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Insiders' Guide To Piano Resources In
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The Sage Page -
Setting Up Your Own Program Of Daily
Practice |
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Greg Sage is an excellent and
experienced brass player residing in
the Boulder Vicinity. He studied at
the Berkeley School of Music, and
performed professionally with many
leading bands across the country.
Greg has also taught here in
Colorado. Much of the information in
this article is applicable to any
musical instrument.
Do you want to hear more of what
Greg Sage has to say? See
How to choose a private teacher. |
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Setting Up Your Own Program of Daily
Practice
To develop and maintain the ability
to play an instrument you must
follow a program of daily practice.
This routine will serve as the
foundation of your skills, an
overall daily constant that provides
stability and consistency to your
playing. A routine will also check
and maintain your progress by
reviewing each of your weaknesses
and limitations daily. This is why
most instrumental teachers structure
their lessons around a daily plan or
program that documents the activity
and improvement of their students.
Though it is always best to study
with a good private teacher, not
everyone has the opportunity or can
afford a quality instructor.
There are many ways to create and
plan your own practice schedule to
improve as quickly as possible, and
every student can become a better
player with the proper effort and
organized approach. What an audience
hears in performance should be the
"tip of the iceberg", an ability
that has been firmly supported by a
daily program of carefully chosen
calisthenics and self evaluation.
This structured practice routine
turns over the responsibility for
growth and improvement to the
musician, rather than leaving it to
chance. An effective program of
daily practice will strengthen your
playing at a regular pace and remove
the guesswork that is so often a big
part of improvement attempts. A
routine is then a structured,
organized series of exercises toward
specific goals in an overall plan.
To be effective, it must address all
the various aspects of your playing
that work together to develop
physical and intellectual strength.
These portions are completed daily
in a specific order which produces
the most efficient stressing and
build up of the muscles and mind.
First, you need a sturdy stave book
to write the routines. This book
will be more important than any
other, and kept with the methods you
choose to work from and follow each
day. You want your program to stay
intact; loose stave paper spread
around may eventually encourage a
lax approach. This routine you set
up must be complete, conscientious,
and practiced entirely, the same
way, every day. As a train must run
on tracks to know exactly where it's
going, an instrumentalist working to
grow and improve must follow a daily
plan. Just as you have made a
commitment to play, you must make a
similar commitment to improve. Old
ways take effort to change, and the
feeling of control and stability
that follows a strictly adhered to
program may be entirely new to you.
You must maintain total faith in the
calm common sense behind what you
are doing. There will always be
those that attempt to discourage you
by relating their lack of closely
following anything, or recommending
some simple exercise they're
currently using that seems to bring
a measure of improvement. Stick with
your decisions, the discipline at
first necessary to follow a daily
routine won't be easy to maintain.
True improvement takes work; you
must overcome any obstacles you may
have to a commitment of diligent
practice. Don't let what seems to
work for others interfere with what
you are doing, especially when it
requires less work or effort. If you
believe an idea has value, then
possibly work it into your program.
The choice is yours to systematize
and advance your playing while
taking full control of your
development, or sit back and wait
for improvement to happen with less
than a total effort.
There are ways to become the best
you can be, but you must make the
decision to use them. Anything less
than complete devotion to working
through each problem in your playing
as part of an overall plan produces
weak results that are usually
temporary and inconsistent. Each
aspect of your instrumental ability
must be isolated and specifically
practiced. Always assume that
playing problems such as sloppy
technique, poor tone, articulation
and interpretation will never solve
themselves. Unfortunately, there are
private lesson teachers that attempt
to address all these issues by
simply giving out
songs week to week for their
students to work on. Songs can be a
portion of your daily
practice, but never the substance of
a valid lesson program that
realistically expects to progress a
student at his or her potential. For
the student that expects to improve,
a carefully planned 4 to 8 part
routine of calisthenics written to
specifically address each facet of
playing is essential. A daily
routine is an effective preparation
for performing all types of music
with careful skill and precision.
Each problem in any style can be
focused on and overcome with
carefully executed drills and
concentration. These exercises never
need to be boring or uninteresting,
especially as they help you to play
increasingly difficult material.
When constructing your routine,
first establish a warm-up that
calmly "wakes up" the various muscle
groups and can be done comfortably
each day as an introduction to the
remainder of your program. A
sensible warm-up is essential.
