Search
Close this search box.

Seeking Perfection, An Interview with Barbara Butler

Seeking Perfection, An Interview with Barbara Butler | July 2010


    Few households on this earth produce as much fine trumpet playing as the Barbara Butler-Charlie Geyer home in suburban Chicago. After years at the Eastman School of Music, they now teach at Northwestern University. They also perform together in Music of the Baroque, the Chicago Chamber Musicians, and at the Grand Teton Music Festival. On different occasions both enjoyed telling the story of their undergraduate years at Northwestern and the time her landlord complained that he liked to listen to her practicing but didn’t like the duets she played with that fellow (Geyer). Barbara studied with Vincent Cichowicz and Adolph Herseth and grew up in Cedar Falls, Iowa.
     She says she had the perfect teacher, David Kennedy. “I was a bit bossy about what I wanted to play, which was only solo competition pieces (ignoring some of the fundamentals I probably needed), so my teacher, who was actually a horn player, found all the newest solo literature from the Paris Conservatory and taught me those pieces. From 6th to 12th grade I entered and won many competitions all around the midwest. As I entered college, won positions at music festivals and moved up in my career, I never took the time to thank him for all he had done for me until it was too late. Today, I urge all my students to find the time to do just this, because our early teachers are the keys that open the door for us.”

What tips could you offer to trumpet students?

    All trumpet students are concerned with having the ability to play in the high register, which for me, begins around F at the top of the staff. I believe the formula for playing high notes comes from the ability to sustain your high notes rather than briefly striking them. The control to sustain them, is created by the muscles at the corners of the mouth rolling or pulling the lips into the smaller, tighter embouchure that is required, and holding that position. The type of air required for playing high notes is not bigger air, or even more air, but rather a faster, smaller, compact and continuous airstream. Holding a high note for eight counts without changing that embouchure shape or speed of air, both requires strength of control and builds that same strength and control.
    Most students throw what I refer to as big air, which overwhelms the embouchure and pops the lips open, so they lose the note after a second. Only when I began to sustain my high notes this way, at a softer dynamic, did I begin to own my high register. I suggest sustaining high notes at mp or p, and when you can do that for eight to  twelve counts you are making big progress. Playing them louder comes later, after having the muscle control to own them first.

How can ensembles play with better intonation?
    Intonation is always a problem for wind players, and in my view this is partly the result of  thinking of one note at a time. They rarely think of their notes in intervals or distances apart. Even more rarely do they think of the chords that are being played. Knowing that your note is a particular distance away from the previous note or the next note, not only gives the ability and knowledge to play it in tune, but it improves accuracy. When players are aware that a group of notes has two large intervals with one small half-step in the middle, they are more likely to play it in tune and without missing. If a conductor or teacher can identify the chord that a brass section is playing, then the players can be directed to an awareness of who has the tonic, who has the third of the chord, and who has the fifth of the chord. Just this simple knowledge improves their playing and intonation a huge percentage. Most bands play notes as isolated sounds not as part of a broader concept.

What is the secret to making progress in practice sessions?

    One of the greatest side benefits of studying music is learning the value of working slowly. Certainly this is what every professional knows and does. When asked why he could play faster than every other violinist, Jascha Heifetz answered, “because I practice slower than every other violinist.” This is the opposite of the basic instincts of all beginners. In part it is the immaturity and impulsiveness of the young, combined with the times in which we live, from 30-second soundbites to instant messages and texts and surfing the internet. With my brass quintet, which includes members of the Chicago Symphony, we regularly rehearse pieces we have played our whole lives at half-tempo or even slower. At this speed, nothing is difficult, and nothing is technical, so we can relax and hear every interval, every interplay amongst the group, and fix every single detail. It is easy to open your ears and be able to hear everything when you are not worried and everything is calm and slow. It also helps identify what needs fixing in each of our individual parts.
    I have never heard of concert bands playing a new work at a dead-slow pace first, but it would be revelatory for an ensemble to do so. Most professional chamber music groups also do this, and again, that creates the ability to hear details and fix them perfectly. For my students at Northwestern University, I recommend as required reading The Talent Code, a new book about ways to learn. The first chapter describes a young amateur clarinetist who begins practicing a passage at a fast tempo, but instead of ignoring mistakes, stops and plays it again repeating the error. She next does the extraordinary and slows the tempo down, isolating just the part with the error, fixing every detail before patching it back into the section. She proceeds in just this way, with many halts, many fixes, always small parts, always slowly, before proceeding to put it back together, and moving faster. In just this short practice session she improved a huge amount. The next piece she played straight through at full tempo. To a listener, she might have sounded better on that piece, but actually she did not improve on that piece at all.
    The basic idea of The Talent Code is that deep, focused practicing creates myelin, the insulation around a neural pathway. The greater the myelin, the stronger and faster that pathway is, and gradually it becomes your default setting whenever you play that passage or one like it. This contrasts with the usual way a student practices, which is at full tempo, with many mistakes, then going back and repeating the mistakes at full tempo. This wraps myelin around bad playing, which means that the default setting for that player will be to return to those same mistakes in the concert. Deep practicing starts from making mistakes, as we all do, but then identifying them, and immediately slowing it all down and highlighting the exact part that is incorrect, and building myelin around slow perfect playing.
    The ideas in The Talent Code apply to any field of endeavor, whether it be golf or music or soccer. If you use deep practicing and only use repetition after you have gotten it perfect, then you are creating an 8-lane highway of correctness. In a golf tournament or in a concert, you can call up the perfect shot or technique that you want.  The more deep practicing someone does, the thicker the myelin. Each careful repetition wraps another layer around it, and eventually it becomes so strong that is the natural way to perform it. It becomes your default setting. On the contrary, whenever someone repeatedly plays a section incorrectly,  they reinforce the wrong kind of learning.
    When I practice, I seek out any place that sounds wrong and focus in on that. I instantly slow it down to identify and correct what needs fixing. I keep slowing it down and simplifying it until it is  perfect. I never play repetitions until it is completely correct and then play many repetitions that way.


