Sunday, October 16, 2022

Still strategizing

As creative types, we can sometimes find inspiration or insight related to the practice of our art in unlikely places. These last couple of weeks, for me, that came from a war correspondent and a college football coach. 

In the first instance, I was listening to a recent interview on NPR with journalist and author Thomas E. Ricks. In the conversation, he was using his experience as a war correspondent to provide analysis of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. In his perspective, much of the success of the movement seems to have come from the way movement leaders adhered to certain principles of war. Specifically, he cites how activists were well-disciplined and focused on preparation, and how they followed up each demonstration with detailed analysis of how the campaign went and what they could do better in the next event. In short, as he says, "They were a learning organization." 

He goes on to praise the leaders for their establishment of, and follow-through on, specific strategies. "Strategy is essential," he says. "If you don't have a strategy, you have basically a car without a steering wheel." 

He also felt that the steps they took in working toward their established strategies were informed by their self-identity. Movement leaders had to clearly define who they were as a movement and what overarching mission they were trying to accomplish. "From that," Ricks says, "tactics will flow." 

In fact, Ricks believes that some of the early failures of the movement stemmed from both a lack of planning and from focusing on goals that were too big to have easily identifiable next steps. It was after these mistakes that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was brought into the movement. As Ricks describes, "King sits down and says, 'OK, what are we going to learn from this?' And he stews on it a lot. And the lessons are, let's be more focused in our goals. Let's not try to change everything at once." Ricks believes it was this willingness to be honest with themselves about what they were doing and how they were doing it that allowed them to develop the necessary strategies to find success. 

The second instance of inspiration has much less historical significance. Even so, it allowed me to make a connection to our work as singers. 

I was reading a preview of the Utah/UCLA football game, which took place on October 8th. The lead-up to the game included a fair degree of hype since it involved two nationally ranked Pac-12 conference rivals. Utah was ranked #11 and was favored in the game despite UCLA's surprising 5-0 record and #18 ranking. With UCLA coming in as the underdog, head coach Chip Kelly was discussing his team's approach to the game. "We know if we're going to beat Utah, it's going to be because of our preparation during the week," he said. "Things don't just happen to you; hope isn't a strategy." 

As I have discussed in a previous article (inspired by a blog by voice pedagogue Matthew Edwards), strategies and goals are different from hopes and dreams. Of course, it's perfectly fine (and probably important) to have hopes and dreams. But without smaller, achievable goals along the way—and strategies for how those goals will be achieved—those hopes and dreams can feel so vast and far-off as to be more frustrating on a day-to-day basis than they are rewarding. 

In both of the instances above, we can see how much value is placed on the direction we get from having specific strategies whenever we are working toward a desired end result. How can you bring more strategizing into your practicing this week? Look back at your goals from the start of the semester. If your progress toward any of these goals has stagnated, let's devise some new strategies. 

Now go practice. 



23 comments:

  1. I really connected to this weeks blog. I think I mentioned this in my first comment, but at the start of the semester I was really struggling just finding a starting point. All I had was a lot of hopes and worries and little to no strategy as to how to reach any sort of goal when it came to singing. As the semester has progressed, each song has sort of shown me a goal I have. It has gone from wanting not to be afraid of singing (a very lofty goal) to simply being able to focus on my breathing and not shy away from high notes. And these two things I think sort of go hand in hand. It has been a really great way in for me. It means I can go into practicing and be able to clearly identify which notes I am shying away from and figure out where I can breathe, how I can approach them even if I can’t hit them perfectly yet, and so on. It makes me feel like I’m not just going in and singing and then calling it good.

