some point, you picked up your flute again. What happened in those intervening years?

Sharilynn: Intervening years, I took a job in Florida, and worked at that job for a short time, and then did some work for a Department of Defense company. Did that for a while. And then ended up actually teaching AutoCAD, which is a computer-aided drafting program. And at that point, I met my husband, and a couple years later, we had children. And I am an all-in kind of person that, if I’m working, I’m all into working. And if I’m a mom, I’m all into a mom. So I went all in as a mom, and quit my job. Loved my job, I absolutely loved empowering people. In just two years, they would walk out of my classroom into a job. But, I wanted to be a mom. And so I have three children. One is in college, one is a junior in high school, and one is seven.

Sharilynn: And it’s my college student that brought me back into music. When he got to middle school, he was quite talented. And I guess, having a musician mom, I’m going to make sure he gets what he needs. And that’s where the hindsight’s 20/20 started to set in. “Gee, if I had this, wonder what would’ve happened.” So I was very happy to provide that for him. He is a very talented player, and has excelled in just about every avenue. He plays saxophone and clarinet as well. And he started on the flute. And my middle son plays the trumpet, and he is doing quite well with his studies in addition. So I’ve got a trumpet player, saxophone player that doubles, and both those guys are into Jazz. And so my oldest one started playing gigs around town. So I want to hear him play.

Sharilynn: So I go, and they all ask, and they talk to me, like, “Hey, do you play?” I’m like, “Yeah, I play flute, but I’m classical.” “That doesn’t matter. Bring your flute. Come on. Just join us.” It’s not that easy. But they like to say it is. So, what happened was, one evening, one of the guys that said, “Hey, I want you to check out my flute. I’ve got this Yamaha flute. Would you give it a look?” So I got it out, started playing a little bit, and just noodled around a little bit. And I’m like, “Oh, it’s pretty nice.” And I handed it back. And the next thing I know, the guy that was the leader of this big band that Matthew would play in, invited me to play. So it was a piece by Bill Holman called Bill’s Blues, and the head, or beginning is played by the flute. And it’s long. So I had to use swing rhythm and all that. And I didn’t really now how to do that at all. And it’s a sight reading band, so..

Christopher: Up until this point, had you listened to much Jazz?

Sharilynn: I love jazz. Yeah, that’s a really good question. When I was in high school, I wanted to play Jazz desperately. Hubert Laws was out. He was super popular. Herbie Mann was out. Paul Horn I think was the other one. And in college I discovered Dave Valentin. He was a Latin Jazz flutist. So I was all over these guys. I like this more than Classical. It has always been in my blood. So I got let into this Jazz band, and since they’re a sight reading band, there’s no… I didn’t know how I was going to sight read this. He did give me some music eventually. But what I decided to do was figure out by ear from the recording, because I was scared to death.

Christopher: And was that something that had ever come up in your classical training, playing by ear?

Sharilynn: No. No, it had never come up. So I got to play that, and it was, I guess decent. He didn’t fire me. And then there was a 25 measure solo afterwards, and someone’s like, “Oh, play pentatonic scale, play pentatonic scale.” Like, okay, pentatonic scale I can play. You know? So there’s just not time to think about all that. So I made it through. I played a lot of A flats. So, I’m still playing with them. They haven’t fired me. And what I can’t do, though, the score patterns are so complex. I’m not there yet. So I tend to write out solos if I’m going to play a solo with the guys. So I’m on a quest.

Christopher: And so just to set the context, it was a few years ago that you joined this band. Is that right?

Sharilynn: Yeah. About two years, maybe it’s two years. And I thought it was just to play in the band with my son, and that when he’d go to college that, “Goodbye. Thank you honey, that was good.” No, now they got me playing everything. I play whatever the pianist has, and if there is a flute part, you can give that to me. And one time they whipped out Stars and Stripes, which was great. But sight reading, that’s a little interesting if you haven’t done it in a while. But that was super cool. Stars and Stripes with big band. So that was a highlight for me. But yeah, I’m still in there. They didn’t fire me, so it’s all good.

