Ep. 16 - Rule #5: Think Of The Correct Thing At The Correct Time

The fifth rule from "Master Hands" by Doug Bush. Join the Team for a discussion of what, when, and how your students should expend their mental energy. Get practical advice about how to make sure your ensemble is subdividing before the attack, and getting in the right headspace before a big performance. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:15

Greetings and salutations, friends, and welcome back to the Team Eastlass podcast, episode 16. My name is Doug Bush, and today I'm joined by Patricia Eastlas and Zach Sheer. And this podcast is for anyone looking to better themselves in percussion education. Think of the correct thing at the correct time. This is rule five of the 24 rules from the book Master Hands. This rule can serve you and your students at both the micro and macro level. One obvious application at a more micro level is simply reminding the students to subdivide before they play. One of our three types of timing we talked about is called spatial timing, which is navigating space before they play. And uh all these types of timing have uh guides or rules to help you succeed in them. The rule for spatial timing is subdivision, just simply subdividing before you play. And this is not something the students are going to inherently do. And every piece of music they play their entire life will begin from silence, right? And so uh you walk through the process of again developing these mantras with your students, right? Any opportunity you have for spatial timing, you make you someone raise your hand to tell me what this time is. Okay, cool. And then you say, What rhythm should you subdivide before you play this? And you get them to, you know, subdivide your choice of rhythm here. But you know, my default is if they are able to subdivide the rhythm they are about to play, like if I'm about to play triplets and I can subdivide triplets, I should subdivide triplets, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Oh, and you do this before they even play the exercise the first time.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Before the first rep. You tell them that. Yes, that's such a good point, Miss Esau.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

I can remember a wonderful educator that I love dearly, and he's literally one of the best I've ever worked with. But multiple times that before playing the exercise would lean to me and say, They're gonna they're gonna blow this attack because they're not subdividing triplets before they play. And then they would blow the attack and he'd be like, see? And then he's cut, cut, do it again. And then they would do it a second time. He's watch, they're gonna do it again. And then they would do it again after a second, bro, tell them. And then three times after three times in a row, he would just explode. Why aren't you subdivided? And it would catch the kids off car, like, oh, they were so shocked they didn't see it coming. Yeah, right. And it's like, yeah, take a moment before you put it. Think of the correct thing at the correct time, guide them. They will not do it on their own. Their shoes aren't even tied. Half their lunch is on their shirt, right? You know what I'm trying to say? It's a miracle they're here.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

You know, Ms. Loss, you know, we talked in a previous episode about how you're so good about asking questions. And I find that you know, this is a great one, right? You just go up to that kid that you think is not perfect and you just say, Hey, right before you play the very first note, what were you thinking about?

SPEAKER_03 3:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

You don't even give them the subdivision hit. No, no. And they're just gonna stare at you.

SPEAKER_03 3:06

Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

And then you're like, okay, you kind of guide them, you know. But I like to ask, like, okay, or maybe they're like, I was subdividing triplets. And I'm like, cool, tell me about the sound of the triplets. You was it, what do you hear in your head? Do you hear triplets being played on a snare drum? Do you hear triplets from the the sound of voice two on the DB88? Or is it the DB96 or whatever the model is? But like, no, really, because because some sometimes they'll get good enough at going, like, yeah, okay, Mr. Shear, I'm subdividing triplets. And I'm like, are you? Tell me about them. What color are the triplets? You know, like but like really getting really specific um about like, are you subdividing? How? When? What does it sound like, etc., etc.? You know, just thinking about the right thing at the right time.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

