Learning to listen

Learning to listen

          Listening is one of the most important and perhaps least mentioned aspects of music education. It might seem like a really obvious thing but yet again the details of listening are far from obvious, at least that is when you are really listening. So what does it mean to listen?

         Listening can be performed in various ways depending on the context. We might listen to a song we want to learn. We play it over and over trying to pick up the details that really bring a piece of music into focus. This type of listening could be thought of as microscopic. We’re looking for details that might otherwise get missed without a deeper attention to details. We might listen to other musicians we happen to be playing with. If a group or ensemble of some sort hopes to play together they’re hopefully listening to each. You’d be surprised how many groups don’t listen to each other. And then there’s the most obvious but arguably least discussed type of listening. Listening to ourselves.

         As a music teacher I have worked with hundreds of students who, at first, couldn’t play with a metronome. At first. Their problem was not a lack of talent. Nor was it a lack of rhythm. And it wasn’t just because they were not advanced enough to play with a metronome. Their problem was almost exclusively a listening problem. They had not learned to divide their attention between what they were doing and what the metronome was doing. And to be fair, its quite difficult at first. This gets us to the crux of the whole issue. Dividing your attention. The ability to musically focus your attention on two different things at the same time is a crucial skill any musician would do well to develop. Fortunately its not as hard as it might seem if the musician starts slowly.
       A great classical guitarist I know told me a story of a performance he gave in front of a world famous guitarist. After the performance he sought out feedback from the famous guitarist. The guitarist told him he technically played everything right but that he had failed at one thing and his performance was greatly flawed as a result. His one failure? A failure to listen, he said.

Earl Scruggs, the Backward Roll, and good taste

When I first started out learning bluegrass style banjo I had no "method" or direction to learning the instrument and style. And by, "style", I mean the entire list of possibilities that are out there for bluegrass banjo. Melodic style, single string style, jazz style, newgrass style, "Bela" Style, "Reno" Style, and of course the ever popular "Scruggs" Style. When I first started out I had a book of tablature that included a mix of Scruggs, single string, and melodic so my earliest stages of learning had a bit of all that. Looking back I'm not sure that was the best thing for my playing. I would argue that it wasn't but hindsight is 20/20 I guess.

As I slowly improved at banjo playing I started branching out into as much music as I could. I went through a Jazz phase and learned a bunch of standards. I worked up lots of fiddle tunes in the melodic style and wrote my own melodic licks. I learned a few Bela Fleck tunes that I really liked. I even messed around a tiny little bit with a classical piece. Some of those musical ventures were more successful than others and it's obvious to me looking back that I was often trying to play above what I was really capable of. I'm still guilty of this and feel like its my weakest link in my playing. It's great to push yourself but at a certain point you have look at your limitations, accept them, and move on. John Hartford or maybe it was Johnny Cash who said that a style is created as much by limitation of talent as talent itself.

After trying to learn all this high-tech banjo music I realized after a while that I don't even really like to listen to high-tech banjo music. Well that's not exactly true but I didn't like to listen to a lot of the music I was trying to play. I mean I don't love to hear melodic banjo all that much. I don't just LOVE jazz banjo. I appreciate and am amazed by folks like Pat Cloud, Bela Fleck, and any number of great jazz banjo players. It's fun to play but I realized I'd much rather hear Earl Scruggs than any banjo player or banjo music for that matter. Why wasn't I focused on playing that music? So about a year or so ago, after playing banjo for 12 years, I really started to get deeper and deeper into "Scruggs" style and try to understand the finer points of his playing. I realized I should have been doing this from the start.

What is it about Earl Scruggs' playing that is so captivating to so many people? Good question. This has been heavily discussed elsewhere so I won't get to into all that but when it comes to the finer points of his playing I'm starting to see what it is he's doing that's so cool. Here's a quick list that's aside from things like, TONE, SPEED, NOTE ARTICULATION, and SONGWRITING. This is a short list of technical things.

1. He plays the melody, and plays it really well.
2. He can change between any roll, at any speed, any time he wants.
3. He's a master of subtle phrasing, especially in the 3rd Em position. (could warrant a whole post or more)
4. He has strong pull offs. (understatement)
5. He's a master of the backward roll.

