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This past week has been busier than usual at my house. We’re getting ready to move over Memorial Day weekend, and I need to have everything packed and boxed by next Friday because my husband and I will both be doing some long-distance traveling. Then, the morning after I return, I have to be available for the furniture delivery crew. Needless to say, my writing and posting time has been a bit sparse. Luckily, when we moved into the place we’re currently living in, we didn’t have room to unpack all the boxes, so about half of the job was pre-done.
Another part of the equation: my in-house students had their recital last Sunday. They were fabulous, and I am so proud of them.
All this is to say that my posting will probably remain slightly sporadic until we get moved and unpacked.
Filed under: Practice Tips
Of all the times I really needed a scanner, this would be it, so I could illustrate my points using actual musical examples. It’s on the purchase budget for this year, though.
Fast practice leads to mistakes. Playing a piece fast, mistakes and all, simply reinforces whatever mistakes a student has learned into the piece. However, practicing a piece slowly, mistakes and all, does exactly the same thing. On the surface it sounds like a no-win situation — doesn’t matter what you do, or try to do, it’s wrong. If the goal of practice is to make whatever you’re practicing easy, how does it become easier if it’s always hard and it never feels like it’s getting easier? That’s the $64K question! Luckily, the answer is pretty simple. So how do we avoid mistakes?
1) Listen to the piece.
2) Separate the hands
3) Break the spot into individual pieces and remove the fluff
4) Think slow, play fast
First, you absolutely must have an accurate idea of what the spot is supposed to sound like, and/or what you want it to sound like at performance tempo. Then you reduce the spot you’re working to its individual components. For most students, it just won’t happen unless you know what it’s supposed to sound like and you make it easy to work on. Start by separating the hands. Pianists do this all the time — work on left hand stuff, then switch to right hand. Violinists can do this too. Intonation is generally a left hand issue; whereas bowing is the domain of the right hand. For example, say the passage has intonation issues combined with an intricate bowing. These things are worked on separately, then when everything is more comfortable, the hands are put back together.
In order for the brain to have time to process all the bits of information it is given, it is very beneficial to break down the practice material into its smallest possible components, and add rests to the music for practice purposes. Sometimes, I like to call it “thinking space” or “decision time”. Practicing this way will drastically reduce the amount of clock time that a student has to spend practicing. It will also drastically reduce the number of mistakes that get “learned” into the piece. I think this procedure is most helpful when it’s done at some sort of tempo, or assigning each bit of the spot a preset amount of time. Musicians would probably understand this better as “keeping a beat.” The most common ways to reduce a spot are to remove the bowing, add space (rests) between each note in the spot, and change/substitute the rhythm of the spot.
Removing the bowing means just that. Take out all slurs, hooks or other phrasing indicators that are done with the bow. You’ll then have a pattern of single pitches, unencumbered by a bowing or phrasing pattern, that will be easier to practice. If you add space between each of those pitches, you have programmed time for your brain to fully focus and process the muscle memory instructions that are necessary for each pitch in the sequence. If you feel it is a particularly difficult spot, you can add as much time as you need, but try to keep it in a set meter (keep a beat). If you have trouble with this, a metronome can be useful (but it shouldn’t be relied on or overused. Use it only until you are secure in counting). Another way to do this is to change the rhythm or substitute another rhythm pattern for the one on the page. It accomplishes the same thing that adding rests does, but it also changes the focus to something else so it makes the original point of practice seem less difficult. For example, you could take a string of pitches and practice them using the “Twinkle A” rhythm pattern (aka, Mississippi Stop Stop).
All these things are easy enough to do, but the tricky part is to play each note in the sequence, no matter how you’ve broken it down, at performance tempo and using the same technique that you would if you were playing it as written. An easy catch phrase for this might be: “Think slow, play fast”. If you try to play the edited spot with sluggish motions, just because you’ve “slowed” it down, when you try to play it faster you’ll likely have a train wreck on your hands. This happens because you have (unintentionally) trained yourself to be sluggish. If you want the bow to move fast, if you want fingers to move fast, you have to train them to do it. They don’t do it automatically just because you want them to or think they should.