Christopher: Fantastic. And you, two of your three kids are still at the age where they’re at home with you. You’re still clearly playing a mom role, but somehow finding time for music alongside that, and making great strides in what you’ve been working on. Tell us a little bit about that. How has music come back into your life? How does it fit into your week-week routine? What kinds of things have you been working on since joining that band?

Sharilynn: My whole practice routine has completely changed. Since this introduction of Jazz, I do so much more by ear. I do a lot more listening. I listened, in the classical realm, but the listening now is so much different. So much more intense. Because you’re listening to reproduce. And I have this… A lot’s happening, actually, so it’s a little bit hard, but my practice routine is different in that I take things such as Improvise For Real has some exercises out there, and so I practice a lot in my car. So I listen a lot to things I’m working on, or a solo that I’d like to transcribe.

Sharilynn: Or I’ve got a set of exercises that I purchased from David Reed. They’re called Sing the Numbers where his system is based on where you are within the tonal map. So you’re singing one, and three, and two, and four. And so I listen to this lovely voice sing the numbers, and then I get to echo it. And so part of my practice routine when I have my flute in my hands is to play that again, and then play the notes. So I figured out what key it was in, and then I go ahead and play the notes. So that’s part of my practice routine.

Sharilynn: And another one I just picked up from a gentleman named Michael Lake, Alto Bone is his website. He has something out there where he takes the Brahms Lullaby and you got to figure it out, and then he gives a tone, and then you have to play it. So he gives you just this tone, and then you have to play the whole tune. And so I am trying to get through that. That is quite a challenge. That is part of my listening part of my practice session. Then I created a warmup that I like to go through, and I usually base that warmup on the key of pieces I’m working on. So I’ve got some stuff I’m working on in B flat right now. And I use that as my warmup.

Sharilynn: And I got pulled back into classical music. We have a new accompanist at our church. And I’ve just gone back to play at church again to kind of get performing regularly so I’m not nervous. The Jazz band’s so nerve-racking for me because it’s so new. So I kind of want to make performing old hat again. And our new accompanist is from the Northeast. He’s a very high level player. One of those people that play by ear, and they have perfect pitch. One of those guys. Name the tune, he can sit down and play it. And so he’s challenging me, and he wants to do a recital. He just showed up. And then I get to do this. So he’s making me play some classical tunes, and I’ve pushed the envelope, and we’re playing stuff that’s kind of half Jazz, half classical. And he did pick out one piece he wants to do, and it’s called Meditation by Massenet. Common piece that’s played by violin or flute or piano. And I approached it differently, and that’s probably the biggest change in my practice routine is, I know this song. I played the recording and learned it from the recording. I don’t look at the music. I don’t have it solid yet, but that’s how I rehearsed it with him, was without the music.

Christopher: Very cool.

Christopher: I want to dig into some of this if I may because I know that for some people following along, that sounds a bit magical. And I think some of the exercises you just described, or maybe the kind of legwork that gets you to being able to do that, to just listen to a piece and figure it out. But I wonder if you could break down, what does it look like when you say you listened to that piece, and without the sheet music, you figured out how to play it? What would, say five minutes of doing that look like?

Sharilynn: Well it’s more than five minutes. It’s a lot of listening. It’s just a lot of listening. The five minutes might be the part of me trying it out. But it’s just a ton of listening, and what I did was, I have an app that will allow me to loop things, so I would just loop it. So I’m folding clothes, making dinner, and I’m looping that little section that I’m trying to learn. So I will do that, and then that’ll be my practice routine. Later on in the evening, I’ll go and I’ll work those few bars. So I broke it down to like 10 bar increments, and I set up a backing track so that I could play over it so I could hear the chords as I went through it.

