One of the keys to successful and pain-free memorization is to only memorize very small sections at a time.

The Problem

Working on only small sections sounds simple enough, but memorization is a tricky business.  It can be really tough, psychologically, to make yourself concentrate on only a very small section at time when you really want to be playing the whole piece.  Good music has a certain feeling of inevitability about it:  one phrase naturally leads to the next and seamlessly carries you and the audience through time.  And the better the music, the stronger that sense of inevitability.  So it can be really hard to make yourself stop at the end of a single phrase.

Flutists, try the first page of the Martin Ballade, and you’ll know what I mean.

If the music is very complicated, with lots of notes and accidentals, you might find yourself deciding to work on memorizing only a portion of a phrase.  And that, my friends, is an even tougher discipline:  to play, over and over, just half of a phrase!

The Solution

So what’s a flutist (or any other musician trying to memorize) to do?  My solution is to put blinders on, just like one puts on a horse drawing a carriage.  The easiest way I’ve found to do this is with Post-its:  I cover up the music that I am not memorizing, making it way easier to focus on only the section I’ve chosen.

Usually it’s enough to just cover the next few notes with a single Post-it:

But if I’m really having a hard time focusing, I’ll cover up the whole next phrase, and even some of the previous one:

A Related Problem

Another common memorization pitfall is giving in to anxiety about learning the entire piece, when what you need to be doing is simply concentrating on a small section.  This is totally normal, of course:  who hasn’t said, or heard a colleague say, “I can play the little sections, it’s playing the whole thing that’s hard?”

When I get caught up in that particular brand of anxiety, my inner monologue goes something like this:  Well, this phrase may be important, but what about the next one?  And the one after that?  And that tricky one at the end? I sometimes get so caught up in the enormity of the task (Play the entire Ibert Concerto from memory?  Seriously?), that it’s hard to concentrate on the small, manageable task of learning one small section at a time, even though in this blog I’m always singing the praises of small sections.

The Same Solution

The Post-it trick is not just a visual focus aid, it also helps you psychologically by hiding the enormity of the job.  It’s similar to when long-distance runners use “short focus:” they look only a few steps ahead at a time, and then can run a whole marathon that way.  It’s also a great trick for getting up hills, since at a short focus, it’s hard to perceive the slope of the hill.  Which is just like using the Post-it trick to keep you looking only at a small section, and not thinking about the whole piece.

Some Details

I’ve also learned to use Post-its in dark colors, or to use two of the light yellow ones, so that I’m not tempted to just read the music through the Post-it.  Another good way to maximize Post-it opacity is to put the sticky part a little above the music you want to hide, as the part of the Post-it that sticks off the music is less see-through.

If you don’t have a stack of Post-its at the ready, you can just use folded up scrap paper:

Horses wear blinders so that they don’t get spooked by other traffic on the road, and musicians need them for a similar reason.  By putting Post-it blinders on, you make it easier to concentrate on the small section you want to practice.  And, perhaps more importantly, this keeps you from getting spooked by the things you are choosing not to concentrate on.

P.S.

In this photo, the horse is you.  The people on the motorcycle are the phrase after the one you’re practicing, and the tanker is the looming fear of playing the whole piece from memory…I think you get the picture!

Photo Credits: Black and white photo of horse: DMahendra Color photo of horse in traffic: Randy Son of Robert Other photos: me!

This is the second in a series of posts about physical warm-ups. For a little bit of intro, please see the first post. For the entire series to date, please click on “Physical Warm-ups” under the heading “Categories” on the right side-bar.

Today, we’ll do two shoulder stretches.

The first will  get you moving, and is that old standby, the shoulder roll.

The second stretch is one of my favorites, but I don’t know what it’s called. For now, I’ve given it the title “The Nameless Shoulder Stretch.” I learned it from a chiropractor in Hong Kong, when I was playing in the orchestra there.

It may be familiar to many of you from other athletic pursuits, but please watch carefully as proper form for this stretch is the key to getting the most out of it.

A Special Note to Flutists

Have you ever had that “flute pain?” The one just under your shoulder blade? The Nameless Shoulder Stretch healed me of that pain. Watch the video below for a little bit more about that:

PS. If you think of a good name for the Nameless Shoulder Stretch, let me know!  I’m currently leaning toward “The Reverse Volleyball Stretch,” but I’m open to suggestion.

