Persistence
A famous big-shot clarinet professor told me once that I would never really be a clarinetist.
He was quite possibly correct.
But for now I’m still at it.
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Use your metronome most of the time
Why should you use a metronome when you practice?
- Music is about organizing sounds in time. Often my students are so focused on playing the “sounds” (pitches) that they forget about the time part. They learn to play the right sounds in the right order, but not precisely in time.
- The metronome helps reveal problem areas. Without a metronome, it’s easy to conveniently slow down or hesitate over a challenging spot. The metronome annoyingly reminds you that something went wrong.
- Working with an audible steady pulse helps develop your inner sense of time, so you’ll play more accurately even after you turn the metronome off.
How much should you use a metronome?
- Probably most of the time. I use a metronome for at least 80% of the time I spend practicing.
But doesn’t playing with a metronome make your playing sound too mechanical?
- I know very few musicians who have the problem that their tempos are too steady. It’s important to practice the tempo nuances too, but if you can’t play the line in perfect time then you probably can’t do a convincing accelerando/ritardando.
What about when you’re practicing something that doesn’t fit well with a metronome, such as changing time signatures?
- Smartphone metronome apps have pretty amazing features these days. And music notation or audio editing software can create anything you can imagine. (For examples, see Adam Ballif’s “Ballif Beats” for clarinet repertoire, or James Barger’s classical saxophone accompaniment track videos.) Time invested creating practice tools like these can pay off in a big way. And in many cases you don’t have to create a metronome track for the whole piece, just for the spots that don’t work well with a standard metronome.
What if you’re “not good” at playing with a metronome?
- Practicing with a metronome is a crucial and mandatory skill for a developing or advancing musician. It’s time to learn.
- Start slowly, maybe very slowly, and work in small chunks.
- Learn to use your metronome’s features, including subdivisions and time signatures.
- Make sure the metronome is loud enough. If feasible, consider using an earphone, an external/Bluetooth speaker, or metronome features like flashing lights or vibrations you can feel.
But what if you heard a big-shot musician say you shouldn’t practice with a metronome?
- In my experience, there are two kinds of musicians who think they don’t need a metronome. One is the top 1%, who have spent a lifetime developing world-class musical abilities. The other is beginning and intermediate musicians, who haven’t learned the value of metronome work because they haven’t done it enough. Don’t mistake a top-level musician’s musings for good beginner advice.
Fire up the metronome and go practice!
Fix fixable problems now
Just about every day I have a student show up for a lesson with an etude or repertoire movement they have been working on for a week or more, and there are little, silly problems that haven’t been fixed:
- A spot where a fingering choice needs to be made, but hasn’t.
- A page turn in an awkward spot.
- An unfamiliar foreign term that hasn’t been looked up.
- An ambiguous accidental that need to be double-checked against the piano part.
It’s easy for them (or me) to ignore or procrastinate small but easily-fixable issues while busily drilling technical passages. But I know they—and I—are doing our best work when those details don’t slip through the cracks.
It’s not worth it to spend a week practicing something in an incorrect or compromised way because you haven’t gotten around to fixing the fixable problems. Would any of these help you solve those issues more promptly?
- Print an alternate/trill fingering chart and keep it with your practicing stuff, or bookmark an online one on your phone.
- Put a few dollars on your copier/printer card/app so you can photocopy a page when needed.
- Keep a good music dictionary in the pocket of your instrument case.
- Keep your piano score and solo part together so you can always use them in tandem.
Consider what other easily-fixable problems you haven’t bothered to fix, and ask yourself what you can do to remove friction so they get solved right away next time you practice.
Isolating problem spots
Earlier this month I posted about a fundamental practicing concept that sometimes escapes my less-experienced students. Here is another:
Me: Play your D melodic minor scale.
Student: [Begins D minor scale, plays a wrong note in the second octave.]
Me: Whoops, remember to play B-natural.
Student: Okay. [Starts over, makes same mistake.]