Sharilynn: Because I wanted to hear the tension in the music, which is something that I’ve picked up since I joined Musical U, is listening for the tension and the release in the music. Where that never occurred to me as a classical player. It’s crazy, but it never did. And you guys have definitely enlightened me to that. I listen differently than I used to thanks to the, what was the course I took? Musician’s Ear. So the intense listening. But I knew that I needed to do that in pursuit of Jazz anyway, that I had to up my listening. I hear my son doing it, I started doing it, and I listen to players that I want to emulate. And I listen to other players. So I knew that had to happen. But this looping thing, totally recommend it. You can listen intently, or you can listen to it in the background while you’re doing something else. But it’s always there. You start to get the tune in your head and be able to sing it. And then if you can sing it, you can play it.

Christopher: So I’m going to play the part of our prototypical audience member, and say, “Really? Is that really true?” So you mentioned listening for the tension and release. How much are you actively, consciously doing stuff in your head when you listen so that later on, when you pick up your flute, you have some idea what notes to play? And how much is it just passive, and then somehow, when you pick up your flute, you know the right notes?

Sharilynn: It’s mostly passive, because I have kids, they always need something. But I do do the active listening when they’re not around. And I have to just kind of limit myself to what I’m listening to. And you’re right, it’s not that easy. I have spent a great deal of time learning some of the principles that they have in the Improvise For Real book. I sing those numbers. I’ve spent time in some of the modules that you have at Musical U going over the intervals, going over the chords, singing the chords.

Sharilynn: I actually developed some exercises for my kids where you find a particular tune that goes with the interval you’re trying to learn, and then I played that tune in 12 keys. Because I figure I have to, if this is what I’m supposed to do, if I’m supposed to learn this language of Jazz, and I learned from Brent Vaartstra at learnjazzstandards.com, and had to do it in all 12 keys, so why don’t I start with something easy like two notes? Maybe I should do two notes, and try to do that interval in all 12 keys. And what I decided to do is take maybe, I don’t know, descending major second. Was it Mary had a Little Lamb? Right? That’s a good one to start with. And that’s pretty easy to do in all 12 keys once you’ve learned your key signatures. So I did stuff like that and kind of pushed myself that way because I really want to harness that.

Christopher: Fantastic, and one of the things you mentioned there was David Reed’s Improvise for Real, and I wonder if we could just spell out a little bit more of what’s going on in those exercises you mentioned. So it is singing the numbers course. It’s using the scales degrees, right? So when you talk about singing the one and the three, and the two and the four, which would map particular notes from the scale.

Sharilynn: Right. He has two levels, and I had already done some ear training, so I bought level two. So I can explain level two in detail. He has the premise of that we have seven notes in the scale. If we talk about C major scale, we have C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. So he starts with that, and then he says, “Well, you can build a chord on each of those scale tones.” And he calls those the seven worlds. So the chord would be let’s see now, C is one, three, five, and seven. And then the G chord is two, four, six, one, and etc.

Sharilynn: And so in this Sing by Numbers Two, he plays the one chord, so he’s playing C, E, G, and B, and then the singer proceeds to sing some of those scale tones. They give you three trials. One seems to be a general trial kind of experimenting with all of the scale tones. The second one is only the chord tones. So if it’s the one chord, you’re only singing one, three, five, and seven, which in a key of C is C, E, G, and B. And she just comes up with every iteration of those notes that you can come up with. And then the final one kind of expands beyond the octaves. You could be singing the top level seven, to one, to two, maybe three above that. And then they go below one to seven, to six. So I think it’s great, son and I, my middle son and I sing that on the way to school. So I make him practice with me. I think this is all coming together and helping.

Sharilynn: There is a very powerful talk that I heard Brent Vaartstra at learnjazzstandards.com interview Marshall McDonald, who was the lead alto with the Count Basie band. And he said that when he began improvising, he just sang stuff and tried to duplicate it on his instrument. And that sounded good to me. And so actually yesterday when I got out my horn, I’m like, “You know what? Let me just hum a little something and see how things are going.” And I was finding notes. My new progress journal says to improve my ear to instrument connection. And so that’s been my main emphasis, is just clueing in this ear. And it doesn’t happen fast. It takes time. And it’s a frustrating thing. We all get frustrated with it, even people that are great are like, “I don’t do that. I don’t understand that.” And I’m a little bit crazy in pursuing this.