Remember the 10-Minute Rule? You can click here for the why and wherefore, but the rule itself goes like this:

Never practice any one thing more than 10 minutes at a time.

The 15-Minute Rule is one of only two exceptions I make to the 10-Minute rule.  It goes something like this:

If you are memorizing, you may work on a single small section for up to 15 minutes.

I make this exception for several reasons.

1. Memory work takes longer than regular practice.
2. Memory work is a combination of physical practice (playing) and mental practice (thinking/observing), and so you can go a little longer on a single passage without the same risk of repetitive stress injury.
3. Memory work is a focused mental effort, which means you can go a few minutes more before you start to drive yourself crazy.

For me, it is not unusual to have to do two sessions of 15 minutes on a single passage –  especially if it is one that involves a lot of technical work and I have to start slow and work my way up to a faster tempo.  Many times, one session of 15 minutes and a second of 10 or less is plenty.  If you find yourself repeatedly having to spend more than two 15-minute sessions per passage, that’s probably a sign that you are trying to memorize too much music at once, and need to choose smaller sections.

As you may know, the 10-Minute Rule has one other exception, the 12-Minute Rule, whereby if you are
SURE you will get your one thing mastered with just two more minutes of practice then you can go for it.  There is no such exception with the 15-Minute Rule.  If your chosen passage isn’t memorized in those 15 minutes, come back to it another day.

As I’ve said, one of the main ideas behind the 10-Minute Rule is preserving your sanity. This is even more important when memorizing music because of the fear so many of us feel about standing up on stage with no music in front of us.  You want to make your memorization practice as sane as possible, so that you will feel as confident as possible up on stage. When memorizing music, you are really learning two things at once:  how to play without the music in front of you, and how to feel when playing without the music in front of you.

If, while memorizing, you allow yourself to do what I call “desperation practicing” (Another two minutes!  Just another two!  I can quit anytime!  Really!), you will carry that feeling with you onto stage.  You will have, in effect, practiced feeling desperate.

In contrast, by observing the 15-Minute Rule, you practice feeling calm and in control. Know that you will have another session if you need it.  Know that you are in control of how you use your time.

Feeling in control of how you spend your practice time will translate directly into feeling in control in performance.

Photo Credit:  CarbonNYC

Playing an instrument is physically demanding, like playing a sport.  So, like an athlete, it’s a good idea to start your practicing with a physical warm-up.

The first thing I do every time I practice — before I play scales, or long-tones, and definitely before I tackle any thorny technical problems– I do a set of stretches for my whole body.  I start at the top (the neck) and work my way down.  In this and following posts, I will share my physical warm-up routine, and hope that you will find it useful.

Today, we’ll do three neck stretches.

The first is just to get you moving, and is the most simple, and most familiar:  the neck roll.

The second is more intense and focused.  I learned it from a book promising “natural ways to beat a headache.”  It didn’t lead to the end of any headaches for me sadly, but it has proved very useful as a warm-up for playing the flute.

The final exercise is from The Paula Robison Flute Warmups Book.  I like it because it emphasizes movement.  Much of our practice time is spent holding relatively still, which can lead to all sorts of tension.  This exercise is a nice counter-movement to the habitual stillness of practice.

When I was first starting to do a lot of playing from memory (preparing for a big competition in my first year of graduate school), I wanted to have some sort of method that would help me feel certain that I had studied the music enough to know it for sure.   I thought that if the process of memorization felt systematic, I could be sure my preparation was thorough, which would translate into more confidence on stage.

I developed the following system at that time, and it has served me well in the years since.  I will devote future articles to some of its finer points, and why it works.  For today, however, I’ll cover the basic steps, so you can start using this system immediately.

The first thing you need to do is choose a short passage to memorize.  The principle of small sections is absolutely crucial to successful memorization – I can’t stress this enough! Please read my previous post on the topic of small sections if you need more information.

Once you’ve chosen your section, here’s what you do:

First stage:  Learning the passage mentally

1.    Play the passage twice through, reading it from the music, with the metronome on.
2.    Now, without looking at the music, think the passage through once at tempo (i.e., keep the metronome on).
3.    Play the passage once more while reading the music, noting anything that you forgot or didn’t know when you thought it through.
4.    Look away from the music, and think the passage at tempo another two times.