Read that last one again. THE BACKWARD ROLL. Yeah that roll, the hardest roll to play. Now I'm sure we could go on and on about Earl Scruggs' technique and find lots of other things but I want to look at the backward roll for a minute. What is so special about it? Here's why I think it's unique and special. For starters, It's really hard to play. The middle finger is the weakest of the 3 and to start your roll on that finger takes a lot more work. The thumb is the strong digit. That's why the forward roll and alternating are so much easier. It does most of the work in those rolls. Not so the backward, the middle does the work and plays most of the melody notes. The backward also breaks up the pulse of the notes and a quick switch from a forward to backward or vice-versa creates cool syncopation. This is most evident in Scruggs' playing in the songs (at least that I know of):

• Ground Speed (The first two rolls of the song are backward and then switch to forward. Really tough. Call it the Ground Speed roll.)
• Home Sweet Home (He masterfully plays the roll on the high D string by deftly switching out of a backward roll to a forward. Especially in the 2nd B part right before he plays those quick staccato chord vamps. Very weird!)
• Shuckin' the Corn (In the first few measures he syncopates his rolls with a lightning quick change from a forward to a backward then back to a forward. Really strange and difficult!)
• Ballad of Jed Clampet (The last section where he plays C, C# dim, then D is somewhat odd and is a long string of backward rolls even for Scruggs.)

These examples are just a few of the most obvious to me and I'm sure a more detailed look at his playing would find more examples. Of course the "G run" that is possibly the most recognizable lick in Scruggs style includes a quick backward roll. Thinking more about the backward roll in bluegrass banjo I feel like the backward roll is a big aspect of Scruggs' playing that a lot of banjoists' neglect. I know I could stand to work on it more.

Ultimately the thing about Earl Scruggs' playing is that he can consistently surprise you. Just when you think you know what he's up to you'll find some lick or phrase that doesn't fall into any pattern and can only be explained to Scruggs trying to play something that compliments the song at hand. For examples see:

• Little girl in Tennessee (kick off)
• Foggy Mountain Rock (those crazy slides)
• Down the road (just try to play that roll)
• Bugle Call Rag (his classic chromatic lick over the vamp)
• HELL JUST ABOUT ANYTHING HE DID! 

And perhaps that's the ultimate lesson Scruggs has to teach us. Not how to play a great banjo break at lightning speed. Not technical things like rolls or licks and such. But, good taste. Can you find any example where he OVERPLAYS ANYTHING? If it's been recorded I've not heard it. A good buddy of mine who's a heck of a great carpenter dropped this little tidbit of wisdom. He said that the hardest thing to achieve in this world is simplicity. On the surface that might seem like a contradictory statement but the banjo playing of Earl Scruggs would suggest otherwise. Happy picking.

Research

I've been doing quite a bit of research to help me write this book on practicing. One little manual I've come across is called "On Practicing" by Ricardo Iznaola. His bio claims that he is "one of the most seminal players, teachers, and thinkers of the guitar (classical) today." Judging by his pocket guide to practicing it looks like he knows an awful lot about practicing. In fact several of his tips and methods are often identical to what you might have read on this blog. Here are a few examples.

A. Building time-in which purely technical concerns are addressed. (This is the same thing as "knowing where the fingers go" that I've often preached.)

B.Interpretive time-in which musicianly elements of expression are tried out and incorporated into the piece (This stage is similar to my "Phrase by phrase" and "becoming musical" stage.)

C. Performing time-in which the integration of technique and musicianship occurs, playing through complete pieces, paying attention to imagined circumstances of a real performance, stage fright, etc. (This is the essentially the same thing as my "shaping" stage of practicing.)

This was another great quote that almost sounds exactly like something I wrote the other day. "When one wants to just 'fool around' with the instrument, one should do so by all means. Be aware, however, that this is not practicing." I couldn't have said it better myself.

Metronomes, John Hartford, and doing things right.

