Focus Part 2: The Turning Point

It’s a bit ironic that in my final year of playing full time in a symphony, I adapted a system that tripled my ability to focus and offered a clear path to mastering nearly 95% of all technical challenges one faces in full time orchestral playing.

I harbor no illusions. There are many levels of classical playing far beyond my gifts. Put simply, hundreds if not thousands of professional violinists in orchestras play far better than I do.  I was a violinist who had to work for it. That has helped me as a teacher, for sure.

Even so, when I adopted the approach found in Carmine Caruso’s Calisthenics for Brass into my everyday practice; I was finally able to accomplish something that Ruben always talked about.  “You know the difficult passage so well, it’s in your pocket. At the drop of a hat, you can pull it out and play it flawlessly.” Put another way, “You know how every single note will sound, before you play it.”  Imagine walking into a symphony audition with that level of confidence?

With Carmine’s method, this can be accomplished, even without warming up! You hardwire your physical playing with your music mind.

Some play by ear musicians can play half a dozen instruments incredibly well. They hear the sound in their head and wire it through their fingers. What they hear from their instrument operates almost like a biofeedback machine. They start to self-correct, adapt and anticipate. They know what will happen before they do it. The Carmine Caruso Method teaches a musician that same skill set with simple exercises that can be done in as little as 10 minutes a day.

The analogy I share with students is this: we turn our playing into something as effortless as talking in our own native language. Think for a moment. A healthy person even at a young age does not struggle to speak in their native language. They just do it, without physical prep or planning. It’s automatic. Nothing between the thought and the expression. This connection is built up on one’s instrument over time.  The true coordination needed to get from one note to the next is brought before a student over and over. One becomes single-minded. This trains a level of focus that only top Olympic and professional athletes experience.

I share all of these principles within the core lessons for piano, violin, guitar and voice on www.TheSchoolForCreativeMusic.com  They are offered for beginning students. The most useful exercise for mastering focus and technique is within Step 1. The magic of bringing order to one’s practice happens in Step 2. The bridge between technique and artistic expression are introduced in Step 3. And all are brought together to learn songs in Step 4.

Later, I’ll go into a detailed explanation of Steps 2, 3 and 4. Here, I’d like to share some of the way that Carmine Caruso has helped me train my ability to focus, and almost accidentally taught me how to play flawlessly: in time, in rhythm, with all the right notes. (It is worth noting that without the soul expression in music, it is debatable whether the accurate reproduction of a score is music at all. But more on that another time.)

In Part One of the 4 Steps on the music ed website, I include the central piece of the puzzle for avoiding mistakes. Mistakes are avoided before they happen. In the Caruso method, the preparation for the next note is done in rhythm. The preparation time is varied from slow to fast. This sets up precise physical coordination for every possible connection between notes. A comprehensive way to be totally prepared ahead of time, 100% of the time. Mistakes? Not in the picture.

This flows for students who are consistent with one important caveat: the practice must be done with mindfulness, paying full attention in the moment. It is incredibly powerful for training focus. So simple. And it brings the fundamental technique required to play any instrument into view as well. The mental sound is fused with the body movements that produce it on the instrument. These movements become second nature because they are practiced in rhythm.

Even so, for every intense repetitive process there is a cost. I discovered that some of my students were tipping toward playing mechanically. It’s a bit challenging for a 9 year old to be single minded about anything. To remedy this, the 4 Steps include the Echo game, which expresses music words and phrases as one gesture. And the Jam, to encourage their creativity and expression. They improvise with the same notes they play songs with. They develop fluency between those notes, and have a much easier time learning someone else’s song. And, they learn to play with the flow of the music so the artistic expression can come alive for them as they play.

I think I was most surprised to learn this kind of training is also very effective for the voice. The vocal instrument is internal, highly personal and the adjustments for improvement can be incredibly subtle. Keeping to the core idea, vocal students can learn a tremendous amount about singing with a beautiful, supported tone that does not tire or strain the voice.

Look for Focus, Part 3 coming soon. This is where the healing power of music comes alive. When one learns to focus on the soul energy flowing through a piece, it transcends time and space. It’s quite extraordinary.