Taking the stress out of sight reading

Do you relish first encounters with new music? Or does the thought of sight reading fill you with dread? Assimilating unseen music is an important skill for any musician, whether you’re taking your first steps or you’re an experienced player. The ability to play through fresh repertoire allows us to assess whether we wish to study it further, and in ensembles that fluency of reading is crucial if we’re to be a useful team player.

Think for a moment about what’s required of us when we’re sight reading. You’re reading a written language (much like reading text) and this tells us which notes to play and in what rhythm. Alongside this you have information about whether to play smoothly or detached, how loud or soft, tempo, character and more besides. When you consider the level of multitasking this requires it’s a miracle any of us can get from one end of a new piece to the other without falling over immediately! If sight reading is something you find difficult, don’t give yourself too hard a time - just remember how much you’re trying to do simultaneously.

Having made sight reading sound like an unscalable mountain, my aim today is to help you turn that mountain into a much smaller peak, or maybe a group of smaller hills. Sight reading may come more naturally for some people, but it’s a skill you can definitely improve with practice - just like any other aspect of musicianship.

Let’s take a look at what needs to happen when you’re given a piece to sight read…

One step at a time

It’s easy to panic when faced with a new piece of music but the best strategy is to break the task down into smaller chunks. Let’s consider the most important things to do before you play a single note….

Look at the key signature

Don’t just think to yourself, ‘There are two sharps”, but actually work out which ones they are - F sharp and C sharp. Finger these notes on your recorder so you immediately begin to build some muscle memory.

Check the time signature

How many beats are there in each bar and what sort of beats are they? The top number of the time signature tells you the number of beats, and the bottom number tells you the type. So 3/4 means three crotchet beats in each bar. If you’ve come to music in adulthood and missed out on learning the basics of music theory it’s worth seeking out some tuition to fill the gaps in your knowledge as this’ll help with sight reading too. A local music shop, if you have one near you, is a great place to ask about nearby teachers, and there are many online resources to help you learn about music theory. If this is something you’d like me to cover here, on the Score Lines blog do get in touch or leave a comment below.

Look for accidentals

Glance through the music and look for accidentals. Are there any ‘exotic’ ones which need translating - for instance a G flat is really only an F sharp in disguise. Recognising them in advance will help you play them with greater ease. While you’re at it, look for sharps and flats which repeat later in the bar - you could even pencil them in to remind you!

Check the tempo marking

What speed does the composer want you to play? You may not be able to play it at full speed immediately, but at least try to have any idea what might have been in his or her mind. Wikipedia has a great glossary of musical terms which is worth bookmarking for future reference.

Consider the tempo you’re going to play

You may have to play more slowly than the indicated speed at first, but you do need to have thought about it before you begin! Look through the rhythms to see how wide a range of note values you have. If the music begins with the fastest notes that’s handy, because you get an immediate feel for how whizzy the music will be. If the piece begins with slower notes you’ll need to think through the mathematical relationship between the note values so you understand their relative speeds. Pick a speed where you’ll be able to at least have a stab at the fastest notes, and don’t be afraid to subdivide the longer notes into smaller beats in your head if you need to.

Now look closer at the rhythms

Having taken a wide view of the piece, look a little closer. Look for any funky rhythms which don’t immediately look straightforward. Relate the rhythms to the beats and see if that helps you figure them out. Maybe tap or scat sing the rhythm to yourself initially so you’re not trying to cope with complex rhythms and the fingerings at once. You can also pencil beat numbers into the music if that helps you understand the rhythm more easily.

Check out the rest of the score

Finally, look through at the other markings in the music - articulation (slurs, staccato, accents), dynamics, ornamentation. You may not be able to put all of these in on the first reading, but knowing they’re there is a start. The most important thing is to get the rhythm and pitch first time out - if you can add further refinements that’s a bonus.

A practical example

Let’s put this into practice now and look at a real world example. This short piece comes from a book of practice sight reading pieces. It’s a grade 6 piece, but the processes we’ve just considered can be applied at any level. If you would prefer to try this piece for yourself on descant or tenor recorder you can find a transposed version here.

Click on the music to download printable version

So what jumps off the page at me when I first look at this music?

We have an F sharp in the key signature (E minor, but the name of the key is less important than knowing which sharps to play), with six quaver beats in each bar. The tempo marking, Con moto, means ‘with movement’ so I would probably try to feel two dotted crotchet beats per bar to achieve a sense of flow. If that makes the semiquavers too quick, there’s no reason why you couldn’t feel a quaver beat though.

Glancing through the bars, there are a few accidentals. Checking if any of them repeat during the bar, I see the D sharp needs to be played twice in bar 12. Looking at other details, there are slurs and staccato to be played. The articulation patterns are pretty consistent, with staccato on all of the quavers and most of the semiquavers slurred in twos. Finally, there are some dynamic markings. These tend to be further down my list of priorities as I feel it’s more important to get the notes, rhythms and articulation on a first read through. It all depends on how easily you can cope with everything else so don’t be afraid to prioritise the notes and rhythms if that means you can keep going without hesitating or stopping.

Coping strategies and survival skills

Like everything in life, sight reading is easier if you have some simple strategies in place to help you. If you work through the steps I’ve suggested above that’ll put you on the right path, but here are some handy tips to help you through…

Don’t stop!