 

                  What is it about the metronome that can cause distress in music students? So often I’ve brought the metronome to start working on a musical passage and you can immediately sense the discomfort. The worry and perhaps even fear that creeps up on the musician new to the metronome is unnecessary. Maybe its just a fear of the unknown. When I first started working with the metronome I was excited. This is what real musicians do I thought, they practice with a metronome. Its to bad I had no idea what I was doing back then but, at least I was trying I guess.

         Its been so long I can scarcely remember what I did when I used a metronome when I was first starting out. I’m pretty sure I was playing too fast. Most folks do. This is one of the most common mistakes of metronome practice. If there’s nobody around who knows to tell you to slow down chances are you are going to play to fast. And too fast equals what? That’s right, poor muscle memory and sloppy music. I know I like to belabor this point. You’ll thank me one day.

         I’ve become so accustomed to practicing with a metronome I can hardly live without a steady beat. During solo performances I often find myself tapping my foot to help lock in the groove. One of my newest musical pursuits has been learning to play old time fiddle, as if I didn’t have enough to work on already! I’m finally starting to perform with the fiddle on a few tunes I can play pretty well. Learning the fiddle has been a dream of mine for years and years. If you’ve ever picked up a fiddle and tried to coax a few sounds out of one you know how difficult it is to make a fiddle sound like anything other than a dying cat, much less sound like music. But as if learning to play fiddle wasn’t difficult enough I decided I wanted to learn to dance while I played fiddle.

          I never felt like I had the time to get serious about practicing fiddle but a few years ago something happened and I resolved that I couldn’t wait any longer. I found myself traveling alone and listening to lots of John Hartford’s music. A bootleg of John Hartford’s from 1988 had ended up on my mp3 player and I hardly listened to anything else for about 2 months. Hartford often performed solo and switched off playing banjo, guitar, and fiddle during his performances. Hartford’s ability as a entertainer and performer are legendary and listening back to this bootleg its easy to see why he was such a beloved figure in the Bluegrass/Old time music community. The music I heard on this bootleg absolutely knocked me over. Hartford’s virtuosity was astounding.

         He danced a shuffle rhythm on a piece of plywood while he played jaw dropping fiddle and banjo music of the highest caliber. And that shuffle rhythm was locked in and just as tight as a bolt holding up the Golden Gate bridge. I couldn’t believe something like that was even possible. I had read an article in the Fretboard journal where Jamie Hartford, John’s son, had mentioned that after a show his father would get the metronome out and work on his timing some more (Fretboard Journal). AFTER a performance. This was a person who knew how to use a metronome. After listening to that music constantly for 2 months I resolved that I had to at least try to learn how to play fiddle and dance. I loved it so much I had to get closer to it. Now if I hoped to do all that I’d better be sure I knew how to work with a metronome.

         As you might expect, it would prove even more difficult than I imagined. I purchased a video where Hartford explains how he danced while he played. He slowly broke his moves down literally step by step. I poured over the video time and time again but it still made no sense to me. And that was just the dancing, the fiddle seemed equally impossible. Dragging the bow across the strings produced sounds only the deaf could appreciate and getting my fingers to find the right place to play notes in tune was like trying to nail a small tack with a sledgehammer. I’d miss every time. This was going to be much harder than I thought.

         I was going to have to accept that I was a complete and total beginner, despite getting accomplished on the guitar and banjo. The fiddle/dance thing was a whole ‘nother beast. I was going to have to learn to really slow down, not just musically speaking but in terms of how fast I was going to learn to play. If I hoped to have any chance of pulling off this fiddle/dancing thing and not embarrassing myself I needed to not make the same mistakes I had made with the guitar and banjo. I realized that instead of feeling overwhelmed by the whole thing, instead, I had a golden opportunity. Here was an opportunity to really do things right. This was a chance to really put to work all that I knew about how to practice. I would have to really walk the walk, not just talk the talk. I also knew that the metronome could help me if I would be patient enough to slow it down and really listen to it. The wise man’s words came back to me once more but this time I felt no fear in the words, “It will be very difficult for you, the ego always gets in the way.” Not this time I decided, not this time.

What is muscle memory?

 

Muscle Memory, Friend or Foe.

