RSI care for bassoonists

I took advantage of the long weekend to put in some extra practice and reedmaking time. I think it was really helpful, there were moments early this when I felt really good about my playing. And it had physical effects too, I felt like the muscles in my hands, arms, and abdomen are getting stronger. All delightful. Unfortunately, I also developed some arm pain, mostly radiating up from my pinkies (mostly left) to the elbow. On Friday, I even had to stop practicing due to pain. I've dealt with RSI in years past, due to typing during periods of intense work and stress. It can be scary, since there's a risk of permanent injury from overuse, and needs to be taken seriously I know. I've been trying to practice in smaller intervals, taking breaks to rest the arms as well as the brain. Trying to be a little more selective in what I work on, since the practices are short. I've also been trying to sleep more, my old typing RSI seemed to be responsive to extra rest and reduction of general life stress, which makes sense if the inflammatory disease is partly autoimmune. At my lesson on Thursday, M showed me some stretches that he does: hands placed palms together in front of chest, arms out and fingers pointing up (like a praying yoga pose), and again with fingers pointing down; another with arms straight out, hand hanging down, and pushing the hand further down. I've been trying these, plus anything else to stretch the affected region, like the wrist stretches I learned years ago taking aikido. Stretching is therapeutic, according to this link, apparently it helps the muscles and tendons relax and reduces the stress. Also hydration is important, something I wouldn't have guessed. M also suggested ibuprofen. I knew it was a good antiinflammatory, but I always worried that it'd just mask the pain, making it more likely that you'd overuse the injured part, and doing more harm than good. A med student friend assures me that this isn't the case: reducing inflammation is an absolute good, allowing the injury to heal, and suggested up to 600 mg maybe 2x a day, but to not use the affected part during the hours after taking the drug. The idea is to use this period to heal, not to allow even more overuse. I have to be careful, but I also have to practice.

Four weeks to go

I'll be performing the Mozart four weeks from tonight. Here's a runthrough from this morning. I find that making recordings has really helped; I tend to hear things on the recording that don't even occur to me to listen for when I'm practicing. It's usually easy stuff, or things that I think are supposed to be easy: is that trill four beats long, or do I go for about six before rushing into a cutoff? Scale runs that I've ignored because "scales are easy". Are the first four notes in tune, in time and in tone? At least then I become aware of other things I need to practice too.

I'm posting it here not because it's great, but it's a reasonable view of where I am now. And besides, posting audio creates a little more performance pressure when making the recording, and practicing performing under pressure always seems like a good idea. With the SoundCloud recording, I think it's possible for anyone to add comments to the track. (I think you have to go to the direct link for the clip, and make an account.) I'd certain welcome it if anyone did, positive or negative. Someday I'd like to put something on YouTube, and hopefully attract a YouTube-style "you suck" commenter. It's something to work towards.

  Mozart runthrough 2011-04-26 by TFox17

On the worthlessness of talent

Barrick Stees blogged about the Geoff Colvin book, Talent is Overrated. It's essentially a business book, reviewing a number of studies about the  I think I've heard about some of those studies before, eg 10,000 hours to become an expert in anything, but I was nevertheless interested enough to pick up a copy and read it. It's having a fairly substantial effect on how I think about things, and I'm still processing the message. The central story, which I don't think I'd really heard or believed, is that talent doesn't exist. There's a single key factor that separates the great from the merely excellent, as well as the mediocre from the absymal, and the adequate from the good. It can be summed up in a single word, and you know it already. Everyone knows it, in fact, it's the punchline to a well-worn joke ("How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"), and yet, despite that, hardly anyone is able to do it. (Otherwise, we'd all be great, wouldn't we?)

The key is simply practice. Concentrated, dedicated, difficult, mentally taxing practice. Hour after hour, day after day, whether people say you're good or not, whether you met last week's objective or not. Talent, in the sense of an inborn aptitude, a gift, doesn't appear to factor, as far as anyone can tell. All differences can be explained by the total amount of high quality practice. Colvin spends some time describing the knife edge of self-perspective that performers must walk: seeing far enough ahead to be able to work effectively on what needs doing next, but not so far that attaining the ultimate goal seems impossible. An accurate view of what's required to achieve excellence, and the cost in time, money, pain, and relationships, is probably inimical to getting there.

