The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 024 Cameron Leach: Communicating Through Intentional & Empathetic Performing

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to The Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 24. Welcome to The Mind Over Finger Podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, and building a purposeful career. And now your host, Dr. Renée Paul Gaultier. hi everyone last week i spoke with the amazing tessa lark about joy and practicing this episode was high on the inspiration spectrum so make sure you catch it if you have not already this week i chat with percussionist cameron leach cameron leads a vibrant solo and chamber music career performing across the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. He's the winner of

Starting point is 00:00:55 both the Percussive Arts Society International Solo Artist Competition and the Yamaha Young Performing Artist Competition, and he frequently appears as a guest artist and clinician at universities and summer festivals. Cameron and I have a great show for you today. In addition to some great practice tips, Cameron elaborates on some very important topics, including how to clearly communicate to our audience through intentional and empathic performing, why students must take ownership of their own learning experience, and why musicians need to be great friends to each other. I love Cameron's perspective on those topics, and I hope you enjoy our discussion. Let's go to the show.

Starting point is 00:01:49 Cameron Leach, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for having me. Cameron, I've been keeping up with your career for about a year now, and it's been quite the year for you. You've had so many incredible projects and great concerts, incredible pieces, and a lot of major accomplishments and successes. That's fantastic. Yeah, it's definitely been a great year. Lots of blessings. A huge whirlwind.

Starting point is 00:02:17 Cameron you're a busy soloist a chamber musician and a teacher and I can't wait to dive in our conversation on practicing and performing but before we do that I would love for those of my listeners who don't already know who you are to hear your story in your own words so can you please tell us a little bit about you and how you got to where you are today and how that artistic path of yours has unfolded? Sure, yeah. So I went to school as a music ed major. I was brought into this world of, I guess, classical contemporary music through the drumline medium, which I think is really popular here in America. That seems to be the model for a lot of young percussionists, is that we get involved in the high school drumline. We come up through that program.

Starting point is 00:03:06 We have a love for drumming, and then we find maybe a love for mallet instruments along the way, or if someone's in the front ensemble they already have that love and so they tack drumming onto that and they go to music school i think it's very different and you know models across the world but that seems to be the the standard american practice so i was involved in that i marched drum corps with the blue devils i marched indoor drum line with rhythm x this was at the end of high school going into college so i went to school as a music ed major and just thought i'd be a band director and it was sort of a surprise to me when Colin Curry a very famous percussion soloist did a residency at my university which was Capital University in Ohio and once I saw him

Starting point is 00:03:49 play some recitals a concerto with the Columbus Symphony I just I knew that was what I had to do and so like the very next day when I had someone ask me what do you want to do you know what do you want to do when you get out of school and I told him I want to be a percussion soloist and they looked at me cross-eyed. I was a little bit upset about that because in my head, I already had made that decision that it was going to happen. That was almost four years ago. Here I am still chasing that crazy dream. I found out as soon as I declared my intent there, like, okay, I'll see through my music education degree. I love to teach, but I knew I had to go to grad school. And so I connected with Michael Burrett at Eastman, who was the professor there, and started taking lessons from him. About every three weeks, I would drive from Ohio to Rochester, which was about six hours. I'd go up one day, take a lesson, come back the next day. And I really feel like having that connection and learning from him was a great way into the school. I think I would encourage everybody to do that.

Starting point is 00:04:55 And while I was at Eastman, I just graduated this past May. I was basically just trying to figure out what it meant to be a soloist. You know, it's all fine and dandy when you look at the idea and you say, I want to be that person on stage. But when you unpack that career and see that maybe you're on the computer for four to six hours a day, sending emails and booking gigs or working with a designer or a videographer or commissioning 10 new pieces at once, the reality sets in that it's not an easy lifestyle

Starting point is 00:05:25 and there's a lot of travel involved and moving parts. So I think my recent focus has been to travel as much as possible and get all these performances that I can. And what I'm talking about with students at universities, especially on this Florida tour that I'm on right now, is basically how I'm going about doing this. I'm not teaching them how to play the marimba. No one wants to hear a 24-year-old say that to them. So I'm just talking about music business principles and an entrepreneurial mindset and how that manifests in the career of a solo performer.

Starting point is 00:05:59 That's such a fascinating trajectory. I love how this chance encounter with Colin Currie really changed everything for you. And the key word that you use is that you made the decision. And I love how you just went forward and did whatever you needed to do to make it to where you are today. That's really incredible. And I agree with you. I think that sometimes we are a little bit shy into venturing into self-promoting and marketing, but it really is the best way to get our message across and reach people. And this way you will maybe end up, and I would say probably end up meeting someone and you will have the same effect on them as Colin Carey had on you. So I feel like it's so important for us musicians to just, as you said, go out there and spread our message and reach out, you know, and not be afraid to self-promote and get out there. But, you know, Cameron, I see on your website that you have a great amount of wonderful performances coming up in the year ahead. And I really invite everyone to check out your calendar at cleachmusic.com. And you also have a fantastic Instagram account. But can you give us an overview of what lays ahead for you in the coming months? Yeah, so let's see. The first big thing, I guess, after what I'm up to right now is this premiere of this Dave Merritt concerto at the end of March, the 29th and 30th, I believe, Capital University,

