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/]