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Re: Pedantic practice.....

Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2006-08-11 21:22

I'm not sure what's happening. Is it that a particular passage seems impossible to play? If so, there are several ways of getting at it.

WORK AT AN EXTREMELY SLOW TEMPO

Practicing is very different from performing. Your goal is not to play up to tempo, but to play perfectly. Your fingers and you embouchure and breathing muscles get trained to play difficult passages by perfect repetition, not by speed.

Use a metronome. Take the first 4 notes of the passage. Play the first note, think about what you need to do to get to the next note, make a mental movie of doing it, and then do it. Take as much time as you need. If you have to set your metronome to 42 beats per minute, then that's what you do.

Speed up gradually, and stop when you begin to make even tiny mistakes.

Practicing while making mistakes only trains your fingers to make mistakes. Never go faster than perfect.

BREAK A BIG PROBLEM INTO SMALL ONES

Don't work on the complete first movement of the Weber Concerto # 2. Work on brief passages that cause trouble. Set small goals that you can accomplish in a single practice session. For more on this, read the great article at http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/conservatory/studio/oboe/practice.shtml.

WORK ON SCALES THAT MATCH THE PROBLEMS

When you work on a difficult passage, isolate the spots where your fingers get tangled and identify which scale or arpeggio they match.

Let's say you're having trouble playing low F#-E-D#-C#-B. You'll recognize that it's part of the B major scale. Go to your Baermann III and work slow and hard on the B major scale, until you feel, if not completely comfortable, at least confident that you know it.

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I may have misunderstood your message. Perhaps when your teacher points out a problem, it suddenly seems huge, and you don't know how to calm down. If that's what it is, all I can advise is to use the same kind of method I just described. Break the problem down into small pieces, and work on them one at a time.

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It's also possible that your teacher pointed out a problem that can't be broken down easily, such as uneven tonguing, or air leaking through your embouchure.

There are solutions for these kinds of problems, too. If you use the search function you'll find lots of advice on tonguing (lighten it up) and air leaks (long tones).

Let us know what your particular problems are. There are all kinds of exercises that can help.

Finally, just start playing. Play with other people, which will shift your attention from your worries to what's happening between you and those you're playing with.

Ken Shaw

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