I clearly recall my first experience of playing clarinet in the school wind band. We were playing Little Brown Jug by Glenn Miller and I’d only been learning about a year, so I was pretty unsure what to expect. My line was pretty easy, but still I made mistakes and I remember being confused when the band didn’t wait for me as I fumbled my way through! Sight reading an unaccompanied piece is a very forgiving experience - you can stop and start as often as you want. But, the moment when good sight reading skills really come in handy is in an ensemble setting, where the others simply don’t wait for you. Therefore it’s good practice to make yourself keep going at all costs, no matter what you’re sight reading. Drop notes on the floor, but keep the pulse going in your head - you can come back later for a post mortem on what went wrong.

Be methodical and get into a routine

Build good habits. Always working though a mental checklist of the details you need to check before sight reading a piece. If you do this methodically you’ll get into a routine and sight reading will become easier.

Look ahead

When we read words, we gain a sense of the meaning by reading ahead a little, taking in more than one word at a time. This allows us to understand whole sentences, rather than just single words. Music is just the same. Your progress when reading one note at a time will be very slow. Instead, try to look for groups of notes. For instance a dotted crotchet will often be paired with a quaver - think of this like a two syllable word. Beyond that, try to look further on so you see what’s ahead of you and can make sense of whole musical sentences. The faster the music moves, the further you’ll need to look ahead, but don’t forget these wise words from Winston Churchill!

“It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.”

Use the notation to help you

Music notation is designed to be helpful. Return to the music example above and look at the beaming. Beams are the horizontal lines which join together groups of shorter notes - quavers for instance. In most music, notes are beamed together in one beat groups. In this example the quavers and semiquavers are always connected together in dotted crotchet length chunks. This helps us see how the notes fit within the framework of the main beats in each bar. This helps you swiftly understand where the beats fall within the bar.

Be prepared for the notes you’ll inevitably forget

When faced with a key signature of multiple flats or sharps, there’ll always be one note you’re bound to forget - usually the last flat or sharp of the key signature. It must be something about the way our brains are wired, but almost every musician I know does this. If you’ve got three sharps, it’ll be the G sharp you’re likely to forget first, while in a key of four flats, you’re likely to overlook the D flats. If you know this you’re in a better position not to fall into the trap!

Focus on rhythm

Rhythm is what keeps music moving along so this should be your first point of focus when sight reading. Yes, aim to play the right notes too, but rhythm is key if you’re to get through the piece.

Don’t worry about perfection

A while ago I wrote a post about the tranny of perfection - the pressure we put on ourselves to be perfect musicians - a task we will always fail at. You can find it here, if you’d like to refresh your memory or read it for the first time. Sight reading will often cause us to fall into the same trap. It’s all too easy to feel you have to get everything perfect first time, but this a desire we’ll rarely fulfil. Instead, keep going, accept you’re going to make mistakes, but remember where they were so you can come back later to correct the errors.

Don’t be afraid to drop notes on the floor

I often jokingly tell ensembles they can drop notes on the floor and we’ll sweep them up later. Sometimes you just have to learn to edit the music on the spot in order to keep it flowing. I learnt this while studying for A level music. I was allocated a singer, whose lessons I was to accompany on the piano. Faced with a Vaughan Williams song with a key of five flats I knew I couldn’t play every note, so I focused on playing the bassline, along with some of the treble notes so my singer had enough accompaniment to carry him along. Second time round, I filled in some of the gaps, once I knew where the music was going.

Use your conductor

If you’re sight reading in an ensemble with a conductor, use them to help you get back on track. You probably won’t have time to eyeball them continuously. But if you’re able to keep their beat in your peripheral vision, you can then check that the first beat of your bars coincides with their downbeats.

Plan ahead and annotate your music

If you’re in an ensemble and you’re given your music while others are still being handed out, use that extra time wisely. Use the steps I listed earlier to prepare and don’t be afraid to pencil helpful notes in your music. Maybe glance through for accidentals and write in ones which reoccur so you don’t forget them first time.

Don’t panic!

Try to keep a clear head, concentrate solely on the task in hand and remember that nothing disastrous will happen if you do make a mistake.

Don’t forget to breathe!

While you’re focusing on getting round the notes, don’t forget to inhale from time to time. You need air to produce a good tone and the oxygen will help your brain to work better too.

You’ve got the basics, now to improve your skills…

Regardless of whether you’re a natural at sight reading, there are lots of things you can do to improve. Here are some practical things that’ll help you hone your skills.

Sight read often

Doing anything regularly will help you improve - conversely, if you only sight read occasionally it’s easy to forget the skills needed. Rummage through your own books of music for pieces you’ve never tried and set yourself the challenge of reading a few unfamiliar lines of music every day. There are graded sight reading books you can buy too and I’ve got some useful resources to share with you too. If you’re just starting out, something simple like a hymn book or a volume of easy folk songs will be useful. Think of this as musical speed dating. You have a short period with each piece of music, where you try to learn as much as possible about it, before moving on to your next date!