Starting point is 00:07:29 which is my alma mater from my undergrad. They're having their 100th year of music at the university. And so as part of that, they're commissioning new works and bringing in major people like Eric Whitaker. and I was lucky enough to get asked to perform this new percussion concerto for wind ensemble and electronics which is a really neat combination I love to work with electronics so I've already had a relationship with Dave Merrick prior to this and and for him to write this piece it just seemed very natural it's a it's a really crazy piece but got to get practicing

Starting point is 00:08:01 on that so that's coming up at the end of at the end of March and and then after that I'm basically just doing a ton of residencies. I've got one at the beginning of April. I have, I think, three residencies over the summer at different festivals, Vegas, Houston, and Florida. I mean, you can't really beat that. Those are great summer destinations. And then beyond that, just, you know, I'm looking ahead to the next season and some great concertos. I'll be premiering a new concerto and performing one with the Dallas Winds, also Jennifer Higdon's, which is one of my favorites it sounds like a fun ride yeah Cameron as a violinist I don't know much about how practicing works for a percussionist but I do know that in every single school I went to

Starting point is 00:08:46 the percussionist they always seem to practice millions of hours a week you guys have to handle and master so many different instruments and techniques and notations and in your case also you seem to be mixing in electroacoustics and theatrical elements and the other thing also is that your repertoire is always expanding and not just in terms of quantity of pieces but also in terms of experimentation with different sounds and effects and I'm sure that it requires so much flexibility and a real ability to switch gear fluidly at all times so can you please talk to us a little or a lot about how this works and how this you know how do you go about it how do you plan and organize practice sessions with so many different types of setups and instruments and

Starting point is 00:09:37 techniques yeah so i'll start i guess with just thinking about the fact that percussion has so many different instruments in school you're you're being asked to do so many different things whether that's you know a week or two with the orchestra and you're playing some sort of glockenspiel part and also a triangle. And then the next week is a new music concert. And for that concert, you might have 20 instruments set up circularly around you. And so every time we bounce between these different things we do, it's essentially like learning a new instrument. When you have that singular instrument, the triangle, the marimba, of course, you've learned how to play that before. But anytime you get that multi-percussion setup, you're dealing with a

Starting point is 00:10:22 instrument. And I think that is something that goes a bit unrecognized. We tend to think of it as just percussion instruments or a percussion setup. And the fact of the matter is that the composers are notating the lines and spaces differently for all of those things. And so it becomes a challenge in that. And I find myself sometimes re-notating things or whatever just to make it easier to read or to learn. But there's a lot of ways to approach it. I think one thing that i try to do now is is only practice the mallet instruments like set them up as if i had them on stage whether that means you know the marimba and a vibraphone and sort of an l formation if i have multiple ones but i'll basically just fake through the other stuff as long as the parts

Starting point is 00:11:11 are sparse enough in those other instruments that i could essentially fake it in the practice room and only play the marimba part and that makes the setup time easier and it makes the transition from from piece to piece and practice easier because you know you're not having to set up all those different bongos and things but of course if a piece is drum based and you have 10 drums you're you're going to need to set those up and practice it and how detailed do you get in terms of planning do you do you write down a plan or practice schedule of how you're going to organize it throughout the day or throughout the week um yes and no it totally depends on what i have coming up right now the turnarounds between different things that i'm doing are like two days at a time so

Starting point is 00:11:55 when i have that little time like let's say um finishing the florida tour flying to oklahoma and doing a quartet show i have 36 hours to relearn you know a 70 minute set of music for that everything's going to be planned out i'm going to only allot myself two hours on the hardest pieces to get them back in my hands and the other ones will get 45 to 30 minutes, something like that. But when I have time to just sit on a piece like this Dave Merritt concerto, I had a good bit of time on that over the winter throughout December and January to really dive into that piece. I didn't give myself any restrictions on that. When I'm biting into a piece that's like 20 minutes long, I love to just be able to sit with it. And if I want to

Starting point is 00:12:40 play with this part and experiment with my sounds for four hours, I have the luxury of doing that. And I think that's another thing that percussionists have to deal with is, you know, we might spend 90 minutes in a practice session finding the right break drum or finding, you know, the right pots and pans to use. And it's a funny thing, but it pays off in the end when the sounds are correct. And, you know, we don't have as much performance practice behind these pieces and behind our instruments so everything we're doing is experimentation and based on that so i yeah i think it's a back and forth for me i love that freedom and i think i thrive on the freedom and that's why i'm doing what i'm doing because i get to be on the road and i have a

Starting point is 00:13:22 schedule but not really sometimes but i do try to focus my practice especially when there are deadlines and i love imposing those if i'm getting lazy on myself i'll just go ahead and book a a random performance that forces me to have my music ready. You just mentioned focus. What helps you focus in the practice room? Oh, yeah. My biggest thing right now, obviously, we can talk about cell phone use, and maybe we will, but my biggest thing right now is fasting. And it doesn't have to be very dedicated. I would say you don't need to get on a regimen, but I always enter the practice room hungry. And because there's like a reward at the end of that, you know, I get to go

