More from Lawrence Kramer’s The Hum of the World:

Music is sound framed as a source of pleasure (p. 50).

I keep a bit of a collection of definitions of music. Usually one or the other is used as a catalyst for class discussion in my theory classes, but I’m also just always interested in definitions. This is quite a good one.

First of all, it explains why people encountering music they really do not like (often at the tail-end of a music “appreciation” course when they throw in Schoenberg and all the rest into a well poisoned by the teacher) their reaction is so often “That’s not music!”

I’ve never understood that reaction because, well, obviously, this sound being made by an orchestra or whatever and recorded is most definitely music. You not liking how it sounds doesn’t change that. I’m happy to argue the point about intentionally provoking pieces like 4’ 33”, but if you don’t think Fünf Sätze is music I don’t have the time of day.

But! If the implicit framing we bring to music is that it is pleasurable, then when we experience the lack of pleasure, or even discomfort, that unstated expectation has been violated and we throw the whole thing out. “That’s not music” is an expression of an unstated expectation.

Music does not have to bring you pleasure for it to be music, though Kramer’s definition still holds up since it supposes a framing, not an actual result. If music is sound that gives you pleasure then what is and isn’t music would change person to person based on their tastes. My world of music would be larger than my mother’s, at least by a Philip Glass or so. It’s fair to say, generally, that music is definitely assumed to be for enjoyment. It is definitely not for communication or meaning like speech and writing and it is not for dramatic portrayal like film and drama. The murkier “expression” is usually present, but only from the performers point of view. When we put on a recording we are thinking primarily of ourselves, not whatever the performer is/was feeling.

But when you do spin a record or stream a song you definitely do so for enjoyment. There are many forms of this enjoyment, but the pursuit of that enjoyment through sound is what the project of listening to music is for. Point for Kramer, and this will be a useful point for a future class discussion. You are dismissed.

I’m currently reading Lawrence Kramer’s evocative The Hum of the World, in which he posits sound as the primary underlying sensation of our lives. Verdict is still out, but it’s a fun book covering a lot of ground I already give attention to (music, sound studies, design, literature). I’m likely a member of the choir to which he preaches.

It got me thinking about one of the most striking sound environment contrasts I’ve encountered:

Last summer I co-led a study abroad trip to the Baltic states and our travel itinerary took us through the Helsinki airport, one of the cleanest, calmest, and most thoughtfully designed public spaces I’ve ever encountered. No bustle, no stress, just a wonderful place to be. Somewhere I might choose to spend time even if I didn’t have a flight.

One of the most striking aspects of the space was the soundscape. Though people were moving around with their luggage and lots of things were going on, it had a calm hush. There was clearly significant thought put into the ambient sound (including a lot of sound absorption), with gentle nature sounds at a quiet level that seemed to cue everyone to how much noise was appropriate (the nature sounds were somewhat louder and busier in the restrooms; also very effective). When an announcement was made the background sounds would lower and everyone would be quiet to listen, rather than it blaring over whatever noise was already existing. Rather than covering noise with more noise, the gentleness of the ambient soundtrack nudged everyone to reduce their own sound output to match it. We found ourselves speaking in the subdued voice of a nice restaurant or public library.

We flew from Helsinki-Vantaa directly to Dallas-Fort Worth. The only things these airports have in common are airplanes and a dash in their name. What a rude awakening. If the details of Helsinki were calibrated for calm, DFW was designed by a sound sadist. The floors are 6 inch tile with large grout lines. Practical and durable perhaps (though who wants to install thousands of feet of 6” tile is beyond me), but the grooves mean that a rolling suitcase clicks on the grout lines several times per second. When a thousand people are rolling suitcases the din is hellish. Of course you still have to talk, so you speak louder. And of course they have to make announcements, so they blare them even louder. And to top it off in some areas there is muzak.

Perhaps a coincidence (perhaps not), folks at DFW seemed rather more stressed and angry than the Finns. While I’m sure it’s possible to get tetchy in Helsinki, I think it’s nearly impossible not to when assailed with the endless racket of Dallas.

I wrote this two years ago on my birthday. Since I’m back around to some of the numbers here (35), I thought it was time to repost it. Street names have been changed for privacy.

Numbers are generally not significant to me, but a few years ago I started to notice a pattern in addresses. (My very first apartment is excepted from this pattern, as it has been from most memories–like it deserves).