Be realistic about the music you choose

Don’t be tempted to select sight reading repertoire which is way beyond your capabilities. If you plan to work on a piece for several weeks or months it doesn’t matter if some of it is initially beyond you. Over time you’ll overcome the technical challenges and learn to play it. To hone your sight reading skills it’s better to choose something a little simpler so you have a sporting chance of maintaining a sense of flow. Over time you’ll be able to move on to more difficult music and stretch yourself further. This is where graded sight reading pieces can be useful, as you’ll be able to see the gradual progression in difficulty.

Practise scales and arpeggios

All music is made up from the patterns we find in scales and arpeggios. By learning to play these fluently, it helps us to recognise them when we see them in music. For grade exams you must memorise them, but I would argue that learning them from music is just as helpful for the purposes of sight reading. In the same way, there are certain combinations of letters which appear frequently in words - once we know this it becomes easier to understand and say words which use them - think of the ‘ough’ in rough, enough, thought and other words. Score Lines subscribers are welcome to download my scale and arpeggio sheets from the Members’ Area on my website. If you’re not a subscriber, why not sign up here for access to lots of exclusive subscriber goodies?

Explore different styles of music

Make yourself sight read music from different genres to widen your experience and learn to cope with unfamiliar patterns. One group I often conduct are great at sight reading early music, but really struggle with jazz based rhythms, purely because they’re less familiar with the style. The more you stretch yourself, the more adaptable you’ll become. Modern music often incorporates more complex rhythms than repertoire from the Renaissance or Baroque, stretching your rhythmic muscles more effectively.

Sight read with others

Playing on your own is enjoyable, but working with others makes you more accountable. Meet up with a friend to play duets, or find an ensemble you can join, where you’ll have to learn to keep going, come what may, when sight reading. If you don’t live near other recorder players, you can always play along with any of my Consort Videos to ensure you keep going!

Sight read on different recorders

If you play several sizes of recorder, make yourself sight read on all of them, perhaps picking a different instrument each day. Otherwise, if you always practise sight reading on the treble, there’s a danger you’ll be a demon reader on that recorder, but may struggle when faced with new music in descant fingering! If you struggle to find sight reading material for some sizes of recorder you’re very welcome to raid the my downloads page for more material.

Use your second chances wisely

When you play a piece for the second time, use that as an opportunity to get more detail and expression into your performance. Maybe pop in more of the dynamics or trills second time round. Be careful not to fall into the trap of overconfidence. On a second reading, subconsciously your brain is saying, “I know this piece a bit now - it’ll be easier this time”, so it’s easy to lose concentration. Conversely, many of the details you stored in short term memory the first time round will have left you because short term memories are stored for only a minute or so in our brains. The result is often a performance which is worse the second time! Don’t get overconfident, but instead concentrate even more to produce a better version second time round.

Looking for practice material?

As I mentioned earlier, there are plenty of sight reading books available to buy, many of them published by the various grade exam boards. There are some great resources available online too. These are the ones I’ve discovered while researching this post but if you know if others please do share them in the comments below.

Practice Sight Reading

A handy website where you can hone your rhythm reading skills at different levels. It’s free to use, but there is an monthly subscription option if you want more bells and whistles.

8 Notes

This site offers sight reading music for a plethora of instruments, including recorder. You can also browse for different styles of music, or even select pieces in particular keys if you want to polish up reading in sharps or flats. Some pieces have accompaniment, to keep you on the straight and narrow, while others are unaccompanied.

Sight Reading Factory

This is an automated site where you can customise the settings, specifying different parameters to help you practise. For instance, you could choose a piece for bass recorder, with a key of two sharps and incorporating triplets.

International Music Score Library Project

IMSLP is a wonderful resource, full of copyright-free music for every instrument you can think of. I often use it to identify fresh consort pieces or repertoire I could arrange for recorders. There’s no reason why you couldn’t use it for sight reading repertoire too though. Searching for ‘1 recorder’ brings up no fewer than 154 pages of suggestions - enough to keep you occupied for several lifetimes!

I hope my thoughts offer you some help with your sight reading. It’s a skill worth practising and polishing as the ability to read fresh music quickly and accurately is so important. If you’ve got your own tips and tricks which you’d like to share please do leave a comment below.

In search of perfection

Would you say you’re a perfectionist? It’s one of those terms we use as both a desired quality and a flaw. But is it something we should desire in music making?

Think about your favourite piece of recorded music, whether it’s a CD or streamed music. Is it perfect, or are you aware of flaws? I wouldn’t mind betting it’s as close to perfect as you could wish. Now consider how that recording was made. If it was created in the last fifty years, the chances the artist made a first take then re-recorded short sections which could be spliced in to cover any errors. Such practices are completely normal these days, allowing us to enjoy a ‘perfect’ performance every time we listen. But is this always a good thing?

The pianist Austrian Artur Schnabel (1882-1951) is best known today for his interpretations of Beethoven and Schubert. Indeed, the noted music critic Harold Schonberg described him as, “The man who invented Beethoven”. Maybe that’s a touch hyperbolic, but his interpretations of Beethoven were justly admired, and he was the first person to record a complete cycle of his piano sonatas. As a teenager, when I loved to tussle with the odd Beethoven piano sonata myself, I had an LP recording of Schnabel playing Sonata No.17 and I loved the spontaneity of his performance. Was it the perfect recording? Absolutely not but that mattered not a jot to me!

