Keystones, Bricks, and Anthills: How Articulation Makes or Breaks the Band

Holmquist's General Method is so chock full of good ideas that it's hard to know where to start if you're trying to introduce his methods to a band. But after some reading (and re-reading), one particular item came to mind. It's easy to do and requires virtually no training.  The best part is that despite being a small change, it has a big impact on the band's sound that only increases over time.

I'm talking about using your tongue to stop notes rather than allowing the note to gradually taper by stopping the breath. Holmquist calls the former the 'Brick' and the latter the 'Anthill' because of the shape of its sound envelope.

Example of a sound envelope with something
of an 'Anthill decay'. We want our 'Brick'
 decay to be as vertical as possible.

The difference between the two is not in the attack of the note, but the release. The sound envelope of the tongue stop / 'Brick' ends with a vertical line from 100% to 0%, while the breath stop / 'Anthill' has a curve that gradually tapers to zero. So now you're starting and stopping notes with the tongue. This should be the default technique for releasing notes when playing big band music. Read the General Method for further discussion of why this is so. 

What makes the tongue stop / Brick release so powerful is that it's what Charles Duhigg refers to as a 'keystone habit' in his latest book. (Buy the book here; read an excerpt here.) He says keystone habits are "those patterns that, when they start to shift, dislodge and remake other habits." Here are some of the interconnected benefits that arise when the tongue stop as the default release technique:

• The band immediately sounds cleaner because musicians have almost no discretion about how and when a note is released. The band moves much closer to having only one version of a note instead of over a dozen (see this post for a brief discussion of this effect). Missing a release is just as important as missing an attack!
• In order to successfully release together, keeping good time becomes more important than ever. The habit of mentally subdividing the beat is therefore encouraged and rewarded.
  • Another benefit of mental beat subdivision is the release on longer notes, especially at slower tempos. This addresses the problem I described in 'It's as Easy as 1, 2, -3'.
• There's now double the number of feedback opportunities for musicians to check their sense of time (attacks and releases)
• The tongue stop release of one note sets up the attack of the next note. Not only is articulation clearer, it's more efficient to play as well!
• It's easier to play quarter notes that are unambiguously short.
• Complex rhythms are easier to hear, understand, and learn.
• Clear articulation encourages decisive playing.

Most of these benefits become apparent soon after the switchover is made to use the tongue release, so it shouldn't be difficult to get the band sold on it, even if it takes some occasional reminding to help firmly establish the habit. As the habit gets firmly established, the tongue release creates a virtuous circle of other good habits that allow the band to sound even better over time.

Lost in (Rehearsal) Space

Mats Holmquist has published The General Method, A New Method For a Tighter Big Band,  a book that's a must-read for anyone who plays in a big band. Far more than anything I could ever accomplish as an amateur, Holmquist uses his years of directorial experience to dissect all the errors that plague big bands, keeping them from sounding their best. In subsequent posts, I'm going to delve into some specific areas of The General Method and offer my own responses. 

Danger, Will Robinson! Bad rehearsal space!

The subject of the present post, however, revolves around something that isn't included in the book, but which is nonetheless critical for the band's well being. 

Everything in The General Method is for naught unless the band has a proper rehearsal space. To illustrate this point, here's a story about three bands that I play in semi-regularly. It's something of a natural experiment showing the impact of rehearsal space on a band's performance. 

Here's a description of each band's playing space:

• Band 'A' plays in a noisy, crowded restaurant.
• Band 'B' alternates between the banquet room of a not so noisy/crowded restaurant and a small auditorium inside a senior living facility. 
• Band 'C' plays in the downstairs meeting area of a church.

And here's my evaluation on how well they play as an ensemble:

• Band 'A' is stuck on the 'OK Plateau'. Their book is interesting but not challenging (nothing wrong with that). There's very little attention paid to phrasing, articulation, dynamics, and general music-making. They're playing the notes and not much else. 
• Band 'B' has a more varied and challenging book. Although they're usually aware of phrasing, articulation, dynamics, etc. but they aren't consistent about it. They also miss opportunities to apply knowledge gained in one chart to others. Their playing gets worse at the restaurant and better at the senior living facility.
• Band 'C' attempts some pretty difficult charts and usually does a decent job of making actual music from the notes. They also do this despite not playing as often as Bands 'A' and 'B'. 