Starting point is 00:14:06 eat. And oftentimes, I'm doing two practice sessions a day that are three or four hours in length each, something along those lines. But if I enter the practice room, and I've just had a big meal, I just feel lazy, I feel heavy, you know, it doesn't feel good. But if I enter having eaten two or three hours prior and so i've got another good four hours in my tank that is the best because as i get hungrier and hungrier i'm really focusing on my task because i know the reward is at the end and it seems a little bit primal almost but there are all these studies now coming out about intermittent fasting and you know having eight or six hours a day to eat only and so you take you know about 16 hours off and so i've been trying to experiment with that and i

Starting point is 00:14:53 I never knew that this was, you know, how I operated until, you know, years later. And I realized that my best practice comes when I'm hungry. So after I eat, usually after my first practice session, what I'll do is I'll go to Starbucks and do a little bit of computer work so that those first two hours of my digestion is spent sitting on the computer. And then I'll go back to practice afterwards. That's really interesting. No one has ever mentioned that before on the show, but I really agree with you as I do the intermittent fasting technique. And for me, I find that it just keeps me energized so much more during the day, for sure. And going back with the techniques, I'm fascinated.

Starting point is 00:15:38 How does a young percussionist go about learning all of these different techniques? I'm sure it requires a lot of work and, as I mentioned earlier, some flexibility. but can you paint a picture of what that looks like for us, non-percussionists? Yeah. Wow. So learning these techniques. So I think there are so many different things and there are so many categories we put ourselves in as percussionists. We say like, I'm an orchestral percussionist or I'm a chamber musician. And hardly anybody says I'm a soloist because they're not crazy. But I think that the techniques come along with this territory that we're taught to categorize ourself within and and so when you find an orchestral percussionist someone who is from

Starting point is 00:16:24 day one known that this is what they want to do and they want to take those auditions they tend to and i'm of course generalizing so you know um i hope nobody gets angry at me right but they tend to focus on the those key instruments the glock the marimba the maybe not the marimba the triangle the snare drum the tambourine and they're probably concerned less with those multi-percussion techniques um with playing these extended things or theatrical pieces especially electro-acoustic pieces this is for the very orchestral minded of course you want to be a little more well-rounded than that and i hope that we are um preaching that or developing that more these days and then you know all the chamber musicians the people that are into the new music for percussion which

Starting point is 00:17:05 is essentially all of our music they're really they're really taught to experiment with their sounds and to approach it with an open mind. And so I think that just to start this topic off is that we need to be more open to other things. I hated orchestral repertoire, but I've learned so much about playing those instruments well, the glocks, the triangles, the tambourines, and making great sounds that I can then transfer those sound concepts to my other playing, which is what I primarily do as a soloist. Likewise, I think that navigating multi setups and the motion principles within that are probably beneficial for an orchestral player to some degree. So in terms of actually learning these techniques, I think it's just something where you have to put the

Starting point is 00:17:52 hours in. There are no shortcuts. And this is why, like you mentioned earlier, we find percussionists practicing so many hours per day. I don't think it's because we're all doing it wrong. I hear about vocalists you know only having i don't know arbitrary number like 90 minutes or 120 minutes in the tank per day because of their vocal health and all these other things and we just don't we don't really deal with that and i don't think we are um just workaholics i think we have to do what we're doing so the best way to learn these things is to first learn the individual instruments um so maybe that is where this orchestral focus comes in we we learn them all by themselves and we learn great sounds. And then to challenge yourself to put those in different contexts,

Starting point is 00:18:36 which are these multi setups. And you maybe work from something smaller, like some Xenakis, where you have maybe like five or six drums and some temple blocks. And you can work your way up to much crazier pieces in the repertoire, where you get to deal with not only different surfaces, but also the athleticism or the physicality of moving between them. And that idea that visceral idea of, I might not even make it over to that vibraphone when I jump over from the marimba. And I think once you start to increase the stress level, the physical stress level of each of those pieces, you have to deal with those instruments that you've known and loved forever in these various contexts. And that's something that will push your musicianship, push your

Starting point is 00:19:23 consistency, and will test you as a player. I think that's how we learn these things. Cameron this is so interesting and it's great I see so many parallels and and so many applications of those techniques that you just discussed on other instruments it just it just maps on beautifully but even on the bigger context I love how you talk about really staying open-minded to other things and being well-rounded because as you say it's so great to know what you want and maybe narrow it to an area of expertise but it's so crucial to keep in mind that being well-rounded is important and that much can be learned from thinking broadly you know and also it keeps the doors open in case someone wants to pivot later in career and I'm curious about problem

Starting point is 00:20:18 solving from a percussionist point of view how does that work for you if you are tackling let's say a difficult passage on on the marimba for example I mean we all have some techniques of you know taking it from making it simple to more complicated going slowly focusing on the kinesthetic motions but as I said I know nothing about percussion practicing so how does that look like when you're tackling on a difficult passage that you're trying to improve you know I think it's probably the same thing in terms of, you know, all these instruments, which is just play it, play it slowly and play it as slowly and as slow as you need to, you know, a lot of people play it slower, but not to the level that they need to really understand note by note what's

Starting point is 00:21:06 happening. But I do think the context is important to this as well. There are some pieces, and I'm not sure if this is the same with other instruments, but in the percussion repertoire, particularly like japanese marimba music there are some passages that are just simply impossible i mean they were written because they are impossible and it's all about the the drama of the music and it's like no i i can't play um these four note chords at in 16th notes at 156 um it's just impossible because they're shifting around so crazily so i think uh of course we have to do we have to do our due diligence and um and practice slowly and learn the correct notes but again you have to understand the context so like there's a piece that i play called mirage

