No more doubt or fear, I found my way
(Styne/Comden/Green)
In her Netflix special Joke Show, the comedian Michelle Wolf describes a blog as ‘a conversation no one wanted to have with you’. This sounds about right. So, liberated by this awareness, I’m pressing on, along with all the other bloggers…
A nagging question for me, in the field of music therapy, is one of musicianship. Actually it’s not only in music therapy, it’s music making more generally (btw I’m not a fan of the word ‘musicking’ despite attempts to get used to it - I prefer music as a mysterious noun). When making music with another person, and especially since becoming a music therapist, I am so often struck by how much the experience affects how I feel about them. If the music clicks, I usually click with the person too. Why is this? Perhaps what I need is to feel reciprocal listening, to feel that what I’m doing is being heard and responded to, and that my responses to them are important to them and have meaning for them.
But I’m more picky than that as well. I did a duo gig once with someone who (my experience) didn’t have a good time feel. Every time we began a tune at a medium or fastish tempo, I could feel it beginning to slow down to their comfort zone. I tried pushing, but this had limited effect. I felt frustrated, blocked, even offended. It was our first meeting, and so our first time playing together, so was I being impatient, not allowing the relationship to emerge? Maybe, but I had another experience recently with a new musician to me, where everything instantly clicked. We also got on. Generally I feel I’ve been lucky, experiencing the latter more frequently, and often surprised by musical frustrations when they come up.
A very experienced jazz musician once said to me that playing with good time is about memory. If you can remember the tempo then there’s no need to slow down. Losing time is about losing memory, or perhaps not bothering to remember, or not listening and paying attention properly. One of the benefits of being a music therapist might be that when this happens in a session, with a client, it could be understood as communication. As the therapist, I might notice the time dragging (assuming we’re playing in a recognisable pulse in the first place) and I could reflect on it. What does it tell me about the client? Are they dragging because they are feeling slow, depressed, heavy? Is there a physiological reason - slow processing time, motor difficulties, some other physical impairment or illness? Is there an unconscious meaning behind the slowness - are they holding me back so that I can feel what it’s like to be held back, for example?
All of this assumes that my time is ‘right’ and theirs is ‘wrong’, that I’m ‘in time’ and they’re falling behind, perhaps. This might be rather subjective, but it might also be empirically correct - one of us might be a better metronome (which one?). This would suggest that having good time awareness is a very important prerequisite for becoming a music therapist. It might even be extended to the idea that having a good ‘feel’ is important too, since feeling a groove and playing in time are so closely related. Is this the case? If so, what else might be important? Intonation? Sound quality? Control of dynamics? My intuitive response would be, yes, all of those. In other words, to be a good music therapist, you need to be a good musician. What a surprise! You get all the big insights here - stick with me.
There’s another nagging problem, voice in my head, whatever. How do I know the difference? How do I avoid projecting my own musical inadequacies onto another musician, who might be a music therapy client? The subtleties of groove, for example, can be experienced as ambiguous - who is dragging and who is rushing? Herbie Hancock’s Chameleon, from the classic Headhunters album, speeds up substantially throughout the track. It’s not about playing with strictly metronomic time, because we know who does this best of all, and it’s definitely not humans. Groove is mutually felt, negotiated, settled into. Sound quality is subjective. Musical personality is a matter of taste. Musicality is culturally determined as well, so a musical difference might be a cultural difference, rather than a difference in competence or sensitivity.
Where does this leave me? With a feeling that I have to trust my own musical judgement, while understanding that it’s fallible. But also with an awareness that musical differences can be felt as personal differences, that how someone is with me as a musician can have a profound effect on how I feel about them as a person. I also notice that the musicians with whom I have developed the best musical relationships are those with whom I feel a shared understanding and have developed trust. I feel intuitively that a person can tell me a lot about themselves through their music, which can include whether they trust me, and whether they want me to trust them. Another friendship with a musician comes to mind, one in which trust has eroded a little over the years, and where this loss is also (by me at least) felt musically whenever we find ourselves playing together. Interestingly, although this isn’t ideal, it is survivable, and maybe even transformable, who knows…
So musicians are people, and people are musicians. I think this idea is a big part of what brought me to music therapy in the first place, and what keeps me fascinated with this peculiar discipline. Why does this musician make me feel good, while this other one can make me feel bad? And why is music such an effective medium for transmitting these feelings? I will continue to try to understand this, which must include a developing awareness of whatever my part is in the shared process, just like, you know, in life.
In her Netflix special Joke Show, the comedian Michelle Wolf describes a blog as ‘a conversation no one wanted to have with you’. This sounds about right. So, liberated by this awareness, I’m pressing on, along with all the other bloggers…
A nagging question for me, in the field of music therapy, is one of musicianship. Actually it’s not only in music therapy, it’s music making more generally (btw I’m not a fan of the word ‘musicking’ despite attempts to get used to it - I prefer music as a mysterious noun). When making music with another person, and especially since becoming a music therapist, I am so often struck by how much the experience affects how I feel about them. If the music clicks, I usually click with the person too. Why is this? Perhaps what I need is to feel reciprocal listening, to feel that what I’m doing is being heard and responded to, and that my responses to them are important to them and have meaning for them.
But I’m more picky than that as well. I did a duo gig once with someone who (my experience) didn’t have a good time feel. Every time we began a tune at a medium or fastish tempo, I could feel it beginning to slow down to their comfort zone. I tried pushing, but this had limited effect. I felt frustrated, blocked, even offended. It was our first meeting, and so our first time playing together, so was I being impatient, not allowing the relationship to emerge? Maybe, but I had another experience recently with a new musician to me, where everything instantly clicked. We also got on. Generally I feel I’ve been lucky, experiencing the latter more frequently, and often surprised by musical frustrations when they come up.
