Category Archives: Practice

The dictaphone never lies: part 2

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Back in the dim and distant past, I carried out the first half of an experiment that I’ve thus far failed to complete. Depressed about my apparent lack of progress, I recorded myself playing a piece and promised to record the same piece a month later, compare the two, and report back. For six months I failed to do this because:
(a) I was afraid I wouldn’t have improved
(b) Listening to a recording of yourself playing an instrument is almost as bad as listening to a recording of yourself speaking, and
(c)  I’m not very good at following things up

Then moment of truth finally came last night when I did the second recording, then listened to both in quick succession.

The original November recording was absurdly bad, like the audio from some awful St Trinian’s music lesson sketch: terrible tuning, erratic timing, no redeeming features whatsoever. Tonight’s attempt was only slightly less bad, I did notice a significant difference in tone and vibrato but the tuning with still really off in places. So, there has been improvement but rather less than I’d hoped for. Thank goodness I dithered for six months, the results after one month would have been crushing.

Moral of the story: listening to a recording of yourself, however painful, is a useful exercise, – it’s been a timely reminder that my tuning needs some work, and that if I want to make a better sound any time soon I’ll need to practice a bit more regularly and a bit more efficiently (more on that soon).

What it’s like to get it wrong again, and again, and again

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I recently read that Toni Morrison didn’t started writing novels until she was in her late 30s, a single mother with two boys. She got up at 4am every morning to write before work. I find stories like that very inspiring for about 30 seconds or as long as it takes me to remember that I can’t even sacrifice an episode of Homeland to do something life-transforming, let alone two or three hours sleep. Take the past week, I have plenty to do but none of it has imminent deadlines attached, with the result that I spend any available time writing detailed to-do lists and researching things I will never ever need to know about (tips on running a marathon in the rain anyone?), obsessing about how to decorate the spare room in a house in a small rural town that I will never move to, and reading about the life of Joe Strummer (born in Ankara, bet you didn’t know that).

The Easter break was a good opportunity to do some of that practice that I’m always complaining I don’t have time to do. But I had important imaginary house buying to do. Consequently, when I had my first lesson in a number of weeks it was a bit painful. We were looking at Sibelius Symphony Number 1, which I’ll be playing with the orchestra this term. It’s not, on the whole, technically difficult but there were four slightly tricky runs in the section we worked on:

I fluffed them, the teacher and I laughed, we played them very slowly together, I wrote in a couple of fingerings and then I tried to play them back, and that’s when my fingers stopped doing what they were told. I must have tried more than 20 times. At home, alone, I’d probably have sworn a bit, had some leftover Easter egg and come back to it later. Not an option here and by my 10th failed attempt my teacher had run out of encouraging things to say. I don’t know to describe how excruciating it is getting the same thing wrong 20 times in a row while someone is watching you. But imagine someone is standing two metres away and throwing a beach ball at you and you just keep on dropping it – funny the first couple of times.  Still, I wonder if the memory will be enough to motivate me to practice it properly before next time but I guess it depends on how much good TV is coming up over the next couple of weeks.

Fun music practice: a contradiction in terms?

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There’s been a post-concert (I’ll come back to that later) lull in my viola playing, hence no blogging. In the meantime, I’ve been grappling with getting my oldest child to do her music practice. In the early weeks, she was delighted by the newness of it all and practice was still a novelty. Now, inevitably, I’m trying to strike the illusive balance between pushing her enough that she improves (and, in turn, gets more pleasure from playing) and not pushing her so hard that she gets bored and decide it’s all a bit too much like hard work and that she’d actually rather watch Pingu with her little sister.

Her teacher gave me a tip along the lines of: ‘as far as possible, make her feel practice is her choice  – give her ownership of it, offer her options etc…’. He told me how one set of parents had crafted a mini chest of drawers made from matchboxes, filled it with little notes detailing musical activities and left the kids to choose a draw. Worked a treat apparently. So over the holidays I channelled my inner Blue Peter presenter, and my daughter and I created this little beauty:

Enchanting I’m sure you’ll agree, but not complete without these:

Three Blind Mice, the Grand Old Duke of York, Pop Goes the Weasel, One of the Twinkle variations – I’ll leave you to work it out. We keep it really short, 5-10 mins, which is about as much as her concentration span and my patience can take. Seems to be working for now, watch this space.

