 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Brett
Date: 2003-01-26 18:13
How much is too much? Is there a point where practicing too much can actually be detrimental to your playing? What are some of the practicing habits of people on this board? Just curious. Thanks.
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Author: Jerry
Date: 2003-01-26 18:18
As long as you're making progress and not becoming irritable (or causing others to become irritable - this is the toughest constraint).
Does noodling and just playing things you enjoy count as "practice?"
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Author: tom piercy
Date: 2003-01-26 18:53
How much is too much is unique too each individual.
A few ideas -
It's too much practice, and can be detrimental, if:
you are in physical pain in fingers, hands, wrists, arms, teeth, lips, neck, or face;
you are not progressing on some level in what you are practicing;
you are not able to focus on necessary practice goals;
you are repeating mistakes.
The list could go on, but as mentioned above, "too much" is unique to each of us. Knowing when to stop and begin again later is very important to learn and can only be learned through trial and hopefully not too much error.
Tom Piercy
thomaspiercy.com
Becoming irritable is not necessarily an indication that you should stop practicing; it may be an indication that you should learn how to practice without becoming irritable.
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Author: Irwin
Date: 2003-01-26 19:38
My limit is usually an hour and a half. Usually I practice a bit less than that and stop when I start to make sloppy mistakes. The key is to use whatever practice time you have wisely and get the most out of it.
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Author: Peter
Date: 2003-01-26 19:55
Ditto to that "how much is too much" is strictly a subjective issue, etc., however, I've formed some opinion on the subject as well (Oh, boy!)
I remember that all through my early music training, several of my teachers, over the years, were of the opinion that a minimum of one to two hours a day were necessary (preferably two, no self respecting music teacher ever goes for the lower number when it concerns practice) just to maintain your present level of proficiency.
Three to four hours a day (preferably four) were necessary to show any tangible improvement over your present level of proficiency.
Form there, there are those who practice much more. Christian Lindbergh, a most gifted professional trombone player, is reputed to practice some eight hours a day, and you should hear this guy's sound!
If he really does this, I would venture to say that the time is probably broken up into several shorter intervals on a daily basis. I can't imagine anyone spending a solid eight hours blowing into one end of any instrument. Anyone who could do that on a regular basis, also needs to stay away from certain other things, such as kryptonite!
If you have a good music teacher, whose opinion you value, I would take it up with him/her, because I doubt that anyone who is not intimately familiar with your personal circumstances can really give you an opinion that would, sure-fire, work for you.
Some of those personal circumstances were mentioned before, but the most important one, to you, should be whether you are actually improving during the time you spend practicing, or not, and the rate at which you are improving, vs how long you spend practicing every day.
Keep in mind that improvement is also the child of how efficiently you are using your "allotted" practice time. That is most important.
That having been said, I'll tell you what I do:
I have a stand in my office that holds, in L-R order: Bb clarinet, tenor sax, C Melody sax, alto sax, soprano sax, Eb clarinet, and one pentatonic flute. (I replaced the alto clarinet on the rack when the C-Mel arrived.)
They sit within hand reach of my chair, so, when I need to take a break from whatever I'm doing, I play for a half-hour, or so, several times a day. I don't know if this is conducive to improvement, or not, but sometimes I get to play several hours in the course of a day, sometimes not even one half-hour.
And that's the name of that tune (as far as "me" goes.)
Good luck and enjoy!
Peter
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Author: HAT
Date: 2003-01-26 20:10
Depends on what your goals are.
Marcellus always used to say something like. . ."There's a lot of guys out there at places like Juilliard practicing all day and all night. They might not have everything that you have talentwise, but if they practice enough, it won't matter. In any case, those are the guys you'll meet in the finals of an audition someday."
The most important thing is not to WASTE time on stuff that isn't helpful. Every teacher has an opinion on what those things are.
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Author: Bazzer the Jazzer
Date: 2003-01-26 20:19
I practice a lot sometimes several times a day it could be a minute or two hours or more, I always have a clarinet in my living room on a stand, I can just pick it up and have a blow, what I have just written this sounds a bit flippant I know, but I am serious about my playing and some serious practise is done, I must add one thing to this, I am single and live on my own so I do not annoy anybody when I play.
Early last year I was talking to another jazz clarinetist and we came to the subject of practice, I asked how often he did it, he said it never came out of its case unless he had a new tune or harmony to perfect, he only played it on gigs, I told him I practised a lot and he asked how I disciplined myself, the answer was simple 'I just love and the sound of the instrument'.
