An inspirational speech on practicing, from a kid who’s just learned to ride a bike.

Thanks to Polly Washburn for finding this!

When I had a lesson with Judith Mendenhall, years ago, she told me a memorable story.  She and a friend were backpacking in Colorado when they were surprised by a bad storm. As they were above the tree line, they were worried they were going to get hypothermia.  Since they knew that one of the symptoms of hypothermia is losing the ability to make good decisions, they tried to make as many decisions as quickly as possible.  For example, they decided that if things got really bad, they would leave their packs behind.  This would make it easier for them to get down the mountain faster, ahead of the bad weather.

This dramatic story has stayed with me, and I think it can illustrate an important function of the practice notebook:  you can use your notebook to make difficult decisions ahead of time.  Obviously, you aren’t facing hypothermia in your practice (!) but you may have times when you are faced with other things that could cloud your ability to make good decisions, and I will explain how your notebook can help you weather those storms.

This hit me in November when I was getting ready for a recital at Trinity Church here in New York [click the link to see a webcast of it].

I was working on Georges Enesco’s beautiful and impressive Cantabile et Presto for flute and piano. The fast and furious Presto is full of double-tonguing passages and tricky chromatic sections where the articulations go across the beat:

I must admit that I HATE practicing this kind of thing (my own ‘storm’ if you will…). Anything that involves articulation—double tonguing, triple tonguing, complicated slur patterns…*  Consequently, I put off practicing tonguing sometimes.  Yes,this happens even to me, author of The Practice Notebook!

Cut to Thanksgiving weekend, 2009.  My performance of the Enesco was just one week away.  I knew I had to get busy on some of those tricky passages.  Like a hiker facing hypothermia, I made my decisions ahead of time. At the end of each practice session, I decided what I would practice at the next one, and wrote it down in my notebook. In this way, I solved the problem of inertia before I even had it.

Let’s take bars 99 to 102 for example (shown above).  The only way to master them was to practice bar 102, then 101 and 102, then 100 through 102, etc, and to work on it everyday. I planned to do 6 repetitions at each metronome level:

• once all slurred (to give the tongue a break)
• twice as written
• one more time all slurred
• twice more as written

It felt like a double blow:  I would have to spend lots of time on articulation, and my ego had to accept that I was struggling with something that I like to think “should be” easy.  When it’s mastered, it sounds easy, anyway!

I wrote the protocol in my book, and stuck to it.  It was like throwing myself a lifeline.

When practicing, I get very rational, and into problem solving mode; I can see clearly what needs to be done next, even if there isn’t time that day to do it.  That clear-eyed version of myself then can send a note, in the practice notebook, to the future version of myself, the one who will be coming to the practice room with fear and loathing in her heart, thinking, “Ugh, not another day of articulation practice!”  That note says,

and the bad decision of hypothermia (i.e. to not practice bars 100-101 again) is averted.

As you can see from the page above, I had to throw myself two life lines that day.  The first was to practice bars 100 and 101 of the Enesco again (before moving on to working on three bars at a time).  The second was the more tough-love note to “suck it up” when working out the opening of the Piazzolla with a metronome.

Sometimes our desire, as musicians (and people!), to sound good all the time (even while practicing) or to wrap up a practice session quickly can be like hypothermia to a hiker:  your brain goes a little foggy and you have a hard time making good decisions.  The practice notebook can be your lifeline—the small thing that tips the balance in favor of good short-term decisions that serve your long-term goals.

You can see a video webcast of the performance of the Enesco and Piazzolla here.  For a pdf of the program, with webcast timings, click lawler trinity 09 program webcast timings.

*note: I think it’s for two reasons:  1) a natural preference for things that are smooth and clean, like slurs, new ziploc bags and modern architecture and 2)the tongue is a lazy muscle, and so practicing tonguing is arduous.

Photo Credit: Jeff Pang

They’re here!  The winter holidays, filled with family visits, parties and gatherings, travel, chocolate, new toys, a surprising amount of stress, and hopefully, more chocolate.

Many of these things can mean major interruptions in your practice routine.  If you’ve been away at music school, you may suddenly find yourself back at home with people who want to see you, not hear your scales from behind closed doors.  For professionals, you may have gigs sprinkled randomly throughout the season, interspersed with long travel days and social obligations that trump professional considerations.

Practicing over vacation, while everyone else is playing with new toys, can be a real challenge.  Here are a few strategies that I’ve employed over the years to make practicing work over the holidays.

