ProneOboe

The Blog has MOVED

2020-12-11T10:27:00.000-05:00

Have you been waiting ... and waiting ... and WAITING for a new Prone Oboe post?

Don't wait here anymore!

The blog has moved to https://jennetingle.com/prone-oboe/ and will not be updated here on Blogger anymore. Please come and check me out there!

I love you all - stay safe out there!

Jennet

Don't Wait For It

2020-10-07T10:41:00.003-04:00

Don’t wait for it.

The lowest notes on the oboe are notoriously difficult to play. They don’t want to speak, they MIGHT splatter, they are SLOW to respond, they feel flat. And if your instrument is even slightly out of adjustment, they can be even more resistant - sometimes literally impossible.

And some students WAIT for that low note to come before they go on, and THIS disrupts the rhythm, the tempo, the flow of the piece, and the musical line they are trying to create. It distracts the listeners, it throws the ensemble off. The pianist has to lurch to catch them, the conductor has to stop and yell.

One missed note, or one note that doesn’t quite speak - THAT doesn’t ruin your communication. But the distraction and disruption for both you and your listener that happens when YOU acknowledge the problem, when YOU make us all wait patiently for the response of a low C - that’s when you lose us.

I think every low note has three possibilities within it.

1. It can “ghost”, or fail to speak at all

2. It can speak perfectly, on time

3. It can squawk and splatter all over the room

We can all agree that version 2 is the ideal. But if you’re feeling tentative about it, if you think you might not get 2? I think it’s clear that leaning toward version 1 is the safer choice.

Allowing low notes to exist on a spectrum in which perfection is not the ONLY acceptable answer is a great relief to me and to my students.

Sometimes, in life, we can get a little bit stuck, or frozen, looking for the one PERFECT action. If you're trying to start a business, if you're trying to create a relationship with someone, if you are trying to increase your visibility on social media because your orchestra has shut down and you need an audience - you might feel like there's no way to know what to do, there's no way to know how to start.

If there's an imperfect okay choice, a perfect one, and a BAD one, just make sure you're leaning away from the BAD choice - then don't wait.

I don’t want to go on record as saying that your notes don’t have to speak, or that sloppy playing or careless behavior is acceptable. That’s not really what I’m saying. BUT - the intention of the musical line is more than any one note, and ANYONE, even a great player, might miss a single note. It doesn't make you a bad person.

So here’s my message, to my students and my clients and sometimes myself. Don’t wait for the note to arrive. Give it your best try, but let it be all right for it to ghost instead of speaking on time. Move ON with your big picture communication. The momentum of your line need not be disrupted for a mere technical matter.

Play me something worth listening to and I don’t need your low B.

The AIR is the Sound

2020-09-16T12:48:00.003-04:00

It's never wrong to go back to basics.

I was working with some college freshmen and we were playing two-bar phrases. I talked about arcing the air over the barline. I talked about singing. I talked about how the tongue is just the consonant of your speech, not the punctuation. I talked about D articulation as opposed to T. I have a LOT of different words I can use for any given concept, and I pulled all of them out. I drew the phrase on my whiteboard, I explained how the LINE is longer than the SLUR, and how the BARLINE is not a STOP.

Still, though, this ONE articulation brought the whole thing to a standstill, every time. So the piece moved measure by measure and not phrase by phrase. They were frustrated and I was too.

And I finally realized that the thing I wasn't saying was this - if the AIR is moving consistently through the oboe, THAT'S what is making the sound. Within that, every instant that your tongue is touching the reed is an instant that sound is not happening. So for a legato tongue effect, you paradoxically have to move your tongue faster than normal, and just touch the reed like a hot potato and get RIGHT BACK OFF OF IT.

It's so basic, so physical, so NOT fancy at all. But it made all the difference. We played some long tones with quarter note DAH articulations, we worked on eliminating the silence between the notes - and then we played beautiful, meaningful two bar phrases that arced over the line and had progression throughout the piece.

This is what is FUN for me about teaching - the creativity in finding the right words for each individual student. Sometimes I can be a little high-minded and flowery in my approach - but I don't mind going all the way back to first principles. The air is the SOUND, the tongue is the SILENCE. It's a lovely reminder for me too.

How Do You WISH You Could Describe Your Reeds?

2020-09-09T10:42:00.004-04:00

In Reed Club last Monday, we took a moment before we started scraping to set some intentions. We each said one word - an adjective to describe what we WANTED our reeds to be. An aspirational adjective.

Efficient was a word that came up, and Consistent. Dark and Mysterious. Mellow. Predictable. Trustworthy. Honest. BIGGER.

Reed affirmations actually felt helpful - both in the moment and in the results we found as we worked. I don't know why that surprises me - I set intentions at the beginning of the year, at the beginning of the month, at the beginning of a run, in the morning before I work. I love a good affirmation. I love WORDS. But I'd sort of forgotten about the possibility of applying one to the mundane work of reed-making.

You don't have to know exactly how to GET to that result. But having clarity in your mind about what that result is? Helps you to stop going down unhelpful rabbit holes. Reminds you to seek something beyond competent, beyond correct - to seek something more Mellow. More HONEST.

How do you want YOUR reeds to be? What adjective do you wish could regularly describe your reeds?

I love you all. Stay safe out there.

Micro Rests

2020-08-26T10:24:00.001-04:00

For oboists, endurance is a huge problem. We can play an endlessly long phrase, because of the way the instrument is constructed, but we can really only do that a few times in a row before our embouchure starts to get fatigued. We develop a buildup of air that feels exhausting to hold onto, and the thought of sustaining that kind of energy over an entire page of music, much less a 45 minute recital program, is intimidating.

There's almost always a lesson, a week or two before a jury or a recital, where my student comes in and says, "I just can't DO this! I can play every detail in my music, but I can't put the whole thing together! My mouth comes right off the oboe when I try - I'm going to fall apart in front of the audience, and it's going to be terrible!"

Look, I'm putting this on my students now - but there's a moment a week or so before MY performances that feels exactly the same! I have not outgrown this moment of panic.

And at that point we start looking for micro rests. Sometimes in the music you are allowed to take your face off the instrument for a few bars or between movements - those are just regular rests, obviously. But sometimes you can take your foot off the gas for a moment - instead of having to really PUSH and actively sustain the sound, and energize it out forward, you can coast a little bit. Maybe there's still sound going on, but for a second it's allowed to be easy. It's the end of a phrase, or a little punctuation within your phrase. It's a comma, or a period, but not the end of a chapter, or even the end of a paragraph. It's just the end of a sentence, but it's a little MOMENT in which you are not pushing forward as hard.

