If I try to play too softly, sometimes my notes don’t respond as I would like. If I try to play too loudly, sometimes my tone or intonation suffer. I have similar limitations when it comes to things like finger or tongue speed, tone color or pitch flexibility, and more.
The way I deal with these limits is very different depending on whether I’m performing or practicing.
If I’m performing, I want to stay just within my limits. I want every note to be predictable and reliable. I want to take advantage of every bit of my dynamic range, but no more. I want to make wise, deliberate, professional-quality choices.
If I’m practicing, I want to explore those limits. Push those limits. Live just beyond those limits. It’s important to do this for couple of reasons. First, if I don’t go past those limits, I won’t know where the limits are for my upcoming performance. Second, if I’m too afraid to go past the limits in the practice room, I’ll never expand them. And if something goes wrong—a note cracks or fails to speak or is out of tune—that’s okay, it’s just practice.
Find your limits, know them well, and, in your practice space, break them.
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When I’m working with new or prospective college music students, one thing that I often hear in their auditions or early lessons is awkward ornamentation. Here are some common pitfalls:
Aggressive grace notes. Notice how grace notes are printed smaller on the page? They aren’t there to call attention to themselves. They are usually adding weight or importance to the following note. Give that note a little extra volume/tenuto/stretch/stress, rather than accenting the grace notes themselves.
Weak trills. Don’t let your breath support sag. Blow through the trill like it’s part of the phrase (because it is). Every note of the trill, no matter how fast it goes by, needs a full, clear, in-tune sound.
Short trills that aren’t short enough. If you don’t have an exit plan for your trill, it’s easy to get stuck in it and be late for the next note. It’s especially a problem for shorter trills, like on a quarter note. To make sure your trills aren’t interrupting the rhythmic pulse, decide exactly how many notes they should have. The shortest version (for trills starting on the lower pitch) is three notes—the starting note, the upper note, and back to the starting note. Five or seven notes (hitting the upper note two or three times) makes it sound more convincingly like a trill, if there’s time. Decide what number makes sense for the style and tempo, and practice it slowly and deliberately with a metronome so you can land on the following note right on time.
Missed accidentals or key signatures. Even within ornaments, key signatures still apply, and accidentals still carry through the measure. Check carefully and mark in any sharps or flats that will help your accuracy.
Uninformed interpretation. Ornamentation is an art, and takes into account musical style, historical context, harmonic context, rhythm and meter, and a lot more. If you possibly can, listen to lots of recordings by professional players and see how they approach the ornaments. Listen for note choices, rhythms, emphasis, and articulation. While you’re still accumulating the knowledge and background you need to make good ornamentation choices on your own, there’s nothing wrong with stealing some ideas from musicians you admire. Also: a surprising number of Baroque composers wrote books on how to play ornaments, so if you’re playing something in that style it may be worth checking to see what the composer themself had in mind! (Quantz‘s chapters on appoggiaturas and “shakes” are a good example for woodwind players.)
Graceful ornaments raise the maturity level of your playing, and audition judges notice. Don’t wing it!
Things to include in your program notes for maximum boredom:
More than a sentence (two, tops) of general biography on the composer.
Unremarkable facts about the piece’s structure (sonata form! key of F!).
A blow-by-blow description (first there is a kind of sad theme! it starts out low and soft but then it gets higher and louder!).
Unfounded judgments about the piece or composer (this is one of the greatest pieces in the repertoire! the composer is truly a genius!).
Explanation (excuses and/or bragging) about how difficult the piece is to play, or inside baseball about playing technique (this piece goes way up into the third octave! the performer has to use triple-tonguing in this one spot!).
Show-offy or obscure terminology, especially if it’s not part of your usual vocabulary and there’s a chance you are using it wrong.
Length greater than a slow reader can get through in the breaks between pieces.
But if you prefer program notes that are less boring, I guess you could try these:
Stick mostly to biographical information that relates specifically to the piece being performed.
Stick mostly to language and content that is accessible to someone who is new to this kind of music and nervous that they won’t get it.
If you must describe the piece to your audience, imagine you are writing program notes for a movie instead. Don’t give away the ending or the celebrity cameos or the plot twist, and don’t give a scene-by-scene breakdown. Give just enough to pique their interest.
If the piece itself is likely to be challenging or inaccessible to your audience, give them a sense for what is interesting about it. (For example, explain in two or three simple sentences about 12-tone serialism or microtonality or minimalism.)
If you’re a student writing program notes as an assignment, you might have to hit a certain target length, include specific information, cite sources, etc. If you’re a teacher assigning those things, consider that maybe what you really wanted was a book report or a theory paper instead.
Generally, program notes should give an intelligent but not necessarily musically-trained audience a few things to help them enjoy the performance more, without feeling like homework. Be ruthless about trimming away anything that doesn’t contribute to that, and don’t be afraid of brevity.
My approach to practicing has to adapt to deadlines. Sometimes the deadlines come up fast, and there isn’t time to make everything as perfect as I would like. Other times I have plenty of preparation time and want to make the best use of it.
Suppose the music I’m working on has one or two especially challenging spots, and I know I could put many hours into trying to perfect them. If I get bogged down trying to make those couple of spots perfect on a tight deadline, I might fail to adequately prepare the rest. It’s a better strategy to make sure I’m ready to play 98% of the music at tempo, make a reasonable effort with the remaining 2%, and hope for the best.
But if I have plenty of time to prepare, that approach can backfire. Getting the 2% “good enough” early in the process may mean compromises that I have to undo later. I’ll have a better final result if I’m not in a hurry to bring the tough spots up to standard. Instead, I give them time to settle deeply into muscle memory before pushing the tempo. I practice difficult spots for a few minutes every day, instead of cramming.
