The Plateau of Latent Potential

[JeffBone44]

I just started reading a book called Atomic Habits by James Clear. It's about how small changes in various habits in your life can yield remarkable results over time. The reason that I am reading this book is because I signed up for a speech course that I believe will help me overcome my lifelong stuttering problem. This is one of the books that is recommended reading. By doing various daily speech exercises, I can rewire my brain with fluent speech habits that will eventually become automatic, while my poor speech habits, which are currently in the driver's seat, will be relegated to the background. The goal is not just to merely overcome stuttering, I eventually want to become a highly competent and engaging speaker.

In the beginning of the book the author discusses the Plateau of Latent Potential. The results of small changes may not show up for several months or even years. This causes many people who are trying to reach goals to give up. A good analogy of the plateau of latent potential is an ice cube in a cold room. If you start at a temperature of 22 degrees, the ice cube will be frozen. Each month, raise the temperature of the room by one degree. 23, 24, 25, etc. Nothing will happen even when the room reaches 31 degrees. Finally, at the tenth month, when the room becomes 32 degrees, the ice cube will begin to melt and you will finally see the results.

Will this apply to aspects of trombone playing? For example, if I want to play really strong pedal tones - I've been playing them every day for the past few months. I recognized some improvement at the beginning, but in the past couple of months they've gotten just marginally better. I'm not going to give up though. I hope that if I continue to play them with the proper technique that I've been taught, that one day soon I will cross that plateau of latent potential, and one morning I will wake up and play beautiful, strong pedal tones. I'm hoping that this will work for the upper register as well. Just because I haven't seen much improvement recently doesn't mean that I'm doing something wrong, and that my practice time has been wasted. My potential to break through is being stored so that one day I can cross that plateau. I recognize that it takes a long time to play securely in the extreme ranges of the trombone.

[BigBadandBass]

In short, yea it will. I think every teacher I’ve ever had has mentioned this book. “The inner game of tennis” (inner game of music is a good complimentary book, I personally prefer igot) and “the alchemist” are also great books that approach similar topics to Clear, albeit more on the mental.

Phil Teele in his book mentions that the most common route for improvement is not linear or exponential but instead a graph that trends upwards but has many low and high points, ie one day you’ll sound like a million bucks and the next you’ll sound like one buck. It’s all upward trending movement.

Music is also a life skill, I heard this quote the other day “it took me 2 years to finish my masters, 10 years to absorb it and another 10 to implement it”. It takes time and everyone takes their own time. We could also get into sunk cost fallacy and the negative arguments for all this and it sounds like you might be heading there, you mention consistent practice everyday (no zero days right?), have you consistently recorded yourself? I’ve found recordings back from the start of my masters and I sound totally different than I do now.

*edited

[baileyman]

I'll work on a new thing every day for months. Then suddenly it comes out the horn. I hope some people have much faster turnaround.

[SimmonsTrombone]

I think Clear is right - I've also read the book. For instance, I've worked on the Teele book for years. My pedals have slowly strengthened until they are solid about seven steps lower than when I started.

[timothy42b]

I just started reading a book called Atomic Habits by James Clear.

That one is very good, worth occasionally rereading.

It makes the claim that habit is always stronger than willpower, and I would agree. That applies to practice, diet, exercise, sleep, everything.

And maybe to playing. How come I can play longer and higher at home than in rehearsal? Maybe partly because those long ago learned techniques recur with that set of stimuli.

[musicofnote]

In short, yea it will. I think every teacher I’ve ever had has mentioned this book. “The inner game of tennis” (don’t buy the musician version, it’s a ripoff)

Hmmm ... I read the musician's book "Inner Game of Music" after attending the old Band Directors Graduate Conducting Course in Calgary (1988-90) and the visiting Prof the one week was Eugene Corporon from University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music (at the time). He was an exceptional conducting and rehearsal teacher and, in the very last session, discussed the book and explain the techniques he'd used with us, that came from the book. I found it so useful, I pretty much used it as a basis to turn my own ensemble and private teaching around, which resulted in many ensemble contest wins.

