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I am curious about how you adult players (pro, band teachers, and non-pro) practice and how you structure it around your busy schedules. For me, it can be difficult. How much time do you practice, and what do you work on primarily? Roger Lewis has always told me to practice smart. I have a good idea of what he means. How do you folks practice? Thank you.

lest's see....today I practiced a grade 1 clarinet solo so I could help my 6th graders with it tomorrow....does that count?

Do you have a structured schedule? Do you have a set time to practice everyday? Do you practice one hour or thirty minutes? Do you practice Arbans or some other books? What I am asking is what do you do to practice efficiently?

Thanks.

I try to practice with lip slurs, long tones, and scales inbetween my elementary classes, I practice scales with my JH & SH bands and then either during my plan or when I get home I run my etudes and solos. I have Friday off so I do a lot of practicing on Fridays. Not sure if its the best way, but it's what I've been doing the last couple of years.

My playing is at a developmental stage. I do not play in a group and I am just trying to learn how to play the horn. I have a great deal of experience in music- many years in bands and community orchestras and a little bit of pro work way back when- so I know what the little black things are on the page and what to do with them. I am trying to learn how to play the tuba and how tuba notes sound. My tuba is a predictable 2340 King and I just had the valves cleaned, aligned, re-guided and expertly fitted by Herr Oberloh. It works fine. I now just need time and repetitions.

I am pounding the first 50 etudes in Arban's. Pounding one page for an hour until I get each etude right and then pound it again until I get each etude right three times in a row. And then to the next page. I have a 'Daily Routine' by Wesley Jacobs and printed by Encore Press I will move to once I start playing in the local community orchestra in a couple of months. Jacobs says the routine should take about a half hour. We'll see. Right now, I play one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon. "Sometime soon" I will drop off the hour in the morning.

Of course, I'm single and have no kids. I'm allowed to play my tuba fortissimo at 5 AM if I want to because I also live in a house with no close neighbors. Playing the tuba is a great release from the troubles of the day (I'm a HS Teacher but not band) and I actually like playing etudes.

This probably isn't helpful to any one but it is what I do. Putting some air through the horn in some kind of fashion is better than not doing it at all. If all you can get is 20 min. doing some scale routines in four different keys, it's better than not doing anything.

I'm a major fan of the Brass Gym... Granted it takes me about 2 hours to go through the whole thing if thats what I'm doing, but I generally pick a choose about an hours worth of exercises a day.. granted as a college student I then go on to work other stuff for an hour or two.. but it wouldn't hurt ot pick out say 30 min of stuff from that, and go on to whatever it is you are to be working on (solos etudes etc.. more interesting stuff than scales and lip slurs)
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Oh, God -- all over the map. Some weeks I get to put in over 2 hours a day and really make something of myself. Then I'll have day job, family, and other obligations where I'll go two weeks without even acknowledging the existance of a tuba, much less getting to practice or rehearse, and in the meantime, if I get a half hour a day, I feel blessed for the luxury afforded me to practice.

I am not proud of that state of affairs. I should have better practice habits. But I chose a long, long time ago that music was not the profession, but the avocation. So my situation, extrapolated, is probably closer to reality than a lot of other community band players would care to drop to the kneeling rail to confess or admit.

KevinMadden wrote:I'm a major fan of the Brass Gym... Granted it takes me about 2 hours to go through the whole thing if thats what I'm doing, but I generally pick a choose about an hours worth of exercises a day.. granted as a college student I then go on to work other stuff for an hour or two.. but it wouldn't hurt ot pick out say 30 min of stuff from that, and go on to whatever it is you are to be working on (solos etudes etc.. more interesting stuff than scales and lip slurs)
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I'll second that... You can always make up your own different, but complete warmup with that book. I regularly do an abbreviated version encompassing all of the major exercises. You can't go wrong with this book...

I use playing my tuba as a stress reducer from my day/night job. I usually get in about 30 minutes of scales/Arbans/Rubank and about 20-30 minutes of working on community band stuff or what ever else is on my stand. That said, I usually don't practice on rehearsal nights, and there is usually at least one day that work interferes with practice (overtime/court/training) so that isn't as regular as I would like.

I am a hobbiest tuba player, been playing again about a year. No real aspirations to do much more than play in the community bands I play in, at least until I retire.

Ally

After 24 years full-time six nights a week playing rock in bars, I semi-retired to a job as a mail carrier. I took 3 years recovering from burnout and rediscovered tuba. I usually blow long tones most days along with some new material I am preparing. I try to lay off the day we have a gig so no new zits will form.
Dennis Gray
tubatooter1940
http://www.myspace.com/johnrenomusic

I do not practice efficiently. I practice for fun, and I play for fun. If I had to treat it like work, it would, well, be like work. But part of being a musician is the decision that at least some fundamentals are "fun".

I do start out with long tones in my warmup, playing descending intervals and octaves. Then, I'll do some lip slurs in the middle register. Then, I'll play a few scales, followed by whatever etude material that I'm playing with at the time.

Then it's music. First, I'll practice the stuff in the folder if there is a need. After that, I'll pick up the F tuba and hack through some solo lit for my own amusement (this is about the time the cat starts climbing the walls). When I'm worn out (this takes about 93 seconds), I'll go back to the big tuba and play low stuff again, particularly orchestral excerpts for stuff that I like.

There's always something on the stand that I'm using for etudes. For a while, it was the Roger Jones 21 Duets (it has also been the Sear Advanced Duets), and I'll play the bottom part on Bb and the top part on F. For a little while it was Snedecor, but to make much progress in that book requires more consistency than I can usually muster. If I wanted to work, I would pull out the Arban's, but I just never seem to want to.

When I get a chance to practice, I often do it for 90 minutes or longer. When my chops are feeling the heat, I drop things down two octaves and just concentrate on moving air. The problem is that these sessions don't happen every day, and sometimes they don't even happen every week.

Being a contented adult player means being at peace with the limitations of life. That means a realization that progress comes in fits and starts, and sometimes you gain ground only to lose it next month. But I never seem to lose what progress I've made completely--often that progress is as much mental as physical and that stays with me.

I've known people who quite because they could not maintain what they were able to develop when they studied music full time. What a waste. Most adult players who didn't study full time would still give a lot to have had that experience.

Rick "who takes what he can get" Denney

It depends a little on which instrument I'm practicing that day. And that depends on what I have coming up.

In general, I start out like others here with longs tones, intervals, and a few scales. Then it's on to whatever I need to be working on for the next gig or practice.

I don't practice every day, but when I do it tends to be for about 2 hours. Unless I have a cold or something (like now) I try to get in 2 or 3 practice sessions a week above and beyond band practices and gigs to keep my endurance up.

I do my best to practice smart. For me, that means working on what I don't do well and not spending my practice time musically patting myself on the back playing what I already can play well. (I do engage in some recreational playing time, though, playing things that I do well and which please me to listen to; I gotta reward myself with *something.*)

More specifically: I'm learning a new instrument now, and that means a whole new set of coordinations and fingerings to solidify in my ageing brain. For each etude, I start with the last couple measures, and play them over and over until I feel they are more or less easy. Then I add a couple measures, and practice the four of them the same way, until they feel easy. I work my way backwards through the piece until I can do the entire thing relatively well. Then I observe where I am still stumbling and put in more time in those places as needed.

Meanwhile, I work on tone, vibrato (needed on the oboe) and intonation. I don't need to work on rhythm or what the notes mean.

This could be applied to any instrument at any age and at any level of development, as needed, with of course the more advanced players paying attention to different things than I do right now as a quasi-beginner.

MA