As soon as we bring our attention to these little spots - I can find five in a line, if I need to - we reframe them as places of rest. Even though you're technically still playing, it feels much easier. You can bounce from micro rest to micro rest, just looking ahead as you go. "OK. I have to surge through this next bit, but I can see three measures from now a place where I can ease up. Where it doesn't have to be quite so hard, quite so energetic. Where I can give myself just a split second of grace." This is a LIFESAVER. Suddenly, in little surges, you can go, and go, and go.

There's a parallel here. It's really hard to work from home, school from home, and live at home all day long. The days feel eternal, the work you need to do feels overwhelming. What if you acknowledged the need for micro rests, and took them as often as necessary throughout the day? You can get frustrated and angry and bad at working if you keep pounding away at the same task, but what if you stood up and stretched for five minutes? What if you took the dog down the block and back, right in the middle of the day? What if you sat back in your chair and took a few deep breaths, and asked yourself, "What would make this feel better right now? A cup of coffee? A nap? A different task that uses my energy in a slightly different way?"

Taking a full day off can be hard for a BUSY person, for a DRIVEN person, for an entrepreneur or a musician. Taking weeklong vacations is essential, but you can only have so many of those, right? But anyone can take a minute, as needed, over and over again during the day. This is not a substitute for REAL rest, let me be clear. PLEASE still take days off, and vacations away from home when it is safe!

Micro rests can keep the days feeling fun, joyful, and sustainable. Learn from the oboists!

On the generosity of Instagram practice accounts

2020-08-19T10:46:00.004-04:00

Classical musicians are trained to make it perfect. To make all the notes correct, to make it sound like the CD, to do it the way everyone else has done it. The only way to shine is to be BETTER - which means cleaner, more in tune, more perfect. We DO NOT SHIP until it’s perfect, which is why so many people struggle with performance anxiety and stage fright. Live is scary because you can’t control how perfect it is.

But here’s what the kids are doing, over on Instagram. They are making “practice accounts” and sharing their work in progress. They are sharing snippets of pieces, little technical etudes, minute-long snatches of what is happening. They are sharing the messy middle.

The first magic in this is that the process of recording yourself, listening to what you’re doing, making judgements for yourself about what is good ENOUGH to share, trying again to make the snippet REPRESENT where you are in the journey - that PROCESS is making you better.

The second magic is that seeing your brave journey makes other people feel braver. And more people sharing makes a community. There are SO MANY oboists on Instagram putting up bits of music - tiny performances created in their bedrooms and offices. And they SEE each other, and HEAR each other. How many live oboe recitals can you go to in a week? I’m pretty prolific, but I only give maybe 10 or 12 solo performances a year. On IG you can hear players every day.

The third magic is that in this community it feels safe to be vulnerable. Every person I have seen says, at some point in the journey, “This isn’t as good as I want it to be, but it’s the best I have today.” This includes real pros, holding major orchestral chairs, and it includes middle schoolers. EVERYONE works through these feelings of frustration and disappointment. When you listen, sometimes you can’t even tell what they are talking about - the playing sounds beautiful. Or in the case of the 15-year-olds, it at least sounds REPRESENTATIVE. The tiny flaws you hear in your own playing are real, they ARE worth working on, but in many cases they don’t distract from the work you are trying to share.

The final magic is that this community is KIND. Sometimes there’s feedback, if the person asked for it - but I have never ONCE seen a nasty trolling response of any sort on one of these practice posts. The humanity of the person sharing their work is honored.

As a professional, I struggle with social media sometimes - how much to post, how to be visible, what to keep back, what to give generously and what to save for paying clients. But I LOVE the community of Instagram Practice Accounts.

Go and look at #oboepractice. Or #100daysofpractice. Or #40daysofbarret, or #ferling48challenge, or just get creative with your hashtags, because the kids sure are. Or what if you put some playing out there yourself? What would it feel like to just share something, even imperfectly?

Choose the YES

2020-08-08T16:44:00.000-04:00

Special moments come at the least expected times.

This video, the one I circulate periodically whenever Facebook reminds me of it, was literally just a gig. I didn’t know Sullivan when he reached out to me to play because he needed the video for some application or other. I didn’t even ask what it was for. I only had a day or two to prepare the music and I was annoyed that it was so hard and annoyed at myself for accepting the gig and annoyed as I drove up to the church he had booked which proved to be basically unheated.

I love what I do, but some gigs ARE an annoyance. Holiday pops runouts leap to mind here. Endless drives through the snow for ungratifyingly formulaic performances of insipid music. My annoyance level going in to this was about the same.

But it turned out to be marvelous fun! Once I got going, the challenge turned out to be the BEST kind of challenge, the thing that is difficult but totally attainable if you bring your A game and your focus. That’s the kind of challenge I love the most.

Sullivan and the pianist and the cameraman he’d brought were totally delightful. I really liked the piece. And every time I see that video now I smile and reshare it, because it came out so well and was such a good experience.

If I had let my annoyance lead the way? If I had turned the gig down, if I had come in with a bad attitude, if I had practiced only just enough to fake through it instead of really playing it? This would not have been so much fun. I would have missed out.

The best thing about my life is the opportunities I get to make interesting things, to DO interesting projects. You can’t always tell in advance which experience is going to be amazing. I know we have to make choices in life - I’ve already made a choice about the next set of holiday pops runouts. (Hold me to that when life resumes!)

But when you can - choose the YES. Because you never know when it’s going to be unexpectedly special.

Coffee? COMMUNICATE.

2020-07-29T09:06:00.000-04:00

Thesis: Communication is important. Letting the other person know your CONTEXT is a part of that.

Scene: We’re walking the doggo, so I can’t step into the co-op with Steve. We’re all wearing masks, which as you know makes communication a little bit more fraught.

"I’m going to grab some coffee - what can I get you?"

"Kombucha."

"Coffee?"

"Kombucha."

"Columbian?"

"No, Kombucha, please."

"WHAT? Cup of joe?"

Bless his heart. He REALLY knows me. In 22 years of marriage I have given him no reason to think that I would prefer a non-coffee, non-booze beverage under any circumstance.

I’m a complex person, and I reserve the right to change up my order on a hot day when something with a little pro-biotic tang sounds appetizing. But he was confused, which I get.

I was working with an Invincible Oboist recently, reiterating that the METER must be clear when you perform. It’s remarkable how much of my energy as a listener - especially on zoom, but really always - goes into trying to grasp the basic structure of what is going on. We NEED the clarity of a downbeat early in the process, we NEED to understand whether the piece in question is in three or four or six - because until that happens we are just searching for meaning. We can’t appreciate any of your other magic until we understand the context of what you’re saying.

Be a girl scout for the first bar or two. Let me get the sense of what I’m hearing. Then I’ll be prepped to hear the rest of your brilliant ideas. THEN you can be playful with rhythm, THEN you can elide phrases and make interesting choices. But I have to trust you first. I have to be ready to listen.

