Whiplash (The Movie)

[James Steele]

Anyway, the guy in the movie just had a warped sense of priorities and a self-inflated vision of his psychopathic behavior as the motivator that would "make or break" a kid. He was so wrong. But the movie more-or-less makes that understood by the end.

Exactly. I don't want to give too much away, but you got the feeling that even though Terrence Fletcher could try to rationalize his emotional brutalizing of his students and even try to make it seem as if it was all in pursuit of a noble goal, the very end of the movie belied his true vindictive nature. If there were any doubt before, you realized that there really had to have been a part of Terrence Fletcher that enjoyed being a bully.

[Shooshie]

Well said!

[Phil O]

I thought the movie was great and the acting superb. Regardless of how you feel about Fletcher's methods, the movie presented both sides well. I'm with Shooshie on this one, but I won't elaborate and spoil it for anyone. Do watch!

Phil

[Bowman]

I used both approaches in my career. Though I hate to say it, fear works.

However, I had the extraordinary privilege of studying with one of the greatest teachers of all time. This is not hyperbole. The list of great violinists who passed through the studio of Dorothy DeLay at Juilliard is both long and impressive: Itzhak Perlman, Sarah Chang, Midori, Gil Shaham, Nadia Salerno-Sonnenberg, Nigel Kennedy ... that's just for starters. Concertmasters of major orchestras, world-class chamber musicians, great studio players (hello there, Bruce Dukow). And me. For six wonderful years.

Miss DeLay was unbelievably kind as a teacher, patient beyond understanding sometimes, always looking for the right way to teach someone. We used to tease her about her way of referring to her charges as "sweetie, sugar plum, sweet little lamb", etc. She could, however, be tough as nails, and because of her generally sunny demeanor when she decided to drop a bomb it was very, very effective. No shouting, no bad temper. Normally delivered with the same sweet smile as her positive remarks. Just the right comment at the right time. Ow. All the more effective for the tone of voice.

While I much prefer to have a reputation of being a nice guy to work with, I have from time to time found fear an excellent motivator, particularly when conducting opera. There are those with whom one can always reason, but when a stage and a pit are involved there are a lot of otherwise superb artists who turn into dunderheads. As the man holding the whole thing together, eventually you learn that it doesn't matter if the people working for you like you or not. What matters is the performance. So long as the fear generated is justified it works a lot better than I would like it to. I would always rather motivate than intimidate, but when the show is tomorrow evening and there are people not doing their jobs ...

Bowman

[Shooshie]

I used both approaches in my career. Though I hate to say it, fear works.

However, I had the extraordinary privilege of studying with one of the greatest teachers of all time. This is not hyperbole. The list of great violinists who passed through the studio of Dorothy DeLay at Juilliard is both long and impressive: Itzhak Perlman, Sarah Chang, Midori, Gil Shaham, Nadia Salerno-Sonnenberg, Nigel Kennedy ... that's just for starters. Concertmasters of major orchestras, world-class chamber musicians, great studio players (hello there, Bruce Dukow). And me. For six wonderful years.

Miss DeLay was unbelievably kind as a teacher, patient beyond understanding sometimes, always looking for the right way to teach someone. We used to tease her about her way of referring to her charges as "sweetie, sugar plum, sweet little lamb", etc. She could, however, be tough as nails, and because of her generally sunny demeanor when she decided to drop a bomb it was very, very effective. No shouting, no bad temper. Normally delivered with the same sweet smile as her positive remarks. Just the right comment at the right time. Ow. All the more effective for the tone of voice.

While I much prefer to have a reputation of being a nice guy to work with, I have from time to time found fear an excellent motivator, particularly when conducting opera. There are those with whom one can always reason, but when a stage and a pit are involved there are a lot of otherwise superb artists who turn into dunderheads. As the man holding the whole thing together, eventually you learn that it doesn't matter if the people working for you like you or not. What matters is the performance. So long as the fear generated is justified it works a lot better than I would like it to. I would always rather motivate than intimidate, but when the show is tomorrow evening and there are people not doing their jobs ...