Total:  six times, three times playing from the music, three times thinking it through without the music

Second stage:  learning the passage physically

1.    Play the passage twice through, reading it from the music, with the metronome on.
2.    Now, without looking at the music, play the passage once through at tempo (keep the metronome on).
3.    Play the passage once more while reading the music, noting anything that you forgot or didn’t know when you thought it through.
4.    Look away from the music, and play the passage at tempo another two times.

Total:  six times through, three times playing from the music, three times playing from memory

Grand total:  twelve times through

For a slow passage, one or two times through this whole process is often enough to get it memorized.  Even if this process takes less than 10 minutes, I only do it one time through in a single practice session.  I come back to it the next day if I feel the passage needs another cycle through the memorization process.

For a fast passage that is technically challenging, here’s my routine:

1. First I do the whole process, all twelve repetitions, at a slow tempo (often a tempo even slower than where I would start if I were merely working on the passage technically)
2. Then I work on the passage using Metronome Trick No. 1, and at every tempo level I do the following:

a.    One time through mentally, at tempo
b.    Two times through playing while reading
c.    One time through playing from memory
d.    One time through playing while reading
e.    Two times through playing from memory

Basically, at each tempo level you go through the passage once mentally, and then go through the entire second stage of memorization.

If you would like a cheat sheet that lists the basic steps of this memorization technique, here it is: memorization-cheat-sheet (click to download as a pdf).

As you try this technique, know that your skill with it will develop slowly, but it will improve over time. If at first you don’t succeed, try again with a shorter section of music.  There have been occasions (most notably complicated music like the Ibert Concerto) when I have memorized one beat at a time!

I find that working from memory is like developing any other skill—it gets easier as you get more proficient.  Your memory, just like your muscles, can be ‘in shape,’ and when it is, memorization happens faster.  And when you’re just starting, you need to start with small units, just as you would start with small weights for your first day at the gym.

NOTE:  This is the first in a series of articles about memorization.  If there are any particular aspects of working from memory that are of interest to you, or you have questions about the techniques I share, please leave a comment below, and I will endeavor to answer those questions in future posts.

Photo Credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/derricksphotos/2172690132/

This is going to be a short entry, because here’s what is the best thing to do on your breaks from practicing:

NOTHING.

And nothing doesn’t need explanation, does it? Well, for me, it did.

Nothing means:
Do not call your friends, do not read The New Yorker, do not track down the Super of your building to ask about when the exterminator comes, do not see what’s doing on Facebook (to name a few examples of things I’m tempted to do on MY breaks).

Just lie down on the couch or the floor, or sit comfortably somewhere, and do nothing.  Think if you have to, but do nothing.

My niece demonstrates proper napping technique

Try it.  I think you’ll find that 5 minutes of just sitting there is just as refreshing, if not more, than reading a magazine for 15 minutes.

I will admit that sometimes I feel a little embarrassed I’m so obsessed with time and practicing efficiently that I even have found a method to take breaks efficiently.  Some people might see that as a pretty major 21st-century malady…

However, it really works.  I first tried this method of break-taking (I mean, really, method of break-taking?) when I was preparing for a big audition while performing full time with Tales & Scales.  It was like finding extra hours in the day.

Now that I’m no longer in the structured environment of T&S, I find this method a bit harder to maintain (since I’m not totally desperate for practice time and I really want to read the New Yorker), but I find it even more useful and important now that I’m trying to manage a life as well as a playing career.

Let’s say you practice in 30 minute segments, with breaks in between, like I do.  If your breaks are only 5 or 7 minutes, you can do two hours of practice in two hours and twenty minutes.  If you take 15 to 20 minute breaks, you end up spending three hours of time for those same two hours of practice. (a savings of 40 minutes… which you can spend any way you like once you’re done with practicing.)

I would also add that I don’t think it’s really the same two hours.  I find that when I do nothing on my breaks, the quality of my practice is noticeably better:  my focus is clearer and I learn faster.  I’m rested, but not distracted.

Plus: honestly, when else do you get to do nothing?  Enjoy it!