A very experienced jazz musician once said to me that playing with good time is about memory. If you can remember the tempo then there’s no need to slow down. Losing time is about losing memory, or perhaps not bothering to remember, or not listening and paying attention properly. One of the benefits of being a music therapist might be that when this happens in a session, with a client, it could be understood as communication. As the therapist, I might notice the time dragging (assuming we’re playing in a recognisable pulse in the first place) and I could reflect on it. What does it tell me about the client? Are they dragging because they are feeling slow, depressed, heavy? Is there a physiological reason - slow processing time, motor difficulties, some other physical impairment or illness? Is there an unconscious meaning behind the slowness - are they holding me back so that I can feel what it’s like to be held back, for example?
All of this assumes that my time is ‘right’ and theirs is ‘wrong’, that I’m ‘in time’ and they’re falling behind, perhaps. This might be rather subjective, but it might also be empirically correct - one of us might be a better metronome (which one?). This would suggest that having good time awareness is a very important prerequisite for becoming a music therapist. It might even be extended to the idea that having a good ‘feel’ is important too, since feeling a groove and playing in time are so closely related. Is this the case? If so, what else might be important? Intonation? Sound quality? Control of dynamics? My intuitive response would be, yes, all of those. In other words, to be a good music therapist, you need to be a good musician. What a surprise! You get all the big insights here - stick with me.
There’s another nagging problem, voice in my head, whatever. How do I know the difference? How do I avoid projecting my own musical inadequacies onto another musician, who might be a music therapy client? The subtleties of groove, for example, can be experienced as ambiguous - who is dragging and who is rushing? Herbie Hancock’s Chameleon, from the classic Headhunters album, speeds up substantially throughout the track. It’s not about playing with strictly metronomic time, because we know who does this best of all, and it’s definitely not humans. Groove is mutually felt, negotiated, settled into. Sound quality is subjective. Musical personality is a matter of taste. Musicality is culturally determined as well, so a musical difference might be a cultural difference, rather than a difference in competence or sensitivity.
Where does this leave me? With a feeling that I have to trust my own musical judgement, while understanding that it’s fallible. But also with an awareness that musical differences can be felt as personal differences, that how someone is with me as a musician can have a profound effect on how I feel about them as a person. I also notice that the musicians with whom I have developed the best musical relationships are those with whom I feel a shared understanding and have developed trust. I feel intuitively that a person can tell me a lot about themselves through their music, which can include whether they trust me, and whether they want me to trust them. Another friendship with a musician comes to mind, one in which trust has eroded a little over the years, and where this loss is also (by me at least) felt musically whenever we find ourselves playing together. Interestingly, although this isn’t ideal, it is survivable, and maybe even transformable, who knows…
So musicians are people, and people are musicians. I think this idea is a big part of what brought me to music therapy in the first place, and what keeps me fascinated with this peculiar discipline. Why does this musician make me feel good, while this other one can make me feel bad? And why is music such an effective medium for transmitting these feelings? I will continue to try to understand this, which must include a developing awareness of whatever my part is in the shared process, just like, you know, in life.
About 20 years ago I was fortunate to sing and play with an African/American band from NY. In that time, the saxophone player as a musician and a person meant a lot to me. I've quickly connected with his music when we improvised, I sung and played a piano, I felt safe on a stage, listened, and regained my voice (quite literally) after my previous relationship. His way of playing was very supportive, non-judgemental, with plenty space and safety all along, I felt an equal as a partner in a band, appreciated in the moment of our 'musicking' and afterwards. I think, music has always been my safe place, especially behind a piano or singing. But playing with that lovely man, in that time, thanks to his kindness, a supportive personality and the way we communicated through our music was definitely the milestone in a process of rebuilding the important aspects of my life, especially, the safety, finding back my voice and strength as a person and a woman musician.
ReplyDeleteHowever, 20 years later, while visiting New York in 2017 we met again, but except quite emotional beginning we didn't really connect in music (we went to a jam session in NY, of course!). I was frustrated and wondering what actually happen? Was I so bad or it was him? Actually, through the whole time I felt dragged by his extremely lyrical and safe but supportive way of playing, while I was ready to go and jump off a high cliff at the start! And after a while I've simply followed the grove and his 'dragging' style, a bit more understanding the fact that 20 years ago his support and feelings in his music resonated with me directly because there and then that was the 'kind of feelings' I needed the most. Here and now was different, I was much stronger, in a different place of my life, and for me, music was exploring, experiencing, expressing, speaking out loud, creating 'my story' , achieving something extraordinary, having fun, not only surviving, as it was 20 years ago... I realised that I didn't need much of the safety from his music any more, I was safe. Sadly, most of his musicality and personality characteristics weren't resonating with me at all. At first, I was disappointed, but later, remembering my life back there I knew that it's a good sign, I felt a very different person and fortunate of the life I was having here and now...
So, 'why does this musician make me feel good, while this other one can make me feel bad? And why is music such an effective medium for transmitting these feelings'... In my opinion, It's about resonating (or not), here and now our feelings and life aspects 'in need' with the musicians who here and now can fulfill it, and compensate through 'musicking' what we're searching for.
And why music is the medium? Because music plays us, at every level of our being, no doubt, even if we try to avoid it, still does it (through the avoidance!). So, no matter what people do, with a little of good luck (or bad for those who avoid it ;-) ), music will eventually tell the truth, this way or another, sooner or later! I truly believe in it!
Thank you for the challenge! Luiza
Thanks for reading, and for your insightful comments Luiza!
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