Bowman

I get that, and I'm not always known for a mild manner, myself. (but never like Fletcher) But what I've noticed over years of playing under dozens of conductors, some famous, some scarcely out of grad school, is that every conductor simply has to use what works for him/her. When I was in college, our band director was a tyrant. He'd waste half our rehearsal time screaming about one incident where someone didn't respect his stick as the absolute authority on tempo. When he conducted the band, it sounded stiff. Not "military," just stiff. I've played under military conductors, like Arnold Gabriel, who could make military precision feel like swing. But this guy made all our phrases feel angular, dynamics feel flat, and time feel like the next note was going to trip over the last.

Then the assistant conductor would have us for a few days, when the conductor was out of town, and from the first note, the music would just pour like water through a brook. He never raised his voice, and hardly ever talked at all. How, one might ask, does the mere presence and gestures of this other director cause an entire group to suddenly begin playing like the London Symphony under Previn? It's not like we conspired to do it.

I learned stick technique, and practiced endlessly with scores. When I directed orchestras, I recognized that I, too, had a "sound," but I have no idea how or why the orchestra responded to me with a particular sound or style. But from what I remember from way back in college with those two band directors, the conductor's demeanor and the way he/she expresses it does far more than stick technique, tyrannical shouting, fear, sweetness, or anything else. Oh, yeah, there are still those players that have to be prodded, taught, or threatened within an inch of their lives to get their attention, but I'm talking about that one thing: how a group responds to an individual on the podium. It has always fascinated me, and I think it's something you can't teach or learn. Like those people who can walk down the street and make friends in a strange city, some people just exude the ability to communicate music.

I've seen some recent, young conductors (Los Angeles, New York) who have this gift. I wish I did!

Shooshie

[mhschmieder]

My brother asked me to not see it, so I obeyed his wishes. I don't want to get the forum into trouble by saying why; send me a PM if interested. It's related to location footage.

At any rate, the premise of the film is a bit strange, since everyone I talk to (or even from my own experiences at music conservatories) seems to think such personalities are extremely rare vs. the norm, as far as what one encounters in music academia.

Of course, artistic license is what fiction is all about, but I do hope non-musicians don't over-generalize after seeing it. Probably the art world, and obviously also the world of writers, have suffered similarly from iconic films that paint a broad stroke of an entire profession (or role within the profession).

[Shooshie]

My brother asked me to not see it, so I obeyed his wishes. I don't want to get the forum into trouble by saying why; send me a PM if interested. It's related to location footage.

At any rate, the premise of the film is a bit strange, since everyone I talk to (or even from my own experiences at music conservatories) seems to think such personalities are extremely rare vs. the norm, as far as what one encounters in music academia.

Of course, artistic license is what fiction is all about, but I do hope non-musicians don't over-generalize after seeing it. Probably the art world, and obviously also the world of writers, have suffered similarly from iconic films that paint a broad stroke of an entire profession (or role within the profession).

Real-world teachers like the one depicted in Whiplash may be somewhat rare, but that's not really the point. Fletcher is an amalgam of lots of common stereotypes in academia. If you spent time in music school, you encountered many of those. Traditional music instruction relationships almost guarantee that the personality disorders will develop in a certain percentage of teachers. The one-on-one teacher/student relationship and the director who exercises god-like power over a large group are both situations where individual successes depend on following him/her absolutely and without question. In music schools it's a one-way dictatorial relationship. Just as there are good and bad parents, some teachers will naturally cross over to the dark side. It happens a lot more than anyone wants to admit. Most music students eventually find a good teacher who treats them well, but nearly everyone suffers a little damage along the way. It's important not to let those people prevent you from developing.

But the relationship itself is a complicated thing. It's almost necessary to break students' egos so that they start to see themselves more objectively, but if it's done right, it also toughens them to be confident no matter what others are saying. It's like the Rudyard Kipling poem, "If."

• If you can keep your head when all about you
  Are losing theirs and blaming it on you
  If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
  Yet make allowance for their doubting too...