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Author: GBK
Date: 2003-01-26 20:22
Being both fiercely competitive and a perfectionist, it is said that Benny Goodman religiously practiced 3 - 4 hours a day, every day of his life...GBK
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Author: Jerry
Date: 2003-01-26 21:12
"Irrititable" in my useage meant the consequence of becoming mentally or physically fatigued to the point that it is unproductive to continue, and if one continues anyway, a noteworthy lack of progress is made despite "gutting it out" with repeition, thus really pissing oneself off, thereby becoming "irritable." This problem can be minimized by breaking up your practice sessions into smaller chunks throughout the day the best you can.
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Author: Laur
Date: 2003-01-26 21:15
The first day of college my professor told us a story :
"There was this one girl who practiced about 4 hours a day, and was accepted to study under a professional top ranked player. She thought, wow, Since i'm studying with him, I better practice harder and longer... So she upped her daily practice to 6 hours.
On the first day of her lesson. She eagerly spoke to her new teacher : I practice 6 hours a day, but i am very willing to practice more, anything you think that would help my playing.
He said quietly, Honey, If you can't get everythign you need to practice accomplished in the first 2 hours, then you are in the wrong profession."
My question is.. how does everyone manage their practice time ? I often feel overwhelmed- How does one practice tech instruments, Piano and their major instrument ( ALL scales, Etudes, Tuning, Technique practice as well as Major Pieces ) without selling their soul to the practice room ?
Laurie.
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Author: Peter
Date: 2003-01-26 21:49
I know that term: "...selling your soul to the practice room." I just looked for it and found it, and it goes like this:
"If you want to play the part of the renowned performer, you have to sell your soul to the practice room;
If you want to play the part of the starving musician, you have to sell a leg, maybe ocassionally something else to the practice room;
If you want to be a music teacher, you have to, perhaps, donate a little blood every now and again;
There is committment, and there is involvement. The pig is committed to your breakfast, but the chicken is merely involved.
Depending on how far you want to get with anything in life, you just may have to adjust yourself to becoming a pig."
This was originally translated from Spanish and I don't know if anyone important said it originally, but it had been in an 8"x10" frame on Maria Josefa Garrido's piano, who had been a fairly well known classical concert pianist in Spain before she gave it up at an early age to marry my grandfather and become a "lady of leisure," thereby taking up "playing the part" of eventually becoming my grandmother.
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Author: Synonymous Botch
Date: 2003-01-26 22:44
To misquote James Taylor (the pop singer),
"If you do what you love for a living, save some for yourself."
Do you suppose top-flight performers can keep going if they're sick of playing? I would say that the balance is struck when you have drilled enough to make recognizable progress but still look forward to slapping on a reed.
I hear one recurrent refrain from the top educators and online pros - long tones are the water to make your sound grow.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2003-01-26 23:52
Synonymous Botch wrote:
>
> I hear one recurrent refrain from the top educators and online
> pros - long tones are the water to make your sound grow.
Which ones, specifically?
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Author: HAT
Date: 2003-01-27 00:12
> I hear one recurrent refrain from the top educators and online
> pros - long tones are the water to make your sound grow.
Mark Charette has beat me to the same question.
I know I have 'been here' many times before, but I don't recommend long tone practice at all. I don't say it is a harmful thing, but when I mentioned wasting time before, long tones were specifically what I had in mind.
To me it is one of the MOST INEFFICIENT uses of practice time. In other words, excessive time usage for the benefits reaped.
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Author: Kat
Date: 2003-01-27 02:06
Hat-
Just a question regarding your position on long tones:
You seem to feel that NO long tones should be used at all. Is that correct?
Not even one or two per practice session?
xoxo,
Katrina
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Author: John Kelly - Australia
Date: 2003-01-27 02:36
I disagree regarding the use of long tones for practice purposes, in fact I find them most useful for building up lip strength, particularly when I have not played for a week or two, as happens regularly in my situation.
Long tones,crescendo to diminuendo and vice versa, good for breath control and pitch control. Boring - possibly - but not a waste of time at all in my opinion. I can play over seven other players in a jazz band (if I want/need) and can also play quietly in a duo or trio.
Cheers,
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Author: HAT
Date: 2003-01-27 03:00
Kat,
I didn't say NOT to do them. I just said that I feel they are not an efficient use of practice time.
In my opinion, they accomplish little that cannot be accomplished practicing scales without the obvious additional benefits scales provide.
Long tones good for breath and pitch control? Possibly (but scales again better), but what is the real-world application of long tones? Almost invariably in the real world when one has long sustained tones, they are in the background (or are supposed to be. . .). In the real world, you have to deal with rhythm, intonation, articulation, etc etc etc all at once.
