The Value of Order

I have been thinking lately about how important it is to have order in our lives.  I believe that I am more productive, more settled, and happier when I feel like my life is orderly.  I enjoy my home more when it is neat and orderly.  Yesterday's clothes left on the floor doesn't feel as good to me as clothing on a hanger.  Knowing what I am going to eat for lunch as I leave for work feels better to me than figuring it out when I am hungry at 12:30 after a morning of classes.  Walking into school with strong lesson plans for the day is better than putting a plan together at the last minute or simply winging it.  I like to plan my daily and weekly schedule carefully.  Somehow all of this orderliness keeps me happy and settled. 

I believe that students need this as well.  For years, I have placed a strong priority on students walking in to an orderly, set up classroom.  I never hand out or collect music in class.  I prepare folders ahead of time, outside of class, and collect music the same way.  I think my students appreciate this.  I feel confident that they appreciate the effort that it takes to be orderly and efficient with class-time.  I also believe in strong classroom routines: introduction, warm up, content and related activity, closure.   These routines set up a safe and predictable learning environment.  

The new school year has begun at NCSSM and orchestra is off to a great start. I have truly enjoyed getting to know all of our new junior string players. Rehearsals have been vibrant and productive right out of the gate.  One thing that has stuck me again this year is the importance of seating in the orchestra and the order that seating facilitates.  Remember that my orchestra changes by just about 50% every year. We are a two-year school and when a class graduates, half of the orchestra departs.  Also, I really don't find out how many students will be in my orchestra or instrumentation until the first day of class. This year I am blessed with incredibly balanced sections: 24 violins, 10 violas, 15 celli, and 2 basses.  I hold auditions very early in the year for my students to introduce themselves to me musically, but for our first few rehearsals, I don't really have a seating order.  We sight-read music and students are permitted to sit anywhere they wish within their section.  This year we had three rehearsals before I could establish a seating chart and sections for the group. While those three rehearsals were fine, I must admit that they never really felt "good."  

By the 2nd week of classes, I had been able to review video auditions and begin to establish some sense of "who is in the room" in my mind.  I created a seating order and assigned violin students into violin I and II sections.  (I should say that I do my best to create "even" sections and rely heavily on assigning some of my top players to leadership positions in the 2nd violin violin section.  I also provide opportunities for some of my less experienced players to test themselves with the sometimes more challenging violin I parts.  And, I always have some students that are simply not ready for the upper positions presented in violin I parts.)   But here is the interesting fact:  once students received their section assignment, seating placement, and stand partner, the ensemble seemed to transform quickly. In fact, immediately. Things were more settled.  Students quickly became comfortable and began to dig into the task at hand in a different way.  It is hard for me to clearly articulate the transformation, but I would simply say that it felt more comfortable.  Every rehearsal since that time has had the same feel.  All I can attribute this to is the confidence that comes with order.  Everyone now knows where they will sit, what part they will play, who their stand partner is, and they are beginning to develop a sense of their role as part of the larger group.

This has been a good reminder for me.  Sometimes I forget the importance of routine and order.  Of course, alternately, sometimes it is good to shake up a routine and order. But, order has to, in fact, be established before it can be "shook up." We crave order as humans.  We respond well to predictability and comfort.  This has been a great reminder for me as we begin the new school year.

I wish you all the best as you begin to establish the order in your classroom and rehearsals to start the new year.

Peace.

Scott

Essence

Last week in rehearsal we began talking about the concept of finding the essence of difficult passages in the repertoire. This is a rehearsal technique that I have been developing over the past several years and wanted to introduce to this fine ensemble. This technique is by no means uniquely mine. But, I believe I have created some wrinkles in the technique that allow for greater learning by each member of the ensemble, regardless of their technical proficiency.   (If you heard the Mendelssohn Sinfonia last night, you heard this without knowing it.)