The first decent apartment I lived in was at 301 W 33rd St. We happened to live there for 3 years. As much as we enjoyed our time in that apartment, we started to want something with rooms. We ended up at 1313 Charles Place. This was when I first took note of a pattern of 1s and 3s.

1313 was a glorious apartment on the 3rd floor of a historic row house in the Bolton Hill neighborhood of Baltimore. With 12 foot ceilings, the 3 living room windows let in so much light you couldn’t help but be happy when you sat there. The house plants thrived and we were happy.

We lived in 1313 Charles for 1 year.

Then we had the opportunity to buy a house. What started as a casual experiment to see if we were even able to get into the housing market turned into being under contract within a week of first contacting our realtor. After a few struggles, we finally closed on 311 Gateway Ct.

311 was a gem. It literally didn’t have a road in front of it. The front door opened into a grassy courtyard shared by six other homes. Like most areas in Baltimore, it was in direct proximity to incredible wealth (we bordered a glorious historic neighborhood) as well as tragic poverty. A half mile east was a five-million dollar mansion, a half mile west were slums with boarded up homes and murder rates that boggled the mind. But it was our perfect shelter in exactly the right location.

311 was where the two of us became 3, bringing our son home to the little house we worked so hard to make our own beautiful home.

After 3 years at 311 it was time to move again. This time though, to another state. Almost ten years in Baltimore made it feel like home. We loved it for its ruggedness, unpredictability, and yes, it’s charm. People who haven’t lived there truly don’t understand, but once you’re there it gets its hooks into you very quickly.

Buying a house out of state was daunting, and we were moving to a red hot housing market. “Unfortunately, this is a very difficult place to buy a house right now,” was the first thing our realtor said when I contacted him.

A few offers didn’t go through (some with frightful Lost Cause themed addresses, which we’re thankful for). Then finally, a perfect mid-century style ranch house came on the market. We made a no regrets offer and were closing a few weeks later. The address: 1305 West Butler.

That 5 kind of bothered me at first. But, after 3 straight addresses made of 1s, 3s, and 0s, I allowed for the addition of one more digit. It didn’t fully make sense though. Why 5? The next stage for our family would be 3 + 1 = 4. A tidy sum numerically and biologically. We had discussed trying for a fourth, and after the move we decided it was time. We quickly met with success, but through an act of divine zygotic fission, we were to skip four for all but a few minutes. At the end of my 31st year, twins girls entered the family.

Now we’re not three. We’re five.

At the end of every school year I send my students this letter. I thought I would share it hear as well. It’s the closest thing I have to a personal manifesto for how I try to go about my life in music.

My dear students,

As you pack up and travel home for the summer I have one final word for you. It concerns the economy.

When I say economy you start thinking about money and budgets and inflation (and this year, tariffs!). That is the money economy. It’s important and affects us all, and music fits into it in a certain way. For those of us that make (or plan to make) a living in music this is very important. You need to know how much money a gig should pay, how may gigs a month will pay the rent, what to charge for a private lesson, and how much self-employment tax you’ll pay on that lesson and those gigs. All of these are important.

But there is another economy that is vital to understand if you are going to make a fulfilling life in music, or really anything else. The economy of gifts.

We rarely think about it, but we live constantly in an economy of giving and receiving gifts. Most of these come in the form of small services we do for one another without expectation of payment. This includes listening, helping, loaning a pencil or sheet of staff paper, sharing a snack, and many of the other ways we interact with one another. Occasionally we exchange physical goods casually and sometimes as formal gifts wrapped up in paper, but the principle is the same: people are more valuable than money.

Whatever the form of a gift, it has a profound advantage over exchanges in the money economy. Nearly everything you buy instantly becomes less valuable. A $100 pair of shoes might be worth $60 after being worn once. Wear them ten times and they’re worth $30 of $40. In the money economy this is called depreciation.

The moment something is given as a gift, however, its value increases. You probably have something you brought to school for your dorm room that is worth very little money, but it’s invaluable to you because someone gave it to you. I have a small pocketknife my grandfather gave me before he died. I could get another one on ebay for $15, but I wouldn’t sell mine for $15,000. This is the power of a gift: it multiplies value with no limit.

