|
Hello friends, I am a classically trained clarinetist. I have a bachelors and masters degree in clarinet performance and am currently earning my doctorate in the same, and I teach undergraduate lessons at a major state university while I do it. I don't know off the top of my head what anyone would want to hear from me but I am around and know a lotta poo poo about stuff. Right now I'm playing Rachmaninov 2, Beethoven 7, "fantasia on themes from rigoletto" by luigi bassi, and as always, scales scales scales. My daily routine includes playing all 36 major and minor scales, full range at a= 100, in this order of articulation style: 1. Slurred 2. Slur two, slur two 3. Tongue one, slur two, slur two, slur two, etc 4. Tongue two, slur two 5 slur two, tongue two 6. Tongue one, slur three 7. Slur three, tongue one 8. Tongue one, slur two, tongue one In even sixteenth notes. Do this every day on whatever scales you are wishing to perfect and you will master them, guaranteed. if you aren't practicing with a metronome, at a tempo at which you make no mistakes, you are wasting your time or even worse, practicing mistakes. We are not rock musicians, there is no room for error or fudging. We must master our instruments not in one particular aesthetic, but be ale instead to produce exactly the sound we want, with the tone we want. This means setting aside individual aesthetic and not categorizing good or bad, but 'what' and 'how'. There is no good, there is no bad, there is only the physical reality of manifesting a sound through our instrument, whatever that sound is. If anyone had any questions or anything, I'm down to do classical chat or clarinet chat anytime. I live and breathe this poo poo all day every day.
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2013 14:49
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 23:01 |
|
|
Now that I'm back at school my routine has 'settled' somewhat. I had been spending most of my time at the piano lately modifying my practice, rather than worrying about what I'm specifically practicing. However I will be performing this semester several times so I need to focus on preparing for those. 1) I spend at least 10-15 minutes during practice, and much more time out of practice, assessing my current situation with the instrument. This includes planning out my current session, analyzing the music I'm playing (working out fingerings, analyzing the harmonies, deciding what I will spend my time focusing on), etc. If I don't spend at least some time planning things, I will get lost pretty quickly. So I spend around this much time quietly thinking to myself and/or writing. I also take around 5-10 minutes off every hour of playing or so to reset this process and re-assess what I'm doing, as well as rest, stretch, drink water, use the restroom, eat a snack, etc. 2) For technique, I'm currently playing the Joseffy Exercises, various pieces from the Little Pischna, and scales, arpeggios, and chords. I'm also learning the Czerny Toccata Op. 92, which is a monstrous etude. The amount of time I spend on technique varies somewhat in each session, depending on how quickly I reach diminishing returns. The Toccata, the Joseffy exercises, or even the Pischna pieces, are all extremely taxing and they drain my concentration and energy rapidly. I have to measure myself to see how much of it I can stand before it becomes unhealthy and counter-productive. Typically, more than a half an hour to an hour of this work is more than I could ever stand in one session, and I would likely have to take a break and not touch these exercises for another day or longer. Then I might work on scales and arpeggios, or just take a break from technique depending on how I feel. I have no desire at all to ruin myself, and some of these exercises will be too difficult to practice without this kind of effort for a good, long while (friend pianist Cory once said about Joseffy: "Ow, those exercises hurt, lol. It took me like a year to find out how to make them not hurt.") 3) When working on repertoire, I spend all of my time drilling particular difficult sections. There is one piece with three presto cadenzas with runs - over the summer I spent all of my time working on those runs and didn't even bother with the rest of the piece. I find that every piece is highly irregular and 95% of your time should be devoted narrowly to a few areas. There is one Bach prelude where I have chosen to master insanely difficult finger substitutions and stretches just to achieve a very marginal increase in legato in a few bars. The rest of the piece has been flawless for awhile, but I have spent months of practice drilling those few bars (all 5 of them), and they are still not 'quite' up to speed with everything else (although thankfully they are within performing territory). If it is brand new I will analyze the piece, then I will apply the 'laser beam' approaches I've discussed earlier in this thread. Currently I'm working with a lot of older repertoire, much of which was not learned with such sophisticated learning insights, but that's life - I spend a lot of time reworking these pieces as best as I am able while trying not to lose the progress I have made. If it's a piece I am experienced with and almost ready to perform, typically I will start off practicing by playing through the piece once to establish a 'state of the piece' while paying attention to where the issues are. Then I will spend the rest of the time drilling those issues. If there is a troublesome mistake, I react according it's severity and try to establish where the problem lies. I might start by slowing the area down hands separate, bit by bit, until the mistake disappears. If this is not working very well, I will switch to practicing the area hands separately slowing down until I find an error-less tempo. In fact, most of the time I just go straight to solving the problems hands separately, because it's so much easier. Then I will spend time problem solving with various techniques and increasing the tempo as I go to see if my solutions are working. I will note that I do not use the metronome when working on my pieces this way, except in the problem solving process and only when it's necessary. In general, I don't practice rigidly with a metronome all of the time, although I know I need to use it more. I still haven't quite replaced that habit. However, in my head I have several set tempos to work from. I have a decent sense of rhythm and can set a tempo of 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 etc. BPMs manually in my head and stick with them when I practice and play. I can use them to solve problems sometimes but more often I will need to pull out the metronome to gradually increase tempos or to steady my playing. Naturally, as a result of old habits, my playing is very un-metronomic and of course sometimes could benefit from being more so. On the plus side, I have a natural and very advanced understanding of agogics in performance and practice - in my head I am constantly manipulating the rhythms, sostenuto, rubato, etc. of the music I am working on and for any given piece I have about a million different ways of subtly altering timing for musical effect. Playing rigidly according to a pulse is completely alien to my musical thinking, which is what has made it so difficult to accept using it all of the time. I need to use it more though for sure - I've noticed that my tempo can waver sometimes unacceptably. 4) When not practicing, nearly every moment of my time not sleeping (and relaxing, hanging out, whatever obviously) is in some way devoted to musical study. I sing in three different singing groups (chorale, church choir, a capella), I listen to and explore new music constantly, I arrange music and work with musical notation software, I'm studying musical theory and taking composition lessons, and very soon I will take a nose dive into composition itself in a competition coming up. I am working on music all of the time in my mind, imagining various ways of playing my pieces, listening to my favorite pieces, modifying pieces, and even trying to invent new ones, although I'm nowhere near there yet. I think the first thought I woke up to this morning was a fingering idea for a 3rd in a passage of one of the 9 piano pieces I'm working on. But yeah. All of this other stuff is critically important for me. Now that the summer is over I won't be spending 6 hours practicing every day, so these other avenues become a part of my extended practice away from the instrument. I feel like if I weren't involved in these other activities, my concentration and inspiration would wane and the quality of my musicianship would be low. I don't believe in just being an instrumentalist - your musicianship from history to theory needs to be total and complete and I am so glad to be working my way there in this wonderful music program.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2013 08:20
|
|
|
CowOnCrack posted:
"I have a good internal metronome", said every music student who couldn't play evenly if you put a gun to their head. Playing rigidly to a pulse and playing evenly are not the same thing. I've heard this same shpiel from countless students who all thought they didn't need to do it or whatever way you want to put 'but I don't waaaaaaannaaaaa'. I guarantee you that when I play rep, I likely use at least as much rubato, but when I practice? metronome. metronome. metronome. Don't start out practicing rubato. Start out practicing perfect evenness and the rubato will present itself. We love to give ourselves excuses not to do this. Don't.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2013 18:47
|
|
|
