 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: ruben
Date: 2020-06-10 13:04
First of all, I have had maths and physics students most of my life, and though they have tremendous powers of concentration when they do maths, this doesn't necessarily spill over into their ability to focus when playing music. So much for the cliché about musicians making good mathematicians and vice versa.
I find that concentration when playing music is a form of mindfulness; of listening to oneself. You have to turn yourself into subject and object: performer and listener. The listener-self is often not sufficiently developed. I have recently raised the subject of memorization on this board. If you don't focus 100 per cent on what you're doing when playing by memory, you will get lost. I'm not implying that everything should be learned by heart. But I am saying that it is a good way to muscle your ability to concentrate. Your thoughts on the matter and tricks for improving focus please?
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2020-06-10 16:59
To me the most important part of teaching is getting students to listen to themselves. Self-listening is key to improving both skill and accuracy. Because, quite obviously, you can't fix what you don't know is broken. But even then, listening will only go so far if you don't know what you're expecting to hear, so forming a mental image of the music in your imagination, your "inner ear," is important. A large part of a student's development into a musician is learning to hear (some use the term "audiate") before he executes. That's true whether he plays from written music or from memory. A musician improves and controls his own performance by listening to what he plays and comparing it to what he expected to hear.
I think that whole process of hearing, doing/listening, and comparing/evaluating takes a lot of focus, which I take to equate to your idea of concentration.
Karl
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Author: Erez Katz
Date: 2020-06-10 17:18
For many, the problem comes from some form, either mild or severe of ADD/ADHD.
30 years ago a lot if cases would be under "poor discipline" and the very severe cases would be on ritalin. Since then, modern imaging technologies revealed that the brain activity patterns of people with ADD/ADHD are different.
Folks with ADHD can focus on specific subjects and excell in them unaided, it is called hyper-focus.
Evaluation or diagnosis of ADD belongs to professionals. Though many experienced school teachers can tell and in some cases suggest evaluation to parents. There are also self evaluation questionnaires available online, it is worth to check out.
As a music teacher, it is a different position.
I think it is very important when dealing with a student that loses focus after 20 minutes to understand how to work with the problem. For example, when you can tell the attention starts to slip, it might be a good time to take a break, maybe mentioned it something like "i feel we are losing focus, lets rest for 5 minutes and see if we can get it back".
I had an interesting conversation with a Philharmonic member on the subject a few months ago and he said "when I loose my attention I just stop and rest, if I try to power through it it would only damage my what I am trying to achieve".
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Author: eac
Date: 2020-06-11 00:20
I think the book "make it stick" bypeter brown, et al, explores the idea of how long intense learning can be accomplished and suggests that for many people, 20 minutes is about the length of a productive session. After 20 minutes a break can facilitate continuing further learning. Unfortunately this concept doesn't match much of our traditional scheduling. But a student losing focus may be actually just demonstrating the inherent characteristics of brain function.
Liz Leckey
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Author: brycon
Date: 2020-06-11 01:21
Quote:
You have to turn yourself into subject and object: performer and listener. The listener-self is often not sufficiently developed.
With myself and with students, I've found the best way to improve self-evaluation skills is through recording. It's simply impossible to focus on all the things we need to be aware of when practicing--phrasing, rhythm, intonation, articulation, tone color, etc.--while also focusing on the physical act of playing. Using a recording device, preferably one that allows you to slow down the play back, and listening for these things one-by-one really improves listening skills. I nearly always have a recording device on my stand and will play as little as a single phrase, record it, and listen back.
Also, splitting up practice sessions into smaller segments (half hour or so), such as Liz recommends above, is good for concentration. Ditto "interleaved" practicing, which is outlined here: https://bulletproofmusician.com/why-the-progress-in-the-practice-room-seems-to-disappear-overnight/
Quote:
If you don't focus 100 per cent on what you're doing when playing by memory, you will get lost. I'm not implying that everything should be learned by heart.
