One of the great fallacies of our time is the doctrine that you should always do your best. It’s a simple phrase with benign intentions, but in the mind of an imaginative youngster it can easily be misinterpreted and eventualy lead to frustration.
Of course, we want our children to do well and grow up to be good people. We disapprove of lazyness and shoddy workmanship and we encourage application and honesty. Our children are generally assessed at school according to two general criteria; level and effort, and we tend to reward or punish them according to how they do in the latter.
As a young man, I had assimilated these ideas and I‘d begun to carry them around with me, applying them to what I did and how I lived. But, somehow in the process, I had misconstrued the original message. As a practical guideline, “doing your best” is useful and effective. However, in the process of growing up I converted good advice into a kind of moral doctrine and began dealing in terms of obligation and prohibition. Somehow I got from “Do your best” to “you should always make an effort”. These two assertions may seem familiar but are in fact miles apart in meaning.
Morality is not a practical thing. Unlike good advice, which can be applied pragmatically, a doctrine tells you what you should do; it’s intended to be obeyed always. It becomes the be all and end all and as such is pushed beyond question. So I got to the point where I was applying the doctrine across the board. I was “trying hard” when often this was at best pointless and at worse, obstructive.
I spent hours bashing away at the trombone because I believed that if I didn’t try hard, I wouldn’t get results; as if the good results which I was seeking were some kind of reward for hard work. Regularly, my top lip would go numb - I was pushing so hard against the mouthpiece that I had stopped the bloodflow.
Gradually I’ve come to realise that results come not so much from working hard as from working well. I’m more relaxed now that I can see that getting what I want isn’t a reward granted by some mystical ajudicator only to the ones who deserve it. Its more plainly the result of doing what is required (no less of course, but also no more) in order to reach an objective. So now, if I need to rest then that’s what I do, without suffering a crisis of conscience.
When I see my students contorting themselves (their shoulders, faces, mouths…) I notice that they’re focusing their attention on the wrong place. There’s no question about the effort they’re putting in.
They seem to concentrate on the contact point between the instrument and themselves. I try to advise them instead to attend to what they want: an attractive sound and good intonation. If I manage to get the point across, the student then, without thinking, begins to blow more evenly and to breathe deeper. This reduces tension and as the student relaxes, so the music begins to flow. It becomes easier to do. For so long I had believed that when something seems easy, I must not be trying hard enough. Now, I’m beginning to realise that in fact, the moment when I allow it all just to flow is the moment when I’m working well.