Credit where credit is due: It was my partner Aine who suggested this and it saved my life; and the picture is by my sister, Sukey.

I first came upon this quote in the “Spiritual Warmups” section of Paula Robison’s Flute Warmups Book.  I have often though of it since, when I am hit with a case of I-Don’t-Wanna-Practice Syndrome:

Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.

I’m sorry I don’t have more time this week for a longer post, but since that quote pretty much says it all (after all, Einstein was a genius), I’ll leave it at that for now.

There are two main processes that need to happen while you practice, and they are:

Experiment, then rehearse.

First, experiment. Try out different things and different ways of playing. This method applies to to musical/interpretational questions like: Does this sound better a bit louder? Does the poignancy of this phrase come through more effectively if I diminuendo on the last note? It addresses technical ones as well, such as: If I move my embouchure this way will the pitch be better? If I concentrate on my left ring finger, will the notes come out more clearly?

When you find the way you want it to go, rehearse it that way. Play it over and over (4 to 7 times is a good rule) the way you’ve decided upon. I like to call this stage “putting the ‘re-‘ in rehearsal.”

It sounds nice to call these processes “stages,” and you might think that implies you will always do them in that order. In reality, however, it’s rarely that organized. You will probably find that you will sometimes experiment, then rehearse, then experiment some more, then re-rehearse.

This is one of my favorite things about practicing: the sense of discovery I experience as an interpretation emerges out of my experiments. I also find that using this method leads to a certain amount of confidence in my own interpretation, knowing that I’ve tried things several different ways and chosen the one that seems the best. And the repeated opportunity to experiment is one of the things I enjoy about all the repetition involved in practicing technically challenging passages.

This technique is of course related to the principle of being willing to sound bad. That’s why I like the experiment stage to be explicitly stated as such: it makes it easier to be willing to sound bad if you can say, “well, it was just an experiment.”

So give it a try the next time you practice. Think of yourself as “in the lab,” instead of on stage. Take advantage of the fact that, in music, practice is not a performance. In the lab, it’s just you tinkering away with your interpretation. Give yourself the freedom to experiment, and then, once you’ve found what you like, enjoy the repetition of it.

Credit where credit is due: I heard this idea in a lecture at the Banff Centre for the Arts given by Froydis Ree Wekre, fabulous Norwegian horn player and teacher.

The picture is by:  Alejandro Hernandez

Here’s a trick for working on certain difficult technical passages. I say “certain” because this only works for passages that begin and end on the same note – as I will demonstrate later in this post. But first, the trick:

It’s simple–just take the passage, and make it into a loop. Play it through, and when you get to the end, that is the same as the beginning, just keep going like a tape loop.

Here is a phrase that I’ve been working on recently that works well this way. It’s from Judith Sainte Croix’s beautiful and mysterious piece for solo alto flute, Arctic Wind, written for and premiered by Andrew Bolowtosky, and I will be performing it in March (see end of post for details):

My goal was to get it to quarter note equals 92, so you can see that the 32nd note passage would be very fast. It conveniently ends just like it begins, so I was able to practice it as a loop, playing bar 58 over and over, like so:

I practiced it using Metronome Trick No. 1, and at each tempo level repeated the loop at least 4 times.

Making a loop is effective for two reasons. First, it takes the passage out of context, and makes it an abstract unit. This makes it easier for your brain to conquer. As you repeat the unit, it creates a particular neural pathway (maybe this one was called Arctic Wind, bar 58), and because you are looping it, this neural pathway gets super-strong, even stronger than it would be just repeating it in the context of the phrase. Looping a passage out of context relieves some of the anxiety associated with its difficulty, making it easier for your brain to focus on how to play it, rather than how daunting the task is.

The second reason is that playing something several times in a loop is harder than playing it once by itself. It’s kind of like when baseball players get warmed up by swinging several bats at once. Once you’ve mastered the phrase as a loop, it’ll seem easy-peasy in context.

Sometimes a tricky phrase is too tricky for this trick! Check out this passage from Righteous Babe by Randall Woolf:

You could loop it, repeating bar 100 a number of times before going on to 101. However, the goal tempo of this passage is quarter equals 96. Only a bit faster than the Sainte Croix, but even more difficult for two reasons:
1. The fingerings are very awkward (flutists, give it a try, you’ll see what I mean!)
2. There are no slower notes in the loop, like the dotted eighths in the Sainte Croix) where you can get a break.

