 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Morrigan
Date: 2008-04-06 16:12
Here's a theory for you all!
In my college days, I practiced a LOT. I had so much time. Most of my sessions would end in frustration as I would do the same thing over and over and I would often get sick of pieces or exercises. Performances would usually turn out quite well in the end, but it felt like a saga getting there.
I now work full-time, 9 - 6, 5 days a week. I get to do about an hour each night. In this case, because of limited time, I make sure I do everything extremely thoroughly and the results, considering the amount of time I've been playing, have actually surprised me. I'm almost as good as I was before (my 6-month break) and it's like I never stopped playing. I'm preparing for an audition and I feel like it may actually turn out to be a good one. I feel the mindset is better than ever before.
Can this method, the "don't over-think it" approach, actually work?
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2008-04-06 16:34
Morrigan wrote:
>> Can this method, the "don't over-think it" approach, actually work?>>
Given the rest of your post, I'm surprised by this last statement. It's true that you don't want to OVERthink, but...
I'd say, practice IS 'thinking'...whilst doing.
What it isn't, is 'unthinking doing'.
The length of time involved is sometimes important, but it's essentially a secondary consideration.
After all, remember Parkinson's Law:
'Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.'
Tony
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Author: Neal Raskin
Date: 2008-04-06 17:13
Contrary to popular belief:
Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Perfect Practice makes Perfect.
It could be that you are practicing smarter now. It may be that you need less time to get the same results because before you were not practicing perfect. The theories on learning mostly suggest that once you, in this case practice, something wrong, you should relearn the right way immediately. If there is a tricky passage that always trips you up, don't just keep playing over and over that way and expect it to get better. In this case you need to slow it down and start relearning the correct way to do it.
Oh I do love my Educational Psychology courses.
Neal
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Author: Malcolm Martland
Date: 2008-04-06 17:23
Sometimes I think you just need to back off a piece and revisit it later - otherwise you can get bogged down with trivia that don't matter but become an issue.
Cheers
Malcolm
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Author: Bassie
Date: 2008-04-06 19:41
Yeah, there's a lot to be said for the right kind of practice... a little effort applied in the right area vs. the bulldozer approach.
I'm beginning (in my old age :-) ) to learn to respect the music more. It's /always/ bigger than I am and very rarely lets me beat it into submission.
> back off a piece and revisit it later
Sometimes you come back after a year or more and it all seems so clear...
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Author: BandieSF
Date: 2008-04-06 20:19
I can easily relate. Back in middle school I would practice an hour each weekday, playing stuff over and over because it was fun. At first I would work out any kinks in music but after that it was purely "play to my heart's content". With that came a slow progression in my improvement. Sure it would spike here or there on occasion, but those days it was mostly static. The only thing that continued to improve rapidly was my endurance. But now I have less time to practice things, forcing me to practice smarter. I focus on individual concepts (like today it was note starts on 1&1 Bb and fixing response and voicing issues on higher notes).
Another way to put it, hammering out music isn't practicing, it's just hammering out music. Practicing is improving specific concepts until they're satisfactory. And a lengthy practice doesn't do you any better than a short one if your endurance can't handle it. There is such thing as practicing too much and too long.
My band director once told me (or rather he told one of the trumpet players in the band) that there was this trumpet player who thought his note starts weren't the best they could be, so he left the professional world for a year and spent the whole year purely on note starts. And when he came back, his note starts were fantastic. Now, that's not to say go work on one concept for a year, but you get the point. Sometimes just focusing on the simplest of things can improve your skills. It just takes a little time. Spend a day here on note starts, a day there on tone, etc.
-----
Current set-up:
Classical:
Strength 4 1/4 Legere Signature Series
Vandoren M13 Lyre
Jazz:
Strength 3 3/4 Legere Quebec
Pomarico Jazz*
Clarinets:
Buffet E11 Student Model
Buffet R13 Greenline
<http://operationhighschool.blogspot.com
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Author: pewd
Date: 2008-04-06 21:48
1 hour a day, properly focused, can work wonders over time.
if you play an hour a day, every day, carefully considering what you will practice BEFORE you start playing, you will over time develop considerable skill. they tell teachers to develop lesson plans in advance - practicing your instrument should work the same way - identify what skills you need to improve, then plan your practice accordingly.
many students practice the same things all the time. hours and hours and hours on the same scales/etutes/solos. wasted time, much of it.
you should not practice what you know - practice what you do not know.
quit playing the same exercises, the same pieces, over and over - practice patterns, techniques etc. which you do not know how to do.
many students play every day , failing to realize there is a difference between performing (for themselves), and practicing skills which they have not yet mastered.
- Paul Dods
Dallas, Texas
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Author: William
Date: 2008-04-07 13:41
I think that repetition can cause boredom, which can result in decline in focus of effort, which can cause more errant behavior in performance. A break in that overly repetative routine can revive one's focus and result in improved (for the moment) performance. I remember once "way back then", when I was hunkered down in a college practice room going over the same passage for the bazzillionth time, a grad student screamed through the door, "YOUR DRIVING ME CRAZY--KNOCK IT OFF AND STOP TRYING SO HARD!!!" I took a break, and--wonder of wonders--was able to learn to passage almost immediantly. Sometimes, just looking away out the window can provide the necessary break you might need in trying to learn something new--or re-learn something old. Give it a try, it works for my brain.