"I feel like something different today. How about kombucha?" would have solved our problem.

and three and ONE___ two would have solved my oboist's.

Communicate! x
x

COMMUNICATING Through the Mask

2020-07-15T11:48:00.000-04:00

I was just trying to pick up my kid’s prescription at the pharmacy.

No, it’s INGLE. EYE ENN GEE ELLL EEEE.

Between the mask covering half my face and the plexiglass barrier, I was almost reduced to charades as I tried to communicate a simple order.

And we’ve all discovered this lately, I’m sure. When you are wearing a mask and trying to speak with someone else, you have to enunciate MUCH more than normal. You have to slow down and say all of the words distinctly. You might have to rephrase, to use more distinctive sounding words. Expressive eyebrows are helpful. It takes EFFORT to communicate in this age of COVID.

But you know what? We HAVE this skill already. As performers, we know what it is to have to heighten our affect and PROJECT our intentions beyond our bodies. We know that although we FEEL the music deeply within ourselves, that feeling doesn’t necessarily translate to an audience unless we SEND it there.

Practicing in my room, I can mumble. I can let the work I’m doing with my fingers and tongue in a technical passage be the only thing I care about, or can gloss over the “boring” parts that I already know. I can let the dynamics all be relative, all sort of related to MF, if my focus is not on them.

But once I’m in front of an audience, whether that’s in a formal hall (remember those?) or a classroom (right?) or even just in front of Zoom demonstrating something for a student or giving a livestream recital - once I’m performing for someone else, it’s no longer about me. It’s about COMMUNICATION.

It takes real energy to get your musical ideas OUT of your body, THROUGH the oboe, and ACROSS space TO another person. At the best of times this is difficult - I used to say things in lessons like, “I see a diminuendo on the page, and I SORT of even heard it. But I’m sitting five feet from you, I’m looking at the music, and I’m being paid to give you my undivided attention right now. Would anyone else have believed you did it?”

Now I say things like, “Zoom is weird, and if you tell me you did a huge exaggerated dynamic change between that Forte and that Piano I will take you at your word. But I sure didn’t hear it. Can you make me believe in your dynamic plan?” And you know what? They can. Zoom IS weird, but you can communicate through it, it just takes more energy than you expect.

And this is the point. We’re not in a normal time right now, but the lessons we’re learning from performing and teaching on line AND from striving for connection in a locked down world can take us forward into the future. Push yourself to reach out harder, to communicate better. Might we emerge from this time as MORE GENEROUS PERFORMERS?

It’s just like speaking through a mask. Put extra energy into your communication style these days - and put that extra energy into performing on your instrument, always!

The musical connection, the HUMAN connection? It's WORTH the effort.

When to Cheat

2020-06-30T15:20:00.000-04:00

I got an email from an oboist a while ago, back before COVID. After thanking me for the reeds I had sent, and complimenting the warm tone they had, they asked a question about the VERY FAST technical passages in the Polovetsian Dances.

“There is a section of the piece where it is conducted in one beat, but is in 6/8 time. The eighth notes I must play moved so quick that at the tempo I just cannot keep up. My fingers don't move that quick.

When you play a section like this what do you do? Don't play at all, but fake it with the reed in your mouth?”

I had some thoughts on this, which felt universal enough to share.

As you might guess, I’m not a huge fan of just LEAVING THE WHOLE THING OUT. It just feels so dispiriting! All around you people are PLAYING the licks, and you are the one giving up? There’s always something you can contribute, even if it’s just a light downbeat every other bar or so. You don’t want to try to be a hero and wind up dragging the group down if you CAN’T achieve tempo, but there’s probably some middle ground between those two extremes.

If you have the time, I’d work SLOWLY then GRADUALLY FASTER, striving for smooth calm air and soft effortless fingers at manageable tempos and trust that adrenaline will take care of the extreme speed after you have done the good fundamental work. Even a few sessions could make a really dramatic improvement IF your goal is calm, unpanicky QUALITY and you strive for GOOD before you work for FAST. And the added bonus is that EVEN if you can’t solve this Borodin before the concert, you’ve put some really good technical work in the bank for the next scary piece.

But sometimes cheating is the safest course. And you probably can’t wing it, simplifying on the fly, without your scramble being apparent. So use your practice time smartly, to devise a cheat PLAN and practice it so you know you can do it!

Maybe it’s downbeats, or two notes per bar, or just a couple of quick slurs... then let some go... then come back in. Maybe you’ll find that you can drop a few pickups, or strategically duck an awkward cross fingering, and play much more than you thought you’d be able to. Even if it’s only downbeats, that at least gives you the satisfaction of participating, and is less likely to sink the rest of the group. This only works if you can stay at tempo and under the radar with your cheat. WHICH DOES TAKE PLANNING AND PRACTICING.

You’ll use your judgement and do what you need to do, of course - but by being strategic you can turn this challenge into a major opportunity to improve your playing and your practicing, AND remain an active member of your orchestra community!

I know I’ve done some version of this before - I always start with diligent practicing and the belief that I can achieve whatever a composer has asked, but sometimes as the performance approaches I’ve had to work out a cheat. In my case, it might be dropping a note or two, adding a slur or an articulation, leaving out a grace note… Because the audience deserves to hear competence, and a cleanly delivered cheat is going to sound better than a disastrous attempt at something I can’t quite play.

What do you think? Is this relatable? Helpful, even?

Tell me I’m not the only one, PLEASE!

You are the Music

2020-06-15T16:36:00.002-04:00

You ARE the music. YOU are the music. It’s not the oboe. It’s YOU.

Too many oboists live RIGHT up against the resistance of the oboe, blowing straight into the instrument and waging war against it DIRECTLY. Using their mouths to try to compensate for the intonation or clenching their fingers to hold extra tight, I guess so it doesn’t get away?

But what if you didn’t have to go in there, into the fray? What if you could maintain a bit of critical distance? What if you could be the boss of the oboe, instead of its timid colleague?

Here’s how I think about it - or at least how I teach it. Play a note, play it beautifully. Now. See if you can take a metaphorical step back from the oboe. Focus the air inside your mouth BEFORE it hits the reed. Now see how it feels different.

How much LESS work can you do, and get ultimately to the same result? Could you blow 20% less, and project actually more? Can you find the resonance in your own body, and just allow the oboe to amplify that? The less energy it takes to get your full, projected, beautiful sound, the more SPACE you have to add energy if the piece or the moment requires it.

Because, as odd as this seems, you will get more out of the oboe if you cultivate an air of detachment. You are the one making the music, the oboe is just the tool, the vehicle, the conduit. If your body has poise, if your air is coming from deep within you, if you know the sound you intend to make before you ever blow - the instrument will give it to you!