And finally, back to music. Though it touches the money economy, I would propose to you that the way to find joy in music is to spend it in the gift economy. This doesn’t mean you don’t take payment for playing, please do. But whether it’s a gig that pays $100 or $1000, the moment you are on stage ready to play the first note, none of that matters. What matters is the giving of the gift we have received and the multiplication of its value by sharing with all who will receive.

There is music that only you can make and you must be willing to give it to us for the world to be as full and rich and beautiful as it is meant to be. This is the power of music. You can give it away without losing anything.

I hope you have a wonderful summer.

I had a realization today: the thing that matters the absolute most in the quality of a university education is the thing that university administrators have the least control over. That thing is what happens in classrooms every day—teaching.

There were basically two things I cared about when I was a student, what classes were offered and who taught them. The what mattered because I had things I was interested in and wanted to learn about. The who was important because it was obvious to me (and still is) that the largest factor in how enjoyable a course would be and how much I would learn would be the teacher. Did I think they were interesting? Did I respect their scholarship? Could they lecture and lead class discussions effectively?

There were many things I did not think about and probably didn’t even know existed. Curriculum maps. Program learning outcome alignment charts. Accreditation reviews and degree audits. Career placement and upward mobility of graduates. I knew then, like I do now, that a great class was about content I cared about and presented by someone who knew a ton about it and could lead us through it.

Now that I’m on the teaching side I see things basically the same way. I update my program curriculum map, and file my review paperwork, try to make thoughtful and encouraging comments on peer observations, and do my learning objective alignments and course context syllabus statements. I update my portfolio for my annual review with my chair. But none of it makes my classes better every day or makes me a better teacher. There is only one thing that can help me be a better teacher: time. I just need time to read, think, make materials, plan classes, and get into the absolute weeds of the class minutiae. This is of course hard to do when you have lots of administrivia to do proving to someone who has never sat in your classroom how good your class is.

Theoretically, every piece of busy work an administration puts upon faculty reduces the quality of a daily class meeting by some factor. Now, most teachers (at least that I know, I hear stories of the other kind) take great pride in being good at what they do and having great classes every time they meet, so they make up the slack with their own time.

Because here’s the thing: everything the administration does (save paying you to improve in your field and craft) makes it harder to make every class meeting great. And a great education is made up of four or so years of great daily classes, along with meaningful assignments that make you think and work. The ratio of good class days to bad class days is probably exactly how good or bad a student regards a class and their whole educational experience. I think it’s just that simple.

Curriculum is incredibly important, but the best curriculum cannot make up for a series of uninteresting, uninspiring class meetings delivered by overworked, underprepared faculty.

But of course, the administration’s first job is to justify its own existence. Those VP salaries have to be doing something. That something is generally thinking up more busy-work that reduces the daily quality of each class. Because try as they might, the only way to make the education at your institution better is to hire better faculty or help the faculty you have be the best they can be. So leave them alone and let them do their jobs, it’s really all they want to do.

1. Paradise Metal (via @jabel) - What I’m calling Byzantine dark-wave, made by a Greek Orthodox priest on his fretless electric guitar. A perfect addition to my diet of microtonal/non-western tuned music.

2. Litanies, Alec Goldfarb - Trained in both jazz and Hindustani classical music, his newest album is realizations of traditional ragas on electric guitar. Incredibly effective.

3. Bach Artillerie (HT Robin Sloan) - I expected this to be a novelty (re-upped Wendy Carlos or Ruth White), but by the end I was listening much more closely. These are interpretive readings and the drumming (from Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier) is amazing. Canon at the 7th is particularly effective. The thing about Bach is the music is just so portable. The structure is resilient enough to endure any treatment without breaking down.

4. String Quartet No. 4, “Amazing Grace,” Ben Johnston (Via my music theory colleague Chris) - Johnston is a pretty obscure composer, mostly of music in just intonation (not to be confused with Tom Johnson, composer of the Chord Catalog). This is a mostly traditional piece, but as the top Youtube comment says, “It’s nice to hear an arrangement that doesn’t sound like it was written as background music for a civil war documentary.” Mensural canon on NEW BRITAIN is exactly what I’m interested in from a string quartet. Kronos sounding fantastic here as well.

Earlier this week I watched the Oscar-nominated 2025 film Train Dreams. I had no idea what we were in for, it’s a film I watched on the recommendation of my most cinephilic brother, but I really enjoyed it. While the choice to have a narrator driven film with little dialogue probably limits its overall impact somewhat, it accomplished a lot (and in under two hours, which I appreciate more and more these days).