Without it you will fatigue more
quickly and may even damage muscles
by demanding them to work in ways
that require careful preparation. Be
realistic with your limits and don't
push
yourself too quickly. The muscles
feel their best when you first start
out, but they must be made ready
just as a runner eases into an
actual run by stretching and
walking. Next, you must research
into the method books and literature
projects you would like to become
involved with.
There is a wide variety of methods
and programs for every instrument,
as well as publications of ensemble
music, solos, and exercises to
develop improvisational ability.
Choose a balance of materials that
cover each aspect of playing that
you need to maintain or improve.
Break your playing down into its
components, such as warm-up (and
there are many books available of
just warm-up exercises, especially
for brass players) scales,
articulation, tonguing and
technique, tone, range, rhythm,
endurance, velocity, sight reading
and literature, etc. Practice from
method books which specifically
cover these issues, and which do so
with a wide variety of exercise
examples
and approaches. By keeping track of
all you've completed in your stave
book you can
alternate parts of different books
on a weekly basis to cover as much
material as possible. Some types of
calisthenics must be worked on each
day, but it would be possible, for
example, to alternate classical
solos with improvisation if your
time or endurance prevent you from
being able to do both every day. You
must structure the routine so that
you are able to do everything that
you list. If you need to shorten
your routine to get everything in,
then do so--you're aiming for
quality, not quantity.
It's easy to become overwhelmed by
all of the practice material
available; establish a focus on the
fundamentals you need to master, the
decide which other projects you have
the endurance, time and desire for.
Remember to maintain a varied mix,
and don't neglect the basics. If you
would like to improvise, a routine
of improvisation exercises and
nothing else will create more
problems than it addresses. Anything
neglected will quickly make itself
felt, and don't expect one exercise
to satisfy a variety of functions.
For example, don't assume that a
scale exercise will also serve to
build your tone if you play the
exercise slowly with concern for
your sound. This won't develop a
better sound than you already have;
an exercise written specifically for
tone development will do that.
Saving time by addressing many
issues with few exercises is not an
effective way to practice. Be honest
with yourself and spend whatever
time is needed to strengthen the
weaknesses
in your playing. None of this is
impossible, nor even difficult with
some concern for
your ability and a little research
into what is available through
various publishers.
A complete routine can be finished
in as little as 90 minutes, or it
can be expanded to a fair portion of
the day, depending on what you can
do physically or how quickly you
would like to achieve certain goals.
Experiment--just keep a record of
what you're doing to determine which
approaches have worked best for you.
Alternate the difficult exercises
with the not so difficult. Another
way to build strength is to
rearrange the order of your routine
before seeking new material. This
helps build endurance by using
exercises the muscles are already
familiar with, but in a different
way. Mistakes will be made, but for
good reason. Everyone's demands are
different, and the only way to
determine what you require is to
closely analyze your individual
responses to what you're practicing.
Some
exercises may affect different
aspects of your playing; you need to
closely observe changes that occur
in your ability each day, learning
more about your playing with each
new problem that arises, decisions
made and solutions that are tried.
To get the most from your program,
here are a few guidelines that may
help you:
1. You must practice your entire
routine every single day. The path
to improvement consists of
commitment and consistency. The only
exceptions to this are performance
days or when playing has become
genuinely painful from overplaying
the day before. On days of a
performance, as a trumpet player, I
do my usual warm-up and possibly
some minor flexibilities to "get the
blood flowing". I never push myself
until the actual performance. On
days following those of overplaying
I may do a warm-up followed by soft
soothing exercises punctuated by
generous periods of rest. "Listening
to your body" is necessary as you
discover what your limits are. Never
seek out excuses to avoid
practicing. Instead, strive to play
whenever possible. A day home sick
is ideal for working on less
physically demanding literature or
technique exercises. When an
instrumentalist is accustomed to
practicing everyday, few activities
will help regain health faster than
the moderate exercise of playing.
Practicing is not a price to pay as
an instrumentalist; it is a daily
opportunity to experience and
develop your musical expression. If
you are going to play at all, do it
consistently and to the best of your
ability. Otherwise, you're simply
courting frustration, unmet goals,
and disappointment most likely
followed by failure. Can you picture
yourself ever saying, "Yeah, I used
to play."? If so, why put yourself
through all the wasted energy of
forcing yourself to practice? Play
because you want to, or save
yourself the trouble. You will
continue to improve only by
practicing each day. The decision
must be made and never questioned.
