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A blog about performing music, teaching music and the business of music.
Filtering by Category: Practicing
This video is by the incredible Tom Hooten, Principal Trumpet of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
He talks about practicing in the sweet spot, which he defines as "having the conviction and patience to practice from a happy place." He then explains how to do that.
He packs an insane amount of insight into a video that's less than 10 minutes. Enjoy!
The key to improving at anything is sustained effort.
Small habits practiced just a little bit every day will compound.
David Zerkel once shared this gem with one of my students in a master class:
“If you practice lip slurs every single day for two straight weeks, the lip trill fairy will pay you a visit.”
Rather than practicing lip trills for three total hours over two days, practice them for 10 minutes a day for 14 straight days (which for the record is actually 40 less minutes overall.) You will not only have improved more at the end of those two weeks than you would have over the two days, that improvement will also be much more permanent.
The key to those 14 days is making sure the practicing is intentional. Totally focused. Phone on airplane mode. Going in with a plan. Fully in the feedback loop.
To circle back to the James Clear quote at the top, the goal is not to make massive strides. It is to get a little better every day. That improvement, just like money patiently left in a savings account or an index fund, will compound.
Establish sustainable habits and you’ll be amazed at the results.
“No points for busy.
Points for successful prioritization. Points for efficiency and productivity. Points for doing work that matters.
No points for busy.”
—Seth Godin from his blog post “Busy is not the point”
Just because you practiced three hours yesterday doesn’t mean you got a lot done on the horn. The same goes for score study or marketing yourself.
I am always challenging my students to practice practicing. I think back to college and can’t believe how much more efficient I am now in the practice room. I can get done in 15 minutes what might have taken me 45 minutes back in the 90’s.
Here are just a handful of the hundred things that are more important than just the total time you spend in the practice room:
Frequency of practice sessions
Prioritization of what needs practicing the most
Goal setting
Getting into the feedback loop by recording yourself
Your focus level during the session
The list goes on and on..
But while total time spent is not even close to the most important practicing metric, you’ve still got to put in the time. As a wise person once said, silence can not improve.
This is not a complicated concept and yet can be hard to implement until you get some momentum. If you are serious about improving your playing, you must be practicing the things you can't do well every single day.
The first part of this equation is having the self-awareness to accurately identify the weaknesses in your playing. I don't think I've ever met a player who has no idea what their weaknesses are. But the best players have an acute sense of their shortcomings with a high degree of specificity.
Noticing that soft playing is not a strength is one thing. (And that's a great start!) But digging a few layers deeper (like for example your ascending slurs in the upper middle and upper registers at a soft dynamic are particularly poor) is much better.
The best players can not only identify their shortcomings to that degree of specificity but then develop a plan to meet them head-on in their daily routines. If you are bored with practicing scales, incorporate one of your weaknesses into your daily scale work. This requires creativity and a lot of focus (since playing a new exercise that you just made up takes a lot more work than just playing around the Circle of Fourths again.)
And if you really want to raise the bar, throw a portion of your warmup on Instagram Live. Even if only five people watch for a total of a minute, your focus will be off the charts when you are broadcasting one of your biggest weaknesses to your friends and colleagues.
So ask yourself two questions: what are your biggest shortcomings as a player (be as specific as possible) and how many days in the last week have you worked on them?
If your answer is less than seven, you might want to reevaluate your priorities.
Gail Williams is dead on here (as usual!) I have encountered many students over the years who are constantly looking to work on the most difficult excerpts and solo repertoire before putting in the work to be able to play their instrument well.
It takes discipline to play the first page of the Arban's book in multiple octaves every single day while making every note identical to those around them no matter the octave or the dynamic. It is easy to do that kind of work every once in a while. But having the in-the-moment discipline to know that you need to be doing that kind of practicing on a regular basis is what separates the good players from the great players.
As I once heard Joe Alessi say, it takes a lot more work to obtain skills on your horn than it does to maintain skills on your horn. Gail Williams spent an insane number of hours being able to play loudly in all registers with a good sound and a variety of attacks, releases, weights, etc. Everyone who can charge people a good chunk of change to listen to them play their instrument has done that work.
Furthermore, she doesn't have to spend nearly as much time today practicing that stuff. I'm sure she still spends more time than you might believe, but it pales in comparison to when she was first acquiring those skills.