Playing from memory seems to be more a matter of concentrating while performing, though, not so much concentrating in a practice room. For myself, I feel as though I go on autopilot in a performance. I hear the music in my mind, as if I'm singing it. And when my clarinet playing deviates from what I hear, I actively check in with my playing (e.g. "C sounds sharp to the piano. Need to flatten the next one."). But on the whole, I'm not thinking "remember to speed up here" or "raise my tongue position on this passage" because those things were already addressed in my practice sessions.
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2020-06-11 02:19
brycon wrote:
> With myself and with students, I've found the best way to
> improve self-evaluation skills is through recording. It's
> simply impossible to focus on all the things we need to be
> aware of when practicing...
I'm not comfortable with this. There have been skilled musical performers for a long time - far longer than the existence of recording equipment. Recording may be helpful, but, IMO, maybe "the best way" is an overstatement. I'm not completely sure, for an inexperienced student, that to the extent it's allowed to replace active self-listening in real time, it might become more destructive than helpful.
Karl
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Author: brycon
Date: 2020-06-11 04:31
Quote:
I'm not completely sure, for an inexperienced student, that to the extent it's allowed to replace active self-listening in real time, it might become more destructive than helpful.
Should have specified that I'm dealing with advanced students. You're completely correct: with more developing students, self-recording would be overwhelming. I imagine that with these students, having them sing through a passage before playing it or giving them guided exercises (e.g. "Play the passage again and focus most intensely on the rhythm rather than on the notes.") would be a better approach.
Quote:
There have been skilled musical performers for a long time - far longer than the existence of recording equipment. Recording may be helpful, but, IMO, maybe "the best way" is an overstatement.
Yes, skilled performance has always existed, and abilities that were once prized, such as improvisation, are now missing. But generally speaking, the technical abilities of current students are greater than at any other time (at least as far as we can tell through recordings). The availability of tuners, metronomes, and recording devices (all on a cell phone no less) is no doubt responsible for a great deal of this technical achievement. And similarly, in the sports world, the ability to record and analyze various data points, such as hip-shoulder-elbow alignment, release point, wrist snap, etc. on a basketball player's jumpshot, has led to the incredible technical skill possessed by current professional athletes. But, of course, your mileage may vary.
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Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2020-06-11 04:37
I'm not sure as I read other posts if I misunderstood ruben's original point. If so, I may have hijacked or at least deflected it toward the process of practicing and performing and away from the idea of ways to maintain concentration on a musical task. If I misdirected things, I apologize.
That said, there are varying levels of concentration. For some students it may be important for a teacher to vary the types of material within the lesson format so that everything doesn't involve the highest intensity of focus. In our own practicing we need to be able to know when we've stopped accomplishing anything so we can either work on something else or, since we aren't paying ourselves an hourly rate, just take a break.
In performance we don't always have the luxury of controlling the level of concentration needed or the time over which it needs to be maintained. As a professional player, you're being paid to be able to do what's needed. In building a program for a student band, mixing less demanding music in with a "reach" piece or two lets the players (and the conductor) relax a little during the concert.
I think the process of memorization can require a high intensity of focus, but I'm not sure that in performance it's so much a matter of concentration as it is of composure, relaxation and not getting in your own way. By the time you've completely memorized a piece (or even a solo passage in an orchestral work), you've internalized the mechanics and don't need to think about them so much.
Karl
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-06-11 04:43
I sympathize with students because they often do not know what they don't know and have no idea of what to look or listen for (or "concentrate" on) in their playing. They have few fixed reference points to guide them and are lost in the musical terrain. Often they are aware only of how loud they are playing and possibly whether they are playing all the right notes (or to put it another way, whether they are playing any wrong notes). Telling them to "concentrate" is counterproductive since they have no idea of what they should be concentrating on. They need a method of orientation to keep them on target and not get lost. The 20 minutes at a time suggestion is helpful, and within those 20 minute bouts, I would have students concentrate most on counting and rhythm as a sure way to get their bearings.
