10 ways to improve your musicianship with a computer

ByBret Pimentel

laptopIt seems like there’s very little I do these days without a computer. Here are some ways I have used a laptop to boost my practice sessions.

  1. Listen

    With hard drives large and cheap, there’s no reason not to have your music collection with you anywhere you can take your instrument and your laptop. Absorb the music of your old or new favorite artists, borrow or steal their best ideas, and find inspiration for your own creations. With iTunes (free), you can even use the Store feature to search for short previews of music you don’t own, and buy it inexpensively for instant gratification. Check out YouTube, too, for lots of free music (and then support the artists by buying a nice legal copy of the stuff you like).

  2. Record yourself

    A built-in microphone or an under-$10 add-on is enough to reveal perhaps more than you want to know about what you really sound like. To really get every painful detail, pay a little more for a quality mic. I have one of these, which works well for me because it’s a standalone recording device and can also be used as a computer microphone. Free (or bundled) software like Garage Band or Audacity gives you a quick and easy way to hear yourself, plus tons more features for power users.

    Also, try using a webcam and bundled software to get a look at things like your posture, technique, and facial expressions while playing.

  3. Make goals

    After you’ve listened to yourself recorded in digital clarity, you may have a few ideas of what needs improving. Fire up your word processor of choice, and make a list of what needs fixing and what you can do about it. Goals that don’t get documented don’t get done: “if you think it, ink it” (or, even better, type it). Make specific, measurable goals, and refer back to your list often.

  4. Track your progress

    Spreadsheets like Excel are perfect for keeping track of measurable goals. Use them to keep track of your speed at something, or how many measures or lines or pieces you have learned, or which days you practiced a certain skill. If you want to get really fancy, make a chart to show your rate of progress, or to reveal when you’ve hit a plateau and need to rethink your practice strategy.

  5. Play along

    Play along with favorite recordings to try out performance tempi, get a feel for accompaniment parts, and do an overall reality check. Or try various kinds of playalong software, like Band-in-a-Box or SmartMusic. Or, just have your favorite playalong products like Aebersold recordings or the Tuning CD right at your fingertips.

  6. Use notation or sequencing software

    Used in combination with a MIDI keyboard, notation software can be a quick and convenient way to transpose or arrange parts, or even to check out what complicated rhythms sound like. (With most software, you can do it without a MIDI keyboard, too, but it’s more work.)

    Or try creating your own playalong recordings. These can be as complicated as complete orchestral accompaniments in your favorite key and tempo, or as simple as long tones that you can play along with in unison to check your intonation. Or how about a custom click track with your preferred tempo changes?

  7. Use analysis tools

    Try the freeware Spectrogram for visualization of your sound. Only your ears can tell you if it sounds right, but a look at a spectrogram may tell you something interesting about the harmonic content or amplitude of one note compared to another. The simpler amplitude visualization provided by software like Audacity can also help you recognize when, for example, there are unwanted bumps in your phrases.

  8. Use online texts

    There’s a wealth of valuable information online on how to improve your playing. One of the best examples of this is the online archives of the Double Reed, the International Double Reed Society’s journal—decades’ worth of solid gold articles by the world’s best oboists and bassoonists. There’s sheet music to be found, too—see my recent post about the IMSLP.

  9. Communicate

    There are lots of excellent message boards and discussion forums devoted to playing musical instruments. The Clarinet Bulletin Board is an example of a discussion board that is well-established, frequented by genuine experts, and generally polite. One of the benefits/dangers of these fora is that anyone can contribute, so you’ll have to use your best judgment to sort the good ideas from the bad.

    Or, if you’re feeling bold, look up the website of one of your favorite players, and send him or her a polite email expressing your admiration and asking for a suggestion on something you’ve been trying to improve in your playing. They are busy people, so be patient and understanding if they don’t respond right away, or even if your email seems to have slipped through the cracks permanently.

  10. Control distractions

    Use your computer to enhance your practicing, but when games or favorite websites become a temptation, turn it off! If your willpower needs a boost, try the LeechBlock Firefox extension or the Mac program Self Control.

Similar Posts

  • Should I tighten the screws on my woodwind instrument?

    ByBret Pimentel

    For many household items, screws should be tightened if they seem loose. But for woodwind instruments it’s a little more complicated.

