This week, I released a short second collection of piano-based tracks called Deep Down and Not Forgotten.

May I ask a favour? If you enjoy the music, would you please click to save/like on each track or the album to help others find it? Thank you. If you want to follow me as an artist that also helps.

My sketch this week is related: one-buttock playing.

We all experience the power of music to move us either as players or listeners.

In his entertaining and insightful TED talk about The Transformative Power of Classical Music, Benjamin Zander begins with a memorable sequence of imitating a child learning to play the piano. With each new year of practice, the child's playing becomes more gentle, more accomplished, and more emotional.

When playing as if an eleven-year-old, now leaning into the music, only one buttock in contact with the piano stool, Ben Zander says,

"I don't know how we got into this position.

I didn't say, 'I'm going to move my shoulder over, move my body.' No, the music pushed me over, which is why I call it one-buttock playing."

"You know, a gentleman was once watching a presentation I was doing, when I was working with a young pianist. He was the president of a corporation in Ohio. I was working with this young pianist, and said, 'The trouble with you is you're a two-buttock player. You should be a one-buttock player.' I moved his body while he was playing. And suddenly, the music took off. It took flight. The audience gasped when they heard the difference. Then I got a letter from this gentleman. He said, 'I was so moved. I went back and I transformed my entire company into a one-buttock company.'"

For me, one-buttock playing means going with the music, letting it take you, and being fully involved, ignoring everything else. It's like reaching a state of Flow, or, as in Pixar's movie Soul, being in "the Zone." And as a more general metaphor, one-buttock playing is a fun reminder to give your all to an activity and be in the moment. Also, buttock is just a funny word.

There are many ways to get into Flow. You can be in Flow working on a spreadsheet. But no spreadsheet has the same effect that music can or matches how I feel when playing and composing on the piano (have a listen).

Zander doesn't mention it in his talk, but expertise is key to one-buttock playing. The younger pianists he emulates don't experience one-buttock playing—they're too busy trying to play the damn piece properly in the first place.

One-buttock playing emerges only when they are skilful enough and know the piece inside and out. In other words, to lose yourself in the emotion or expression of a piece of music or a challenge, you must first master the craft. Once the execution is the baseline, you create space to focus on the expression.

So it is, I think, with all pursuits. Picasso could sketch with abandon because he'd first mastered painting. Shakespeare could play with language because he'd first mastered it. Federer could make tennis look like an art form because his mastery of the fundamentals gave him freedom on the court. A great CEO can take a company to new heights only when the team executes the basics like clockwork.

You may remember Benjamin Zander from the leadership sketch Leading from Any Chair

Collective Effervescence: the magic of shared experience

Match Challenge with Skills for Flow at Work

One-buttock playing

Leading from Any Chair is the idea that we all have the opportunity to influence the action even when we're not standing at the front. It's a principle for effective leadership and teaching yourself and others to lead.

In their inspiring book, The Art of Possibility, Benjamin and Rosamund Zander relate a story from renowned violist Eugene Lehner, who played in the Kolish Quartet and Boston Symphony Orchestra. One day, in an interpretation class led by Zander with Lehner as a guest coach, Ben Zander asked him, "How can you bear to play day after day in an orchestra led by conductors, many of whom must know so much less than you?"

Lehner said he was playing in a rehearsal in his first year in the orchestra when the conductor, Koussevitsky, struggled to lead the orchestra as he wanted through a tricky Bach piece. A friend of Koussevitsky and fellow conductor, Nadia Boulanger, was sitting in on the session. Koussevitsky stopped and asked if Nadia would conduct the passage so he could hear what it sounded like from the back of the hall. Nadia conducted the passage without a hitch, and the rehearsal continued. But the episode left Lehner ever wondering and waiting for the moment when a conductor might say to him, "Lehner, you come up here and conduct. I want to go to the back of the hall and hear how it sounds."

"It's now 43 years since that happened," said Lehner, "and it is less and less likely that I will be asked. However, in the meantime, I haven't had a single dull moment in a rehearsal as I sit wondering, 'What would I say to the orchestra, should I suddenly be called upon to lead?'"

There are many occasions when I have personally grappled with whether now is the moment to step up and lead. Sometimes, I have taken them. Other times, I feel ashamed that I sat back and let events unfold without contributing.

It's the easy path to defer to whoever's leading and consider that there may be better times to influence or say what you think needs to be said. Or you can take the view that we're all responsible in some way for what we're experiencing, and we all have the opportunity to influence for the better.

You don't have to be the captain on the field to influence your fellow players.

A typical example I've experienced is seeing a presenter struggle in a meeting, perhaps with technical difficulties or audience confusion. It may take only a little to try and help with the tech or to ask the presenter to explain a point that you see needs to be clarified for people. Or, as an audience member, you can sit back and consider it not your problem.

Once, in the middle of a performance at a wedding, the music suddenly clicked off for the performer. Immediately picking up on the problem, the wedding photographer started singing the melody, picking up where the music left off. Getting the idea, all the guests joined in, continuing the music to the end. This quick intervention undoubtedly led to a better show for everyone, including the performer.

When you choose to step up, it's an opportunity to learn to lead. You may discover that there's more to leading than it seems and gain empathy for the leaders around you.