Starting point is 00:21:56 and at the end of this piece um it is quite literally impossible so instead of playing the hands together we split them apart to make it twice as fast and you basically throw your hands down and you get close to the notes and that's as good as you can get um and i think it's more about the effect that it creates as opposed to the the actual pitches in there of course if you're playing baka marimba or something else you don't have this luxury you have to play the correct notes but by and large i think that kind of music because it is tonal was written with the possibility of playing all those notes in mind you know there's not this expectation that you might not be able to play all of those notes so um i think that's that's what i would think

Starting point is 00:22:40 about for marimba when i think about multi setups that's something where you're you're navigating a new you're essentially like unrolling a map and finding your way um and somewhere that you're completely unfamiliar with which is this you know array of where your drums are placed and your temple blocks and your wind chimes so in that context you really just need to get familiar with the instrument your new instrument and instead of just practicing slowly you should just improvise on that setup and get a feel for where everything is so that then when you start to learn the music you you know where these things are you know kinesthetically and you can you can navigate that and obviously then practice slowly and the last thing i'll say is this idea um on

Starting point is 00:23:23 the marimba specifically of playing contrapuntal lines let's say that your hands are three octaves apart and you have to choose a hand to look at or not look at either of them but you can't look at both. And this is an important thing for percussionists that I think we all need to realize is that you shouldn't switch up which hand you look at. Um, and I mean across all pieces. So for me, I always look at my upper hand. Typically that's going to have the melodic line. Um, it definitely has the most audible voice because it's a higher pitch. And so I leave my, my low hand to be, you know, I leave it down at the bottom of the instrument and I just, I suppose, hope that I hit the right notes, but it's because I've learned how that feels at the bottom end of the instrument

Starting point is 00:24:08 that I can trust myself to do that now. And I only look to the upper hand. That's really interesting. And you know, it's so great what you just say. It's exactly what it is. That's one of the reasons I love this podcast is discussing with all these musicians because the way we approach music, it's all interconnected and we can learn so much from each other, from observing another instrument play from talking with other instrumentalists or even maybe playing for them and take lessons from you're giving me an idea maybe I should take a lesson from a percussionist at some point it'd be interesting oh gosh Cameron before the interview you mentioned communication on stage and I think that's a great idea because it's a really

Starting point is 00:24:53 important topic I love watching and listening to the videos that you share on social media and we can really see your enthusiasm for what you do and it's contagious and it's very inspiring so can you please speak to how that does or does not manifest in the practice room so i see so many students they have a practice mode way of playing and then they think it will magically transform into performance mode once on stage but even i know that's not how it works right so how do you practice communicating your message to the audience as a performer? Yeah, I love thinking about this and I love talking about this. I'll start quickly by talking about this idea of playing in a quartet just to kind of begin this topic, which is that when I'm in a percussion

Starting point is 00:25:42 quartet, so much is visually based, visual head cues, all sorts of things that in the practice room, if I know after I've studied my score, which yes, I do that so many hours of score study in the quartet music, to know where people's parts are. I think that's huge. I always practice looking up and looking in the direction of the person that I know that I'll be cuing or playing with. And this is something where for those two seconds that my head is up, I'm learning that part without looking down, without looking at the music, just by feel so that I trust myself to do that in rehearsal and in performance. So that would be one form of communication that I like to deal with in the practice room which is just like ensemble communication and i think a lot of people

Starting point is 00:26:24 get into these ensemble rehearsals and they go into their bubble and they don't like to visually communicate with their friends in the group and that's the quickest way for the ensemble to fall apart especially when we're playing all these crazy new music you know things and and there's not a 16th note grid to fit your notes into now transition that to this sort of solo visual communication. I love thinking about this in terms of context also. I think that's sort of been a mantra for me. It's just everything in context. And for this, of course, if you're playing theater music, it's easier because in the practice room, you have to perform the theater music as if you will perform it on stage, or you have no chance because you haven't gone into that

Starting point is 00:27:11 that zone of being the character that you're supposed to be on stage. And it really is that it really is taking yourself out of the equation and becoming this new character to embody the piece. And so when I was learning, when I was learning, let's say the bouncy ball piece that everybody has seen on on my Facebook or Instagram, like the bouncy ball piece is fun, because it's a fun piece, you know, and it's easy to smile and to have this bouncy ball. And so I'm going to just bounce it around and, and it makes sense. And I would practice in a mirror and I would take video of myself and watch my performances and understand like, if I didn't follow the bouncy ball with my, with my head or my eyes, then it didn't look authentic to the audience. So I had

Starting point is 00:27:57 to practice that in the practice room of being really honest with myself. Did you follow the bounce of that invisible bouncy ball as it moved around the stage or not? And then some of these other things I do, some of these more new music theater pieces, take you to a little more uncomfortable place in the practice room. But you have to go there. You have to be willing to experiment with yells and fast talking and anxiety on your face. And so you have to practice that. But those, of course, are easier than, let's say, the typical marimba solo to communicate your message because they're based on that visual communication. So I think if we move into sort of this more typical world of percussion music that sort of visual communication and practice