    Woodwind instruments (flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and saxophones) have many screws on them. They are usually the slotted type, for which you would use a standard (“flat-head”) screwdriver. And some of them need to be tightened when they become loose, but some should be left alone—and it’s not always easy to tell which is which. If you aren’t sure, take it to your teacher or a professional instrument repair shop.

    When tightening screws, always use a screwdriver that fits the screw very closely, to reduce the chances of damaging the screw. Mismatched screwdrivers can also slip, causing injury to you or scratches on the instrument’s finish.

    Here are some kinds of screws you might find on your instrument:

    Some screws simply hold some non-moving pieces together. For example, these screws on a saxophone hold this key guard onto the instrument. It’s not a moving part; the screws are just there so a professional can remove the key guard to do specialized work on the key. If these screws are loose, you can carefully tighten them just until they are snug.

    The same is true of these screws that hold the oboe’s thumb rest in place—they are part of a non-moving assembly. If they won’t stay in place, the wood may be damaged (the hole is “stripped”). A good repair shop can fix it for you.

    Woodwind instruments have many pivot screws, and also pivot rods that have slotted ends like screws. These allow some of the instrument’s keys to pivot (rotate) a little when you press and release them.

    Here is one of the pivot screws on a flute. The threaded part screws into a post that is attached to the instrument, and the pointy tip of the screw fits into a void in the end of the key, holding it in place but allowing it to pivot smoothly. For a well-made and well-maintained instrument, usually you can screw these in all the way until they are snug and the head of the screw fits into the post without protruding. But if that makes the key stick or misbehave, it may be necessary to loosen it just slightly.

    Here is a flute pivot rod. When it is screwed in it looks the same as a pivot screw, but when it is removed you can see that it’s long enough to pass all the way through a post and the keys’ hinge tube, and then screw into another post. Like a pivot screw, a pivot rod can usually be screwed in until snug, unless that seems to cause a problem.

    Most of the woodwinds also have at least a few adjustment screws. These allow a professional to fine-tune how some of the keys move. They need to be tightened a certain amount, no tighter and no looser, like turning the knob on an oven to get the right temperature. If it’s too loose or too tight, it will make the instrument difficult or impossible to play. Making these adjustments properly requires specialized skills.

    Here are some of the many adjustment screws on an oboe:

    And here is one of the few on a clarinet:

    If you tighten these adjustment screws and don’t know what you are doing, you will probably need to take the instrument to your teacher or a repair shop to undo the damage. This can be time-consuming and expensive.

    If you have screws that keep loosening on their own, this may be because they are dirty, damaged, or need lubrication. A good repair shop can clean and repair the screws or rods without damaging them (or replace them if necessary), and can determine and apply the appropriate lubricant. (Most household oils aren’t right for the job.) If the screws continue to loosen after this treatment, take the instrument to the shop again and they may use additional methods to secure the screws in place.

  • MS Excel music hack: Sort musical instruments by score order

    ByBret Pimentel

    For today’s Stupid Microsoft Office Trick, we will be teaching Excel how to sort musical instruments into score order. This has lots of uses for musicians and music educators:

    • Inventories of instruments, sheet music, CD’s, you name it
    • Rosters of students, orchestra members, sub lists, and so forth

    For example, suppose I have a list of sheet music for various woodwind instruments:

    Chaos!

    If I sort alphabetically by column C, I’ll get bassoon pieces first, then clarinet, flute, oboe, and saxophone. But as a musician I rarely have reason to sort things that way. I would rather have the flute pieces on the top, followed by oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone—a typical score ordering.

    I’ll show you three easy steps to make this happen. I’m using Excel 2007 and Windows Vista, but I believe this feature exists in earlier versions of Excel as well. You are on your own for the exact details, unless someone cares to share in the comments section. Read More “MS Excel music hack: Sort musical instruments by score order”

  • 12(+) ways to practice a technical passage

    ByBret Pimentel

    A popular article from the Bulletproof Musician blog has been making the rounds on social media again, which, to oversimplify, recommends variety in your practice routine.

    What is crucial is that you are keeping your brain engaged by varying the material.

    One of the suggestions the author (clarinetist Christine Carter) makes is to practice passages “in different rhythmic variations.” She doesn’t go into detail because that isn’t the main thrust of the article, but here are some of my favorite ways of varying rhythms for practice.

