Leo Baluk, who teaches cello and is one of the faculty members in the YMP program provides a roadmap for practicing. All levels are welcome. As Leo says, “This method of practicing will allow you to build trust, or faith, in your own skills at your instrument. Too much “mindless” or unfocused practicing will only leave you hoping you don’t make a mistake in a stressful situation (lesson, performance, etc.), and chances are, you will actually make a mistake. By practicing small, hyper-focused chunks, you’ll develop a sense of trust in your own skills and be better able to play difficult music/passages ‘on-demand.’”
From the series: Practice Tips from Community Music Center Faculty
1. Listening
- Gives you immediate information on how piece sounds
- Observe
- “Performance” tempo
- Phrasings
- Style
- Listen to different recordings/musicians, find which ones you like
- Ask yourself why you like it
2. Study your music
- Sometimes the title gives you information
- “Sonata in E minor”’
- What is a sonata?
- “Gigue”
- What is a “Gigue”?
- “Sonata in E minor”’
- Study tempo/style/character indications, if any
- Use Google Translate
- “Poco lento e grazioso” – Little slow and graceful
- “Leggiero” – light
- Use Google Translate
- Study a little background about composer/piece of music
- Sometimes you can learn interesting stories/facts behind the music, such as why the composer wrote the piece, what was it written for, etc., etc.
3. Sight-reading at slow tempo
- Slow Tempo allows you to get as much of the notes as possible
- A good way to understand the “big” picture
- Find the difficult parts, make (mental) notes of it to work on later
- Write in preliminary fingerings/bowings that makes the most sense to you
- Chunking
- “Break down” the music into smaller “chunks”
- Start by breaking it down into independent phrases
- Phrases can be chunked down into groups of measures
- 8-bar phrase can be broken down into 2 x 4 measures
- Chunking gives you an obtainable goal to achieve in your current practice session
- It’ll be difficult to be able to play the whole piece after 1, 2 or 3 days of practice. This can be discouraging.
- You might even feel and think to yourself, “Wow, I practiced 1 hour, but I’m not even sure what, if any, I achieved”
- Give yourself a 4-measure goal you know you’ll be able to play by the end of your practicing for that day
- Even more chunking, and repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat
- Sometimes you have to chunk down your chunks even further…
- A 4-measure chunk can be broken down into 2, 2 can be broken down to 1, 1 can be broken down into a couple notes
- Sometimes you’ll come across a difficult single measure
- Ask yourself why and what makes it difficult
- It could be a fingering problem
- It could be a bowing problem
- It could be a left hand-right-hand coordination problem
- It could simply be a technically difficult passage
- Asking yourself and figuring out what makes it difficult solves 50% of your problem
- Ask yourself why and what makes it difficult
- The other 50% fix comes from playing the part sloooooowwwwllly and many many many many many many many many many many many repetitions
- Slow tempo allows you to focus on every aspect and be in control of your movements
- Repetitive practicing teaches your muscles how it needs to move
- ***Repetitive (and slow) practice on small, difficult parts is a million times more effective than repetitive practice of your whole piece from beginning to end hoping you don’t make a mistake***
- “Gluing” it back together
- After you ironed out these small, difficult passages, it’s time to glue the chunks back together.
- After you worked out a difficult measure, play the measure including the measure before it (2-measures)
- Try adding the measure after it (3-measures)
- Try and play the bigger, 4-measure chunk
- Try and play the whole 8-measure phrase
- Niceeee
- Hiking up to performance-tempo
- Now that you can play all, or large chunks of your piece slowly, it’s time to start pushing the tempo faster
- Remind yourself of “Performance” tempo by listening, or checking metronome marking
- Let’s say performance tempo is “Allegro” Quarter note = 120
- Let’s say you can play the piece at quarter note = 40
- You’ll only overwhelm yourself if you jump from 40 to 120
- Instead, push yourself incrementally, from 40 to 42
- The idea is that while objectively you’re going faster (42 is ever so slightly faster than 40), you won’t necessarily notice the difference
- Still able to play? Great! Push it a little further, maybe 44
- You want to find a tempo where you are just barely able to manage it
- It’s a challenging tempo, but not too overwhelming that there’s no way you can get there soon
- Sooner or later, you’ll get up to your performance-tempo!
- Let’s say you can play the piece at quarter note = 40