HEAD BANGING
Let's face it, we've all done it: you get stuck on a difficult lick and you begin to flail away at it, playing it over and over with little chance to regroup between each failed attempt. Often frustration mounts, tension builds up and fundamentals fall to the wayside as you are locked in a struggle with your opponent. I refer to this style of practice as "banging your head against a wall." I've been guilty of it in many a practice session. Rarely does it result in much improvement. In fact it can easily do more harm than good.
If you make a repeated mistake, stop for just a moment. Take a deep breath. Regain mental focus. Start over once you've had a chance to center yourself mentally and physically. It only takes a second but can make an enormous difference in the long run.
GOING INTO THE RED
Imagine that you have a "tension gauge" installed in your body. As you practice, you can easily watch your personal tension needle and realize when it is going "into the red." Let's face it, once that needle starts to peak out, it is unlikely that you'll make much progress in your practicing.
You should have readily at your disposal a set of "tension busters"
- short melodic patterns which you can turn to restore relaxed playing. I
find that the best tension busting patterns all have the same basic characteristics:
middle to low register, very legato or even glissando, mezzo piano or piano,
relatively brief duration.
In other words, low, slow and gentle.
THE BATTLE OF THE HABITS
Here's a scary thought: you could spend two hours practicing and end up worse than when you began! In fact, I suspect this is a fairly common occurrence.
When we all play, we have good habits and bad habits. One of the goals of practicing is to strengthen good habits. If you simply view your practice session as a time to master music, you could do so strengthening bad habits all the while. As you leave the practice room, your bad habits may be stronger than ever!
You cannot break a bad habit. You must instead build up a good habit to replace it. For example, when you say to yourself, "Don't tense up for that high note," you focus your attention on a bad habit and, in so doing, may even strengthen it. Instead say something like, "Keep the air flowing through the line right up to that high note." Now you are reinforcing a positive concept rather than trying to block out a negative one.
If you think this idea doesn't work, try this exercise: For the next 10 seconds DO NOT think of a yellow cow. Well, were you able to block out that image? I'll bet that for that 10 seconds, however, you weren't thinking about tensing up for high notes!
THE MISTAKE BEHIND THE MISTAKE
Here's a thought-provoking question: What is the most important personality trait of a fine musician. Although there are many great answers, my personal favorite is: PATIENCE. Through patience, many other things become possible.
When you struggle with some aspect of piece of music, ask yourself, "What is the underlying problem here?" Intelligent practicing is often the art of uncovering the mistake behind the mistake. Yes, the note didn't speak in that soft legato passage, but why? What can you do (besides playing the passage over and over) to solve the problem?
THE CIRCLE OF ABILITIES
Imagine a circle which represents everything you can play. The easier the music, the farther inside the circle you are. Material that is just barely playable sits on the outer edge of the circle. Mastering a new and difficult piece of music often requires modifying it so as to bring it within the circle. The most common modification is to slow something down to learn it.
What I have seen time and again is that students fail to slow down enough to allow deep learning to take place. Impatiently, they slow something down just barely enough to get through it and then speed up again without ever allowing allowing their learning to sink in. Using the circle analogy, they only slow down enough to bring the passage just barely within reach at the edge of the circle. To really learn something, they have slow it down enough to bring it well within the circle of abilities.
Without deep learning, students return day after day to find only limited progress. Often they erroneously reach the conclusion that, "I just can't play this lick. Why am I not getting any better?"
Don't live IN A VACUUM
Ed Koch, when he was mayor of New York City, used to go around asking people, "How am I doin'?" As you practice, you must consider the same question. More importantly, how do you know how you are doing? In order to make real progress, you must get FEEDBACK. Otherwise you are living in a vacuum. Here are some different ways to get feedback: