My niftiest practice method || An interview with Sophie Crawford || A poem by Kira Helper
27.10.2016
For those of you thinking ‘When the #*$% is Katya going to write a newsletter about her favourite practice methods?!’ – you can now relax.
Having admitted (both to myself and to you all) that I have the natural self-discipline of a sea cucumber, I was surprised and delighted when a number of people reached out to ask if I'd put some of the practice techniques and self-discipline tricks that I've been thinking and writing about over the years into my lil newsletter. I'm an amenable person, sure, but I'm also very susceptible to flattery, so I said yes straightaway.
A quick note: I must apologise for my seemingly lackadaisical spelling of practice/practise. As an English person living in America, the auto-correct function on my computer is only ever one vowel away from a full-blown identity crisis, and there are times when I just can't face the red wiggly line of judgement. I know that's a lily-livered excuse if you ever heard one, but it's the best I can do.
Now, as we're about to get stuck into the serious (v serious) business of practice systems, you might be thinking that a musician's practice methods are too niche for your taste, or too many degrees of Kevin Bacon away from your work-related needs. But no! The same ideas work just as well for attacking any and all day-to-day tasks that seem a little daunting, or tedious. Or worst of all: daunting and tedious - the dreaded double-whammy that's Kryptonite to any to-do list.
You might have to get a touch more creative, but I promise - any systems for learning/practicing music can also be helpful for breaking big jobs into small, ultra-achievable mini-jobs; for measuring, observing and celebrating success; and for for dishing out an hour in 6-10 minute spoonfuls.
I thought I'd start with my favourite system: The Ten Coin Method.
I probably won't use capital letters every time, because - well, who am I kidding? But it felt fun that first time, so I hope you'll indulge me. This is the practice method I turn to when I need to go from feeling like a worm to feeling like a champ, pronto.
I don't mean to brag (yes I do, I totally just said that to be coy) but I wanted to share with you one of the nicest messages I've ever received:
So you see, through diligent use of my Ten Coin Method soon we can all be singing Mozart and Rachmaninov to our hearts' content!*
*Disclaimer: results may vary, depending on whether you were - like this gentleman - a phenomenal opera singer to begin with. Apologies for any wilful deception on my part.
Anyway, here it is! The Ten Coin Method!
[The crowd goes wild]
So, um, after all that hullabaloo, it turns out that the ten coin method is relatively self-explanatory. But that would be an embarrassingly short and boring newsletter (even by my standards) if I left it there, so I’ll just power on and talk you through it.
Step one: put 10 coins on a chair (or, say, a table) in your practice/work area. In my case, that means a tall stool, within easy reaching distance from my harp. Easy reachability is crucial, and I’ll come back to the experiments that led me to this conclusion.
Do a bite size section of the thing that you’re working on.
If it goes wrong, weep uncontrollably.
If it goes wrong, try again. S L O W E R. And perhaps take a smaller chunk. Yeah, you know what? Definitely try a smaller chunk, even if it's just to humour me.
If it goes well, sliiiiide one coin away from its minted friends.
Repeat until all 10 coins have done the victory slide. For the hardcore (i.e. me … sometimes) if the thing you’re working on goes wrong, even as far along in the game as coin #7, #8 (or even #9!!!) slide em all back and start over. Frustrating though this can be, I find it helps me to be more careful, and to take things at the pace where I can really do my best. Sometimes, when I'm finding a supposedly straightforward thing fist-shakingly difficult, it makes a world of difference to go gingerly and break things down to a manageable size rather than trying to jump ahead and impress myself. (Genuinely, that’s a thing, embarrassing though it may be.)
A confession: I use a mixed selection of English and American coins, and I slide them along in order of size, largest to smallest. I know this is ridiculous, but at the beginning, when I need some extra motivational oomph, sliding a big coin (50p coins/quarters go first, then 2ps/nickels, and so forth) makes my progress seem all the more satisfying. THEN by the time I’m starting to flag, I’ve reached the little coins (a dime, or a 5p, for instance) – this makes me feel like ‘Pah! I only have those TINY coins left! They wouldn’t even look that comical being rolled along by a Borrower! This can’t be so hard!’ I’m just saying that’s what works for me.
Oh, and the things I experimented with in terms of coin locations were as follows:
Near = very good
Far away, so that I have to do some kind of physical exercise in between each go, either something to amuse myself like a hop, or something beneficial, like a stretch, star jump or a tiny little jog = Less good. It tickled me at first, but it made everything that much more laborious. And in terms of motivation and effective time-management, labour intensity is NOT the name of the game. The name of the game is the Ten Coin Method – in case you have suffered a boredom induced stroke and lost track of what we’re talking about. And apparently it's a Motivation and Effective Time-Management Game. (I mean, what other kind is there?)