If I was a betting person, I’d put money on this method of practice. It works. If you’re dissatisfied or frustrated with your progress, give it a try. I’m pretty sure you’ll be glad you did.
I posted today’s stuff yesterday. So today, I’m posting what I meant to post yesterday.
Here’s the link to the follow-up article to which I’m referring in this post: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24274335/
As I mentioned last week, I love it when there are follow-ups to articles I read that explain a little more about what I was reading, even though the context might be slightly different. Just such a thing happened last week when two articles appeared on the MSNBC website. The first was about mistakes. The follow-up was about…you guessed it…mistakes. The gist of the article attempts to shed some light on the question “why do we make the same mistakes persistently, or why/how do we ‘learn’ to make mistakes?” In a nutshell, we learn to make mistakes from making mistakes. The article mentions that music teachers have known this for a long time, and that avoidance of mistakes is why we caution students to practice slowly and carefully. Unfortunately, too many students (especially middle- and high-school students) think that progress is measured by how many pieces they can play (even badly), not by how well they master techniques and ideas in the pieces they’re learning.
Mistakes breed mistakes. And if you make a mistake enough times, it not only becomes a habit, but you actually substitute the mistake in your long-term memory as the “correct” version. And the really bad news is that it can take an excruciatingly long time to fix the mistake, which definitely contributes to the numbers of students who quit. One of the most frustrating things about teaching is that I have occasionally had students who work ahead in the repertoire because they seem to think I’ll be impressed by their initiative, but then get upset with me when we have to spend weeks or months correcting the mistakes they “learned” into the pieces. Warning, begging and pleading does not work with students like that. They pay me to teach them to play, but are offended when I insist on teaching them how to do it right. (I know, imagine the nerve I have — wanting my students to play to the best of their ability. Geez!)
Mistakes are one of the most fruitful paths to learning, but they can be avoided and minimized with slow, careful, thoughtful practice. I’m not necessarily saying that pieces should be played at a snail’s pace. The tempo, or pace of a piece, can be slowed dramatically for practice, but the motions remain the same as they would be if you were playing at performance tempo. I’ll talk about this process on Thursday.
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Keep it Short. I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to ask my students to practice daily, putting in at minimum the same amount of time that they spend at a lesson. In other words, a thirty minute lesson should be reinforced with at least thirty minutes of practice every day between lessons. I do think, however, that the conventional wisdom used to dictate that practice be finished in a single block of time. Indeed, this was how the vast majority of my own practicing was done for many years. And then I discovered that my available time didn’t always come in nice, neat blocks of two or three hours. Finding those big blocks of time was easy when I was a teenager, because I didn’t do anything except music. Then I became a parent, and then a student, wife, business owner, and all the other perks of adulthood. Even now though, because I’m pretty organized, I could find large blocks of time if I’d get off the computer. The real revelation came during grad school, when I figured out that my trusty kitchen timer could be used for things other than making sure the fish sticks didn’t burn. I could remind myself to watch a particular show on TV if I set the timer. I could remember to reboot the laundry. I could do homework without my brain turning to mush. Why, I could even practice if I set the timer! Wow, what a concept! Why, oh why, didn’t anyone tell me that thirty years ago?
In the last couple of years, I have noticed more and more teachers (especially those with an online presence) urging their students to practice in smaller chunks. I dunno — maybe this train of thought was always there and I just wasn’t paying attention, which is entirely plausible. But lately I’ve been packing up files in preparation to move to a new house and decided to read through a stack of articles I saved for future reference. Many of them made some kind of reference to these short, organized, fun practice sessions that I’ve advocated for many years now.