1. Let your family know ahead of time that you will be practicing. The delicate balancing act of family and practice is a LOT easier if my family knows about it ahead of time, and knows why it’s important. If you have a concert or audition coming up, let them know!
2. Get creative about where you practice. I remember several Christmas vacations spent practicing in my grandparents’ basement.  It was not the most pleasant place to play, but it was the only spot that was quiet and that I could call my own for a few hours a day.  Find your own private practice spot.
3. Get creative about when you practice. It’s a tough discipline, but sometimes getting up early is a great way to get in some quality time on your instrument before family madness is in full swing.  (Especially if you can practice somewhere far away from sleepers, like the basement!)
4. Plan ahead. Decide ahead of time what you are going to practice, when, and how much.  At the end of each practice session, make a plan for the next day’s work, and write it in your practice notebook.  Then when you drag yourself away from the Playstation tomorrow, all you have to do is follow your own directions, not reassess your practice needs.
5. Be reasonable with your goals. Winter break is NOT the time to up your practice routine from 3 hours a day to 5. Let’s be real, people!
6. Practice big ideas. Winter break often means an interruption in your normal lesson schedule, if you are a student.  Maybe you have 2 or more weeks between lessons instead of just one.  That makes it a good time to spend some focused effort on big ideas that your teacher has been working on–like changing your posture or your embourchure.
7. Practice a new piece of music you’ve been wanting to play, or a piece you really love. Make sure you have a compelling reason to take yourself away from family activities:  music that you love, or music that you haven’t been able to find time for during the school year.  I’m going to be working on Edie Hill’s This Floating World and I can’t wait!
8. Find time to enjoy casual chamber music with family or friends. Normally, I would say that playing duets with your dad doesn’t count as practicing, but over the holidays, it’s a great way to keep your chops up, and to reconnect with the reason you became a musician in the first place.
   

   portrait of the author as a young flutist (in fifth grade, playing Christmas carols with my father)

9. Perform for your family. This one is especially good for younger musicians, and music school students. Just make sure you choose your pieces carefully.  As an enthusiastic student, I once played some weird “new” music for my partly tone-deaf grandmother, and she stopped me in the middle of it, saying it was so loud, it made her stomach hurt!  I should have stuck with the Ave Maria…
10. Give yourself some external motivation. Bart Feller, principal flute of the New Jersey Symphony, just mentioned to me that he is headlining the Kentucky Flute Fair in January, and that not only is he looking forward to the Fair itself, but to having a reason to stay in shape over the break.  Everyone needs external motivation, and a performance or audition scheduled for early January is a great reason to practice over the holidays.
11. Cut yourself some slack. It is vacation after all, and we all need a break from time to time.  If you want a break, but you have to keep practicing (because you have an audition in early January…), schedule some off days, and stick to them. Enjoy them, even!  You might find that a day or two of rest improves your playing. It’s a phenomenon my colleagues and I call The Magic of Gestation, and will be the subject of it’s own post next year sometime.
12. Eat lots of chocolate. I’m pretty sure there are studies that show this helps with your music performance…

Happy New Year!

Photo credits:  Snow crystal:  elif ayse;  Me & my father playing together:  my grandfather.

1.  Do a thorough physical warm-up. Physical warm-ups not only prevent injury, they make your practice more efficient. If you start practicing without doing a warm-up first, your body is going to be trying to do two things at once:  warming itself up to the task of playing and learning the new skill you are practicing.  Eventually, you will probably accomplish both those tasks, but you’d be able to do it faster and easier if you did them one at a time.  You can find my suggestions on physical warm-ups by clicking on “Physical Warm-ups” on the Categories tab at the right.

2.  Incorporate mental practice into your routine. Study after study has shown that some form of mental practice, separate from physical practice, enhances any skill you are trying to develop, whether it’s playing a sport or playing an instrument.  Why not experiment with one of the following techniques, even for just a few minutes a day?

• Visualization: Imagine yourself playing beautifully in your upcoming concert or audition.
• Score study: Notice how the piano part fits with yours.  Look for melodic and harmonic patterns.  Apply some of that stuff you learned in theory class to your own music!
• Memorization: Try beginning the memorization process away from your instrument. Study the music phrase by phrase as you would if you were practicing with the instrument.
• Practice the thought process you use while playing the piece. Page through the score while reminding yourself of the various things you need to think and do while playing the piece (make sure not to play this phrase too loudly, match the pitch of the horn on this note, use this long rest to relax the shoulders, etc).

3.    Practice the hard parts first. (after having done a good warm-up of course!) Jump into the deep end! When you practice the most challenging part of a piece of music, you are not only getting better at the piece, you’re getting better at your instrument.  So mastering the hard parts of a piece first will make the easy parts even easier, and therefore take even less time to practice.

4.    Be ruthless when isolating the problem spots. Sometimes the main obstacle to playing a difficult passage can be narrowed down to a single interval.  Tedious though it may seem to practice just two notes, it is way MORE efficient (and way LESS tedious) than slogging through an entire phrase over and over again.

5.    Close the door. Having a private space in which to practice can have a profound impact on your ability to concentrate. While you’re at it, you could also try turning off the phone and putting the computer to sleep.  If you don’t have a room in which to practice (for example, if you practice in your family’s living room), you can still find a way to metaphorically close the door—face your music stand away from the hall where people might be walking by or away from your sister sitting on the couch…

6.    Plan and take breaks. Give yourself a time limit and stick to it.  If you’ll be practicing for an hour, take a 5-minute break after half an hour.  You’ll come back refreshed, and your second half-hour of work will be more productive than it would have been if you had just plowed through.  Pilots are required to take breaks, and musicians should be too! For more on breaks, see this post.

