Keeping it fresh: learning a new instrument

If you’re feeling a bit stale in your musical explorations, here’s an idea to spice things up: pick up a new instrument.

No, I’m not talking about expanding your collection of axes with “yet-another-one-of-a-kind” that differs from your others only by serial number or label year and puts you on the outs with your spouse…not that I would know anything about that.  :-)  I’m talking about a different instrument.

Our friends over at Making Music Magazine – one of your PartTimeMusician.com ad partners! – published this article pointing out how picking up a second instrument that is related to one you already know can expand your horizons and breathe new life into your music. It’s well worth the read.

A word of caution from someone who is a multi-instrumentalist, though: take care not to spread yourself too thin. The old expression “jack of all trades and master of none” was coined for a reason, and trying to do too many things often results in doing nothing well. If you feel yourself getting discouraged with your progress on either instrument, refocus…and remind yourself that it’s all good.

Taking up a second instrument can indeed broaden your horizons and rejuvenate your music-making, and choosing an instrument similar to one you already know allows you to apply your growth to both. If you’re stuck in a rut on your musical path, consider branching out with a second instrument. You just might rediscover what made you fall in love with playing music in the first place.

All the best,
Mark

P.S. – If you’re a multi-instrumentalist already or are considering becoming one, please leave a comment below or drop us a line; we’d love to hear your thoughts. The more we (all) share, the more we (all) know!

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Church Music Resources for Part-Time Musicians

When I received this review of the Lifeway Worship Project from long-time friend and PartTimeMusician.com contributor Steve Hamrick, I knew several of our readers would love to see it. If you play music in church on a regular basis, or even on special occasions, this could be a great help. Resources like this enable us prepare better, play better, and generally make life better for musician and listener alike.  :-)  Steve, thank you for passing this along!

Keep playing,
Mark

Many of the readers of PartTimeMusician.com are involved with music in some church-related capacity.  Regardless of denomination and size of church, there are many challenges we all share in finding new, reasonably-priced musical resources for our church programs.  Serving as a worship minister for many years in the local church and for the past several years as a state music director for a major evangelical denomination has given me an opportunity to see the struggles of churches in finding things like new hymns, praise songs, instrumental accompaniments, accompaniment tracks, and new choir music.  While there are many publishing companies that provide quarterly resources through choral clubs, I haven’t found they are too helpful in providing music for congregational worship. And what if you serve in a small church with no pianist or organist, or perhaps the only one who plays is sick or on vacation?  What do you do then?

I would like to tell you about a product that I have used for over a year that has helped me more than any other single resource for congregational worship, the Lifeway Worship Project™. I should say that this company does not pay me nor am I representing them in this article, although I have been privileged to visit their headquarters in Nashville and know many of those who have developed this product.

It must be a real challenge for church music publishers to provide music for such a varied audience.  Some churches sing hymns, others sing contemporary praise songs, many use a blended approach while yet others prefer a southern gospel or country style of music. Church music programs are often accompanied by a full orchestra; others, a praise band, organ, piano, guitar, or perhaps they have no accompanist at all. To provide a single resource to meet these vast needs would be a seemingly impossible task.

When the Lifeway Christian Resource Company was in the process of producing a new hymnal a couple of years ago, the realization came to surface that in our digital society, a hymn book was out of date before it could even be printed. As a result, they decided that alongside the new hymnal, they would produce an online resource in which they could add new songs and arrangements as necessary.  Lifeway took on an enormous task of developing an online and hard-copy product that included arrangements of all the 650 songs in the printed hymnal plus 250 additional new songs and optional arrangements.  Here’s where it gets interesting.

Lifewayworship.com decided to not only to make the SATB arrangements of the hymnal available online, but the following parts may be downloaded a la carte: extended piano accompaniment, organ, vocals, full orchestra, individual instrumental parts, lead sheets, praise band charts, chord charts, PowerPoint™ files, and even Finale™ parts.  If that wasn’t cool enough, with the finest session players in Nashville, Lifeway recorded MP3’s of every song in the project. Each song can be downloaded as a listening track, a split track (accompaniment on one side and vocals on the other), or a stereo accompaniment track, sometimes in multiple keys.  The hymns are recorded with full orchestra and the praise songs are recorded with praise band instrumentation.  The accompaniment tracks are extremely helpful for soloists, small groups, or choir.   The tracks make a great option for the church with no accompanist. Lifewayworship.com decided to price their products similar to the iTunes Store®.  With no monthly membership fees, downloads range from $.10 to $1.99 each.

Wait, there’s more.  Because every soloist and worship leader doesn’t always want to perform every verse, Lifewayworship.com allows you to make a Songmap™ of many of the songs in the project.  A songmap allows you to make your own arrangements of the hymns and praise tunes.  Do you think an arrangement has too much repetition? Just cut out the extra parts. Need it in a lower key? Most songs are available in several keys. What is amazing is that Songmap™ will provide you with an accompaniment track, printed music, and even orchestral parts exactly to your specifications for your arrangement.