Christopher: This has come across.

Sharilynn: There are a ton of people I would sincerely… I can’t tell you. I could tell you just even what I listened to today. You want to know what I learned today? I’m really nuts about it, and I’m encouraged because I think I’m starting to get there. And it’s a different mindset. I know that you talk a lot about mindset. This mindset of really knowing what you’re going to play beforehand is huge, whether you’re just doing classical music, or Jazz improvisation, if you know it really well, your fingers tend to find it better. I wish someone would’ve told me that years ago because the classical preparation that our pianist has asked me to do, I’m listening to that stuff like crazy. I don’t have a lot of time to practice the stuff he wants me to do. And so I decided I’m just going to listen as much as I can. And I’m having a better chance at finding my way, but then being frustrated I can’t play that. I just slow it down super slow until my ear understands it. And I’m having much more success.

Sharilynn: That is definitely something I’ve noticed in my kids. I teach lessons as well, and they’ll come in, and they just can’t get something. And I make them sing it. And if they can sing it, they turn around and they play it like that. It’s nuts. So we do not use our ear as much as we should. We really don’t. Not in the classical world at all. So that’s been my big lesson. It’s through Jazz. Jazz has taught me to listen, listen, and listen some more.

Christopher: Got you. And before we move on, I want to ask one follow up question that I know will have been on people’s minds, which is, you were doing these kinds of ear training exercises like the Improvise for Real course, for example, and playing all 12 keys as an interval or melody, and then we also heard about how these days, if you’re approaching a new piece, you might choose to skip the sheet music and just figure it out by ear, or using a lot of listening. How much are you, and I’m asking this because the answer genuinely varies in my experience. It’s not that there’s a right answer and a wrong answer. Different people do it different ways. But how much are you consciously applying what you learned? So are you using, say, that numbering system when you pick up your flute and you’re trying to play what you heard? Or is it just kind of embedded at that point, and it comes out automatically?

Sharilynn: I think it’s a combination of the two. Michael Lake that I mentioned, I think he, the exercises that he provides, the instructions are, “Don’t think about where you are. Don’t think that there- here comes the octave jump.” So he instructs you not to do that. And I get that. And I think the more you emphasize on that, it becomes a little more automatic. However, I think when you know where you are, it gives you a little bit more of a grounding place rather than just throwing yourself out there. “Yeah, let’s just see if this works.” Because then you don’t know where you mess up. So if I’m trying to get through, I think it’s Brahms Lullaby that I’m learning, at what point am I messing up? I’d have to hum the tune, and like, “Is that the place?” I wouldn’t even know.

Sharilynn: But I think what he’s trying to say is get the left brain out of there and let the right brain do what it’s supposed to do. Right brain can hear all this stuff. The right brain has the feeling. So I think that’s what he means by that. But I literally use a combination of the two. And if the notes go by- sometimes the notes go by too quickly, and you can’t even come up with the number. So it’s almost like it starts on three, or that’s four, and I think all my practice in going through all 12 keys, it’s not hard to come up with what four is. And even in the key of B or something like that. I would have to say I use a combination of the two.

Christopher: Wonderful. And you mentioned there, “I wish someone had taught me this way back when.” Or, “I wish I’d known that back when I was learning.” What other things come into that category for you? And obviously you have the teacher’s perspective now. You’re consciously deciding what to give these kids, and they’re practicing, and they’re learning the instrument. What else falls into that category for you?

Sharilynn: I would have to say how to practice. I wish that they would’ve literally told me how to practice. I didn’t know. I spent hours trying to figure out how to practice, and at one point, since I had to get back into this, and my skills were pretty well, I had to figure out how to get back up to speed. And so I took my engineering mind along with my musical mind. I said, “Hey, if this is what I have to do, what’s the right way to approach this? What is the problem here? What is it that I’m missing out, or what is it that I typically don’t do correctly?” And I’d have to say the big thing that came to me was how we play between the beats. For instance, if you’re playing something that’s eighth notes, where does that eighth note fall? Is it falling exactly on the upbeat?

