Summer!

I’ve been spending time regrouping, and am now at the Cortona Sessions for New Music, where I’ve been inspired by the enthusiasm and and rigor of the fellows and faculty.

What do musicians do over the summer? Sure, you could go to a festival and play gigs, but what if you have some unstructured time? It can also be an expanse of open space, particularly for musicians in high school or early in their collegiate experiences.

News flash: it’s summer! For musicians summer can be the busiest time of year: festivals, concerts, residencies and more. For students and those on an academic calendar, an enigma. 3 months of free time? Hardly. 3 months of unstructured time? Could be. A long time that could be wasted? Perhaps.

What to do with summer?

Over the past year, Mike Truesdell and I have been putting our respective 1/2 brains together on our MikeDrop podcast, discussing topics as narrow as “the snare drum music of Jacques Delécluse” and as broad as, you guessed it, “What to Do Over Summer” (clearly, not record a podcast).

In between breaks rehearsing and recording Scarlatti, Couperin, and Rameau, Mike and I assembled some summer materials for musicians, creatives, curious people, and “adult learners” (as the national endowment for the humanities calls them).

Below are my top tips and some additional resources. I’m going to dig deeper into these ideas in the coming weeks.

The MikeDrop Guide to Summer

Mike C’s Big Ideas

There is No Summer

Our goal as creatives is to build systems that help one work sustainably throughout the year. I don’t want to feel so drained by the end of the academic year that I spend all of May just recovering…oops…darn… What about creating systems of work and rest that enable long-term balance?

Think Big

Spend time thinking about how our bodies learn new things and take on challenges that do that, even if they aren’t musical. For me (Mike C), this means contextualizing practice within a larger whole of learning, and spending time over the summer on the “non-practicing” parts of learning: study, research, analysis, inspiration. You know, this stuff:

Think Bigger

Musicians are in the culture business, and spending time over the summer recharging your artistic well can have tremendous benefits. Likewise, experiencing other forms of art and making connections between disciplines can help to cross-train your brain. Visit an art museum and think about the relationships to your repertoire, or spend some time noticing architectural details in a favorite city.

Mike T's Big Ideas

Mike T, as always, has a system. His summer plan maximizes impact through three distinct phases.

1. Decompress
2. Prepare and Develop
3. Taper

As always, he has a chart:

In fact, Mike laid out his summer priorities quite humorously here:

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Mike C and T Agree

It wouldn’t be MikeDrop without offensively high consensus, so here are some summer ideas we both agreed on:

Revisit and Hone Technic

al Skills; Expand Repertoire

Dust off those method books and revisit the fundamentals, auditing and enhancing skills along the way. Looking for new inspiration? Here are some of the Mikes’ favorite method books:

For Mike T, sight-singing, rhythmic reading, and other basic musicianship tasks are on the table. Mike C (the lazy one) likes to take on a big new project to motivate technical growth.

Set Practical Goals and Engage in New Projects

Both Mikes advocate for using summer to plan and execute new projects that might be left on the wayside during the school year. Mike T says that working on activities requiring a different focus (home improvements, planning community concerts, reading fiction) help “organize the brain”

Maintain a Flexible Routine

Creating a routine that allows for both structured practice and spontaneous creativity is essential.

• Mike C. discusses the importance of integrating experiences and insights from outside the music world into daily practice. Do something that inspires and challenges you every day.
• Mike T argues that a daily routine of basic musicianship is essential.

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Further Resources

Listening

Repertoire knowledge is a powerful benchmark of musical fluency. Coming soon: MikeDrop’s favorite recordings

Practicing

Musical technique is best developed on a separate but parallel track from repertoire development.

New method books to check out? Check out our discussion of mallet percussion books:

Reading

Want a summer reading list? Here’s mine:​

What I learned going full ASU on my studio: leverage, scale, systems, AI.

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