Think carefully about your practice approach, and adapt as needed. Good luck!
Exercise has always been a challenge motivation-wise for me, but now that being over 30 appears to be a chronic condition, it’s something that I’m trying to do better about. I find it easier to motivate myself to practice my instruments, but I see connections between my exercise aversion and some of my students’ practice lethargy:
Unclear or undetermined direction and goals
Poor planning of exercise/practice sessions
Sessions are boring
Unfamiliarity with proper training/practicing techniques, or a mistaken self-evaluation of how well they are being executed
I’ve previously attempted jogging routines, trips to the campus gym’s weight room, calisthenics programs, and various other workouts. All have fizzled out fairly quickly. Recently I had settled into a daily walk, which was easy and pleasant but wasn’t improving my fitness in any noticeable way.
I decided this year to take advantage of a summer fitness class being offered for free on campus. It was my first time committing to doing anything like that, but the price was right and the time commitment seemed do-able.
To my surprise, things went much better than in any of my previous attempts at regular exercise (after the first week’s exhaustion and soreness ebbed a little), and I found that a number of things that worked well for me in practice sessions were also clicking in my new fitness program:
Accountability is a big motivator. I knew the fitness instructor and my classmates would be expecting me every day, and that was enough to get me out of bed and into the gym for a full hour. Likewise, I need accountability in my practicing. For years I had teachers’ expectations to meet, but now I am accountable to myself. One thing that has worked well for me this summer is regularly-scheduled informal recording sessions, where I listen back to my playing, evaluate the results of my efforts, and write down some comments for myself.
Progress doesn’t always look like what you want it to. After my summer workouts, I still don’t have six-pack abs or a four-minute mile, but my pants are fitting a little loose, and my endurance is way, way up. Similarly, in the practice room, my summer’s efforts haven’t brought my recital repertoire to blazing tempi and groundbreaking interpretation, but I have shored up some fundamentals and made headway on some new techniques.
Variety is good. The fitness class was a “boot camp”-style regimen, with lots of short intervals of high-intensity (for me) exercise. It’s very similar to a strategy I use when practicing: pick a problem spot, and give it 10 minutes of hyper-focused effort. After 10 minutes, move on. It’s amazing how much gets done in a few hours’ worth of ten-minute chunks, and I enjoy it much more than long sessions working on the same problem.
Don’t fight your equipment. I bought new shoes partway through the summer, and the next day’s class was agony on my legs. I got some advice and bought some drugstore insoles that supported my feet differently, and the following class was 100% better. Same thing goes for my instruments and reeds: if something isn’t working efficiently, I’m unhappy and ineffective (and possibly even injured). Make sure your instruments are the best quality you can reasonably afford, and that they are kept in excellent repair and adjustment.
The fitness instructor was fond of saying, “If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.” (The phrase seems to get credited a lot to Fred DeVito.) It’s easy to fall into patterns of “practicing” what I can already do, rather than tackling something that will push me to a new level.
Progress feeds motivation. I found that sweating through a few weeks of exercise and seeing some improvement really boosted my enthusiasm for exercise. (To my own surprise, I’m even hoping to fit in another exercise class during the semester.) I recall as a freshman music major really struggling with getting my practicing done at first. But as it started to pay off, I got excited about what I was accomplishing, and it snowballed into more and better practicing.
Go put in some hours in the practice room—and in the gym, too!
When I listen to young and advancing woodwind players at the high school level (masterclass participants, scholarship or honor band auditionees, competition participants), I often think that there are some small fixes that would make a big difference in their success. There’s no substitute for lessons with a qualified teacher, but these improvements are easy and set you apart from the rest:
Slow down a little. Speed is only impressive if your playing is clean, even, and precise. If taking a slightly slower tempo gives you better accuracy and control, do it.
Breathe intentionally. Where you breathe in the music makes a huge difference in your phrasing. Never just play until you run out of air. Find places to breathe that sound natural. If you’re not sure, listen to a recording of a good player and copy their breaths, or record yourself and notice what sounds right or wrong. Mark the breaths in (all of them!) and practice them carefully until they are a habit.
Do bigger dynamics. Even if you think you are already following the dynamic markings, make your softs softer and your louds louder.
Choose reeds wisely. I hear lots of ambitious young players using reeds that are much too hard. If a little softer reed allows you to play with ease and comfort, you will probably sound better. And a performance isn’t the time to use a brand-new one, or one that is past its prime. A week or two ahead, break in some new reeds and pick the best 2-3 to have on hand.
Relax. Tension is the biggest thing that tanks even well-prepared performances. Practice releasing the tension in your body. As you feel tension creep back in, release it again. Take advantage of rests or other pauses in the music to release once more. Try a pre-performance ritual like box breathing to reduce your adrenaline response, focus and calm your mind, and steady your hands.
Sometimes the smallest adjustments make the biggest difference. If you are an advancing player, which of these do you think would help you the most? If you’re a teacher, what small fixes do you recommend most?
I’m far from being a photography expert, but I do have one trick. (This is a music-related post, I promise.)
In general, good photos take advantage of the eye’s full light-to-dark range. In other words, the very darkest part of the photo should be very black, and the very lightest part should be very white.
Here’s a photo that doesn’t meet those criteria—the darkest and lightest parts of the photo are both sort of medium-grayish.
But a quick “auto-level” procedure in photo-editing software (like the free Gimp) corrects this by adjusting each pixel of the photo, basically making the dark ones darker and the light ones lighter: Read More “Playing full-spectrum music”