Starting point is 00:28:42 means that i i have to i have two modes i suppose is what i would say in the practice room the first mode is is learning mode where i'm not worried about that so much i'm just learning the notes and getting through it in my hands and then once i'm comfortable and i can even just run a 60 second piece of the, of that piece of music, then I'll run it and I'll try to emote in it. I'll try to ask myself, what, what is the message I want to get across to the audience? And this is the key for me is two words, intentional and empathetic performance. The intention of the, of the performance is, is your message. Like, what do I want to get across to the audience? So I might say this section is a sad section of the music. And okay, that's great. And so let me try to perform

Starting point is 00:29:31 this in a sad way, whatever that means to me in the moment. And then I have to go back and evaluate with empathy. I have to put myself in the audience's shoes. Did I achieve that? Did I achieve this look of sadness, the sound of sadness? What did I do musically and visually to get there? And you probably need to take a video of that until you build that self-awareness from doing it so much. I don't take so many videos anymore. I just know how I'm looking and how I'm feeling. And I evaluate in that way. But I think the biggest thing is to consider your message and then consider, is the audience receiving it? Because oftentimes we think they are, but we're not doing enough. And it almost becomes a little self-serving and selfish if we don't

Starting point is 00:30:15 consider the audience. And that's what I don't like. I think that's why when you say, and I'm happy you said it, that it's contagious on stage. When you watch those videos, the energy is contagious. That's the goal. The audience needs to get the bug for whatever my emotion is in the moment. And that's, what's going to take them through the piece. Even if they have no idea tonally what's happening or a tonally, um, I'm hoping that that is the one thing that I can get across to them. And then at the end of the concert, when I go out and I speak to them, they'll say, you know, I had no idea what was going on, but I really felt what you were doing. really felt your anxiety and that's the goal for me i think is just clear emotional communication

Starting point is 00:30:51 through the music visually i love that clear emotional communication what a great answer there's so many things i want to address i hope that you come to chicago at some point and we get to uh you know elaborate for hours on that topic you know i love this approach that you just mentioned about this intentional and empathetic way of viewing things and i keep saying telling the students for example for the violin sound quality is very important for all instruments of course but so many of us I should put myself in that boat as well we go into this practice mode that you mentioned and we forget about sound quality but I want to tell my students know that sound quality needs to be a state of being at all time and to really bring the stage in the

Starting point is 00:31:38 practice room because the sound quality is part of how you learn a passage you cannot separate them because the way you perform a passage technically will affect the sound quality and and what we're after is this beautiful sound and to really integrate as well what you were talking about with with how we can communicate our intention also goes in the practice room so everything you just said is really wonderful. And that kind of makes me think of, I was seeing your great blog on your website and you talk about documenting your preparation for PASIC and making videos for this. And I had a guest on the podcast a few weeks ago who was mentioning how for her making Instagram videos helps her practice because they're daily performances from her practice room

Starting point is 00:32:31 that really make her get into this performance state and really helps her practicing because it's different when you're performing your your state of focus is completely different and your awareness goes to things that are a little bit different than if you're just playing for yourself but i feel like the two really connect together i'm not sure if i i'm not sure i'm being very articulate right now because i have so many ideas colliding in my head right now but would you say that, that doing these videos and documenting this preparation helps with that process? Um, yes and no. Uh, I think sometimes I see it more as a chore and I, I'm a little less enthusiastic sometimes now than when I was starting the social media journey, I guess.

Starting point is 00:33:20 I'm a little less enthusiastic sometimes because, um, now I really, I really have so much going on and it's, and I try not to use that as an excuse, like, Oh, I didn't have time to do that. But sometimes there, there really is not, you know, there's no time for it. I don't think that it's ever motivated me so much as it has just been an outlet, I guess, like, it's almost a stress reliever. If I do have that extra couple minutes to make a little post, for instance, the competition prep for PASIC, that was a really cool thing for me, because that was such a high stress preparation for that competition. And it was great to just have the moment of like, okay, I'm going to talk about voicings on the marimba for, you know,

Starting point is 00:34:01 seven minutes and I'm going to record it and I'm going to throw it up. And of course I had to, I had to sound good and I felt like I needed to represent the piece well, but if I was at the end of a three hour practice session and I hit a couple of wrong notes in this, you know, tough passage, I mean, I don't care. That's that stuff happens on stage. You always make mistakes. And so I never thought of it as a performance, but I understand why people would think of that.

Starting point is 00:34:26 and I think that would be a great motivator but I wanted to you said something earlier too which I wanted to back up just really quickly about was this idea of sound quality in the practice room and being in this performance mode and I think for us what's really interesting and this is for any instrument is having

Starting point is 00:34:43 the sound of a hall you know in your ears in the practice room which is this luxury that we don't have and often times you can't get into a hall a school like you know I went to Eastman and at Eastman the halls are not open for practice use and my undergrad they were and so you could go in and get a feel every night if you wanted for the hall but for me i always try to think about the extra

Starting point is 00:35:05 resonance that i'm going to get from the hall and how i'm going to use my articulation changes on the marimba um to sort of achieve that that message like we were talking about communicating that message and i think that's something that goes under um it has not as much attention as it should it's like underrepresented in the percussion community we we get in practice mode and then we get on stage and we're still there and of course it sounds like violinists deal with the same things but i just think we need to sort of open our ears open our minds and try to listen more like listen to our sound more and then listen especially on stage once you get out of your nerves which is tough but understanding the sound of the hall and taking note of that for the next time