Warchicken posted:"I have a good internal metronome", said every music student who couldn't play evenly if you put a gun to their head. Playing rigidly to a pulse and playing evenly are not the same thing. I've heard this same shpiel from countless students who all thought they didn't need to do it or whatever way you want to put 'but I don't waaaaaaannaaaaa'. I guarantee you that when I play rep, I likely use at least as much rubato, but when I practice? metronome. metronome. metronome. <insert semi-defensive response blah blah> Don't get me wrong, I do use the metronome and understand it's importance - I just use it sparingly and as a tool to assist my ear and sense of rhythm, not replace it. It's true that everyone can benefit from the use of the metronome, but some people have a different ear and brain than others and have a different experience in terms of how frequently they need this tool and how important it is in their learning style. Early on in my lessons I hated the metronome and resisted it for the wrong reasons, but now I understand it's uses and proper place in practice. I had pretty big tempo issues when I first started playing but these issues have gradually worked themselves out despite my 'infrequent' metronome use. I've found that my 'tempo-free' brain becomes more properly grounded over time automatically but it doesn't change how I experience or play music. I can't help if this is how it works for me, and it's hard to obsess over something that doesn't seem strictly necessary (for the time-being). The main issues come not from tempo primarily, but with pieces that are far above my level in technical demands. Fluid tempo in this case becomes a byproduct of vigorous note accuracy and incredibly disciplined practice of which 'tempo-ramping' is a part, but a late part and a very straightforward part. Despite improving a lot in this area, I'm still not satisfied however and have been gradually using the metronome more in practicing as I stated. The main issue for me is getting used to using the metronome in a process that's already full of variables. When confronted with a gazillion problems, steady tempo is just one, and they can't all be solved at the same time. I'm used to relying on internal tempos (or learning things out of time) to simplify learning difficult material, because using the metronome adds one more thing to concentrate on in a process already totally overwhelming me. I had been using the metronome here and there to 'calibrate' and rely on this calibration without the metronome on the whole time. Now I'm gradually increasing how frequently I use it. Or, if there's something that requires special attention, I will use the 'ramp up the tempo method'. A lot of the time I don't get that far however, because I cannot play things acceptably at any tempo. I have not viscerally experienced the value of using the 'ramp the tempo up' method all of the time in practice, but I know what I've read and heard that it's important and I know the enormous pitfall of relying on my own intuition. The way I use this method is discussed in that earlier post I made. A lot of the methods I'm using now do not require learning in strict time and in fact are best not because note accuracy, aural analysis, harmonic analysis, keyboard layout analysis, training various memories, etc. taxes your brain enough as it is and any tempo you would be playing at would be just stupidly slow (I do believe there really is such a thing as too slow, but yes, even 1/16th of the real tempo can be acceptable in some cases for slow practice). It takes time to change habits, but in the end the habits are a means to an end. My playing is improving quite rapidly and tempo fluctuation is rarely an issue anymore, so I'm content not to obsess over this fact of my practice (relatively infrequent metronome use). I'm a lot more worried about how there is never a piece for which I can solve all of the technical challenges before I'm forced to perform it or move on, which is frustrating like no other.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2013 23:03
|
|
|
Another thought occurred to me while devouring a Rinaldi's Deli sandwich - the thought of using the metronome for tempo practice or rhythm practice. The metronome can be used to help with either one, but for me they are very separate things. I use the metronome RELIGIOUSLY to learn new rhythmic patterns that I am not familiar with. However this doesn't take very long (or at least, not repetitive daily practice in the manner otherwise discussed) and once I've internalized the feel of that pattern, I know how it sounds and so I know if I'm playing it correctly or not when I'm playing a section or piece at any tempo. I hear the way it's supposed to sound in my head and correct it or adjust it a such. The pitfall here of course is if you learn it or perceive it incorrectly, which was a problem when my music reading was abysmal, but not anymore as it's now acceptably mediocre. However, once you've internalized or can hear all of the rhythmic elements of a piece, then tempo really isn't such a big deal - it's just the backdrop to which those patterns are set. You can consciously increase or decrease this to get a sense of how these rhythmic things change, but once you have the rhythmic patterns locked in, the tempo is secondary and subject only to the demands of the context of musical expression. Rigid is expected in some case, rubato in others, and subtle agogics I believe in all cases or it's not music. Of course, the metronome is great for helping to keep this steady and getting a sense of how the patterns change subtly, but this groove or pocket sense is so strong for me that almost the only time I have a problem is when the patterns are new to me, or I don't have the technique to play it. When I first joined the A Capella group on campus and was doing jazz charts, it was a total nightmare with all of these syncopated rhythmic patterns I had never encountered. My reading is terrible, my sight singing is even worse (i.e. non-existent), my vocal technique was newbie, and these were difficult pieces - imagine the nightmare. However, there was really only one main problem to solve - how does that one pattern actually feel or sound? For this, it took a lot of work with the metronome to completely 'get it'. But once I got that, that was pretty much it. There's one other thing I can think of - in performance, I have to fight naturally against speeding up because of adrenaline. This again seems to be a separate issue. CowOnCrack fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Sep 8, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2013 23:53
|
|
|
Do you have a private teacher? I don't have to ask to know what they would say in response to all that, because it's the same thing I would say, and do, to all my students who say it. Only practice at a tempo at which you make no mistakes. When you feel secure that you have mastered that tempo, slowly move up. This makes sure you can play something perfectly at all tempos.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2013 00:29
|
|
|
Warchicken posted:Do you have a private teacher? I don't have to ask to know what they would say in response to all that, because it's the same thing I would say, and do, to all my students who say it. No one's experience is this simple though, because things aren't this simple. At some point you get stuck at a speed wall, and repeating something over and over with a metronome is more often NOT what you want to do in order to overcome it. For one thing, it's tiring and potentially injuring, and for another, it's inefficient. It's more efficient to apply counter-intuitive methods like spurts, rhythmic variations, rhythmic accents, etc., which are not in strict time. The motions for playing something faster change the same way the gaits of a horse change - they are different in quality, not quickness, to slower motions. The only way you will discover these motions is by experimenting pushing your speed. You need to experiment playing much faster in order to discover new motions (while avoiding ingraining mistakes of course). Also, no matter what you do, sometimes you will not be able to play something at a certain speed for awhile and no amount of repitition will get you there if your brain isn't ready. If you play super slowly and 100% accurately only with a metronome, you will never learn how to play faster. If you play faster only, you will ingrain too many mistakes. You have to find the right balance which is as close to no mistakes as possible, but mistakes are unavoidable to the learning process. Also, when building up the many layers that are a piece, sometimes you have to dispense with some to focus on others. In my case, sometimes I dispense with a metronomic tempo to focus more easily on the other insanely difficult things I am doing which would be impossible or incredibly inefficient if I included tempo in the huge equation (for that moment). Steady tempo is actually one of the things I'm least concerned with in learning pieces - it's very easy to do once you've solved the technical hurdles. And many aspects of solving technical hurdles are handled outside of tempo. edited: less blabbin', more coherency CowOnCrack fucked around with this message at 10:08 on Sep 8, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2013 01:40
|
|
|
Potentially injuring? What? Not trying to be rude here, but do you have degrees in music? Do you have a private teacher? I have spent a lot of time taking lessons and classes in pedagogy as well as teaching at the university level and I simply cannot agree that you should start practicing a piece at a tempo that is faster than you can play it without mistakes. That is simply not true and you shouldn't tell people to do that. I understand the emotional need to just go for it and see where it's at sometimes and of course I do so myself as well. But it is poor practice technique to play something at tempo, gently caress it up, and then keep trying to play it at that tempo. The real problem here is that it feels grueling and tiring to practice consistently with a met. Students also don't want to admit that they have to slow things down a lot because they feel like they are admitting defeat in some way or are admitting that they aren't good enough to just play the piece. Yes, the motions are sometimes different for slow playing versus fast playing, but again, if you learn to play a piece at every tempo, you will discover a huge amount more ways to be expressive with it in the process, and what works and what doesn't. I also do sometimes turn the met off and just go for it, at or above performance tempo - but I do that occasionally, and almost always use the met, which seems to be the opposite of what you are advocating. You should talk to some professors of music at whatever university you wish to, or to some professional contract orchestral musicians, and see what they say. I feel certain they will agree with me. I don't mean to just keep arguing about this in an annoying fashion or anything, I simply can't agree with someone saying not use a metronome for 90%+ of your practice time. Also, practicing the way I am saying is far, far more efficient. You can spend four hours practicing at tempo and go nowhere, or maybe you'll get somewhere, or you can spend one hour practicing slowly with a metronome and definitely improve a drastic amount.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2013 23:55
|
|
|
To change the subject a bit, how does one structure their practice time? As a(n admittedly not great) percussionist, I feel like I'm wasting a lot of time by not structuring my practicing. So far the one thing that gives me some structure are books, but there's obviously a lot to do in the practice room outside of books...what is it/how do you make it structured?