I’m sitting outside right now on a lazy warm summer afternoon, with my little dog next to me. If I speak to her she’ll wag her tail a little. If I idly suggest that she stand up, or dance, or fetch something, she won’t stir. If I, however, stand up, square my shoulders, and give her a command, she’ll (probably) obey. I have to inhabit my body, I have to use it appropriately, I have to mean it. Then she’ll be happy to oblige.

Similarly, I don’t think you can ASK the oboe for the sound and the music you want. You decide, you make that music. Bring the oboe along with you.

Make More Reeds

2020-05-31T09:15:00.001-04:00

I recently met with a former student who proudly described THE reed she was working on to me. She’d gotten it to a point where it made a beep, but it didn’t really play on the oboe yet, but it HADN'T CRACKED! I celebrated with her - but I limited my glee. One slightly successful reed - in the past month - is a good start. It’s further than she had gotten before.

But that is no way to be abundant. If it takes you a month to sort of make one reed, where’s the incentive to even start? No one has that kind of time, and you can’t make your living on one reed a month even if it’s a perfect reed.

More to the point - the learning curve at that rate is basically a flat line. Reedmaking is an art as well as a craft. I can teach someone to construct a reed in a single session, and we can get to a beeping reed in that time. But the next part? The part where you finish it to your comfort and then go out in public and play on it? The part where you analyze what you don’t like, form a hypothesis about how to fix it, try that, and fail a bunch of times before you succeed? That’s really on you, and it takes EXPERIENCE and practice to get there.

I don’t know actually how many reeds I made before I started making adequate ones. Before I started actually playing on my own, and not my teacher’s. That statistic is lost to time. I don’t remember what my numbers were like, but I started learning in 9th grade. The summer after 11th grade I was on my own, by circumstance not choice. My reeds were not good at that time but I could get by on them. Since then it’s been a continual process of iteration.

Does it have to take two and a half years to learn this skill? ABSOLUTELY NOT.

But can you get there on one reed a month? ALSO NO.

Make more reeds. Make more reeds. Make more reeds.

I want to help. Oboe Reed Boot Camp can't happen this summer. Getting a crowd of oboists into a room to sit close together for hours, talk and laugh, and try each other's reeds didn't seem like INSANITY before COVID-19, but it does now.

Instead I have the offer of Reed Club - a weekly social reedmaking session over Zoom, for people who have the concepts in place but would like more support, accountability, and companionship as they work.

And later this summer I will open a new online program, Zero to Reedmaker, for the folks who need a little more INSTRUCTION. Feel free to hit me with an email if this sounds like YOU and you want to be notified when it opens!

Separating it Out

2020-05-18T11:47:00.000-04:00

Last semester, my student came in with the Hoedown from Copland’s Rodeo.

Let me guess, I said - the low tonguing passage?

Of course she assumed that she had a tonguing problem. We always assume that.

I started by checking her oboe. There’s no point in beating yourself up to tongue a low D if your instrument is fighting you. Turning screws is less work than practicing. That could have been but was NOT the problem.

Then, in rapid succession, we isolated and improved her air, embouchure, and fingers. Within 20 minutes we had solved the passage and moved on.

All of these aspects of oboe playing get so tangled up as we work on difficult pieces and passages. You can work on something as HARD and as EFFORTFULLY as you want, but it can’t really get better until you can isolate your issues and get to the bottom of them.

In our case, I started by taking the tonguing out and asking her to slur the passage. It sounded terrible. We slowed it down and I asked her connect all of the notes on the air. It was still not totally working so we simplified down to a low D long tone. I had her crescendo it to the second bar of each two bar phrase. Once we had that under control we added fingers to the air. Again, SLOWLY, to make sure all of the connections were smooth. It took a little effort to connect the F#s to the Ds, because she also had to be reminded to work for the low note by using her embouchure to reach DOWN, and then to reset so that all of the notes in the passage could operate from the same easy low face. We brought that line gently back to tempo, focusing on good relaxed warm air and quality connections, and on soft agile fingers.

Only then did we bring articulation back into the picture. I had her play the passage very slowly with a clear LEGATO tongue. Focusing on the density and saturation of the NOTES, and minimizing the tongue as much as possible. Dah dah dah dah DAH dah dah dah, etc. We brought that task gradually back up to speed, and she sounded amazing on it.

Twenty minutes to solve a passage that difficult is GREAT! If we had not pulled it apart, she would have cemented her bad habits by whacking away at the tonguing day after day until she played it badly in the performance too.

We ALL do this sometimes - we assume we know what’s wrong and if we just work HARDER at it we can fix it. This is so human, so typical. But playing the oboe is a network of skills going on simultaneously. Learning how to pull them apart and work independently on them is EVERYTHING.

This is what I do in my own practice, and this is 100% what I teach, too. There is ALWAYS a way to play the oboe in a relaxed, effortless way, though sometimes it takes some detective work to identify the PROBLEM first. Doesn't it sound like fun to work in this way?

I'm starting a second round of The Invincible Oboist NEXT WEEK, May 26. If you think you might be interested in working with me for ten weeks to rediscover the EASE and JOY in your oboe playing, book a free call with me today and let's chat about it!

Keeping My AIR to Myself

2020-04-23T10:33:00.001-04:00

I was out running this morning and I crossed the street to avoid a perfectly nice lady walking her perfectly nice dog. We smiled and waved at each other - but didn’t dare to get close. Runners in this COVID season allow a lot of space. The air I use when I run comes right out of the bottom of my lungs, like my whole body is exhaling at once, and I’m aware, in a way that I never was before, about the cloud of exhale that surrounds me when I am breathing like this. About having to keep it to myself.
 
And then I got to thinking about the oboe.
 
We use our air in a variety of ways, right? And we oboists have that trick, that superpower, of not ACTUALLY needing that much ACTUAL air to play the instrument, so I often see students trying to get away with HEAD air only. Blowing only from the neck up, letting their lower body NOT be a part of the process. As you might expect, this leads to an unsupported sound, a fair amount of throat strain, a need for very soft, easy reeds, and a relative lack of dynamic range.
 
At the other extreme, I see people who take a GIANT breath, filling their lungs with air, and then playing with a ton of pressure. The result can be heavy, over-tiring - and of course these people also have the problem of needing to get rid of ALL of the extra bad air in their lungs. It takes longer to exhale a TON of air than only a little, so they can really get themselves into trouble in extended passages.
 
I see people straining to play the oboe on a teaspoonful of air or struggling to manage an overfilled tank - and I SEE that struggle, because it is a hard balance to find.
 