         Can you tie your shoes? Do you type? Can you type even moderately fast say, 35 words per minute or more? Can you write? Draw or paint? Can you ride a bike? Drive a car? Play a video game? Can eat your dinner with a knife and fork? These are examples of tasks that require muscle memory. Muscle memory is the ability to remember a task after it is repeated several times. Eventually that task becomes “automatic”, meaning that you don’t have to think about the actual physical details of the task. 

         For example, when was the last time you had to think about tying your shoelaces? I challenge you to try and dissect all the movements necessary to tie your shoes.  It’s quite complicated and yet most likely a completely involuntary process for you.  Chances are that you were taught the movements at a very young age and you can’t even remember when or how you learned to tie your shoes. But every day you tie your shoes without fail. That’s muscle memory at work.

         Muscle memory is kind of miraculous thing. It allows us to perform complicated tasks without much thought. If all is going well the movements seem to be on autopilot. The great songwriter and multi-instrumentalist John Hartford said that if he was playing well he was just two eyeballs floating up above his hands and he might even be thinking about something else. And John Hartford could play fast. This could only happen with muscle memory.

         The thing about muscle memory is that it doesn’t care much about your good intentions. It only remembers what you tell it. If you tell it do something poorly over and over then you’ll “remember” it that way. A great example of this is sloppy handwriting. My penmanship is terrible. Even if I try and write nice and smooth I can’t. Muscle memory controls how well and how clean your handwriting is. I paid little or no attention to my handwriting when I was in my early years of school. I had no patience to sit there and trace those lines over and over again getting it perfect every time. Now with the advent of computers I hardly ever write. My muscle memory for handwriting is back to the elementary school level.   

         Tracing the letter A over and over is how you were trained to write. First upper case A then the lower case a. You probably started out with printing then eventually you were trained to write in cursive. I gave up on cursive long ago. My cursive is illegible at this point. I made a half-hearted attempt to improve my handwriting a few years ago but gave up when I realized how much work I had to do. It’s to bad I didn’t do it right the first time maybe my hand writing wouldn’t like a total doofus’.

         Muscle memory might seem like a mysterious thing but in reality its fairly straightforward. Any time we think, or move, or perform any action our nerves fire an electrical impulse and hopefully, if we’re healthy, our body responds to that electrical impulse, like tying our shoes for example. If we perform an action enough times our nerves get wrapped with an insulation called Myelin. It literally grows around the nerve.

         Myelin is like taking a single strand of wire and reinforcing it with extra layers. Scientists have actually been able to photograph it and you can see the layers wrapped around the nerves like tree rings. On some nerve fibers scientists have seen the myelin wrapped as many as fifty times. That’s muscle memory!

         When you were taught to tie your shoes the nerves that send the signal to your hands get wrapped with Myelin which speeds the firing and improves the accuracy of the electrical impulse. By the time you’re twenty years old you’ve accumulated a lot of myelin around your shoe tying nerves. You can likely do it with your eyes closed. That’s the myelin speeding up the signals through your nervous system. The thing is, if you stop tying your shoes, let say for years, you might have trouble tying your shoes. You would have to relearn the skill just like with my handwriting. I never write by hand anymore so my handwriting has gotten very sloppy. There’s no myelin reinforcing it.

          Myelin only grows when you repeatedly send a signal through your nervous system. In other words, it won’t grow unless you practice! By practicing what we’re really doing is reinforcing a movement or skill with this myelin stuff. Its like building up our nervous system muscles for heavy lifting. But as soon as we stop practicing it stops growing just like our muscles would stop growing if we stopped lifting weights.

         So what we’ve been calling muscle memory could be called “myelin memory.” It is allowing us to perform the complicated task of playing a musical instrument. And therein is the beautiful and perhaps brutal truth about muscle memory. You have to practice to develop muscle memory and it would behoove you to get it right the first time because myelin will remember all the mistakes you make. Get things right the first time and you won’t have to relearn anything. Get it wrong the first time and you’re stuck with a bad habit unless you start over from scratch and totally relearn (or re-myelinate everything), the right way.