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2013 05:10
|
|
|
Warchicken posted:I simply can't agree with someone saying not use a metronome for 90%+ of your practice time. Bingo. This is something I heavily agree with. Now, don't get my wrong, there are times that I will try something up at tempo without a met to see how close I am getting, but that's not often. On the Euph I can generally work it through the fast parts without a met OK, but working my way up on the metronome doesn't just improve my sense of time, it also keeps me honest to the pitches, time, and style. I might not catch that I'm a bit sharp on that B-nat when I'm doing sixteenth notes at q=stupid fast. Jazz Marimba posted:To change the subject a bit, how does one structure their practice time? As a(n admittedly not great) percussionist, I feel like I'm wasting a lot of time by not structuring my practicing. So far the one thing that gives me some structure are books, but there's obviously a lot to do in the practice room outside of books...what is it/how do you make it structured? I go into practice with a plan. I went over my daily routine kind of in my first post, but I break it down like this (I'm brass, so eh): 20 minutes sound 20 minutes articulation 20 minutes flexibility (this is slurs (which are articulation but eh) and making sure that I am able to slot the pitch properly) With each 20 I do roughly 13 minutes routine stuff (stuff I've got down pat, just to review and get good techniques in my head), 4 minutes of stuff I have to think about (but not too hard!), and 3 minutes of where I want to be (hard poo poo, multiple tounging for me currently). From there I move into my rep. I like to keep multiple pieces on the stand at once open and ready to play: my current works, and a few that I know I sound good and feel comfortable for me. I will take the harder passages that I am focusing on and try and make them sound like the piece on the right, alternating back and forth between similar sections. This is where I spend the bulk of my practice, chunking up the piece and modeling it. I'll rotate out the pieces I use to model depending on what piece I have down matches what I'm working on: using lyrical for lyrical, technical for technical. Near the end of the session, I generally try and do a mock run (this is closer to recital/performance time usually). This is met-less and recorded (Zoom H2N is my best friend). I will run it, not stopping for mistakes. The tempo will be performance possibly a bit slower. Once I've recorded that I'll listen back through it, and mark in the music what needs focus. This becomes my practice for my next session 
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2013 18:39
|
|
|
Short term goals are often lacking badly in practice. Always know exactly what you are working on right this second, exactly - don't just be playing. If you're doing long tones, which note, for how long, to do what? If you're doing scales, what's your starting tempo and your goal tempo? If you're playin a piece, what measure, what starting tempo, what goal tempo? This helps you feel accomplished, too, because you can always point to what you did and say " I made that better". It sucks to practice for two hours and not even be sure anything got better.
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2013 21:39
|
|
|
Warchicken posted:Short term goals are often lacking badly in practice. Always know exactly what you are working on right this second, exactly - don't just be playing. If you're doing long tones, which note, for how long, to do what? If you're doing scales, what's your starting tempo and your goal tempo? If you're playin a piece, what measure, what starting tempo, what goal tempo? This helps you feel accomplished, too, because you can always point to what you did and say " I made that better". It sucks to practice for two hours and not even be sure anything got better. To the percussionist who was wondering about how to structure a practice session. I don't know the percussion specifics that you would build your practice session around, but essentially the above. Always remain conscious of what you are trying to achieve with your practising. If you are practising a piece, don't just repeat it ad nauseam from start till finish - that's dumb (and grossly inefficient). Work on the passages that are giving you trouble, and try to do so in a meaningful manner (if you have no idea what that might be, a good place to start would be playing the passage at a quarter (1/4th) of the written tempo and working your way up). I like to keep a practice journal where I write my goals for the practice session, and then list things to keep in mind for the next one (I went into more detail on my practice habits in an earlier post).
|
|
#
?
Sep 10, 2013 01:51
|
|
|
Ahh, I was hoping for something more applicable to drum set...a lot of what you guys are describing transfers pretty well to marimba (better yet, vibes if I can get my hands on some!), but I can't really see sound/articulation/etc. transferring to kit. Too bad there aren't really 'pieces' for kit :\
|
|
#
?
Sep 10, 2013 05:11
|
|
|
Warchicken posted:Potentially injuring? What? I have two private teachers, and I also I never said this. I said a metronome isn't sometimes required to keep tempo while practicing, and that's because it isn't. You can practice slowly and accurately without a metronome. I can't speak for other instruments, but for piano playing, a lot of problem solving is more easily done outside of time or without a metronome constantly clicking, and there is no disadvantage as long as you aren't making mistakes. List of times not to use a metronome: 1) You are practicing a very small section (a few notes) that doesn't neatly fit into a beat or crosses beats - there's no reason to practice this against a tempo unless you are insecure about the rhythm. Note that everything I'm saying here about metronomes and tempo doesn't apply to metronomes and rhythm. If you aren't completely solid about how to count a particular rhythmic pattern, then absolutely DO use a metronome until you understand it well enough to play it without a metronome. As long as you are not making mistakes, you don't immediately need to use a tempo counter while you isolate these small groups of notes - instead you can count a steady and slow internal beat or, set one with a metronome but then silence the metronome afterward to concentrate more on the technical issues (while also practicing to play without the metronome!). 2) You are practicing a section where you can already play most of it up to speed or already faster, in which case playing the whole thing metronomically is a waste of time. 3) You are using any of the methods I discussed in that one post I made about 'secret techniques' or whatever, except the part about what to do when all those layers are mastered and it's time to increase the tempo. 4) You are exploring new motions by playing faster, which is a prerequisite for getting better. These excursions are brief and not repeated over and over. In some cases a metronome can be used, but it's not required in all cases. 5) Anytime you are learning something extremely difficult and doing everything you want to do is not possible all at once, and setting an ultra ridiculously slow tempo is not helpful either. 6) In general, as C.C. Chang mentioned in his Fundamentals of Piano Practice, one should be weary of the pitfalls of slow practice while also knowing why it is indispensable. One of them is that slow practice takes a lot more time. If you spend too much time playing slowly, your rate of progress will be much slower, because you can practice something 6 times in one minute if it takes 10 seconds or 4 times if takes 15 seconds. It's true that you don't want to ingrain mistakes - you should try to find a balance as close to no mistakes as you can. 7) Finally, the practical world we live in is that we have time constraints on pieces as students. Sometimes we are faced with a choice of either accepting a certain degree of error or not playing the piece. Quoth my PRIVATE instructor Jonas, as I was explaining to him why I was progressing too slow on a piece, saying that I was going to play every single bar hands separately flawlessly at every tempo one click at a time, "Whoa, I mean that's great and everything man but, you'll never finish the piece!" The goal of practicing without mistakes is actually not so much that you don't make mistakes (which of course is big), but rather that you cultivate habits of increasing accuracy over time. Mistakes in performances don't matter that much as a student, but you want to ingrain vigorous habits for later on in your career and learn as you go to make less of them. This is because in the real world mistakes in performances are very bad. However, whether you learned mistakes or made them in your old repertoire doesn't matter a whole lot and in general won't hinder your progress except that you need to learn to be more careful practicing. It's not like your whole technique goes down the drain because you weren't super accurate in your first year. Just make sure you solve that and improve your practice over time to save you pain and suffering when mistakes start to matter a lot. quote:Yes, the motions are sometimes different for slow playing versus fast playing, but again, if you learn to play a piece at every tempo, you will discover a huge amount more ways to be expressive with it in the process, and what works and what doesn't. That's not the issue I'm talking about though. I'm saying that as you move from gait to gait, the motions change, so you can't just sit there and try to increase the metronome incrementally. You will never get better. I agree with the point that you want to learn to master every 'gait' and in that sense, you can master 'tempos'. If that's what you are talking about, then that makes sense. If you are saying something along the lines of, 'Master 71bpm, then master 72bpm', then that makes no sense. Maybe I was wrong to assume that. quote:Also, practicing the way I am saying is far, far more efficient. You can spend four hours practicing at tempo and go nowhere, or maybe you'll get somewhere, or you can spend one hour practicing slowly with a metronome and definitely improve a drastic amount. Nowhere have I docked slow practice in general. I agree it's extremely important - but you can also practice slowly and accurately and not be using a metronome. quote:I don't mean to just keep arguing about this in an annoying fashion or anything, I simply can't agree with someone saying not use a metronome for 90%+ of your practice time. I use the metronome far less than this, mostly because what I am working on is so far above my level. I'm 27 years old, and I started playing when I was 26. The repertoire I'm working on is something most people would be working on in double or triple (or much more even) the time I've