Possibly the primary way the mind works when you're playing music is not to ask "have I played any wrong notes" but rather "where am I in the score" and that requires knowing which measure and which fraction of the beat you are playing or should be playing (if you are off or out of synch). When students are trained to be perfectly aware of their rhythmic position and the rhythmic patterns of the music they are playing, they can never really be lost. Moreover, knowing exactly where you are rhythmically is one sure way of developing awareness. Focusing on the rhythms, meter, counting, and subdividing, gives you a solid position and footing from which to then turn your attention to other matters, such as pitch, right notes, dynamics, and phrasing.
Clark Brody said that he knew Larry Combs would win the audition for the Chicago Symphony because, out of many dozen players auditioning, Larry was rock solid rhythmically and the others, no matter how beautifully and musically they played sounded shaky and relatively clueless because their rhythm was not as perfect as his. It is probably only a slight exaggeration to say that having students try to stand on any element beside rhythm is like putting them in quicksand. They will, to some degree sink or get muddled. If you want students to see the other musical elements clearly, get them oriented to be masters of rhythm and play the clarinet like a drum. This requires and develops great attentive skills and you will not have to worry about their mind wandering. If they've got the rhythm down like a percussion pro, then they must have learned the art of concentrating on at least that one major element of all music, and they can go from there to add to the "layers" of concentration needed to be really good performers.
Chunking (taking smaller bits of information--a few notes or phrase sections at a time-and combining them into more meaningful and therefore memorable wholes) can be used for rhythm patterns and pitch and phrasing patterns as well, and that technique also improves attention and concentration.
Post Edited (2020-06-11 04:55)
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Author: ruben
Date: 2020-06-11 12:59
I find it helps to focus on ONE thing, which doesn't imply to the exclusion of everything else. In the book: "The Inner Game of Tennis", they suggest focusing on the ball; keeping your eyes on the ball and letting everything gravitate around that focal point. In music-making, "the ball" could be rhythm, as Seabreeze suggested. Or the next day, it could be projection, or tone, or anything for that matter.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: Jarmo Hyvakko
Date: 2020-06-12 12:05
One thing you should ask is, are you concentrating on what you are doing or are you concentrating on consentrating itself! For me the Tim Gallwey's book "The Inner Game of Golf" was a mind opener. I think what his method is aiming at, is what they call "flow".
What do you remember from a concert, that went badly: all the mistakes. What do you remember from a concert that went well: almost nothing. You have been in flow state.
We should get rid of that pirate's parrot on our shoulder, the combination of your own and your mother's expectations, your old clarinet professor, local critic etc. And be prepared to tell your spouse "actually i don't remember" when she asks "how was the concert".
Our spine has done the job how to play the instrument for so long time, that during playing it doesn't need those nervous advice from our head.
How to do it, is another story. Just opening it up a bit: the next time when you practise a difficult passage, in stead of thinking correcting solutions and blaming yourself on the mistakes, just play it again, and again, and just give yourself points from one to five, how well it went.
Tim Gallwey's original book was about tennis. Because i am a golfer, i prefer the golf book. There is also a book "The Inner Game of Music", that is not written by Gallwey himself. Read that if you are neither golfer nor tennis player. I find that book a bit too deliberate, it explains too much in comparison to put you to try things and finding an "Inner A-haa".
Jarmo Hyvakko, Principal Clarinet, Tampere Philharmonic, Finland
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Author: ruben
Date: 2020-06-12 12:30
Jarmo: I agree that the Inner Game of Tennis and Golf are more useful and to the point than the Inner Game of Music even for somebody that doesn't play these games. Ultimately, nothing strengthens focus as much as performing in public does, provided you are performing in order to communicate, express yourself and the beauty of the music you are playing, and not just eschewing criticism or showing off.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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