So, I did eventually practice this as a loop, but not before practicing it just two quarters at a time, and then 4:

You may be wondering why bother to loop it if you can play it all 4 beats already … Since this is one of the most technically difficult passages of the piece, I wanted to feel extra confident that I had it down, and looping it gave me that peace of mind.

So, the next time you are faced with a particularly difficult passage that happens to end the way it begins, give this method a try. Become a live-action tape loop in your practice, and enjoy increased confidence and success in your performance.

Note: If you’re in the New York area and you’d like to hear Arctic Wind and Righteous Babe, please come to one of the following performances:
• 7 March 2009, 7pm, South Nyack Recital Series
• 15 March 2009, 3pm, Rockland Conservatory of Music Faculty Recital

Another note: The reel-to-reel photo is from:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/fridgemonkey/3294979647/

So, if you’ve read my entry on why you should listen to me, you might remember that I alluded to some embarrassing moments when I was learning these practice techniques.  Here, both to satisfy your curiosity and to illustrate the point that a metronome only works if you listen to it, are two of those stories.

Picture this: the young Zara Lawler, in her first semester of music school, studying with the renowned flutist Carol Wincenc at Indiana University (now the Jacobs School of Music).  I was so psyched to be there!  I practiced all day, tried to play like the grad students, was early for my lessons, and called my teacher “Ms. Wincenc” – I felt much too shy to call her “Carol” like everyone else did.  Basically, I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

Ms. Wincenc assigned me an etude a week from Andersen Op. 15.  I worked really hard on them, but always found them very difficult.  At one lesson, we had the following exchange:

Ms. Wincenc:  Did you practice this etude with a metronome?
Me:  Yes, of course.
Ms. Wincenc:  Then why doesn’t it sound like you did?

While that might sound harsh, it was an “a-ha” moment for me.  I knew right away what had gone wrong: I had been practicing with the metronome on, but not listening to it.  It’s amazing that it’s even possible to ignore something as insistent as a metronome, yet, that’s exactly what I had been doing.

Story number two takes place earlier in my schooling, while I was at the BUTI Flute Institute, the summer after my senior year in high school.  I was again eager to do my best, in my bright-eyed and bushy-tailed way, in master classes all day long with Doriot Anthony Dwyer and Leone Buyse (then principal and associate principal flutes of the Boston Symphony, people).

So there I was, in front of the class, playing a different Andersen etude.  This one was running 16th notes in ¾ time:

(click on this link for the first few bars of Andersen Op 15 No 1, played as written in three-four)

Ms. Buyse (of course I called her “Ms. Buyse!”) stopped me and said it sounded like I was playing in 6/8, not ¾. Here’s the same section of music, played in 6/8—I’m sure you can hear the difference:

(click here for the same passage played in six-eight)

So I started again, and she stopped me again, and said it STILL sounded like 6/8.  I tried a third time, and she stopped me a third time — you can see how this is getting embarrassing, right?  Well it gets worse, because eighties fashion plays a key role in this story:

I was wearing a Swatch.  Remember Swatches? If you’ve ever seen one, you’ve probably noticed how loud they tick.  Well, the Swatch in question was ticking out seconds, which I was hearing as dotted quarter = 60, exactly the tempo that you would play this in 6/8.

Here is that same passage again, but with a metronome on, so you can really hear the effect (it’s really too bad I don’t have the Swatch anymore, so I can’t use it as the second metronome. Heh. )

(click here for Andersen Op 15, No 1 in three-four, with metronome)

(click here to hear it in six-eight, with the metronome)

So it was the opposite problem of the first story.  At IU, I was working with a metronome but not listening to it.  At BUTI, I was listening to a metronome without realizing it. But the moral of both these stories is the same:  a metronome only works if you listen to it.  It is not enough to just have it on in the same room with you.  You must learn to listen to it, and play with it. Losing the 80s fashion doesn’t hurt either, though I hear it’s coming back.

[Note:  The videos in this entry were shot by the multi-talented Mary Dicken.  The Swatch photo is from http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoonabar/363501100/]