The band's choice of playing space has two major effects:

1. You can't rehearse when you're in front of people who have to pay to be there (ex. restaurants). Like it or not, those people are an audience, and the band is performing, not rehearsing. Without rehearsal, mistakes become entrained and bad habits are reinforced. Quality inevitably declines. 
2. The insidious Matthew Effect works over a longer time period. Because of the first effect (above), bands with better rehearsal space tend to play better. This in turn attracts better musicians, which further improves that band. Vice versa for the bands with bad rehearsal spaces. 

In short, if the band doesn't have a good rehearsal space, they eventually reach the 'OK Plateau', where mediocrity rules the roost and music goes to die. If they have a good rehearsal space, there's the opportunity to work and improve. Taking full advantage of that opportunity is something else altogether, and I'll address how that can be done in future posts. 

The Fully Pneumatic Band

pneu·ma  [noo-muh, nyoo-] 

noun

1. the vital spirit; the soul.

2.Theology . the Spirit of God; the Holy Ghost.

Origin: 1875–80;  < Greek pneûma  literally, breath, wind, akin to pneîn  to blow, breathe

In my previous posts on complexity, I emphasized the need to allow for some mental bandwidth to be devoted to section and ensemble playing. But what if someone's chops are up to snuff but they still struggle with ensemble playing? How might you encourage the basics of this vital skill? Where would you even begin? 

The essence of good ensemble playing is largely ineffable, at least for me. I can tell you some its attributes, signs, and symptoms, but not necessarily a detailed step-by-step process of how one might go about developing it. I suspect the approach one takes varies widely from person to person, in keeping with the Berliner Principle. So, true to Monk's advice not to talk music to death, I want to focus on very basic stuff you can do that might foster better ensemble playing while keeping the jabbering philosophy part to a minimum. 

So what can we do? We'll get to that soon. First, I'm going to sell you on the importance of breathing. 

He might have played even better
 had he actually inhaled.

You've probably heard that "the band that breathes together, stays together". That's true whether or not you happen to play a wind instrument. The act of breathing is so natural and vital that the simple act of coordinated breathing can work wonders, especially at the section level. Anyone who has played in a concert band or orchestra with a conductor standing up front has seen him/her use their breathing (or the lack of it) in the performance of their job. 

Take this example from a NY Times article on conductors (emphasis is mine):

Conductors often speak of the importance of breathing: of inhaling in time to an upbeat to prepare for an entrance, much the way a singer draws a breath before starting. “The strings have to be encouraged to breathe” as well as the winds, Mr. Nézet-Séguin said. “It makes the whole thing more natural.”For Mr. Bicket breathing as conducting is a necessity. If his hands are otherwise occupied playing a harpsichord or an organ, his cue for entrances often comes with an audible breath. The nature of that breath can affect the playing. A sharp intake creates a harder-edged sound.

Leonard Bernstein mentions breathing in The Joy of Music (emphasis is mine):

...he [the conductor] must show, in his silent upbeat, the character of the music which is about to sound. Whether he thinks of it as tense and agitated, or weighty and doom-ridden, his upbeat should show this, in order to enable the orchestra players to respond in kind. It is exactly like breathing: the preparation is like an inhalation, and the music sounds as an exhalation. We all have to inhale in order to speak, for example; all verbal expression is exhaled. So it is with music: we inhale on the upbeat and sing out a phrase of music, then inhale again and breathe out the next phrase. A conductor who breathes with the music has gone far in acquiring a technique.

I'll add that breathing with the music is the responsibility of everyone, not just the conductor. Breathing with the music makes you a much more effective player and solves a lot of problems with badly timed entrances, attacks, accents, etc. 

So, what to do? For now, put your instrument down. Ironically, it's the biggest barrier between you and the music. Also, you'll need other musicians around because ensemble playing can't be learned alone. You need at least one other, but preferably the whole band will participate. Sit just as you do in rehearsal or performance, but have one person (the lead trumpet probably) try to get everyone else to simply inhale, then clap together. The inhalation is the cue/upbeat/ictus for the subsequent clap. Not as easy as it seems, especially when the guy doing the inhalation cue/upbeat/ictus is the lead trumpet, who stands at the back of the band. 