Sharilynn: And so I take my students through a series of exercises which, we’ll take the major scale. They have a pattern that they typically play for the major scale. And it’s an audition pattern. And so I’m good with that. I can understand that. When you play the audition, play that pattern. But if you want to get better at playing the flute or your instrument, you need to do it differently. You just have to keep changing it up. So my kids play, exercise, and I set the metronome at 40. And then I will have them click the subdivisions. I actually put some backing tracks for them where it clicks the subdivision. And you’re playing your major scale in eighth notes, but your sounds, each sound you play, matches with the metronome. So at 40, it’s really hard to kind of figure out where the upbeat is, so you just match the metronome. And then they’re instructed to change the rhythm to triplets as they are comfortable.

Sharilynn: And then we move to sixteenth notes, and then, thank goodness for metronomes that have different subdivisions, like five over one. That gets crazy, and that makes them think. They’ll be like, “Yeah, I know my scales.” I’m like, “Okay, play it this way.” “Oh my gosh.” But they’re able to do it. I do this as a clinician at the schools, too. So I’ll have the whole group of them doing it. And so we do five over the beat, six over the beat, seven over the beat. That’s kind of mind blowing. But that’s the whole scale. When you get to the next beat, you start again on the main note. Then you do eight over the beat, and I think there were two things. The reason I did that was to feel what’s happening between the beat so that you’re exactly matching that finger exchange with the metronome. So you get control of your hands.

Sharilynn: And the number two reason was sometimes these notes just, you’re asked to play fast notes so quickly. And if I didn’t touch on that, that was something that was hard for me in that I didn’t have music instruction, and the level of music was so high that that’s where I created- Oh, I did say that. That’s where I created the smear. Because I could fake it really well. This way, it teaches them to play every note in between. And they are so confident. And I think that was probably part of what was lacking in my confidence is that I wasn’t sure if it was going to come off or not. So who wants to stand on a ball and play their flute for everybody? And I think that this technique has worked so beautifully in what my students have accomplished, and kids that I work with in the schools. And then they stay at 40 for a long time.

Sharilynn: But if you do the math, once you get up to eight over the beat, you’re actually playing sixteenth notes at 80. That’s not that fast, you know? And then it kind of eases you into the fast playing. And by doing a lot of research into Josh Turknett, his Laws of Brainjo. And one of the things he touched on was that this fast playing just comes with experience. And I think that it made me feel good that this exercise really kind of gives them that experience. And you’re being precise about what you do every step of the way. So it’s not like deer in the headlights like, [inaudible 00:53:50] “Sixteenth notes.” That’s what they all do in high school. They’re afraid of sixteenth notes. But I teach them how to practice like this.

Sharilynn: And I’ve got one young lady that just she said, “Okay.” Just do everything I said, “Okay.” And we have a, not a competition, but all district band that was three counties. So it’s three surrounding counties and all the high schools involved in those counties. And she won first chair as a sophomore. And it’s just that she’s confident. She’s been able to kind of work her way through like this. And she took my challenge to do Happy Birthday in all twelve keys, too. She’s maybe as nuts as I am, I don’t know.

Christopher: Very cool. Well I was saying to you before we hit record that I think you’re going to really enjoy the interview we have coming out with Gregg Goodheart and a couple of other things you just mentioned align perfectly with what he was saying.

Christopher: For example, often, the sticking point is for the student is in actually doing what the teacher told them to. And if they would just do what the teacher told them to, they would get a really long way.

Sharilynn: I agree. Yes.

Christopher: He was also pointing out that actually if you really crack practice and you get your repertoire to a certain level of mastery, performance anxiety isn’t really a thing anymore, because you know you can do it. And you know you can do it at speed. So why would you be worried?