    Let’s take this example passage:

    Original excerpt (from Piazzolla Tango Etudes, notation simplified)

    The most obvious and common rhythmic variation for practice is to use uneven rhythms, alternating long and short notes. There are two ways to do it:

    Methods 1-2: Long-short, then short-long

    In all of these examples, note durations aren’t necessarily set in stone—they are just meant to show which are the long notes and which are the short ones. The first example above could alternatively be notated this way:

    Method 1a

    Those examples use groupings of two notes, a long one and a short one. We can extrapolate that to, say, groups of three notes, one long and two short. There are three ways to do that:

    Methods 3-5: Long-short-short, short-long-short, short-short-long

    Another variation would be groupings of four notes, done four different ways:

    practice4
    Methods 6-9

    For additional practice, try groups of five, six, and so on.

    Another extension of this technique is to keep the basic rhythm the same but shift it within the meter:

    Methods 10-12

    Use subtle anchoring to make this especially effective. Again, the possible variations are limited only by your imagination: try playing the passage in triplets instead of sixteenths, and then shift those within the meter.

    I find these techniques to be an excellent way to keep some variety and interest in my practicing even when I’m stuck on a particularly frustrating passage. The Bulletproof Musician article suggests rotating between several passages in order to keep the routine varied, and I agree that is a useful way to practice, but I find that, in moderate doses, playing one passage in many different ways has similar effects.

    Keep your practicing varied and goal-oriented!

  • Thinking through scales

    ByBret Pimentel

    My university woodwind students have to pass a scale exam as one of the requirements to progress in their degree program. They have to be able to play major scales and three forms of minor scales, plus arpeggios, through the “full range” of the instrument, from memory.

    Many of my students learned their major scales in their school band programs, well enough to have most of them in muscle memory. But some of them are less familiar with the minor scales.

    It can be a little overwhelming to keep track of 48 different scales. With plenty of accurate repetitions my students can get to the point of muscle memory for all 48. But in the meantime sometimes they get stuck trying to remember the right notes for the next scale, or get mixed up and play the wrong one.

    I find it very helpful to have a mental roadmap for thinking through the next scale, and especially so if I can relate it to something I already have in muscle memory. My map might go something like this, but there are lots of possibilities:

    • C major scale: already in muscle memory, little or no “thinking” needed. As I play, notice the first, third, and fifth scale degrees, so I can use them in the next step.
    • C major arpeggio: first, third, and fifth degrees of the scale I just played.
    • C natural minor scale: since it’s a minor scale, I’m going to lower the third from E to E-flat. And E-flat major is the relative key to C minor, and I have E-flat major in my muscle memory, so I can play that same pattern of notes without too much thought.
    • C harmonic minor scale: now that I’ve got C natural minor under my fingers, I just need to change one note to produce the harmonic minor: B-flat becomes B-natural.
    • C melodic minor, ascending: this one is just like the C major scale I played a minute ago, but lower the E to E-flat.
    • C melodic minor, descending: this one is just like the C natural minor scale (related to E-flat major) that I played a minute ago. Notice the first, third, and fifth scale degrees, so I can use them in the next step.
    • C minor arpeggio: first, third, and fifth degrees of the scale I just played.

    Another approach that appeals to some of my students is to think in terms of scale degrees: start with the major scale that’s already in muscle memory, and remember that for, say, harmonic minor, you have to lower the third and the sixth.

    Having an organized way of thinking through the scales helps prevent the paralysis and overwhelm of trying to conjure up the whole scale from nothing. When my students take their exam, nobody minds if they take a few moments to think before they start playing, but getting stuck mid-scale would be a problem.

    As you get better and faster at thinking through the scales, a good way to push yourself is to use a metronome, and limit yourself to a pre-set amount of time before the next scale starts. Maybe a certain number of beats (or, ultimately, zero beats) before jumping into the next one. If that doesn’t go well in the practice space, you know that particular transition is a problem spot, and can reorganize your efforts accordingly.

    Happy practicing!

  • What if I don’t love to practice?

    ByBret Pimentel

    Musicians are supposed to wake up every day filled with a burning desire to practice for hours, right? If you don’t feel that way, you must not really have what it takes, right? And even if you don’t feel like practicing, you should be able to will yourself to do it anyway, right?

