Behind the Editor’s Desk

Usually, I’m pretty good at Word, but a mystery has been plaguing me for YEARS that I finally just figured out.

Sometimes, for inexplicable reasons, Word staunchly refuses to spell check. It behaves as if everything was spelled correctly, even though EVERYTHING IS NOT. You can go to Tools > Spelling and Grammar, and nothing happens. Just a stupid smile. You can spell cat “ddog” and it will just beam, peacefully at you. Nothing gets the red underline. Even the Preference “Check Spelling as you Type” is active. Ddog is fine with Mr. Computer.

To fix it:

1. Select Edit>Replace.

2. Click the arrow to expand to Advanced settings.

3. Click in the Find field to set the pointer there.

4. Click the middle popup menu “Format”), and choose “Language.”

5. Activate “Do not check spelling or grammar.” Leave the list field to “(no language).” Click OK.

6. Click in the Replace field to set the pointer there.

7. Repeat steps 4 and 5, but now deactivate “Do not check spelling and grammar.” Click OK.

8. Click Replace all.

Spell check should now work again.

In other words, we’re doing a search/replace for this mysterious behavior, and getting rid of it.

I hope that this changes your life as it has mine.

These are the books I use most commonly as references.

Notation

Music Notation: Preparing Scores and Parts, by Matthew Nicholl and Richard Grudzinski. (Berklee Press 2007). For contemporary score layout, this is really the definitive source. I was its editor. And I say that to make myself look more impressive by association with this great text (though in truth, I really didn’t actually help it very much), not out of any delusion that my involvement would make it seem any more appealing.

Music Notation, by Mark McGrain (Berklee Press). This book has been around for decades, and at Berklee, it’s long been considered the definitive source for handwritten jazz charts, particularly lead sheets.

Music Notation, by Gardiner Read. This is the old standby, really more optimized for classical music than for contemporary popular music. It’s a classic. Maybe, it’s THE classic.

The Art of Music Copying, by Clinton Roemer. This is a classic text on old school engraving, and a very fine book.

Finale: An Easy Guide to Music Notation (2nd Edition), by Tom Rudolph and Vince Leonard (Berklee Press 2005). Again, I’m the editor. If you are using 2007 or later, wait a few months until the 2009 edition comes out. But this book is worth its price for the chart on page 245 alone.

Orchestration

The Harvard Dictionary of Music. Classic. Everyone has this. It is often hailed as the ultimate arbiter for disagreements, and it’s hard to argue with “Well, the Harvard Dictionary of Music says….” The only effective rebuttal is “Yeah, but it’s geared towards classical musicians,” and even that doesn’t always work.

The Study of Orchestration, by Samuel Adler. Classic, focused on classical music. Most people have this or Piston. I have and use both, but prefer Adler for most things.

Orchestration, by Walter Piston. Classic, focused on classical music. Most people have this or Adler.

Writing

The Chicago Manual of Style. If you write, you need this book on your shelf. If you are a professional writer, you absolutely must have it. It is ubiquitous in the industry.

The Associated Press Style Guide. This is useful particularly for newspaper and Web authoring, whereas CMS focuses more on books. Someone swiped my copy long ago, and I frequently feel guilty when I have a question and don’t look it up here. Did you take my copy? Curse you, give it back! (shaking fist…)

The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White. Among the most lovable how-to books ever written. It’s been said that you can judge how serious a graduate student is by how many copies of this book they own. It is small and easily misplaced, but fortunately cheap, so people buy it again and again. I think I have three copies, but it’s hard to say.

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Secrecy and pretense have been a part of music education since at least the Middle Ages. Cliques have had their own notation. Masters have been reluctant to share their techniques for fear that they would lose their competitive edge. Textbooks were written in an overwrought, highfalutin academic style, perhaps to create a sense of awe and mystique around the author. But that doesn’t do the reader/student much good. I hope that we’re growing out of that now, in this age of sharing information.

You’ll see this if you compare several works discussing the same subject matter. At NEC, we had a seminar devoted to this. We looked a counterpoint and harmony books by Schoenberg, Piston, and some others, and compared their styles. Some were clear and helpful. Others were as dense as mortgage documents. But the ideas were the same. A fugue is a fugue. Why then, not compete for the clearest explanation? The reality of what’s published is far from that.

In my editing, I find that some authors put a lot of effort into putting on such airs and trappings of academia. This is especially common in two groups: highly educated musicians born before about 1950 and people who grew up very poor, in rough or highly rural neighborhoods with poor schools. The result is long rambling sentences, awkward and esoteric words, and a condescending affect.

Yuck. Clarity is so much more helpful to the reader.

So, the laborious process goes, of profound, deep editing. When editing gets severe, an unfortunate consequence can be that the writer’s personality can get lost. This is a danger with all writing that is very far from the mark of what’s appropriate or helpful for the reader. The life gets edited out of it. The baby goes out with the bath water, and it can be tough work getting it back in.