So if you are a young tuba player, rather than jumping into the John Williams Concerto your freshman year, maybe do the sometimes tedious work that your teacher suggests on a regular basis. I promise you will be able to play the John Williams before you know it!
Fundamentals before fireworks!
"Make sure you can maintain a sense of rhythmic urgency without a metronome going."
—David Zerkel
Practicing with a metronome is essential for any musician serious about playing with great rhythm.
Practicing without a metronome is also essential for any musician serious about playing with great rhythm.
Let me explain...
To improve at anything on your instrument you must enter a feedback loop. That means getting precise data about what is actually coming out of your horn, using that data to try something a little different and then getting more data.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
In this case, that means using a metronome and a recording device to figure out whether you are playing perfectly in time. And if not, noticing the patterns of how or where you are playing with bad rhythm so you can adjust accordingly.
But some players fall into a trap of practicing with a metronome all the time (or darn close to it.) While this might seem like a good idea, it is actually a really bad idea. You never want to come to rely on a tool that won't be present when you are performing or auditioning.
The way to properly use a metronome is to record yourself both with it and without it to see if you can play with great time regardless. It should be used as a reference point, not provide the rhythm for you.
So there are two types of people who can fall into the lack of rhythmic urgency without a metronome trap that David Zerkel alluded to in the above quote, those who never use a metronome and those who use one too much.
"Go for your best sound right at the beginning of every note."
—David Zerkel
Making your best sound right at the beginning of the note is dependent on the immediacy of the air. Students must understand that it's not just the quantity but also the quality of the air that needs to be immediate.
The air of a held note that's not changing dynamics needs to be the exact same at the very beginning of the note as it is a beat later. This is pretty easy to achieve in the middle register at a middle dynamic for a decent player.
The challenge comes from being able to do that in all registers at any dynamic level.
And why are the world's best players able to do that with ease?
Through lots and lots of highly focused repetition.
Joe Alessi wasn't born with the ability to play freakishly soft in any register. He simply worked his ass off. It's really not rocket science.
It is also worth noting that it takes significantly more time and effort to obtain skills than it does to maintain skills. I guarantee you Joe has spent less time in the last calendar year practicing his extreme soft playing that he did when he was first acquiring the skill.
To be clear, I bet he spent an awful lot of time maintaining it in the past year. But the amount of time he spent getting that ability in the first place might make your head spin right off.
It is my experience that all musicians believe they are willing to do that kind of work to be able to play that well. But it's also been experience that the number who "are willing" to do that work is way higher than the number who actually do it.
Want to know a trick to instantly be more musical and focused when doing mundane drills or warming up?
Broadcast yourself using Facebook Live, Instagram stories or on YouTube.
No, seriously.
Even if three people are watching you, hell, even if there is only a threat of just three people watching you, you will be incredibly focused.
As anyone who has ever taught knows, it is awfully easy to be fully engaged when performing a drill for a student. And that's just with an audience of one. With social media, you can recreate that phenomenon any time you'd like.
Simply posting a one-minute chunk in the middle of your warm-up will engage your brain and make you much more focused, even after the camera is off.
If you are bored while doing drills or warming up, there are tools at your disposal to remedy that situation. If you don't use any of them and continue to not play at your absolute focused, best, it's on you.
And every one of your heroes on your instrument is always playing at her or his focused best.
This reminds me of one of my favorite Joe Alessi quotes:
"You’re not winning an audition if your first notes of the day are at 1 pm.”
—Joe Alessi
Same goes for composing. Or doing score study. Or anything else.
Get those feet moving!
Love this quote from fantastic trombone player Will Baker!
If your students (or you!) are bored with their scales, tell them THEY'RE DOING IT WRONG!
With a little practice, anyone can play any scale mf two octaves at a decent clip. That's really not very hard. All it takes it reps.
You know what's not easy and requires not just a lot of reps but a lot of concentration?
You get the point!
Unless your name is Wynton Marsalis, I'm guessing you can't ascending thirds followed by descending fourths for the first time and have it mastered in all twelve keys within five minutes.
So if you or your students are bored with scales, you are experiencing a failure of creativity!
Get more creative and you will suddenly be reengaged while practicing the vital musical building blocks we call scales.