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Author: graham
Date: 2008-04-07 14:37
Something similar happened to me years ago when I had been practicing pretty hard hoping to get into music college when some comments from my then teacher caused me to think I was kiddung myself so I slacked off dramatically without telling him. Such was the improvement in my playing that he asked my parents whether his comments had caused me to practice a great deal harder. I had reached a mental block, and it had shifted when I stopped trying so hard. Later I got into two music colleges out of taking three auditions, but I had decided then to go to university instead, and the teacher seemed sad that I passed up the very thing he had doubted I had the capacity for. Of course, he had been correct in the first place. If I could not achieve the desired results by practicing hard, then only a fool's paradice would suggest I would do so by practicing scarcely. The problem was I did not have it in me to achieve the desired results at all, but I could achieve more by taking a "cool" approach than by going hell for leather at it.
I don't suppose this helps at all.
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Author: clarinetwife
Date: 2008-04-07 14:41
I would turn around the title to this thread. I don 't know that less practice on its own can be good for most people unless they need to rest physically or mentally. However, good practice can definitely be less. So, I agree with much of what Paul wrote. I certainly get much more done in a defined period of time than I used to.
Barb
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Author: Morrigan
Date: 2008-04-07 16:59
I think it may be working for me because all day at work, I daydream about what I'm going to do that night... "Gee that left hand pinky needs some work, I'll get out the Jeanjean..."
...that is, when I get the chance through all my crazy crazy office work!!!
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Author: bmcgar ★2017
Date: 2008-04-07 17:01
When my students ask me how to know when they've practiced long enough, I tell them, "When your parents beg you to stop."
(It's never happened yet, btw.)
B.
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2008-04-07 17:27
It's nice to come back to a piece that's been shelved for a while with a fresh outlook to it, and then realise it's not as difficult as you made it out to be the first time round by constantly labouring over it until you just got yourself all wound up and fed up with it.
And then when you've come back to it later, it's a nice surprise to find it all falls into place by using common sense and thinking rationally and constructively rather than the panic of getting a certain bit nailed that was the root cause of anxiety.
Though if you have less time to practice, don't waste it by farting around - concentrate on the good stuff. And only you'll know what the good stuff is.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: ginny
Date: 2008-04-07 19:10
I have found that for me the practice time is not the key to large improvements. It is some realization that occurs and then all my playing improves markedly. I can learn to play a new tune to my current level through practice but not beyond that without the breakthrough step, which may or may not occur during practice. Of course I have a long way to go technique wise.
My singing improved when I realised (listening to practice recording) that I made the e sound too much in my throat and that I could do this in my mouth and improve the pitch and tone. This made me realise that I was misplacing my throat on the clarinet as well although I'd been thinking about the airstream in terms of throat prior which had lead me to think about singing.
Was that practicing? more thinking away from the instrument. I just wish I knew how to have these insights with less time between.
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-04-07 19:41
I definitely think there is something to what the original poster is describing. I've had it happen many times before that I've experienced noticable improvement in playing something after not having played it in a while.
I don't think this means that "less practice is better." But I do think there's probably some kind of a connection to short-term/long-term memory. There is a technique that is used in foreign language learning where they have you recall words/phrases after gradually-increasing intervals of time. This is supposed to help burn the information into your long-term memory. I imagine that a similar thing probably occurs during music practice.
One thing that I like to do (since like the original poster, I have limited practice time, too) is to take a spare minute and mentally "practice" with just the sheet music (hearing the music in my head and imagining the finger movements). While it's not a substitute for real practice with the instrument in hand, I've found that this exercise allows me to concentrate my "real" practice time on working on the hard parts (it also sometimes helps in discovering what the hard parts are).
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Author: brycon
Date: 2008-04-07 21:46
Kenny Werner writes about this topic in his book, Effortless Mastery. It may not be very scientific, but nonetheless it is a great read for anyone looking to refine their practice technique and overall musicianship.
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Author: clarinetfreak
Date: 2008-04-08 01:18
There was a very interesting program on the Discovery Chanel about how our brain stores new information. Are there any of you out there who has done any research regarding the brain and musical performance/practice?
Good Times!
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Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2008-04-08 03:52
I sincerely hope "less practice is good", and can be extrapolated to "no practice is great", so that I may be declared a great player!
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Author: graham
Date: 2008-04-08 07:25
I think either I or some other posters are missing Morrigan's point. I do not think he is referring to laying aside any particular piece and then coming back to it later to find it falls better into place. He is talking about a wholesale reduction in all practice time, by several factors.
Whilst I agree with Morrigan that time spent thinking about the instrument while it is in the case is often time very well spent, there is an obvious problem with daydreaming about the clarinet at work, and that is that your work does not get done. Ultimately, that leads to unhappiness that can manifest itself in a variety of ways.
The key point has to be, how to maintain the best standard possible on the reduced practice time. Macho intentions such as playing on the hardest reeds possible etc. seem likely to be abandoned, but probably to good effect.
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