What was also noteworth to me personally was that the author of that music version was the bassist, Barry Green. Barry was one of two teachers at the University of Cincinnati, College Conservatory of Music whose performance students all either got playing jobs in decent to top tier orchestras OR "made it" in the commercial gigging world. The other teacher at the time was Betty Glover, who taught with a completely different style. COMPLETELY different.

The main take-away from that book was getting away from atively judging a student's performances and playing and instead instilling a sense of responsibility for one's own playing through the process of critical listen and questioning.

So with that in mind, I'd never tell a kid to play in tune, nor when tuning, would I tell them if they were sharp or flat. I just told them to do something to get it better. Different is good correct is best. I never told kids in an ensemble to play louder or softer, shorter or longer, but I'd let the person they were following in the piece to play and then tell the kids to imagine they were setting forth what that other person started. This "forced" them to LISTEN, analyse what the others were doing and then run with that with their own playing and listen while playing, asking if that was different/better.

Interestingly enough, in many cases Ed Tarr also taught ensemble rehearsals in this manner, not telling people to play so or so. Of course you had to know your historical sources, and if you didn't he'd give you authors and titles to study, but then he always insisted we play from scores and know what the other musicians were playing. He knew of the book, but as far as I know, he hadn't read it.

But he never folded us into imitations of his interpretations, neither in ensembles nor in private instruction. Like any PhD candidate, after playing a solo piece in a lesson, we'd defend it like a dissertation defense. And the worst he'd say if the sources and analysis was at least defendable was "Ok, I understand why you played it like that historically speaking and musically, even if I personally wouldn't do it like that" and DIDN'T then insist we play it like he would have.

I took a similar approach with kids in ensembles a few years later after having played under Corporon and experiencing "The Inner Game of Music" in real life. "Play it like the flutes did before you". or "Do you have the melody here, who does and what is your role in the piece at that point?". I was actually surprised how capable 10-18 year old kids were of doing it without needing explicit instructions how to play each note.

The only actual "resistance" I ever got to this way of teaching was when I myself taught a graduate course of ensemble pedagogy and the conservatory students in the class, who'd admittedly never NOT been explicitly told how exactly to play stuff by their teachers, who never actually had to develop a personal interpretation by themselves, wanted cook-book instructions how to run rehearsals, which I didn't give them. Interesting, that.

[Bach5G]

A recent instructor talked about Effortless Mastery (Kenny Werner). Might also be worth a look.

[BigBadandBass]

In short, yea it will. I think every teacher I’ve ever had has mentioned this book. “The inner game of tennis” (don’t buy the musician version, it’s a ripoff)

Hmmm ... I read the musician's book "Inner Game of Music" after attending the old Band Directors Graduate Conducting Course in Calgary (1988-90) and the visiting Prof the one week was Eugene Corporon from University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music (at the time). He was an exceptional conducting and rehearsal teacher and, in the very last session, discussed the book and explain the techniques he'd used with us, that came from the book. I found it so useful, I pretty much used it as a basis to turn my own ensemble and private teaching around, which resulted in many ensemble contest wins.

Im gonna edit my comment here and revise it. It is a good book and there are a lot of merits, but at the same time inner game of tennis teaches those exact things you’ve mentioned. I’ve taken a few classes in teaching, pedagogy and performance anxiety and all three teachers champion tennis more. They’re both good books and having read them both I still find that you can extrapolate everything from the musicians book from tennis. I’m not discounting Barry Green at all, it’s a great complimentary book, and I think the point my teachers were making is that people especially musicians look at these styles of books and often find the “music” one without seeing the inspiration or branching out besides them.

I was also say, as a post-graduate (non-degree? I’m not sure the best way to describe an Artist Diploma) student still in school, one of the big conversations I’ve heard arise is the idea of all the cookie cutter style approach to playing. With so many people being focused on winning jobs nowadays I think some students fall into this route where they just wanna be told what to do to win.

