How to Become a Better Teacher to Yourself by Noa Kageyama
Note: The original text of this article is from an email campaign spread over two days. The text has been edited for clarity. No significant changes to the author’s ideas have been made. The complete, unedited text is linked at the bottom of this article.
Day One
I was maybe 8 or 9 when my violin teacher, Marya Giesy, said something that I still remember to this day.
She told me that her job was not to teach me, but to teach me how to teach myself. So that one day, I would no longer be as dependent on her for feedback and advice.
At the time, my little brain couldn’t fathom being my own teacher. I mean, how would that even work? My teacher seemed to know everything - the right fingering for every tricky passage, which notes in the phrase I should highlight, where to take a little more time (and where not to), why my E string would sometimes squeak after a string crossing…
How…?
I mean, how was I supposed to know if I was doing things right? How would I know what advice to give myself? It made my head hurt just to think about it.
Indeed, accurate, constructive feedback is an essential element of effective practice and learning. But while having a trusted teacher, friend, or colleague can be an invaluable resource, the vast majority of our practice time is spent alone. So on day-to-day basis, the effectiveness of our practice, like Mrs. Giesy told me all those years ago, is largely dependent on how well we’re able to listen to, critique, and coach ourselves.
We’ve talked about this sort of thing before, but I thought this might be a topic worth revisiting as we head into the last few weeks of 2020. That way you can hit the ground running and be an even more awesome self-coach in 2021. =)
So today, we’ll talk about how to become a better listener. And tomorrow, we’ll look at some interesting research on how to give yourself better advice.
Divided attention
Have you ever had a conversation with a friend, where at some point you realize they’re not actually listening to anything you’re saying? And that what they’re really doing is just thinking about what they want to say next?
I think we have an intuition about this sort of thing because we know from experience how hard it is to listen attentively, while thinking about something else.
But when you think about it, isn’t this basically what we do during much of our practice time? Attempting to devote part of our attention to playing in the most engaged and effective way, while devoting another part of our attention to listening and evaluating our playing?
Much like the conversation analogy, we can kind of sort of do it, but I think we miss many more details than we realize.
The Old MacDonald challenge
Here’s a simple challenge I often use in class, to illustrate how bad we are at multi-tasking.
Try sing a few bars of Old MacDonald Had a Farm in your head just to get yourself warmed up (BTW, have you ever wondered why it is that the song is in past tense?).
Seriously, for real, take a moment to try this!
Simple enough, right?
Ok. Now sing it in your head again, but this time, while you sing, count backwards from 100 by 3’s, out loud. Like get the singing going in your head, and then say 100…97…94, etc. out loud.
Give it a try. I’ll wait. =)
Ha! Not so easy, eh?
So what’s the solution to our multi-tasking quandary?
A simple solution
Recording!
Yeah, I know it’s uncomfortable, and even world-class performers like Richard Goode and Krystian Zimerman have expressed a similar aversion to listening to their playing.
But on the flip side, it can also be really liberating to let loose and just play for once, without having to worry about all the self-monitoring, analysis, critique, and keeping score. Where you can just enjoy playing, and delegate all of that other serious stuff to your recording device and future you.
I know you may not be super enthused about recording at this moment, but I’d love for you to experiment with a few things in the next couple days, and see if this might change how you feel about recording.
A consolation prize
And if you still hate recording as much as ever by the weekend, just reply to this email with a sad face emoji, and I’ll send you a recipe for the best pancakes ever - and you can let the buttery, syrupy, pancakey goodness melt your self-recording horrors away.
Ready to give this a try?
Today’s action steps
STEP 1: Record (est. 1-2 minutes)
Pick a short selection of music that you were planning to work on today, put your phone on video recording mode, prop it up on a stand or bookcase, and record yourself playing ~30-60 seconds of music.
And please do this first. Not after you’ve spent an hour working things up to an artificially high level. You want to expose all of the biggest warts and problem areas that are likely to pop up in a real performance setting. So sure, warm up a bit, but record before you practice.
