Philosophy of Practice, Efficient Practice Techniques

Part 1: Philosophy of Practice

Practicing a musical instrument, in a general sense, is the act of chasing an aural image: how you want to sound. This chase leads you to the practice room where you use all of the tools at your disposal, internal and external: mirror, piano, metronome, tuner, CDs, breathing devices, intellect, creativity, imagination, repetition, patience, persistence, and more.  Some goals of practicing are consistency, overcoming obstacles, and developing good habits.  Habits are constantly forming so one should practice carefully, attentively and thoughtfully.

We learn how we want to sound by imitating teachers, interpreting their instructions, listening to live performances, and listening to recordings of many instrumentalists, vocalists, and genres.  It follows then, that developing musicians take lessons, build their listening library, attend live concerts, and listen!  These activities are the natural result of loving music enough to devote oneself to learning an instrument.

More information about practicing can be found in the other articles at this site and in Norman Bolter’s brief but potent text, Methods of Effective Practice.

Part 2: Efficient Practice Techniques (excerpt from A Modern Guide for Trombonists and Other Musicians, third edition)

There are many ways to improve those pesky angular passages, those pyrotechnical runs, and those long, slow, lung-busting phrases.  You have probably tried some of these methods before.  The important thing is that you are your own best teacher.  When you encounter a difficult passage, determine the nature of the challenge and address it with the most appropriate of the following techniques or with those of your own invention:

Expressive

  • Record your playing.  Try to evaluate it from the perspective of an audience member: was it emotionally moving?
  • Give yourself permission to fail.  Choose a passage, forgive any technical errors in advance, and go the extra mile, musically speaking.  Aim for too much expression and see if you get there.  You may surprise yourself with greater accuracy prioritizing music over technique.  Also, use less technically challenging music to develop expression.  Try some free improvisation, in any style.
  • Ghost play: choose a difficult passage and do everything without creating sound.  Blow (release) the air, move the slide (or valves, keys, or bow), and articulate.  Be accurate with each slide position or fingering.  Imagine a beautiful tone, stellar technique, and musical inflection coming from your instrument.  Then play the passage and match your ideal.
  • Sing or buzz a passage with complete musical abandon, then play it on your instrument the same way.  By momentarily removing the instrument, you increase your musical connection. (Arnold Jacobs)
  • Write lyrics to an etude or passage.  In addition to providing a syllable to think for every note, adding words can enhance phrasing, important notes, and shifts in mood.

Mental, Aural

  • Ghost play (see above). Have you ever heard “it’s 90% mental?”  Well, ghost playing reveals sloppy thinking, missed notes, and when one is using the instrument as a crutch.  Ghost playing can also improve breath support if you create a constant rush of air through the instrument.  Also try without articulating for that purpose.
  • Sing.  This addresses intonation, expression, and phrasing.  Well-tuned singing offers proof that you are producing accurate pitches in your mind.  After all, intonation begins before any sound is produced.  For a revealing variation, choose a passage and alternate notes between singing and playing.
  • Play a passage on your mouthpiece.  Mind the accuracy of rhythm and pitch.  Give a strong air supply that you can feel if you hold your free hand up.  It’s okay to have an airy mouthpiece sound, a hiss in the sound.  Buzzing requires you to think in tune, buzz as a singer must to vibrate their vocal cords in tune.  Buzzing also requires a vibration for every note, just as a singer has a syllable for every note.  For these reasons, regular buzzing improves sound, accuracy, and intonation.
  • Practice weak/less prepared sections of a piece first.
  • Use your metronome at various beat divisions, from sixteenth notes up through one beat per measure and at even longer intervals.  There are now apps that drop away some of the beats.  The longer between clicks, the more you must internalize the pulse to stay accurate.

Physical, Muscular, Technical, Breath Support

  • For fast music, start slow and increase the metronome speed over weeks, months, or years. Reverse that process for slow music to achieve breath support through the long phrases.
  • For high music, start low and transpose the key up over weeks, months, or years. Reverse this for low music.
  • Practice technical passages in small sections, then seamlessly connect these sections or add notes bit by bit so that you are preparing them to be played in context.
  • Practice the difficult passage slowly, without tension, with all of the musicality and other features desired at full speed.  Gradually increase the speed over several repetitions.  When you reach your maximum, slow back down to a tempo that you can play before increasing again.  In this way, ingrain tough passages into muscle memory and bring them up to speed without tension.
  • Build a challenging phrase one note at a time: A, AB, ABC, etc.  When you make a mistake or notice tension, remove a note and repeat until you are ready add it again.  After you have done this to a ten-note passage you will have played the first few notes at least ten times, and they will now flow naturally.
  • Build the phrase backwards, one note at a time: Z, YZ, XYZ, WXYZ, etc.  You will still be playing the notes in order.
  • Practice a passage without using the tongue (sometimes producing glissandi on trombone–valves/keyed instrument will produce legato).  Strive for solid, constant, quality sound.  When you fall short you may need increase wind and/or the accuracy of the buzz, especially at note changes and phrase endings.  Flutter-tonguing is a variation of this exercise that provides more resistance, making it easier afterwards.
  • Alter written rhythms.  Changing a straight eighth or sixteenth note rhythm into a dotted rhythm (or reversed dotted rhythm) can improve slide technique and evenness, as the heavy and light notes are altered.
  • Transpose the beat.  Shifting the downbeat to upbeats or to two and four instead of one and three while in cut time.  The heavy and light notes are temporarily reversed in this exercise in an attempt to achieve evenness when playing things “normally” again.  As with all of these techniques, this is purely for the practice room; the composer probably wants the rhythmic inflection created by the piece in its original form.
  • Practice sixteenth note (or cut-time eighth note) passages in one-beat clips, resting on the downbeats and playing each next downbeat as follows: Rest E&A2, Rest E&A3, Rest E&A4 and so on.  This practice will give difficulty runs flow and ease.
  • Reverse the note order of a tough passage.  Sometimes reversing the direction of a difficult slur or angular note change can help accuracy when going back to the original order.
  • Practice well-tuned octaves, unisons, or fifths with others for ear training.
  • Intentionally increase or exaggerate a problem.  If you can make it worse then perhaps you can find the cause and a solution.

 

Written 11/23/2003, revised 8/3/2006 and 12/25/2016.