One of the reasons I love using this system is that I'm a big fan of making my practice programs as mindless as possible - within reason. (This applies only to technical work/note-learning, before you all go bananas and burn me at the stake for practice heresy.) If I'm not constantly having to make decisions about what to do next, how many times to do it & so on, I find that it alleviates a huge amount of mental pressure, and efficient ways of learning can become automatic and easy-breezy.
As much as I love creating systems to help me generate some semblance of discipline, the flip side is that I'll sometimes wonder whether I'm just an unusually ineffective human for needing them in the first place. In an idle moment I'll assume that everybody else is just cracking through task after task - nothing but vim and vigour. Especially vim, whatever the hell that is.
So, when my friend Jamie asked me if he could include the ten coin system on his website, I was just thrilled. Perhaps I'm not so vim-less after all!
Jamie is a fantastic jazz guitarist, and has dedicated a section of his website to tips and tricks for musicians, which I think is the loveliest, coolest idea. I should have probably learnt from his much more succinct version before I wrote this newsletter. But .... I didn't, so there we are.
Hooray!
(I'm putting that 'super duper person' bit on my CV, just try and stop me, Jamie!)
But before you go around thinking how great Jamie is, there's also this:
This all seems well and good at first. Kids, good. Teaching, good. Love in caps lock? Great.
But then - 5 pens?!
Oh no. Oh no no no. This is sacrilege indeed. That 'ha ha' is the guiltily attempted levity of somebody who knows their message will be read with a face of unabating thunder.
Okay, I'm just joshing really. Apparently I can't put up a formidable, intimidating front, even in print! I actually LOVE it (love in caps lock is great! She said, formidably) when people tell me about the little adjustments they've made to the ten coin method, and I've happily squirrelled away a collection of photos and messages with the different versions people have sent me. Whenever anybody tells me that they've found my little systems helpful, it makes me all a-flutter with joy.
My favourite suggestion so far is from Alex the Jester, a ludicrously good performer, juggler and unicyclist:“I find the coin technique for rehearsing very effective. I usually use beanbags or rolled socks myself. I like to ceremonially toss them, or spike them to the ground.”The ceremonial tossing of rolled socks as a gesture of triumph definitely adds a bit of much-needed grandeur to proceedings. But I fear 'the ten rolled socks method' wouldn't be quite as catchy a title. Or Katchy!!
......
Okay, I'll show myself out.
The Cameo
My guest star this week is Sophie Crawford.
Sophie writes and performs music for the touring theatre company Glimmer, and runs a monthly poetry and music night in London, called Patterned Ground. With her accordion in tow, she spent a year playing the Song Woman in the West End production of War Horse. I'm listening to Sophie's beautiful singing here, and it's a serious, soul-glowing treat. From haunting folk songs to Westlife covers (possibly just as haunting tbh), Sophie is also a member of Boyz - the all-girl boyband who are fast igniting the London drag king scene.
What’s your job title/profession?
Actor, musician, theatre maker.
What would you love for people to know about your work?
Well my theatre work that I make is predominantly focused on rehabilitating women’s histories that have been neglected, stories that need to have their place reinstated in our cultural understanding of where we live. I’m interested in making theatre work for women in an endeavour to counter the massive male domination of the industry. In terms of music, I love folk music and it’s what I love to play. Finally in terms of the poetry and music night I organise called Patterned Ground I just believe in being 100% friendly all the time and creating a completely non-judgemental atmosphere so that people can be free to express themselves.
What do you wish people would stop asking about your work?
What do you have coming up?
What made you/helped you to choose what you do?
I’ve been going to Towersey Folk Festival since I was a baby, and it has given me a lifelong love of folk music and niche histories. I joined the National Youth Theatre when I was 15 and that got me into doing plays. So I try to combine the two. To be honest I just found theatre-y people seemed so nice when I was a teenager, it really won me over.
What’s your perfect breakfast/lunch for a workday? (What do you actually have for breakfast/lunch?)