I don't think anyone ever became a great player without learning to seek honest (sometimes painful) feedback, and to realize how it benefits them to take it seriously. But if the person giving the feedback develops jealousy and starts making it brutal, you've got to be able to remove them from your inner circle. That is hard to do when that person also holds the keys to your advancement and graduation, your recommendations, your paycheck, and so forth.

The movie was not subtle. Most real relationships are much more subtle, less personal. But the same factors are at work, and it's about time someone highlighted it for the world to see. I just hope that people realize that the teacher doesn't have to be so over-the-top like Fletcher for it to be just as devastating to the student.

Shooshie

[mhschmieder]

Good points, Shooshie. My own problems in music school are too personal for a forum such as this, but I get where you're coming from regarding a filmmaker's perceived need to use non-subtle methods to reach a larger audience with their intended message, and that actual real world stuff can be very devastating.

One of the worst things I encountered was during an audition. To keep it more anonymous, I will not say which conservatory. The professor who was auditioning me stood directly behind me, dropping hot cigar ashes on my shoulders the entire time I was playing, and knocking my music stand over several times.

Fortunately, I had memorized the music long before (and it wasn't exactly easy stuff, being Darius Milhaud's Clarinet Concerto, which only has one brief rest and is full of 64th notes and faster articulations). I was really ticked off about the cigar ash intimidation technique though, and chose to not go to that school as a result. It's a good deal of why I ended up at Indiana.

[Shooshie]

I only have only a few audition stories, but one sticks with me. The judge was the NTSU wind ensemble director. When I returned as a grad student at 28, I wanted to play lead in his wind ensemble. He knew I'd been away from academia and teaching, so he used a very difficult etude for sight-reading, the only thing we played besides scales. It was the one that all the high school kids in the area had learned for the All-Region competition. The incoming freshmen knew it by heart. And the only people who knew it better, were their private teachers who played it all day while giving lessons.

They were my competition, and they knew it cold. I played it their tempo, but with six flats and lots of double-flats, something must have gotten past me. The director gave me second chair alto sax to one of those private teachers. On a level playing field I'd probably have won, and I WAS sight reading. I asked to be switched to tenor, which he did, and I asked him why he used that piece. He was off-guard for an instant, caught himself, and made some remark like "you have to be a good reader to play here." He became too busy to answer when I asked him if he knew that over half his auditioners had it memorized.

I learned that the guy had been getting an ear-full about me from a particular sax player who had been friends with him for years. The player was good, but he had feared competing with me from the day I started as an undergrad, when he had judged the auditions. (Red flag? Auditions judged by an auditioner?) He'd been bad-mouthing me ever since. I didn't know about it for years, but the two sax professors each told me about it, unsolicited, because they'd actually confronted the director.

What did I learn? When someone spends years running you down every time your name comes up, there's little you can do about it. Attempting to repair the damage or countering the slander will only deepen the hole. You've got to know you're starting "in the hole," and you'll have to play your way out of it. Sometimes that is impossible. That's one reason we have laws against slander.

Shooshie

[Bowman]

The professor who was auditioning me stood directly behind me, dropping hot cigar ashes on my shoulders the entire time I was playing, and knocking my music stand over several times.

Profs like that are contemptible. Auditions are, by their very nature, intimidating. You don't need some sadistic bastard making the situation worse to prove that you can't be "thrown off your concentration", or some such nonsense. Ugh.

As for fairness in auditions, I question if it really exists. There is always some sort of bias, even at orchestral auditions where there are screens. Shortly before I took my one and only audition for a major orchestra (not saying which one), I played a gig with one of the people who I knew would be on the other side of the screen. I asked him about the music director's priorities, so as to know which way to go in certain aspects (faster but rougher vs. slower and cleaner, etc.) He told me. I won the audition. Was that fair to those who didn't have the benefit of the advice I received? Probably not, but this kind of thing goes on all the time.

One thing is for certain: it wasn't necessary for anyone to yell at me to get me to play better.