Schnabel recorded his Beethoven cycle between 1932 and 1935 – a time when performers were limited to four minutes of recording time (the length of a 78rpm disc) and no possibility of editing. Imagine the pressure he must have felt to play every note as perfectly as possible. Schnabel famously hated the recording process, but thank goodness he persevered. If you listen to his interpretations today they contain some flaws, but his vitality and musicality still shines through. While researching this blog post I listened again to Schnabel’s performance of Beethoven’s Sonata No.17 (a piece I learnt myself), comparing it with recordings by more recent pianists of note. Interestingly, I still enjoy the Schnabel recording, warts and all and I love the skittish nature of the opening movement. Have a listen for yourself if you’d like to.

So what does this have to do with our recorder playing I hear you ask? I would argue that the recorded music we listen to has a big influence on our attitude to our own playing, whether you’re a professional or an amateur. My audience here on the Score Lines blog encompasses a wide range of musicians - those who are just starting out, players who’ve been at it a while and can get around a piece of music with a good degree of fluency and musicality and some who perform with confidence and polish. Wherever you fall on that sliding scale, I’m willing to bet you’ve berated yourself for mistakes many times. Am I right? Of course I am!

It’s human nature to compare yourself to others, in music and all areas of life. When we listen to what we consider a ‘perfect’ performance we will often compare our own playing unfavourably – “Why don’t I sound like that?” or “What’s the point in me trying if I can’t even get all the notes right?” Is this a healthy reaction? In some ways, yes it is, if it drives us to practise more and improve our playing. But if it just makes you feel downbeat and disheartened I would argue not.

Let me tell you a story, which shows the influence a performance can have on others.

When I first taught at the Recorder Summer School the course would include a professional concert, towards the end of the week. One year we had to move it to the start of the week to accommodate the diary of our performers and it provoked an interesting reaction among our students. Many of them loved the change. They told us that when the concert was at the end of the week, they compared their own playing unfavourably with what they heard and it made them realise how little they’d improved during the course. In contrast, a concert at the start of the week inspired them to work harder to improve their playing. We now have the concert at the start of the course every year – all because of a chance diary clash years ago!

Should we be perfectionists?

There are some careers where anything less than perfection can be disastrous – a surgeon for instance – the difference between perfect and imperfect can be a matter of life and death. Are surgeons perfectionists? Almost certainly. Do all surgeons achieve perfection in their work every day of their lives? Almost certainly not!

Will anyone die if we play a wrong note or mistune that F sharp? Definitely not. But should we aim for perfection? Yes and no. As humans we’re incapable of utter perfection in anything – it’s a simple fact of life that we make mistakes. What’s more important is whether those mistakes spoil the end result and whether we learn from them.

I spent many years teaching the recorder in schools and was always amazed at the courage of the children I taught. They’d fearlessly jump up in front of a large audience and play the music they’d been diligently practising. Mistakes happened but by and large they just got on with it and didn’t fret about them. Children know from recent experience that they’ll make mistakes, but such errors will rarely cause them any long term pain or distress. Think how many times you fell off your bicycle in childhood, picking up grazes and bruises. That wasn’t going to stop you grabbing your bike and jumping back on it. You never fretted about what might happen if you met a pothole or your chain fell off. Childhood is the time when we try new things without fretting about what we cannot control.

As we grow up we begin to worry more. By the time we reach adulthood we’re doing jobs where people count on us to get things right and it seems a much bigger deal if we make a mistake. This often carries over into our lives away from work, affecting the things we do for fun.

Through my work with adult recorder players I encounter lots of people who are at the top of their game in whatever they do for a living. They know their job well and are in control, knowing they have the skills to cope with any glitches that may occur. They also clearly understand the risks of being less than perfect, whether that’s driving a bus, teaching a class of children or removing someone’s appendix.

Now put the same person into a rehearsal or concert and you’d think they’d have the same coping strategies, wouldn’t you? Maybe not. Remember that many amateur musicians come to music in later life, or perhaps return to it several decades after first learning in school. Experience of life makes their adult brains much more aware of the wrong notes and somehow those mistakes seem a bigger deal when you’re 42 than when you’re 9!

Is a musical mistake really a life and death threat? Far from it, but by adulthood we’re used to succeeding and the fear of looking foolish is larger in our minds. This fear puts many off even trying to perform and can deter some from even going along to play in an ensemble until they feel they’re ‘good enough’ and I think this is a real shame.

Yes, you should strive for perfection in your musical activities, but always remember that you’ll never achieve perfection. Try as hard as you can at whatever you do, but don’t let mistakes get blown out of proportion in your mind.

I’ve often heard a quote along the lines of ‘Amateur practise until they get something right, while professionals practise until they can’t get it wrong.’ I’ve tried and failed to find the original source for this quote, but it still contains a lot of truth. As a working professional, I certainly feel the pressure to get things perfect, but I know from experience that an audience won’t enjoy a concert less if it contains the occasional flaw.

