 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Madelinnneeee
Date: 2013-10-15 00:04
So I started practicing for my All State/Regional auditions since about June or July. I've been feeling very confident about my playing, except recently I have noticed that I've started getting sloppier..Maybe it just my mind messing with me but I feel like the more I practice, the sloppier I get? My private lesson instructor always gets on me to practice more but I can figure out how to polish it up! Am I getting sloppy or is it my mind like freaking out from playing it to much that it tells me it gets worse ? Bleh. :/
Post Edited (2013-10-15 01:39)
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Author: TJTG
Date: 2013-10-15 00:23
I think there is a certain amount of motivation and thrill from playing new music, sight-reading music, and starting to play a piece which makes us play closer to our optimal ends of technique.
After we settle into a piece, we loose that heightened amount of concentration motivated by the excitement, adrenaline, or what have you.
It's time to step back from the music. You have well over 6 months before this audition. You've started the process. Now that you know the music, put it away for a while. When you come back to it, make sure it's lots of slow practice. I have an audition in January. I've started learning my music knowing full well I'll leave it alone for a month or so. The 30 days leading up to the audition are filled with intense concentration.
Or, if you refuse to leave the music for a while, practice with intent. "Today I'm fixing 3 sloppy runs" or "I must make my staccatos consistent". Be specific and gradual.
My advice is to either take a break, OR study specific things. The big picture is important, but stop running the pieces and excerpts through. Dig into the details.
It's 6 months away though, don't stress. You'll be a better player then than you are today.
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Author: Tony F
Date: 2013-10-15 00:29
Are you recording your practice sessions and listening critically to the result? If not, you may be just reinforcing your problems. Remember that apart from getting the technical details right your main objective is to make beautiful sounds, but that being said, beautiful sounds are no good if they are the wrong sounds. Try taking a week off and doing something else unrelated to clarinet. Sometimes you are too close to the problem and you get stale.
Tony F.
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2013-10-15 00:39
Sounds like you may have gotten bored with the piece. What music is it? When is the audition?
On the other hand you may have reached a stage at which you're noticing details that you were too distracted by the new difficulties of the music to notice.
You need to do a little self-analysis to figure out which is the case. Then you need to do some analysis of the places you feel have gotten sloppy to try to figure out what specifically isn't clean and why.
It could be, whether the problem boredom or a new stage of awareness, that your way of dealing with it has been to keep practicing the piece over and over the same way. What probably won't improve things is for you to continue to practice whatever sloppiness you're noticing. If you take a more analytic look at the problems, simply changing approach may help with either cause. Slow things down. Isolate tricky or awkward places instead of playing through from one end to the other.
Or, if there's time before the audition, maybe just give it a rest for a short while and then come back to it, hopefully, refreshed.
Karl
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Author: Madelinnneeee
Date: 2013-10-15 01:47
The Audition is November 2nd. I am playing excerpts from Concerto No. 2 in E-Flat Major, Op. 74, Carl Maria von Weber. I have ofter recorded my playing to see what I need to work on. I pinpoint sections and try to work on them. Sections I never had problems with before have now sort of become an issue with sloppiness!
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2013-10-15 02:07
Madeline - what you practice, you will get very consistent at.
Therefore, if you practice, and make mistakes, they will come back again, and again. Slow down the speed, and refuse to make mistakes. Get the correct notes back into your fingers.
http://www.SkypeClarinetLessons.com
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2013-10-15 02:15
Madelinnneeee wrote:
> Sections I never had
> problems with before have now sort of become an issue with
> sloppiness!
OK, so what exactly do you mean by sloppiness? That's a well-known concerto - maybe even give a couple of specific examples.
As the audition gets closer are nerves becoming a problem? Could you be pressing to play faster and hitting a tempo ceiling?
Depending on what kinds of things are going wrong, your best approach may be to just slow everything down and practice for as much relaxation as control of the instrument will allow. Concentrate on intervals at a slow tempo so you can feel your fingers moving clearly, feel whether they're tightening or missing their holes, hear clearly if fingers aren't moving together. Excess tension (beyond what's necessary to make the needed finger movements) can cause a lot of bad coordination. Do whatever you can think of to counter any tendency you feel to press or tense.
Karl
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Author: Madelinnneeee
Date: 2013-10-15 02:39
Karl,
I've been playing this for a while so it's basically all muscle memory.
It's like in certain passages recently, my hands will like "not move" fast enough I guess you could say that, or completely skip an occasional or speed up randomly. I'm not sure how to describe it accurately but my hand muscles freak out! Like you said, it seems all stiff motions. I will definitely try slowing it and relaxing. I do know that my lessons teacher keeps getting on me to get it faster and faster but I can't seem to get faster. Maybe that's contributing.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2013-10-15 22:38
Madeline -
Hold your hands up in front of your face, palms facing inward, and flap your fingers from the knuckles 25 times.
Then lay your hands palm down on a table with the knuckles raised slightly. Practice raising your fingers in order from the little finger through the index finger, and also your left thumb.
Let them float up, seemingly without effort.
Then let one finger at a time drop, entirely by gravity and without assistance from your muscles.
Work to get that feeling as you play, each finger feeling light and moving almost without effort.
Pick up your clarinet and, without blowing, work for the same feeling. Of course you will need to push down keys held up by springs, but strive for the minimum effort. Watch yourself in a mirror to make sure your finger motion is kept to a minimum, as if you were trying to make your motions so small that someone watching couldn't tell what you were doing.
Then do the same while playing, initially at a very slow tempo. As you speed up little by little, use a trick Tony Pay described. As one finger goes down or up, start the next movement, so that they overlap. This works particularly well in the fast descending sextuplets at the end of the Weber 2nd Concerto finale.
Also, "chunk" the notes. That is, play them in groups rather than one note at a time. In the Weber, each sextuplet is a single gesture, read and played with a memorized sequence of finger motions.
Ken Shaw
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