Starting point is 00:35:48 you're on stage or maybe throughout the recital. If you play piece one on the recital, by the time you get to the fifth piece, you should be playing differently. You should be reacting to the hall and reacting to the audience. If you feel the audience is getting impatient during a slow section, you either intentionally make them wait more or you speed it up a little bit to get through it because you know you need to get to the next thing. I love that interaction. It's almost like stand-up comedy on stage where you vibe off of the audience. I love having that flexibility in the pieces. And I feel like the key word in what you just said right now is listen. Listening to ourselves is such, you know, it's a learning process. And what you were mentioning earlier

Starting point is 00:36:29 about making a video and recording ourselves, you're getting feedback from yourself. And I feel like it brings the awareness to things that might be different than what we're focusing on when we are executing something. And then we go and play it again and pay attention to something that's a little bit different once we've seen it or heard it on a recording. Yeah. And I think that reveals too, like the recording always reveals what the audience is hearing. You should listen to the recording without the visual and then watch it with the visual and just check out the different segments of what you're doing. And I always, always perform with the audience in mind and that audience member not being a musician, just somebody that's

Starting point is 00:37:13 out there that's wanting to be entertained and wanting to root for you. And that's another key is that they're not out there to be against you. They didn't buy the ticket because they want to see you fail. And they're there for you. And so clearly communicating your message to that person who does not care your articulations, your notes. They just care about what they hear and what they feel in the audience. Yes. Again, I love what you said about intentional and empathetic performance. Yeah, that's, that's been sort of a new thing for me. I wanted to distill my ideas into three words, you know, and I just thought of those two. And then the first one is inquisitive, because that to me means, you know, you're sort of curious. And if you have a question,

Starting point is 00:37:59 you're going to seek out the person to answer that if that means calling managers in New York City and, and asking them, how does how do you work with your clients? And how does that relationship work? These are things that I've done and calling violin soloist because maybe a percussion soloist won't help you as much because you're competition to them. I mean, there are all these factors you have to think about in the music business landscape. But I think of inquisitive as being this curiosity, intention being the way that you package the curiosity into an answer and you deliver it. And then the empathy or the empathetic part being the way that you adjust that intention for the audience that's receiving it. So it's almost like a three-step process, you know,

Starting point is 00:38:37 go figure this is fantastic really three words to live by yeah inquisitive intentional and empathetic it's fantastic and you know one thing that i love is that from hearing you speak i can really see that you are doing something that i hope everyone who's in music school right now understands is this importance of really take ownership of their learning experience because schools can't provide us with everything that we need they just cannot otherwise we would have to stay there for 15 years and it's so important for us to be to use your term inquisitive to search for more and branch out and get the additional information that we need and the additional knowledge outside of the school curriculum because they try to provide us with

Starting point is 00:39:31 the basics, but they cannot make us as artists. And it's really up to us to expand on what we're getting from the schools. And I really get that feeling that you are that way from hearing you speak. Yeah. I always thought that when I was in school, that the moment that I got out, I had to be this professional. And I've like, I dealt with that identity crisis for, well, I mean, maybe the last nine months and along the way, now that I'm out of school and I'm doing this, I just realized There is absolutely no way I could have learned any of this in school. And even with all of the music business courses that I took at Eastman, there was no hope of me learning what it was like to be on tour or the logistics of dealing with this and tech writers and all these different things. Um, there just wasn't that opportunity and I think that's okay because I think it separates the people who really want to do it From the people who might want to dip their toe in of course

Starting point is 00:40:28 We want to have more opportunities for everybody to experience it But at the end of the day there is only one way to sort of go about doing this and that's just to do it you just have to get started on it and And dive in you can't dip your toe into this kind of a career And so i'm always thinking of things in a learning context I mean, I'll deliver a clinic. And at the end of the clinic, before they've even stood up or said anything, I asked them, what could I have done better for you? How could I have delivered that message better for you? And I think that honesty and that interaction actually earns people's trust as opposed to, you know, it doesn't make them question the message you just delivered. It makes them go, wow, he was really there for me and what I needed in that moment. And I hope that's what's coming across as I go from place to place. But yeah, like you said, we'd have to be in school for 15 years and we would have to have, what do they call them, professional semesters or internships? We'd have to have like 20 of those to learn all of this stuff. It just is not going to happen. So everybody needs to get that out of their head that when you graduate, you're somehow now a professional. You're always a student. You're always learning. And we're all just faking it to different degrees is what I say. I think it's kind of a funny way to think about it. Amen. This is awesome. Cameron, I'm really enjoying our conversation. I wish we could

Starting point is 00:41:44 keep on going, but I know you have to be on your way. So how about a round of rapid fire questions before I let you go? All right, let's do it. So you already talked about that a little bit. But you know, for the people who are really kind of dreaming of a career that resemble yours, can you tell us a little bit more about what the life looks like right now? Yeah, life right now is very short practice sessions and jumping in the car or jumping on a plane and going somewhere new. It's suitcase packing and unpacking. It's just a lot of very focused things right now. So like, you know, Florida tour, living out of my car, hotel rooms, going to Oklahoma, all this stuff. It's just very, very quick right now. I would say the pace of life is fast and I can't wait for it to slow down so that I can get some really awesome practice time in and some time with my friends and family.