However, it's also important to
practice only because you want to.
If you take days off, you're
choosing not to maintain the ability
you already have to play your
instrument. You've made the choice
to slowly give it all up, to
surrender away all you've ever
worked and dreamed for. From the
lack of confidence in your playing
to spending the time you do practice
regaining lost abilities, not
playing everyday gradually destroys
everything you've ever accomplished.
At first you may choose to take days
off, to test what I've just written
and see if this is true for you.
These issues need to be addressed
early in your career on the
instrument. Face your decision to
practice regularly from the very
start and stick with it. When you
attempt to satisfy your need to
practice by facing a new decision
each day, your improvement is far
more difficult and stress producing
than it will ever need to be. After
this commitment to work daily has
been made you'll look forward to
playing as you get up in the
morning, and be consistently able to
hear and feel the improvement you're
making. Progress is often slow, and
rarely occurs as quickly as we would
like or expect. I often compare
development on an instrument to the
growth of a young child. The
progress seems slow and difficult,
with spurts of improvement followed
by long periods of no change.
Eventually the child does mature,
but not without constant attention
and care. There's nothing we can do
to speed up the process, predict its
pace or
stop what our time and effort have
made inevitable.
2. During your routine, rest
adequately as you practice. A good
rule is to rest as much as you play.
This is especially important for
brass and woodwind players that are
demanding much from a relatively
small area of muscle tissue (the
embouchure). When someone advances
to the point of practicing 4 to 6
hours per day, at least a third must
be spent resting off the instrument.
Endurance is built from exercising
the muscles to their limits in a
variety of ways, with each portion
of your routine followed by rest.
The most important aspect of
building endurance is to sense what
any particular exercise is doing for
you--is it strengthening the
muscles, or damaging them? After
practicing your routine for a couple
weeks you'll become aware of muscles
being stimulated, energized and
challenged, or "torn down". You're
progress will be quickest, most
consistent and of highest quality
when your daily routine avoids the
tearing down or damage caused by
attempting too much and not resting
enough. A routine is not supposed to
be a daily journey to exhaustion!
Fatigue is fine, but pain and the
resulting stiffness are not. Your
muscles must be relaxed and flexible
if you expect to play consistently
at your best. A brass player that
overstresses his embouchure quickly
loses fundamental strength, tone,
technique and control. Guitarists,
drummers and piano players develop
various degrees of muscle strain or
even tendonitis, destroying their
ability to play at all. Adequate
rest between exercises that
constitute a balanced, sensible
routine can prevent these problems.
You must listen to your body when it
tells you that you are doing too
much, or that what you are doing may
not be right for you. Develop an
awareness of the most you can
accomplish daily when working over a
long period of time, improving on
your instrument evenly and
gradually. Remember, the function of
a routine is not to simply locate
your
limits and push them. The primary
function of a routine is to
establish day to day consistency in
your playing. Taking risks with your
ability by working on material that
may injure your muscles with its
difficulty is not necessary or wise.
If you push too hard, a price will
be paid, if not by the second or the
third day then certainly by the end
of the week. As your muscles adjust
to your practicing you'll need to
tailor your routine to what your
individual system can accomplish. It
may be necessary to put aside
material that duplicates the purpose
of something else, or that tires you
too quickly. However, be sure to
include exercises that focus on your
weaknesses. Things you don't do well
are never pleasant to work on, so
take advantage of the freedom to
gradually address these areas of
your playing by including a little
each day into your program.
3. Set goals for yourself. But don't
spend all your time practicing a
certain style of music. There's no
such thing as beginning on an
instrument to become a "jazz player"
or a "classical player". You must
learn to play the instrument first!
Stick with mastering the basics,
then you can later explore specific
styles of music if you choose. Many
students want to play jazz without
concern for tone and proper
articulation development, or play
classically without being able to
play "by ear". Never forget that the
instrument has fundamentals that
must be maintained, basics that will
provide you with the tools to play
all types of music. Make a
commitment to develop the sound and
personality you like, but don't
limit yourself by restricting what
you choose to practice. Include
music you enjoy from songbooks,
solos, etc. into your routine. Go
ahead and commit to projects of
working up literature that may take
weeks or months to master, but try
to keep them within your current
ability or a little beyond. There's
nothing wrong with trying something
far beyond you, but it can become
difficult to accomplish much day to
day. It's best not to work on
material that will simply damage
your muscles or prove to be
discouraging. But always explore new
pieces, one day you'll be able to
play them and with each new music
purchase you'll be adding to your
repertoire. If you have more to do
than you can realistically cover
each day, then alternate materials
that strengthen the.same areas of
your playing. For example, rotate
one type of literature with another,
practicing one piece on Mon., Wed.,
Fri., the other on Tues., Thurs.,
Sat., then working
on whichever is weakest on Sunday.