As a special encouragement, you might pack band members in as tightly as possible. Good listening skills aren't the exclusive domain of the ear, but rather involve a more intuitive, visceral, gut-level approach. So writes Tom Palmatier in "A Guide for the Blue Collar Band Director" (emphasis is mine):

Insist that the band sit almost uncomfortably close together. The really great British brass bands sit with their elbows touching so they can feel each other breathe. I like to set up the band myself or to put out some "limits" at the perimeter to keep them packed in. They can't listen to each other if they're spread out too much.

If you can manage to get the band to clap together, then have everyone pick up their instruments and just play one note instead of clapping. And if you can do that, you're well on your way to having tight entrances and releases as well as unified phrasing and articulation. In short, the coordination of phrasing and articulation starts with the coordination of breathing. 

So why not take a few minutes to have the band just practice breathing together? Maybe that's just what everyone needs in order to get tuned in to one another. 

P.S.  Also, don't neglect (certain) recordings. A good pair of earphones (like these or these) opens up a whole new world when you can hear musicians breathe on studio-recorded albums. There's a wealth of information conveyed by how slow or fast, how deep or shallow a musician inhales just prior to an entrance. 

P.P.S.  If you're really into this breathing thing, maybe you can try Inuit throat singing (see an example here), or maybe take the whole band out for a group yoga class! 

Fascinating (Frustrating) Rhythm

Raph's one measure rhythm #13 is a pernicious little beast:

A close variant omits the quarter note on beat 4

What is it about this rhythm that trips up nearly everyone, including me? There's an instrumental version of "Night and Day" that has this figure multiple times, and it's never played the same way twice. Seldom is it played correctly. Usually the quarter note on beat 3 is rushed, causing everything for a few beats afterward to stumble. Kind of like moving a blind man's couch just a few inches to the left. Not enough to cause a disaster, but enough to make the band sound lousy. It reminds me of this problem that I wrote about previously. 

I've struggled to find a universal explanation for why most people want to rush beat 3, but I gave up. Personally, my mind tells me to continue the syncopation that's set up by the eighth rest + dotted quarter note, but the quarter note on beat 3 violates that expectation. Maybe your reason for stumbling over this figure is different than mine. It doesn't really matter. What does matter is you have to discover a tactic to reliably solves this problem- for you. That quarter note has to fall exactly on beat 3, like a pile driver cracking a watch crystal. Your timing needs to be exquisite to pull it off. 

One solution I came up with is to bend, but not break, one of Raph's 'Basic Rules'. That's Rule #2: "Any note longer than a quarter-note is given its full time value." I use breathing to solve the problem by taking a sharp, quick breath on the 'and' of beat 2. What I actually play is close to this:

In reality, I almost stop my air stream. It's more of very fast taper to near zero. Maybe I take a quick breath, maybe I don't. What's important here is the mental conceptualization of a very brief pause allowing the next quarter note to fall right on beat 3. 

Most importantly, I think of that rest on the 'and' of beat 2 not as a rest per se, but as note that I happen to play by inhaling. In so doing, I physically prevent myself from coming in early on beat 3. When it comes to music, I'm a kinesthetic learner, which fits with

The broader point here is for you the individual to experiment with different approaches and find what works best for you. The tactic I use fits very well with  my Myers-Briggs intuitive/thinking (NT) temperament.  Your mileage may vary.


I've written before about Paul Berliner's Thinking in Jazz, and I'll emphasize again that Berliner describes a shocking variety of personal variation when it comes to how different people approach and solve the same problems in jazz and swing music. Maybe I'll start calling it the Berliner Principle. 

Don't be satisfied with mediocrity! If you keep wrecking a particular rhythm or phrase, let your curiosity drive you to find a solution that best fits how you approach the music. That's just one more reason why talking about the problem isn't nearly as effective as simply trying out different ideas until something sticks, then building on it. Now that I've figured out what works for me, I simply write a circled "13" above that troublesome figure in my part. That's enough to remind me to use my home-grown tactic to make sure I nail that rhythm every time.