Sharilynn: And it’s exactly it. And I’m sure he mentioned that the more you do it, the more confident you feel about performing. That’s why I went back to play at church because I play Saturday and Sunday. So I play every week. I guess on Sunday there’s probably 800 plus people, and then maybe 400 on Saturday night or something. So you got an audience. But it’s a safe audience. They can’t fire me. So it’s all good. But with this new pianist, I get challenges. And I have to share this one with you, too. He switches things all the time. All the time. So my new challenge is when he changes key, I got to figure it out faster.

Sharilynn: He just randomly changes key. He goes, “Yeah, I want to play this song.” I had music for the song. It’s not one I knew real well. Did not know it by ear at all. So there wasn’t even time to even figure the numbers for that. And the guitarist and I just looked at each other, and we’re like, “Oh.” Yeah. So that’s my new mission, is to hear when he changes key. Aye-I-Aye.

Christopher: Keeping you on your toes? That’s great. Well, if I’ve picked up anything from this conversation, Sharilynn, and your posts inside Musical U, it’s that you are someone who thrives on that challenge. And you certainly don’t shy away from it. I wonder if there were any insights about practicing in particular that you wish you could go back and tell yourself, or that you’re now giving your students. When you said you didn’t know how to practice, are there other things you’re giving them?

Sharilynn: Definitely. I think that they always say to work on your sound, you need to do long tones. And I’ve met other professionals who used to say, “pfft, I don’t do long tones.” But there are so many cool things out there that you can put with let’s say long tones. So if you’re working on your sound, find some good examples. Some of those are the drone tones. So you play a drone tone, and you can match that sound. And what I have my students doing is kind of combining that with the Improvise for Real mentality in that play the tone or the drone tone, but then go in the scale pattern above that. So let’s say if it’s a drone tone on C, then play D against that.

Sharilynn: How does that sound? How do you feel about that? Do you like that? And then you go back. You’re getting a sense of where you are on the scale, and if you’re playing, let’s say, C, D, to C, then you’ve just given yourself a great example of what a major second is. So you can begin to get these intervals in your ears. Then you’d go C to E, back to C. Very slowly, C to F, back to C. C to G, back to C. C to A, back to C. And C to B, back to C. And then do the octave. Check your information on the octave. That’s a good way to do long tones, is that type of thing.

Sharilynn: And the other thing is they have sine waves out there, like pure sine tones. I’ve been doing a little bit of that, and that’s great for intonation. So that would’ve been a really cool one. Because I think they get bored. And you’re like, “Okay.. What am I supposed to be doing? I’m holding this long note.” You can do- typically you’ll do a loud, soft kind of thing. How soft can you play? Can you make it grow louder? And can you make it grow softer and still maintain the pitch? But I’m kind of digging the sine wave thing. That’s pretty cool, the sine tones. And there are apps out there that are free that you can kind of put those on, and I think those are super cool. And again, Jazzers. Jazzers are into this kind of stuff, and I think that’s super neat, so get out those long tones, because the most important thing you do is have a good sound. And I’ve heard players just run up and down their horns, and I just can’t get past their sound if they don’t have a good sound.

Sharilynn: And the average listener’s really pretty much the same way. You could win them on that first note, and so sound is really something. And it’s super important to work on, and those are fun exercises to do, and they’re challenging. Especially if you start trying to push the limits of how soft can I play it? How loud can I play it? Because those are all things that were challenged to you in our ensembles or in our solo playing.

Christopher: Awesome. And I know that our audience is going to be annoyed with me if I let you go without asking for all of the resources and things you found useful on the way. We’ve already mentioned David Reed, Improvise for Real, and Brent over at Learn Jazz Standards, And I think Michael Lake was the other one. You had the Brahms Lullaby. Is that right?

