The Insanity in Your Practice Room
More than any other thing I talk about with students, I teach practice techniques. Students play for me and it’s very clear that they have been playing the etude over and over again the same way all week resulting in the same problems never being fixed. Often, this is because they don’t know how to practice any other way. But for a minute contemplate what it means to do the same action repeatedly and expect to find a different result. Einstein was not wrong when he called this the definition of insanity. If we were scientists instead of musicians, the idea of performing the exact same experiment repeatedly without changing a single variable would be laughable. Instead, we march along thinking that if we play for 10,000 hours we will eventually become virtuosos. It’s time to change this way of thinking and start being more scientific in the practice room.
When something in the music is causing problems, hypothesize what it is and then create exercises from the music to work on that problem. A good example for this is the fifth measure of the solo from Tuba Mirum. The most common problem is getting a clean natural slur from the F to the A flat, so let’s use this for our discussion.
A good guess for why the slur is not working is that the air is not there in one way or another. The bad way of practicing this would be to keep playing the slur over and over until you get it right. My way is to take away variables to isolate the problem. First take away the slide and play all the notes in first position. This lets you work on just the slur without having to worry about slide coordination. If that is still not quite right, then I would add flutter tonguing, or growling if that is not possible, to create the need for more air. Flutter tonguing also making it more audible when the air stream thins out, which will help the player hear where the problem is occurring. In order for this repetition to avoid becoming rote and as a result careless, I would also change slide positions and alternate between 5-4-4-3 and 1-1-1-1 and 1-1-1-3. Next, I would focus on changing the way I perceive the slur. Often, a high note in a phrase is looked at as the goal or end and then the rest is an afterthought. To counteract this, I would play:
I would loop this a few times to get comfortable with the new way of perceiving the line. Finally I would put it all together.
This should all take about 5 minutes, and it will be some of the most effective 5 minutes of your week.
What is giving you trouble in the practice room? I would love to help you learn how to fix it.