Bowman

[Shooshie]

I asked him about the music director's priorities, so as to know which way to go in certain aspects (faster but rougher vs. slower and cleaner, etc.) He told me. I won the audition. Was that fair to those who didn't have the benefit of the advice I received? Probably not, but this kind of thing goes on all the time.

That's not unfair. You sought information. He didn't tell you what the sight-reading material would be. THAT would be cheating. But just knowing how to approach the excerpts? There should be an online database for all conductors with that information. What's unfair is that you get up there and don't know what they're looking for in the excerpts. Do they want a bel-canto player? Do they want someone who stays strictly "inside the lines?" Well, they ALL want that, but it's still subjective until you know what they consider "inside the lines." People put a lot of money into orchestral auditions. I know people who have been to close to a hundred auditions over their careers. Each one costs money, plus there are plane fares and hotel bills, taxis, restaurants... it's a major undertaking. So, you get up there and go with a choice. Later you find that it was the wrong choice. You could just as easily have done it whatever way they want it, but they aren't telling you that. It's maddening!

I did find a forum that claims to discuss past auditions with insider information.

Here's an interesting item about music auditions: Judges tend to choose for looks over sound. That's interesting, because one of those guys who has been to so many auditions has always placed in the top 10, often at 2 or 3, but has never won an audition. I know his playing, and he's as good as they get. Makes you wonder.

Shooshie

[Phil O]

I understand the need to toughen kids up, especially if they are planning on a career in music. Eventually they'll run into a professor, boss or whatever that is like the person depicted in the move (to some extent). You'd like them to develop a thick skin but without the scars. It's not easy administering tough love. I tend to talk about it with my students when they screw up. Typically I'll say something like, "No doubt, some day you'll get a jerk for a professor or work for someone unreasonable. Don't think it won't happen, it will. So don't let this happen again because the next time you might not be lucky enough for it to be me and you'll find yourself out of a job or out of an ensemble at school or worse." It makes the point without (hopefully) causing too much damage.

The other day I suggested to a group of students in one of my ensembles (mostly high school seniors and and a few juniors) that they watch Whiplash. I told them not to let their parents watch it with them because they probably couldn't handle the language (got the laugh). I also explained that they probably will encounter someone with similarly unpleasant demeanor at some point and to think about how they would handle it. I eagerly await their feedback.

Phil

[Shooshie]

I suggest that students spend a year or two at least (and preferably till graduation) at a university or conservatory that has a LOT of extremely high-competition. North Texas, at any given time, had somewhere between 100 and 150 saxophonists. That's a lot of people on one little insignificant instrument, however cool some may think it is. But it creates competition. A school like New England Conservatory or Northwestern will have fewer students, but they will all be top-shelf players. Berkelee (Boston) is a high-powered school for jazz, like North Texas.

If you play classical, you need to benefit from jazz competition, and vice-versa. The two have technique in common, and you learn things from either side that strengthens whatever style you play. It's stupid to listen to jazz players practicing high-intensity scales and patterns, if you are a classical player, and to think that's ok for jazz, but you don't need that. If you play jazz, and you're around classical players thinking you don't need that kind of control over sound, you're equally mistaken, and no amount of search for mouthpieces, reeds, and other gear will fix it. Learn from each other, especially about practicing.

But the #1 reason for experiencing the competition is this: you see your place in the world of music. Those people aren't going away when you leave school for the real world. They'll always be at your auditions, gigs, faculty jobs, and so forth. If you don't master your playing as they do, they will always surpass you. Nobody has to tell you where you rank. You know. But you can change it with practice and attitude. You learn to beat the mf's at whatever is put in front of you.

And nobody ever has to tell you good job, bad job, or anything else. You'll find the way, because you KNOW. But if you go to school where there is little competition except for some music-ed majors who happen to be mediocre players, you'll think you're excelling, but in fact you've developed false confidence. When you encounter people who've been where the competition is great, you'll get crushed.