Reading old books and watching films that take themselves seriously (some old and some new) is a reminder of how thoroughly irony has infected everything in our culture. One of the most remarkable things about Americans of the 50s and 60s (at least as depicted, and in my experience of elderly folks as well) is how seriously they take things. Seriously enough to get involved and do things that make communities work.

I recently played a gig at a luncheon for the local chapter of the National Federation of Music Clubs. (Basically groups of private music teachers who work together on things like competitions, scholarships, etc. organized by state and local chapter.) The amount of ceremony and ritual this involved was mind-blowing. Singing of hymns, reciting of pledges, the reading of a collect, bestowing honors and awards. Then I played about 30 minutes of music and we ate the worst salad I’ve ever had. The thing all these folks had in common was they were of my parents generation or older. It is unimaginable to me that people my age would organize in this way. There are lots of reason, but partly because we just don’t take ourselves that seriously.

I haven’t checked, but one imagines the enrollments in things like Kiwanis, Rotary, Elks, and other fraternal organizations is declining rapidly as the Greatest Generation has all but gone and the youngest Silent and oldest Boomers begin to die away in large numbers.

Robert Grainier, the subject of Trains Dreams, takes his life and his work seriously. His profession as a logger is incredibly dangerous and must be taken seriously to survive. Even the most careful must be lucky enough to avoid accidents to make it to old age. But he also has a sense that the work, something he seems to have fallen into as a young man, is important in a significant way. More specifically, it is destructive. The loggers are small crews of misfits living for weeks in the deep wilderness, but the most aware of them sense they are changing the world as they sever the interconnected threads of the forest one by one. Robert and some of the oldest members of the crews—like one of his only friends, Arne, the powder monkey—understand that the world is changing and they are foot soldiers on the wrong side of the battle.

As he gets older he more frequently encounters the brashness of the younger loggers. They believe that there are so many trees that by the time they cut them all down the next forest will have grown up to replace it. Robert’s concerns are not just about sustainability though. As the opening monologue of the film tells us, there used to be another world you could find around a corner in the forest. An older, more magical world, that could be stumbled into. Something like Terebithia or Narnia, where the deep magic still rules. Even if the trees regrow they won’t be the same as the ones they cut. Robert understands that the world he was born into is quickly fading and a new world he understands little is taking its place. The young loggers, born just a few decades later, never found themselves in the old world and don’t fear its loss.

After a break of several years (for reasons I won’t spoil for those who have not watched), Robert returns to a logging job to find that the work has changed as well. A steam-powered tractor, replacing the horse-drawn skids, rumbles through the forest. Revving chainsaws rather than rhythmic axe work now reverberate around the jobsite. He struggles to start the machine (a problem over a century of small motor innovation has not solved) until a younger sawyer grabs it from him, pulls the choke, and cranks it up. Leaving him behind for good.

Though unsaid, Robert clearly understands that this change in technology means the forest, like himself, will not be able to keep up. He leaves logging forever and, in one of the most beautiful scenes of the film, baptizes himself into a new life in the clear cold river.

The ending years of his life are spent contemplating its beginning. A life which featured alternations of violence, joy, absence, and finally a great loss. His life parallels the life of the forest, a place of beauty, danger, and exploitation. How to make sense of all this he has seen? And especially in a world he hardly recognizes outside of his one acre homestead?

His work after logging consists of odd jobs until he comes to own a pair of horses and wagon. He then makes his living as a driver. One of the people he meets driving is a woman (who looks quite similar to his wife) who works as a forest ranger. Her job is to sit in a high observation tower watching for fires and reporting on the changing landscape of the virgin forests due to logging. Though it goes unsaid, his awkwardness at being part of this change is palpable. (Despite the narrator, this film is good at showing even if it tells a lot of things).

Joining her in the observation tower one day he sees for the first time how the forest looks from above. Its beauty is affecting, and this change in perspective finally allows him to voice the loss he has endured to her, seemingly for the first time. She has likewise suffered loss and finds solace in her isolated work, but she is able to empathize with Robert.

This singular experience of perspective and sympathy directs the end of his life toward searching and considering what his life has meant, what all these events good and bad have been about. He occasionally forays into the cities where he encounters electricity, television, and circus shows whose obvious fakery does not blunt their capacity to stir something in him.

