Open Writing

Roland is not only a very good friend, he is experienced in learning new skills. During his adult years, he has learnt, at intervals of ten years, to play the clarinet, the French horn and the bassoon. My only disappointment is that he is unable to play them all concurrently, which would be very useful in wind quintets. He is more than competent in each instrument, holding his own in challenging orchestral, wind-band and chamber music groups.

Roland maintains that there is a specific sequence of phases through which one needs to pass when learning any skill.

For instance, you decide that your life’s ambition is to learn to play the flute. You go into a music shop, one that sells musical instruments and sheet music. The shop assistant helps you to choose a flute. It consists of three silver tubes, one with a single hole set into a sort of Dali-esque lip plate, the other two, one long, one short, with a complicated system of rods and keys to close and open more holes. It shines brightly in the velvet lined case. You wince a little at the price, but know it will all be worthwhile in a week or two when you can play ‘Love Me Tender’ at your next door neighbour’s wedding.

Next, the assistant suggests that you need a tutor. At your blank look, he explains that a tutor is a book containing instructions and musical exercises, all the steps of learning to play your flute. It’s large and expensive. Having glanced inside the tutor at words you don’t understand, like ‘embouchure’, and meaningless lines, dots and symbols, you ask the assistant for the name of a flute teacher. You go home, thrilling to the thought that soon the glorious sounds of music that you are going to make with that lovely, silver tube will delight your friends and family.

This is the first phase of learning: you are in a blissful state of ‘unconscious incompetence’. You have no idea just how little you know.

You phone the flute teacher, introduce yourself and begin to explain, “I’ve just purchased a flute…” but she interrupts you:

“You bought a flute, without taking someone with you who knows how to play, how to choose a flute that will work properly?” the teacher sounds horrified. She sighs a little, then puts on a cheerful voice: “Well, I have a space on Saturday morning at ten, why don’t you bring your instrument and any music you have and we’ll see!”

You begin to suspect that there are aspects of playing a flute that you know nothing about, but look forward to Saturday morning, and to playing a tune or two.

On Saturday morning, the teacher welcomes you and ushers you into her studio. There are a couple of flimsy metal music stands bearing books similar to your tutor and a piano in the corner. The walls are covered with pictures of musical instruments and certificates from places you’ve never heard of: UNISA, Trinity College of Music and the Royal Schools of Music…

“Right, let’s see your flute,” your teacher chirps. “You say you’ve actually bought it, you’re not hiring it?” Shaking her head in amazement, she takes the case from you, places it on her desk, opens it and takes out the three pieces of silver-tube, fitting them into each other so that they make up that magical, musical instrument, a flute. She raises it, puts the part with the single hole in it against her mouth, and produces glorious, silvery sounds, rippling up and down, making the sunshine dance. You’re thrilled. You can’t wait to try it yourself.

“Now,” she says, it’s your turn. She removes the top joint, the one with the Dali-shaped plate with the hole in it. She explains how you need to hold it against the hollow below your lip, that you need to smile, then make a pin-hole in the middle of the smile, and blow across the hole in the lip-plate, or the flute’s ‘embouchure’, to make a sound.

At the end of your first hour’s lesson, you’re frustrated that sometimes you made a good sound and sometimes just harsh, breathy hisses. You stood in front of a mirror and tried to copy your teacher, sometimes succeeding, more often not. You realise there’s a whole lot more to learning the flute than you ever dreamt of. It may, in fact, take a few weeks before you add the rest of the instrument to the head joint and begin learning actual notes. Playing ‘Love Me Tender’ may have to wait for your neighbour’s first wedding anniversary…

You have entered the second, long phase of learning, that of ‘conscious incompetence’: you are aware just how much you don’t know…

Your lessons progress, with you practising what you’ve learnt at home each week. Within three months, with an enormous amount of hard work, you managed to play ‘Love Me Tender’, rather breathily, at a barbecue welcoming your neighbour home from his honeymoon.

Depending on how often you practise and how well you remember and follow your teacher’s instructions, sooner or later, you’ll reach a lesson to be remembered: you’ve been practising a piece for an exam and have just played it for your teacher. It was difficult, you really had to concentrate on all sorts of things at once: your breathing, making a perfect sound on each note, using your tongue and your fingers in the correct sequences, going louder here and softer there, slowing down, speeding up, counting properly… and your focus and intense concentration paid off, everything was perfect.

“Well done!” your teacher says, and you glow with pride in your achievement.

Congratulations on reaching the third stage of learning: ‘Conscious Competence’. At this level you can thoroughly enjoy playing your instrument. You’ve achieved what you’ve set out to do, you can play music on the flute. You have to be aware and concentrate all the time on your physical and mental activities, but you … can … play the flute!

The ultimate goal of anyone learning to do anything, however, is to reach the fourth and final phase:

After many years of playing, with different teachers guiding you, attending master-classes around the world, practising alone in your room at home for many hours each week, rehearsing with orchestras and pianists and chamber groups, the whole physical aspect of playing the flute begins to come easily. Eventually, your mind is set free to enjoy and interpret the music, while your fingers, lungs and lips do the physical part automatically… you’ve reached the ‘final phase’ – ‘Unconscious Competence’. What bliss.

Never, however, dream that playing the flute will always be easy from now on, or that you can do anything you want without effort! You pick up an as yet unlearned piece of music, and each of the phases has to be passed through yet again, although in much briefer form. You ‘sight-read’ the work, not knowing just how difficult the piece is, how much work you’re going to have to put in to learn it. Then, you play it with a pianist accompanying you, and realise that the notes are tricky for both of you. You go home and spend hours teaching fingers, tongue and lungs to play the correct notes in the correct sequence, you learn all the nuances of your own part.

Next week, you rehearse together again. Your accompanist has been working as hard on his part of the music. You discover that putting it together to make the glorious sounds the composer envisioned is not going to be easy. You play tricky sections repeatedly, you work out how the notes fit together, you play it slowly, then faster, louder, softer. You go home and work on it alone some more… Weeks go by, and you move from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence then conscious competence, when it all starts sounding wonderful, but is extremely hard work… With luck, in time for the performance, you’ll have come as close as possible to that glorious feeling of unconscious competence, when the music can ebb and flow from the flute and piano, and meld into one marvellous piece of soaring sound in which the composer ‘speaks’ through you to your audience.

Over many years of teaching the flute, and of learning new works, I’ve moved through Roland’s four phases of acquiring knowledge many times. He is a wise friend.

Learning is a life-long privilege that has to be earned with concentration and hard, repetitive work. The harder your work, the greater will be the rewards. The journey from Unconscious Incompetence to Unconscious Competence can be enjoyed every step of the way.

Until next time… ‘here comes Treble!’

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