Absolutely. I mean, mindless repetition isn't gonna get you anywhere. Mindless repetition might actually make things harder on you as you ingrain. So uh you, you know, Mr. Shu, you always say you play with your mind, you play with your brain, not your hands, right? And and so you have to train the student's brain just like you train their hands. And the way you do that is before they play, you guide them, right? And uh, you know, a mantra that we have uh, you know, at Capel is that during the tap-off, every student should choose an individual singular goal for that rep. And it could be their mark time technique, it could be keeping their beads together, it could be the consistency of their mezzo forte dynamic, whatever. But something to help in this that we've done over the years is um, you know, our students all have notebooks, and during the drumline camps, we're making them write lessons down in these notebooks to reference later in their practicing, right? But what I have um the SNEAR line do is uh, because that's who I'm primarily working with during the camps, is I have them flip to the last page of the notebook. And, you know, before we place, you know, an exercise, I'll say, okay, I want you to write down two things that are applicable to any exercise we play. Good time, good sound, whatever, right? They write it down right there, right? Okay, now write down two things specifically for this. Okay, it's a paradigm exercise, you know, quality of my low double and you know, uh timing of my low double after the accent, whatever. They all write it down and then they leave it there on the music stand. And as they do this throughout the camp, they're adding to it and adding to it and adding to it. And by the, you know, fourth day of the first camp, uh, I just have them flip to the back of their notebook, you know, and it just have it on their music stand. And that way they can constantly between reps look at it and reference something. Oh, yeah, Mark Timestyle. Mr. Bush was really getting on me about that. I'm gonna fix that or whatever. Uh, but again, I'm just not anticipating that these kids are gonna be thinking I very much the opposite. I think that they will be thinking of the incorrect thing at the incorrect time, you know.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Yeah, the way I'll do that in front ensemble land, because sometimes it can almost seem like a waste of time to do uh down the line playing because you'll have anywhere from 16 to sometimes like 25 kids in a front ensemble, and that can take a long time and you can lose your attention. So, what we'll do on any given exercise is okay, we play two reps of it. All right, now we're going down the line. We'll start from a specified place. We'll have four or five players play one at a time. And after those four play four or five players have gone, I will give specific short comments to each one. Oh, your attack was late, oh, you're playing your left hand too loud. You know, they get one specific thing, and then everybody again jumps in and plays a couple more times through, and then we'll continue down the line where we left off. So that way each player gets specific instructions, they get uh direct feedback on what they need to work on the most. And in those times when we're doing the reps, the players that just went get an opportunity to write down whatever the comment that they just got. And more advanced through the week or more for more advanced players, I won't tell them. I'll ask them what they heard. And they'll tell me, oh, it was my left hand that was too loud, or uh, I was a little earlier, crushed on those triplets, you know, and then I'll have them write that down.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

Absolutely. And this is this is again more on the macro level. If we think about, you know, uh thinking of the correct thing at the correct time on a more of a macro level or the season holistically, what I want to guide the students, maybe in an ensemble setting, to think about earlier in the season when they just got the beats is going to be different than a week before our first contest or the day of our last contest, right? So, Mr. Shear, what are some of your thoughts on like a performance mindset and and how you should be thinking, you know, the performing versus evaluating?

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Yeah, absolutely. So, first, I I'm just going to uh identify with myself, with my staff, with my students, that there is a difference. Performing is not the same as rehearsal, and we need to be in a different mindset for those two things. So, uh, this is something I think I learned from Christopher Dean, which is like it it's actually almost impossible to be the performer and the teacher and the like right to perform and also evaluate your performance in real time and also to then think about what to do to correct that evaluation that you just like that's really hard, right? So um are we always working on our performance quality and and that sort of thing, even in rehearsal? Yes, but am I gonna maybe give a little bit on that so the students can really work on evaluation during rehearsal? Sure. But then I actually think the more important one is to start to develop with your students almost like, hey, we're flipping a switch once we go into performance mode, like rehearsal is over. We're we're actually not here at this contest or this performance to get better. That time is gone. And the only thing we have to do now is to go out there and light it up. Like to go out there and and perform with really no mental focus at all. None of your none of your like uh brain bandwidth devoted to criticism or evaluation or anything. Like I actually remember, um, and I'm probably gonna get the exact quote wrong, but I remember Paul saying often, like, it's kind of relief when that, it's kind of a relief when that first mistake happens.

SPEAKER_03 9:10

Right?

SPEAKER_01 9:10

Because you're like, now, okay, like we we don't have to worry about, like we're not we're not really super worried about like there being a tiny mistake. We know it's not gonna be perfect. We're here to like really give a performance, which is just a different thing than trying to get better.