These scenes in the city are important, because they show his seeming immunity to amusement. He encounters these new developments with the same seriousness he approaches everything. He tries to understand rather than escape from his reality in them.

One of his final interactions with technology is paying for a ride in an airplane to “see the world as only the birds see it.” In a clear visual reference to the similar scene from Malick’s Tree of Life, Robert has an experience, similar to the one on the forest watch tower, of gaining perspective on the overall events of his life.

Women are conspicuous throughout Grainier’s life. Though never knowing his father and mother—he is an orphan who was put on a train to the west—he is intensely devoted to his family. Meeting his wife Gladys, or rather being met by her, gives shape to his early life. The joyful intrusion of a daughter brings him meaning as more than a worker and provider. The forest ranger helps him process his grief, and the pilot (who is somewhat surprisingly a woman) shows him the meaning of his life from the air.

These relationships, while they exist, are his life. After they are gone he spends his time earnestly trying to understand them and the world he inhabits. His work does not consume him, in fact it eventually expels him. He has no interest in social life beyond his family, and his pleasures come only in their purest versions: eating, playing with his wife and child, experiencing nature.

Robert Grainier is a man utterly devoid of irony. He does nothing in jest, though he can be playful, and does not shrug off any of the roles he finds himself in. Most of all, he doesn’t hide himself behind a false self but lives his own life with seriousness and joy.

This was striking, because it is harder and harder to take yourself or your life seriously. The performative nature of life online, and increasingly our politics, media, and all other things, means we drape ourselves in irony to hide in plain sight. Too busy costuming a role to be who we are and live our own life in quiet and contemplation—a well-examined life lived well.

When I was about fourteen my mom put a cd in my Easter basket. This wasn’t uncommon, but this particular disk would become one of the more important ones in my collection. I’ve listened to it nearly every Holy Week since.

Other than already being a fan of both Chanticleer and Tavener, I had absolutely no context for this work. I just knew that I loved how it sounded. Chanticleer is somehow the best and most versatile choir around, and this caught them at what I consider their peak (when I saw them in concert around 2010 only one member of choir—the incredible and affable bass Eric Alatorre—that recorded this was still in the group. He spent about thirty years with them but has since retired from Chanticleer and sings with whatever choirs he wants.)

As it turns out, this work is an Orthodox liturgical work. I am not Orthodox myself, but it would be fair to say my aesthetic sensibilities fit a lot better in an Orthodox context than Protestantism.

Tavener was himself a convert to Orthodoxy for most of his adult life and this work was intended as service music for Pascha. He includes somewhat detailed program notes about the movements through the space in the program notes. It appears to have only been performed a few times, mostly by Chanticleer and once by (of all things) a Presbyterian church’s choir.

The choral numbers are predictably Tavener; rich harmony, homophonous textures. Unlike many Tavener works, most of the choral numbers are lightly accompanied by strings which adds to the depth of sound for such a small choir. It’s the solo singing that really stands out though. To a man, they all inhabit the expressive world of byzantine chant (quarter tones and all) in a way that is very unlike any kind of western singing, but completely convincing.

The final movement, Resurrection in Hades, features one of the great shocks in music. After over an hour of sparsely accompanied music, we hear what sounds like a board being hit with a hammer. And indeed, it is a semantron. This is such a foreign sound to eastern protestant or catholic ears, but it carries rich significance in the Russian Orthodox tradition as a traditional accompaniment to processions and funerals.

This is the only work I know with what I consider a satisfying musical depiction of the resurrection. I’ll just leave it at that.

My musical life has been on a pretty serious microtonal kick lately. As someone who has always been somewhat dissonance-seeking in music this is probably the logical outcome. Microtonality is one of the things I’ve always found appealing about Chinese, Indian, and Arabic music. It’s a world of flavors we don’t have in classical music. And I’ve been at the buffet.

The science of tuning is fascinating, but when I try to talk to students about it they start to regard me with some suspicion as a possible crackpot. Many sidelong glances are exchanged around the room when I tell them the piano is a profoundly out of tune instrument and has ruined our ears for pure intervals. But it’s true! There are so many interesting and expressive sounds we have learned to hear as out of tune because they don’t accord with our reductionistic approach to tuning for convenience. (Don’t ask me how I feel about auto-tune.)

