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The man with the hat in the back of the room

by John Goodell

The pianist Lorin Hollander tells a wonderful story of arriving at the Academy of Music ahead of his performance with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra back in the late 1970s. He situated himself on stage for his warm up ahead of his rehearsal with the orchestra, and started to play the piano alone in the hall. As he worked through a few passages, he looked out to the empty seats and spotted a short man wearing a hat and coat near the back. He continued playing, but couldn’t stop himself from thinking about who was listening.

As he continued to play, he realized it was Maestro Ormandy. Hollander started to question in his mind how he was playing – criticizing his left hand, his articulation, his tempo – all while continuing to play more rigidly and less musically. As the voices got louder and louder in his head, he turned to his audience of one and shouted, “I’m sorry, Maestro. I’m not sure I like the way I’m playing right now.” There was no response.

Hollander stood up, and as he continued making excuses under his breath, as if in conversation with the Maestro, he walked down into the audience towards the back row. As he got closer and closer, he realized that there was no one actually there. Instead, there was simply a hat left on one of the seats from the night before. His mind had fabricated the rest of the person.

Hollander’s point in telling this story was to help the workshop of young musicians to recognize themselves as their worst critics. His point wasn’t to “unlearn” being critical, or to *not* listen to one’s self with critical ears, but instead to limit how those voices affect one’s perception of both the music and in this case, an entire conversation with a hat!

A former teacher of mine often used the analogy of trying to repair a roller coaster *while* on the ride. Impossible, right? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a mechanic reaching outside the coaster box as it speeds down the track to fix a screw or repair the rails. Of course we need to listen (actively) while something is happening, and this is particularly tricky if *we* are the ones making the music, but criticism, evaluation, and analysis need to happen before and after, not during.

As artists, our perceptions of others are often the result of how we perceive ourselves. A healthy balance of critical listening and devil-may-care performing is a great recipe for meaningful communication.

 

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: assumptions, listen, music, story

That sounds funny

by John Goodell

A while back, I taught an autistic child how to play the piano. We worked together for over a year, and I was regularly frustrated by how challenging it was. I was also amazed at how this boy would, seemingly out of nowhere, totally understand a fundamental skill that had apparently eluded him for weeks prior. It was clear he was listening, but not on my timeline.

During one particular lesson, as he started to play his piece on an electric piano in my office, he stopped and said, “This piano sounds funny.” I thought nothing of it until he started getting rather angry at my request that he continue anyway. I asked him if it was too loud or just sounded different. He simply repeated that it sounded funny. His father, who sat in during our lessons, looked as confused as I was, and to save the lesson, we moved to another room with a different instrument. He seemed content.

Not two weeks later, while arranging something for piano with my computer playing in the background, I noticed that the pitch of the electric piano didn’t quite match the recording on my computer. As I investigated, it seemed that the piano had been digitally adjusted (accidentally) to tune at 441 Hz, instead of the generally accepted 440 Hz. In other words, it was almost imperceptibly sharp.

The piano in my office did, indeed, sound “funny” — it was not tuned correctly, and after setting it back to 440, I immediately emailed my student to let him know that the piano had been “fixed” ahead of our next lesson.

I am a classically trained musician with 35 years of experience, and a 9 year old boy heard something that I did not. Was I embarrassed? No. Upset for not hearing what was so obvious to him? Absolutely not. I was and still am in total awe of each individual’s ability to perceive uniquely. I live with total appreciation that everything I do, every person I interact with every day offers me an opportunity to learn something new…to perceive something, however mundane, in a different way…to pass along my own passion for what I experience in a complete piece of music, or a simple A 440.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: music, story

When to start…

by John Goodell

When I work with young musicians, I usually give them a set of guidelines called John’s Grimoire. One of the principals of the Grimoire is the following:

There are three aspects to every sound:
Beginning – Duration – Ending
Care for the duration of each note as you would a child,
and respect the silence between sounds.

This silence “between sounds” is something I have come to appreciate more as I mature as a musician myself. At a recent performance, a colleague and I had just finished an improvisation (piano and voice) and as it ended, I was struck by the beauty of silence. Not only did it help me appreciate more deeply what had just happened, but it also gave me space to actually hear what was coming next.

When do I start the next piece? Even after thirty seconds, the sound and affect of the previous music was still resounding across the room. As I waited and actually enjoyed the absence of music, the time came to begin the Bach Invention. It was palpable…almost obvious…but certainly later in time that I would have initially guessed.

When do you start the next thing? Giving time to absorb and process what has already happened always takes more time than you think. Take the time, and respect the silence between sounds. I’ve found that starting the next thing is always later than I expect. Put another way: those things I start too early (at the wrong time) rarely fulfill me.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: music, silence, story

The louder the music…

by John Goodell

…the less I move.

This is a basic principal of conducting – as the music gets more intense, faster and louder, the conductor appears to do even less – there is only so big you can beat, I guess.

I had the “once in a lifetime” opportunity to sing under Robert Shaw – twice, actually. Both times (once in Carnegie Hall singing the incredible Eighth Symphony of Mahler) I was struck by how seemingly little he did. For the first half of the week, in fact, we weren’t even allowed to sing with text – we had to articulate “one and two and tee and four and” the entire time. This exercise immediately opened up our ears to actually listen to what everyone else in the 1,000 person ensemble was doing.

Another ear-opening exercise was singing to a make-shift pendulum Mr. Shaw cooked up out of his bag of tricks on stage – he literally pulled out a large piece of string and attached his watch to the end, stood on the podium and gave it a huge swing. Every time it reached the height of one side, we sang.

Our training that week was about not only trusting him, but trusting each other – and trusting ourselves to listen to what was actually going on around us. Of course, that meant that in the performance, Mr. Shaw stood in front of thousands and presided over our joy in sharing this music. It appeared to the audience as if he was doing nothing – and I guess at that point, they were right. His work had been done earlier that week (and in his 70 prior years of study) in rehearsal – it’s really hard to listen, especially while you’re moving all over the place.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: music, story

Are you listening?

by John Goodell

There’s a passage from Aaron Copland’s What to listen for in music that distinguishes between hearing music and listening to music – the latter of which is ACTIVE.

I think this distinction is equally valid for running a company – especially a service company – especially these days.

Are you listening to your customers? Do you need to ask your customers questions to get answers, or do they freely share their thoughts, ideas, criticisms and praise with you?

Asking for feedback is always a good idea, but the best service culture touts an open (and unprompted) exchange of thoughts – some about what YOU are doing, and some about what else is going on around you. This second part is incredibly rich – and it’s how we decided to start our core product (ChurchPost.com) and many others after that. Listen to what people are saying about the “other stuff” – the stuff that you hear over and over again, and realize – “Hmmmm….why are so many people struggling with this?”

Equally tempting is to take every comment, every feature request, every criticism to heart and try to fix it. In their fantastic book Rework, Jason Fried and David Hansson have a section about NOT keeping lists of feature requests and other feedback. Do NOT write them down, they say. Agreed.

As more people say the same thing, you WILL remember what needs to be done (and most importantly, why you are doing it – to solve a problem). This is in stark contrast with launching feature after feature until you forget why you started your service in the first place.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: listen, music, story

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