Sharilynn: Yes. He has more exercises out there that build you up to that. Because that’s pretty challenging. And I’m going to probably get more with him on that, but he does have buildup exercises. It looks like it’s based on intervals. So he’s definitely worth a look. I’ve also gotten into, and they no longer have a website, but they have YouTube videos. Learn Jazz Faster. A couple of guys from Berkeley. And I’ve bought their eBooks when they still had their website. One of the gentlemen had a baby, and then that was it.

Christopher: Yeah, that’s so rough.

Sharilynn: I’m all in for this kid, so yeah.

Christopher: I can sympathize.

Sharilynn: Yes, I can, too. But those guys have some really great stuff. But the YouTube videos are out there. They’re free. They have something called, I think it’s 25 Great Ways to Something about Your Practice. And then I tune into Aimee Nolte. I think she’s great. She does all kinds of stuff. She does all kinds of things. I’m trying to think of who else that I’ve done. I did purchase Jeffrey’s book. Jeffrey Agrell.

Christopher: Oh yeah, fantastic.

Sharilynn: This one.

Christopher: Improvisation Games for Classical Musicians.

Sharilynn: Now It’s Time to Play. Yes, that’s what I-

Christopher: Have you dove into it yet?

Sharilynn: Not yet. That pianist kind of threw me off course. He just showed up about two months ago, so.

Christopher: Yeah, there’s your improvisation games right there for you at the church.

Sharilynn: I know. But that’s pretty much what I’m into now. Those things, and I think I would probably look up Michael Lake and maybe get a Skype lesson with him. Because he seems… I have to interject with this. A lot of times, the approach with Jazz is here’s the chord. Use the chord tones. Use the chord scale. Use this. And I struggle with that as a musician going, “Well how is that improvisation. How am I really expressing myself if I know this is what I always play when I get there? I guess in my further research, they’ve expanded beyond that in that, let’s say you found a piece of Jazz language or a “lick” that you liked. They tell you to make variations of that. And so then that brings in your expression, but if you’re sitting there counting the measures until that lick shows up that you practiced, I can’t see how that’s improvisation.

Sharilynn: So I have struggled with that for two years, and Michael seems to be not the first one. I have to say through Musical U, that was the first. Andrew’s Play Listen Play. So part of my listening to Musical U and hear it in your improv module, because that’s been super cool. And he puts just great backing tracks up there that make you just want to play free, and figure it all out. So that’s brilliant. But Michael Lake, I think he’s got something there. So I’m going to look into him some more. That’s probably where I’m headed. Because it’s all in this hearing, and one thing I did learn from Josh Turknett there and my research with him, he says that once you’ve made something automatic, or I would say internalized, that you need to let it go. Because when the left brain steps in, that’s a bad thing. It’ll mess you up. So I kind of see that for Jazz. So if you’re thinking, “Oh, here comes that two, five, one. I want to use that lick that I learned,” then your left brain just stepped in.

Sharilynn: And so I’m kind of curious about what he has to say. Because he’s pretty much saying, “No, let that right brain take over, and just make that connection to the ear and your instrument tight.” So I think it comes… I am failing at that exercise. I’ve been working on it I guess a week, but I fail at it. So that ought to be a really interesting lesson. I think he expects it. But yeah, you just got to keep at it. And I see these jazzers. I talk to these guys that play in the band that I play in. One is actually a professor at the community college. Same one I used to teach at. And he shakes his head sometimes, and he just says, “Aw man, I just heard something today, and I just don’t understand it.” So that’s what I like about jazzers. I think they feel like they’re always working, they’re always learning, and I’ve had some classical people that maybe think they’ve arrived. So not all of them, but I tend to say, I probably identify more with these jazzers that are always wanting to learn and always wanting to get better.

Christopher: Tremendous. Well, thank you so much, Sharilynn. I know I’m not alone in considering myself very lucky that I get to follow along with your progress journal inside Musical U. Because you’re always, as is clear from this conversation, after some really interesting stuff and pushing the boundaries for yourself. And it’s honestly very inspiring, so thank you so much for joining us on the show today.

Sharilynn: Thank you for having me. I’ve had a great time.

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