Author: d-oboe
Date: 2006-07-10 03:08
Perhaps you aren't listening to yourself, or you aren't setting any goals.
Personally, I usually end up running out of time before I finish everything I need to finish, much less what I want to. Doing scales up and down once is not enough. There needs to be arpeggios, thirds, fourths, fifths, articulation changes, rhythm changes. And of course, you need to increase the speed of these. AND it has to be clean. Don't practice glitches!
Long tones can easily occupy an hour. The beginnings and endings of the chosen note(s) must be clean, pitch shouldn't drift, and any dynamics that are applied to the long tone must be controlled. Not quiet-soft-quiet-soft.
Also, long tones should be done in all registers. You might start out with one note in each of the registers.
Make sure everything is as good as you can possibly make it! If you can't play a passage up to speed yet, slow it down until you can play everything cleanly. If you can't play a 20-second long tone without cacking, work on a 10-second one. If you can, go for 30 seconds (done cleanly!)
Honestly, if you really start to look at your errors, and challenge yourself, you will start to run out of time, rather than needing to fill that extra time.
Like my teacher always told me: "it's not how many hours you practice...it's how well, and how often!"
In other words, practicing needs to be done right, and in order to engrain them into muscle memory, it has to be done often. (I usually have three 1.25 hour sessions a day)
D
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