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  2. There was a certain part of this blog that really stuck out to me. Rick had this to say about Martin Luther King: "Let's not try to change everything at once". To me, this is how I make progress, but it is also the hardest thing for myself to remember. When I finish a performance, I can typically walk away with a handful of things that I need to work on. Immediately, I want to re-try my piece and implement everything all at once. This typically results in a weaker performance that has no strong features. Ive noticed, especially since I began singing class, that prioritizing one element allows for significantly more progress moving forward with a piece. With 'Good Morning Starshine', I specially prioritized ease and comfort of singing for over a minute(something very foreign to me). I feel very accomplished in my goal after my 2nd performance, but I think my character was lacking. Now that Ive gained confidence with ease, i can progress to my next goal of character.

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  3. I liked when you mentioned “ As Ricks describes, "King sits down and says, 'OK, what are we going to learn from this?… let's be more focused in our goals. Let's not try to change everything at once." This semester, I’ve had a hard time with adding movement/more character to the pieces we work on in class, as well as for my private voice lessons. I’ve been so used to staying still and adding emotion in my face and in my voice that I don’t use my body/movement a ton while performing. One of my goals is to add more character and/or emotion to these songs, and I am wondering what strategy I can use. Maybe I just need to work on being less nervous and getting out of my head because this usually makes me tense up while performing.

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  4. I really enjoyed this week's blog post; I find it to be super pertinent to what I've been thinking about recently. I feel like I've been making good progress within the realm of having good rehearsals but it's a matter of when they happen, that's an issue. I am going to remake a rehearsal schedule as I feel like the one, I have in place now isn't happening very frequently. The disorganization stresses me out a bit! A strategy that I've been implementing with more pieces recently is breaking them up into sections rather than trying to tackle it all at once. Since I have such high expectations for myself, I tend to work harder rather than smarter! Overall, this blog post has inspired me to rethink my rehearsal schedule; off to go edit it now 👍

    Alexa Shaheen

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  5. I like the way this blog draws comparisons between singing and other things in that they can all be accomplished with the use of strategy. I really liked the part about trying a strategy and then adjusting it based on what worked and what didn’t. Singing sometimes seems overwhelming because there are so many different aspects to think about that it’s hard to know where to start. It’s a good reminder to come up with a practical strategy that focuses on specific goals. That’s something I want to work on—having more organized and intentional practice so that I can get a clearer idea of what’s working and what isn’t.

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  6. Honestly I think the majority of my practice is strategy based, just because I know what I want and can get to technical with it. I think my goals from the semester have actually proved to come true. Which is great and makes me excited to great more goals and work on strategies in my practice to achieve my goal. I do think it it has taken me a while to get to this place because for a while I was just more concerned with the goal and wasn't strategizing. But it is great to see the progress and see how I am helping myself with strategizing.

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  7. I really liked the line “things don’t just happen to you; hope isn’t a strategy.” I often find myself hoping that if I just repetitively practice, something is going to magically change in my voice and I’ll be able to do everything I’ve wanted! Unfortunately, though, that is really not how it works. We need to make practices very active in the way that we strategize and work specific areas of our voice. While we are not really “competing” in the traditional way, we should still treat our practice like we have an important “game” coming up, whether that be for a vocal jury, audition, show, etc. I don’t seem to struggle in this area when I have specific assignments or auditions coming up, but I do struggle when I am working more technical vocal elements, such as strengthening upper range, using supported breath, and so on. This blog is a good reminder to strategize everything!

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  8. I really enjoyed the section when you stated that "hope isn't a strategy", I feel like I often tend to just hope for the best in many situations. If I practice the audition enough but dont warm up before the audition i'll hope for the best that my voice won't crack, etc. Which is an awful technique for anyone, even a professional that has been doing this for years, to have. It's better to have strategic-based practice, not only is it more logical but it is also more beneficial.

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  9. This blog was a good reminder for me this week. Towards the beginning of the semester I set a goal to be more organized in general this year, not just with voice but with all of my classes. I feel like at the beginning of the year, my practice was very focused and I saw a lot of changes happening really fast. I'm still being pretty organized, but my practicing is starting to lean back towards practicing to practice rather than practicing to work on something specific. I still am seeing improvements and changes, but not as many as I noticed towards the beginning. This could also have to do with being familiar with my pieces now, but I think I could definitely push myself by setting individual goals and purposes to my practicing. I'm going to work harder at bringing strategy back in so that I can get closer, or even beyond where I was towards the beginning of the year.