There are several really valid reasons for what I call “spot” or “chunk” practice, or “Two-Minute Drills”, It gives you an activity to focus your attention on, because sometimes it’s really hard to focus productively on practicing when you’re brain is thinking about what to have for dinner, or “goshthisisboring, whencanIgodosomethingFUN!” Short sessions keep a student from losing track of time, or even better, from wasting time. Another is to actually learn to focus. Smaller chunks of time allow you to vary your work and not get bogged down with too many details, or get stuck in one mode of thought for too long. Shorter chunks are (or should be) the norm for very young students anyway, like preschoolers, who can’t concentrate for more than two or three minutes at a time in the first place. One reason that doesn’t get discussed much, but should be, is injury prevention. Musicians, and especially string players and pianists, suffer proportionally higher numbers of repetitive stress injuries. Sometimes it’s helpful to think about practicing the same way an athlete would about training. Practicing is an endurance sport, both mentally and physically, but you develop endurance by starting small. I read an article the other day which addressed the problem of younger and younger string players falling victim to injuries caused by overuse. It is virtually impossible to get your muscles into a state of overuse if you practice in short bits of time.
Personally, I think that two minutes is an excellent starting point for most students. OK, I know what you’re thinking, “Two minutes?? She’s crazy. What can you do in two minutes? I can’t even get the violin out of the case in two minutes!” Preschoolers may or may not be able to go that long, but for older students it gives both a starting point and a definite, predetermined stopping point. The time between is reserved for complete focus on the task at hand, whatever it might be. In other words, it gives you some structure to your time. “Two Minute Drills” allow a student to get an incredible amount of work done, despite the fact that we usually vastly underestimate the time we spend doing a task. When I first started using a timer during practice, I was very surprised, even shocked, when the timer went off because I thought that certainly I had much more time left than I did. Total focus has the amazing benefit of making time seem like it disappeared or flew by, and leaves you wanting do more. I’m not a clock-watcher now, but I can fully concentrate for about twenty minutes, with the aid of a timer, and still have enough focus and patience left to do some more. Which is a really good thing if you have aspirations of wanting to play better.
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I think that a lot of people, and especially critics of the “Suzuki” method get confused about learning by rote and repetition. The definition that the critics usually assign to rote is repeating something that you’ve heard ad nauseum. “Parroting” and “copying” are also common synonyms. And they are usually talking about rote in connection with the logically programmed delay in learning to read music. It’s almost as if they’re saying that musicians can’t really play correctly unless and until they can read music. But I’ll talk more about that in another post. Repetition is the mode of achieving results with focused, active listening. My experience is that repeating an action multiple times doesn’t really accomplish anything except to waste a huge amount of time. Even listening without paying attention is a waste of time, no matter how much a student listens. Listening is vitally important, to be sure, but not everything can be learned by passive listening. The point is to make what you’re working on better, so the kind of repetition you want to do is the kind that improves with each attempt. This improvement comes through listening to what you’re doing and asking questions.
The asking questions part is directly related to how much you listen to the reference recordings, at least until you have a really good understanding of how your playing works. It is unreasonable to expect a three-year-old to read music — he’s just getting command of the alphabet at that age, and doesn’t really understand that The ABC Song is more than just a song he can sing that everyone oohs and ahs and claps when he finishes. Said kid certainly didn’t learn The ABC Song by reading it out of a book — somebody sang it to him and he picked it up by listening. We don’t knock three-year-olds for learning anything else by imitating someone else, so why do we have a problem with kids learning to play musical instruments that way? That is my $100,000 question.
If a violin student chooses not to listen to the reference recording, how does he know if his efforts are achieving anything? If he doesn’t know what the “standard” is, what he’s using as a measuring stick? In the case of The ABC Song, for some kids the reference or “standard” is Mom’s voice; for others, children’s TV provides the standard. He works on it, comparing it to the “standard” in his own way, until he gets it. Until the standard is absolutely stuck in long-term memory, it needs to be heard repeatedly if the intent is to learn. When a student begins to practice this way, the first questions that should be asked (especially for beginners) are related to posture. Is the left hand properly and comfortably positioned? Are the fingers striking the string in the correct location — in relation to the string itself and in relation to the mechanics of the hand?