Which brings me to the Westminster dog show. Congratulations to Uno the beagle and all those who played a part in awarding him his Best in Show victory on February 11, 2008. As I am part of a two-beagle household, with my beagle in-law making three, this is big news around here, and I will confess to probably spending too much time reading about this grand event. A beagle hasn’t won Best in Show before.

Particularly of note are some of the details regarding Uno’s performance. Not only was he considered the noisiest in show, but he also reportedly nibbled on a brand new sign and nipped a microphone during an interview. This is important news: it means that he is a proper beagle, not some over-groomed robot dog, bred for chasing ribbons rather than rabbits. Uno is a dog’s dog. I will tell you from experience: real beagles destroy furniture and toys, bark and howl, and lick even clean dishes in the dishwasher. They are like Uno.

Uno had a good bath, and likely a pedicure, and was on his best behavior for the show. But he was still Uno the beagle. The result was that the crowd gave him an uncharacteristically enthusiastic standing ovation. Despite being on his best behavior, he was still himself. That’s what won the day. He was the perfect dog. And he was still a beagle.

As writers and editors, let’s take note. There are many ways to present concepts. Truth and clarity are our ideals. But the human element—in Uno’s case, the “beagle factor”—that makes it unique and fosters an emotional tie with the reader.

I am reminded of a project by a highly beloved educator, who was just a terrible writer. In his first draft, he came across as condescending and rambling, and inclined towards useless information, redundancy, and digressions. It was such an obnoxious first proof.

After four years editing his project, which included two different editors who eventually gave up in disgust, the project landed on my desk, and I had the directive to either save it or kill it. I had seen the first draft and knew how it started. Then, I read the latest edited version, and saw that it had become a lifeless lump. It was utterly without any beagle factor left. Mostly inoffensive, but b-o-r-i-n-g. And it was about two hundred pages too long.

I met with the author and found him to be extremely charismatic and engaging, in person. He was also really, really smart, and kind, and seemed to care that I understood the concepts he was explaining to me. And he was sooooo funny! If he was a dog, he’d be a beagle, and his overly edited manuscript was a pale reflection of himself. Who knows why his writing was so off, but the editing mostly moved it sideways, rather than up. The grammar was cleaned up, and the offensive bits were removed. But, well, yuck again.

Here’s how we saved it.

I went through the book, chapter by chapter, and came up with lists of questions about the content. When there was a concept missing, I formed a question to generate the right answer about it. When something was boring, I’d ask for an example. When something was condescending, I’d ask him to explain it again. He was so fed up with the project at that point that he didn’t really remember much about what was in the manuscript and what was not.

Rather than asking him to write again, I interviewed him, doing a one-hour session per chapter, based on my lists of questions.

In these interviews, he was his usual charming self. He told jokes and stories, he used time-tested teaching strategies to explain difficult theoretical concepts. He swore like a sailor, as was his wont. He’d go off on tangents, but then the questions would bring him back. They were delightful sessions because he was such a fun person. To him, it was really a process of chatting about a subject that he loved, rather than writing a book.

I transcribed these interviews, and used what he said there to fill in or replace what was in the original chapters. Some of his stories were really not appropriate for print, but others became useful metaphors/examples, especially after some gentle modifications. Some of them wound up exemplifying points that were besides what originally prompted them, but they were still his stories. In other words, we captured his “schtick.” I gave him the chapters, which he felt were in his own voice in a way that his own actual writing never was, and he made small technical adjustments, but overall was very happy with how it turned out.

The result was a clear, concise book that is now getting glowing reviews. People comment how they like his warm style, and feel like he’s right in the room with them. His past students commented that they were so happy to have his teaching in book form. He went back into his book, and it became alive again. The book is clear and informative, but it’s also got that beagle factor.

There are many ways that writing can be good. If publishing is your goal, remember the importance of the beagle factor. On this eve of Valentine’s Day, let’s remember that it’s the beagle factor that makes the difference between like and love.

Finding the right duck isn’t always easy. In my quest to find Indian runners, I found that the only way to get the pure white ones was to get them “straight run.” In other words, the ducklings were unsexed: males (drakes) and females in equal numbers, as they hatched.

The difficulty is that when mating season comes about, the healthy ratio for confined ducks is about one drake for every three or so ducks, or even fewer. Thus, I now have too many drakes, and I need to find homes for them, for the good of the flock.

So too, when writing, it is important to have the right ideas present in your book, article, course, or dare I say it, blog entry. Something that I see with books—particularly by first-time authors—is that there is the desire to include too many ideas. If we are motivated to share what we know, we want to give a complete picture. But this can be to the detriment of work, as a clutter of ideas can be distracting and unfocused, and ultimately not in the reader’s best interest.