Man I’m a painslave when it comes to food. I don’t know where the puritanical/abstemious streak comes from. Breakfast is toast. And recently that has been eaten while running up a road or from my bike basket at traffic lights. For lunch I tend to eat whatever can be ‘cooked’ in my thermos in the morning using only hot water. So at the moment I’m really treating myself with frozen dumplings and edamame. Chuck it in you thermos with boiling water while you pack your bag, drain it just before you leave. I can’t pretend to be proud of how I eat. If I’m organised I will make a lentil soup for the week. But that can get thinner and thinner as the week goes on so nothing wins hands down in the lunch wars.
What’s your perfect time to wake up? (When do you actually wake up?)
At the moment I am waking up at hours that make me want to weep because I am doing a kids show and children apparently like to watch theatre at ungodly hours. In a dream world I would wake up at 10am.
What’s your alarm sound?
I’m not sure it makes a sound, it’s my phone vibrating under my head.
Do you have a set morning routine?
It depends whether I’m in rehearsals or working on a project that I can do from home or a library. Whatever happens I have a shower in the morning and breakfast. And I do try and write three pages in my notebook every morning just to get going.
How do you get to and from work?
At the moment I’m touring a children’s show so I am travelling all over London and really loving the luxury of getting buses and trains. Normally I’m on my bike, which is great for mental health but not good for weariness.
Do you have a dedicated/preferred workspace? If so, what does it look like?
I wish I did. That is definitely on my to do list. At present I am snatching moments to do my own work wherever I can. I have a great chair in my living room that is just the bomb. I also do a lot of writing and music in my bedroom which my friends painted with a mural of a river all around it so I can feel like I’m outside.
Not a bad mural. Not a good photo, sure, but not a bad mural.
I think Sophie was especially pleased with my contribution here:
While Sophie was desperately trying to correct a fairly questionable Sun:Ray ratio, I managed to capture her immediate response to the quite sudden appearance....
... of this little guy:
I bet my cheerful fish don't look so bad now, do they?
Though I must admit, this photo does not capture the mole's exquisitely detailed, expressive eyebrows. Not by a long shot.
When you're on the road, where do you do your writing?
On buses and trains. Dressing rooms are just no good for that stuff. I always seem to be sharing it with someone, so privacy is limited. Public transport is really the best place.
Essential work items?
Black biros. Back strap belt for my accordion.
What are your work hours like? Do you try and create a routine for yourself or is that impossible given the nature of your work?
I wish I had a set routine. Right now I’m at the mercy of a touring schedule. It is very difficult to have a set routine because it depends what the next deadline is. On the rare occasions when I have had a day to define for myself I usually wake up at 10am, try to meet a friend who lives locally and work in their company until 6pm.
Do you work with fixed goals in mind or take it day by day depending on what comes up?
I definitely work with fixed goals. I have to, otherwise I wouldn’t get anything done. It can be to my detriment though, it can leave me working right up to deadlines.
What inspires you?
The beautiful music of John McCusker, the Walthamstow marshes, Peking Opera.
What’s your favourite thing about your job?
I like being able to make my own work and feel that I am creating something sustainable and meaningful that doesn’t leave me at the whims and mercy of others.
Least favourite?
Massive insecurity, both financial and psychological. When the hell is the next thing going to be? And if you don’t sort things out nothing will happen.
What do you do to get through days when you just don’t feel like it?
Cry on my bicycle. Go down to the river Lea. But more likely just become wildly irate and fire off lots of admin emails to make up for the fact that I feel out of control and as if I am achieving almost nothing.
Go to bed very early.
Do you have a go-to treat to get you out of a slump?
Cooking something is good. Something that I actually take time over. That is quite healing. But due to my abstemious shopping that will often be pasta-based. I wish I could say it wasn’t.
Go-to work snack/sustenance?
Green apples, chocolate, decaf tea. But if I’m left by myself working I often forget to eat at normal times and then wonder why I’ve chewed off all my fingernails.
What’s your favourite part of the day?
The most productive time is around 5pm and that’s a pretty good time generally. The day isn’t totally lost, the evening could still redeem it.
Least favourite?
Early mornings are just doom. I feel like seeing the sunrise is the little sop you are given to make up for the fact that you are just feeling grey. But I do love getting out of the house quickly in the morning, a bit like recreating the experience of camping - going fast from waking to the outdoors.
How you define a good/successful day?
It would be one with a fair amount of balance. Where I’ve seen friends, done some work for someone else and done some work for me.
What’s been your favourite failure? One that you learnt a lot from, or one that you can look back and say ‘well I got through THAT, I’m unstoppable!’