I recently watched a televised concert from the London Palladium by the singer Adele in which she performed songs from her new album. She got a short way into one of them and stopped, apologising to the audience, saying how nervous she was. Did they hate her for this? Far from it, they loved this honesty and gave her a huge round of applause! Seeing Adele’s nerves get the better of her just made them love her even more and that in turn gave her the confidence to turn in a fabulous performance when she restarted.

Combatting the fear of imperfection

Put your credit card away!

Photographers suffer from all the same worries as musicians – we compare our photos to those of others and fret that we’re not good enough. A common mistake is to think a better camera or a new lens will turn you a better photographer and many people become afflicted with GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) in the search for the camera which will make their photos look like those of Ansel Adams. Does it work? Very rarely – and I speak from experience!

I sometimes see the same affliction in recorder players. They think if they just upgrade their pearwood treble to a rosewood one or buy an instrument made by a big name recorder maker that’ll make all the difference and they’ll magically sound like Frans Bruggen. I’ve heard beautiful performances played on cheap plastic instruments and awful ones coming from handmade recorders costing thousands of pounds. The truth is if you want to get closer to perfection with your playing you’re better off spending that cash on some lessons from a good recorder teacher, or simply practise in a more considered way to upgrade your mental and physical skills.

A recorder is a tool - buying a more expensive one won’t necessarily make you a more perfect player!

Make a mess and have fun!

When I was at music college my teacher used to criticise me for being ‘too neat and tidy’. It struck me as an odd accusation at the time, but looking back I can see my obsession for perfection almost certainly made my performances less exciting and rather clinical. Now I worry less about the possibility of small imperfections, placing a greater focus on taking risks to create a more exciting performance.

When you’re practising don’t be afraid to make a mess of things. First steps on any new piece of music will often be untidy and littered with mistakes but it’s all part of the learning experience. We learn from mistakes – after all, it’s the experience of falling over in the snow that teaches us to tread carefully when it’s icy if we wish to avoid injury. Wrong notes won’t inflict physical pain on anyone, but do try to remember where your mistakes were you can correct them and do it better next time.

Use your practice time to correct mistakes and seek perfection, but don’t forget to take risks. Throw in an ambitious piece of ornamentation and don’t fret that it might go horribly wrong. Some of what you try will succeed and you’ll learn how far you can take things in performance. Try playing something really fast to find your limits. If you stumble you’ll learn something and your pet cat, asleep nearby, won’t care how many times you throw caution to the wind to try something new! Some of your experiments will fail but others will be successes you can celebrate.

While running Zoom workshops on recorder technique during the Covid-19 lockdowns I realised there were some benefits to this way of working. One of my workshop’s exercises requires my students to blow a note really loudly and quietly, making a frankly awful noise, to ascertain the acceptable limits of their tone. In face-to-face workshops this tends to be somewhat tentative as people are worried about making a fool of themselves. On Zoom, with microphones muted, players were able to give it everything they had without worrying what anyone else thought and many told me they found that freeing.

Don’t wait until you’re ‘good enough’

If you’re fairly new to music making and are still at the stage of playing on your own at home, be brave and find a group to play with. Don’t wait until you’re ‘good enough’ - you’re just trying to insulate yourself from failure. If you find a group who are at a similar level to yourself you’ll be able to commiserate and celebrate your failures and successes together. If you find you’re weaker than your fellow musicians, they’ll help you lift your game, carrying you along on their wave of confidence. Recorder players invariably are welcoming and keen to see you succeed – they’ve all been there themselves, stumbling along as they took their own first steps. It doesn’t matter if you don’t play every note at first – you’ll learn coping strategies and in a few weeks you’ll wonder why you were ever scared about going along.

My partner, Kevin, started a brass band for young players on a Saturday morning. As soon as a child could play five notes on their instrument they were welcome in the band – there was no need to wait until they’d passed any music exams. At times the sound was dreadful, but the kids quickly improved, developing their musical and technical skills. Most importantly they had enormous fun! They didn’t care that their first rendition of Jingle Bells in the Christmas concert sounded a bit dodgy – the applause from the audience spurred them on to improve, even if they weren’t always perfect. Years later I watched some of those earliest band members perform to a packed audience at Birmingham Symphony Hall and their sense of enthusiasm and achievement was infectious. They didn’t wait until they were ‘good enough’  - they just jumped in and had a go!

Be a true amateur

The definition of an amateur is someone who does something for the love of it. Can you say, hand on heart, that you play every note with real love? Or do you get hung up on getting the notes right, sometimes losing sight of the real joy of music making – playing with passion and enjoyment?

“To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable.”

Ludwig van Beethoven

Yes, do try to get the notes right, but don’t forget to consider the story you are trying to convey through your music. What mood are you trying to conjure up? Are you playing that slow melody with true feeling, or are you just content with getting the notes on all the right beats? Share your love of the music in your playing and anyone who hears you will feel it, regardless of the occasional wrong note.

Be a realist

I think musicians often feel they should be stretching themselves all the time. The classic example of this is the student who passes a grade exam and moves straight on to the next one. Most adult players have no desire to take exams, but I sometimes still see the same mentality, as they throw themselves into ever more challenging repertoire without taking time to consolidate.