been studying piano seriously. It's most often the case that I can't use the metronome practicing what I'm playing because it's riddled with technical difficulties that are too difficult to be set in time, and inter-spaced with things that are not worth practicing. Some examples: Fantasia in D Minor, Mozart This piece has three cadenzas and one mini cadenza at a presto tempo. The rest of the piece is trivially easy technically, although it still takes some degree of time and effort to learn and is not 'easy' to make very musical and beautiful of course. But for my purposes it's worth dedicating less than 10% of my time towards. However the cadenzas are scalar flourishes best played at least 140-160bpm. You can't really go much slower than that without them being completely devoid of their musical function, therefore meaning you are not playing the piece anymore. When practicing these, setting a metronome and playing them over and over while slightly increasing the tempo is a gigantic waste of time, because certain parts of the scale (the runs with consecutive fingers) are easy to play very quickly while some note combinations (finger crosses) are maddenly difficult to play, with the speed wall for these starting as low as 80bpm for most people (92-100ish bpm for me). It takes a long time to develop the technique to play scales rapidly, but the fastest way to get there is not tempo-rampin'. You are better off practicing those little note combinations over and over with various techniques and exercises. The most simple is a spurt, which is not practiced with a metronome and would be worthless if it was. Various accents, rhythmic exercises, etc. are also called for and while they can be played with a metronome, there's no big need here to be incredibly precise with the tempo. These cadenzas are structures that must be built piece by piece, and this is not the time to be fretting about the tempo because learning speedy motions is more primary. Of course, sometimes I will bust out the metronome and play the whole passage just to see where I'm at, or I will deliberately use the metronome if I am interested AT THAT POINT in a clean tempo because perhaps I feel it might be getting sloppy. CowOnCrack fucked around with this message at 07:29 on Sep 10, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 10, 2013 07:00
|
|
|
CowOnCrack posted:It takes a long time to develop the technique to play scales rapidly, but the fastest way to get there is not tempo-rampin'. You are better off practicing those little note combinations over and over with various techniques and exercises. The most simple is a spurt, which is not practiced with a metronome and would be worthless if it was. Various accents, rhythmic exercises, etc. are also called for and while they can be played with a metronome, there's no big need here to be incredibly precise with the tempo. These cadenzas are structures that must be built piece by piece, and this is not the time to be fretting about the tempo because learning speedy motions is more primary. Of course, sometimes I will bust out the metronome and play the whole passage just to see where I'm at, or I will deliberately use the metronome if I am interested AT THAT POINT in a clean tempo because perhaps I feel it might be getting sloppy. Only have a minute here, but....yes it is. You ramp the tempo on those various techniques and exercises. Why would it be worthless if it was practiced with a metronome? I have practiced every articulation style and accent on my scales with a metronome and I just can't figure out what you think makes them not suitable for that. If you can't do it in tempo, on demand, you can't do it at all. I've played plenty of cadenzas, and every one of them I practiced with a metronome until I felt I had the technique of it solid enough to not have to think about it while I took an expressive ear to it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 10, 2013 15:07
|
|
|
Warchicken posted:Why would it be worthless if it was practiced with a metronome? I'm talking about a lot of different things, so you have to say to what thing you are applying this statement. Which techniques and exercises? I acknowledge the usefulness of using a metronome in many situations, such as 1) Practicing fluidity between sections or groups of notes 2) Solidifying unfamiliar rhythmic patterns 3) Assessing where your current speed wall exists and in what groups of notes 4) As a crucial final element of finishing a piece or passage, you must be able to play through it evenly with a metronome at gradually increasing tempos However, there are layers below these that are even more fundamental, which I listed above. If you are doing a spurt, there's no need to use a metronome a lot of the time - you are simply using a burst of indeterminate speed. You could use a metronome and practice that burst of indeterminate speed at a certain speed, but there's no particular need to. You are simply investigating ways to play faster - you aren't practicing over and over at this speed. I would go so far as to say that a metronome here is perfectly fine and can be quite useful in some instances, however I feel that in some other cases it's not required and a burden. In the case of scales, you are interested in exploring the fastest bursts of speed possible, because there is no limit for how fast you want to play scales. The principle of 'try to play as fast as you can' is fine on things like finger crossings. Mistakes are fine, because you barely repeat it and don't ingrain it. Mistakes are how you figure out what motions fail and what succeed. Then, once you've figured out some good approaches, you can bring in the metronome and try to make them fluid. You don't use the metronome at first because you can't - you need to solve more fundamental problems first. For things like rhythmic exercises, I will give you an example - the Long, Short, Long exercise. You can set a metronome if you want and say that the Long will be a triple dotted half note and the short a sixteenth, but you don't have to play it this way for the exercise to be effective. It doesn't matter how long the long is or how short the short is to a pretty lenient degree - the long just needs to be LONG and the short needs to be a burst of speed. Another important point is the value of the metronome based on rhythmic complexity. The Czerny Toccata I am studying is almost 95% sixteenth notes - it's a rhythmically uncomplicated study of double thirds, double fourths, double sixths, massive leaps, and all around awkward stretches and torture. Playing evenly in this context without a metronome is trivial and is not really the major difficulty here, and is also not needed right away when solving the other enormous difficulties in even one bar hands separately. Likewise, in the Fantasia in D, in the first place the notes in the cadenza are all sixteenths so playing them evenly is all technique not tempo, in the second place they are grouped irregularly so if you want to bring those contours out practicing with a metronome is fiercely impractical and practicing them WITH a metronome will be ingraining errors, and finally the sixteenths are supposed to be played 'somewhat' freely in time as the final result. If I was working on something with any rhythmical complexity at all, you wouldn't see me practicing it WITHOUT the metronome because I would never want to ingrain the rhythms improperly - I'm a score following fanatic (which is why I also can't stand playing at the wrong tempo, but anyway...) Which brings me to the final point about playing in all tempos on demand. I'm not sure I totally agree with this. Yes, if you practice outside of tempo too much, you might ingrain too much unevenness in your playing which is an enormous pitfall and must be checked. However, what is also an error is playing any piece in the tempo that is not the appropriate tempo. In other words, practicing an Allegro piece ultra slowly all the time is training your ear to hear it incorrectly and training yourself to play it at a gait which is not the actual gait of the piece. It is necessary to build your way towards playing it at higher speeds, but in its own way it's a kind of pitfall you can get sucked into. These cadenzas are an example of this - to really play them as they are, you have to practice and explore playing them freely while respecting the contours (groupings of notes) the fact that they are fast (therefore you really need to get on top of those motions and quickly) and the fact that evenness would be more easily achieved after you've mastered the technical hurdles. Trust me, I've tried tempo ramping these cadenzas and it fails every time and wastes tons of time. When I worked on them, I just drilled the small groups of notes that required finger crossings or anything that isn't a run of consecutive fingers. I used rhythmic exercises of accenting every sixteenth (which can be done with a metronome but is awkward), then I did Long, Short, Long exercises, and finally THEN I started using the metronome in combination with these methods to measure my progress to the desired bpm and to make sure things are fluid and even. Using all of these things together, I have been able to improve my scalar technique to these higher ranges (140-160bpm) in just a couple of months (ALMOST there, not quite super solid), whereas this is something that would take a normal student perhaps 3-5 years of practicing scales every day hands together with the tempo-ramping method. Playing scales this fast is a huge milestone for a pianist, believe me. There are many, many players who never ever get there because they follow intuitive methods - it's not something that's possible without the methods I've just discussed.
|
|
#
?
Sep 10, 2013 21:06
|
|
|
You sure write a whole lot of words and grandiose statements about the correct ways to practice for a guy who's played a grand total of one year
|
|
#
?
Sep 10, 2013 21:18
|
|
|
Jazz Marimba posted:Ahh, I was hoping for something more applicable to drum set...a lot of what you guys are describing transfers pretty well to marimba (better yet, vibes if I can get my hands on some!), but I can't really see sound/articulation/etc. transferring to kit. Too bad there aren't really 'pieces' for kit :\ Where we refer to pieces, you might translate it to rhythms, accents, and fills? As a non-percussionist I can't really pretend I know what kind of things you might practice. Do you perform mostly classical (Beethoven, Mozart, etc.) or mostly contemporary music (pop, rock, etc.)? If the latter, wouldn't you say that you practice various songs and try to imitate what the drummer plays in them - or do you improvise at all times? If you could list a few things you might do when you practice, it might be easier for those of us who aren't percussionists to at least make a somewhat educated guesswork what an efficient practice session might look like.
|
|
#
?