By constantly asking myself, "What would I say should I suddenly be called upon to lead?" I am mentally rehearsing for when I am needed, for when I am in the position of a leader. It speeds up my learning and keeps me always ready for action.

It's one reason why always thinking of questions at a talk or conference is valuable. It forces you to engage with the material, and when the opportunity arises, you're ready to step up and ask about what matters to you or what everyone is thinking.

Identifying passion and the leaders in front of you

As a leader, if you believe you are superior, for example, as the conductor who doesn't consider the orchestra members to have anything to contribute to the interpretation of the music, then you are likely to suppress the voices of the very people you need to deliver.

People want to contribute—that's why they attended the class, joined the company, or trained in their discipline. Rosamund Zander advises that, as a leader, we can train ourselves to spot the passion of the people in our teams. We can actively look for occasions to allow team members to lead. And if we don't see the passion, we can ask ourselves, "Who am I being that they are not shining?"

We can learn to lead at any time. So the next time you're just one in a crowd, consider that you can lead from any chair. Ask yourself, "What would I say if I were suddenly called upon to lead?"

In case it wasn't clear, I highly recommend The Art of Possibility, which I listened to as an audiobook read by Benjamin and Rosamund. And I always recommend finding 20 mins to watch Benjamin Zander's classic TED talk, The Transformative Power of Classical Music. Left-buttock playing is a sketch I've been planning for a long time.

The Responsibility Poem: Whose job is it?

What drives us: Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose

This is the last time I plan to draw an orchestra. I now know a little of what it must feel like to draw Where's Wally?

Leading from Any Chair

Collective effervescence is an eye-catching name for the magic of shared experience and moving in unison. As described by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim, it picks out those times when people come together in synchrony for an experience that's different and often greater than those you can have alone.

It might be gathering and singing at a music festival, swaying to the music as one being at a concert, experiencing the wonder of nature together, when the crowd erupts together as a goal goes in and hugging the person next to you, taking a yoga or spinning class, worshipping together, the pilgrimage to Mecca, or that magical Shawshank Redemption moment listening to the duet from The Marriage of Figaro as one. Despite my feeble clarinet skills, I remember a brief goosebump feeling when the school orchestra played it all correctly. And I remember my hair standing up when Twickenham Stadium carried Swing Low, Sweet Chariot in unison.

Collective effervescence is something we missed during the pandemic. It was identified in Dacher Keltner's book Awe as one of the 8 Wonders of Life.

Also see: forest bathing, notice when you're happy, 5 ways to wellbeing

Collective effervescence

Ma is the negative space — the space that makes the whole. Formed by the rather beautiful Chinese characters of 'Door' and 'Sun', like the sun gleaming through a doorway, it represents what isn't there and how that helps form what is.

Ma is present in art, including beautiful minimalistic ink brush drawings and music where the silence and quiet that surround the notes help make a piece what it is.

Some vintage-related sketches: figure and ground, use white space with care, John Cage

SP 795 - Ma - smaller.png

We're all different sizes, and there is no one-size-fits-all, but when it comes to the chosen size it turns out that that size mostly fits men better.

Caroline Criado Perez in her book Invisible Women shares how so much of the designed world fits men better than women — examples include piano keyboards that make playing more technically difficult and more prone to injury for smaller hands, stab vests that didn't take account of breasts, crash test dummies for car seats tested only with males, toilets that always lead to queues, phones that don't fit female hands or pockets, and voice recognition that picks out male voices more easily.

It's a stark reminder of how we need to do more to design with more of the world in mind rather than the default reference male. 

Read more: The deadly truth about a world built for men – from stab vests to car crashes.

See also brilliance bias and the curb-cut effect.

One-size-fits-men

"This negative is the score. The print is the performance."

This memorable analogy is from Ansel Adams, one of the foremost American photographers.

From the negative captured by the camera, Ansel would experiment with cropping, dodging and burning (lightening and darkening) to create the final print.

We have a large print of moon and half dome in our hallway. It reminds me that what the camera captured directly isn't the final piece. You still have the performance to perform.

The analogy works beyond photographs. A recipe, a script, a joke, or a business idea all still need the right performance.

Prints and performances

One of the biggest benefits of digital music. Now you don’t have to listen to that rubbish one on the album. Don’t be shy.

Delete tracks you don’t like

7 minutes well spent watching Julian Treasure at TED.

3 ways to listen better

John Cage is an American composer famous for his piece 4' 33'', which is 4 mins and 33 seconds of silence.

4' 33" divided into three movements of 30 seconds, 2 minutes 23 seconds, and the final 1 minute and 40 seconds. All silent.

It's really quite hard to listen and watch a full orchestra performance of 4' 33" without finding it rather fascinating. Like when the musicians turn the pages at the right moments.

Make art like John Cage

Having played the piano most of my life I only started composing when I started spontaneously dropping by the music practice rooms at UC Berkeley in the middle of the day. Without any music I was practically forced to start making things up. Every now and then it’s new and nice. You can listen to a few short piano pieces on youtube.

I strongly believe in this as advice, but it does presuppose years of copying and playing others’ music as well as the basics of music theory. Replicate, then innovate

More sketches about starting and getting started

Want to compose? Just sit down without any music

It really is another language. One well worth learning.

Music sketches