We all love a challenge, but perpetually being at the bleeding edge of your technique can be demoralising. You’re always at your limit, endlessly trying to get around the notes with no spare mental capacity to think about the bigger picture. Sometimes, give yourself a break – pick an easier piece where you can comfortably manage the technical challenges. This frees you up to explore the different ways you could phrase the music, experiment with different tempi or try some more creative ornamentation.

How to deal with imperfections in performance

It’s very easy in performance to become totally focused on our imperfections – we assume the audience will hear every glitch and think less of us. In reality, many of them will slip by unnoticed. Even when an audience does hear a mistake you can be sure it won’t wreck the concert for them.

I’ve made what felt like apocalyptic errors in concerts over the years, but perhaps the most extreme was an unaccompanied piece by Anton Heberle. Midway through I had a memory lapse in a passage of arpeggio patterns. Unsure of where to restart, I explored one arpeggio, trying to give it an intentionally improvisatory air, hopeful it might lead me back to safety. No, that wasn’t the one. I tried another – still not right. Then inspiration struck – it was B flat major I was searching for! I was finally back on the right path and the music flowed easily from there to the double barline. At the end the audience applauded enthusiastically, I took my bow and retreated to the wings with a huge sigh of relief. Chatting to my Dad afterwards, we discussed the Heberle, a piece he’d heard me play many times before, and he admitted he hadn’t even noticed my faux pas. Because I’d made my explorations in a confident and musical way, he assumed it was an intentional part of the music and was utterly convinced it had been right.

The moral of the story? Always play with conviction and confidence and the audience will believe in you. Take risks and share your passion with the audience and they’ll love you even if you are imperfect.

“Practise like it means everything in world to you. Perform like you don’t give a damn.”

Jascha Heifetz, violinist.

Most importantly, if you do make a mistake, don’t let it put you off what comes next. It’s far too easy to play a wrong note and then spend several bars mentally kicking yourself for making a stupid error. During those ensuing bars you’re even more likely to make further mistakes, purely because you’re busy berating yourself rather than concentrating on the music.

Before a concert with the youth orchestra I played with as a teenager, our conductor gave us a pep talk, telling us, ”I absolve you of your mistakes.” It seemed an odd thing to say at the time but, looking back, I realise he was telling us to immediately put our errors behind us. You are human – you will be imperfect – that much is a given. Remember though, you cannot turn back time to un-make mistakes so to let them distract you, resulting in more errors is unforgiveable. After the performance is over, look back and analyse what you did wrong. Use the experience to improve your playing in the future, but don’t give it a second thought in the heat of the moment.

Performing to a packed audience in Chichester Cathedral with the Parnassian Ensemble

Embrace your humanity

There is an aesthetic embraced by the Japanese called Wabi-sabi – the concept of beauty through imperfection. These imperfections can be flaws introduced in production of an item, or simply marks accrued through years of wear and tear. As a photographer I appreciate the appeal of this aesthetic through the way I react to the buildings I photograph. I often visit old churches and find so much joy in photographing details around these ancient buildings which have over time developed a patina. These imperfections tell us others have been there before us and we can imagine the stories they could tell us.

An enchanting pew end from a Suffolk church. The marks left by centuries of being caressed by churchgoers just make me love this carving even more.

In music we all bring our own wabi-sabi aesthetic to the music we play. We are all unique individuals, bringing our own life experiences and personal strengths and weakness to our musical interpretation. At no point in our lives can we ever consider ourselves to be complete and perfect – the finished article. Over time we bring new life experiences to bear on the way we play music, and our interpretations should be part of an everchanging process. I look back to performances I gave in my younger days and know I would do them very differently now. These changes in interpretation and technique are part of my own musical wabi-sabi. No performance will every be utterly perfect, but I am perpetually on a road towards a mythical perfection I hope I might one day achieve.

I enjoyed a fascinating conversation recently with someone who’d been to the finals of the National Brass Band Championships which ties in with the wabi-sabi concept. In brass band contests all the bands play the same test piece to an adjudicator who is hidden behind a screen, so they can judge without bias. There is a big emphasis at these competitions on playing the music perfectly – avoiding errors as much as is humanly possible.

In this particular contest, there were two performances which stood out to the person I was chatting with. One followed the composer’s score to the letter, getting as close to technical perfection as possible – it turned out to be winning performance. But the second was much more dynamic, taking risks, stretching the musical possibilities and, yes, including occasional wrong notes. What really interested me though was when the person I was chatting to said if they were paying money to attend a concert, it was this second performance they’d rather see. The imperfections didn’t matter one jot – the passion and musicality were worth infinitely more.

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So is perfectionism a good trait for musicians? I would argue one should always strive to play perfectly, practising thoughtfully and efficiently to eliminate our mistakes. However, when it comes to playing with others and in concert, you should be less focused on perfection and aim instead to communicate your love of the music to others. If that means you’re a little less than perfect, you’re just showing your humanity and it doesn’t make you any less of a musician.

What’s your attitude to perfection? Do you beaver away until you have every note polished until it shines, or are you a more spontaneous risk taker? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject, whether you just play for fun with friends or you’re a seasoned performer. Please do leave a comment below.

The importance of awareness

Think of yourself as a musician for a moment – would you say you’re a meerkat or a lion?

What do you mean, you’re neither?!