I generate my sound from deep within my body, using the same open, relaxed throat I have when I run. I try to simulate the very natural way I breathe when I’m exerting myself A LITTLE. At the same time, I intentionally avoid taking giant breaths - I let myself breathe like a normal human. When I use that natural air, from my own breath and body, it feels like the oboe is just an extension of myself. A heightened, more musical part of myself.

It feels PERSONAL to play an instrument with my air, with the breath of my life. It feels GENEROUS to perform for an audience using my air.

I’m accustomed to thinking about my air, and the air of the students and clients I work with. I’m not used to thinking of it as a source of contagion, I’m not used to feeling afraid of someone else’s natural, personal air. This is a strange strange time.
 
Are you a sipper of air or a gasper when you play your instrument? How do you think about your air? If I do a free training in a few weeks over on Facebook, is this an interesting topic?

Top Six Reasons I Love Teaching Online Lessons

2020-04-01T10:53:00.001-04:00

I've been seeing so many complaints among my friends and colleagues about the quality of their Skype, FaceTime, and Zoom lessons.  I have to say that while I acknowledge the limitations of the media, I actually really LOVE teaching online.  

1.  Lesson transitions are better.  Sometimes when we are live, our chit-chat can take a fair amount of time, while people get their instruments out at the beginning, soak their reeds, and put everything away again.  Online no one calls in before they are ready, and we can end the call at the end of the content and let everyone take care of swabbing in private. We use ALL of our allotted time efficiently online. 

2. My personal focus is better.  I have to listen hard to hear the details through the medium, and it keeps my mind from wandering.  I think the tighter transitions help me with that, too.  And I perceive the same from my students - it could be that my focus directs theirs, I suppose, but either way we’ve gotten a LOT of good work done lately!

3. My students do a lot more playing.  In live lessons, I interrupt a lot - too much - and we can take a full session to get through three lines of music.  Interruptions are too disruptive over zoom, so I let them play a bunch.  Then I talk a bunch.  We can and do have some back and forth as we dig into details, but I really enjoy hearing more of what they’ve prepared. 

4. I can only see a thumbnail of the person, usually.  From the chest up, often, or only a side view as they play.  But that focused view gives me a really clear focus on jaw movement, or tension in the shoulders, or posture and approach to the instrument.  In a live lesson there might be a LOT of distraction, a lot of visual stimulation - but online I see closeups of body parts (we can and do move the camera to focus on hands, fingers, etc as needed) and can REALLY address efficient body usage in my students. 

5. The students have to take much more responsibility for their own sound and learning. The mics on our computers are BAD, we know that. I can’t hear every nuance, so I find myself saying things like, I’m hearing variable pitch on that B natural.  Tell me if I’m wrong. It sounds like there’s a quiver or a tension in the sound on that note - are you hearing that? Tell me how that long tone FELT in your body.  I don’t hear any dynamic range. Tell me what dynamic you think you are playing there.  Can you convince me of that dynamic THROUGH cyberspace?  Talk to me about the beginning of that note - it sounded really jarring.  Did you hear that from your side too?   Live, I would point it out and make them fix it - over the internet I have to make them notice it and acknowledge it for themselves, and be responsible for telling me when it’s fixed.  Even my younger students can DO this, when I ask them to! 

6. Obviously, I can’t fix their reeds over cyberspace.  I can talk them through diagnosis and tweaks, but I can’t JUST do it for them.  This is going to be SO empowering for them!  Everyone’s coming out of this quarantine ready to cope with reed adjustment, I just know it. 

These are my top six reasons why zoom lessons are GREAT - tell me yours! 

Reed Mindset

2020-02-04T12:18:00.000-05:00

In our dress rehearsal Saturday morning I became aware of just how GREAT my reed was. It felt so EASY to play the oboe. I could come in perfectly softly, with or without a strong attack. I could enter loudly and in tune, with or without accent. My pitch was centered, my tone was attractive. I could taper right off the ends of notes EXACTLY as I needed to. And all of these things just felt RIGHT. It’s so unusual to have a reed that I didn’t have to MANAGE, that I didn’t have to keep an awareness of in the back of my head, that I didn’t have to massage in certain registers or dynamics. I could just THINK a musical gesture and then DO it, without compromise. It was a fantastic feeling.

RIGHT IMMEDIATELY behind that awareness of my great reed came anxiety. How terrible would it feel when I inevitably had to return to a lesser reed? When this one died? How could I ever make something THIS GOOD again? WHAT IF my concert reed tonight was LESS GOOD, could I perform as well as I was doing right now? Should I put this amazing reed aside and SAVE it? What if this moment is the peak reed moment of my life and everything else forever afterward is worse?

This is a SCARCITY MINDSET!

I recognized it right away because of all the mindset books I’ve been reading. Letting myself feel tension about the GOOD REED that I was ENJOYING playing on and playing as well as I ever have? That is ridiculous. And so I stopped myself. Identifying the thought made it go away. I just enjoyed that reed for the whole rest of the rehearsal. I relaxed into the goodness.

Sometimes, the oboe IS easy, and the reed IS good, and there is no reason for me to ruin those times by thinking about the other ones.

I can empower myself by remembering that I am fully equipped to deal with the rough times. I make reeds well and fast, I adjust them as needed, and I know how to make things work in a suboptimal situation. Reeds are an abundant and renewable resource. I can have another one anytime.

This is what it means to be Invincible.

Sometimes, like this weekend, I also get Lucky, and that’s a thing to be grateful for.

Open Arms

2020-02-01T16:33:00.000-05:00

Photo by Steve Halama on Unsplash

In rehearsal last night, the concertmaster suggested to the strings that they play with a more open bow arm.  I don’t know precisely what that phrase means to a string player - if it’s a technical term or more of a kinetic metaphor - but it immediately set my mind spinning.

When I am playing my best, I do feel open.  I feel that there’s a lovely big halo of air around me, like the space surrounding me is part of the physical act.  I feel spaciousness in my chest and softness in my elbows and I’m grounded through my chair or my feet but everything else is lifted and filled with air and space and ROOM. I have open arms. 

This sensation - or the lack of it - stood out to me in my first Dreams and Visions performance last week.  I have since listened back to the recording, and honestly things didn’t go all that badly - but I FELT bad in the moment.  I started getting a lot of water in the instrument, I got flustered, and I got into my own head about it - and my usual expansive body awareness shrank to a little nub.  Thinking back on it, I remember tightness and clumsiness in my fingers and hands.  I remember my hands feeling cold while my face felt hot.  And I remember tunnel-visioning into the music on the stand, not feeling free to share my work generously lest I lose my zone of safety, which was me and the stand and maybe my mouth and not much else. 