What kicked all this off was the sensation out of Canada, Angine de Poitrine. I’m not into the goofy costumes and performance art aspects of any of this but the music is so interesting. My introduction came (along with about 2 million other people) from Rick Beato on YouTube. If there’s anyone right now that can make a difference in the growth of a group, it’s Rick with his commentary and high standard of taste.

Hearing this kind of smart, prog/math rock is so refreshing. The nearest analog I can think of is my favorite Baltimore band, Horse Lords. The combination of complex rhythms and quarter tones is just enough to make this stick, but the loop-pedal nature of playing as a duo means the material is limited so you can get used to it. The YouTube comments on their videos are hilarious, but the consensus of those that like it is that it is something like a rebellion against the aesthetic averager that is AI-generated music.

Everyone else in my household absolutely hates this. The children shriek in horror. You might too.

Doing some more reading about tuning theory led me to this absolute gem from one of my favorite composers, Terry Riley’s The Harp of New Albion. I’ve read about La Monte Young’s The Well-Tuned Piano pretty extensively, but somehow missed the existence of Riley’s counterpart, a full length exploration of five-limit just intonation (as usual, Ethan Hein has you covered if you want to go deep on how this works).

These sonorities are so rich and expressive, much more alive than a piano in equal-temperament. As Riley once put it, “Western music is so fast because it’s out of tune.”

And of course the best information I can find about this with some tuning analysis is from a good old-fashioned blogspot blog.

All this reminded me of an album I got deep into a year or so ago. Alec Goldfarb’s microtonal take on the blues. His bio says that Hindustani classical music is one of his major influences. The synthesis of blues guitar and sitar playing is really quite something. This is not easy-listening in any sense, but hearing the tropes and habits of two wildly different styles merged is compelling. This music was clearly made by very serious-minded musicians that approach this project with earnestness.

I. After reading David Sudnow’s books on learning the play the piano (Ways of the Hand and Talk’s Body) I’ve been thinking about the “handfulness” (his term) of playing and learning music. In practicing improvisation he had to learn to go from playing “wayfully,” that is, through pre-determined and drilled pathways like scales and arpeggios to playing “songfully.” Songful musicians hear the sounds they want (often best accomplished by singing, there is a reason jazz musicians scat) and then develops the instincts, habits, and collections of skills to realize them in sound. Eventually, this songfulness also becomes a handfulness. Your hands learn to find the patterns that fit the song.

This is the open-circuit side of music. A controlled environment where vernacular phrases and gestures are traversed in new combinations, what we call improvisation. The mental space and physical preparation of improvisation is a lot like learning to play basketball or some other team sport. Clearly stated rules and expectations govern the ways of movement that are appropriate to the game and, when well-executed, come off with grace and style. No two basketball games are exactly alike, but any given play is quite similar to something that has happened before. The best players have trained for the most possible contingencies and how to handle them. (e.g. Steph Curry’s warm-up routine.)

Open-circuit skill experts develop vasts networks of motor programs (how the brain runs physical movements) along with task specific sub-routines. These are the subtle differences of movement that allow a five year old to walk and run on nearly every possible terrain, but a toddler can only manage flat and level ground. The five year old has developed many more task specific sub-routines in the “walking” motor program. If you only ever practice scales bottom to top starting on the first note, you shouldn’t expect to be able to jump in to the middle when the band changes chords.

II. “A song is a social organizational device par exellence, a format that quite elegantly coordinates the movements of two or more individuals” (Talk’s Body, p. 105). The same could be said for the rules of any sport or game. They create the expectations that allow coordinated movement and enforce punishment (fouls, penalty flags, time out for big tough hockey players) for those that violate them. On the macro level they create such things as Symphony Orchestras and the Olympic Games, perhaps the largest peaceful international cooperative event.

We don’t have the same formal punishments in music, but expectations are enforced socially. You won’t be asked back to the jam if you’re a showboat or can’t hang with the beat. If you try to play a jazzy solo in a rock-based jam band you’ll be a misfit. Blues has some of the strictest stylistic constraints of them all. In the fusion era we live in there is a lot less stylistic gatekeeping, but bluesmen of a previous generation were fiercely protective of the traditional sounds of blues.

