Wednesday we listened to the Melissa, Jenny, and Eric's talk on practicing, which we agreed was filled with much good advice. On Friday, we discussed how to apply those ideas and others to our own practicing. Your assignment was to take one of those ideas, or something you already know you "ought to do but haven't been in your practicing, and use it in your practice this weekend.
In a comment below, share what practice technique you have used and how it was worked for you.
I consciously made the effort to slow down even the simplest runs in my assigned etudes this weekend. The results have come surprisingly swift and sudden. It seems like the only work in these has been picking up the tempo. Other than that, "practicing relaxed" has seriously reduced the effort load.
ReplyDeleteIn my practice sessions, I broke my pieces up into smaller chunks in order to better work on them. After trying this over the weekend, I was able to get more work done on my pieces since I was working on individual sections instead of the piece as a whole. Also, since I was working on smaller sections, I was able to get more reps in without taxing myself as much. After trying it this week, I will definitely hold onto this practicing strategy.
ReplyDeleteIn the time I set aside to practice, I am making small goals for myself, and sticking to them. I am also trying to break down rhythms further and take things slower. Another thing I am working on is staying focussed and relaxed, which is really difficult for me. When at first trying to apply everything I needed to do right away, it didn't go as well as I thought it would, but in the practice times since, I've done each of those things a little bit better simply by giving myself the time.
ReplyDeleteDuring my practice sessions this weekend, I tried to stay in a practice room until I reached a specific goal. This was nice because the amount of time I spent practicing varied. I also worked to incorporate something that Jenny spoke about in the session on Wednesday. She said that she would sometimes go back and play old repertoire for fun. At the end of my practice sessions this weekend I didn't play old music, but I spent some time playing through a book of Porgy and Bess arrangements. Not only was it fun but I also was able to apply the technique that I had been practicing to a fun piece of music.
ReplyDeleteEver since I began learning piano, my teachers have always told me to "phrase" well and would come up with all sorts of anecdotes-- "oh, you're being interrupted!" "ask a question!"-- for how I should play my music. I didn't really get why should and how I would go about doing that, but now the saying "if you don't have anything to say, don't say it at all" is making me want to figure out what I'm actually saying with my music. I took the time in the practice room this weekend to map out my pieces and what they were trying to say (form, harmonies) and now I feel I have a deeper and broader understanding of my pieces, an essential foundation.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to keep this pretty short because it was a pretty quick revelation: I tried isolating very small parts of each of my pieces that were giving me problems and worked them in a conscious effort to fix any problem that came up. Turns out the method of attacking things that you fear really does work. I've also become more conscious of how comfortable I feel while practicing and I've had less pain in general when I practice for long periods of time.
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ReplyDeleteThis week I made a conscious effort not to get distracted by the outside world while practicing. I made sure to pick a time in the day when I would have at least an hour where I wouldn't have to worry about rushing off anywhere and a time when I was the most alert and focused. It made a world of difference. In combination with other practice techniques I was able to set goals and accomplish them at a much quicker rate than I have been able to before. I attribute this to my focus. Not getting distracted and fully engrossing myself in the music opened up my creativity and I was able to come up with different ways of solving problems I was having, and I got a lot more done!
ReplyDeleteThis week, like James, I broke up my pieces into smaller sections and also focused on my problem spots like Kenna was talking about in class. This helped me not only improve those certain sections, but it helped the song flow better as an entire piece and was much more enjoyable to practice.
ReplyDeleteThe things we learned from fifth house have been very helpful. I have seen the positive results from their practicing advice. I split up my time like most people and tried to set goals for myself. I also took time to stretch and relax my body before jumping right into practicing. I want to try to have set practice times fit into my schedule. I'm still working on that. I like this new way of practicing, I feel like I get more done!
ReplyDeleteIn my practicing I have definitely chunked my pieces up a little bit more and I find it has helped
ReplyDeleteAmong basically every technique they mentioned, I took Jenny's love of long tones and tried to incorporate them more into my warm-up schedule. They're super important on clarinet to strengthen tone quality, tuning, and breath quality. Recently, I've been sick so I've been skipping them because my breathing has been a struggle. After hearing Jenny rave about them though, I decided to go back to them, sick or no, because shorter long tones are better than no long tones at all.
ReplyDeleteWhile practicing piano, I've been working on practicing extremely slow so that I can get all the notes right, and not speeding it up to much too quickly. If there were certain parts of pieces that were particularly difficult, I'd isolate those parts and practice them on their own until I had them down, and then put them in the context of the entire piece. It's been extremely helpful! My practice sessions are much shorter because I'm getting the pieces down quicker.
ReplyDeleteI was relaxed. Extremely...relaxed. This made my scales and arpeggios on my saxophone way more even than they have ever been!
ReplyDeleteI also focused on the idea of relaxation when practicing. I know this sounds really corny, but when you work with the music and feel it, there's more room for enjoyment. The more natural you make a phrase, the easier it will be to retain how that feels, etc. Also, working with a metronome was hard, but I trucked through it with piano.
ReplyDeleteIn my practicing I gave myself specific goals like which words to learn and which section to focus on and it helped me to memorize and feel more comfortable with my pieces. I tried to be relaxed and did some stretching and deep breathing to focus in on what I was doing.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was interesting that they talked about how practicing correctly can help you be less afraid for performance. Being afraid of performing has never been a problem for me. I am afraid of practicing. What am I supposed to do? What if I'm not doing it right? What if I never get better? Practicing, for me is about just getting into the practice room and keep working at things, even when I think I'm not doing it right. Letting go of it being perfect has been the most important part.
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