It's not magic - A note on practicing

[Oystein Baadsvik]

I once gave a master class with a gifted student in Taipei, Taiwan. There were six other students in the room followed the class, and at one point in the class we recorded the student's performance of the first movement of the Vaughan Williams concerto while he played with a metronome. After listening to the performance, we agreed that a lot of things were good but in one particular 16-note passage the performer was obviously dragging.
"And what is the solution to that?" I asked him. Silence. "Anyone?" Everyone in the room looked at each other and wondered what kind of magic would be needed to deal with the problem of playing too slow. They were obviously waiting for me, the "master", to say something really smart. Because the solution is so obvious I denied to do so. After the collective quest for a solution had come to a halt, the youngest student in the room suddenly raised his hand and suggested: "Maybe he should… play it faster?". I could see the older students slight embarrassment when they got this simple and obvious advice from their younger colleague: If you play too slow - you can fix it by playing faster.
The passage was played again, and after a couple of attempts the passage was in tempo and sounded fine.
Pretty easy, and not magic at all. Most importantly, the student did it himself, without any wise words from me.
What do we learn from this example, and why do I even bother spending time writing about such a seemingly ridiculously simple thing?
Because this example describes a typical and very important challenge both for students and for teachers in music education.
http://www.lowbrassmusic.com/blog/not_magic/

[arminhachmer]

bravo.

Most often, the "secret" to doing something is to do it.

Bravo to YOU on that one Bloke.
I also like: Start something.

[Ken Herrick]

I MOST heartily recommended that players of ALL levels follow the link and take note of the advice offered - ALL of it!!!!!

Recording and studying your practice can be extremely beneficial. One of the first things Jake had me do was get a good recorder and set my practice room up as a recording studio. A lot of other students would make use of my equipment and found too that concentrating on input then analysing the product by listening afterwards was extremely beneficial.

It is GREAT to see one of The Best making a post like this one. Let's hope there are more to come.

[Doug Elliott]

I MOST heartily recommended that players of ALL levels follow the link and take note of the advice offered - ALL of it!!!!!

Recording and studying your practice can be extremely beneficial. One of the first things Jake had me do was get a good recorder and set my practice room up as a recording studio. A lot of other students would make use of my equipment and found too that concentrating on input then analysing the product by listening afterwards was extremely beneficial.

It is GREAT to see one of The Best making a post like this one. Let's hope there are more to come.

Yes, that's what I would do too.

But it never fails to amaze me how Jacob's students fail to notice the discrepancies between what he said he taught and what he actually did that worked.

He said concentrate on the OUTPUT.

I like Oystein's approach.

[Ken Herrick]

Yes, Doug, though I think it is a matter of "agreeing" on a couple definitions. Jake meaning the musical end product and "input" as I used it being what musical product one puts into the horn for it to amplify. Really the same.

In the sense Jake meant it is a matter of concentrating on the music -"output" rather than the more mechanical aspects such as embouchure and breathing at the time one is trying to produce music.

As in computing, junk in gets junk out. For making good music we need to put good material in to have a hope of getting good music out. That is where learning the technical aspects through good practice and appropriate analysis and rectification of technical shortcomings counts.

And as one will see in the material at the link and as Jake often said -they as well as Harvey, CHALLENGE yourself and aim to do better.

[Doug Elliott]

In the sense Jake meant it is a matter of concentrating on the music -"output" rather than the more mechanical aspects such as embouchure and breathing at the time one is trying to produce music.

Of course... no one would disagree with that.

[PMeuph]

..... "Maybe he should… play it faster?". .....

It seems like this should be called the Nike approach . (i.e "Just do it")

[Jay Bertolet]

To me, the real message here is critical thinking and evaluation. The OP makes a great observation in his blog entry about how we tend to define our capability by what we can conceive ourselves, or in his terms, what we can imagine. I have found with my students that this is usually the greatest hurdle to overcome. It is so important to seek out other players, to listen to what the best in our field are doing, and to keep that as the minimum standard. When you understand that what is already done is just the starting point, then you open up your mind and imagination to really explore all the possibilities. When you then engage a critical ear to your own playing to define where that currently is, suddenly you have both ends of the equation. Knowing where you are and where you want to be defines a direction to success.

When will students learn to record themselves and listen to the results? How many licks are there in a Tootsie-Pop? We may never know...

[Schedonnardus]

We're talking about practice man, practice.

http://youtu.be/eGDBR2L5kzI