Another neat feature of the Lifeway Worship Project is that it saves your downloads on their database. This means that when you download a song to your computer, you will also have it stored on-line where you may access your library at anytime from any computer as long as you have internet access. Of course, there are copyright restrictions by which you must abide.  Almost all the products you can download are also available as hard copies on DVD/CD. There are also some excellent video accompaniment tracks for praise songs and hymns.  The Lifeway Worship Project also produces moving and still backgrounds for media projection software.

You can listen to every song in the project by clicking on this link. Go to the middle of the page where there is a box labeled “Play the Lifeway Worship Project,” scroll to the song you want, and hit play. You can also hear snippets of any song from the main Lifewayworship.com when you type a song in the “find and buy” box. You can also preview pdf’s of every printed arrangement before you commit to purchase anything.  Another neat feature is that in the “find and buy” box, you may also type in a subject, scripture, or author and get results of your search.  You do not pay for anything until you check out so I encourage you to experiment within the site. There is also a basic free worship planning tool called Worshipmap™, and an advance worship planning tool called WorshipmapPro™ which has a yearly subscription.  The Lifeway site sometimes is slow and accessing it from a fast internet connection is advised.

While you will not find every hymn or praise song from every denomination, you will find over 1000 songs written in terrific arrangements to use in your church.  Sign up yourself or your church for free and then give it a try.

Steve Hamrick is a regular reader of PartTimeMusician.com and currently serves as the director of Worship and Church Music for the Illinois Baptist State Association, Springfield, Illinois. He can be reached via email or at his website.

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Review: Mel Bay’s Easiest Fiddling Book

Last month, guest contributor Michael Henderson shared his review of Clayton Haslop’s Beginner’s Circle DVD Course with the PartTimeMusician.com family. This month, Mike has generously agreed to share his first-hand account of Mel Bay’s Easiest Fiddling Book. Enjoy!

All the best,
Mark

Mel Bay’s Easiest Fiddling Book: A Review

Mel Bay’s Easiest Fiddling Book by Craig Duncan retails for $14.95 with the CD. It contains 23 songs arranged from easiest to hardest, starting with Liza Jane and progressing to Rubber Dolly. Along the way you’ll encounter Oh Susanna, Shortnin’ Bread, Buffalo Gals, and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. It contains fingering charts for each tune to allow beginners who do not know how to read music to begin playing immediately.

All of the tunes are arranged in 1st position and are in the keys of Amaj, Dmaj, and Gmaj. Most of the songs are in 2/4 time. None of the songs have complicated fingerings. All of them were pretty easy to play with the left hand, partly because the G string isn’t used by any of the tunes.

A couple of paragraphs in the introduction explains the scheme for the fingering charts. The charts use a shorthand notation to indicate the string to play and the finger to place for the note. The notation uses dashes to indicate a longer duration for a note. I found this approach a bit confusing at first. I had to compare the letters and numbers to the score carefully to understand it. Once I did, though, I concluded that it would likely work for a new player to find the notes. The scheme falls short of my expectations, though, because it doesn’t address the rhythm of the pieces. For example, there’s no way to capture the difference between a quarter note and a dotted quarter note.

After playing through the book, I didn’t find the choice of songs very interesting. I had high expectations because when I was looking at the book in the store, I recognized most of the songs in the book. A few of them (Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and Oh, Lord) were in my want list. Additionally, it had Oh, Susanna, Simple Gifts and Shortnin’ Bread. That made it seem like a good choice at the time. As I played through it, though, I found that most of the songs just weren’t that interesting.

My impression is that the book does not live up to the title of “easiest” and that it is not a good value. I was surprised that the author slipped accidentals into the second song in the book (Old Joe Clark). The fingering scheme has some shortcomings. The selection of songs is somewhat stale. There are a couple of songs that might have been interesting to play but overall, they’re kind of boring.

Finally, I should admit that I did not listen to the accompanying CD because I plan to return this book as soon as possible.

Michael Henderson is, in his own words, a “middle-aged adult who lives in Denver and started learning to play the violin in November of 2008″. He’s also a really decent guy. If you’d like to leave him a note, please do so in the comment box below.

This review is provided for informational purposes only; your mileage may vary. For more information on Mel Bay products, please visit the Mel Bay website.

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Play trumpet AND horn? Good advice for doubling

In an article about transposition that we published recently, I mentioned that a good friend of mine, a trumpet and horn player, had helped me a great deal when I resumed playing the trumpet after a 20-year hiatus. One of our loyal PTM readers contacted me and asked for a “patch through” in order to ask some questions, as he is attempting to pick up both horn and trumpet after several years away from both instruments. Since many people eventually decide to “double” on another instrument, I asked both gentlemen if I could publish an excerpt of their exchange for the benefit of others…and both agreed. See, the PTM crowd really is a generous bunch. 

The Players

Ken Bacorn is a returning musician, looking to pick up both horn and trumpet after roughly 15 years away from both. From my correspondence with Ken, I know him to be inquisitive and thoughtful; he’s asking the right questions to accomplish his goals. Ken, thanks for getting this excellent discussion started!