Performance anxiety is not a big issue for me - I’m a calm and friendly performer as a rule.  I expect that my future performances will return to a more normal zone and I’ll drop back into my big airy oboe space.  But I wonder if I could have used an Open Arms metaphor in the moment to find my way back to that space.  

This is also a thing I’ve been thinking about with my students recently.  They can get SO TIGHT in their bodies around the oboe, as though they are trying not to be seen.  We’re leading into Solo and Ensemble contest this month, and I’m coaching PERFORMANCE PRACTICE all the time.  

And so much of that practice is body awareness.  I don’t have a formal way to talk about it - only a way to SHOW it.  And that way is by OPENING my arms, OPENING the space around me, and inviting the audience in.  Welcome, friends, to my music! 

Open arms. 

Shaq and the Oboe

2020-01-10T15:09:00.001-05:00

Here’s my FAVORITE thing about that Shaquille O'Neal video everyone's sharing this week - it’s how HAPPY he is playing this silly game and how little he CARES what the oboe actually SOUNDS LIKE or how to play it.

Almost as if the oboe is not a giant obstacle to overcome.

Instead of focusing on the CRAFT of the instrument, the precise fingerings, the quality of the sound, the finesse of the vibrato - his focus is on DELIVERING the SONG. It’s on COMMUNICATION, not perfection.

What a LIBERATING concept!

When I am playing my best, I find that I can surpass the STRUGGLE and come to a place where my focus is on communication. I can sing through the instrument, and I can use that voice to reach out and find someone else. This is really what being In the Zone means for me - it's when I don’t have to engage with the OBOE and instead can be generous with my VOICE for the audience.

I seek and strive for this Zone all the time - it’s the whole point of practicing! I practice long tones and scales, I study scores and learn my solo parts not to be diligent, but so that when it counts I have the best possible chance of breaking through into the TRANSCENDENT part of music making, the part where I’m communicating from soul to soul.

Do you need to have a handle on the CRAFT of the oboe to find that Zone?

Shaq’s delightful example aside, I do think it helps. Having great control of your AIR, your EMBOUCHURE, your TECHNIQUE, your TENSION, your REEDS, your INSTRUMENT, and the piece you’re playing puts the conditions in place for you to free up your musicianship. For you to SING and MAKE MUSIC and COMMUNICATE.

Have you heard? I'm opening a ten-week online group coaching program for oboists who are ready to get past the struggle so they can find their voices and their Oboe Zone through the instrument.

The Invincible Oboist will begin on February 2, 2020, and I'm screening applicants now. If you're curious, you can Book a Call with me and we'll see if you're a good fit for the program!

Tall Poppy Syndrome

2019-12-05T09:49:00.001-05:00

Photo by Kris Atomic on Unsplash

I’ve been reading about Tall Poppy Syndrome, since hearing SOMEONE mention it in a podcast interview. I’m embarrassed that I can’t source that podcast - too much travel recently, too many amazing podcast interviews. I have no idea who drew it to my attention.

Basically, though, it’s the concept that anyone who seems to be getting above their station needs to be cut back down. Someone who presents as better than other people should be brought down to size, because everyone ought to be equal. Don’t be sticking your neck out, don’t draw attention to yourself.

This shows up in orchestras a lot. An orchestra is rigidly hierarchical, and there’s only one principal flute, only one concertmaster. No one is surprised that a concertmaster gets to play a solo. But when a section player stands out in any way - starts a chamber music series, gives a recital, speaks at an event - that person begins to get the side-eye. Who does she think she is, right?

I don’t buy it.

It advances everyone if a member of the group is showcased. If someone gets to stand up and play a solo, it’s because she a. worked very hard to be at the top of her game, b. pitched that solo to someone, and c. was willing to put herself out there in that way. If someone gets to go to afterparties with donors, it’s because she has volunteered to serve on numerous board committees, and because she is GOOD at socializing and being an advocate for the orchestra. She’s an asset and she’s made herself that.

There are definitely a lot of musicians who come to work to play their parts, and then go home again afterwards. These musicians are perfectly entitled to do ONLY this much - that is what they are being paid for. But putting extra energy in IS what creates opportunities for others.

I’m so proud of my colleagues when they do great work. I admire the different strengths that all of them have - some are expert socializers, easily making friends in the audience and on the board. Some are exquisite orchestral musicians, effortlessly fitting in to the group and enhancing it with their attention to detail. Some are soloists, happy to present their interpretations OUT FRONT all the time.

My strengths enhance the group. Other people’s strengths enhance it in different ways. Why would I be jealous of someone else’s earned opportunities?

One musician's success is everyone’s success

But here’s a thing. I’m working hard right now on audience building, and on self-promotion. I have some really clear plans about things I want to offer and do: a recital I’m going to tour, a book I want to release, and a program I want to launch. And the thing that makes me hesitate - and I actually had thought I was immune to this - is WHAT will my colleagues think of me? Will they think I’m getting above my station? Will they give me the side-eye for wanting more creative outlets, more money, more visibility?

Is that a thing? Because it feels like a thing. I can simultaneously call out Tall Poppy Syndrome when I see it applied to my great colleagues, and feel EXTREMELY tentative about raising my head and announcing my plans myself. As much as I pep-talk myself, it’s still there. Can I get rid of this feeling? Or do I just have to move THROUGH it?

How have you seen this manifest in your life? How have you dealt with it? What advice do you have for me?

Discouraging Words

2019-10-26T15:19:00.000-04:00

I can remember at least two old cranky violinists coming to talk to young me about NOT going into music. There was a session, for example, during a Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra retreat in which a real RPO professional (who was probably 47 but whom I remember as ancient) told us that, statistically, no one who graduates from music school wins auditions for jobs because there are only like 4 jobs out there in the world and 7000 hotshots coming into the job market every week.

Quit NOW.

I may have misremembered the details of this speech, but I remember the emotional jolt. It was designed to discourage.

Last weekend I was presenting at a Double Reed Festival, and heard some oboists grumbling about another presenter who had evidently given something of the same talk to a roomful of masterclass attendees and participants. High school students and cheerful adult amateurs.

And look, there's an element of truth to this. Classical music is not a growing field, and it is legitimately hard to get into a big orchestra, or even just a big enough one to take care of your basic income needs. I have heart to heart conversations regularly with my most serious students - because no one should come into this profession expecting their path to be easy or lucrative.

But.

Let's not discourage people who love what they do, no matter at what level they do it. Let's not say that since only an elite few can get into the New York Philharmonic, no one should try. Let's not negate the experiences of people who are playing on the side, playing in community bands, making chamber music with their friends. There is enormous joy in that, and it's not our place to tell them there isn't.

And let's not tell young people that there is no living to be made in music. My colleagues and I are proof that that is not true. I perform with two regional orchestras that don't conflict with each THAT often. I teach, I freelance actively, I play recitals and concertos, I make reeds for myself and for others. I LOVE what I do, and my freelancer husband and I have a house and a family and a fantastic life that suits us perfectly.