STEP 2: Create a rubric (est. 1-2 minutes)
Whether it’s a science lab or english paper, my kids’ teachers are always sending home rubrics that make their expectations clear on big assignments. Where to get an A, for instance, the rubric says that a paper needs correct capitalization and punctuation (language), the usage of transitional phrases (structure), and varied sentence structure and figurative language (content). Whereas a B or C paper might fall short in the use of commas, or fail to use descriptive language, lack specific examples, etc.
My kids used to hate following these rubrics, but as they’ve gotten older, I think they have begun to find that having a clear framework makes it soooo much easier for them to edit and critique their own writing.
You might find yourself resisting the idea of a rubric much as they did - but it’s not as silly, or juvenile, or nerdy, or overly-analytical, or whatever the voice in your head may be saying. Met Opera percussionist Rob Knopper used a rubric to help guide his listening/self-evaluation when he was in audition preparation mode, for instance. And flutist Linda Chesis (MSM) has described using a similar tool with her students as well.
For today, let’s keep your rubric super basic and simple. You can download a sample worksheet HERE, which is pre-filled with three basic categories - intonation, sound quality, and rhythm. Feel free to add one or two more broad categories if you’d like - perhaps something like character, phrasing, dynamic contrast, etc.
STEP 3: Listen back (est. 10 minutes)
Now it’s time to listen back to your recording. However, when you do, DO NOT judge or evaluate what you hear as positive or negative. That’s going to bum you out, and make you feel like wandering over to the fridge to see if you have enough stuff in there to make a sandwich.
The idea is to simply observe and write down—as dispassionately as possible—exactly what you hear.
For instance, rather than writing down “first few notes sounded disgusting,” (disgusting=judgment) write down “first few notes sounded narrow and lacked resonance” (narrow/lacked resonance=judgment-free observation of fact).
In other words, don’t think of it as a list of everything that sound bad. Think of it more as a list of problems that you’d love to find solutions for.
One more thing. My hope is that the rubric makes listening back feel easier and less overwhelming. But if you have the opposite experience, here’s a tip: listen back to your recording multiple times, focusing on only one category each time.
Like, on the first pass, listen only for intonation issues. And on the second pass, only for sound issues. Rhythm on the third pass, and so on.
And then you’re done for today!
Day Two
Yesterday, we experimented with using a rubric to make recording/listening a more constructive and less judgmental (and depressing) experience.
Of course, we only did the recording/listening part of the process yesterday, so that means you were left with a list of unsolved problems - which I imagine you’ve been itching to resolve!
So today, we’ll take the next step and look at a strategy for generating smarter solutions to all those problems you identified.
We are both geniuses and dummies
When I was on my internship year near the end of my Ph.D. program, one of my supervisors noted that we’re all geniuses when it comes to solving our friends’ problems, but completely blind when it comes to our own problems.
Have you ever noticed that as well?
Receiving vs. giving advice
Well, a few years ago, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, Lauren Eskreis-Winkler, noticed that there was a lot of research which looked at how receiving advice impacts one’s learning - but not so much on how giving advice benefits the advice-giver.
It does sound a little backwards at first, but there is some evidence that giving advice actually increases your confidence and motivation more than receiving advice does. So she wondered…is there a chance that giving advice could lead to an increase in performance for the advice-giver too?
A study…
Eskreis-Winkler and several colleagues recruited nearly 2000 students across seven different high schools, and randomly assigned them to one of two groups.
At the beginning of the academic quarter, one group was asked to write a motivational letter and share some study advice to an anonymous younger student who was “hoping to do better in school.”
Participants in the other group (control) completed a bunch of questionnaires, but were not asked to provide any advice to students.
Any difference?
At the end of the quarter, researchers compared the two groups’ grades. And was there any difference?
You betcha. Regardless of their ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, what year they were in school, or how well they did in previous grading periods, the advice-givers got better grades during that grading period than those who did not give advice.