In virtually every ensemble there is some range of technical ability exhibited by the members of the group. There will almost always be some who grasp the most difficult technical passages quickly and others who take longer to learn the passages or, perhaps even find those passages to be above their technical capabilities. This is the case this week and virtually every summer here in the Intermediate Concert Orchestra. Again, I would stress that this is the case in most youth and community orchestras.

So, as music directors, we have one of two choices. We can either program all music in which everyone in the ensemble can play every technical passage. Or, we can give the musicians tools for seeing the deeper meaning in passages and finding ways to adapt technically so that they are enhancing the orchestral performance, not detracting from it. In several of the conducting situations in which I find myself, the latter is the better choice. (Let me stress to young teachers that sometimes the former is the better choice. It depends on your particular situation and requires great thought in reference to the goals of the ensemble and the type of musician that you are reaching.)

My friend, conductor Scott Speck, put it this way: think of a meter in front of the orchestra. For every right note you play the meter goes to the right. That is good! For every wrong note you play, the meter goes to the left.  That is bad. If you don't play anything the meter stays straight up and down. No harm done. The goal for each musician is to make the meter go to the right constantly. That said, by not playing a wrong note, the meter is not impacted. I am trying to get young musicians to make that meter go to the right. If they play in correct rhythms or incorrect pitches, that meter goes in the wrong direction. It is hard to convince young musicians that they are helping The Ensemble by leaving stuff out. So, in response to this I created this rehearsal technique. If done correctly, the musicians that ought the for playing the essence not only serve a benign role of not hurting the ensemble. They also help the ensemble by stabilizing rhythmic and pitch information for the other players.

I called my technique finding the ESSENCE of a passage.  It works like this:

Many times in the repertoire there will be very fast passages of 16th notes, difficult fingerings or shifts or, perhaps, very high notes that are technically challenging. I can always tell from the podium when there are students who are struggling to keep up with the ensemble.  It is at this point that I invite the ensemble to step back, listen to the passage, think about the passage, and ascertain the essence of the passage. Sometimes when we are simply seeing a difficult fast passage or technical requirements that are above our level, it's easy to get lost in the forest and missed the trees. Many times in a sixteenth note passage the essence is the first note of the 16th . Or, perhaps if the passage is very high and require shifting on the part of the string player, simply taking note of the name of the note can be an enlightening activity. I always say that correct pitches are way more important than high notes. A pitch that is difficult to find up high on the fingerboard is better off being played an octave lower in a position that is accessible to a less-experienced string player.

In addition to finding these essence passages when left hand is in focus, I will also look for rhythmic essence at times. If an ensemble is struggling with a rhythmic passage, I try to look for the fundamental rhythms and break the difficulties down into manageable pieces. Sometimes this means adding sixteenth notes to a tricky eighth note passage that may be rushing or slowing down. Sometimes it means just finding the accented notes in a fast passage. Other times, it means clarifying who is providing the rhythmic information in the passage.  Really, it is the same process: find the technically difficult passage and break it down into manageable parts that still fit into the greater work.  After a while, musicians get quite good at doing this!

Please bear in mind that these are my values as a conductor and ensemble leader.  My thinking might be different if I was working as a private instructor on solo repertoire.  As a conductor, my ultimate goal is an accurate and moving performance.

Once I have established exactly what the essence of a passage includes, we go to work on using it meaningfully.

• We play the essence passage by itself. 
• We add the rest of the ensemble playing the actual part while the section in question is playing the essence. 
• Sometimes I will have the outside player play the written part and the inside player do the essence. 
• I will then reverse that. 
• Sometimes I will have the front three stands play the written part and the rest of the section play the essence. 

I typically give musicians the choice as to what they will play in a concert. In other words, a student might play The essence in rehearsal for several weeks while they are perfecting the difficult passage. I always make it clear that I would prefer essence in performance over a sloppy technically difficult passage. Essence always makes the ensemble stronger. Wrong notes make the ensemble weaker.  And, I always remind students that no one in the audience will have any idea that they are playing something other than what is written in the part.  At the core is the notion that each players' responsibility is to make the ensemble better!  Sometimes that means playing the essence.