I never did win the BIG job. I doubt I will. But I'm working all the time, I'm joyful in my career, and I am not a unicorn, I am a normal human. I figured out my strengths and what I love to do, and I leveraged them, and I made myself a career. There's a niche for everyone that wants one.

What is YOUR musical life going to look like?

My Favorite Things: Printer Edition

2019-10-16T19:29:00.001-04:00

Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom -Leonardo da Vinci

The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution - Igor Stravinsky

Sometimes constraints actually create success. Not being able to swim made me run. And running taught me the discipline I needed as a writer - Malcolm Gladwell

I bought a printer this summer. I bought it specifically to carry in the camper with us when we took our long national parks vacation. It was the smallest, lightest, simplest printer I could find that did what I needed - it printed in color or black and white on letter size paper, period. With it, I was able to run my reed business from the road, and it took up barely any space, and weighed almost nothing, and it was also white and cute. I loved it for the freedom it gave me - to mail reed shipments from anywhere - and for its adorable design factor.

I had a printer, of course, at home. My big business printer lived up on top of my filing cabinet, looming menacingly over my office. It could scan things on its huge glass plate, and it could feed a whole stack of documents through to copy and scan and print, and it could acknowledge our printing commands from anywhere in the house, from any device, and it had two paper trays for both labels and plain paper and always printed on the correct medium. It could print double-sided. It could print on smaller envelopes or photo paper as well. It was quite a nice printer, and I had been fond of it if not loving of it, and I did appreciate all of the smart things it did.

Shortly after we got home from our trip, my big business printer died.

But I did not immediately replace it. It was summer, and we are poor in the summer, and after all I had my adorable white printer ready for action.

My little white printer can live on my desk. Because it’s not networked I have to plug my computer physically into it to print, so there’s really no need to have it loaded full of labels and paper - I'm sitting right there so it’s easy to feed the sheet I need in as I print each page. I don’t mind the extra work because it’s so convenient having it right here next to me. I can’t scan onto it - but I can scan on my phone now! I can’t print effortlessly from my iPad or from elsewhere in the house - but why do I need that? It’s not such a crazy workaround to email something to myself if it’s truly necessary, and there are a surprising amount of things that are NOT necessary, and that I DON’T need to have on actual paper. Why should I?

It’s the dawning of a new technological age - one in which my printer actually can be MUCH dumber than all of my previous ones and I can make it work just as well in my life and also love it more!

Looking for a tiny printer with a ton of perfectly reasonable constraints? I recommend this one!

*This post contains affiliate links, which send a tiny kickback to me at no cost to you if you should order through them.

I Love Auditions

2019-09-23T09:12:00.001-04:00

I love auditions. No, I do, really. First of all, I like the game of it. Fifty people come to the hall, one leaves victorious. The drama is deeply fun.

I love playing auditions. Picture it - you get to walk out onto an unfamiliar but beautiful stage, the home stage of an orchestra better than yours. You have the entire space to yourself. Gazing up into the rows of darkened seats, you can take deep breaths and choose the perfect moment in which to break the silence. You can stand there for up to fifteen minutes, playing all of the BEST and most famous solos for your instrument, to an audience that is listening intently and wanting you to succeed. You can take these solos at the tempo you choose, in the style you like. No conductor is trying to alter your vision of the piece. It’s all for you.

I love sitting behind the screen, too. It’s fascinating to listen to other people audition, and to hear what their preparation has brought to the table. Humans are amazing, right? I love watching the Olympics for the same reason - the divers, figure skaters, gymnasts, ski jumpers, etc are artists as well as athletes, and although I know nothing of these sports I find that I can quickly learn to discriminate between the ones that are merely good and the ones that are astounding. It quickly becomes clear what skills are difficult, and what separates the winners and losers.

In an audition context, even when it’s not MY instrument being auditioned, I rapidly develop a sense of what skills are difficult for the instrument involved, and once it’s clear what I’m listening for I can sit back and root for them all. It’s amazing to notice how people choose to compensate for the difficulties. And it’s fascinating to observe the qualities that will really make me sit up and take notice. If a candidate comes in and begins immediately to make music, to do something intentional and beautiful and controlled - I’m on their side instantly. I’m hoping they get through the tricky passages, I’m wanting them to succeed. Honestly, I want everyone to succeed, but once you grab my attention by doing something beautiful, I’m all in for you. All I want is to hear great playing - and every ten minutes there’s a new person filled with new potential. This is what makes it fun to sit on a committee.

And for my own playing, I can really draw inspiration from the best players we hear. What IS it that makes the difference? Did you hear that PERFECT slur up to the high note? I bet I could do something like that!

It’s even inspiring to notice what keeps the non-winners out of the running. Very often it’s not about mistakes that happen in their lists, but simply a lack of attention to detail. Sometimes particular slurs are sloppy, or articulations don’t quite sound clean, or phrases aren’t perfectly cared for. The playing is FINE, but not great. I love hearing these reminders to take care of my own house, right? To make sure that even in my day-to-day playing I am vigilant about the small sloppinesses that can creep up. That I remain unimpeachable even in my BASIC, non-audition work.

I love auditions. I love everything about them. Don’t you?

Reed Habits

2019-09-03T14:03:00.000-04:00

How do you change your reed making habits?

Even if you feel like a reed beginner, I can promise that you have developed some habits, for good or ill. This is how our bodies work, right? If the way you hold your knife on day one gets you close to the scrape you want, you’ll hold it that way again. After even ten minutes the process feels a little less foreign, and you are apt to keep repeating the same tricks. But if you remain aware of what is going on, you can start to make decisions about how that increasing consistency is helping or hurting your process!

I’m thinking specifically of two students I have, with easily identifiable reed issues. One consistently leaves a moat, or a thin region immediately north of her rooftop, between the heart and the rest of her sloping tip. The other allows the center of the tip to be thin, especially while working on the left side of the blade. We’ve identified the problems. We’ve agreed that we don’t want them there. Somehow they keep coming back.

This might be a controversial statement: You can change your habits! I believe that you can construct a plan to get the result you want, and can rewire your habits, ultimately, so that you don’t do the same bad thing over and over. But it’s so easy to go on auto-pilot when you are working on reeds. The task is so tedious. The familiarity so tempting.

The only way I can do it - can make a significant change to the way I work - is to Think, Think, Think. I look at the reed in my hand, and I remind myself what and how I intend to scrape and how that choice is different than my habit. I might use pencil to mark the exact area I want, or the precise scrape I should aim for. Then I do it, slowly. Paying attention to the task, to the goal, to my intention.