Starting point is 00:42:38 And what skills do you think young musicians studying today should acquire in addition to learning to play their instruments? We've already talked about, you know, self-marketing, but love to hear what you think about that. Yeah, I think in addition to all of that, all the business speak or whatever, I think that we all need to acquire better communication skills, like just how we talk to people and how we listen, especially to people. And again, we find ourselves coming back to the same words. But if you can be in a conversation and truly listen to somebody without waiting to speak, I think that is a huge thing. And that will help your musicianship because you're taking, again, the other person into account. And then on top of that, obviously, self-promotion, marketing, all those things, we can all learn from that. Totally. Cameron, is there a performance that has stayed with you throughout the years? And why? Yeah, there's a couple. One really cool one, which is a little bit strange, was the Yamaha Young Performing Artists Competition, which I was fortunate enough to be selected as one of the winners in 2017. And at that concert, you perform for like a 2,000-seat auditorium full of high school kids, which was really cool because I played this big electronic piece with a humongous setup. and they had the spotlight and all these different effects going and the high school kids all stand up and clap

Starting point is 00:44:02 and it's just like this roar of the audience. And you know you'll probably never play for that many screaming people ever again in your life. I mean, we can dream one day. But that was a really amazing experience. So thank you, Yamaha, for that. That was a really great thing. But then besides that, I think, I don't know.

Starting point is 00:44:23 Obviously, there's really great experiences in Europe and in China, But I just think some of the most important things on this last Florida tour, it really stuck with me at Southeastern University, just being able to interface with the kids in the music department there. During a departmental recital, we were able to talk about empathy and communication. And I felt like the kids really, really got the message. And that was a great experience for me. I prefer interaction over just cold performance any day. so it's not funny how most of us seem to really prefer the performances where there was a really genuine connection with the audience yeah and and um i think we're just taught uh because of the years of performance practice before us that it's supposed to be you know that fourth wall or whatever with the audience um if i can break that as soon as possible on stage i do i love to speak after pieces and i especially love to get up and do the theater stuff so that i get to look at the audience. And I hope instead of making them uncomfortable, that they feel included. That's

Starting point is 00:45:24 the point. So yeah, I think that we're just kind of trained to not interact in a lot of ways. And I think we need to get away from that, especially in this day and age. That's true. Cameron, do you have a favorite tool in the practice room? Yeah. I would say metronome, but I've heard too much of that in my life. So I still use it, but it kind of gives me flashbacks to drumline. So I love these AirPods, which is funny. They were gifted to me at Christmas and I never, this is the thing I never knew that I needed, but it's great because I, when I play electroacoustic pieces, I don't have a wire attached to me in the practice room and I can use my practice tracks in these

Starting point is 00:46:05 wireless Bluetooth headphones and I can also use a metronome as well. So yeah, I would have to say my AirPods, which is kind of strange. No, I really like that. It's giving me a lot of ideas for my own practice. Do you have a favorite book that you would recommend to the listeners? I admittedly do not read as much as I should, but I'm in the middle of a book right now called Beyond Talent. Honestly, I can't remember the author. I apologize. It's a book about the self-promotion, the marketing, and the music business landscape. I think it's got a particular

Starting point is 00:46:40 focus on classical musicians. I remember I got the book at ESO and then I never read it. So Beyond Talent is what that's called. And then I always think about this book. It was a short, punchy book that I read called The War of Art, which is by Steven Pressfield. I read that in my undergrad. And if I remember, it was a really effective book. It's just one of those motivational books that you just want to go after something after you read it. So those are my two. So that's great. I've never heard of them. And now I can't wait to hop on Amazon and have them delivered. Yeah. What is the best advice that was ever given to you that you would like to pass on to the listeners? Oh, I think my best advice, I don't even know if it was ever given to me,

Starting point is 00:47:25 but the thing that I just want to tell people is just to be a friend to others in this cutthroat landscape this music business world there's so much um using going on people using others for something you know that dirty that dirty word networking you know like i don't believe in networking i just think we all need to make friends and understand that we all are sort of this collective you know consciousness of musicians around the world we're all dealing with the same questions and the same problems so being a friend to somebody i think is first and foremost of course, that's not great artistic advice, maybe, but just life advice. I think we just need more kindness in the world. I think that's a start is always asking yourself, what can I do for you?

Starting point is 00:48:14 How can I help you? And making it very clear that you want the best for these other people, even if they're your competition, it doesn't matter. You're all unique and you all have enough room in the market for your own careers. Yes. I think this is really, really important advice and it's something that if we all do it could really i think transform the landscape of classical music right now yeah i think it's it's desperately needed to um you know the i i it's so easy to stigmatize classical music as stuffy but i i still think that it is it is it is this stuffy thing and i want to break that fourth wall that doesn't mean that i want to wear jeans and a t-shirt on stage it just means that i want to interact with the audience there is something