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  10. I definitely think that over the course of the weeks, my practice schedule has never been set in stone. I have more or less pushed them back to later times in the day than when I had originally planned, and some weeks it seems to be working for me later in the day, so it is nice to think that a different strategy in how I plan out my practice helps me want to engage it more. However, I think each week I need to go into practice with a mindset of what specifically I want to focus on in my voice. My current strategy is just learning rep and warming up with warm-ups from previous lessons and does not entail focusing on specific areas of my voice. Moving ahead, I definitely will begin making specific plans on what I want to work on in my voice, and just practice it over the course of the week. Like the post says, "hope isn't a strategy", and I have been hoping before this class that my voice will magically get better and the areas that I dislike about my voice will suddenly vanish. There is much more I have to learn, and to quote this post, I am willing to start implementing "smaller, achievable goals along the way" in order to begin any sort of growth in the process!

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  11. I really loved this weeks blog. I feel that it's easy to go into "auto-pilot" in a lot of different aspects of my life, but especially with practicing or rehearsing. When I find myself going through the motions, I think it's a sign that it's time to come up with some new strategies when it comes to approaching my work, and I feel like you named that really well in this blog. I also appreciated that you discussed how inspiration can be found in so many different aspects of life, even when you least expect it.

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  12. It is important to understand the implications of where you want to go in your journey. Especially in fine arts it is important to know where to go and when, but also having the tools to do so. I really liked the analogy with the car as a vehicle just roaming around with a high possibility of it crashing, is how the journey through a BFA feels. We are lucky enough to have professors who truly care about our journey that construct the steering wheel for us in more manageable settings so we are not overwhelmed with efforts of the growth we want.

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  13. This is a topic that I think I've been relating to recently during rehearsals for the show I'm in (Somewhere). Things like memorizing a play or incorporating lots of notes into my performance can seem really daunting at first, but if I take them step by step then they seem much more doable. This is also often how I have to function in my life as a whole; I'm somebody who really struggles to stay on top of things and to get everything done. It's not uncommon for me to feel completely overwhelmed by all of the responsibilities and tasks in my life. Making lists and just working on one thing at a time can help to alleviate some of that stress and helps me be more successful in my life.

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  14. This blog post was such a great reminder of the importance of tangible goals. I think I have a bit of a habit of trying to do a lot of things all at once without a specific plan, and then becoming frustrated when I can't meet every goal at once. This is why I've started in the past few months to write down to-do lists for most things in my life; cleaning my apartment, assignments, call my mom, etc. However, this post made me realize how important it is to apply this to my education and learning process. I have been caught up trying accomplish intangible goals instead of buckling down on a specific objective that I can truly "check off" and using strategies to achieve this using more than just the power of hope.

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  15. I think that if you sincerely want a dream or a hope to become reality—as was mentioned in the post—you have to break it down into strategies and goals. I’m not saying don’t dream, but it feels like there’s a balance between allowing yourself to dream with your head in the clouds while also understanding the reality of the path you must take to reach your dream. I think for most people, achieving one’s dreams or hopes is actually a difficult and sometimes painstaking process. This post reminded that when I hear singers whose voices I envy or maybe hope to emulate, yes some of them are simply gifted (yay!) but there’s also so many beautiful singers who went through the process of creating goals and strategies to develop and strengthen the sound, technique, and artistry they dreamed of having. This post was a helpful reminder in my week: my dreams for my voice may not be as out of reach as I’d thought, but I have to commit and be consistent in the strategies and goals I set to get there.