Sep 10, 2013 22:26
|
|
|
L. Ron Mexico posted:You sure write a whole lot of words and grandiose statements about the correct ways to practice for a guy who's played a grand total of one year While talking to an instructor of music at a university who has a masters degree in music. I hate to just "pull rank" on someone like that but I don't know what else to say. If you don't see the value in being intimately familiar with every tempo, all I can say is that you will eventually mature a bit as a musician and leave it at that. A piece that is straight sixteenths is exactly the type that must, must must be perfected with a metronome, because if there is any irregularity, it will be unbelievably obvious, and I don't mean rubato, I mean accidental unevenness or hesitation at more difficult sections. Maybe you think is "trivial" to do this but nobody else on the whole planet agrees with you except for other people who erroneously believe they have mastered playing even straight 8ths or 16ths after one year of playing. Personally I'm halfway through my dma and I would never say such a thing because my professor would probably laugh in my face. "Mistakes are how you figure out what motions fail and what succeed." What? No,mistakes are you playing too quickly to use proper technique, and loving up as a result. If I make a mistake, I stop and slow down my metronome, get it right, and bring it up to tempo. "In the case of scales, you are interested in the fastest burst of speed possible.." NO! Absolutely not. Wrong, wrong, wrong. You are interested in the smoothest, most accurate speed you can play them and not one click faster. You are looking to build your knowledge of the key. You are looking to ingrain technical patterns into your playing. Speed is useless. Nobody cares how fast you can play your scales. I can rip up and down my scales - all of them - as fast as you can set the metronome, but do I? Hell no, I go over them all daily at the fastest tempo at which I can play them smoothly and evenly and with my best tone. I might get drunk or high and gently caress around but that's not practicing, that's loving around. I really am not trying to sound like I am dismissing your views out of hand - I am not. But you are giving out bad advice that could honestly really do damage to students just beginning, and you really don't have the experience to back that advice up. CowOnCrack posted:
This in particular is just so egregiously wrong. "The" correct tempo? Exactly how many pieces in the world do you believe have a single correct tempo? Maybe some - not all or even most - modern music might, but only those pieces with it exactly prescribed. Tempo markings like "andante" have relativistic meanings - all that word means is 'walking pace'. There is no prescribed speed for any such marking at all. I have played the same Beethoven symphony three times and all three times the tempos were different. I have played Mahler 5 and heard entirely different tempos from our orchestra, from Chicago Phil, from London symphony, et cetera. Mendellsohns violin concerto? Holy poo poo don't even get me started on these violinists and their loving tempos. Plus, why would playing a fast piece slow somehow screw up my playing it fast? Why can't I just do both? If I decide to play a fast piece slow I will find a way to make it authentically expressive that I may or may not somehow use while playing it fast. But it is my choice as the performer to make - frankly, if the composer wants to come yell at me for not playing it exactly how he wanted me to then he can climb up out of his grave and tell me himself. If he wanted an exact tempo marking he should have added one  Please don't be offended by my words by the way. I have simply heard all this before, and everyone who says it - well, they aren't exactly winning auditions. empty whippet box fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Sep 10, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 10, 2013 22:43
|
|
|
BRAAAAAAAINS posted:Where we refer to pieces, you might translate it to rhythms, accents, and fills? As a non-percussionist I can't really pretend I know what kind of things you might practice. Do you perform mostly classical (Beethoven, Mozart, etc.) or mostly contemporary music (pop, rock, etc.)? If the latter, wouldn't you say that you practice various songs and try to imitate what the drummer plays in them - or do you improvise at all times? Entirely contemporary stuff, including jazz, is what I'm interested in, but I joined my school's orchestra this semester and am on snare for two of the three pieces we have so far. Having started in 2010, mostly what I've done for practicing/getting better has consisted of going through (parts of) several books (Bop Drumming, Beyond Bop Drumming, Future Sounds, the New Breed), and then playing along to songs on a Pandora station (both trying to imitate and improvising). In my playing I find it difficult to not improvise for every song all the time (although my band thinks that's pretty cool). At the moment my practice situation is a bit difficult due to a roommate that works nights, so I'm going through a snare solo book with a practice pad to work on both sight reading and learning new rhythms and accent patterns (once I finish I fully plan on going through it again with a metronome and bringing them all up to at least quarter=120 bpm). I'll be honest and say I don't practice every day, and that it's rather ADD...both mostly due to not knowing how to structure practicing.
|
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2013 01:39
|
|
|
L. Ron Mexico posted:You sure write a whole lot of words and grandiose statements about the correct ways to practice for a guy who's played a grand total of one year Just sharing my thoughts, feel free to correct me. My methods are working for me, and if someone can't clearly explain why theirs are better, I won't accept it at face value. Warchicken posted:While talking to an instructor of music at a university who has a masters degree in music. I hate to just "pull rank" on someone like that but I don't know what else to say. If you don't see the value in being intimately familiar with every tempo, all I can say is that you will eventually mature a bit as a musician and leave it at that. There's nothing wrong with pulling rank. I respect your point of view regardless. I just brought up the fact that I don't use the metronome that much, and gave my reasons why when called out. It's as simple as that. I did that for a reason - a discussion with someone who knows more than me can help me clarify why I need to adjust my practice more. But I will strongly defend something if I think it's correct - if I don't, then I will be less likely to think it's wrong if someone gives me reason to think it's wrong later. quote:A piece that is straight sixteenths is exactly the type that must, must must be perfected with a metronome, because if there is any irregularity, it will be unbelievably obvious, and I don't mean rubato, I mean accidental unevenness or hesitation at more difficult sections. Maybe you think is "trivial" to do this but nobody else on the whole planet agrees with you except for other people who erroneously believe they have mastered playing even straight 8ths or 16ths after one year of playing. Personally I'm halfway through my dma and I would never say such a thing because my professor would probably laugh in my face. My point wasn't you learn the whole piece without the metronome and pray for evenness. The point was that evenness is one part of a massive structure that is this etude, and that maybe there are more primary concerns than playing at a steady tempo - at least in the near term. quote:"Mistakes are how you figure out what motions fail and what succeed." What? No,mistakes are you playing too quickly to use proper technique, and loving up as a result. If I make a mistake, I stop and slow down my metronome, get it right, and bring it up to tempo. That's what I said you should do, except I didn't articulate it very well. If you make a mistake, you don't keep making mistakes over and over and stay at the fast tempo. You slow back down and try to learn new motions from these experiments. However, if you try to play something faster and push your technique, mistakes will inevitably happen because you are doing something you haven't done before and these help you learn. If you bring the speed down every time you make a mistake and don't use it somehow, you won't ever discover faster ways of playing. I agree that you can incrementally increase the tempo of something to a point and stay totally accurate, but past a certain point it doesn't work very well because your old motions are no longer adequate. When you hit these speed walls, you need other methods than just increasing the tempo with the metronome. quote:"In the case of scales, you are interested in the fastest burst of speed possible.." NO! Absolutely not. Wrong, wrong, wrong. You are interested in the smoothest, most accurate speed you can play them and not one click faster. You are looking to build your knowledge of the key. You are looking to ingrain technical patterns into your playing. Speed is useless. Nobody cares how fast you can play your scales. I can rip up and down my scales - all of them - as fast as you can set the metronome, but do I? Hell no, I go over them all daily at the fastest tempo at which I can play them smoothly and evenly and with my best tone. I might get drunk or high and gently caress around but that's not practicing, that's loving around. Taking what I said right out of context. I said in the grand scheme of things, you are interested in improving your scale technique to the fastest it's possible to humanly play, yes? The key to doing this is to solve the difficult areas of the scale. Consecutive fingers are easy. I can already play a consecutive downwards 5 finger pattern at 300bpm. If I can solve the problem of crossing the thumb over and under, boom, 300bpm scales (or something like that scales.) There's no downside to trying to push your technique here. If you aren't making mistakes over and over, you are fine. One of the advantages of doing these spurts is that it's a lot easier to play very small groups of notes (even just two notes forming an interval) very quickly. In fact there is a technique called chord attack where you play those notes as an interval, then slow down from 'infinite speed'! A technique that clearly doesn't use a metronome. With small spurts you can experiment with either no risk or extremely low risk of ingraining mistakes (and only if you do a bunch mindlessly in a row). quote:I really am not trying to sound like I am dismissing your views out of hand - I am not. But you are giving out bad advice that could honestly really do damage to students just beginning, and you really don't have the experience to back that advice up. This is great to say, but so far your arguments for your point of view have not been clear to me, because you haven't done a great job of directly addressing what I'm saying. Instead you keep taking things I say out of context and then attacking them which is great, but you aren't actually attacking my point. quote:This in particular is just so egregiously wrong. "The" correct tempo? Exactly how many pieces in the world do you believe have a single correct tempo? Maybe some - not all or even most - modern music might, but only those pieces with it exactly prescribed. Tempo markings like "andante" have relativistic meanings - all that word means is 