If all the posture issues are non-issues, move on to the “was it better” line of questioning. Relate the question specifically to what is being worked on, but also in more general terms. For example, did what was played sound better in general: was in overall more in tune, better tone, straighter bow, etc? More specifically, if a student is working on in-tune playing, was the offending note closer to what it’s supposed to sound like? Does he know exactly where it should be? Where exactly is the finger supposed to land? Did he adjust it by ear (preferable) or did he look at his finger? Can he hit the pitch accurately if he closes his eyes or stares at a spot on the wall? How far does the pitch need to be adjusted to make it correct? Are there other fingers that could help him measure the distance? Would it help to listen to the recording a few times to see how his progress is going? Would it help to record him, so he can hear what he’s doing from an objective source?
Older students might also find it helpful and fun to use “journalistic questioning”: what, where, when, why, and how? This method will work for nailing down a problem, as well as fo finding possible solutions. As an example of this line of questioning: what happened? — exactly what is the mistake or problem? Is it a pitch that is out of tune? Or a bow that has learned the run to opposite direction from what it’s supposed to? Where does it occur? — At a specific point in the music? Does it happen right after the preceding motion or set of pitches? When does it happen? — All the time? Once in a while? Every third or fourth time? Only when you’re not holding your violin tall? Why did it happen? Do you know, or is it something you need to pay more attention to in order to discover the reason? And finally, how did it happen? Was it because you weren’t paying attention, not listening enough, etc.?
In order to make repetition fruitful, it pays to ask a lot of questions and keep asking them until you get it right. But don’t become obsessive to the point of spending too much time on that one thing. Do a little at a time over the course of several days. I like to use a timer when I’m working on something that requires a lot of concentration or a lot of nit-picky work, and it keeps me from getting side-tracked or neglectful of other work I need to do. It’s hard to argue with a timer. And one final thing to remember: the questioning process gets easier and becomes more streamlined the more you do it and the more your muscles learn about playing.
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The pitch of the lowest string on a violin is named “G”. It has a very unique sound. Many players expect to find a sultry, sensuous, yes even sexy sound when they play on G, especially in the higher reaches. The sound should not crack under bow pressure, or whine or buzz or sputter. In short, the G on my violin doesn’t respond the way I think it should. It rarely cracks, but more often simply sputters and whines. Kind of like when you get poked with a sharp object and say “ow”. It doesn’t have that “fatness” in the sound that feels like dark blue velvet or thick, warm syrup on pancakes. It’s had this problem since I bought it, some eight or nine years ago, but I’m really starting to notice it now. Don’t know why I didn’t before, or why it didn’t really matter before, but that’s another post.
So I’ve been looking for cures or tips on things I can do myself to improve the sound without taking it in to a shop and risking the luthier telling me that my fiddle is a piece o’ junk. My initial thought, because I’m a closet pessimist, was that I’m doing something wrong — not enough bow, too much bow, not enough weight, arm not in the correct position, whatever. It’s these simple fixes that usually work miracles for my students’ sound. But I’ve tried playing with the position I use and nothing seems to improve the density of the sound. Several times, I’ve considered installing a “wolf eliminator”, a little gadget that attaches to the string between the bridge and the tailpiece that supposedly removes the offending sound. Or would, if the violin actually had wolf tones. Mine doesn’t, so that would be a total waste of five bucks (and I’m frugal too.)
Another thought would be to change the brand of string. I currently use Pirastro Aricores with a Goldbrokat E, after an exhaustive search for the strings that sounded best and produced the kind of sound I was after. They are fabulous on the A and D strings and I’ve gotten compliments over the years regarding how well-matched they are to my instrument. I got a scare recently when I actually had to start buying strings again (because I was practicing and playing with some regularity) and the retailer from which I had been buying them stopped carrying them. The rep tried to tell me that Pirastro had discontinued them, so I emailed Pirastro and was told that they had NOT been discontinued. So I just buy them from another retailer now. And the first retailer, with which I’ve done business since 1976, lost most of my business because they lied to me. Anyway, I need to restring anyway for an upcoming performance, but it has occured to me that maybe I should start looking for a G that has different tonal characteristics from the others. I’m not particularly brand loyal, but I do have to say that the Goldbrokat E is the best I’ve ever used, and I don’t care a whit for Dominants. I absolutely love gut strings, but Olives are out of my price range for everyday playing. Eudoxas and Gold Labels wear out too fast and the sound, while rich and lovely, is too muted for my violin. I’d even pay more for the G of my dreams, if it gave me the sound and response I want.