Don't introduce new material or
changes into your routine until your
playing is stable and you have
control over what you are currently
doing. The point is to develop a
body of calisthenics and literature
that can be accomplished and
expanded. If a student has been
playing longer than a year, I rarely
expect physical growth or adjustment
in less than a week of practice, and
often wait two weeks before
introducing a change of material.
4. Practice is enjoyable, and the
growth process is rewarding to
experience. However, the daily
struggle with the same familiar
issues can become comfortable. When
the results of our effort finally
appear we sometimes overlook the
improvement or actually sabotage our
progress. After working to
accomplish a specific goal in your
playing, don't immediately jump to
more difficult projects that put you
back where you started. Take the
improvement and use what you have
just accomplished. Recognize when
you could be introducing obstacles
to your improvement, or stalling
your growth without realizing it.
Gradually reach for more difficult
material, and never be totally
satisfied. Goals have no limits!
5. Don't accept the common belief
that working on certain styles of
playing will limit your versatility.
Capabilities do not usually "trade
off" with one another. The advice
that "Jazz players can't play
classically (when actually some of
the best classical players also play
jazz, and many believe that a
mastery of classical technique is
essential to play jazz correctly),
just can't be stated for everyone.
Brass players are often told that
"upper register players have poor
mid-register tone"--and both of
these statements are simply based on
the experience of others. Try
whatever you desire, then analyze
your own development. Accept these
examples as a warning that others
pave had trouble, and
compensate a little extra in the
planning of your routine. If you are
a trumpet player and wish to build
your upper register, then be sure to
allocate a generous block of time to
mid-register tone maintenance. Don't
deny yourself something before
you've even begun. The experiences
of others can never be more than
suggestions or opinion. Unless you
have decided ,to follow a private
teacher, the comments of others are
their views that mayor may not apply
to you. Do what you know is right
based on your own careful
observations of your limits and
responses to various exercises and
stresses. You are the only person
that knows exactly how you play.
Construct your program with
sensible, mature, well rounded
approaches. And when you do seek
advice, get it from those you know
and respect.
6. Don't practice simply for the
admiration or approval of others.
It's impossible to take
responsibility for how others will
perceive you and your musicianship.
Play for yourself, it's only then
that you can develop the
understanding of your ability
necessary to meet whatever goals you
have planned for yourself. As a
student in music school or with a
private teacher, devote the effort
needed to learn all you are required
to, even when asked to master
certain styles that you don't like
or you may feel "conflict" with your
playing. You cannot control or avoid
t~e opinions and priorities of those
that come into your life, and many
will claim to know more about your
playing than you do. Accomplish this
material toward your own mastery of
the instrument. Your devotion and
perseverance at completing the
required work will earn respect,
while continuing to practice the
program you have established for
yourself. What motivates each
musician to play is as individual as
they are. But for yourself, don't
play simply to earn money or to
compare your playing to others. Play
to reach your individual potential
and establishing your own musical
identity.
7. Performing is a major result of
your work, and an audience that
values your ability is always
rewarding. You are speaking a
language that non-musicians enjoy
hearing and don't understand.
They're in wonder that you can do
anything, so what you perform does
not have to be difficult or
flashy-it may even be best that it's
not. Many people would rather hear a
moving interpretation of something
they recognize than a difficult solo
that's perfectly executed.
8. There are parts of your routine
that should be done without your
instrument. Wind players must do
breathing exercises to continue
proper physical development, and all
musicians can benefit from a regular
program of physical exercise, such
as jogging. At times when your
instrument is not available, scales
can be fingered through on armchairs
and tonguing exercises done under
your breath. There are no secrets.
Anyone that implements a structured
and conscientious daily practice
routine can develop on an
instrument.
Do you want to hear more of what
Greg Sage has to say? See
How to choose a private teacher. |
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