Side note, the brass department at CCM is putting on a memorial concert for Betty this year, been hearing stories about her and Barry from some of the faculty that knew her

[musicofnote]

I didn't study with either Barry Green or Betty. I was a trumpet major at the time - which explains why I harped on how Ed Tarr taught. But all the students of both I knew in my time at CCM had their stories of Betty and Barry. All loved Barry and all were scared to death of Betty. My only run in with Betty was ONCE, when I had an audition for the Brass Rep ensemble she taught. Her studio was next to my teacher's (Eugene Blee) and we'd often hear her through the cinder block walls, yelling at her students and I'd often run into one or the other in cafeteria, ashen faced, shakily trying to drink a coffee after a lesson. Anyway, I walked into her room for the audition. Set down my mute and she, without saying hello or anything else said "F-trumpet 6/4 Allegro in 2. 1 .. 2 ... ... Why the hell are you playing?" I was so scared, that I never really did get a decent phrase out of the horn and needless to say, didn't get into the ensemble.

The "Inner Game of Music" is a way to teach personal responsibility in the formation of interpretation of unfamiliar pieces and for basic ensemble skills. It certainly isn't a method for learning basic mechanics of playing. It does however strive to get beyond the traditional role of the teacher getting the student to play exactly how the teacher thinks something should be played without having to give any background information as to why. To this day, I get PO'ed when watching masterclasses given by some of the best players who get students to play more crescendo, sorter, louder, but rarely if ever talk about the piece, why it was written in that manner, listening to the others playing - but rather pushing their interpretation, and I assume many doing so because ... that's how they learned it. My beloved trumpet teacher at CCM was exactly like this. When I did dare to ask him why I should play an excerpt like this or that, he'd invariably answer "Because Thomas Schippers and Thor Johnson wanted to hear it that way." And this answer was exactly why I wanted to go study with Ed because I admired how he sounded and I was lucky enough to attend a weekend workshop he gave then at Indiana University, 90 miles away from Cincy. His method of digging into the history of the pieces and then showing how that history could be applied to playing was refreshing. My encounter with Eugene Corporon and "The Inner Game of Music" came a few years later.

[blast]

Teaching at college level as I see it, is centrally about musical empowerment of the student. My aim has been to see a student leave the RCS with the tools of self development allied to a solid playing foundation. College is only the beginning of a career. This has now become the object of armchair debate as I have just retired from the RCS after 32 years of enjoyable teaching. I have been teaching for 50 years in total, so I think it's time for a rest. I will continue to play for Scottish Opera and am looking forward to the new season.

[Posaunus]

... I have just retired from the RCS after 32 years of enjoyable teaching. I have been teaching for 50 years in total, so I think it's time for a rest. I will continue to play for Scottish Opera and am looking forward to the new season.

Chris,

Welcome to the "retired-still-playing" world. Congratulations on your willingness to keep playing in the Opera. We old guys can still make music!

[blast]

... I have just retired from the RCS after 32 years of enjoyable teaching. I have been teaching for 50 years in total, so I think it's time for a rest. I will continue to play for Scottish Opera and am looking forward to the new season.

Chris,

Welcome to the "retired-still-playing" world. Congratulations on your willingness to keep playing in the Opera. We old guys can still make music!

Thanks, next year will be my 40th at the Opera, so I want to make that. Still enjoy making noise !!!

[hstellges]

Some great ideas and books for me to check out in this thread; I've definitely found with myself that consistency throughout how/when I practice leads to healthier improvements over long-term. I record myself while practicing often, for one reason to review and look at issues, but also as a way to look back on days/weeks/months later and see actual proof that incremental improvements add up over time.

[Burgerbob]

It's hard to see the forest for the trees- sometimes I think I have done nothing for years, but if I actually look at how I played over that period... serious improvement has occurred.

[JeffBone44]

I have been practicing those low notes in the trigger range and pedal tones. For a long time I was wondering what I was doing wrong, because they were very inconsistent and I had difficulty centering them. They are beginning to come out really well. There was no magic pill that was going to make them work instantaneously. The major thing that I was doing wrong was not playing them enough. I kept at it, and am enjoying the results. My double trigger C, I can play it almost every time now with a solid tone and with power if I need it. The double trigger B natural, I would say it's about a 50-60% success rate now. It will keep improving, as long as I continue to practice them daily. Same with the pedals.

Of course, I realize that it's not enough to just practice more. Practice must be done the right way, with a consistent plan. Practicing the wrong way will make things worse, because all you're doing is making bad habits automatic.