III. On the other side of the spectrum are closed-circuit skills. This is all classical music, but also a lot of virtuosic metal (most of which is not improvised but worked out in advance) and a lot of fingerstyle guitar and folk music. Most genres more flexibility than classical music, but “the song” is essentially set down in writing or oral tradition and recreated roughly the same way each performance. The ability to recreate an ideal version of the music after extensive rehearsal is the territory of classical musicians, figure skaters, and gymnasts over all others. (Many years ago I realized that almost all the popular American sports are open-circuit team competitions—baseball, basketball, football, hockey, soccer—but that most of our favorite Olympic sports are soloistic, closed-circuit sports like gymnastics, diving, even skiing and oddities like bobsled to some extent.)

The ways of training for these different kinds of performance are quite different. Perhaps they are the difference between preparing to play Hamlet and preparing for an oral argument before the Supreme Court. To do Hamlet (closed-circuit) justice you have to memorize all the lines of course, but you also have to internalize all the thoughts and feelings he is processing throughout the play. Then you have to say them in the way you think will communicate the best. This is nearly identical to preparing to play a classical piece effectively, you are just dealing with the world of sound and gesture rather than word and action.

When you go before SCOTUS as oral advocate, you don’t know what you will be asked. Or at least you don’t know exactly **what you will be asked, but if you belong there you what the possibilities are and you have prepared accordingly. A successful advocate can actively navigate all aspects of a case and argument depending on the questions asked. The best even adjust their manner and attitude according to the tone of questions from the justices. These are the equivalent of task specific sub-routines. After the very brief prepared speech (”playing the head” as jazz people say), it is all improv. If you pull up to the jazz jam you don’t know what tunes will be called, but if you can’t play Cherokee, Stella by Starlight, All of Me, and twenty or thirty of the other most commonly played tunes then you really aren’t prepared.

IV. A curious habit of mind music students develop is to think about their hands as technology. Over years of practice the hands develop ways of moving and manipulating your instrument that seem to take on an alien quality. Around age sixteen I saw a video of myself playing the guitar and had something like an out of body experience. It was clearly me and my hands doing this playing, but I couldn’t imagine it was possible I actually did it. It seemed that some force was impelling my hands around the guitar in a way I didn’t fully understand.

And indeed, I did not fully understand it. I had been practicing essentially mindlessly, repeating the same things over and over again for rote muscle memory. In this way I learned to play some very difficult music, but performance was always on a knife edge. One misstep on this very narrow path I had gone down thousands of times and it would fall apart. Good preparation accounts for this by playing a piece in as many different ways as can be devised to account for the irregularities of live performance and playing with nerves.

This kind of practicing is from the hands up. Input is primarily from the hands, and the executive function does something like a pass/fail evaluation. “That attempt sounded bad.” “That attempt sounded good.” And then some are better or worse.

Practicing in this mode is wildly inefficient. The solution to the bad attempts is always another attempt. Wishful thinking, of course, that the hands will magically find the right pathway after traversing the wrong pathway dozens of times in a row. As I try to drill into my students, after you have played a mistake the most likely thing you will play the next time is… a mistake. This is something like the plateau of ability Sudnow hit after he had developed his “chops” on scales and arpeggios, but still couldn’t pull off stylistic improvisation. He had to lead the hands rather than follow them.

Learning the practice from the brain down is a major step for developing musicians. Careful analytical thought is the first step to progress, but it is primarily analysis of the hands and their ways of moving in relation to the music. Wisdom on an instrument comes from knowing what kinds of movements will be secure in the stressful environment of live performance and which won’t. ”Fingering is destiny” is another of our studio mottos. This kind of mental work creates an integrated connection from brain to hands that holds up to pressure much better. Rather than throwing your hands at the task hoping they bring it off because they have in practice, you are actively in control and making constant adjustments based on feedback. The brain tells the hands what to do, but the hands also respond with whether what is asked feels good. This is where the “songful” and “handful” nature of playing well come together. The mind and body in harmony.

V. Another element of handfulness in music—which you might remember is where this rumination began—is in the composing of music itself. My current concert program is all works by guitarists or lutenists. This is an interesting context to observe hand-based thinking. It’s clear that each of these pieces has a firm rootedness in the topography of the instrument. Though they aren’t easy by any means, the music doesn’t demand from the instrument something it isn’t good at. The best player-composers have independent musical ideas of course. A sure sign of hack-work is music that follows common patterns or relies completely on instrument-specific effects. But even the best pieces are molded by a deep knowledge of terrain, texture, and the possibilities of four fingers playing six strings. This music “fits the hand” as we say, and allows the instrument to speak in its natural voice. It’s an absolute joy to play.