Me: Please start at the second-octave A, and play just from there to—
Student: [Starts from second-octave A, makes the same mistake, proceeds to finish the scale.]
Me: No, I want you to start at the A, play just to the B-natural, and stop.
Student: [Plays.]
Me: Okay, that’s correct. Now—
Student: [Starts over, makes same mistake.]
Practicing in overly large segments is an issue for less-experienced students for at least three reasons. The first is that is it makes it difficult to notice exactly where the problem is happening. Students may tend to “power through” a section and evaluate it as a whole (“That wasn’t very good”), then simply start over again and hope for the best. Sometimes my younger students are surprised when I point out that they are actually making the same mistake over and over. In their minds, it’s a roll of the dice every time, hoping that everything turns out right, and if it doesn’t, then start again and hope for better luck this time. Practicing in smaller segments makes it much easier to identify and isolate problems.
photo, Basheer Tome The second issue is that even if the precise problem is known, practicing it within too large a segment increases the cognitive load—it’s hard to devote enough attention to the actual problem when there are so many other notes to think about. Plus, practicing too long of a segment raises the stakes in a way that often doesn’t work well for inexperienced practicers: by the time you actually arrive at the problem spot, the pressure is really on to get it right, since you’ve already invested a lot in this run-through. If you isolate the problem to a much smaller segment, it’s not such a big deal if you have to start again.
The third issue is efficiency. If your goal is to correct one wrong note, which lasts less than a second, and you play 30 seconds’ worth of music leading up to it and another 30 seconds’ worth after it, then you can only get about one repetition done per minute. Even if you get it right, it will take you hours to really solidify that passage. But if you can narrow the problem down to two seconds’ worth of music, you can do many repetitions per minute.
In most cases, the problem that needs fixing has to do with getting from one note to another successfully. It may be that the second note isn’t the right one, or that it doesn’t respond right, or that the articulation isn’t correct, or a variety of other things, but the crucial concept is that there is a pair of notes, and the first note is right, and the second one isn’t.
Step one is to practice just those two notes, not just once through, but many times. If this is only accomplished with difficulty, it may be due to the second note having a less-familiar fingering, or perhaps some kind of particular response difficulty. Practice those two notes—and only those two notes—over and over until they improve. If they don’t, consult a teacher who can help to you diagnose and improve your technique.
If playing the two notes is trivially easy, then the problem is something about the context in which they appear. Add one more note before the first one, and repeat it several times. If it’s still easy, add one more. Continue until the problem returns, and practice that sequence of notes slowly and carefully until it feels natural and solid. If it becomes clear that adding more notes before the problem isn’t what’s triggering it, then start again from the two notes and gradually add notes after them. Sometimes anticipating what follows can cause something to go wrong.
Don’t be overly anxious to put the (former) problem spot back into the “context” of a whole scale or etude or movement. Make most of your practicing small-segment work, and very gradually reassemble the small segments into slightly larger ones. Repeat the slightly larger ones many times, then combine them again into still larger ones.
Take the time to break your practicing down into smaller chunks, isolate the problem spots, and work them methodically and repetitively.
Becoming a professional musician
Sometimes when my students get paying engagements for the first time, I joke with them that they are now “professional” musicians. That’s true in a sense, but I think there’s more that goes into being a true professional.
If you are a college student aspiring to be a professional musician, here are some things you might ask yourself:
- Am I reliably on time to things?
- Do I always have a pencil? Extra reeds? Whatever else is needed?
- Do I show up to rehearsals with my parts learned and ready?
- Am I self-motivating when it comes to practicing?
- Am I pleasant and cooperative on a gig or in a rehearsal?
- Am I easy to contact, and prompt about replying?
- Is my closet stocked with clean, sharp gig apparel?
- Do I keep my instruments well-maintained?
- Do I have a sense of what my time and talents are worth, and a firm but polite way of expressing that?
- Do I meet and exceed my teachers’ expectations?