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  16. Thank you for this blog Brian! I honestly really needed this reminder. It’s important to have smaller, short term goals because these are the ones that will gradually get you to your main, long term ones. It’s also good to have them to be reminded of the progress that is being made and to know that even though you may not be where you want to be, you are getting so much closer. I feel like this is something I forget to do since most of the time I’m looking at the big picture and overall scheme of things but when I look at things incrementally, I really am so proud of the work we’ve done so far. Looking at it like that reminds me of how far I’ve come. When it comes to strategies, I do think I’ve improved on those. I used to wish the power of hoping would solve all my problems when I was younger but I definitely had to learn to get rid of that once college started. It truly is all in hard work and strategies and practice. You just have to keep going no matter what.

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  17. I think the problem with my life is that its hard to stay organized when there is a platter of life being served to me. And when the biggest plate of life is being served I also feel like I get blindsided to what really matters. To find a way to strategize my life in a way to complete the goals I set for myself at the beginning of a semester.

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  18. The concept that not everything can be changed all at once stood out to me— I always find myself eager to get to work on all the things that I would like to continue to improve, which is not always the most realistic. I also know that sometimes things will take a few steps back in order for something new to gain a few steps forward. Since this is an idea I was already comfortable with, I think that trying to incorporate a mindset of focusing on one specific thing at a time will really support my learning efforts.

    Additionally, thinking of voice lessons/practice times as creating strategies for performance in the same way strategies are implemented from practice to games in football or other sports makes a lot of sense to me. I know what things can make me feel more confident going into a performance or audition of any kind, so focusing on these things when I am practicing will help to solidify them; this way, I should be able to reduce any self-doubts or insecurities about a song before I have to sing it.

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  19. One area I'd like to bring better strategizing into regarding my practicing this week is my acting ability - recently I have been focusing a great deal on this aspect of my singing, because I've felt it has been lacking. However, until the last time I practiced I was feeling like this focus lacked application, as I had not been creating a plan of action for achieving my intended acting beats. Previously, I had simply tried to expand upon the acting that came to mind the first time I'd presented the material to myself; not only was this ineffective in yielding intriguing results, it made my work stagnant, as the expansion upon my initial work left me feeling limited in what I could accomplish. This last time I practiced, though, I tried to incorporate some of the experimentation that was mentioned in a previous blog post while also attempting to bring real points of view to my acting, and I felt like this was much more successful in bringing realism and authenticity to my acting. Furthermore, a strategy I would like to further incorporate, which I also tried during this last practice session, is the act of actually singing to a person and incorporating this into my singing from the get-go when I receive material, as otherwise I default to a glazed-over stare straight ahead that is not compelling in the slightest. As I incorporate these strategies into my practicing over the next week, I hope to continue to see growth and progress in my acting such that I begin to truly come alive within my singing.

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  20. I think strategy and having a plan better allows you to follow through when practicing. Because if you don't have a game plan it's easy to say that you don't know what to do, or practice mindlessly without intension or change. I think for me a good strategy would be first make sure I get the notes and timing right. Then from there I can try to make adjustments and incorporate gesture and acting.

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  21. After reading this I do need to make sure that yes having dreams is crucial but those things need to have specific goals and strategies to make them come true. I know that I can do a better job at that. I need to make sure to take a step back and make sure each step towards the goals are nice and secure.

    Alex Fish

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  22. I can be more strategic in my practice by segmenting into smaller chunks. If I am able to give myself tiny goals for each practice session, the bigger goals will come more quickly.

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  23. I really liked the quote saying, "Strategy is essential... If you don't have a strategy, you have basically a car without a steering wheel." I feel that sometimes, I can be overwhelmed by the bigger picture. I have vocal goals, and a way I would like to sound, and a range I would like to achieve. But occasionally I will find myself overwhelmed by the idea of reaching all of these goals. Having mini goals, and a strategy to get there helps keep me from succumbing to that overwhelm. Strategy makes me more likely to practice.

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