It's that simple. There's no place for the Fletchers of the world. They're psychopaths, and don't deserve to be in front of students. But students who know their own skill should never feel challenged by such idiots. Just watch them as you would a thunderstorm, even laugh at them. (beware their fists) You know your place. They don't, but you can show them.

Shooshie

[BKK-OZ]

I'm not so sure that we need to see music as a competitive blood-sport.

I'm not suggesting that people should not strive to do their best, or work hard at their craft, or understand how competitive life really is - but many of my favourite artists would laugh at the very notion of 'winning' auditions and 'competing' at music.

The latter has always cracked me up. It is like the current rash of cooking, renovation, and survival TV shows. Somehow, people can 'beat' someone with a well-cooked entrée, or a nicely tiled bathroom. Talent competition shows are the lowest in my view - one person's expression 'wins' and the others 'lose'. I don't get it.

I remember the Beatles laughing about aeolian cadences. They weren't worried about the analysis, they cared about the sound itself. It would be hilarious to watch Bob Dylan trying out for American Idol. Eisteddfods would never have welcomed Charlie Parker. Can you imagine Ornette Coleman going before a judging panel!

[Shooshie]

I'm not so sure that we need to see music as a competitive blood-sport.

I'm not suggesting that people should not strive to do their best, or work hard at their craft, or understand how competitive life really is - but many of my favourite artists would laugh at the very notion of 'winning' auditions and 'competing' at music.

The latter has always cracked me up. It is like the current rash of cooking, renovation, and survival TV shows. Somehow, people can 'beat' someone with a well-cooked entrée, or a nicely tiled bathroom. Talent competition shows are the lowest in my view - one person's expression 'wins' and the others 'lose'. I don't get it.

There's a part of me that agrees with you (or wants to) and a much larger, more rational part that disagrees. Auditions are facts of life for classical players. Always have been, back to Mozart's time and before. Beethoven, Bach, Buxtehude, all engaged in competitions. In the old days, they were public. The people probably had a lot of sway on who actually "won." Sometimes one competitor wouldn't show up, knowing that he stood no chance against someone like Bach or Beethoven. Better to be indisposed than humiliated.

Jazz has always been about networking. You hang out with guys who are playing at clubs and things, and you gradually get to play with them. It's a much more closed system, actually, though it seems "freer" when you put it the way you were putting it. If you don't know the guys, you don't get in. Somehow, your playing has to precede you, and you've got to get their attention in order to get them to let you in long enough to determine if they want to play with you or not.

It's an audition, even though it doesn't look like one. And if you think jazz players don't engage in direct competition, you don't know jazz. There are often battles of the horns, where players alternate solos and one "wins." People love that stuff. There may be no prize (or there may be), but it gets both names out, especially the one that wins. It's public relations, and that spells more gigs.

This is just the way the world works. You either audition directly in front of judges, which is a more democratic way of getting in, since you don't have to have a reputation first, or you ingratiate yourself in a group, being judged on everything from your taste in barbecue to booze to handling yourself socially in the group, to... finally... your playing.

In the commercial world, it's only partly different: when someone can't show up, they have to call in a sub. If you're the sub, that's your chance. If they like your playing, you'll get called back. But there are only so many slots to fill, and at any given time there are usually hundreds of people waiting for a chance at any one slot. How else do you think they get those chances? (to keep this under 1000 pages, I'm not going to bring up audition politics, brand-name studios whose famous teachers place students in orchestras all over the world; infighting, backbiting, and that sort of thing.)

Don't put too much stock in the super-cool veneer that jazz and pop like to project. Underneath, there's business. And taking care of business is how these guys stay relevant for so long. Your audition tape may be something you made with DP, or it may be something that EMI made at their Berlin studio, or at Abbey Road, and sold a million copies, but you get auditioned one way or another.

But we'd all like to believe that music is really just about coolness, about the great players just rising to the top somehow, magically perhaps, and about the guys on top just taking them in. If they pass all the tests along the way, it would appear that's what's happening, but to the guys that get rejected, it ain't the cool path they thought it was going to be.

