Complexity, part 2

...and too may badly marked arrangements,
awkward page turns, impossible mute changes,
missing rehearsal letters, 14th generation
photocopies, etc... for the royal ear. Just cut a
few and it will be perfect.

You can only focus your conscious mind on one thing at a time! Multitasking is a myth! There are three levels of complexity in the band, and you can't possibly pay attention to all of them at once, but somehow you have to cover them all in just the right amounts, at just the right times. Not paying enough attention to the section and ensemble levels is a hallmark of nonprofessional bands. The commonly heard complaint is that musicians are buried in their own parts, nearly oblivious to what's going on around them. The band can't stay together, phrasing goes out the window, cues are missed, tempos shift and lurch uncontrollably, etc. Oy.

As I wrote last time, part of the problem comes from band leaders picking out charts that are too difficult for musicians from a technical perspective. Musicians who are pushed to the limits of their technical capabilities won't have enough mental bandwidth left over to pay attention to their section and the whole ensemble. But not so fast! The individual musicians themselves bear an equal responsibility, too! Their job is to practice until their parts can be played without much conscious effort, which frees up some of that mental bandwidth for the section and ensemble levels. Practice time can also be spent expanding their abilities so that those more difficult charts come more easily as well. 

Shifting back to band leaders for a moment- how many of them allow their musicians to take their parts home with them? Not many, in my experience. How about having two copies of every book? A .pdf copy on the band's web site? A .jpg image of the parts on the band's web site? (Hey, musicians, you can do this too during rehearsal since most of us have some kind of portable device with a camera on it.) There's scarcely an excuse for musicians not having a copy of their parts available to them outside rehearsal, and there's no excuse at all for musicians not to practice troublesome parts until they have it down cold. Any given chart might not be played for weeks at a time, and without the ability to practice parts at home, it's almost like sight reading every time.

What's the appropriate mix of attention to your own part, your section, and the whole band? Not to be vague or slippery, but that depends. You have to constantly cycle your attention between those three levels all the time. The perpetual self-monitoring and adjustment is what makes playing in an ensemble so challenging- and rewarding! So, my prescription for the complexity problem is as follows:

• Band leaders pick easier tunes
• Band leaders pick fewer tunes
• Band leaders make the parts available for musicians to practice at home (musicians do this for themselves as a backup if needed)
• Musicians practice their parts until they are half-memorized (not much conscious effort needed)
• Musicians work on expanding their skill sets
• Rehearsals focus on section and ensemble level playing. No re-do's for simply flubbing notes.