Chicken Sexing, Plane Spotting, and Swing

"Talking about music is like dancing about architecture."

-Thelonious Monk

Ask a Japanese chicken sexer how they do their job, and the most likely response will be something like, "I don't know. The chicks just look male or female to me." If you could ask a WWII era British home defense aircraft spotter how they distinguished Allied from Axis planes, you could expect a similar response. 

Good time & good rhythm. Chicks dig it. Do you?

Teaching someone to sex day old chicks or distinguish high-flying (and often invisible) aircraft sounds like a straightforward job. Design a seminar complete with nifty Power Point slides featuring snazzy diagrams, give students lots of handouts and quick-reference cards, and you're off. Only you aren't. Turns out giving explicit, articulable instruction is the worst way to go! Instead, a deceptively simple master/apprentice model where the teacher gives immediate yes/no feedback to the student gets the job done much better. 

There's a similar situation in the big band where we try to give clear, unambiguous instructions to less experienced members on how to swing, how to play tricky rhythmic passages, syncopations, etc. Attempts at explanation fall flat, no matter how detailed, verbose, and well-intentioned they are. In fact, it probably gets worse the more you try to explain it. The only way to learn how to swing is to listen and play, play and listen, over and over, to people who've 'got it'. You can get off to a good start by using materials like the Raph etude book, but that will only give you a rough idea of how to play. The real learning has to be done alongside a group of people who 'get it' already.

"Man, if you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know." 

-Louis Armstrong 

But what if your band doesn't have very many people who 'get it'? The band needs a critical mass of these people in order to provide an adequate pool of 'teachers' for the less experienced players to emulate. I'd say at least 50% need to be experienced, maybe more. The 'yes/no' feedback we're looking for is simply if the novice can match the playing of the more experienced people. Immediate, real-time, unambiguous feedback. Many amateur bands are permanently stuck in mediocristan because they lack that critical mass of experienced musicians by which the less experienced can bootstrap themselves. 

Worse yet is the lack of understanding about how swing and jazz is actually learned, especially at the ensemble level. Aside from the basics, it's not by verbal instructions or critique, classroom learning or round table discussions. Nope. Just find people better than you and emulate their sound. You have to trust that your subconscious mind will figure out how to make it happen. The cycle of frustration I wrote about last time is fueled by this misunderstanding. Well-intended experienced musicians confabulate a rational but specious explanation of how to play this or that. Novices try to put those instructions into practice and fail miserably. Everyone winds up frustrated.

Talking about it doesn't work, and there's not enough experienced musicians on hand to effectively transmit the knowledge. What to do? We'll explore some next-best options in the following post. 

Friction & Frustration in Rehearsal

I work as a laboratory researcher for a major pharmaceutical company, sort of a 'molecular shepherd' as I like to think of it. In line with industry trends, we work hand in hand with overseas outsourcing firms. India, in my case. Over the several years that this arrangement has been in place, I've come to notice a parallel between the working relationships between the U.S. and India-based research teams and the working relationships within amateur bands.

Don't let it get to this point. Work smarter, not harder!

To wit, the spread of skills levels is the culprit. For example, while many Indian researchers are as skilled as anyone in the US, many more need a great deal of supervision and on-the-job training. Similarly, amateur bands also have a wide range of skill levels, from (near-) professional on down to the very inexperienced. But it doesn't matter whether you're talking research or music, because the subject at hand is the interaction between the high-skill and low-skill groups. Working in an organization where there's a large skill differential across members causes problems regardless of what end of the curve they're on. Below is a brief description of the problem as applied to amateur bands. Sound like your band at all?

• Higher skilled players:
  • Have a lot of implicit knowledge that is wrongly assumed to be held by everyone
  • Get quickly frustrated when lower skill players make what are seen as stupid mistakes
  • Can't adequately explain/instruct/mentor lower skill players in an effort to help them out, no matter how well intentioned they are
  • Give up on the low skilled players as permanently unable to improve, leading to anger, resentment, mistrust, apathy, etc.

