Practice Philosophy

[tubamarc8891]

What's yours? I.E. what I always concentrate on is _____.

[Bob Kolada]

Being comfortable on my horn, making a great sound, and playing in tune.

[JHardisk]

What's yours? I.E. what I always concentrate on is _____.

What I always concentrate on is staying off Tubenet, and spending valuable time behind the instrument. When not practicing, spending every waking moment with my family, as they are far more precious. Rinse, repeat. Sometimes I have success, other times not.

You'll learn far more behind your instrument than any Tubenet discussion will ever teach you. I find Tubenet to be somewhat of a guilty pleasure, like reading tabloids. I'm thankful that it's here for the small percentage of applicable topics, but regret having spent time reading much of it!

[J.c. Sherman]

You're not practicing to work on the easy stuff you can already play.

You're are practicing to work on the hard stuff FIRST... then have fun.

[glangfur]

Practicing is like eating. A balanced diet is best for you, and being aware of what you are doing and why makes everything better.

I give a class that I call "5 Modes of Practicing." I find that it is extremely beneficial to consciously decide which mode you are in at any give time while you are practicing. Here is the text of my handout:

5 Modes of Practicing

1. Practicing Technique – working on the physical coordination needed to play your instrument or sing. For example: scales and arpeggios, long tones, tone or vocal placement exercises, fingering studies, etc. This is the time to cultivate the most relaxed, natural way of managing the interface between your mind, body and instrument. This is a lifelong endeavor, and nobody ever has it perfected.

2. Practicing Music for Your Body – learning the music you intend to perform, addressing the technical demands and physical coordination, learning notes, ingraining the musical structures in the inner ear. This is the mode we most often call “woodshedding.” Mode 1 serves Mode 2, and Mode 2 can informs the focus of Mode 1.

3. Practicing Music for Music – exploring the music you will perform in a mindset of experimentation. Finding what makes it happen musically, making decisions – or simply experimenting – about relative dynamics, tempi, articulation styles, tone color. This doesn’t have to happen with your instrument! You can also study scores, listen to other music by the same composer, listening to other music in a similar style, etc. Instrumentalists can sing through music, either with your voice or just in your imagination, to develop phrasing ideas separately from instrumental concerns.

4. Practicing Performing – practicing the music you will perform for the mindset and thought processes of actually performing. Commitment to the moment is vital in this mode – no stopping, no going back. And in order to fully commit, the critical, self-evaluating mind has to be turned off now! Only after you finish do you think back or listen back to a recording of what you have just done, and think about what needs to be addressed in the next session of Mode 2 or 3. This is an extremely important step if you want to be a successful performer, and particularly if you take auditions.

5. Practicing Joy – playing music you love, for yourself, just because you love it, even if you have no intention to ever perform it. This is also crucial to a life as a musician, and feeds all of the work we do. Also, get together with friends to play duets, trios, quartets, small jazz combos, etc.

© Gabriel Langfur 2010

[glangfur]

Here's another handout I give out at the same class:

Thoughts on Practicing

“Always start with what you CAN do.” – Norman Bolter. Whatever you want to achieve, you have to start with what you can do today and work towards it patiently and deliberately. The two most important words in this sentence are CAN and START.

“The highest reward from your working is not what you get for it but what you become by it.” – Sydney Harris. Keep the ultimate goals in mind: being a wonderful, expressive musician.

Be creative. Invent routines and methods for yourself to address specific problems. Hammering away at something hoping it will get better is probably the slowest way to improve. It’s better than not practicing at all, but not by much.

Be productive. Don’t just put in hours because you think you should; find ways to use your time productively. If you only have a few minutes, figure out what you can accomplish in that time. If some aspect of your playing is going so poorly one day that even trying to fix it will be frustrating, work on something else and vow to come back to that aspect the next day. Practicing slowly is always productive.

Monitor your body for relaxation, economy and ease of motion and tone production.
“I want it to be EASY!” – Sam Pilafian

Tell, don’t ask. Don’t play anything, ever, wondering how it will come out. Direct it, tell it, sing it in your brain, be in charge of the sound. If it doesn't come out the way you imagine, that's something to work out practice methods to improve. But your mind is ultimately much more powerful than your body, so keep the mind in charge of the body, not the other way around.

Practice for your mind at least as much as your body. Find the most productive thought processes that help you in the moment of performance, and practice those as you prepare for the performance or audition.

Practice performing. Devote some of your regular practice time to performing. Commit to the moment, play as if there’s an audience, and don’t stop for anything. Using a recording device is one excellent way of doing this. Evaluate afterwards to determine what specific technical aspects and overall musical ideas you want to do better, and then practice those things very specifically. But make sure to practice the commitment to the moment you will need for performance.

Think more about great phrases and less about perfect notes – particularly as you get closer to the audition or performance.



© Gabriel Langfur 2010

[glangfur]

One final thought: your three best teachers are...

1. a constant, flowing airstream

2. a constant, flowing, subdivided internal pulse

3. your imagination

[ztuba]

http://www.wendellworld.com/html/Practicing.pdf" target="_blank

this guy said it all and the results his students get say the rest.

[imperialbari]

Alle Ding' sind Gift, und nichts ohn' Gift; allein die Dosis macht, daß ein Ding kein Gift ist.

What bloke means is:

All tubas have dings, and no tubists are gifted. Only a dose will make you gifted.

[Mojo workin']

Yes, great advice Gabe. Keep that stuff coming; not enough of it around here.

[TexTuba]

Practice?

[Kory101]

Practice?

We not even talkin' bout the concert. We talkin' bout practice.

[The Jackson]

Practice?

We not even talkin' bout the concert. We talkin' bout practice.

Not a game. Not a game. Not THE game. Not a game.

We talkin' about




practice.

[TexTuba]

It's official.... I'm too old to get this joke and too old to give a damn.

RC
(33)

[Kory101]

It's official.... I'm too old to get this joke and too old to give a damn.

RC
(33)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGDBR2L5kzI" target="_blank

[TubaRay]

We talkin' about practice, man! How in the hell can I make my ensemble mates better by practicin'?

[sloan]

We talkin' about practice, man! How in the hell can I make my ensemble mates better by practicin'?

You know - he might be right. *HE* can't make his teammates better by coming to practice.

Pros who fill out the instrumentation in community bands know this.

[TubaRay]

We talkin' about practice, man! How in the hell can I make my ensemble mates better by practicin'?

You know - he might be right. *HE* can't make his teammates better by coming to practice.

Pros who fill out the instrumentation in community bands know this.

In my view, there's no question he is right about that. However, it is possible to improved the outcome of future NBA games for that team. And it is possible to improve the ultimate performance of the ensemble involved(in your case). I believe you could agree with this.

[Rev Rob]

I practice in the church sanctuary I serve. Great acoustics and it is empty except on Sunday mornings. I am not yet ready to offer them offertory music yet.