For me it’s an ongoing challenge to start a piece of music at the right tempo. Here are a few tricks I have used:
Practice, a lot, with a metronome, to internalize and habituate the tempo.
If circumstances allow, check a metronome backstage immediately before beginning the piece.
If circumstances allow, have a metronome with you on stage. Most have a “silent” function that you can use to discreetly double-check.
Maybe your piece has a fast or tricky part, and you’re worried that you will go too fast and that part won’t go well. Sing that part in your mind before you start to play, so you can pick a tempo that will work for that part.
Be aware of your tendencies. For example, if the adrenaline of performance makes you tend to rush, you can adjust accordingly.
Find a song that you know really well and have thoroughly internalized, that has a tempo very close to the one you wish to play at. Sing a few bars of the song mentally to find your tempo. For example, here’s a list of songs that have a tempo of about 94 beats per minute—I bet you can find at least a few that you know.
Ten years ago in 2009 I wrote a blog post about how to set up auto-complete sharp, flat, and natural symbols in Microsoft Word 2007 running on Windows Vista. Here’s an update for Word 2016 on Windows 10.
Thanks to Ariel Detwiler for calling my attention to the need for an update.
How it will work
Type this (plus space bar)
Get this
F-sharp
F♯
B-flat
B♭
C-natural
C♮
Will it work on Office 365?
No, the web version of Office doesn’t currently (2019) support this feature.
How to set it up
Open up a new Microsoft Word 2016 document.
Type the following: 266d Then press Alt-X. The “266d” should turn into a flat symbol.
Highlight the flat. Click the “File” tab, then “Options.” A dialog box appears; click “Proofing” at its left-hand side. Click the “AutoCorrect Options…” button. On the “AutoCorrect” tab, make sure “Replace text as you type” is checked. In the “Replace:” box, type: -flat Next to “With:,” make sure “Plain text” is selected. Your flat should be in the “With:” box. Click “Add,” then click “OK” twice.
Repeat steps 2-3 for the sharp and natural signs. In step 2, use “266f” for sharp and “266e” for natural, and in step 4 use “-sharp” and “-natural.”
If you are in the habit of using the pound sign (#) and lowercase b for sharp and flat signs, shame on you for your unprofessional documents. You might be tempted to set up your AutoCorrect to correct those. The problem with doing it that way is that you will have to create a separate AutoCorrect entry for each note (Ab, Bb, Cb, etc.). Plus, it’s a good idea to just get in the habit of typing “F-sharp” so if you’re using a system that doesn’t have your special AutoCorrect set up, you will be left with that more correct version instead of a pound sign or letter b.
If you have set up the AutoCorrect but you actually want to type “-flat,” “-sharp,” or “-natural” and override the automatic change, type what you want and then press Ctrl-Z (Undo) to change the symbol back into text.
As my students get better at reading more complicated rhythms, often it is the “easy” notes that emerge as the ones still lacking in precision: the longer note values and the rests. It’s not uncommon for my university students to play intricate sixteenth-note rhythms with accuracy and confidence, but play whole notes that are too short by a significant fraction.
Try this: use your thumb and index finger to indicate a distance of about an inch (or, if you live in a country with saner units of measure, do a centimeter). How sure are you of your estimate? Now try one foot (or maybe 30 centimeters), then one yard (or one meter). How sure are you of those estimates? Probably less so. Look into the distance and see if you can guess at a point that is a mile (or kilometer) away. At distances this large, it starts to feel more like just guessing. But if you are reasonably confident of your smaller measurements, you can use them to derive the larger ones: measure out 12 of your guesstimated inches, and you can be more confident that you are in the ballpark of a foot.
Note values are the same way: it’s much easier to place notes that have less “distance” (time) between them. This is why subdividing is key to playing longer notes (or rests) accurately. Don’t start a whole note, wait, and end the note when you suppose enough time has passed; instead, mentally use smaller notes to measure out the longer ones. For example:
Subdivision is also particularly useful for slowing down tempos smoothly and gracefully. When the “large” beats need to get farther apart, it’s not easy to do this gradually and evenly. Smaller beat subdivisions are much easier to manipulate.
Subdivision takes some concentration at first, but can become somewhat automatic with practice. Master this technique for greater precision and control of tempo.
I don’t knock anyone for finding their niche. And Mr. Yeo is clearly a very accomplished musician—listen to some of his sound clips if there is any doubt. But I have to admit a few items from his doubling tips amused me as a woodwind doubler. Read More “More on brass doubling”
Back in the olden days (2002), I wrote a paper for a college class on Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s simultaneous playing of clarinet and saxophone on “Creole Love Call” from the 1967 album The Inflated Tear. (When I started up this blog, the paper retroactively became a blog post.) In my paper, I included two fingering charts—one for right-handed clarinet, one for left-handed saxophone—that I thought looked pretty good and only took me a few hours to make. Ah, how young I was.
Right-handed clarinet fingering chart. Click for larger.
Left-handed saxophone fingering chart.