    It’s normal and okay not to love practicing, or for your love of practicing to vary. And it’s normal and okay to have less-than-perfect willpower.

    Some self-awareness about your practicing (or lack thereof) can help a lot. What keeps you from practicing, or from practicing at your best? Can you embrace it? Incorporate it? Work around it?

    Here’s an example: I’ve discovered that my mind wanders a lot while I practice. I might be doing some slow repetition of a tricky passage, but my brain is working on something else. So now I practice with a small notepad nearby. I find that if I can pause practicing for a moment and jot down a few thoughts, it quiets my mind.

    At first I resisted this idea, because it seemed like I was planning to multitask and be distracted. But for me, permission to get the idea out of my head and onto paper makes my practicing much more productive overall.

    Do you fail to practice, or fail to practice well, because:

    • …you get too bored working on one thing for such a long time? Can you rearrange your practicing so you change tasks every few minutes? Or spread your practicing out throughout the day?
    • …you hate missing out on what your friends are up to, IRL or online? Would it help if you gave yourself permission to spend a few minutes now and then, within established limits, to catch up on what’s happening? Or what if you practiced first thing in the morning, before your social circle gets interesting?
    • …you’re engrossed in an interesting book or show? What if you got to read or watch for ten minutes as soon as you finish your scale routine, or put in a solid half-hour on your étude? Or if you get your practicing done before dinner, you get to binge in the evening, guilt-free?
    • …you get hangry or tired? Could you schedule yourself some breaks to snack or nap or stretch? Or move your practicing to after a meal, instead of just before?

    Instead of beating yourself up about motivation or willpower, ask yourself how you can harness your natural inclinations and use them for productive practice.

  • Slowing down

    ByBret Pimentel

    I can’t tell you how often I have had this happen in lessons, especially with my younger students:

    Me: Play your E-flat major scale.

    Student: [Begins scale at breakneck speed, plays 3-4 notes, makes a mistake, stops. Begins again at the same speed, makes a different mistake, stops.]

    Me: Wait—

    Student: [Begins again at breakneck speed, makes a different mistake, stops.]

    Me: Wait. Please slow down and play accurately.

    Student: [Begins again at same speed as before, makes a different mistake, stops.]

    Me: Okay, let me show you what I mean. [Demonstrates.]

    Student: [Rolls eyes. Plays the scale slowly, with much-improved accuracy.]

    Me: Good. See what I—

    Student: [Plays at breakneck speed. Makes a mistake.]

    Younger or less-experienced students in particular seem to get fixated on a perceived need to play everything as fast as possible, and often seem to prefer fast-with-mistakes over slower and more accurate. But as more experienced practice-ers know, time spent practicing this way is virtually 100% wasted.

    Mastery of a technical sequence, such as playing a scale or musical passage, requires repetition. If my scale turns out differently every time because I’m playing too fast and sacrificing consistency, then I really haven’t done any repetitions. Or if I’m making the same mistake repeatedly because I’m not giving myself time to think while I play, then I’m doing repetitions of something that I didn’t want to master: an incorrect version of the passage. I spent many of my younger years throwing away practice time doing each of those things.

    It’s also a mistake to move on too quickly from playing slowly. Sometimes I will see a student make several hasty, sloppy attempts at a passage, then relent and play it slowly, and then, having “succeeded,” immediately return to playing too fast. Once isn’t nearly enough. It may take several, or dozens, or hundreds, or more accurate, controlled repetitions before it’s possible to play the passage at the desired speed. But if I have laid this foundation well, I find that speed is the least of my worries—I have all the speed I need, and with solid accuracy.

    And the speeding-up part of the process often takes place very late in my preparations. I think sometimes my students expect their speed to increase like this:

    speed-straightBut I get much better results if I allow this to happen:

    speed-curved

    I spend more and more of my time polishing every detail of a passage at a slow tempo, and let the speeding up happen later and later. When I do this, I learn technical sequences much more thoroughly and much more efficiently (in other words, the “Time spent practicing” for a particular passage gets shorter and produces better results).

    Don’t waste time and effort practicing mistakes. Be patient, slow down, play it with accuracy and control.

One Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comments that take a negative or confrontational tone are subject to email and name verification before being approved. In other words: no anonymous trolls allowed—take responsibility for your words.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.