“Yin and Yang” is used to describe complimentary energies and states that work together in the natural world. The concept of Yin and Yang is one of balance as the ultimate creative force.
When learning a musical instrument, the more perfectly balanced your practice, the more creative, productive, and self-sustaining your effort becomes. Conversely, practice which is out of balance produces little result, drains your energy, and saps enthusiasm.
There are many kinds of balance that nourish and sustain practice and learning. One is the balance between freedom and limits. It’s an irony of practice that the way we expand our skills and become less limited as players is by practicing within strict limits.
The Power of Limits
For example, suppose I’ve mastered minor pentatonic scales and can play and improvise fluently with them; and I’m also drawn to Spanish and Latin music, but I haven’t yet learned to play the harmonic minor scales which are a foundation of that sound. To do so I must spend some time learning the sound and practicing the fingerings of harmonic minor scales and melodies. Once I gain comfort and familiarity with the sound and fingerings, it’s time to try using them to improvise melodies over recordings of minor key progressions. If I relax now and play freely, allowing what is natural to me to come through, I’ll find myself playing minor pentatonics, and not using the harmonic minor at all. Freedom at this point leads me to just repeat what I already know. If instead I limit my playing to the use of the harmonic minor, I’ll likely feel awkward and restricted at first. But the more I remain within this limit, the more of the harmonic minor I’ll explore. Over time I’ll develop familiarity and confidence with it, and after a certain amount of this strictly limited practice, I’ll begin to assimilate what I’ve experienced so that it becomes natural, or “second nature” to me. Then, when I allow myself to play freely, both the minor pentatonic and the harmonic minor will emerge effortlessly in my playing.
Many students chafe at practicing within limits due to the feelings of constraint, even ineptitude, which arise in the process. But without adhering to limits, a different kind of discouragement creeps in – that of being stuck in a rut, endlessly repeating oneself, unable to break out into new territory. So both limits and freedom are necessary. Limits create the space to expand our knowledge and skill, and freedom creates the space to explore the full range of our newfound expressive capabilities. The pain of limits is transformed into the joy of limitless expression.
Balance Every Activity
There are many other kinds of balance which are critical to making practice dynamic and productive. For instance, the balance between acquiring skills and applying skills. It’s not enough to practice scale fingerings, we need to spend equal time applying them creatively to making melodies. Learning music theory must be balanced with ear training, because music theory remains a self-contained, inaccessible world of abstract logic if we can’t hear in our imagination the things we are speaking about (in the same way that color theory would remain abstract if you couldn’t “see” the color red in your mind’s eye when you say “red”). Ear training is the critical link between music theory and reality (which is your experience of music).
Practicing must be balanced with playing. Few of us learn a musical instrument in order to practice. But many of us practice more than we play, and that can separate us from the joy of effortless expression, and from our heart connection to music.
Playing alone should be balanced with playing with others. My students who play with others at least once a week progress at twice the pace, or faster, of my students who only play alone between lessons.
Playing, Composing and Improvising
Just as balance fosters learning, the activities of playing, improvising, and composing music rely on balance. Musical gestures arise from combinations of complimentary forces, environments, psychological states, strategies, and actions. Both aspects of dualities, both ends of continuums, are involved in varying quantities and strengths in the creation of musical ideas. For example, melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic “cadence” (which in music means resolution, or coming to rest) are made by the complementary states of tension and harmony, which create the energies of activity and rest.
The Infinite Path
These are just a few examples of balance that energize us and propel us on the path to learning and making music. Below are more dualities that we can harness to balance practice and generate music. What other types of balance can you think of that further practice and music-making? Post a reply and share your thoughts!
Right hand/Left hand
Fast/Slow
Loud/Soft
Mimicking/Inventing
Listening/Speaking
Following Instruction/Plotting your own course
One String/Six Strings
Consonant/Dissonant
Spontaneous/Deliberate
Focused/Dreaming
Feminine/Masculine
Repeating/Varying
Moving/Still
Expected/Surprising
Light/Dark
Emotional/Rational
Risky/Safe
Major/Minor
Warm/Cold
Imagining/Manifesting
Intentional/Accidental
Question/Answer
Vertical/Horizontal
Up/Down
Beginning/Ending
Reciting/Improvising
Thinking/Feeling
Extroverted/ Introverted
Ecstatic/Sorrowful
Hopeful/Despondent
New/Old
Rhythmic/Melodic
Small/Large
Embracing/Rejecting
Earth/Sky
© 2013 Brenna Method