As far as pitch, notes are only in tune as they relate to other notes. Playing long tones trying to 'pin the needle' is not going to help you play a c in tune because you don't know whether that c is the tonic note or whether it is the major third in the key of a-flat. There would be a huge difference where that note has to go between those two possibilities. Playing scales addresses this issue.
Stanley Hastey once said in a masterclass: "anyone can sound good on one note. Once someone plays an INTERVAL, however, you can immediately tell whether the player is a beginner or someone very good." My teacher did not believe in long tones either.
Those of you who spend 10 or more minutes a day on long tones. .. consider 6 months of taking those minutes and using them on Baermann 3 (adding them to what hopefully is already a decent amount of scale practice). I think the results should speak for themselves. Use a metronome!
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Author: Meighan Stoops
Date: 2003-01-27 03:40
I think it's helpful to differentiate between long tones and slow practice. I'm not big on doing things like holding a note for as long as possible. I do play several intervals (narrow and eventually wide) at the beginning of my warm-up. I also think that practicing something that's giving you problems at a slow tempo in a legatissimo manner is extremely helpful (whether it's a slow or fast passage). When Hat says that he doesn't practice long tones, don't assume that he doesn't practice some things slowly to work on sound, air, and legato.
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Author: Morrigan
Date: 2003-01-27 05:23
Personally, I will work until I suffer from any form of fatigue. Whem my mind wanders, I'll stop. When I am physically tired, I take a break. Especially if I feel some sort of pain, I definitely stop and find out what the pain was caused by and make sure not to do it again.
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Author: Ken Shaw
Date: 2003-01-27 14:36
Read the biography written by Harold Wright's wife in the CD inserts for his recordings. She said he practiced constantly. When someone came up the walk to the front door of their house, he would run out the back door so she could say he wasn't home, and he could keep practicing. I've been told on direct authority that Ralph McLane was the same way, and that Richard Stoltzaman practices as much as 10 hours a day.
At the Clarinet Day at Mannes, Michael Nuccio said he shut himself in a practice room full time when he was at the conservatory studying with Marcellus. He figured he had this one chance to make the most possible out of his talent and he didn't want to waste a second.
When I was in high school, one of the retired local music teachers had played flute in the Chicago Symphony. I asked him whether he still kept up on the instrument. He said, "Not as much as I'd like to. I'm lucky to get in any more than two hours a day."
As HAT quotes Marcellus, there are always people who'll out-practice you if you give them the chance.
There are very few people who have this sort of single-mindedness or physical endurance. Frankly, I found I wasn't one of them. I made it up to four hours a day, but couldn't stretch beyond that. I have too many other interests, and so make my living in a less exacting job.
Best regards.
Ken Shaw
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Author: RA
Date: 2003-01-27 15:11
When composing, and after finished, how does one come up with a title?
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Author: Sylvain
Date: 2003-01-27 17:36
I think one very important practice habit is to make yourself a schedule.
Scales = ??? min
Etudes = ??? min
Solo 1 = ??? min, etc....
I also think that practicing more than 2 hours in one shot is not very wise. Most college students in music that I know try to practice at least 4 hours a day.
-S
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Author: Allen Cole
Date: 2003-01-28 06:33
I think that long tones have their advantages, but more for younger students than more advanced players.
Kat and Meghan both make good points. My kids have a set litany of scale skills that they work on, and I often encourage them to play them like long tones with their fingers moving. I do similar things myself.
I think that any warmup or other pat exercises can produce the same results as long tones and, as KAT points out, really get you in touch with intervals and jumps.
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Author: Kat
Date: 2003-01-28 16:07
Yeah, Allen,
I have one student who is soooo hyper that when he's playing anything with his fingers moving at all, he doesn't seem to want to produce the sound correctly. With him I think I _must_ have him play a long tone or two just to set his embouchure and calm him down for the lesson!
xoxo,
Katrina
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Author: HAT
Date: 2003-01-28 18:40
KAT,
Yes, that is what long tones are for. To use as a reference for playing moving notes.
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Author: Kat
Date: 2003-01-29 03:44
Hat,
That's why I was a little confused by your replies...
For me, I don't use 'em...never could stand playing 'em, felt frustrated and bored and that they really didn't do too much for me.
But with my beginners and intermediate students, I feel a lot of the time I don't have a choice. These kids just "honk" and wiggle their fingers unless I make 'em stop and have them play one note and then stop and play another... Not sure if it's an attention span thing or just a frustration thing.
For the student I referenced above, I think he's just a freaky lil' 12-year old boy (no offense intended...LOL!) who likes to make a lot of noise...
xoxo,
Katrina
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