Klarinet Archive - Posting 001312.txt from 2004/03

From: "Patricia A. Smith" <arlyss1@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] [clarinet] Performance and other skills relevant to performing; was, not just
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 11:33:53 -0500

Ormondtoby Montoya wrote:

>I would now be !Absolutely! convinced how valuable it is to mix children of different abilities together.
>
>At some point farther down the line, you need to choose the best
>performers and urge them to strive for excellence.... there's no
>argument there. But in the earlier stages of education (such as today was for me), I saw first hand how both the skilled and the unskilled profited by working together. It was spectacular. The unskilled had good examples to emulate and they improved, but the skilled faced the challenge of meshing with performers less talented than themselves without shortchanging their performances; and they learned some thing(s) in the process that they would never have learned while rehearsing only
>with equals. It made me think about a virtuoso who hogs the show rather than learning how to use his/her skill to support the
>performance.
>
>

Mr. Montoya makes an important clarification here, which I think is
important enough to change the subject line.

First of all, performance involves many things, not just skill at one's
instrument.

One must ALSO look at these (among other) items:

Medium - are you a soloist, or do you perform with a clarinet section,
woodwind quintet, or other chamber group, piano trio, jazz group, etc.?
This will determine a great deal how you will approach your rehearsals.

Students who ARE the better performers sometimes are not particularly
the best leaders, when it comes to leading rehearsals, etc. They
sometimes need to be taught certain tools and qualities, such as tact,
compromise, etc. with their peers. Just because someone is skilled in
certain areas, does not mean they necessarily can transfer that
elsewhere. Also, it does not mean they have communication skills when
it comes to dealing with others!

How difficult are the pieces/tunes/charts that the group wants to
perform? How far along are they when it comes to rehearsal techniques?
Some kids don't have a lot of patience when it comes to breaking down a
piece into components for real rehearsing. If you have kids who have
ADHD, or autism for example, it's important to be SUPER-ORGANIZED in
this respect when rehearsing a large ensemble...have your roadmap in
front of you - let them know which places in the music you will be
covering before you start rehearsing, and don't spend too much time a)
on one place, or b) on one section. With a small ensemble, don't let
one person monopolize the rehearsal because s/he didn't practice her/his
part. Sometimes, kids don't know HOW to practice a piece that, with a
little work, isn't all that difficult for them. I'll get to that.

Practice techniques for kids:

Practicing is a bugaboo for kids of ALL ability levels. Add an
exceptionality of some sort, and you've got a minefield, if you're not
careful. (My own ADHD made practicing HELL for me, even way into
adulthood) Some pointers for folks when teaching kids how to practice:

Every individual student is different... as a band "dictator" (hi
Rebecca!) you can only give general guidelines. If you have a student
who is having serious problems getting good practice habits going,
speaking to him/her on an individual basis can help. Remember -
structure is a student's best friend.

For me, as a person who has ADHD, these tactics help:

1) Breathing first! WITH long tones! I can't WAIT to have a horn in my
face! SOOO, since I need to get embouchure set, and get everything
warm, I like the feeling of relaxation that doing long tones first helps
me achieve. For more advanced students, individual long tones, followed
by slurred long tone scales, or intervallic long tones ( I can think of
several examples in general, but names escape me) Setting a specific
time limit to this will ease the transition into the next step of
practicing. For most students, 2-3 minutes is enough. for more
advanced, longer is fine.

2) Steady scale practice. This should include not just major, minor
(Baermann-type stuff) but also modal, and other type scales, especially
if you're into jazz. Not only do scales warm up the fingers, they get
the ears going. You hear those intervallic relationships, and that
helps greatly, especially if you're into improv. (remember you're
warming up the brain, as well as the fingers, lungs, etc) This should
last about 5 minutes for most students, longer for more advanced. Do
NOT play TOO fast! Use a metronome. I'd suggest for beginners and
intermediate students, don't go TOO slow. Quarter note = about 88 bpm.
(Your teacher is your best bet, however.)

3) Tuner practice - this is for the more advanced. Length of time
depends upon the individual's teacher's recommendations.

4) Break down your major practice time into modules for each
etude/orchestral piece/band piece/ensemble piece/chamber piece that you
need to go over. Isolate places according to what sort of difficulty
you are having with them:
breathing? technical? articulation? smoothness of execution? My
personal suggestion is that you take a piece of medium difficult and
assign it to yourself first. Give yourself three minutes with it. Then
go on to the next one, more difficult. Three minutes. Plan MOST of
your time around the piece that is MOST difficult. Then back down,
leaving the least difficult for last. Again, times will vary, according
to the level of proficiency of the student.

5) Cool down: a) For fun: I think it's important to remember WHY we
play music! Once you've gotten the assigned pieces out of the way,
spend a few minutes playing something you like! Make up stuff, if that's
what you like to do. Put on a CD, or tape, & do some improv. Trade
fours with Wynton or whoever. Or, get what we used to call music minus
one and have your own accompanist for your favorite solo! Or, just
write new music. Whatever seems like the most fun. and finally b) some
long tones just to relax those muscles and feel good.

I find this sort of structure, when I can follow it, is very settling,
and fills my need to know exactly what I'll be doing with the time I
spend with the horn.

Obviously, planning some of the time around adjusting and/or making
reeds, is also necessary. This way, you also do not risk spending so
much time sanding, hacking, etc. that you feel you've wasted your
practice time hacking away.

I am NOT going to say this particular structure will work for everyone.
It's not a one-size fits all proposition by any means. What I do intend
to say is that the more a student or professional structures his/her
time - and especially for students, the more they learn to
self-discipline in this manner, the better this skill will transfer to
other areas of life. For those of us who have exceptionalities we deal
with, this is NOT an easy thing to do. We must reinforce it with
ourselves in many ways.

I have to write down my practice routine, when I'm practicing regularly,
and sometimes, I even keep a practice journal, so I have a record of
what I've accomplished. This also serves the dual purpose of showing me
just what I've accomplished, and lets me know where I may have cheated
myself, or where I may have spent too much time, when I need to spend
that time on something else.

Obviously, also, this sort of thing has to be adjusted for age level.
One does not expect beginners to work as long as more advanced
students. At the college/university level, I recall being told that one
was expected to practice one hour per day for every semester hour one
was taking in lessons. Hence - three hours per day - at least. Most
put in a lot more, when they could, some less. I think it's not quite
the amount of time, as much as it is how one structures it to make the
best use of this commodity.

I apologize if this post sounds a bit too preachy or pedantic. Duet to
the nature of how beginners must learn the clarinet, establishing a
coordination between the breathing, posture, embouchure, tongue
movement, hand position and the movement of the fingers, IMO it is
especially important to find a routine that helps establish, and even
imprint good habits on a daily basis, without being a rote bore. Also,
if you go out and look at the research now available on methods of
instruction for students with certain exceptionalities, a high amount of
structure is quite desirable, both for the teacher's sake, and for the
student's.

I am also not going to say that ALL students with exceptionalities can
learn an instrument. That sort of assumption would be ignorant and
unrealistic. However, for those that can, a skilled teacher with an
understanding of various individual modalities can elicit a good deal of
not only progress, but often exceptional ability and talent.

Patricia Smith

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