- Am I willing to play any part, including the less-prestigious ones? Am I willing to put my best into supporting someone else’s solo moment, even if I think that opportunity should have been mine?
- Have I recorded myself lately? Did I come away from it with some ideas of what needs improvement?
- What are the most common issues my teachers or ensemble directors mention about my playing? Am I addressing those in a focused way?
- Am I responsive to useful criticism, thick-skinned against non-useful criticism, and able to tell the difference?
- Is there anything about my playing or demeanor that would cause stress to someone who hired me for a gig? Am I currently stressing out my teachers, directors, or fellow students?
Graduation from college doesn’t guarantee you any gigs. Become the person that other musicians want to work with.
Why you should use a scale sheet
My university students take a scale exam covering all the major and 3-forms-of-minor scales, plus arpeggios, in all 12 keys, memorized. In preparation, I provide them with a scale “sheet,” with all of the scales and arpeggios written out note by note.
There’s a part of my brain that objects to this, since I don’t really want scale playing to be a reading exercise. My students should be able to work out the notes for each scale from several different angles, by using (for example) interval patterns, transposition, and/or playing by ear. And the true goal is muscle memory—the ability to play all these scales on auto-pilot, without relying on any particular thought process.
The scale sheet shouldn’t be a crutch, but can it be helpful? I think it can. Here’s why:
If I’m working on a complicated repertoire piece or étude, I will certainly work from a piece of printed music, even if I intend to memorize it. Besides the printed musical information, the paper (or digital) copy also gives me a place to annotate the music with hints to improve my performance.
A scale sheet can work the same way. It’s not merely for laying out all the notes, but also for marking in:
- preferred fingerings, articulations, etc.
- current playable metronome markings
- unresolved problem spots
- some tracking/tally of which scales I’ve practiced lately (I find that if I let myself choose scales “randomly” to work on, I end up choosing the same ones repeatedly, and completely neglecting others)
- indications (stars? check marks? smiley faces?) of progress and successes, that might help me feel motivated to continue
If you’re not using a scale sheet of some kind, I suppose you could figure out an organized way to write this information in some other document, but it’s hard to beat the convenience of the scale sheet.
As a teacher, I provide scale sheets with the ranges, rhythms, articulations, fingerings, and so forth that I want my students to use. You should produce your own, by hand or with the commercial or free music notation software of your choice. (Hint: use the transpose function to turn one key in to twelve, and minimize the chance of errors.)
Happy practicing!
Preparing a focused mind
I find that in performance my mind isn’t always focused on what I would like. I’m easily distracted by conditions in the performance space, audience reactions, or, especially, the ways that my playing isn’t everything I would like it to be.
When I get distracted, and especially when it turns into negative self-talk, it’s easy to spiral. I feel bad about my playing, so my playing gets worse, and then I feel worse still.
When I talk about this phenomenon with my students, often their strategy is “just don’t think negative thoughts.” Maybe that works for them, but it sure doesn’t for me. Rebuking myself for having negative thoughts doesn’t really improve my frame of mind mid-performance.
Instead I find it helpful to focus on something positive and constructive. And in the heat of battle it can be hard to think of something, so it helps me to pick one out in advance. In other words, I have an advance plan for what to focus my mind on if and when it starts wandering in unhelpful directions.
The best positive thing to think about might depend on what works for you. But as a woodwind player, my go-to thought is air. I focus on the sensations of air moving through my body and into the instrument.
This works well for me for a few reasons. Because air is at the core of my tone production technique, paying attention to it usually helps me play a little better. If I’m taking good breaths, my brain and body are better oxygenated and able to function better. And air is closely tied to expression, so focusing on it can help my thoughts redirect toward that. Plus, air is a relaxing thing—lots of meditation and mindfulness practices use breathing as a method to achieve calm and clarity.
Having a plan like this gives me an easy way to get past a distraction and return my thoughts to the moment. Good luck!