The following approach can help you focus your ideas for the good of the flock. Er… book. A deeper discussion of this is in my article “How to Write a Music Method Book,” which currently resides on the Artists House Web site. (I also periodically give a writing seminar on this topic.)

1. Title. Focus on crafting a working title for your work that articulates your over-arching most important theme. Though the ultimate title will likely be a decision by a marketing department, a good working title will help you focus. For example:

“Beginning Didgeridoo.”

2. Objectives. Write about five short points articulating what the reader will learn from your work. Make sure that they support your title.

• Learn effective circular breathing
• Develop effective and healthy embouchure and playing posture
• Choose the instrument that’s best for you
• Perform six didgeridoo songs
• Imitate twelve animal noises

3. Topics. Confirm that every topic you want to include in your book supports at least one objective.

Let’s say that your first draft turns out to be 400 pages long, so you know you need to cut out some data. Topic 1 is a breathing exercise. That supports the first bullet, so it can stay in. Topic 2 is about the history of the didgeridoo. Since this isn’t listed as an objective, you should seriously consider cutting it, especially since the book is running long. Do this with all topics, and eventually, you will wind up with a much more focused work. It will be easier for your readers to understand what you are trying to communicate.

The mantra is: Deleting is Delightful. Or, save your rejected topics for another work. There is always another opportunity to write. Do this for every single topic you write or consider writing. Be ruthless.

Now, would you like a free drake? Indian runners are a bit too scrawny to eat, but they make good company.

Writers, like other creative artists, struggle with the relationship between two related, and often confused activities: expression vs. articulation. Navigating this is critical for creating effective work.

Expression means bringing something that’s inside of you out. Your soul stirs, and you write something down. This is an over-arching motivation for why creative artists spend their time creating. They perceive something they feel has value, and want to share it with others.

Articulation means crafting a communication object. It involves looking at an outpouring of raw expression and adjusting it so that a reader (listener, watcher, whatever) will understand what you’re trying to express.

Editing (including self-editing) is the process of honing the communication object for optimized communication.

I find three questions helpful, when editing, that help preserve the original intent while making communication as effective as possible. When I teach this in my writing seminars, I call it “Feist’s Trident.” Someday, maybe somebody else will call it that too.

Feist’s Trident

The questions I ask when reviewing something:

1. What’s the Big Idea?
2. What’s in?
3. What’s out?

Say that you are charged with optimizing the following sentence. (I made it especially horrible, just for you.)

“It is my opinion, based on my thirty years as an educator and performing pianist, that pianists at all levels of expertise and proficiency must remember to memorize all types of inversion—first, second, and third—so that they are to avoid creating musically ineffective and unsuccessful comping parts.”

First question: What’s the Big Idea?

It can take several readings to figure this out. Here, the writer seems to be saying that there is a body of information (inversions) that is important for pianists to learn.

Next, we go word by word, phrase by phrase, and ask the next two questions of each element: what’s in/what’s out? In other words, what supports the Big Idea? Ruthlessness will serve you well, here.

The first bit, from “It….performing pianist,” is a common sledgehammer, designed to inspire the sense that the point coming up is worth reading. But readers already think the writer is credible, or else they would stop reading. So, that whole first bit can be “out,” and we can begin “Pianists….” Omitting useless text like this generally helps articulate a point.

“Pianists” seems an important word here, so we keep it in, for now, but “…at all levels of experience and proficiency” is redundant, so it’s out. “Memorizing” is relevant, so we keep it! “Must remember” is just bossy, “all types” with “first, second, third,” are unnecessary.

Let’s see what we’re keeping, so far:

“Pianists must memorize inversions, if they are to avoid creating musically ineffective and unsuccessful comping parts.”

That’s getting much closer to the Big Idea. But it’s quite bossy and negative. Here’s a more positive rendering, still keeping the Big Idea. I’ve done a bit more massaging to get more useless verbiage “out.” Now that we’re closer to the mark, it seems that “Pianists” is likely obvious, as we’re discussing comping parts, and the whole work is likely about “pianists” anyway.

“Memorizing inversions helps you create effective comping parts.”

Now, that’s a much more useful sentence! The Big Idea is now clear. Certainly, though, confirm with that author that you did, in fact, nail their intended big idea. When editing is as drastic as this, points are likely to be mistaken, somewhat. The author might say, “Actually, I want to emphasize that learning them is what’s important, not memorizing them.” Or “I meant memorizing inversion fingerings.” Omitting some of the chaff helps everyone focus in on what the main point to be articulated should be.

The goal in the process was to articulate a point. The raw expression object was hindered by words and thoughts that were distracting. Honing focus and gleefully eliminating words that didn’t serve the main purpose helped achieve the real goal: communication.

Good writing optimizes the use of good words and minimizes the use of bad words.