SPEAKER_02 9:25

Yeah, and and especially with younger students, I want to reiterate something that Mr. She's saying here, though. It's it's not like, oh, I wait until the gig to do this. No, and then I turn it on literally at the gig. The the lack of maturity of this and experience that the students have that will so it's built into the rehearsal, right? And it's not something like the first week of band camp when we're learning part three of the band show, it's not like okay, this performance rep.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

No, no, no, no, no. We're we're still deep in learning and evaluation of this, but it's more like, okay, we we got our first contest coming up in a week, and we're not gonna wait until that day to have performance runs, right? We are going to have dedicated time in the rehearsal, often at the end, and often um, whether it's your personal practice or even in there, like I remember uh just a couple weeks ago when we did our first ever full ensemble run of one of the movements of the drumline shows. This is the first one, you know, Mr. Wynn recorded it and he sent it to everybody, right? And that was immediately for both the staff and the students. Um, you know, uh, so you leverage earlier, like here, this is a performance run. And inevitably, uh in my experience, I've seen me you show it to the kids and they're always surprised by some things. Oh, I didn't know I looked like that. Oh my gosh. Wow, Mr. Bush, my mallets really are a little low, or wow, I really am, or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

I am making that face. I am making that face, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:46

Or uh I'm a little out of balance because I I haven't really refined my listening level skills, which is the tool that we use that involves thinking of the correct thing at the correct time. So, Missy Slass, what are the different listening levels?

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Uh the different listening levels uh apply uh listening level one is listening to yourself and either the metronome or watching the conductor, but you're just concerned with what you're doing and how that fits with something steady, usually the metronome. Listening level two involves listening to yourself, the metronome, and someone in your section that may have the same part as you or your entire section if you're you know playing a snare line. Listening level three is you, the metronome, the people playing your same part, and the other members of your section. So as you get deeper and more familiar with the music, you are expanding to different levels of listening. But when the music is brand new, you are only focused on listening level one. And what I have found is that many times, especially you know, in the first week uh of playing the music, everybody's excited to hear the full thing. Uh the students will lean towards listening two or three much sooner than they need to. Because everybody's just there, they want to hear it put together. Yeah, but what that always results in is breaking and rushing, and uh one player comes in early and then the rest of them join in and it becomes a big mess.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