OK, this might not be a musical classification you’ve come across before, but let me explain what I mean…

Take a moment to compare these two animal species. If you imagine a meerkat I’m willing to bet you’ll picture them perched on a branch or rock, standing tall, alertly looking out for anything that might be a danger to the family group, ready to sound an alarm call at a moment’s notice.

In contrast, a lion sits at the top of the food chain. They have few natural predators so they spend a lot of their lives relaxing, snoozing on the savanna, as the world around them goes on. Yes, they’ll leap into action when necessary, to hunt down their next meal, but in general they have no need to be alert at all times.

Now think again about the time you spend playing and listening to music. Are you a meerkat; always alert, ready for anything the music could throw at you? Or are you a lion – chilled out and not paying too much attention to what’s going on?

Of course, there’s space for both approaches in music, and neither attitude suits every musician or situation. But I’d like to encourage you to find your inner meerkat more often and notice how that helps your own music making.

Let’s take a look at three areas where I think this is particularly important…

Awareness of oneself

Self awareness in music making is something I’ve focused on much more over the last year or two, largely as a result of teaching my students on Zoom during the pandemic. In a face to face lesson you can show pupils the errors of their ways more easily, often by playing a few bars with them. When playing together it’s much easier to hear when you’re rushing, or if you’re ignoring the composer’s articulation markings. Over Zoom, playing together in real time is all but impossible so as a teacher you have to rely on a student using their own self awareness to recognise the errors as you explain them. Let’s take a look at some of the areas where we all might need to increase our self awareness…

It’s not uncommon if you choose to study music seriously at music college or university to be taken back to basics during your first year. With the best will in the world, we all inadvertently develop bad habits over time. If you’re seeking to become a professional musician it pays to have a really good foundation to one’s technique and sometimes the best way to acquire this is to spend time going back to the fundamentals. For instance, when I began taking lessons with my recorder teacher at Trinity College of Music we spent a whole term working on my tone production and articulation. That meant three months mostly spent on breathing exercises, long notes, slow scales and exercises by Hans Ulrich Staeps. Maybe not the most inspiring mix, but it gave me a solid base on which to build the rest of my technique and musicianship, for which I’m really grateful.

Now I realise most of my readers won’t want to become professionals, but musicians of any level can benefit from being more aware of their playing technique. For instance, do you sit well when you play? Or do you slouch nonchalantly in your seat? Something as simple as posture can have a huge impact on your tone and general wellbeing. Many years ago, I spent time working on posture with the students in my summer school class. At the end of the week one of them came and told me that she always got backache when playing the recorder for long periods. Using the techniques I’d shared, her backache had gone away and she felt rejuvenated. Knowing my words had made such an impact on her musical and physical wellbeing made me so happy!

Now think of the other physical aspects of technique you might not pay enough attention to. Do you breath in a relaxed, open way? Are you using your diaphragm and core muscles to support your air column to produce a beautiful, rounded tone? Are your throat and face muscles free of tension, or are they tense, leading to a constricted sound?

What about your fingers? Are you a master of economy, minimising their movement, or do you flap them around with abandon? If you’re not sure, try playing in front of a mirror and look at your technique as an outsider would. This can be a very revealing experience!

OK, so I’ve got you thinking about your external technique – now turn your attention to the goings on inside your body.

Grab a recorder right now to play this simple melody and really listen.

Are you blowing right through the phrase, or do you puff in short bursts, creating a choppy line? Does your tonguing cut the melody up into small chunks. Or are you able to articulate really gently, so your tongue strokes interrupt the flow of breath as little as possible, creating a beautiful, connected melodic line? If you find it hard to answer these questions, try recording yourself. You’ll notice different things listening to your playing as a detached third party, rather than hearing the sound filtered through your own head. If you have a smartphone, try using the voice recording app for this and you can keep these short clips to compare your progress.

Just with that one aspect of awareness I’ve given you lots to think about. I would warn against trying to improve all aspects of your playing at once. If you try to develop your posture, breathing, tone production, fingering and tonguing all at once you’ll drive yourself to distraction! Instead, pick one aspect of your playing to focus on and then move on when you feel you’ve made progress.

Awareness of other musicians

I imagine you probably play with other musicians, perhaps regularly, maybe occasionally.

When making music with others, how aware are you of them? Do you listen carefully to the way they are playing and how you blend in? Or maybe you go into what I call ‘bingo mode’ – eyes down, totally focused on your own actions?

When we first begin making music with other people it’s easy to be overwhelmed. Depending on the difficulty of the music, you may be completely focused on just getting the notes and rhythms right, with no spare mental capacity to listen to others. That’s entirely understandable, but it’s important to develop a wider awareness while playing as soon as you can.

Initially, try to listen in a general way without getting distracted by the finer details. Ask yourself if what you’re playing fits with everything else that’s going on. In a lot of music, especially renaissance and baroque repertoire, you’ll be able to tell easily if you’re completely out of sync with others. I once encountered a student on a course who was a nimble player, but lacked awareness of others as she played. While she could get around the notes, if she got out of sync with others she steadfastly remained at odds with the rest of the ensemble until her error was pointed out. While she could play pretty much anything I threw at her, she was quite a destructive influence in an ensemble.