Steve Hamrick has an extensive background in music, plays numerous instruments exceptionally well (horn and trumpet top the list, but he is no stranger to guitar and piano!), conducts both instrumental and choral ensembles, and has several compositions and arrangements to his credit. Steve is the Director of Worship & Church Music for the Illinois Baptist State Association and can be reached by posting a comment here or directly via email. Steve is a phenomenal musician who is also a gracious human being, and I’m privileged to call him a good friend.

The Inquiry

Hi Steve,

I have recently decided to get back into music after being away for about 15 years. To make life more interesting, I decided to comeback on both the horn and trumpet. I was wondering if you would be willing to share with me some tips on playing both, and being proficient on both.

I guess I’m curious as to how much practice time you dedicate to the two different instruments. And, of course, I am looking for advice on mouthpieces. Do you use something that is similar for both instruments, or have you learned to use mouthpieces that are completely different?

I would greatly appreciate any insight you would be willing to offer. Thanks.

Ken Bacorn

The Response

Hi Ken,

Thanks for the note. Of course the standard answer from most teachers is that you shouldn’t do both, but I believe that it is possible on an intermediate to advanced level. I originally was a trumpet player that moved to the horn in the 9th grade because we didn’t have any horn players. I continued playing both instruments but focused on the horn through college and beyond. I continued to play trumpet in Jazz band and church throughout. I still enjoy playing both instruments regularly and on occasion play both in the same night for a gig. I have personally found it is a lot easier to go from the horn to the trumpet than the other way around. There is something about moving down to a smaller mouthpiece that is more difficult for me. Of course the down side is that you can’t always choose the order of the music. If I have to move from trumpet to horn in the same program, I will take the horn mouthpiece and buzz for as long as I have time to re-adjust my embouchure.

I do not try to find similar mouthpieces between the two instruments. I don’t think there is anything out there that is comparable anyway. The diameters are different, the rims are way different, and the cups are different as well. I really prefer a gold rim for slickness. I suggest you try several mouthpiece combos and see what combo works for you.

Also I make sure that the mouthpiece placement for each instrument remains standard. The trumpet should be played in the top half of the mouthpiece, while the horn needs to be played in the lower half of the mouthpiece. I have found that both rims sit about the same place on my top lip. I am sure this is helpful when switching between the two instruments.

For me, I always practice the horn first and the trumpet second, if I am going to play both during one gig. I will practice the horn or trumpet exclusively if I am only going to play one of the instruments. Often I am playing the horn during the week for an orchestra rehearsal, but then on Sunday I play my trumpet in church. I have never had any issue or difficulty if I am only playing one instrument per day. I can go back to the horn on Monday and it feels as it always has.

Tonguing and tone are harder on the horn than trumpet and the playing the upper octave of the trumpet in tune and accurately is the most difficult for me. So I practice accordingly. I work upper octave almost exclusively on the trumpet and work most of the basics on the horn. I am sure that has a lot to do with personal preference.

Lastly, get in a community group or church type group so you will have motivation to play. Lessons will force you to practice. Most people will do better with some accountability.

I had a professor tell me that even after 15 years, you will get back about 75% of your original proficiency back within two weeks. That last 25% and beyond will take a lot of work with daily practice required.

Hope this is helpful. It is not meant to be scientific but I have encouraged a lot of adults to pull the old horn out of the attic and join the local church or community band.

Blessings,
Steve

The Bottom Line

It is possible to learn, or re-learn, two instruments at once…but it isn’t easy. It can be done, though…and your rewards will correspond directly to your commitment. The above exchange wasn’t intended to be all-inclusive in terms of either topics or advice, and of course, situations vary…but it’s great advice for a great start for those looking to double on two brass instruments.

Have a comment? Post it! We all get smarter when we share what we know. Thanks to Ken and Steve for a great discussion and for allowing us all to benefit from it.

All the best,
Mark

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Music should be FUN!

We all take up music for different reasons, but I’m confident that at the heart of them all is NOT the idea that music is work. How much more could we accomplish if we just allowed ourselves to have some fun?!?

I ran across a video a few days ago that demonstrated beautifully the impact that fun has on us as human beings. We’ve discussed this on several occasions (see Five Secrets to Rapid Improvement in Your Playing for a favorite example) but a picture is worth a thousand words…and moving pictures significantly more.  8-)  Check it out!

The best thing about this video from the perspective of a Part-Time Musician (PTM) may be that it holds the key to getting the most from our shared obsession. No one would argue that taking the stairs involves less effort than riding the escalator up to the surface, yet people chose to take the stairs. Why? Because it was fun. Even with more work involved, it was fun!

Studying an instrument takes effort, and there are days we all consider quitting. It takes time, it takes work. Yet it can be an incredible amount of fun if we allow ourselves to make it so. Practice, yes…drill, yes…strive, yes! But don’t forget to have fun with it, too. You may be surprised at the improvements you see.

Keep playing,
Mark

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