'walking pace'. There is no prescribed speed for any such marking at all. I have played the same Beethoven symphony three times and all three times the tempos were different. I have played Mahler 5 and heard entirely different tempos from our orchestra, from Chicago Phil, from London symphony, et cetera. Mendellsohns violin concerto? Holy poo poo don't even get me started on these violinists and their loving tempos. So you don't play piano. The instruments and their mechanics are fairly different, and this may explain the gap in our understanding. quote:Plus, why would playing a fast piece slow somehow screw up my playing it fast? Why can't I just do both? If I decide to play a fast piece slow I will find a way to make it authentically expressive that I may or may not somehow use while playing it fast. But it is my choice as the performer to make - frankly, if the composer wants to come yell at me for not playing it exactly how he wanted me to then he can climb up out of his grave and tell me himself. If he wanted an exact tempo marking he should have added one Because you aren't playing the piece correctly. It's that simple. To learn to play the piece correctly, you have to learn it at the correct tempo. There are a wide range of interpretations, but the cadenzas marked "Presto" must be played Presto. Obviously, if you want flexibility in tempo, then you should learn to play it any tempo you wish. It's smart to do this anyway, in the sense that you don't just skip the intermediate stages. However, it IS a pitfall to practice too much at a slow speed. We have finite time on this earth and if our intention is to play the actual piece as it's composer intended we can't spend more time than is strictly necessary at the slower speeds. At least I can't. I started at 26 and I'm catching up with kids who are playing what I'm playing at 8 years old (although it's unmusical and robotic as poo poo, at least). quote:Please don't be offended by my words by the way. I have simply heard all this before, and everyone who says it - well, they aren't exactly winning auditions. It may be that you aren't familiar with the technique exercises I'm discussing. My piano teacher at school has a doctorate from Juliard and went there when she was 11 years old as a child prodigy. She's an incredible concert pianist and one of the best teachers in the region. She of course emphasizes the importance of slow practice and using the metronome, but she demonstrated certain exercises that don't use the metronome. The repertoire she has given me is so hard, that at first I couldn't even play one hand at 1/12th the tempo. I had to just struggle to get the notes under my fingers before I could even think about playing a metronome. In piano practice, especially hands together practice, things can be so hard that playing against a tempo is practically impossible - at least for some time. It would require something literally like 5pm, because it's THAT hard to put the notes together. No human brain can work this slow. My other private teacher with whom I do composition lessons mainly now knows dozens of classical musicians in the area and talks to them frequently about their habits, and when I was showing him how slow I practiced he said, "This tempo is too slow for a human brain. Most good classical musicians can't practice successfully this slowly. You have to speed it up." Then I said I couldn't, because it was too difficult. So he suggested playing it hands separately (something I mentioned already) and I could speed it up a bit however I was barely there. At this point I just need to get the notes and patterns more familiar. This is my life as a piano player most of the time. He believes practicing at 20bpm or slower is a waste of time, and practicing against a super slow beat can ingrain habits of missing the beat because the brain can't stay focused between vast gaps of time. Unfortunately, that's just how slow some of this poo poo is. The points I made mainly pertain to these situations, and also particular exercises. For everything else though, of course you need the metronome. When you are at the stage where you can comfortably play the piece at a reasonable tempo (40bpm or something), then yes, the basic method of playing for evenness and gradually increase the tempo is fine. That's the very LAST step of that massive bullet point list of practice methods I made in an earlier post which are notes directly from another highly successful concert pianist with whom I had one very expensive lesson. CowOnCrack fucked around with this message at 07:59 on Sep 11, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2013 07:17
|
|
|
CowOnCrack posted:
I don't see any gaps in my understanding. I know that if my accompanist couldn't play their part at whatever tempo I wanted I would fire them and find someone who could though. quote:
I have difficulty believing that any music student has ever been told "you're spending too much time practicing slowly, you need to practice faster." That is a thing I have never in my whole life heard anyone be told, but I hear the opposite said to almost every student every week. If I have a performance in an hour, I'll run through sections at 70% tempo. Also, do not get married to this nebulous "what the composer intended" idea. There are not extensive notes on what the composer intended for every piece or indeed the vast majority of them. Do we know what Beethoven wanted for his piano sonatas? Here's what he wanted: to get paid and gently caress his students. You think Mozart would give a quarter of a poo poo if you took something 20 beats faster because you like it there? He might not even remember when he wrote it because he was blackout drunk, tossed it off in one copy in one night and sold it to some dude who's name he doesn't remember. Adhering too closely to an idea of what the composer "intended" - which is often nigh impossible to really say anyway - will make your performance boring, those guys are dead, we aren't. Have your own informed opinion that mixes fluidly with your best guess at what the composer wanted. I've played pieces for clarinet alone by living composers like Joan tower an when I research the piece, interviews with her have her laughing at someone's marked up score delineating sections and tonality and saying "sure, if you say so, sounds neat!". There isn't one right answer. It's music. That goes for everything we are talking about, too - practice technique, musicality, composition....the set of rules is useful insofar as you can break them and get away with it. If you are so green you have to take something to 5 bpm(lol?) to play it then you should probably be doing fundamentals, because that piece is simp,y above your level. Actually, at that point you should be using subdivisions of those beats, not just speeding the beats up because "the human brain can't do that"  honestly, I have a really hard time believing that you were actually told these things. Being a child prodigy who went to Juilliard is great and all but that persons experience is not going to be very useful for people who weren't child prodigies and who didn't go to Juilliard. You're a year into your studies and perhaps you should be asking others what they think of your practice technique, but you sound as though you think you have the answers already.
|
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2013 16:39
|
|
|
Jazz Marimba posted:
That sounds like a great place to start! As for structure, you'd just set some goals for a practice session "sight read <arbitrary number that seems reasonable for the amount of time I usually have available when I practice> exercises in <name of book>" could be one, the next in your list of things to accomplish might be taking one song off your pandora station in which you like what the drummer is doing and find a youtube clip (or download an mp3 of it, or whatever - get creative!) and try to split it up into smaller chunks (chorus, verse, bridge, etc. could be one way of doing this). Then you might dedicate one session to working on one of these smaller chunks, eventually putting them together and BAM you have suddenly learned to do the things that drummer did in that song. I guess the TL;DR of this is break up the stuff you usually do when you practice into smaller chunks, try to pay more attention to what you are trying to learn from them, and figure out how to put them into a list of things to do during each practice session. Doing this will answer the question "Why am I practising this?", which helps with figuring out what the building blocks to use when you try to structure your practising. For me as a violist that list looks something like: * scales (specific thing I'm practising scales for today which could be anything from intonation, vibrato, or bowing techniques) * bar x - y <piece I'm currently learning> * another piece I'm learning * write down what to work on next practice session Another thing that might help is trying to, if possible, practice more consistently. Get some sort of routine going etc.
|
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2013 21:00
|
|
|
What all this actually sounds like is that you are in way over your head. If you were going as slow as you were saying(the 5bpm thing) that you are going then its very obvious that you are rushing things. Especially when you make comments like: CowOnCrack posted:At least I can't. I started at 26 and I'm catching up with kids who are playing what I'm playing at 8 years old (although it's unmusical and robotic as poo poo, at least). It seems your more focused on where everyone else is and not where you are at in your playing ability. Stop playing catch up.
|
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2013 01:52
|
|
|
Stravinsky posted:Stop playing catch up. BRAAAAAAAINS fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Sep 12, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2013 02:54
|
|
|
I just try to learn what I'm being given to learn. I don't think I am being given these pieces without a reason - my progress has been very rapid as an adult learner. The only thing that hasn't caught up is my practice habits, but that's catching up too. Funding cuts have been made to our music program and I have limited semesters before I can no longer participate in it. I have to realistic about how much time I reasonably have before I would have to start pondering doing something else or attempt to play professionally or semi-professionally. This is why I take an intense interest in optimal practice methods. I've acknowledged here and elsewhere that gradual progress is by far the best and most efficient - provided there is time. I really appreciate the discussions and criticisms though. Classical musicians keep on truckin'
|
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2013 06:57
|
|
|
CowOnCrack posted:
I've been feeling really disoriented ever since the move, but today I finally got around to having a proper practice session (~70 minutes). And for the first time I felt confident enough in my intonation that I practised my 3 octave C major scale without the aid of my trusty tuner (-app on my phone), and instead pulled out the metronome (*shudder* *hissssssssssssssssssssssssss*). It was a pretty good experience, and I think I'll be trying that more in the future (I still feel like I will benefit a lot from practising with the tuner to bring my intonation closer to perfection, but since I haven't done much metronome practice lately it seems like a good idea to incorporate that as well).