I’ve failed lots of auditions but that’s sort of par for the course. To be honest I think the failures I’ve got the most badass chutzpah from have always been romantic ones. There is just nothing like getting dumped again and working out how to turn it into a great anecdote or write a song about it, to make you feel like you can take on anything. It always makes me feel more defiantly myself; value the friends I have and often makes me very, very productive. It would be nice if that wasn’t the galvanising force. But it often is.
Any hot tips for the old work-life-balance conundrum?
If you want to book that holiday, book the damn holiday. Your work will find a way of fitting around it and you’ll never regret going. When you have loads of work on Call Your Friends. It will keep you sane and stop you feeling sad.
Do you have any hobbies/passions outside of work?
I love knitting and sewing. It is absolutely what I secretly want to be doing a lot of the time.
Katya: she's not kidding around here. By way of evidence, I submit this blanket that Sophie knitted for her newborn nephew.
That's right, she just nonchalantly knitted a blanket with a quote from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Bear that in mind next time you find yourself ducking into Toys'R'Us, hurriedly scavenging for any old tat.
How do you make time for them? Where do they fit into your day/week?
I don’t get to do it every week and it tends to be project based, but if I’m meeting up with someone and I know we might be mindlessly sedentary for a while then I’ll bring my knitting or sewing along. In fact I do just carry a sewing kit and knitting things with me most places.
What’s one piece of advice you would give to someone who wants to do what you do?
Send loads of emails, be kind to everyone - the people you know are often the key to your work.
What’s the best piece of advice someone’s ever given you?
Best piece of advice I received quite recently was from a friend who told me to read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, which I’ve been reading and really has been life changing. A wonderful musician friend of mine told me: ‘you just need to practice’ and it is hackneyed but in relation to the accordion, boy oh boy is it true.
What’s your top tip for getting shit done?
Make a list. Bash everything out. There’s no point in agonising over stuff.
Listen to Sophie's beautiful singing here.
Go to Patterned Ground, is her monthly event dedicated to new poetry and music. Whatever you might be imagining, it's so much nicer.
Sophie's theatre company is called Glimmer. Everything they create is pure, unadulterated magic.
"We believe that nothing is more nourishing than a good story told brilliantly. Our rich theatre of little means means that we can ascend to the brightest heaven of invention with nothing but a rusty hat box, a cracked slide projector and a transvestite accompanist."
Need I say more?
After the katchy thing earlier, I think I need not.
A Poem
This week's poem is by Kira Helper, and it's called A Dedication to Black Lives.
You can/should listen to Kira reading it herself:
Every day was like a block party
Ponytails and fitted caps
Old men playing bachata
Checkerboards on their laps
And Everywhere- brown faces
Little brown bodies
Dancing in fire hydrant waves
Any signs of fear there were no traces
Just smiles and imagination
In our eyes
Today it was, “Make believe we’re spies!”
Working for the CIA
Everyday, we’d play
Those little brown bodies
Brown bodies
Brown faces
Brown People everywhere.
Brown People and
White cops.
Brown People, white cops.
White cops from
White suburbs
In different boroughs
In different neighborhoods
Miles away from mine
How was this fine?
Because even as children
We knew how they felt
about us:
Our little brown bodies automatically
Made us sus’
Which in turn taught us
To mistrust
Them,
And we knew how
It would end -
A Stop and Frisk
for a decriminalized
Dime bag
In front of
Grandma’s house.
Run up the stairs
cause you’re scared,
Tried to flush it
Shoulda rushed it
Cause for
Drowning the pot
You got shot.
In your grandma’s
bathroom.
Over a dime bag.
While my white friends
Downtown
Sell weed
By the pound,
These dealers
On bikes
Don’t even get
A Frown
When they pass by
These cops?
What’s the chance
They’ll get stopped?
But that’s
The privilege of
The skin
To which you weren’t
Akin.
Ramarley.
And I could say
I hardly knew you,
Yet I wept at
Your death
Knowing it
Could have been
My brother or friend
Who’s life was put
To an end.
Because you had a
Brown body
You beautiful descendant
of the Diaspora,
Disallowed to
Move forward
faster.
And I’m
Constantly reminded
of how
Our society is
So blinded
Always trying to make
Excuses:
“Don’t make this
A color thing.”
Everybody puts their
2-cents in,
which proves
Worthless
to me
As long as We
keep getting
Murdered,
Here’s some names
You should’ve
heard of:
Sean Bell
What the hell?
Unarmed and 23
Killed the night before
His wedding,
A husband
Never-to-be.