• Lower skilled players:
  • Can be so overwhelmed (or embarrassed) that they can't adequately communicate what they're having trouble with and why
  • Get defensive when they sense the higher skilled players are getting frustrated and impatient with them 
  • Can't adequately understand the often cryptic, vague, and imprecise instruction they receive from higher skilled players
  • Give up on themselves, leading to anger, resentment, mistrust, apathy, etc.  

The way most amateur bands rehearse doesn't address the unique situation that sets them apart from professional bands. Trying to run an amateur band as if it were a scaled-down version of a professional band doesn't work very well. With such a wide range of skill levels, there has to be some mechanism by which the less skilled musicians can quickly learn to play more like their higher skilled counterparts. 

The question is: How?

Some possible answers are coming soon. Stay tuned!

Decisiveness

The biggest difference I hear when comparing recordings of amateur and professional bands is hard to define succinctly, but words like crisp, clean, articulate, and tight come to mind. But one word trumps them all: Decisive. Without decisive playing, what results is indecisive: A timid, murky, flaccid, spineless, insipid mush of notes. It's like having your mouth full of cold boiled-to-death broccoli.

Mediocrity: It's What's For Dinner

Turns out it can be difficult to encourage musicians to play decisively! There's (at least) two separate but related issues that undermine decisiveness:

• Throwing time and rhythm under the bus in the futile quest to get all the notes. Too many notes?
• So-called 'rehearsals' that are anything but. The wrong space and the wrong attitude create a destructive high-pressure environment that instills a fear of failure.

Combine those two points, and you get a self-reinforcing death spiral in which musicians are trained to avoid decisive playing. Inevitably they learn to 'play it safe' by using a hesitant, timid approach because nobody wants to be That Guy who makes a loud, exposed mistake. Most everybody waits for someone else to cue them for entrances and attacks, and that's what turns the band's sound into mushy broccoli. What's left is an 'ensemble' in name only. There's not much actual ensemble playing because everyone has retreated to the relative safety of burying themselves in their own part, only occasionally keeping an ear out for someone to cue them for especially exposed entrances and attacks. That's usually the drummer, and heaven help you if the drummer is himself a timid, hesitant musician.

So now we've defined the trap. Getting out entails reversing the process that got us in there to begin with. How?

• Shift the focus away from 'getting all the notes' to 'keep good time and rhythm'. Commit to keep going, no matter what happens- even if you have to stop playing and just remain mentally engaged as the rhythms and notes proceed. See my post on the Cooper color codes as applied to ensemble playing.
• Whenever you play anything, commit to playing it with decisiveness and authority. That's the only way you'll get any kind of useful feedback. If you played it correctly, that's great! Keep up the good work! If you didn't play it correctly, you'll have crystal-clear and immediate feedback that you can use next time around. Remember to mark your part with whatever you think might be helpful for you. Always make new mistakes- avoid repeating old ones. 
  • If you're a little gun shy and need help getting started, try using the "as-if" principle. Play as if you were already a decisive, authoritative, and experienced musician. You can even keep a favorite musician, mentor, or teacher in mind. You can even take on their persona or pretend to be them while you play. This really works.
• Stop rehearsing in public spaces, especially where people have to pay to be there. That removes the problem of making mistakes in front of an audience.
• Be as supportive of the other musicians in your band! No rolling eyes, sarcastic comments, etc. If a particular mistake is being made again and again, it should raise your curiosity instead of your blood pressure. The rehearsal is a laboratory and test ground for integrating 16 separate parts into a seamless whole. It probably won't happen on the first try! Or the second, third, or fifteenth either. Every failure can teach you something. Make sure you learn what it is! Become antifragile!

Don't you dare reach for the Cheez Wiz!

That last point is much much harder than the pithy few sentences I just wrote. It might entail a large change in the culture of the band, and that can take time. But perhaps not as much time as you're dreading it will. There was a (temporary) change in a band I played in, where open dialog between members was encouraged instead of the more usual top-down "critique and instruct" approach. For a short time, there was a palpable shift in attitude. Tensions dropped, people became more comfortable playing more decisively, making the inevitable mistakes as they went along, knowing that there would be a chance afterward to collegiality discuss what had gone wrong and why. It's too bad things couldn't have continued that way, but at the least it was a glimpse at what is possible.