Good words are expressive. They communicate clearly. That’s the goal of all writing, but especially so when trying to teach music, which is so technical.

One of my favorite words is “inspire,” just because of what it means, and because it hasn’t been ruined yet by overuse. Another word I like a lot is “disaster,” for its etymology: dis- (against) aster (stars). It’s not just bad, it’s a catastrophe on a grand, astrological, universal scale. Even the stars are against it!

While curse words are traditionally considered bad words, I actually think they are pretty good. They are charged with emotion and can be an effective way to communicate, when used well. If I were to write f— or s—, everyone would jump! That said, curse words often suffer from a boy-who-cried-wolf syndrome. They are commonly used unnecessarily in contexts that don’t really demand it, and often inject anger into situations where love or calm would be more appropriate. Though they are our most energy-charged words, when used as generic intensifiers, they lose their oomph. So, if you cherish them as I do, handle them with care, and save them for special occasions.

In polite discourse, curse-word substitutes can be more effective than the actual curse words themselves. “Frickin’” (also “fricken” or “freaking”) is a good example. It means “accursed.” It’s a way of saying, “I’m usually too much of a gentle person to swear, but this circumstance is driving me to it!” I also like punctuation substitutions for swearing. I’ve standardized on @!!*&, over the years. Four characters might be better, but I like the excitement factor of the double exclamation points, and that assortment of punctuation just has a nice, balanced look to it. The unusual characters give the sense of the “word” being outside the parameters of what’s normal. That makes readers perk up. Similarly, words that are a little outside casual usage can give a text life. That goes for lyrics, too.

Truly bad words are those that distract from communication, and in the highly complex and technical world of writing about music, clarity is what makes the writing useful. Consider this sentence:

“You must practice these fingerings.”

In this context, the first two words, “You must,” are bad words. They steal the verb’s thunder and only add clutter, not real value. They are such common words that they essentially serve as filler here. So, in fact, what makes a word good or bad is its context. In another circumstance, “you” might be perfect!

Here’s a modified version of that sentence. It is so much more poignant with the bad words taken out:

“Practice these fingerings.”

Much clearer! Also, “You must” made the original communication unnecessarily personalized and bossy, and that’s another distraction, here. When giving instructions, avoid anything that diminishes the clarity like that. The tasks at hand are difficult enough to teach without cluttering up our writing with bad words.

Know what I’m frickin’ saying?

The same essential body of knowledge can be taught via books or online courses. At Berklee, the book-publishing arm (Berklee Press) and the online school (Berkleemusic) are organized under the same division, Berklee Media. Until recently, we even shared staff, and even now, there is much overlap between who is writing books and who is developing online courses. My office is right next to that of Debbie Cavalier, the Dean of Continuing Education, and we constantly send potential authors back and forth to each other. Many authors (Dave Kusek, Jimmy Kachulis, Dan Thompson, Eric Beall, and many, many others) have written both books and online courses on the same material, and they use their books as textbooks for their courses. And sometimes, an author will pitch a concept to one of us or the other, and we’ll say, “This would work better as a book,” or “This would be a great online course.”

From the author’s perspective, the processes of writing each are very similar. They both entail looking at the subject, organizing what topics get presented in what order, and crafting how best to articulate concepts.

But there are differences that anyone developing either one (or both) should keep in mind. By playing to the strengths of each medium, the final products can be optimized for the best user experience.

1. Online courses at Berkleemusic are highly interactive. Students post assignments for review by the instructor and other students. Students ask questions. This is perhaps the richest dimension of the online experience, and high quality courses are designed to facilitate meaningful communication. Interactivity and communication are chief benefits of online courses over books, and they exponentially magnify the learning experience.

2. Integration between media types in online courses can be deeper, more prevalent, and more seamless than in books. Many books have accompanying CDs or even DVDs, but it is relatively cumbersome to switch between reading a book and listening to a CD. Online, it is natural to read a paragraph, take a Flash quiz, and watch a video, all on the same page. The multimedia experience is the other chief educational advantage of online courses.

3. Books can vary in depth and breadth more than the standard 12-week online course format can, and different books have different types of purposes and grandiosity of ambition. A course must always be a deep, substantial hunk of education that significantly raises students’ capabilities and understanding. Books, though, can be more focused, such as Gilson Schachnik’s new Beginning Ear Training (the one with the elephant), which is essentially a set of ear training practice exercises with minimal pedagogical rumination. Or, books can be deep and comprehensive, such as Dan Thompson’s Understanding Audio, which shows how an intimate understanding of the physics of sound can transform your disappointing, lackluster plink-plank-plunk of a guitar sound into a banshee-screaming fire engine of a groove machine. As is Dan’s wont.

Courses conform to schedules, and for that reason, they must have tighter parameters regarding the amount of content they present. Books, though, can have chapters or appendixes that might potentially be relatively advanced or esoteric to some readers. A big chart with tons of detail might work nicely in a book but be awkward in a course. It’s not such a big deal for a reader to skip a chapter in a book, compared to skipping a week of a course.