So, this is a brief description of my thoughts on finding Essence in Ensemble repertoire. Sometimes it is absolutely imperative that this be defined and that students know that they can use it as a purposeful tool as part of the rehearsal process and perhaps even part of the performance . I welcome your comments and thoughts on the subject.

Until next time.

Peace.

Scott

Priorities

Last weekend, I was privileged to conduct for the El Sistema USA East Coast Seminario.  This was a gathering of students and teachers from El Sistema USA programs up and down the East Coast of the United States and featured students from Miami, North Palm Beach, Atlanta, Newport News, Durham, Raleigh, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Lehigh Valley PA, and Connecticut.  Kidznotes in Durham served as the host and I did a bit of conducting and rehearsing with the large group as part of the weekend.

At one point, I was speaking with a couple of the instructors and was asked about my priorities in rehearsal when working with a group of students that are just coming together for the first time in a festival setting like this.  I thought it was a great question and it provided me the challenge of distilling my thoughts  into a brief conversation.  I  thought I would share my thoughts here as well.

My first priority, in any short term festival setting, it to establish the necessity for young musicians to visually communicate with me.  What I am saying, in a nutshell, is that I want them to watch the conductor!   This in turn, provides me the opportunity to visually communicate with them throughout the festival and, hopefully, for them to go home with a new found appreciation for the skill of visual communication in the ensemble.  It might sound surprising, but most young musicians need to more fully develop this skill.  Our human nature is to look at the written page.  In orchestral music, that is just the first step.  Players must know the music well enough to lift their eyes and attention to the conductor in order to receive valuable, imperative information.  They also need to know when  to look to the conductor.  It is not always during difficult passages or changes in tempo.  I ask students to establish visual contact during static moments in the music as well;  to look to the conductor for pulse during repeated rhythmic sections, for style and phrasing during sustained passages, for information during rests.  And, when a conductor knows that his musicians are looking for information, he/she will usually give more information in turn.

I must also add that for me, it goes a bit deeper than this.  If students are looking to me for information, I can also establish a visual relationship with them.  I can smile at them.  I can acknowledge their active participation.  I can "make friends" without ever saying a word.  This, to me, is so important as a vital part of music-making.  It is so relational in every way and in a festival setting I can't always speak with every student before or between rehearsals.  So, those smiles, affirmations, and acknowledgements go a long way.

My other priority that must be established is the need for a complete understanding and commitment to the various roles of each voice of the ensemble throughout every moment of music to be performed.  In other words, students much have a strong understanding of who has melodic material, rhythmic material, harmonic material, obbligato lines.  I often refer to this as the  teacher/student relationship.  In other words, in any passage, some voice has to play the role of teacher.  That voice is the one that is giving information that the others need in order to play accurately, musically, or expressively.  That may include rhythmic material or melodic material.  Regardless, the others are learning something vital from that voice.  The others, then, are the students.  They are learning from the teacher voice.  And, they are, in turn, responding to that information appropriately.  It is essentially a chamber music concept in large ensemble performance.  Too many conductors simply instruct young musicians  to "watch the stick."  That directive, in my opinion, falls way short.  Do they need to watch the stick? For that answer, refer to the previous paragraph.  But, in addition, real music-making involves listening to all of the voices and reacting to not only the visual information that the conductor is giving, but also the sonic information that the musicians are continually receiving from each other.

For me, both of these values must be established early in the rehearsal process in order to develop a musical and expressive ensemble.  I believe that students of all ages and playing levels can be instructed in these concepts.

In the end, it boils down to communication.  Music making is communication at many levels: conductor to player, player to conductor, player to player, voice to voice,  ensemble to audience, audience to ensemble.  If we establish and affirm clear tools of communication for our ensembles early in the rehearsals process, everything works at a much higher level.

I hope that these thoughts are helpful.  It has been interesting for me to consider and articulate my thoughts on this topic.

As we move into the spring concert season and summer, I wish you all the best.

Peace.
Scott