I'm having a hard time letting go of talent, though. I've always thought (and been told!) that I had some kind of talent. I took easily to things, was good at math, sight read my way through lessons soon after starting... And I know, from comparing with classmates, and standardized exams, that there are other people who are worse at this stuff. I'd try to keep my classes interesting by avoiding doing any studying or paying attention in class and still see if I could ace the test, which worked in math all the way up to integral calculus. So isn't there talent there? Well yeah. It's a new task effect: some people are able to get through the very earliest stages of a new thing more quickly than others. And academic metrics like math contests, standardized aptitude tests and so on essentially test *only* this phase. So yes, I pick up things easily, always have. Indeed, my positive self-image has been mostly based on this attribute for my entire life. Unfortunately, as Colvin expands on in detail, and I've learned to my detriment only over many years, this effect does not extend. In particular, it does not correlate with rate of improvement, ultimate achievement, nor can it be used to predict how good you'll be good if you work at it. In a sense, that's what the student wants to know, "Am I any good?" And by that they mean, Will I ever be any good? Am I wasting my time? Is the investment worth it, or should I do something else with my life? And unfortunately, the ease of picking something up is useless in answering these questions. (In fact, initial ease can be counterproductive, if you then don't learn the skills required to overcome all the inevitable difficulties that you will encounter. I thought, when I was a kid, that I should do something that I found easy, that that was where my special talent lay. This is wrong: difficulty is inevitable, in any area. Learning how to work should be the first step in anything.)

A better attitude is that I'll be better if I practice than if I don't. That the frustrations that I encounter, and the physical limitations that I have, aren't in fact signs of being unsuitable (or worthless!), they are normal things that everyone deals with. And to accept where I'm at, while looking just a few feet in front of my shoelaces, trying to take a few steps forward. And to keep practicing.

IMSLP attacked

IMSLP, the most vital repository on the net for public domain scores, got attacked by the UK Music Publishers' Association yesterday. Apparently the MPA sent a false DMCA takedown notice to IMSLP's registrar, GoDaddy, who (being GoDaddy) just took the domain off the net. IMSLP undertakes heroic measures to guard against copyright infringement, and are very easy to work with should something slip through, so this was perhaps the the fault of an intern or flunky. To their credit, the MPA halted the attack within a day (if only for their own self-protection), and IMSLP is back online. Nevertheless it's amusing to read the thread on the IMSLP forum where Jake Kirmer, the guy at the MPA who signed perjurous letter, tries and fails to get the evidence removed from the net.

It seems like a story with a happy ending, but still a good reminder of the importance and difficulty of defending the public domain. I donated $20 towards IMSLP, something that I hadn't bothered doing before. It's also a reminder to not work with GoDaddy - not only do they screw over their customers (this is not the first time for them) they also have a CEO who hunts elephants for fun, and is proud to publicize that. I have some sites registered on GoDaddy, I should really move them elsewhere. IMSLP administrators are no doubt thinking about the same thing right now.

Pop tunes for whales

This is fascinating:  humpback whales sing to each other, not uncommon in the animal world. But all the males in a population sing basically the same song at the same time, which is not so different from hit radio. What's more, the songs change from year to year: they get bored, I guess, and switch to a new tunes. The new tunes are transmitted, culturally (!), from group to group, as the latest hits spread across the oceans. That's just amazing to me. The link has recordings of the latest hits in whale songs. It reminds me a bit of the Gubaidulina Concerto for Bassoon and Low Strings that I've been listening to recently. A lot of extended techniques: microtones, multiphonics and slides, but very much an integrated piece. Here are various YouTube versions, and the great album on iTunes from Rino Vernizzi.

Better than new

So I've now been playing on my newly fixed-up horn for about a week. It feels very different, particularly when I first got it back, but I'm becoming acclimated to the differences. The biggest change is the feel of the keys: everything got moved and adjusted, along with new pads etc. Key throws are shorter. The keys are quieter and tighter. It's taken  some time to get used to, but it's absolutely better. In particular, with less distance and slop in the key motion, I'm encouraged to have less distance and slop in my finger motion. This should help my technique.

