Liquid Luck

[Derek Reaban]

I participated in the statistic for the biggest opening weekend box office ever last Friday when I took my eight year old to see the final Harry Potter movie. I’ve enjoyed the whole series with him (as well as my older boys), and we watched a number of the earlier movies in preparation for the final installment.

One of the earlier movies (The Half-Blood Prince) has a scene where each of the students in the "potions" class must create a specific concoction from their Advance Potions Manual and the student who successfully arrives at the best potion will receive a vial of Liquid Luck from the professor. As the students are meeting with various levels of dreadful failures during the process, Harry is reading his potions manual that has notations in the margins that slightly alter the instructions that everyone is to follow. He crushes the beans with the flat edge of his knife instead of cutting them which results in a much different result than everyone else. He uses only 13 beans instead of 16 based on the very detailed notes that only his book contains. He stirs the final potion seven times counter-clockwise and once clockwise which heightens the strength of his brew (everyone else only has the 7x CCW comment).

The result is that he creates a potion "so perfect" that the professor claims, "one drop would kill us all". His prize for navigating the myriad of instructions in the book is the vial of Liquid Luck that will allow the drinker to be lucky for a period of time, during which time everything they attempt will be successful.

As I have been contemplating the recent successes that I have had playing with my summer reading orchestra, I know that the increased playing time that I have been putting in has certainly made a difference in my preparation. I also commented in a post called Emergent Properties! that when we had a week off in our eight week season, I quickly discovered that my playing during that week seemed to lack the vibrancy in sound that I had been experiencing when I was in my full-up "prep mode" for really big orchestral pieces.

I think that the Harry Potter scene in The Half-Blood Prince is a marvelous metaphor for what we are required to do daily to arrive at a practice routine that is so perfect / complete that it will allow us to experience the euphoria of Liquid Luck (i.e. everything that we attempt musically will result in great success).

We all work with the same ingredients in our daily fundamental practice, but some are fortunate to have "notes in the margin" to get the magical results to occur. If long tones are one of the ingredients, some students may be articulating them and playing them loud for 8 counts and some may be playing them soft for 16 counts. A small portion of the students may be using a breath attack and doing a crescendo – decrescendo at a slow tempo. Still others may be holding them until all their air is exhausted. A very small number may precede the long tones with a few notes on the mouthpiece / leadpipe combination. Some of these approaches may lead to better results than others, or some variation of any of these techniques may result in fabulous success if applied in the proper way. However, many paths may lead to stiffness and overworked chops if the student doesn’t have the proper guidance.

With so many fundamentals (articulation, lip flexibilities, scales, endurance/strength, etc.), and so many variations on each one, it seems like the perfect potion may be very elusive unless guidance is sought from the "professors".

What I wonder about this metaphor, is that we all must be standing on the shoulders of giants to arrive at the perfect routine! With the many different lessons that I’ve had from marvelous players, I seem to have discovered so many secrets that really seem to work well if diligently applied. But, the discovery of these secrets was simply based on the experience of others (giants who have come before us). These secrets, consistently applied, result in a small amount of Liquid Luck as the prize.

There are those players / teachers that put in the time and energy to discover things that others will never know about. Stirring the potion 7 times counter-clock wise and then once clockwise. The result is extremely special. They must be applying more than random happenstance, or the experience of others, to arrive at these breakthroughs.

For this reason I’m very interested in the process that goes into unlocking secrets beyond simply applying the experience of others for specific exercises or routines. How many of us sit down and document what works well for us and what doesn’t? How can we do this if we aren’t able to objectively measure what we do well and what we don’t do well?

This topic, of course, is leading to goal setting, and practice schedules, and daily journaling. I know that I’m going to begin considering this part of my "practice" as a fundamental of its own. I personally know how to play most of my fundamentals fairly well to achieve results that are consistent and satisfying. What I’d really like to do is become an expert at designing my practice day so that with the amount of time that I have to spend each day / week, I accomplish the very most that I am capable of. The Liquid Luck is certainly real when applying this last "ingredient" to the potion.

How many of us have added Goal Setting / Journaling as a "fundamental"? How many of us know as much about this "new fundamental" as we do about long tones or articulation drills? I would certainly enjoy hearing your personal stories of success in this area!

Here's a good post for reference.
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Derek Reaban
Tempe, Arizona
Tempe Winds / Symphony of the Southwest