the ugly teenage phase

I'd mentioned on Twitter and Facebook that Ben gave me a pep talk during today's lesson. Several people asked me what it was about.

For background, during this lesson, we were working on an etude and a minuet. Both involve moving in and out of a lot of positions. This can be tricky with an instrument that doesn't have frets on it. You have to go by sound alone. You can cheat a bit and use a tuner to tell you if you're too sharp or too flat, but eventually, you play so many notes over and over that you start to recognize when they are too sharp, too flat, or just right.

The etude focuses on going from first to fourth position and back again. I thought I'd been doing fine in my practice sessions with it, but when Ben played the second cello part along with me, it was obvious I was playing a hair too sharp in first position and a hair too flat in fourth position. This really threw me, and I got flustered with how to fix it. (I did figure out that since the width of the fingerspace in positions narrows as you go down the fingerboard, I'm overcompensating for it when I change positions.)

I've been working on this etude for awhile, and I was starting to doubt my ability to improve on it, ie, I wasn't sure what to work on anymore, sharpness and flatness aside. I can play the right notes at speed, and my shifts are a lot better (no pausing to get from one to the other). However, it's nowhere near the joy-to-listen-to point. In fact, nothing I play gets to that point.

Ben said that I'm at that stage where the novelty of learning to play the cello has worn off, and I'm not satisifed anymore with "it's okay to sound bad since I'm a beginner anyway," but I've also not had anywhere near enough experience with the instrument yet to show deep mastery of anything. What he sees and hears in my lessons is that I'm in the thick of rolling up my sleeves and working at fundamentals and details so I can eventually get to the I-sound-and-feel-like-I-know-what-I'm-doing stage.

I heard a similar statement from one of my art teachers years ago. She said all creative works go through an "ugly teenage phase," where the shiny new project enthusiasm fades, and you have to work and develop the substance that turns it into something worth looking at (or in the case of music, worth listening to). That can be a long and tedious slog that requires the P word.

Patience.

I've never minded doing the work to get good at something, since I am more process-oriented than product-oriented when it comes to creative endeavors, but there comes a point where it gets hard to sit down every day and do the work when it seems like I only see a drop of improvement every once in awhile. (My latest drop was getting a quick eighth-note run in the minuet to sound and feel accurate, smooth, and comfortable enough that even I thought it sounded good.)

I suspect that's why Ben makes me keep a cello journal. He's forever pointing out how many pages I've filled and saying, "look what you were working on a year ago that seemed impossible, and now you can do it easily." It's his way of saying that I may be good about not resting on my laurels, but I suffer from a serious case of not acknowledging what I've accomplished.

His advice was to "keep being consistent and organized." Practice every day, no matter what, and continue to write down what I do. Approach a piece in layers so it's less daunting, which results in less procrastinating about even starting it - focus on one thing until I have it, and then add another layer, and then another - pizzicato to get the left hand comfortable, then bow in rhythm on open strings, then add the left hand back in, then add slurs and dynamics. It's the least stressful way to learn a piece thoroughly and not get permanently hung up on any one thing, and it sneaks patience in there at the same time.

Now he's assigned me a frenzied, someone's-had-caffeine-haven't-they scherzo to work on for the next few weeks. I've overcome tripping over eighth notes. On to sixteenth notes.

"You'll get there," he says. "And remember, we're doing this because it's fun!"

Never underestimate the power of others having faith in you when you run low on your own reserves of it.