To avoid being a destructive ensemble player there are some steps you can take to improve your awareness. At its simplest, ask yourself if your pitch and rhythm matches that of people who are sharing the same part as you. Beyond that, listen to your intonation. Are your notes blending with others at the same pitch? Maybe you need to use a more positive airflow to avoid being flat, or perhaps you’re blowing too enthusiastically and are a little sharp. If you’re not sure which way to adjust, try one and then the other and see which is better.

Now you’re more comfortable adjusting your pitch and breath to blend with others, how is your articulation? Are your slurs hurrying a little? Fingers often take on a life of their own without the tongue to keep them in check. Where you have staccato and accent markings, listen to whether everyone in the ensemble is interpreting these in the same way. Of course, it may be that you are right and others are wrong, but everyone needs to be willing to compromise for the greater good sometimes! Maybe you’re rehearsing a fugue and other voices play the main theme before you do? In that case, observe the way they shape the melody line and try to emulate that, so the musical style is consistent.

As you gain technical fluency and experience you’ll find you’re better able to listen in detail to the musicians around you, analysing whether you are united in your musical approach. There will be times, especially when sight reading a new, challenging piece, when your external awareness slips, but aim to regain that awareness as soon as possible.

Awareness of the music you listen to

Through chatting to students and fellow professionals I’ve come to realise we all listen in different ways. Non-musicians will often listen to music just for sheer pleasure, letting it wash over them while not focusing on details. Teenagers frequently have an intimate knowledge of the lyrics in their favourite pop songs, but may not give a second thought to the type of harmony the composer has used.

In contrast I find myself perpetually analysing music I listen to. Sometimes it’ll be the harmony which catches my ear - on other occasions I’ll be distracted by the rhythms. You may consider this to be an affliction which takes away the simple pleasure of enjoying to music, but I’m just as capable of listening mindlessly and letting the sound wash over me!

As an example, if you’ve ever seen the film Dunkirk, did you notice the way composer Hans Zimmer sneaked Edward Elgar’s Nimrod into the soundtrack from time to time? It jumped out at me immediately but I wonder how many of my fellow cinemagoers simply enjoyed the lush orchestral score at face value? The following clip is a good example of this:

Of course, listening to music can be a wonderful tool to help improve your own playing. On a course several years ago I discussed baroque style with my students, noting the way the composer’s manuscript is just a starting point. We listened to a recording of the Scarlatti we were studying and I encouraged everyone to focus on the articulation, noting where the performers made the notes detached and where they were played smoothly. The looks of wonderment on my students’ faces made me realise that listening in this way was not habitual for them – they were used to listening much more passively.

Contemporary composers are generally quite prescriptive in their notation, spelling out exactly how they would like you to play the music. For instance, this extract by Steve Marshall, from his Sleazy Blues, clearly indicates which notes should be staccato or accented. Of course, you can still apply your own personal interpretation to the music, but Steve’s notation helps you understand where to begin.

Now compare this extract from Handel’s Sonata in F for two recorders and continuo – you can download the complete score by clicking here if you’d like to see the whole piece. Handel gives little information beyond the notes – no performance indications aside from the tempo and a couple of trills. Indeed, the original manuscript would have included even less – just a bassline with a little figured bass for the harpsichordist to work from. With early music, it’s up to the performer to make creative decisions about phrasing, articulation, dynamics, ornamentation and more.

So how do we make appropriate choices? A lot of the techniques professional performers use today have been gleaned from treatises of the period – such as On Playing the Flute, which I mentioned in my last blog post.

Of course, you can learn a lot by listening to by the performances of others. For example, take a moment to listen to the following recording of the Handel by The Parnassian Ensemble (including yours truly). Focus on the way we chose to shape the music, making some notes legato, while others are staccato. As you begin to listening more critically, you may notice the way we create dynamic contrasts and the effect the density of the harpsichord chords has in terms of highlighting important moments in the music.

I plan to talk more about the decisions you need to consider when thinking about articulation in a future blog post. But for now just listening critically will help you come up with creative ideas.

Next time you listen to any music, take a moment to listen with greater awareness. Ask yourself what you notice about the music. Is it in a major or minor key? How does the music make you feel – is it sonorous and calming, or energetic and uplifting. Listening in greater detail, note what creative choices the performers have made about the articulation they use or the dynamic shapes they make.

Naturally, there are times when you just need to let the music wash over you, but try and get into the habit of listening in a more critical way on a regular basis. You can then begin to experiment with some of these techniques in the music you play. You’ll soon find it helps bring your performances to life.

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So have you decided if you’re a meerkat or a lion yet? I freely admit I’m more of a meerkat, but that’s largely as a result of my musical training. For example, I recently discovered the TV series Travel Man and became obsessed with analysing the time signature of the closing credits (16/8 if you know the series and are intrigued). I’m willing to bet most fans of the show simply enjoy the rousing tune!

I’d love to hear what conclusions you come to about your own awareness, both physically and musically. Have you had any of those eureka moments, with flashes of recognition or inspiration? Maybe you realised an errant finger was slowing you down in a fast passage, or perhaps listening to others in an ensemble helped you to become a better musician. Or maybe, like me, you smiled at the unexpected recognition something interesting hidden away in a piece of music. Please do comment below and share your thoughts.