Hmm…so how would this apply to your music practice?
Application to your practice
Well, the most literal application would be to embrace opportunities to teach. Whether it be to cultivate a teaching studio alongside your performing activities or audition-taking. Or to have a practice buddy or audition-prep partner that you could both offer advice to, and receive advice from.
But I also think we can also get better at giving ourselves advice, by imagining we are teaching a friend or student, rather than ourselves.
Admittedly, yes, this is a little easier said than done, and doesn’t feel quite the same as giving advice to someone else, but let’s experiment with a couple psychological “distancing” hacks, and see if they can help you tap into your inner Yoda.
Today’s action steps
STEP 1: Imagine giving your friend a lesson
Take out your rubric from yesterday. And starting with the first problem you’d love to solve, imagine a friend came to you describing that same problem, and was looking for your advice. What would you suggest they try?
Like, if the problem you wrote down yesterday was “first few notes sounded narrow and lacked resonance,” in the solution column you could suggest “try releasing your thumb tension and use a wider vibrato.”
STEP 2: Try out the suggestions
Try out the suggestions that you generate for your imaginary friend, even if you’re not sure if they’ll work. It’s ok if your ideas don’t all work - not every potential solution will. The idea is to keep brainstorming new solutions and trying them, until you find the combination of suggestions that solves your imaginary friend’s problem.
STEP 3: Write down the solutions that work
When you find the perfect mix of suggestions that solves the problem, write it down, so you don’t forget your brilliant advice!
Variation #1: Talk in the third person
If you’re having trouble imagining that you’re giving advice to a friend, try talking in the third person instead.
As in, “Noa is playing those 5ths in m.23 out of tune” (problem). “I think he should try using less finger pressure in that section” (solution).
Though it will feel silly at first, talk out loud to yourself when you do this. It will help you stay in 3rd person dialogue mode. And for what it’s worth, this is not some random crazy idea of mine - there’s a research basis for the benefits of talking out loud, in the third person!
And if that doesn’t click, there’s one more thing you could try.
Variation #2: Talk to the duck
In the software engineering world, there’s a story about a programmer who would carry around a rubber duckie and debug their code by walking the duck through the code, line by line, explaining what everything did.
If you’re struggling to get yourself into teacher mode, get yourself a rubber duckie or stuffed animal of your own, set it up near your stand, and walk it through your recording, measure by measure, explaining what happened, why it happened, and what specific adjustments would lead to a different result.
Like, “Alright Bob. It looks like Noa is having trouble getting those 5ths in tune. I think he’s pressing down too hard in the left hand, and not using enough of the pad of his fingers. I’m betting that if he flattens things out a bit and uses less finger pressure, but keeps the bow weight steady, the intonation will improve.”
Will this make you sound like a crazy person? Totally, but it can also be kind of fun. And if it helps you to coach yourself more effectively, people will just think you’re “quirky,” not crazy. =)
What’s next?
What we did here in the last couple days, is a super simple example of how practice practice and performance practice can be used to complement each other on a daily basis for more effective learning and performing.
Where instead of feeling a sense of increasing dread as a performance approaches, and feeling compelled to cram like crazy, you can go into the performance feeling more confident, knowing that you not only sound good in the practice room, but can transfer this level of playing to the stage as well.
Admittedly, this scenario can feel like an unattainable fantasy on some days. I get emails every week from musicians at all levels who are frustrated by trembling hands. Fear of memory slips. Panic that sets in and totally immobilizes their body as they fumble through the performance. A history of coming close, but falling ever so short in auditions.
But above all, many describe a sense that they are doing everything they know to do, yet things remain the same.
I think we’ve all been there at one point or another. But if I’ve learned nothing else in the last 20 years, it’s that we don’t have to resign ourselves to this. In the same way that learning how to swim changes your experience of being in the deep end of a pool, there are specific, concrete skills we can learn that change our experience of performing - and practicing.
Original Text
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