                Photo of Charlie Geyer and Barbara Butler taken in 1998

What are the keys to success in music?

    I believe there are four ingredients needed to achieve success as a musician: talent, work ethic, intelligence of work, and perseverance. Talent is what many young students think is most important. I can tell you that you do need talent, but it is the least important of the four. One young saxophonist may be able to play a difficult technique easily right away while another has to work hard to master it, but to an audience they are both equal. The audience only hears the results, which are the same. 
    Certainly I am spoiled by working with the finest students at Northwestern University, where all have talent, but whether some have more than others is not important to me. A good work ethic is critical, and this means consistent work. In my view, the last two categories are the most critical elements of success. Intelligent work is far more important than practicing for hours and failing to achieve any permanent learning or improvement, that someone else accomplishes with 10 minutes of intelligent practice.

What is the state of music education in our schools?

    I am greatly concerned today that school administrators at all levels do not appreciate the value and importance of music to the development of our youth. I believe this devaluation of music stems from the fact that neither success in music nor the study of music can be measured in terms that those administrators understand. Academia lives by measuring our youth: GPAs, SATs, ACTs, and class rank, and that which they cannot measure, they do not value. Because school administrators can measure the rigor of AP classes in math and physics, they then use them as predictors of future success in college. However, the rigor in music is measured by the four hours of practicing each day, the continuous competitions and auditions, the hundreds of hours of lessons, rehearsals, and summer festivals. These are absolutely predictors of success but cannot be measured in the same way. I believe that someone in business or medicine, law or engineering, will be better at their job if they have studied music and have developed the creativity that is the hallmark of music.
    People who are deeply involved in music become more creative and better focused as students. They learn the value of slow and dedicated work, and that makes them more successful in any field they choose. Most of the students in my daughter’s ensembles are in AP classes, and get accepted into the finest schools. In my view there is a direct correlation between intelligence and participation in music, starting with those who choose to play an instrument. The ability to focus on precisely the most critical problem notes is the same trait that makes for excellence in math or science. Merely slogging away at a problem is not the equivalent of making progress.

What other performance tips can you offer?
    I found out years ago that musicians can actually control how an audience thinks about the music. At a lesson a student played a piece for me and sounded great, but part way through it I realized my mind had wandered. I was embarrassed and simply asked him to start over without explaining why. He replied, “I’d love to start again. I was really into it until the double bar.” This surprised me because it was at the double bar that my mind started to wander.
    Later that week at a group lesson, I experimented and played a lyrical piece in three sections for them. In the first section I focused on playing as though I were an opera singer who brought meaning to every word in the lyrics. During the second section I thought only about my trumpet technique, while during the third section I thought only about going out to dinner. After I finished I asked which section they liked best, and every single person chose the first section, describing it as singing and beautiful, almost like a dream. About the second section they commented about the clean tonguing and neat slurs; all comments pertained to my technique. About the third section there were so few specific comments because their minds had wandered just as mine did. From that moment I learned that a performer can control how the audience thinks about and reacts to the music. If you teach music solely by emphasizing notes and technique, no one will be thrilled by the result.

And a final note …
    (Editor’s Note: During the interview, Butler told the following story, which was just to interesting to omit from the article.)

The Piccolo and the Pistol
    When I came to Chicago as an undergraduate student at Northwestern University I immediately received a phone call to play a Bach Cantata and was asked if I played piccolo trumpet. I assured the caller I did, and was hired, but actually I had never played one and did not yet own one. I immediately called the Schilke company and got Mr. Schilke on the phone, begging for help. He said in a gruff voice, “Come down.”
    I arrived, and he said that there were no piccolo trumpets in stock, but that he always pulled out the best one and gold-plated it, to keep for his own use. He let me borrow his piccolo and eventually let me buy it. Just before I graduated, I had a late rehearsal one night, and left the horn in my car overnight. Naturally, that evening my car was in a row of cars that had all their windows smashed. Everything, including my prized piccolo trumpet, was taken.
    I went to Schilke’s office in tears and told him that I needed a new instrument. Before he could answer, the phone rang, and he was told that at that very moment, someone was trying to peddle my trumpet at Lyons and Healy, which was just down the street. I jumped up, ran down the street and into the store, where I saw the thief holding my stolen piccolo trumpet. I went right up to him and punched him as hard as I could, but the police had just arrived and pulled me off him. Right behind me stood Ren Schilke with his gun pointed at the thief. I was unaware until then, that he had grabbed a pistol and followed me to the store. What a great guy, and I still play that piccolo trumpet today.