Keys were not the only changes. New pads everywhere, a bit of fresh oil in the bore, and very careful sealing. The boot seals down to 8 on his magical pressure tester, which is very good. (What the units are, I have no idea. The test is basically how much positive pressure the joint can stand, though.) I was expecting the improved seal to help low register response in particular. And it does, but not as much as I was expecting, demonstrating that I still have a ways to go on my reedwork. What I didn't expect was changes in sound and intonation. There are lots of individual notes which are improved: for example, F#3 and B1 were previously relatively bad notes, much brighter and more nasal than the notes around them. They now fit better into the notes around them. That's probably due to oiling the bore, he said. And I think intonation has improved: things like low D2 and E2 improving makes sense, given the sealing, and adjustments to pad height, but why would notes in the middle register (like B2 and C#3) improve? I don't know, but I'll take it. The whole thing plays better, I think, than when it was new from the factory.

All in all, a great improvement, well worth the trouble. Now, it's all up to the reeds and me.

Overhaul, and practicing without a bassoon

I'm down in LA for a week, visiting my parents, so I figured I'd take the opportunity to have some work done on my horn by the only guy I trust with it. I brought it with me on my last visit, and we put it on his leak tester. It did show some leakage, which is not surprising considering that it's been 25 years since the pads were installed by the factory. Big enough to make a difference? Perhaps. I know I struggle a bit in particular with attacks in the low register, which I've ascribed to reeds and technique, but the leaks will factor too. He told me he'd need at least three days, to give time for tonehole work to seal, pads to seat, etc. Somehow a bit of repadding has turned into a full overhaul, with every key removed and cleaned, every cork, pad, and felt replaced, everything oiled, adjusted and regulated - a lot of work. I'm really looking forward to seeing and playing the result, which I'll get to do tonight.

So I've now been without a horn in my hands for a week. Since practice is all mental, it seems like it ought to work just fine without the horn. I've therefore been trying to practice a bit, visualizing myself playing scales mostly. I imagine the sound of each note, the finger motions, what I'm doing with my air column. I have no idea whether it'll help having missed a week of practice, but it's something I can do, and the process has been really interesting. It's much harder than I thought, first of all. Total focus is required just to keep going. With a real horn, the horn itself is making sound, responding to my touch and air, but without it, I have to imagine every detail. It's a lot of work. And in particular, it's hard to do things fast, and nearly impossible with a metronome, so I've ended up in the bizarre position of practicing long tones in my imagination. The other thing that's surprising is that the quality of playing is so lousy. You'd think that if I was just imagining myself playing, I'd imagine playing perfectly. But instead I tend to make the same mistakes in my imagination as I do in reality. They are almost more obvious without the horn. So it's a good exercise, even if I'm really looking forward to having an actual bassoon again.

Focus

Here's a great masterclass by Daniel Matsukawa, talking mostly about the Firebird solo, and how to play legato. I have great trouble with smooth legato playing, so this is something I'd like to work on. But at one point he also talks a bit about focus, and how he deals with nerves when approaching a big solo. It's not just a matter of "I get nervous" or "I don't get nervous", everyone does, to a greater or lesser extent. He says he prefers to focus on the music, to be present, to be in the moment. This certainly resonates with my experience. Many times I have been playing, and thinking aloud to myself about the fact that I wasn't present, or in a total flow... Really, if you're thinking about your level of focus, or thinking verbally about anything, then pretty much by definition you've lost focus. I don't know of any tricks for getting it back, I wish I did, no doubt it's a matter of, um, practice and focus. And the damage to losing focus can be immediate: I recall when recording Mozart runthroughs to check my memory work when losing focus for just a beat or two was sufficient to get the fingers fumbling. Maybe it's easier for people who meditate, or who have less analytical personalities, I don't know. Unfortunately, that's not how I am.

I had an experience trying to regain focus under pressure recently. I was subbing in on 2nd for a community orchestra playing at a retirement centre. For reasons too embarrassing to detail, even pseudonymously, I was very distracted when I began performing. Every nerve was tense and alert, brain on overdrive, fingers shaking, full fight or flight response. Fortunately my music was straightforward and unexposed. The analytical part of my brain was able to say, it's okay, the half-life of adrenaline is 2 minutes, it'll be like this until the adrenaline is gone, and there's nothing to do but wait and do your best despite everything in the meantime. And eventually, I was able to get sufficiently into the moment to be able to play my part. So maybe that's a useful trick: being able to relax about being unable to relax.