Why I need a Tiger Mum

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I am determined that, for the first time in my life, next week, I will go to an orchestra rehearsal having prepared properly. But, when I say ‘determined’, while the spirit is willing, the flesh is pretty unreliable.

I’ve touched on this a lot but I can’t seem to learn the lesson myself so I’m going to risk monotony and repeat: you get out what you put in. Not rocket science I grant you, but the mind has ways of playing tricks…

To pluck an example out of thin air: you sit perched on the threshold of a brand new year, the festivities have more or less destroyed any semblance of a routine that you had put in place, you are struggling to get back on top of work, your children’s school routine, housework, thank you letters, family/friend commitments etc but, nonetheless, in the spirit of New Year Resolutions you commit to practising each evening. The first evening goes well, better than expected even, you find yourself clocking up two hours of practice. But, come the second night, you start up again and realise that there doesn’t seem to have been much of an improvement despite “all that effort” that you put in the night before. You tell yourself, “well, perhaps I’m just not cut out for this, if I had any real talent I’d sound a lot better than this by now, and also there’s something on the telly that I’d really like to watch and I could murder a nice glass of wine or several”. And thus, another hobby slowly bites the dust.

I’m sure I’m not the only person to have been a little in awe of the mums on Meet Britain’s Chinese Tiger Mums, which aired tonight on BBC2. Quite mad in parts, yes, and I’m not about to sign my almost 2-year-old up to Kumon maths classes but I did agree wholeheartedly with the message that sustained effort reaps rewards. In fact, I found myself wondering if one of those Tiger Mums would take me in hand and ensure that I spent all my leisure time practising scales and partaking in other improving activities. I just don’t have the self-discipline to do it myself. But, the truth is there is no short cut, if you want to get better at something, you have to put the time in. As my husband helpfully said to me the other day: “if it was easy, I’d be doing it”.

Back to square two or three

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The point of this blog was partly to keep me playing the viola. “If I don’t practise I’ve got nothing to write about…” I said, possibly a little complacently. So that explains my recent cyber silence: a combination of work, travel, Christmas and the preparations for it, has meant very little practice over the past couple of weeks. I picked my viola up again the other day and really felt the difference (not in a good way). Tricky bars that I’d practiced for ages, and more or less mastered, felt completely foreign to my fingers again.

Before the relapse I felt I’d turned a corner, my bowing had improved, I’d attached a new chinrest and felt the benefit, and everything has started to sound a bit better. So I feel as if I’ve taken several steps backwards. It hasn’t taken  me right back to where I started in September though, which is relief – I covered a lot of ground in an hour of practice. But keeping it up feels impossible at this time of year with lots of family visits, no childcare and no routine. Happily, the season of new starts is almost upon us. In what’s left of 2011 I’ll be trying to come up with a practice (and blog) schedule for next year that I have some hope of sticking to. Bring on 2012.

 

Playing along to a CD (not as easy as it sounds)

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Practising can be quite a lonely and, dare I say it, tedious business at times. Particularly if you’re doing it right i.e. not just playing the bits you like and can play, but repeating the devilishly difficult bars ad nauseum until they start to sound better. To shake things up a bit I tried playing along to one of those accompaniment CDs (I bought a book that came with one a few weeks ago but have only just had a chance to test drive it).

Practically speaking, it’s quite a tricky: there’s very little pause before or after each track so after you’ve selected the backing track you want and pressed play there’s a mad dash to put down the remote control, pick up the viola and bow and then catch up the two or three bars that you’ve already missed. I tried a number of different approaches e.g. having my viola in place, remote control in same hand as bow, pressing play and flinging the remote across the room as I started to play. Not ideal though.

