Pencil me in

There are some mistakes that get made all the time by an awful lot of people.  And some of those are the ones that leave you shaking your head because the solution is so simple and so easy.  But despite how easy the fix is, it still doesn’t happen, for some reason.

No, I’m not talking about something complicated like putting the coffee and water into the maker at night before you go to bed so the morning is smoother.  I’m talking about something even simpler.  Something that can make you a better musician.  Something you can do with the stroke of a pen.  Well, a pencil, actually.

MARK YOUR MUSIC!

You’ll be amazed at how simple your life becomes when you embrace this fix!  It has three steps –

First, make a copy of your music (Do Not write on your original!).  If you have a download, print a couple. Or use your home printer to copy it.  Or go to the local big box office supply store and use the self-copy machines.  There is no excuse! (Of course, this is you making a copy of music you have bought for your use – no violating copyrights!).

Second, now that you have extra copies to write on – find a pencil.  Not a pen!  Any ol’ pencil will work (or buy some while you’re in the big box office supply store making copies). 

Third, and this one is a biggie – use the pencil on the copies!  Mark anything you need to have marked.  Forgetting a fingering? Write it in.  Not used to reading all those ledger lines?  Mark them. Missing a dynamic? Circle it.  Any time you have a hitch in your reading, leave yourself a note so that you have a smoother experience as you continue to play.

Why not a pen?  Well, you want to be able to correct errors in your marking. But you also might change your mind as you continue to work on the music. Or you might completely change your understanding of the music and decide to mark it differently.  Or you might no longer need the notations.  There are a ton of reasons that at some time in the future you might want to erase what you’ve written.

A quick point – consider using colored pencils to highlight different items.  I usually use black for fingering, yellow for lever changes, red for dynamics, blue for repeats, etc.  This is your system for you to play your best so do whatever it takes for you to feel comfortable and confident while looking at your music. 

If you’re not a strong reader, then make two copies and use one as a “note speller” which will help you read the music and will improve your reading (because like everything else, reading gets better with practice too!). My students suggest putting the note speller copy in a sheet protector and use a dry erase marker so you can read, reread, and rereread – as often as needed until you build your reading strength. 

Remember, it’s not a library book.  You can write all over the music – it’s your copy!  Feel free to mark it up, erase it, mark it up again – as often as you need.   And if you want to, you can even leave yourself a sticker for doing a good job!   If you’re one of those people who tries to remember what you were doing before (and forgotten) – are you ready to mark your music now?  If you already mark your music – what do you do?  Let me know in the comments!

Dancing a tune

Do you ever think about how your fingers dance over the strings? When you watch a really good player, their hands really do seem to dance among the strings.  They place surely and there is a fluidity to the movements that belies all the thinking that goes into those fingers in the moment.  But maybe more importantly, that fluidity is built on all the thinking that happens before the playing ever begins.

Early in learning a tune you might be focused on learning the melody, but you also need to work the fingering.  This is true regardless of your means of ingesting the tune.  Whether you learn it by reading or by listening, you still have to get your fingers on the strings. And in a way to makes it sing!

And this is where some of the trouble begins.  Because we need to think about a bunch of things.  And also think about a bunch of “groups of things”.   Groups of things are also known as Patterns.  And music in simply patterns. * 

What things?  Well, there are things that are easy to detect and we can easily find the patterns –

• we can hear the pitches (and where they go)
  
• we can hear the rhythm
  
• we can see the dots (and where they go)
  
• we can see the grand staff
  
• we can see the bar lines
• we can see the strings
• we can see our hands
• We can feel our hands

Not only are these things easy to note and each is a dimension of the tune.  What is more challenging to find is the relationships between all those things.  Because the pitches and dots, and the grand staff and the bar lines are related to the strings and where the fingers go (duh, I know that you know that I know that you know that).  But sometimes they don’t quite line up, like when

• there’s a pickup at the start of a long line of notes (the bar line can distract you)
• the phrasing makes is seem like there’s a break but really the fingers need to keep on going
• there’s a place where you haven’t fully accounted for the notes in a particular direction (or how many ups for how many downs leave your fingers tied in knots – yikes!
• there’s a note on one clef and you think you must take it in the hand for that clef
  

To avoid the unpleasantness of running out of fingers, having a finger fumble every time, never getting that eccentric note, or getting weird phrasing – because your fingers are not ready to take on the pattern you’ve encountered – take time to really notice what all the patterns are, first in each “dimension” of the music (sound, rhythm, staff placement, etc.) and then try to find the higher level patterns that may be concealed if you focus on only one thing.

Keep at it.  Don’t let it defeat you – it’s like a Rubik’s Cube only way more complicated (and a lot more entertaining).   Once you draw your focus away from the individual patterns you’ll be able to suss out the multidimensional patterns that will define the fingering for you.  And then your fingers can dance over all the strings!

What pattern gives you fingering fits?  Is it a particular tune, or a specific single pattern, or series of patterns that just won’t fit together? Let me know in the comments!

* I can’t take credit for this wisdom.  I learned this way of thinking from Kris Snyder, and I have unceremoniously stolen it from her.