Clearly, the time has come to update these sad old charts, and the Fingering Diagram Builder makes it fast, easy, and, dare I say it?—fun. I’ll show you how it’s done, using three particularly cool features (if I do say so myself) of the FDB. We will take a look at the FDB’s custom styles, custom keywork presets, and Dropbox integration.
Custom styles
For now, my plan is just to create enough diagrams to replace the ones in these old fingering charts—just the fingerings I figure Kirk must have used. But I don’t think Rahsaan would want me limiting myself to just those fingerings in the future. I’d better set up this project in such a way that I can come back later with new one-handed fingerings I’ve discovered, and add them to the charts with a minimum of fuss.
The problem is that, what with the FDB’s highly customizable diagrams, I may not remember tomorrow whether the ones I made today have lines that are “medium” or “thick” or “heavy,” or whether I sized them “small” or “tiny,” or whether I was saving the diagrams as .PNG files for onscreen use or .TIF files for better printed results. The FDB does, of course, remember my current settings between sessions all on its own, but I like to work on several projects at once (Rahsaan would approve, I think) and I’ll use the FDB’s “custom styles” to keep each project’s configuraton a click away. Here’s how:
First I will set up things just the way I want them. Currently, settings that can be saved as part of a custom style are: diagram size, line thickness, color, file naming procedure (let the FDB name them automatically, or specify each filename myself), file format, save-to location (my computer or my Dropbox), and, if I’m using Dropbox, which folder to save the files in.
Once everything is just right, I’ll click over to the “Custom styles” tab in the FDB’s menu to review my choices, and select which ones I want to save.
As you can see, I’ve set the diagrams to be small, heavy-lined, colored in gray, .PNG-formatted, and saved to Dropbox in a folder called “kirkismyhero.” I have un-checked the box for “File naming,” since I don’t want the FDB to remember that for my purposes on this project—I’ll just go ahead and use whichever system I’m already using that day.
I’ll type in a name (“kirk project”) for my custom style, and click the “Save current settings” button (or press Enter).
I’m done—that’s all there is to it. In the future, whenever I want to create more diagrams like the ones I’m making today, I can just go to the “Custom styles” tab and click on “kirk project.”
My practicing has evolved quite a bit since my beginner days. In those earliest days as a middle-school band student, my idea of “practicing” amounted to playing the scale/piece/etc. through from beginning to end, generally with a number of mistakes, and then (optionally…) doing it again. I did manage to make some progress, but the results were far from ideal: few problem spots ever really got fixed.
As my musical standards, maturity, and commitment to practice time improved, it became clear that beginning-to-end practicing was not the best use of my time. As I started taking private lessons during high school, and transitioned into university music studies, I began spending more of my practice time focusing on the problem spots. With some work, at least some of those spots got solved, and my rate of progress ramped up noticeably.
At that point, I found myself in the same situation that my own university students now sometimes complain of: they successfully improve the problem spots, but, frustratingly, the “easy” parts fall apart under pressure (in a lesson, a performance, etc.).
For me, the third stage of my practicing development began when I realized the obvious: every part of what I am practicing needs concentrated, methodical practice. If the “easy” parts are falling apart, it’s because I have essentially been sight-reading them in the practice room, and under pressure my sight-reading ability suffers a bit. Instead I need to know every note, rest, and expressive marking intimately. Problem-spot practicing gets me up close and personal with the “hard” parts, but neglects the rest.
So now I practice, and encourage my students to practice, phrase by phrase, measure by measure, even beat by beat, through every bit of the music, regardless of difficulty. Some parts might require more work, but every part needs work.
When I explain this to students, I sometimes see in their faces the same hesitation that I initially had: this is going to take forever! It does require serious commitment, but isn’t it worth it to play the lesson or performance with confidence and control? Besides, it might not take as long as you think. Sometimes I walk through the math with a student to show them that it’s actually pretty doable. For example, suppose the student’s assignment includes a 50-measure etude. If the student spends two focused minutes on each and every measure, that only adds up to a bit more than an hour and a half of practicing, but begins an intimate acquaintance with the entire etude. That’s less than one day’s worth of practicing for most college-level music students, leaving quite a few additional hours in the week to shore up the hard parts plus practice other assigned materials.
I think that, at least for me, this progression through three different stages was necessary; in other words, I don’t think it’s necessarily wise or feasible to push all beginners straight into something as intensive and committed as third-stage practicing. Your results may vary.
Most of them cost a lot of money. Replacing any of them would be expensive, possibly even prohibitively so. (If you haven’t already, get a good insurance policy from a company that specializes in musical instruments!)
I worked hard at choosing them. When I bought my oboe, I went to the IDRS conference and tried over 50, maybe 100 of them. Finding a replacement oboe that I’m really happy with could mean trying another 50 or 100. Even if you’ve got the time, opportunities to do something like that are rare.
I have invested a lot of time developing personal relationships with my instruments—getting to know their intonation and response tendencies, getting comfortable with the feel of the keywork, finding out how to coax “my” sound from them. Even replacing one with another of the same make and model means starting fresh with a stranger.
