Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2016-06-24 17:30
I believe there to be a paradox in practicing difficult passages that you cover well Roxanne:
Perhaps the single best method of perfecting and maintaining difficult passages lies in taking the music at a tempo that we can handle, so that we don't reinforce in our brains the mistakes we make when taking music faster than we can handle.
BUT
This can lead to monotony, and, as you've mentioned, for our brains to lose focus.
Still more, its been my experience that students sometimes get locked in to playing hard passages correctly only at a particular speed. Even if this is at performance tempo, conductor deviations from this speed can throw off players, even when the tempo is slower that that rehearsed.
Accordingly, both to vary our practice so we remain focused, and to really master difficult sections, as a teacher I have deliberately altered tempo for students mid piece, at places and speeds unknown ahead of time to the student, only telling them upfront that this might happen.
I've only seen one smartphone app that offers a random metronome tempo adjustment, such that the student can practice this on their own. I'd like to see more apps develop this feature, allowing the student to pre-program the percent deviation from tempo, as well as its randomness and frequency, so that they can train for this on their own.
Another thing I encourage is to practice variations of fingerings. This can come in several forms. It could be learning how to play a passage not simply the best way from a fingering standpoint (e.g. use of chromatic keys), but using alternative pinkies where indicated. This includes, on instruments lacking a left pinky Ab/Eb lever, where pinky slides are indicated to free up a right pinky for such Ab/Eb tones, to do such slides all the different ways (often there is more than one place to effect such slides in music). I've even had students effect such slides where it wasn't necessary--just to keep things interesting.
I've had students memorize sections, and be able to play them on both their A and Bb clarinets. It's all about mixing things up, not to make things harder for them, but too keep the mind focused.
Another place where technology can fit in is to create random passages with known need for alternate fingers based upon notes in the next few measures. This can not only train students to read ahead, but identify common places in music where note patterns coming up affect fingers used on currently played notes.
Finally, students have to learn to walk away from a passage until later, when their gains for the day have been maximized, even if the passage still needs work. This can be enforced by teachers through time limits, helping students identify when daily plateaus have been reached, or training students to break up daily practice time into multiple sessions.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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