This does take a little while, the first time. I would even be super careful with it the second, the third, the fourth times through. It’s funny how much easier it is to form a habit than to break one, right? You didn’t even know you were making habits when you first started working on reeds, and suddenly you can’t seem to make a reed without a moat!

But you can change.

Maybe your problems are more subtle. It could be that your reeds look fine but are always sharp. Always resistant to moving between registers. Always slow to respond down low. These are real problems, and maybe you don’t exactly know how to address them, right? They’re not as visibly obvious as a thin place in the tip or a moat above the heart.

My advice? Think Think Think.

Form a hypothesis - if I take more out of the windows, will my pitch come down? Then make that reed, slowly and thoughtfully, exaggerating the new idea that you had. Once you make that reed, you may not have your solution, but you will have DATA.

Hmmm. My sound got more free and the opening feels more flexible. But the pitch is still up.

THAT’S GREAT INFORMATION!

On your next reed, try something different. Do it intentionally, put words on it before you start so you can identify the magic that leads to your eventual good result. You can rethink everything, from the gouge thickness to the tie length to the height of the rooftop to the size of the wall at the bottom of the heart. Everything you were doing before is a habit, and you can change your habits.

Think Think Think. You can do whatever you want.

The Magic of Words

2019-08-09T15:22:00.000-04:00

After my concerto performance last June, I was chatting with a lovely woman from the audience. “It’s not like you’re blowing through the oboe,” she said. People are always interested in the AIR, and I had just finished talking about circular breathing with someone else. So I was sure I knew what she was about to say, but I was wrong. “It’s as though you’re sending your very soul through it.”

Needless to say, this statement floored me. Because it was so poetic and lovely, and because it made the work I had just done - a real physical effort, right? - seem like a greater good, somehow. Because it actually felt incredibly resonant to the way I think about the oboe, and about air and breathing and support, and was just such a perfect and efficient way to say the thing I always struggle to describe.

On the physical side, I relate very well to the verb “sending”, compared to the word “blowing”. To blow feels adversarial, like blowing OUT a candle, like blowing AT something external to you. It feels shallow, like something you do with just your MOUTH, limited to the top of your body. Sometimes the oboe does feel like an adversary, but this is not the way I like to relate to it. Instead, if I can SEND or PUSH from within me, if I can feel as though I am producing the sound from somewhere much deeper than my head, it feels so much more personal. So much deeper. So much more me.

(I would not necessarily use the word PUSH with a young student. There are some real PRESSURE problems that could come out of that imagery. I would say, SING it out from deep within yourself, or SEND the sound out on the air. So don’t read my words and get weird, STUDENTS. We’re just talking here.)

Indeed, in both a metaphorical and a very direct, physical way, I like to feel as though I am projecting myself out through the oboe, originating the sound deep within my body and using the instrument simply as the vehicle for sharing it. When a performance is really in flow - when all elements are functioning optimally, when the magic truly happens - the communication is direct - not from my oboe to your ear, but from my soul to yours.

In my EXTROBOE camp last weekend, I found myself using this description several times. I was a little embarrassed sharing the story of the nice lady from the audience - because her description is SO poetic and lovely, it feels like bragging to talk about it at all. But one person after another found a breakthrough in air, projection, FLOW when we began to explore that metaphor.

Words matter. There’s something there. I love it.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

2019-07-31T11:46:00.000-04:00

We took a vacation this summer. This is not news to anyone in my life - anyone who knows me or especially Steve on Facebook followed along with all of our pictures. We took our travel trailer out to Arizona - via St Louis, Tulsa, Amarillo, Roswell, Santa Fe - and then stayed a week in Clarksdale and Flagstaff and visited some ancient pueblo ruins, Sedona, Jerome, the Lowell Observatory, the Grand Canyon. We swam in swimming pools, lakes, and icy mountain streams. We hiked. Eventually we came home again, via Albuquerque, Amarillo, Tulsa, and St Louis. (our inventiveness had somewhat worn out). After a week at home we took another trip, and drove to Vermont via western NY and the Adirondack Park (stayed an extra day to hike a mountain), lived four days in East Franklin VT, and came home via Catskill and eastern Ohio.

This vacation felt different from all of our previous ones. In the 21 years we’ve been married, I can name only one - maybe two trips we ever took that were not For Work or For Family. Steve and I are good at making our own fun - we’ll go together to an out of town gig and enjoy a new location IN THE SPACES BETWEEN showing up for rehearsals and concerts. We’ll love it. We’ll go to visit my mom, or his - and sneak out for hikes or winery tours between eating official family meals and sleeping in guest rooms. We’ll move Steve (for example) out to Oregon for a year and explore EVERY ROADSIDE ATTRACTION the whole way across the country and have great adventures.

But none of those experiences were the same as this. In an RV you always have your own space and your own schedule. You can wake up in the morning and have your completely normal morning routine - drip coffee, outdoor yoga, journal, eggs - and know where everything is and not have to dig around in someone else’s kitchen or go out to explore a strange city in search of a drinkable dark roast. You can rest AT HOME in the afternoon without having to make conversation with a well-meaning relative or make excuses for your vacation nap or hide your beer, or lurk in a library because you checked out of your hotel but still have hours to kill before work.

And, in my case, you can bring along all of the tools, machines, and mailers that constitute your reed business, and continue to make and send shipments while traveling. The volume of my business is reduced in the summer, but there’s always SOMEONE who wants something, and this year I was able to accommodate those orders instead of putting them off. I was able to bring money in as we drove. I was able to stay in business.

And in this way, with all of these happy comforts of home, we took four weeks of vacation this year! We did not grow to hate each other, or any other perfectly nice member of our extended family. We did get to visit with friends and family, and we did get to explore, and shop and hike, and eat out in restaurants - but we got to do it on our own terms. It felt like a real break and an amazing one.

This all feels so new to me. I feel as though I’m growing into a new phase of my life, fast, and feeling a little weirdly guilty about it. Like, who am I to just TAKE a trip I’ve wanted to take, to just GO to a place I hadn’t been, for no reason other than wanting to?

I’ve been trying to say this - trying to figure out a way to say this - for some time now. I didn’t used to believe I could make choices like this. I just assumed it would always look the same, that I would always be scrambling for gigs, waiting for the phone to ring, unable to leave home without an express invitation to do so. Growing up, my family didn’t do trips that DIDN’T involve sleeping on a relative’s couch, that DIDN’T involve going to the same cabin on the same lake that we always had.

I’ve seen other grownups taking grownup vacations and didn’t fully realize until now that I am also a grownup, that I could also make a choice about where and how and when I live, I work, I vacation. There’s a freedom that I see in my life now, a sense of possibility that is NEW. I can do what I want. I love it. This is me, moving forward.