Yep, yep, for sure, for sure. Uh, you know, kind of along that, you know, uh train of thought as well is the, you know, how do the students they're going to be, thankfully, and I think this is one of the best things about this activity, they're going to be put in high pressure situations. And, you know, in some ways, I feel like the younger students nowadays are at a disadvantage more so than previous generations I've taught. Because uh, you know, thankfully, in many ways, our life is just so much more comfortable than it was 10 years ago and definitely 20 years ago, and then definitely 20 years before that, you know what I mean? And so, because by no fault of the students, their life is so extremely comfortable and and easy in most cases compared to what it used to be. When you're trying to stand outside in the Texas sun and concentrate on the quality of that low tap, or you're dealing with the, you know, you've been told uh all these things about mental health and anxieties and and whatever, you've been really inundated with this. And now you're you're as a you know, uh a young, young boy, young girl, like transitioning into, you know, young adulthood, and you're feeling these nervouses and this growth and these like uh uh you know anxieties of my first ever crush or my first ever date or my first ever uh you know, failing a test that I thought I was gonna do well on, or you know, trying to sneak out of the house and not get caught by my parents or whatever, you know, is you're dealing with all these kind of firsts, right? That do come with this kind of at that time in your life are big, important, heavy things, right? So, oh my gosh, I'm doing my first band contest, you know, with this prestigious group, or my first, you know, uh, or auditioning for it or whatnot. Uh, you know, we we try to teach the kids that regardless, any of these things, the solution is always the same, thinking of the correct thing at the correct time, which which involves breathe right, think right. If we can teach them, uh, you know, if you've if you haven't had a chance, check out Hicks and Gracie's book, Breathe a Life and Flow, I highly recommend it. Outstanding book. And he talks a lot about how a lot of people actually get the deep breath incorrect, where they focus a lot on that inhale, but really the key is the exhale, like getting all the kind of stale air you have out. So all the kids are taught this. We spend a long time, uh probably a surprising amount of time, to someone outside uh of getting them to fully exhale and fully inhale and send that calmness to their entire nervous system that, hey, everything's okay. And then guide them to are the things you're thinking about right now things that are productive and going to help you in whatever you're about to achieve? Or are there things, are they things that are out of your control that emotionally? You you like, for example, you know, often in a drumline contest or a band, yeah, definitely a drumline contest, there is another group on the field playing, right? When we come to the end zone. We do not put the drums down and listen to them because every drumline instructor I've ever worked with walks around the lot, they hear, oh gosh, you hear Bingaman's group over there? Oh my gosh, those are the cleanest roles I've ever heard in my life. Oh, they're a million times cleaner than our roles. Like, no, they're not. Bingaman's thinking the exact same thing, right? And so is Mr. LeBrec and everybody else, right? You know, that's out here. Everybody's hearing these other at the end of the day, neither you nor your students have any control over what that group on the field sounds like or what they're doing or what they're playing or how they're playing it. That's the last thing I want the kids paying attention of or thinking of right before they perform. We immediately, you know, we take, you know, it into our own hands, we arc up in a circle and we very quietly mentally run and air stick the show that they're about to play. We get them to think of the right thing at the right time and and uh focus on breathing right and thinking right and identifying when their negative thoughts are thoughts that are things that are outside of their control, letting those go and replacing them with positive things that are in their control.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Yeah, and when it comes to uh the performance mindset and how to avoid concentrating on evaluation or solving problems or uh just navigating the mistakes that might come up, it the number one key method is audition, is singing and visualizing successfully the music in your head and being a vessel for what's happening up there. Um I know for me personally, I remember being in high school, little baby Islas, as a sophomore, and uh the piece I was working on was the Tumalet Creston Concerto, and I was gonna compete with this piece at a local competition, um, and I obviously had spent a lot of time preparing it, probably more time than I needed, uh, as was and is still my style. Um and had one rehearsal with the pianist, this amazing like Russian doctoral student from North Texas the night before. Uh it went extremely well. I was ready to go. I show up to this contest the next morning. I'm the first one to go on. And as I am setting up my marimba in the parking lot, my percussion instructor comes over and he's he's like, um, so I have to tell you I didn't know this in advance, or else I would have told you this. But I found out that to be qualified in this competition, you have to play the piece memorized. And I didn't know this in advance. You can imagine, you know, my face goes pale, like, what? Um, and since I was the first one on, I had no time to see if I could do it. I had a chance to maybe play a couple scales and then get on in there. And so what happens, of course, uh, I start the piece, we played through the first three or four lines, everything goes okay, and then uh my hands fail me and I panic and it just goes black. I see the universe, I see, I see everything but the notes on the page. Yeah, right, and I'm panicking, and I try to jump in again because I kind of know where she is, but I don't know what notes to play. I don't even remember what key the piece is in. Uh I did, but I didn't. Uh and then I finally jump in towards the end, and the pianist jumps in with me, and we finish the piece and maybe play the last two or three lines of the piece. And I felt so defeated. I felt so disappointed in myself. And had I had the skill of audiation, had I even known that that existed, I could have specifically thought about that and probably gotten through the entire piece without breaking or falling apart because I knew it. I really knew it. I'd practiced it enough, but I didn't trust in the skills and I didn't think about the right thing. I focused on the problems, I focused on uh all the stress of the situation and not just the music that I was trying to create. So that's one of these things that will embed into how we prepare, not just the day of the contest, not just the day before the contest, but on very strategic moments, have the students, okay. This time you're just audiating. You're just singing the parts in your head and you're performing. So that when it gets to those stressful moments with a lot of pressure, it's not anything different. They're doing what they've already practiced.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Miss East Los, I'm sorry that happened to you. When we're done recording, I can give you a hug.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

No, I'm so glad. I'm good. Yeah, I'm glad that made you stronger. It made me stronger, made me smarter.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

Uh awesome guys. Hey, thanks for hanging out with us today, friends. Um, we appreciate it as always. And if you have any questions for the podcast, send them to teamesloss at gmail.com. That's teameslos, t-e-a-m, i-s l a s at gmail.com. Shout out to all the great percussion companies that support teameslos, Maypex Majestic Percussion, Dynasty Percussion, Remo Drumheads, ProMark, Sticks and Mallets, Sabian Symbols, Beetle Percussion, and Lot Ride Apparel. Mr. Shrew Shear, this rule here comes from the best-selling snare method book, Master Hands. Where can our listeners, the best and brightest in the music education industry, pick up this book?

SPEAKER_01 20:11

At any online or in-person music retailer. Or at teamslost.com.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

Yes, sir. Right now, I'm thinking of the correct thing at the correct time, and that is you should like and subscribe. This podcast, please give us that five lit, five star review. And remember, friends, step one is time, step two is sound. Step five is think of the correct thing at the correct time. And step three is subscribing to the Team E Sloss podcast.