Beyond the schedule, courses have to conform to other standards, particularly if they are associated with academic institutions such as Berklee. The ones here at Berkleemusic are NEASC accredited, college level courses. This means a number of things, in terms of academic rigor, substantial homework assignments, student assessments, credentials of authors and instructors, and so on. And if they are Berkleemusic courses, it goes without saying that the content must be aligned with that of Berklee College’s standards and scope. A course that’s part of a curriculum has different requirements and parameters than do most books, though certainly textbooks need to similarly be reflective and supportive of exterior factors.

4. Books are portable. You don’t need electricity, and you can read them in bed, on the beach, while seated at your piano, etc. Sure, you might do the same with your laptop, but it’s not as easy. You can give a book to someone else.

5. Reading a computer screen is more taxing than reading a book, and so varying media types are ideally interspersed, in writing online courses. Rather than just screens and screens of endless text, like an online book (which is what lesser online courses do than those we have at Berkleemusic), we enliven the readers’ experience by changing teaching/learning approach often. Good classroom teachers do this too. They lecture for a bit, then write something on the board, then ask a question. So online, text is interspersed with graphics, movies, audio clips, discussions, animations, and so on. This is how we keep students awake. It requires more collaboration between the author and courseware developers, graphics designer, and so on, than books.

In a book, it is fine to have just text or just music notation, though of course, graphics and accompanying recordings are often helpful. It’s generally subtler, though, more along the lines of presenting a concept, then exemplifying it, then perhaps practicing it, and so on, as a means of varying the reader’s perception mechanism. It might all happen in text.

6. The experience of reading and holding a book is more organic than the experience of viewing a computer screen. Readers can read a book at their own paces, without worrying about deadlines and project due dates. They can skip a chapter, read chapters out of order, or practice the same exercises every day for twenty years.

From a user perspective, the online experience is both more intense and more directed than the book-reading experience. The element of timing in a course adds structure to learning, which can inspire a greater flurry of effort from the student/reader. Then, the course ends, and the student and teacher say their good-byes.

Books are forever. A book can sit on your shelf and serve as a reference indefinitely. You might have a question long after you read a book, and so look something up in the index, spending two minutes per year with a book every year for the rest of your life.

7. Online courses are relatively easy to update. A teacher can post “Late breaking news” at any time, during an online course, and therefore add content on the fly, that’s not part of the traditional authoring process. If you are teaching a software program and there’s a new release, you can change your content quickly and easily. A book might become obsolete and appropriately go out of print in the same circumstance.

It’s helpful to have taught material before writing a book about it. This could be in an online course, a live course, a seminar, a private studio, or whatever. Students and other sounding boards help us to refine our ideas and align our pet priorities with real needs. Their questions and challenges are gifts that help us to maintain relevance. But there’s nothing like writing a book to deepen how well we really understand our subject. Writing, and dare I say being edited, gives us the space to articulate our ideas clearly, reworking a sentence or an explanation over and over until it’s rendered clearly. And when we uncover a gap in our understanding, we can go research it. We can read three other books about it, and then write the best explanation ever about how it really should be.

To a great extent, courses are defined by the students participating. For example, in my Finale course, some sections might have more music teachers, others more film composers, others more church choir directors. Everyone asks unique questions to address their personal work (which is the basis for their assignments), and this makes each course a unique journey, with a unique persona.

Courses are optimized to be journeys, rather than persistent references. They are little communities that last for a finite period where participants can potentially change each other’s lives. They are about human interaction as the means of transferring knowledge.

In a book, the author is an expert who takes the stage and rhapsodizes, uninterrupted. In an online course, the instructor says his bit, and then opens the floor to discussion. In courses, the transfer of knowledge is more customized to the reader, and less predictable. In books, subjects can be more deeply articulated.

While the author’s effort is similar in producing either one, the reader’s experience is quite different. Both have their places in the learning process. And writing either one with an eye towards optimizing the user’s experience will always yield the most useful and even transformative results.

Writing books tends to drive musicians bonkers, particularly towards the end of the process when we’re fussing with minutia, reviewing proofs, cleaning up the final punchlist of details, and awaiting the final endlessly long march to the printer. Authors get crabby. There are two primary reasons why, in my opinion:

1. Books are persistent artifacts of an author’s best work and best thinking, and so getting books exactly right is intertwined with perceptions of self worth. At the end of the project, we feel stuck with its limitations, and are running out of time to make it the perfect, most holistic statement of who we are.

2. Musicians need to create actual music. Writing books about music is not the same as making music, and towards the end of the process, we get antsy because it’s been such an incredibly laborious distraction from what we need to be our primary life focus: making music.