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2013 02:28
|
|
|
I wanted to share these as inspiration. My teacher, Lois Roberts, is rather enigmatic in the sense that she's super humanly talented at the piano but chooses to be low key. I recently found out that she played Gaspard de la Nuit and the Goldberg Variations in a college concert back in 1990 and that a friend of mine had taken the hard copies and converted them to mp3s. I've scrounged them up and they are, if not the best recordings of those pieces I've heard anywhere (live or otherwise), they are tied with the greats. Yet this woman is teaching at community college instead of being the female Hamelin. I reiterate how lucky again I am to be a part of this music program! I wish I had all of them but I will have to take more to dig up the rest. Lois Roberts Ravel Gaspard de la Nuit - Ondine https://soundcloud.com/cgobeille/33-track-33 Gaspard de la Nuit - Scarbo https://soundcloud.com/cgobeille/lois-roberts-ravel-gaspard-de Bach Goldberg Variations - Var. 1 https://soundcloud.com/cgobeille/lois-roberts-j-s-bach-goldberg Goldberg Variations - Aria https://soundcloud.com/cgobeille/lois-roberts-plays-bach
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2013 07:44
|
|
|
After conquering the whole repertoire and fully maturing as a pianist, Hamelin has now become a monster of live performance and a player of his own transcriptions. A modern-day Liszt! Infinite inspiration contained within. Gabriel Fauré http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-9ls5MCLlQ - Impromptu No.2, Op.31 & Barcarolle No.3 Op.42 Paul de Schlözer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJYuwhU0qZE - Etude in A flat, Op.1 No.2 Marc-André Hamelin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8memPmhpIA - Triple Etude, perf. Marc-André Hamelin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N1przkk5tA - Variations on a theme by Paginini http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XLbOw6WLS0 - Chopin 'Minute Waltz" (hehe)
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2013 06:08
|
|
|
CowOnCrack posted:If you play super slowly and 100% accurately only with a metronome, you will never learn how to play faster. I'm a professional symphony violist, I've been playing over 20 years and I have a B.Mus. and M.Mus. from major US Conservatories. This is incorrect, and every single music teacher I've ever had disagrees with you. Playing slowly with the metronome is actually the only way to learn how to play faster. There are two real keys to slow practice - you have to be playing slow enough that you don't make any mistakes, and you must use the same motions and approach/articulation/sound/phrasing/dynamics etc as your final tempo. It is literally like playing in slow motion. It's also insanely hard to do, and something that, like everything, you have to practice a lot to get good at. If you make a mistake, ever, you're playing too fast. Break the piece/exercise down into sections, then slow them down until you can get every note, every articulation, every color. Keep it at that tempo until you can get it exactly the way you want it 5 times in a row. (It can be any number of successful repetitions, but the minimum is 3, and I prefer at least 5. Depends on how ambitious/perfectionist you are. Primrose, arguably the greatest violist of all time, his number was 60+. That's real work). Once you've reached your number of perfect repetitions bump the metronome up a couple of bpm and start over. Don't ever play something faster until you've reached your number of successive repetitions. If you gently caress up, it's back to the first repetition. If you start loving up a lot, the tempo goes down back down. You keep doing this until you reach the tempo you want, and then you keep going above that by about 10% or so (it's useful to be tempo-flexible in both directions as you don't ever want to be performing something at your personal fastest tempo, so you give yourself a bit of breathing room). This isn't something you can just finish in an afternoon, it's a very gradual, methodical process that can take weeks, or even months. It's also the only way to really learn poo poo well, and accumulating the necessary amount of patience and focus takes a long time. I took 12 auditions before I finally starting passing the first rounds, and actually winning one was all about expanding my patience and awareness to really do this kind of work in my preparation on everything, day after day after day, without getting impatient and jumping ahead too quickly and loving up. Your interpretive, musical goals (and poo poo like rubato) can all be mentally realized by listening to recordings, expanding your theoretical knowledge, score study, and singing everything to yourself without your instrument (many of the great performers prefer to memorize something completely before playing a single note of it). Also, if you're playing with other people (and you should, that's the whole point!) then expressive tempi fluctuations and phrasings often happen spontaneously, in the moment, in the musical space between the players. Sometimes the greatest performances aren't actually planned out all that rigidly. Your fingers have to be there first though, and beating that poo poo into your fingers is a totally different and quite rigid specialized activity. tldr; Warchicken is absolutely right. Practicing without a metronome isn't practicing, it's just loving around. e - Oh yeah, and to you and me and everyone else in this thread and every musician ever - stop comparing yourself to other people. There is always someone better than you. Always. I don't care if you started making GBS threads Paganini as a two year old, there's still somebody better than you. Just accept it and move on. You will burn out and stop progressing unless you learn how to work for your own satisfaction and towards your own goals without relentlessly negatively contrasting your work with that of others. emTme3 fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Sep 21, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2013 20:27
|
|
|
Welcome to the thread Splifyphus! Nice to see another violist here, I hope to one day join the ranks of professional symphony violists like yourself! I like your advice on practice and will add that to my daily routine, I think you pretty much nailed my feelings on practising overall. Essentially, stay conscious at all times in regards to what you are doing and what you are trying to accomplish by doing so. I see no reason why one couldn't apply learning tactics such as removing rhythm while first sight reading the music and play one note per beat regardless of actual note value while using a metronome. In fact, I can't really think of anything that couldn't be adapted to function with a metronome. (I should really get a good dedicated metronome, I keep hearing good things about BOSS...)