There's one axiom that is always true: musicians always audition.

I remember the Beatles laughing about aeolian cadences. They weren't worried about the analysis, they cared about the sound itself. It would be hilarious to watch Bob Dylan trying out for American Idol. Eisteddfods would never have welcomed Charlie Parker. Can you imagine Ornette Coleman going before a judging panel!

The Beatles loved to take potshots at formal education. Nothing wrong with that; I do too, and I'm formally educated, yet I learned everything about playing from my own discoveries, not lessons with teachers, and yet the lessons served some purpose, I'm sure.

They could afford to do that. They had the brilliant George Martin covering for them. You listen to the Beatles records, and you know very quickly that half the stuff on there was not coming from them. McCartney still tries to dance around the issue of his lack of education, and he loves to make videos where he's playing all the instruments, but he still can't write a note, and depends on others to do that for him.

"Aeolian Cadence" is a word for a sound we make. When you say that word, just as when you say Plagal Cadence, or Dominant Cadence, or other modal cadences, you immediately strike up a sound in the mind of someone who knows what that means. It's much easier than explaining that you are going to resolve to the relative minor chord, for it explains how it resolves, as well. There are medieval cadences, too, which sound weird to our ears, but a trained musician knows how to make one. We have names for all those things, because they are shortcuts.

Only theory nerds start treating the names with more awe than the music they represent. Most people know that the general public, including self-taught musicians, don't know the sound of the names, so they don't talk in that vocabulary most of the time, but when talking to a peer, you can do that, and your point gets across much more quickly than when having to spell everything out.

I have to say that this is one area which I'm glad I received in music school. I didn't really learn it that well when I was in school, but after I got out, I realized that my work was a LOT easier if I knew what these things were. I spent time learning them, and I'm glad i know them. The Beatles were great. I love them above all other pop groups. I loved John Lennon's attitude when I was a kid, but now I realize that he, too, was a kid, rebelling against the formal world that made him feel small and inferior. He realized he didn't have to feel that way, and as he grew richer, he felt like that vindicated any lack of knowledge that ever bothered him. But SOMEONE had to know how to put together the stuff he conceived of, and you can be sure it wasn't him. He bragged that he was the first in R&R to use horns. Who do you think wrote the horn parts? It wasn't Dixieland. They were written parts, played by members of the London classical community, most likely members of the London Symphony or the Royal Phil. Those guys didn't improvise. They read.

Great productions are often put together by people who only play by ear. It's been done for centuries. But when those things have to be done by Tuesday, they require someone who knows how to do it, what to write, and players who can read, especially when they are experimental or an amalgam of styles, like so many of the Beatles recordings. Even country musicians know "I, IV, V, key of G" It's just a name.

To the public, there is always the illusion that these things just "happen." I've worn all the hats from player, arranger, composer, director, producer, engineer, agent, announcer, manager, copyist, PR writer, and audience, and I can tell you absolutely for a fact that these things normally don't happen. The exception is if a couple musicians sit down on a street corner and start jamming. A crowd forms. It was an event. It just "happened." If a group is just doing what it knows best, then there is little need for arranging or learning anything new. But someone still has to publicize it, find the venues, book them, and myriad other details that go with getting a show in front of people. The luckiest of all these people are the players that don't have to deal with the rest, like John Lennon and Ornette Coleman. You can bet that there are thousands who'd like to be in their shoes, so yes, when an opportunity comes up, they audition. One way or another, they audition.

As an agent, I sometimes called people I knew to go out with shows we were booking. Those people had already auditioned for me, simply by my hearing them play over the years. I didn't call most people; just the ones I knew could do it right. That's an audition, even if they think they didn't have to do anything to get the gig. Yes, they did; they had to get my attention and keep it for years, so that I'd think of them when I needed them. Dylan auditioned, too; it just happens in different ways.

But the formal audition where 300 flutists show up for a chance at one slot? That's the classical way, and it goes back centuries. That's how you find one great player and utterly disillusion 299 other great players.

Shooshie