(I won’t offer a third reason: that they are getting fed up with me torturing them…. That couldn’t be the case, could it?!)

An antidote to the first one, about identity, is to plan to write a series of books in your life that will collectively articulate a part of your persona, but more importantly to realize that no book could ever possibly do a soul justice. Books just don’t have that capability.

An antidote to the third one, if it exists (and I’m sure it does not), is to know that I will leave you alone very soon.

The middle one is what I really want to discuss. This past weekend, I took my boys to visit Sue (Gedutis) Lindsay and her family. Sue is a friend, musician, and fellow editor of Berklee Media projects. Here are Annie Lindsay and Forrest Feist munching on French fries, before we went to Plimoth Plantation.

We were catching up, and I was complaining about being generally crabby, and I mentioned feeling a bit far from music these days, when I seem to spend all my time talking and writing about music, rather than actually creating the real thing.

She offered a bit of wisdom that I feel is important to pass on. Cynical Sue said (and I paraphrase), “Musicians are special people, and we need to be creating music all the time, to feel normal.” She discussed her own journey through various distractions that were almost, but not quite, music, including writing books, research, teaching, and so forth. It’s not that these aren’t worthy, fun, and even necessary undertakings. We must call them “pseudo-musical activities,” though, and doing the real thing is where it’s really at. We must carve out time to create real music, for sanity’s sake, and be ferociously protective of this time.

So, I’m looking at life, and counting directions. I have my family (including two little boys), an old/maintenance-needing house, endless yard work, I serve on three town boards (chairing one), there’s my full-time gig at Berklee Press, part-time teaching Finale online, a variety of neglected hobbies, a few assorted other obligations, plus protecting my flock of chickens/ducks/geese from that hungry fox….. Quite a lot happening here, which all conspire to create distance from that spiritual life engine called music, which is the primary force that can keep me relatively sane and whole, but which is now at arm’s length. And I feel it poignantly this November, as days grow short and the world grows cold.

Prioritization is increasingly a necessary life’s skill for me, and I would venture, for anyone, as life developments bring increasing directions without offering us more hours in the day.

Arthur Cunningham, my first composition teacher and life mentor, once said to me, “I promise you that if you write every day, you will improve.”

So, here’s my thought/recommendation:

Create music every day.

Even if it’s for five minutes, you need to touch that fire, no how busy you are, and no matter how deeply your daily life is embroiled into pseudo-musical or non-musical activities. An hour would be great, but five minutes is better than nothing. Recognize that pseudo-musical activities (writing, teaching, studying, copying parts….) are not the same as making music, even though they might be delightful experiences in their own right. We need to be constantly warmed by that real core energy of musical spirit.

Commercial success and even inter-human communication are secondary to being warmed by the fire of creativity. Consider it a life imperative to touch the real thing. See progress over weeks, months, and years, not over the course of a few minutes.

If this rings true to you, please stop surfing the ’net, and create music for five minutes RIGHT NOW. Close your door, then play your guitar, beat your drum, improvise, scat sing, write a lyric—whatever the real-deal-essence-of-what-music-is-all-about-closest-to-center activity is for you. Then schedule a time when you will do it again tomorrow, and repeat. Just five minutes.

Let me know how it goes.

In grammar and style guides, a tremendous amount of ink has been devoted to the topic of when to use words and when to use numerals. Many book publishers, including Berklee Press, use the Chicago Manual of Style as their guide for such things. Although CMS makes a valiant attempt at clarifying this topic, the needs of music writing are very specific, and other resources have been necessary in our quest towards clarity and consistency with this.

I found that the most helpful resources are ones devoted to the most technical forms of scientific writing. Fun reading, let me tell you. In this post, I will share some of the insights I’ve gained about when to use numerals and when to use words.

A guiding principle, though, is this: Numerals are different than words, and they are an interruption to the reader’s general flow. They can be a great help in clarifying comparisons and names, but they should be used thoughtfully because there is the danger that they can become annoying.

As with all matters of writing, clarity is key.

The CMS general rule is to write out all whole numbers from –100 to 100. A-hah, you say! You should have written “minus one hundred to one hundred.” Well, I wish I could have, but when quantities are set in close proximity, as in a range, it’s clearer to use numerals.

See the game?

Here’s a sentence that took a ton of research to construct, the process of which was extremely helpful to me in understanding how to render numerals.

1. “A 12-bar blues has three 4-bar phrases.”

[applause, please...]

Here, we have two types of quantities: types of musical constructions (12-bar, 4-bar) and a quantity of objects of these types (three). It’s clearer to have a distinction in how these differing logical organizations are rendered. Compare that above sentence to the alternatives:

2. “A twelve-bar blues has three four-bar phrases.”

3. “A 12-bar blues has 3 4-bar phrases.”