7.    Keep a log. Think today about what you need to practice tomorrow and write it down.  It’ll save you the time of idly playing through your piece at your next session, trying to remember which spot you thought needed attention. I saved this one for last, since technically, it won’t improve your practicing until tomorrow.  For more on the value of keeping a practice notebook, check out my first and second posts.  And be sure to read the comments, as readers have posted some interesting ideas on the topic.

Photo credits: Stretch is by That Guy Who’s Going Places;  Clock is by inocuo;  Notebook is by *spudballoo*

Why to write (or why I write, anyway)

Part of the value of the practice notebook is that it makes your work visible. This is of prime importance in the music world—no one pays you to practice, no one applauds when you’ve finished your scales, and though your always-growing skill is a great reward, it is often a real challenge to feel accomplished when you practice and have nothing to show for it. You know, a carpenter builds a set of shelves, and they have the shelves as proof of their work. An artist does a painting, and even if it’s still in progress after a day’s or week’s work, it’s there to see (and touch even)—a visible, tangible monument to their work and talent.

Now, I don’t expect that the Met will ever have an exhibition of the practice notebooks of the great musicians of our time, but the practice notebook can go a long way to make you feel good about the amount and quality of the work you’re doing, simply by making it visible and tangible.

But wait, there’s more!

I’d like to list a few more benefits that you can keep an eye out for as you experiment with keeping a practice notebook. Keeping a practice log allows you to:

• Keep track of what still needs to be done (write yourself a note: come back to bar 12, work on bars 234 and 235 together now, start 2nd movement tomorrow).

• Give yourself encouragement. Don’t be shy about it—remember how I said this wouldn’t be posted in front of the class? Go ahead—put a gold star every time you meet your practice goal! Or write in curse words! Or both!

• Be your own best teacher by keeping track of what works and what doesn’t

• Get to have a cool notebook.  Isn’t this one pretty?

• Have fun, later on in life, to look back at a record of your past life in music. Remember when you took that big audition? Remember when you first started working with your favorite teacher?  Here’s mine from the day I took my Tales & Scales audition:
  

A special note to the beginners out there: have you ever wished you could have your teacher there with you all week, making sure you practice right? This is a great way to learn to practice—what works, what doesn’t, what’s fun, and what isn’t. It’s especially valuable if you are not practicing every day—to help keep track of where you are, and what still needs time and attention.

A note to the professionals and conservatory students out there: I know you’re skeptical! Try it anyway!

Besides yourself and your instrument, the practice notebook is the single most important tool in your practicing.

I know, I know, those of you who have been playing for a while, or who are already in music school, or, gasp, professionals, are thinking, “Practice notebook? You mean like those charts I used to have to fill out for band practice? In fifth grade?”

Well, no, not exactly. This is not a chart you fill out and post in front of class, in order to separate the “good” students from the “bad.”

Instead, it is a notebook that you keep for yourself, where you can keep track of all of your hard work, all your ideas of things that need work, and best of all, that you can flip back through from time to time, to see how much you’ve done.

So here’s my story about practice notebooks: I ran the New York City Marathon in 1999—my one and only marathon so far. I had never trained for anything like that before, so I just followed the plan for beginners laid out by the NY Roadrunners Club—I followed it to the day, and kept track on a wall calendar of all the running I did, how far and how fast (or how slow, depending on your perspective), and how I felt each time. The deal with marathons, for beginners, is that you don’t actually ever run 26.2 miles until the race itself—your longest training run is usually 20 or 22 miles. So, as the marathon approached, I was freaking out about whether or not I was ready, since I was going to be running a distance that was a full 4 miles more than my longest run to date. So, just imagine how calming it was to flip through my calendar and see all of the running I had done, and know that I had run every run the NYRRC says to: it was proof that I was ready for the marathon.

I ran the marathon, it was fun and exhausting, and a few months later I was getting ready for a big audition for a ballet orchestra, as well as preparing for a solo competition. It was a lot to prepare, all the ballet music was new to me, and I was really having a hard time managing it all—and once again found myself pretty freaking out about whether or not I would be ready. I was bemoaning that fact to my good friend Polly, who responded by saying, “Did you learn anything from the marathon that could be helpful here?” My first reaction, honestly, was “What the hell kind of cheap do-it-yourself-life-coach question is that?” My second was “Well, it was pretty cool to write it all down.”

And so began my strong belief in the value of practice notebooks.

What to write (or what I write, that can serve as a starting point for you):

I keep track of the time of each practice session, and what I practice in each session. Usually just what piece, and maybe what movement or section I’ve been working on. A typical entry looks something like this:

21 January 2000

That’s really all you have to do to start getting a benefit from keeping these records, and that’s often all I do, as well.

HOWEVER, there are some great benefits to putting in some other commentary in your notebook. If you’ve been really struggling with something, write yourself some encouragement:

22 January 2000

Or, more enthusiastically:

29 May 2007

Sometimes I like to keep a record of how I felt, or what I would like to be better:

18 November 1999

8 October 2008

10 March 2000

And sometimes I can’t be bothered with being positive and write:

22 February 2008

Or just:

31 May 2007

Coming next time:  Why to write it