Practicing Outside Your Comfort Zone

Finding Joy In Stepping Outside Your Wheelhouse

                Today I turned in my main bow, which has a French Style frog, into the local music store for a rehair. It should be ready in about a week, but in the meantime, I’m stuck with my German Style bow to practice and gig with. I won’t pretend: while I’m comfortable enough with the german grip to teach on it, and probably will do just fine with it on gigs, I’m way out of my comfort zone with this thing. It feels like learning to ride a bike again except you’re peddling with your hands and steering with your toes backwards. You understand the concept and the mechanics, but the execution is foreign to you. During my practice session this morning I got to thinking about the benefits of consistently going outside of our comfort zones on the bass and how that’s where progress is really made.

                Getting outside of your comfort zone doesn’t necessarily mean playing the Hindemith Sonata while walking a tightrope between two 10-story buildings – though that would certainly be nerve-wracking - and it doesn’t mean playing things that are unequivocally too difficult, a waste of time. Rather, think of your comfort zone like you would at a gym: push yourself just a little bit more every day to make gains, but go too extreme and you can get hurt. In the practice room this can look wildly different for different learning styles, playing levels, and commitment levels. For some students of the bass it’s getting the shifts for your E-flat major scale in tune and smooth. For others it’s slowly learning to get a good sound with the bow. Maybe for more advanced students (looking at myself) it’s finally tackling Heldenleben 9-11 and getting the 3rd and 4th measures clean.

Of course, there will be sessions where strictly maintaining chops is the goal, but there’s a certain level of joy that comes in finding something that’s *just* beyond your reach and tackling it head-on. It’s not comfortable to play something you’re ostensibly terrible at, and you have to get outside of your comfort zone to face that challenge and progress.

                For me, this week, I REALLY need to work on my spiccato with this german style bow. I’ll be facing the discomfort of playing that stroke at a much lower level than I can with my regular grip. Just like building muscle or losing weight, it’s going to get a little better every day when I spend time outside what’s comfortable doing the work.

                It’s the same way in jazz or other improvised musics. Sure, you can play the same tunes, the same ii-V licks, the same bass line patterns, but you’ll always sound the same. I find that I play better when I’m working on learning new tunes or pick a new scale/arpeggio/ii-V pattern that sends my brain spinning. It’s easy, and very tempting, to play the things we know. Especially if you feel like someone is listening. “What if they think I can’t play AT ALL because they hear me shedding diatonic 7th chord arpeggios in F-sharp that I’m no good at yet?” Overcoming that fear of failure and judgement, accepting that a certain thing might not be up to par yet, and working to get it there is how we move forward on our instrument.

                In my first year of undergrad, they assembled all the first-year music students and had a few professors chat about practice techniques, expectations, all that good stuff. I remember one of them saying something along the lines of “if you’re really good at your C major scale, there’s no reason to start your practice session with it. Go to a key you’re not as comfortable with and start there.” I took that advice to heart, and still try to spend most of my time on things that need improvement. I can play the heck out of George Vance’s Progressive Repertoire books, and it’s fun to be able to make music effortlessly from time to time, but I’m not going to get better at the bass spending all my time playing the things I already know. – insert caveat about how yes, we should spend time joyfully making music and reaping all the rewards of our hard work and that this getting outside of your comfort zone is just the most productive way to spend time in the practice room in terms of tackling new concepts –

                Enjoy making music and enjoy learning to step outside your comfort zone to make your music making even better at a higher level. Thanks for reading my word salad! Let me know – how do you feel about the idea of getting outside your comfort zone in the practice room?