Starting point is 00:48:58 to the artifice of classical music of course we dress up we get on stage we do this um but i think that breaking that wall is a great thing and it's going to start by not just outreach and not you know outreach is cheap outreach is just you reaching out to somebody else but that word engagement you know community engagement how can i what can i do for you again coming back to being a friend or being helpful what can i do for you and and if that's not classical music that's okay But if it is, what do you need from it? And how can I help you get that? As opposed to just thinking that playing Beethoven and Brahms are going to give people what they need. I think we need to meet them where they are and take them into our world and offer up whatever it is, which is, again, I think emotional communication and sort of that catharsis that comes with it. And sorry, sorry to go on a tangent here about it, you know, but I, that's sort of like, that's, that's where I am. That's, that's where I am with all this right now. I think that, and I did this show on my Florida tour where I played at this sort of restaurant bar in the basement where they have these like classical music nights and open mics. And, and that was, that was like a telling thing because you're playing for people that aren't musicians and they're just coming to see whatever crazy art is being presented that night. and performing for them and getting their feedback and, you know, what they enjoy about it. These are

Starting point is 00:50:25 the people we need to reach out to, you know, and also reach out to the people that might not even know that they need it. So yes, I love that answer so much. Cameron, do you have a quick actionable tip that we can implement today in our musical lives? Okay, so a practice room tip, I'll say, I was thinking about this too, because of how percussionists always get locked into phrasing or playing with the metronome. I was thinking that I want to challenge people to turn the metronome on the whole note or the half note and milk your phrases. Play with the inner notes of your phrases while keeping the big time the same, but flexing within the 16th notes. Let the harmony of the music dictate where you move. I think that is a big tip for me.

Starting point is 00:51:11 So turn the metronome on the half note. Get it away from the quarter note or the eighth note. stop locking yourself in a box that's a great way to to learn notes and then get away from that and start to open your phrases up the other thing i i would just challenge everybody in their musical lives to try to make an impact on somebody and see if if they recognize it so like perform for somebody perform for one person or two people invite them to a very personal run through or something and just say, I want to communicate this emotion to you or, or, or don't tell them that rather have it in your head, play the piece and then ask them what emotion did you get from that? It's like, check yourself, use, use that as a check. I would encourage everybody to basically

Starting point is 00:51:57 having a great, a great sense of phrase in the practice room, but then also matching that with your communication and giving yourself, um, an evaluation with, with people around you that will be honest with you. So those are my tips. Those are a little long-winded. Wow. Those are amazing. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you. This has been great. Oh my gosh. Cameron, where can people go to know more about you? I've put all this info in the show notes. Yeah. So my website is cleachmusic.com, C-L-E-A-C-H, music.com. A lot of people say cleach music and I think that's kind of cool. So I'm going to roll with that. And then on Instagram and on Facebook, I'm the same thing, cleachmusic. I mainly use Instagram and my website and

Starting point is 00:52:39 I'm getting back to blogging a little bit more now, which I'm very excited about. I think it's a great way to communicate. Um, and I think that's it. I have a YouTube channel, but of course all those videos are hosted on my website as well. And I encourage people to go check that out because that's some really amazing design work done on the website by, um, by a great friend. So yeah, cleats music is basically where you can find me on anything. Cameron, thank you so much again for accepting to be on the show. I was talking about your enthusiasm on the stage earlier, but I think that we can all feel how much you love what you do, even offstage. And it's so inspiring and so motivating. I'm really, really happy that we

Starting point is 00:53:21 had this chance to talk today. All right. Well, thank you so much. And I hope everybody, I hope this helped in some way, everybody. And thank you so much for having me on. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this chat with Cameron Leach. I personally love his mindful approach to music making and especially his dedication to connect meaningfully with his audience. I also completely agree that we only gain by seeking to be a true friend and a kind colleague to our fellow musicians. This can only benefit us and positively affect us in our playing, our artistic output, and our enjoyment of our experience as artists. I think it's something we should all aspire to. As always, you can find the show notes for this

Starting point is 00:54:19 episode, other episodes of the show, and more resources on mindful and deliberate practice at mindoverfinger.com. You can also visit cleachmusic.com, that's C as Cameron, leach is l-e-a-c-h music.com for more information about Cameron's career and upcoming projects next week is the first of a series of three very special episodes as a performer and a teacher I constantly feel the presence of the musicians that have helped shape me as an artist with their knowledge, their skills, and their examples. There are many, too many to interview them all, but there are three that I consider as the main pedagogical influences in my life, and you will get to meet them in the coming weeks. And I'm really excited to begin with

Starting point is 00:55:14 Canadian violinist, teacher, and conductor Jean-Francois Rivet, who was my teacher from the age of nine when I began conservatory, all the way to the age of 20 when I graduated from the University of Montreal. Jean-François and I have an amazing conversation about learning to listen to ourselves and broadening our horizons as musicians. In the meantime, I hope to catch up with you on social media. So say hello on Instagram and Facebook at Mind Over Finger and check out the Mind Over Finger tribe at facebook.com slash groups slash Mind Over Finger tribe for inspiration, motivation, and support, as well as information and discussions on how to take your practice to the next level and enjoy the process. Also, if you think of someone who might benefit from

Starting point is 00:56:05 this episode, please share it with them. And if you feel like you got some value out of this conversation, please take a minute to head over to iTunes to rate and leave a review. your kind words mean the world to me and I truly appreciate it again thank you and a bientot

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 024 Cameron Leach: Communicating Through Intentional & Empathetic Performing

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