Then I thought, OK, maybe it’s something structurally wrong with the violin. Maybe the bass bar is cracked or the bridge needs replaced. That would be something that I’d have to have a luthier do. If it’s the bass bar, you’re talking major bucks. I’m not sure it is a good use of money to spend half the value of my instrument repairing something when I could use that money and buy another one that’s already in playing condition. So, until I actually come up with an answer the smart thing to do is to play with different strings — start with the least expensive fixes first — and if that doesn’t solve the problem, I’ll bite the bullet and take it to Kansas City.
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For many of us, we hear from the time we are knee-high to a grasshopper, “Stand up straight. Look me in the eye. Tuck in your shirt.” And any number of other things related directly to posture. Violin playing is no different. Standing up straight is a given. Looking the violin “in the eye” is also pretty important, and can’t be done if you’re not standing up straight. “Tuck in your shirt” can be translated to mean that your posture must be centered and balanced.
Good violin posture is an extention of the natural, free movement of the body. The feet are flat on the floor, and slightly separated to provide balance. The arms are assisted by gravity to keep them from getting tired or overworked. The violin is held in place by the head, and should feel like it is floating on top of the shoulder and hand. All motions originate from the perception of “roundedness”, even though they might sometimes look like straight lines or angles. When I place my violin and prepare to play, it feels like I am hugging an old friend.
Posture can be a help or a hindrance. Does your violin feel like an old friend or an awkward implement of musical torture? If it feels awkward, look for clues in the mirror (or video yourself playing) and see if there is something stiff or painful. It might indicate that a different posture might work better. But keep in mind that anytime you change something in your posture, there are repercussions. That one change might lead to several other necessary ones for it all to “click”. And it will probably feel very strange, because your muscles were trained (and became accustomed) to doing it differently. In the end, though, it’s worth it to investigate your posture and make changes as soon as possible.
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It’s really cool when there is a directly-related follow-up to something I talk about. Yesterday, I posted about mistakes. Well, the follow-up was on MSNBC today:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24274335/
I’ll talk more about this next Tuesday…
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Schedules should be done with thought and care, for yourself as well as others in your house. The easiest thing to do is to look at your calendar and mark off times that will not work, for whatever reason. You may find that you have several smaller blocks of time available throughout the day, or a single large block at a given point. Start by keeping your scheduled sessions short — no more than about five minutes at a time. It is OK (and actually preferable) to do several of these short sessions, but keep them separated. Take breaks in between each one, or if your schedule allows, go do something else that needs your attention and come back to it later. The main benefit to taking frequent, regular breaks is that your brain gets time to process what you just worked on and get it encoded into your long-term memory. It also keeps you from overdoing it physically, which is really important if you’re a beginner — sore fingers take all the fun out of practicing. This method is also extremely effective and usually necessary for pre-schoolers, who normally have a very limited attention span. Adults and older students can often focus for longer amounts of time, but that’s because we’ve trained ourselves to do so. Small sessions also help a student learn to focus and develop critical listening and analytical skills; in other words, how do you know you’re accomplishing anything if you’re not paying attention or listening to what you’re doing, compared to the time before? Some people find it helpful to also schedule their listening time, but that’s not always necessary for every student.
As you build physical stamina and get a better idea of how much you can actually accomplish in a given amount of time, you can start increasing the length of the sessions to whatever your brain can handle. I can pretty well maintain full, active concentration for about twenty minutes at a time. You may be able to do more, or not quite that much — everyone is different. It is also helpful at making it routine by scheduling practice every day, or as close to every day as you can. Five or six days a week will work, but aim for seven if possible. Two probably won’t help you much. The more time you can devote means the more times you’ll actually get to play, which means your learning will be faster and probably more solid.
So, to review our main points here, successful scheduling of practice includes: short sessions initially; frequent, regular breaks; and dedicated time on a daily basis. I’ll start talking about the second scheduling question next Wednesday — what are you going to work on?
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