In the end I gave up trying to have any say in what piece I played, started the CD at the beginning and treated it as a series of diverse sight-reading exercises, with accompaniment. I hurtled through a hornpipe and a couple of reels, a poignant Bosnian ‘Hero’s Farewell’, a few bluegrass tunes, then some Hungarian numbers, and finished off with some Christmas carols and a traditional Jewish dance – quite a revelation.

It was good fun, which is the main thing, and playing in a variety of styles feels like a healthy thing to do, musically speaking. Also, playing along with a CD makes it painfully obvious if you’re either out of tune or not keeping time, and, it’s occasionally quite nice not just to hear the sound of your own playing echoing round the room.

It’s been pointed out to me that you can achieve the same effect by playing along to YouTube – particularly useful if you’re learning an orchestral part.

How much should you practise?

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If you really want to improve, that is. I put this question to my viola teacher whose response was “whatever you can manage” and then, when pressed, “ideally, an hour a day”. A bit daunted, I sought solace on one of my favourite sites, Pay the Piper, but it told me more or less the same thing: 15 minutes ‘well-organised’ practice per day for every two grades of progress (so 15 minutes for grades 1-2, 30 minutes for grades 3-4 etc). I wouldn’t know what grade I’m at now, but based on the fact that the last music exam I took was grade 7, I ought to be doing about an hour a day at least 6 days a week.

At the risk of sounding a bit whiny (and obvious), it is incredibly hard to find an hour a day to practise once you’ve factored in small children, work, washing, cooking, the occasional bit of socialising, not to mention the mundane business of eating and sleeping. (There is also the small matter of blogging to fit into the equation, which explains why I’ve been a bit quiet these past few days).

I haven’t been keeping track of my practice time so far but will tot up the minutes/hours this week – and it’ll be interesting to see how far I fall short. In the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions for how I might squeeze an extra hour or three out of each week I’d be most grateful.

The dictaphone never lies

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I’ve just embarked on an experiment because, despite practising regularly, I’m not convinced my playing is actually is improving. That might be because I’m expecting too much too fast, or because as I iron out one problem I notice another, or because I’m just not putting enough time and effort in.

Anyway, to settle the matter, tonight I recorded myself playing three pieces that I’ve been practising regularly for the past couple of months. On 16 December, I’ll deploy the dictaphone again, play the same three pieces, compare the recordings to see if there’s any noticeable difference, and then report back.

Any musicians out there care to join me?

 

The honeymoon is over – life with music begins

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Over the past week I’ve found myself adding ‘viola practice’ to my ‘to do’ list. This is no bad thing in some ways as I’m still at the habit-forming stage. But, with some of the enthusiasm of the first few weeks having ebbed away, I had a creeping sense that the viola was becoming a chore, which is absolutely the last thing it should be. One of the joys of learning or returning to an instrument as an adult, is that you can come to it without any feelings of bondage: you’re playing because you want to, you’re giving yourself an opportunity to switch off from everything else and do something that gives you pleasure. It is, for want of a better expression, you-time.

So if you do start to dread practising, my advice is to get your instrument out, choose something, anything that is completely un-taxing – music that you know can play without really having to think about it at all – and just enjoy the tune and the fact that you’re able to make music. For me it was jigs and carols, and before I knew it, I’d been there an hour.

Better late than never

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One of the few disadvantages to learning to play an instrument as an adult is that you’re likely to be more self-conscious. It’s a subject close to my heart because tomorrow I’m due to have a viola lesson. My last lesson was almost half a lifetime ago, and I could play a lot better then. The teacher reassured me that he wasn’t expecting any Paganini Caprices, but still, the prospect of standing in front of a stranger, scraping through a study or two is a bit daunting, especially when you know what it’s meant to sound like, and how far you are falling short.

It’s a point that sound engineer Ethan Winer touches on in this essay, about his decision to take up the cello at the age of 43. He also offers some practical, analytical advice for string players about how to improve your technique.

Ethan has since become a very accomplished player and something of a YouTube star thanks to his terrific Cello Rondo (in which he plays 37 separate cello parts). It’s innovative, quirky and full of joy – not to be missed.