The eye has to puzzle out examples (2) and (3) in a way that it doesn’t have to puzzle out (1). Example (3) is particularly difficult, figuring out the 3 and 4. It’s an example of a numeral being annoying and disruptive rather than clarifying.

By the way, I set parentheses around example numerals because I don’t want to confuse the other numerals with my example numerals. So, each type of number gets a unique treatment, and reading comprehension is served, hopefully.

This gets hairy, hairy, hairy. One of the most difficult types of writing to do is writing about music theory for guitar, as in Jon Damian’s recent book, The Chord Factory. Why? Because there are a great many types of numbers involved. You’ve got:

String numbers
Fret numbers
Finger numbers
Interval numbers
Chord extension numbers
Scale tone numbers

With your first finger on the 1st fret of the 6th string and your third finger on the 3rd fret of the 4th string, play a fifth from the root, and then imagine the C9 accompaniment….

[more applause, please….]

It’s quite murderous, tracking these over hundreds of pages (not to mention, hundreds of books).

Beyond just specifying rule after rule, there are a couple principles that I find helpful to keep in mind.

1. If something is identified or categorized by its number, then use the numeral (or “ordinal” form of the numeral, e.g., 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.). 16-track unit, 1st fret, fret 1, page 6. Cmin7(9)

2. If there are two different types of numbers that are likely to be discussed in close proximity to each other, see if there is a logical way to make them different, even if it forces you to violate some “rules.” “Put your first finger on the 1st fret.” Or, rework: Put your 1st finger on fret 1.”

3. If you are comparing more than two quantities, use numerals. I have 2, you have 6, and she has all 9.” That’s an example of numerals being clarifying.

It is a great challenge to make sure that these are stylistically consistent at the book and catalog level, and this is where lists of rules can be helpful. Again, though, you sometimes need to violate the rules to achieve clarity.

Here are the “rules” listed in the Berklee Press Style Guide, which have a specific slant towards music writing and are thus supplementary to CMS. Unfortunately, this list seems to be ever expanding. I think it was originally compiled by Susan Gedutis Lindsay.

Words

Whole numbers (zero to one hundred, including negative numbers)

Numbers that begin a sentence (Three thousand fifty-five people…)

Intervals (Play both notes of the minor third in measure 3.)

Also note: In labels in musical examples, intervals are abbreviated using the numeral and its quality. M (major), m (minor), and P (perfect), as in M7, m3, P5.

Note values up to sixteenths (whole note, half note, quarter note, eighth note, sixteenth note, but 32nd note, 64th note, etc.)

Beat quantities (A half note lasts for two beats.)

Measure quantities (Vamp for sixteen bars.)

Inversions (first inversion)

Finger number (Third finger)

Numerals

Numbers with decimals and fractions (1.56, 2 1/2)

Measure numbers (measures 3–11)

Item names where numbers are important (16-track recorder, 12-bar blues)

Model numbers (DX-7, Hammond B3 organ)

Money ($25)

Note values larger than a sixteenth note (32nd note)

Beat numbers (beats 2 and 4)

Scale degrees (Degree 4 of C major is F.)

Chord degrees (A major triad has a major 3rd.)

Chord numbers (Substitute VI for II at the coda.)

Metronome markings (Set the quarter note to 88 bpm.)

String number (First finger on the 3rd string.)

Fret or position (7th fret or fret 7)

Time signatures (4/4)

Forms (12-bar blues)

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Complain, complain, complain. As an editor, that’s what I do all day long. Don’t do this, don’t do that. This chapter is fluff, this paragraph is redundant. Yank this, reword that, add this, rethink that.

It’s not an issue with Berklee Press authors specifically. They are great—smart, experienced teachers, generally with uniquely perspectives on both how to teach and how to make music. It’s just a part of the editing process. If we’re aiming to produce the best books on their topics ever published, we have to get deep down into looking at minutiae, which often, admittedly, the only people who really care (consciously) are other editors. But in making it better than necessary, we hopefully make it really great—useful to musicians trying to improve their craft.

Twelve or so years ago, in another job, I had a manager who once said to me, “You can come to me with any problem, as long as you also bring me its solution.” At the time, it made me so mad I almost quit, but there’s definitely some truth to it, in terms of a productive business model. So, rather than just writing, “This stinks, redo,” editors generally suggest fixes to the problem. “This is redundant, so delete this paragraph and replace it with an example, to liven things up.”

Which brings us to baseball, which I have always loathed. I was thirty before I attended a live professional baseball game. But an ex-friend insisted that it was my duty as an American to at least give it a try, so she dragged me to Fenway Park, where the Red Sox beat some other team. I’m sorry that someone had to lose the game, with so many people watching. Whether or not it was the Red Sox remains irrelevant to me.

It’s been nearly ten years since that boring afternoon (and since I heard from my companion at Fenway Park). But the Red Sox played a significant (to them) game a few days ago, and people keep trying to chat with me about it.

Rather than just complain, I will offer some suggestions for how to make the Great American Waste of Time less loathsome.

My Suggested Improved Rules of Baseball

1. Make it a rule that to be on a professional baseball team, you must have been born and raised in that team’s city—or at least truly associated with the city, in some way. At the game I attended, Mo Vaughn (actually born in Connecticut, but at least it’s New England) hit a home run. The man sitting in front of me was so excited, he said to his little boy, “Wow, now you can say that you saw Mo Vaughn hit a home run in Fenway Park!”

For a moment, I actually thought that maybe there was indeed something positive about baseball—some city pride in a local hero’s achievement. But then shortly afterwards, Mr. Vaughn got a better offer, and dumped Boston for Anaheim, and then later joined the Mets before retiring to sell hot dogs in Somerville. So, there is really practically nothing “Boston” or even “New England,” about the Red Sox, and I can’t imagine why anyone takes civic pride in how this team of carpet baggers fairs.

Also, it’s a bit discriminatory. The Dominican Republic raises the best baseball players in the world, but they don’t get credit for it because their native sons are signed up to represent teams all over the United States. Is Boston better than Detroit? Is a city famous for higher education better than one famous for making cars? Certainly, baseball is no indicator, because the teams purportedly from those cities actually have nothing to do with the cities at all. Making a “must be born and raised” clause would make the games much more relevant as reflections of society.

By the way, I call Mo Vaughn a hero not because he can whack a baseball but because of all the work he’s been doing in rehabilitating low income housing. For that, people should cheer him whether he’s at the plate on the field or the plate at the hot dog stand.

If we don’t make the advertised regional origins more real, then yank the city name from the name of the team, and just call it Red Sox Corporation. We don’t refer to other companies located in Boston with “Boston” in their name. Boston Fidelity? Boston Gillette? Boston Berklee? So, why “Boston Red Sox?” All that’s currently Boston about them are some file cabinets and some grass.

2. Make player salaries not exceed that of the snack vendors. Most of watching baseball involves waiting for something to happen, and the only way to make all the tedious waiting palatable is to drink beer and eat hot dogs. Therefore, I suggest that the vendors are actually more critical to the overall experience than the players are. Let’s give compensation where it is due.

3. Give the loafing players something to do while the batter and pitcher do their thing. Besides the fact that my parking lot’s fee goes from $17 to $35 a day when there is a game at Fenway Park, what I hate most about baseball is that it is such a waste of resources. So many highly paid, competent professionals just stand around, scratching themselves, waiting for a very small percentage of the team to do any work.

Everyone else might try juggling tricks, for instance. The shortstop, the left fielder, everyone in the dugout, and so on, could all juggle, and stop only when the ball comes their way. Sheesh, their salaries are high enough, they could at least toss around some clubs or flaming torches. Anything, to relieve the tedium!

4. Improve the food. Maybe Italian pastries? And how about some decent beer—like, a local microbrew, rather than the standard commercial swill. Boston’s Beer Works is right across the street from Fenway Park, so serving their beer in the bleachers would be a natural fit. Wheeling kegs across the street should be cheaper than trucking in Budweiser from the Midwest. And how about some true Boston fare, such as fried seafood and lobster rolls?

5. Get some diversity on the field. Meaning, mix up that monoculture of grass with a more environmentally conscious assortment of pasture plants that will support a healthier ecosystem. Maybe let some heritage breed animals graze on it when there’s no game on—traditional New England breeds such as Devon cows, Jacob sheep, Dominique chickens, Pilgrim geese, and such. And leave the droppings. It would make those dramatic slides onto base more heroic—particularly if there were some chickens flapping out of the way.

6. Improve the music. They have some pretty great artists doing the national anthem, and such, and I was heartened when Tiger Okoshi performed with his pickup band of taiko drummers and horn players, in honor of Dice-K’s debut. But surely, there are more opportunities for live music? With three conservatories (Berklee, NEC, Boston Conservatory) so close to Fenway Park that there is the constant danger of a stray foul ball damaging any number of Steinways, you’d think that the Sox would have the community spirit to give some of their neighbors some gigs.

Just be local, is what I’m saying. Local beer, local music, local players. Be Boston. Then, if a nasty city like Elizabeth, NJ or Waco, TX hacks up a team, I’d genuinely want the Red Sox to win.

By the way, Tiger Okoshi is a Berklee professor and a wonderfully creative jazz trumpeter. He was co-author (with Charles Lewis) of The Berklee Practice Method for Trumpet, which teaches trumpeters how to play in rock bands/small jazz combos.

See, this is a relevant entry to my blog.

Anyhow, I hope that these suggested modifications of the rules of baseball can be enacted right away, and thus lead to some much-needed improvements in the game.

To see the Red Sox schedule, and thus know when to avoid parking in my lot next year, click here.