Eric Garner
Staten Island father
Unarmed and 43
Choked to death
for “selling cigarettes”
Left to die on
the street.
Ezell Ford
Please help me, Lord
Unarmed and 26
He was autistic
Cops shot him
Face down
How ballistic.
Amadou Diallo
Is this getting hard to swallow?
Unarmed and 23
Immigrated to
America
Only to learn
The consequences
here of what a
Black man is to be.
Michael Brown
In his graduation
Crown
Unarmed and 18
Shot dead
In his chest
His body in the
Street for
4 hours
Unclean.
Then there was
The Martins’ son, 17
Trayvon
And this
Sad list
Just goes
On and on;
So listen
To us
When we express
Our anger
and fear,
For you would
Do the same for
those you hold
Dear.
If you somehow
Disagree
I call you
A fool:
But I’ll stop
making it
“A color thang”
When you do.
I first met Kira during a class we were both taking, called Mind and Body Discipline for the Musician. One of our assignments was to give a talk about our non-musical creative outlets, and why they were important to us. Kira read this poem. When she was done, the room fell silent for a while. Then it fizzed into an hour long discussion - about race relations in America, about the importance of the arts in this ongoing conversation, and about how vital it is that our society seeks to make space for unheard voices to emerge, and to be heard.
To this day, my heart goes out to the guy who had to follow Kira's presentation.
I mean, it would have been hard enough to follow that with anything, but this project....
... it was on the homemade smoothies he loved to make, using only berries he had picked by hand. In all my days I have never seen a more sheepish expression. Or tasted a more delicious smoothie.
Thank you Kira, for letting me share your poem. It's beautiful and important, just like you!
Also thank you for being the greatest sleepover partner, and for teaching me how to make a serious, architecturally sound pillow fort for the days when that's just what has to happen.
Follow Kira on Instagram here, but be prepared to turn into a human version of the emoji with heart eyes.
Some Music
The theme of this week's playlist is letters & correspondence. Partly just for fun, but also because it allows me to indulge my fantasy that this email newsletter is actually a handwritten missive. And I didn't smudge the ink even one time.
Then again, it's undeniably trickier to include a Spotify playlist in a handwritten letter. I mean, who has the time to be writing out all those URLs by hand?
Luckily, as this is a decidedly unglamorous email newsletter, you can listen to the playlist on Spotify here.
Oh right, and the links section would be an absolute mare.
Links!
Speaking of correspondence, here's Nora Ephron being hilarious (of course) on The Six Stages of Email.
“Dear Ijeawele, or a femininst manifesto in fifteen suggestions” Every sentence of this essay by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is searingly, incandescently true and important. I had honest to god goosebumps from start to finish.
'Bar brawl lands Ukraine archbishop in monastery' What a headline.
The new Ikea advert could be an excellent tonic for those looking to curb their social media tendencies. The slogan - 'Let's Relax' - could also be a helpful reminder for anyone who's as woefully susceptible to Facebook-induced envy as I am.
Related: this app called Checky (free, iPhone and Android) tells you how many times a day you unlock your phone. At first I thought it was counterintuitive to use an app to help untether me from my albatross-like phone, but then I found the results to be grislier than I expected, so have decided to stick with it. If you don't have an iPhone then Quality Time (free, Android), can also give you real-time data on how much time you spend using each app. Taking it one step further, Moment ($4.99, iPhone) lets you set your own limit on phone usage, and sends you a notification when you’ve reached the threshold. I haven't gone there yet, but I'm not ruling it out.
Marina Hyde is one of my favourite journalists. Here she is, being brilliant on the tabloids' vexing double standards when it comes to refugees and Cindy Cawford's daughter. (A sentence I never thought I'd write.)
If after that you need an immediate optimism hit, check out Obama's Kid Science Advisors.
My friend EJ sent me these pictures of a dog called chihuahua-mametaro, and whatever I was expecting, they did not disappoint.
It's just been announced that every episode of Jessica Jones, Season 2 will be directed by a woman. That shouldn't really be worthy of note, but it is, so I thought I'd highlight it here.
21 Pure And Perfect Things That Will Make You Feel Better.
Buzzfeed, sometimes you just know what I need.
If that was too soothing, and now you'd like to adjust the scales by watching the most inexplicable video of all time, then feast your eyes on THIS. Every time I watch it, I discover a new, even more baffling detail.
But this video of a young Christoph Waltz is a close second:
As always, thank you to the artist/magician Tamsin Baker for making my header illustration.
And that's it! See you next week!
Love,
Katya