Repetition as Play
Structure as freedom
Opening night! I’m playing the unforgiving 8th-note barrage of complex broken chords, the relentless New York City train ride of “Another Hundred People” from the musical Company.
My attention is in three directions: the singer on stage, the score and conductor in front of me, and my two hands playing the locomotive accompaniment that in that moment is supporting it all. All of us, together, stretched to the limit.
Then, during the extended fermata of the first scene break, while I have a moment to reflect on the first section and prepare for the next, I realize: I’m calm. I’m definitely not comfortable, but I’m confident. The fast tempo (405 8th-note beats per minute, or nearly 7 beats per second) feels unexpectedly secure.
How did that happen?
Not by magic.
Or was it?
Let’s go back to my practice room during the preparation of “Another Hundred People”.
I started with chunking1. Based on the underlying harmonic rhythm, I created blocked chords from 8th-note groups of 3 and 2 played by both hands.
Then I integrated the small chunks. These chords were grouped into musical phrases and practiced individually in rep sets.2
When I felt comfortable with the phrases of blocked chords, I “re-arpeggiated” the chords as written, playing them slowly in rep sets, then gradually increasing tempo. Each phrase and tempo change became its own rep set.3
Slowly, methodically, as more and more phrases were chunked, blocked, practiced as rep sets, and tempos increased, they were re-integrated among themselves and further integrated into larger and larger sections.
But this wasn’t magic.
It took a lot of thinking, designing, and goal attainment. I had learned the piece and could slog through it, but I could not yet play it dependably. Even as we started rehearsals.
The magic happened later.
During the whole rehearsal process, and even into performance, I used the chunked blocked chords as warm-ups, reminders, for preparation. I played them from memory, as rituals before rehearsals and performances. They were little crystals that I kept pulling out of my pocket and polishing. They eventually became the gems that brought me to that moment on opening night.
What was the gems’ magic? A gift wrapped in a paradox.
Let’s see what’s inside.
In Homo Ludens4, the Dutch philosopher Johan Huizinga says boldly that “the first characteristic of play” is “that it is free: is in fact freedom.” He also says that repetition is one of play’s most essential qualities. What this means is that the structure of play is not ordinary routine. It is a freely chosen return to an activity that yields freshness each time. The child who plays the same game again isn’t bored. Through the act of genuine play, their experience deepens.
What I discovered opening night: the same prepare-play-reflect design that directs a single repetition also steered the entire Company rehearsal process. The blocked chord exercises I designed are the smallest circle. The opening night performance is one of the largest. They inhabit the same magic circle and express the same pattern, but on different time scales.
And here’s the gift. The freedom of play is what freely chosen structure makes possible. The confidence I felt on opening night didn’t come despite the hundreds of repetitions. It was because of them.
Like me, you were probably told to repeat things without understanding why or how. This leads us to practice motivated by obligation, resulting in feelings of tedium, and experiencing our practice as something to get through.
Huizinga, by reminding us of our instinct to play, offers us possibilities for understanding. The most compelling possibility is this: the musician who understands the basic repetition and intentionally designs their own repetition sets is genuinely freer than the one doing what they’re told.
This possibility becomes reality because of two things that are true. The process of design5 is itself an act of freedom; and each repetition is where that freedom is enacted.
But if play is freedom, what does it feel like to actually enter a repetition, beyond the safety zone of certainty? And what happens when the repetition doesn’t go as planned?
Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture, Johan Huizinga; also referenced in That Which We Call Play, and Entering the Magic Circle
For a list of posts on the idea of design in music practice, see the Reimagining Music Practice Starter Kit
Very insightful. This reminds me of my "practice" of doodling. Doodling is serious play. You can't make a mistake so exploration results. Doodles improve skills. And opens new doors!