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 00:31
|
|
|
I actually agree with most of what you and warchicken are saying. In terms of making the piece solid, you need to use the tempo ramping method at some point - it's the only way to make it completely solid. In an earlier post I explained this was the final process in learning a piece: CowOnCrack posted:Here are examples of what I learned. Before playing any notes, prepare your hands to play the notes by raising your wrists (in this particular piece this is valid). Visualize the note on the key before you play it and exactly how the motion will look. Try to access your kinesthetic memory and experience how the motion will feel before doing it. If possible, try to hear the note or sing it before you play it. Use the score to know exactly what you play next. Reference the score for every single note in this method and develop a photographic memory of the score (if you do this a ton for every note anyone can get good at this). After doing all of this mental exercise, only when you are 100% certain that what you are playing next will be correct do you execute the motion to strike the note. Bring your fingers down, strike the key, and do not allow the finger to collapse. Then, after the keystroke, immediately consciously relax. Rinse and repeat. Do this for every single note. That way when you learn it, it will be 100% accurate plus you will be training the method for total accuracy. It takes forever, but it's not even close to being over. You can do this method except instead of playing one note, play two in a row and hold one for a very long time while making the other short (again this for a piece that is extremely fast and just groups of sixteenths). Then do 3 notes and 4 notes in row. If you do everything written above, it will be awhile before you can do 3 or 4 notes in a row because it requires intense concentration and the ability to visualize into the future before playing. I found when I first tried that I was totally mindfucked. However there are some steps to get there because playing in time is simply impossible or impractical for awhile. The concert pianist I was studying with (named Yana) never taught me to do any of these initial steps in the first paragraph with the metronome, but she did emphasize very strongly that once you can play the whole piece at a very slow basic tempo you are ready for the 1-click-at-a-time approach. So I have to continue to disagree with using the metronome for every single thing. You can use a metronome for any kind of playing, the question is whether you need to do so for the same results in some cases. I guess a good argument is - why not? I don't have a great answer, except that if I don't feel I strictly need it for what I'm doing I'd rather not use it, especially if it's less than practical. I still believe that sometimes what you are working on is so difficult that using a metronome is impractical for a period of time because below around 40bpm, you can't concentrate on the pulse long enough to not make mistakes, and at some point you can't use rhythmic subdivisions. I suppose with the Czerny Toccata, you could set the metronome to 60 and treat it as a 1/64th note and you'd get 2 seconds per beat, but that would still be too fast to learn the piece hands together. It takes me 10 seconds or more to pause and learn where to place my hands for the next sixteenth note. Why use a metronome until I can play the whole piece at a steady tempo, which would require building the piece first note by note, then bar by bar at a very slow tempo? It takes probably months just to get to that point and a metronome won't always be useful for every step. However, once I can play the whole piece through at say, sixteenth = 100 or so, then I would always use the method you describe. The other point is one I made earlier, in terms of discovering how to play faster. I still feel that learning to play faster is not simply a function of ramping up the tempo. When you have to switch gaits to a new speed, all of your previous experience at slower tempos won't help you, and you can't set the tempo faster because you won't be able to perform that motion. You have to step outside of the tempo for a moment and find a better motion. Then, like you said, you have to practice those motions in slow motion and then speed it up. I agree with this. But you need to find out what those motions are. No one knows them from birth. And you will make a few mistakes searching for them. Just don't repeat and ingrain the mistakes. I completely and totally agree with the "No Mistakes Ever Rule", just not really fully convinced of "All Metronome All Day Rule". A final point is I don't care how I rank in comparison to other musicians, I just know that I am starting late in life and have less time and an experience deficit. I have time, but not time to waste practicing inefficiently. If I'm not fully convinced in a practice method I won't use it. My experience with using a metronome when learning very difficult pieces for the first time is that it's pointless until the notes are basically there which takes a long while. My experience when doing these various drills is that there is no particular need to use it in many of them, although this thread has helped me to see how it could be used in more drills than I thought perhaps with better results. It isn't just that I'm too lazy to use the metronome and haven't tried it, it's that I have tried it and from experience I can say I waste time and don't achieve anything more than if I did not use it. However, I continue to push myself to use it more and use it in better ways because I'm always interested in expanding the uses of the tools at my disposal. CowOnCrack fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Sep 24, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2013 05:57
|
|
|
I dunno, everything you've used as an example for things you can't use a metronome for are things I would absolutely use a metronome for. Not only that, but if you have to take 10 seconds to learn the next finger on every note, frankly the piece is above your head by a long shot. You should be playing pieces that are appropriate for your skill level so that your musicality can develop with everything else.
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2013 07:38
|
|
|
CowOnCrack posted:It takes me 10 seconds or more to pause and learn where to place my hands for the next sixteenth note. CowOnCrack posted:The other point is one I made earlier, in terms of discovering how to play faster. I still feel that learning to play faster is not simply a function of ramping up the tempo. When you have to switch gaits to a new speed, all of your previous experience at slower tempos won't help you, and you can't set the tempo faster because you won't be able to perform that motion. CowOnCrack posted:No one knows them from birth. And you will make a few mistakes searching for them. CowOnCrack posted:A final point is I don't care how I rank in comparison to other musicians, I just know that I am starting late in life and have less time and an experience deficit. I have time, but not time to waste practicing inefficiently. CowOnCrack posted:If I'm not fully convinced in a practice method I won't use it. CowOnCrack posted:However, I continue to push myself to use it more and use it in better ways because I'm always interested in expanding the uses of the tools at my disposal. Warchicken posted:I dunno, everything you've used as an example for things you can't use a metronome for are things I would absolutely use a metronome for. Not only that, but if you have to take 10 seconds to learn the next finger on every note, frankly the piece is above your head by a long shot. You should be playing pieces that are appropriate for your skill level so that your musicality can develop with everything else.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2013 01:45
|
|
|
Thanks for all the advice. I readily admit that I'm a complete lazy bum when it comes to sight reading and my reading is miserably awful. It's just so painful. Right now I'm working through Bartok's Microkosmos which are so easy that no one can screw them up (I screw them up hands separate.) Because your reading can be god awful and still learn pieces of any difficulty (because you are working so slow anyway) you can really get sucked into the trap of having awful reading. It takes a lot of conscious effort to force yourself to learn it, but sight reading new music easily is by far the most useful and profitable skill for a musician. It has to be the most valuable skill to have in the music market. If your reading is godlike, you can be a studio musician where you come in, they give you a piece of music, and you play it on the first take. Then walk out with $$$. I need massive work there but now I don't practice without sight reading for 30 minutes.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2013 02:59
|
|
|
That kind of depends on the audition situation. If we're talking professional orchestra or something along those lines, sight reading likely wouldn't be involved unless you got to the final round and were playing with an established orchestra member to test out how you blend with them, and at that point, it's really not about sight reading - you just happen t be sight reading. For a university audition or other "chair placement" type if thing, there will likely be a very important sightreading component. For random gigs you would likely be referred by someone, not auditioned; but yes, it is simp,y expected that you show up to the gig ready to go 100 percent, first rehearsal, unless you haven't been given your part yet - it's rare to play gigs where you have to sightreading in a high pressure situation but it does happen. Once I was called on late notice to sub for a show of Annie in New Orleans on Bari sax/ clarinet / alto sax and had to show up cold and play on a Bari I had never touched - actually, I had never played Bari before at all. It was scary as gently caress and thank god I spent a lot of time in my younger years sightreading or I would have fallen right on my face. That said, I generally find sightreading mostly just "happens" and once you have a strong fundamental technique, just a little focus on it now and then will go a long way. It is incredibly impressive to see players who can simply read anything, transpose it on sight, whatever and just loving kill it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2013 05:20
|
|
|
I wanted to recommend the Joseffy Exercises, particularly the trills, to all pianists. They can be found here: http://imslp.org/wiki/School_of_Advanced_Piano_Playing_(Joseffy,_Rafael) The Trill exercises are #4, with ones for 12, 23, 34, and 45. They are on page 16 of the PDF. These exercises do so many different things it's difficult to list them all. If you can work through this whole book you'll be cracking advanced romantic repertoire in no time. Another excellent set of exercises are these: http://www.amazon.com/Little-Pischna-48-Practice-Pieces/dp/0793553121/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1380482249&sr=8-2&keywords=pischna http://www.amazon.com/Pischna-Techn...eywords=pischna Despite being called the "Little Pischna", the first one I listed is proving to be just fine for me. For scales, I practice them several ways: 1) 4 octaves, boring 2) In rhythmic groups of 1, 2s, 3s, 4s, and 5s, at the same tempo 3) Grand form - up two octaves parallel, two octaves contrary, up two octaves parallel, down two octaves parallel, two octaves contrary, down two octaves parallel. Looks and sounds cool, and lets you practice contrary and parallel in one go. 4) Rhythmic accents, short long, off beats, etc. 5) Very loud, very slow articulation 6) Musically - to practice dynamics, articulation, phrasing, tone color, rubato Arpeggios, more or less the same deal, although they are difficult to do as many things with as scales. Chords, play them all. It's fun to just play through triads, cadences, triads with the octave, dominants, diminished chords in all in versions and keys - just bang around for awhile and learn the topography. Maybe come up with some harmonic ideas for a composition, and solidify the various fingerings and comfortable hand positions for each configuration. For sight reading, I still suck at Mikrokosmos :/ For tortuous etude-ness, this one is hard to beat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_0u9dLCRRY Hope this helps. Oh, and use a metronome!
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2013 20:25
|
|
|
How do you guys deal with practice on days you don't feel well, either physically or in a bad state of mind?
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2013 21:25
|
|
|
I don't practice then. I have no need to keep up my playing ability because its just for fun for me so I can easily go without practice without feeling bad.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2013 23:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 23:01 |
|
|
Definitely rest. You can only improve so much so fast anyway and if you're like me you hit your weekly point of rapidly diminishing returns in a few day. Also, practicing too much without proper rest and regeneration results in slower and more painful progress, not to mention strain and possible injury.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2013 17:46
|
|