On Practicing
17/11/13 22:04
Last week I wrote about the link between LISTENING and SLOW PRACTICE. Today I’d like to suggest that you spend a little time with your tuner during your warmup and beyond. And not surprisingly, that subject also links back to slow practice.
Spending even five careful minutes playing whole notes with a tuner will benefit all subsequent aspects of your practice session, just as slow practicing does, and for some of the same reasons.
Unless we are very careful players, most of us go through our practice routines doing the same, habitual things that make us feel comfortable; not the things that make us better. And one of those habitual, counterproductive things many of us do is backing off on our air to “favor" difficult passages, difficult attacks, out of tune notes, etc. We manipulate notes and lines, rather than using our air to play them.
Using the tuner at the beginning of the practice session helps us break that cycle of daily, counterproductive habits by forcing us to use our air. If our air isn’t consistent, some notes will be out of tune or “out of color” (sounding different from the other notes); we will see (on the tuner) and/or hear that immediately, and we instinctively use more air to fix it, because that’s the only thing that works.
So after (or even during) your warmup, pull out your tuner for just a few minutes. It will get your practice session off on the right foot in all kinds of good ways!
Spending even five careful minutes playing whole notes with a tuner will benefit all subsequent aspects of your practice session, just as slow practicing does, and for some of the same reasons.
Unless we are very careful players, most of us go through our practice routines doing the same, habitual things that make us feel comfortable; not the things that make us better. And one of those habitual, counterproductive things many of us do is backing off on our air to “favor" difficult passages, difficult attacks, out of tune notes, etc. We manipulate notes and lines, rather than using our air to play them.
Using the tuner at the beginning of the practice session helps us break that cycle of daily, counterproductive habits by forcing us to use our air. If our air isn’t consistent, some notes will be out of tune or “out of color” (sounding different from the other notes); we will see (on the tuner) and/or hear that immediately, and we instinctively use more air to fix it, because that’s the only thing that works.
So after (or even during) your warmup, pull out your tuner for just a few minutes. It will get your practice session off on the right foot in all kinds of good ways!