Hey First name / Friend!
I just got back from 10 days in Barcelona, for a 9-day training my son did at the Barça Academy. It's nice to be home, and reflect on the experience. Now I'm just talking soccer here. For sure, we had an incredible food and culture experience too - you can ask me for my notes on that separately! Anyhow…
After being immersed in soccer at the highest level both with talented youth and the insanely incredible FC Barcelona pros, I couldn't help but notice some things.
1. Like music, you start training at a young age and you devote so.much.time to it.
2. The boys had training every morning, and played "friendlies" each night - games with local clubs where they could put what they learned into immediate practice.
3. Individual skills (agility, ball control, passing etc) were taught and practiced with high reps. Then corrections and adjustments were made before being implemented into a scrimmage within the training hour.
4. Periods of intense focus were delineated by water and rest breaks that were a time for fun and team camaraderie.
5. One day the kids had a career talk by a retired player one day who said: all of you dream of becoming a soccer star one day, but the reality is only a very small number of you will achieve it. Keep working hard.
6. The coaches emphasized playing with freedom, personality and h.e.a.r.t.
7. Finally, the teams were pitted against similarly-aged Spanish teams who routinely crushed our American teams. As the director of the program explained, "you have to open your eyes to the game at a global level", and learn from teams that are better than you!
Read the blog for more detailed take-aways, and for what Barça's “h.e.a.r.t.” acronym stands for.
While the aim is to develop skills to put the ball into the net and score goals, it's not the only "goal".
In each of the above, parallels are obvious, but it's important to note that there's so much gained in the process of training. You develop tenacity, resilience, discipline, vision, trust in yourself and others, connection to a wider world, communication skills, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
I might also add, the extent that the pro players feed their bodies nutritious foods, take care of their physical and mental selves, is astounding and should be a bigger focus for us as musician-athletes. Music-making is as much physical as it is intellectual & emotional.
Now, about your clarinet playing this week
Be a good musician-athlete!
1. Agility: We recommend doing some isolated finger motion exercises
- Vade-Mecum du Clarinettiste
- Opperman Modern Daily Studies, which opens with left and right hand studies
- Finger Fitness Etudes, 68 fun Klose-based etudes by our friend Kristen Denny-Chambers
2. Air Control:
- Ring Tone exercise - this exercise helps you keep the bell tone “ring” in your sound as you move up the register
- Harmonics exercise - get your air, embouchure and voicing working together!
3. Teamwork:
- Communicating - observe how you communicate ideas with musical phrases. Do you achieve direction and emotion? Observe (if you're in rehearsal with a pianist or ensemble) how you ‘talk’ to your fellow musicians.
- Here are some tips for your next chamber music rehearsal!
Have a great week!
xo,
