In September, I began teaching trumpet at the University of North Alabama, after my friend and UNA trumpet professor asked me if I would. Although it’s a long, 2 hour and 15 minute drive from Birmingham to Florence, I’m really enjoying this opportunity. I had been hoping for a chance to regularly work with a group of great students so I could test out some of my organizational and pedagogical ideas with them. To get some real world feedback has really helped give context to my theoretical ideas.
Each time I visit and am able to work with these students in a lesson, I begin by asking questions. Questions like, “How is your trumpet playing going?” “Do you feel you’re understanding everything?” “What are you still struggling with?”. One question I ask that usually has a surprising answer is, “How many days this week did you practice the routine?” I’m always hoping the answer will be six, as that is how many days the routine is programmed for each week. But that is almost never the case. Common answers are one, two, or maybe three days during the past week. They are practicing almost every day, working on material for juries, concerts, and other material of interest, but I’m learning that the fundamental routines aren’t as high of a priority in their daily lives.
Recently, when I was in a lesson and learned my student only practiced their fundamentals routine one day the previous week, I bluntly said, “Why isn’t the routine more important to you?” I let them know I wasn’t trying to be mean, but rather, I wanted their perspective. To me, there should be nothing more important than their fundamental routine. Their answer revealed a key component of what I was missing, saying, “I like the routine, but I have to perform my jury piece, so I usually end up practicing that.”
I was thinking to myself that people who didn’t use the app very much were having a hard time buying into using a structure like what is found in the GOLD Method app. Maybe that’s still the case for some, but my conversation with this student showed me the problem was I had a much different way of seeing fundamentals than she did. To me, the development of great fundamentals makes learning music faster and more consistent over time; I’m thinking about their long term development. But for this student, their jury is right around the corner, and this deadline-driven performance is stressful. It’s hard to focus on long term development when you know you have to play a difficult piece of music for a grade next month.
In this post, I would like to elaborate on what I shared with my student to help them understand why I value fundamentals so much and why I think they should consider making it a higher priority. Much of my argument is supported by the words of Steven Covey in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” so I plan to share his thoughts about effective personal management, then relate it back to our musical practice.
The Four Quadrants
In “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, Steven Covey lays out a series of principles that aim to guide people to more personal and public success. The first three habits comprise the habits of personal success, with each habit building upon the previous. The first habit is “Be proactive”. The goal of this habit is to use the four unique human endowments of imagination, conscience, independent will, and self-awareness to understand how we are not forced to act certain ways based on what happens to us, but rather, we can choose how we want to act. We can be proactive and take responsibility for the way we choose to live our lives. The second principle is “Begin with the end in mind”, and is based upon the principle that all things are created twice - the first creation is mental, and the second is physical. Principle two focuses on how to define values that are important and how to apply those values as a lens through which we make choices. This habit encourages the reader to make a personal mission statement to help “focus on what you want to be and to do and on the values or principles upon which being and doing are based.” For the purposes of this post, I don’t plan to go into more detail about habits 1 and 2, but it is important to have a general understanding of what they are in order to understand the main part of our discussion: habit 3.
Habit 3 is “Put first things first”, and it is the culmination of the first two habits. In this habit, the focus is on developing the discipline to manage your time, and more importantly, manage yourself in accordance with your own values and purpose. In the book, when discussing how we all spend our time, Covey makes an important distinction between the words “urgent” and “important”. Things that are urgent - a ringing phone - require, or demand immediate attention. Things that are important, reading personal development books for example, are results oriented and contribute to our personal mission and value system. When discussing the practical differences, Covey writes, “We react to urgent matters. Important matters that are not urgent require more initiative, more proactivity. We must act to seize opportunity, to make things happen.”
To help readers make more effective use of their time, the author describes four different quadrants to consider:
Quadrant 1 - The activities in Quadrant 1 are both urgent and important. This could be crises, pressing problems, or other deadline driven projects.
Quadrant 2 - The activities in Quadrant 2 are considered important, but not urgent. Examples would include planning, relationship building, rest, and recognizing new opportunities.
Quadrant 3 - The activities in Quadrant 3 are ones that are urgent, but not important. An example might be someone interrupting your work, or the feeling that you need to respond to a text or an email.
Quadrant 4 - The activities in Quadrant 4 are not urgent, and they are not important. This quadrant would include time wasters like Netflix or mindlessly scrolling through social media.
According to Covey, “Quadrant 2 is at the heart of effective personal management. It deals with things that we know we need to do, but somehow seldom get around to doing, because they aren’t urgent.” The more time you are able to spend in Quadrant 2, you reduce the amount of activities that appear in Quadrant 1. Instead of feeling like your life is putting out one fire after another, you are consistently and methodically working towards ensuring the important things you need to do are being taken care of.
Musician Applications
Referring back to the story I shared at the beginning of this post, it is clear to me that the struggle my student was experiencing was the pull of preparing for their jury (urgent and important) was more of a priority than practicing fundamentals (important, but not urgent). I can certainly empathize with their feelings — but it’s also short-sighted.
The development of increasingly consistent and reliable fundamentals over time will make learning music easier and faster. Instead of stressing about how hard a piece of music is, and wondering if you’ll be able to learn it, you will have more confidence, knowing that you already possess the skills necessary to perform this work at a high level. However, if you never spend time on fundamentals, it will be much more difficult to develop the skills necessary to achieve that level of confidence.
The more time you are able to devote to fundamentals (Quadrant 2), the easier it will make preparing for performances like a concert, jury, or audition (Quadrant 1). Even if you can’t spend the full amount of time you want to spend, a little bit of focused work on your fundamental needs each day will add up significantly over time. It’s similar to an exponential curve - the curve moves up slowly at first, but before you know it, the curve becomes very steep.
In summary, I believe fundamentals should be one of the top priorities for musicians, especially for students. This Quadrant 2 activity may not feel as urgent as the music you will play later this week or month, but it will make a huge impact on how enjoyable and efficient the process of learning music will be over time.
The GOLD Method app
If you are looking for a way to make your fundamentals work easier and more effective, check out the GOLD Method app tab on the navigation links on my website, or click here.