Head Games

 

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Head games. (Practice for the mind)

         For a short time I used to enter guitar and banjo competitions.  The idea of a music competition is a bit ridiculous from the start.  How could music be judged in a  competition? The answer of course is that it can’t. Music is expression. At best, it’s human emotions transmitted through organized sound, it’s a feeling man, it’s cosmic, or something like that. How could expression be judged? Mostly competitions judge technical ability. How well one’s fingers work while playing a difficult piece of music. Perhaps most tellingly they judge how calm one’s mind can stay in the face of anxiety and pressure. Those competitions were some of the most stressful performances I’ve ever given. I mean you’re being judged after all. The ego is on the line and it doesn’t bow out easily.

         I don’t regret entering competitions even though I’d steer clear of them now. The competitions pushed me to develop my technique and knowledge of the instruments to higher levels. It also pushed me to perform in high pressure situations. My very first competition was pretty much an outright disaster. I had planned on performing three guitar instrumentals with the aid of a 2^nd guitarist providing rhythmic accompaniment. Unfortunately my backup guitarist failed to show and I was struck with terror at the thought of performing alone.  

         My heart rate sped up as my hands nervously twitched from the anxiety that built as I waited impatiently for the competition to start. Maybe the contest officials sensed that I needed to get put out of my misery and I was chosen first. I would have to literally face the music I had hoped to play and impress everyone with. As you might imagine my performance was painful to hear.

         My self-consciousness had crippled my confidence. Music I had gone over smoothly so many times at home was quickly buried under a mountain of fear and anxiety. I had expected the performance to go a certain way and when it didn’t my mind froze. I wasn’t prepared to adapt. I wasn’t ready to change. Most importantly, I wasn’t really focused on music. I was just plain scared. I needed to learn to adapt to unexpected musical situations and get control of my anxiety.

         A year later I found myself on a solo camping trip in Leavenworth, Washington about 30 minutes from the same bluegrass festival that hosted the guitar competition I had entered and bombed in. I realized that the bluegrass festival was happening that particular weekend and they would be having the competition again. I had my guitar with me, maybe I should go enter just for fun? I hadn’t prepared for it in any way but I thought it might be fun to go play. In the year since the last competition I had spent some time working up solo guitar versions of old traditional tunes like Reuben’s Train and Black Mountain Rag. These versions weren’t especially flashy and not the type of thing that would do well at a guitar competition but they were fun to play.

         I thought “Why not” and drove over to the festival grounds and entered the competition. When it was my turn to take the stage I had some butterflies but nothing like the year before. I didn’t really care that much if I did well in the competition or not. Mostly I wanted to see friends and play these arrangements for a live audience. I hadn’t been rehearsing the songs intensely so they were still a bit rough around the edges but I ended up playing them pretty well. This time I around I actually got into the music and was able to forget myself.

         To my surprise after my performance the crowd cheered really loud. Louder than for any other competitors up to that point. I was amazed. Several people came up to me afterward and told me they thought I had done really well.  Despite all that I didn’t really imagine myself doing well in the standings. The thought of placing hadn’t really crossed my mind and besides I felt satisfied with how I had played because it was such an improvement from the previous year.

         Right after my performance a guitarist took the stage whose technical ability clearly surpassed mine and everybody else’s. This guitarist got the crowd’s attention with his hot licks and classy playing. Well, here was the best guitarist in the competition. I knew it, the crowd knew it, and I’m sure this awesome guitarist knew it. All that was left was 2^nd and 3^rd place and honestly I even considered leaving before the “winners” were announced.

         As cheesy as it sounds I felt like I had already won. I played infinitely better than I had the year before. Anything I had to prove at that point had been proved but I was really shocked when they called my name to come accept 2^nd place! Wow, I mean I thought maybe 3^rd place but 2^nd place just seemed crazy. 

         I hadn’t even prepared for this competition and entered it unexpectedly and I somehow got 2^nd place. I was thrilled, but the biggest compliment I got about my playing wasn’t the 2^nd place from the judges it came from the winner himself. After the winners were announced he came up to me and told me he really like my playing and arrangements and praised them for being “really musical.” Wow. Placing in the competition was a really nice feeling, not because I felt that I was that much of a better guitarist than the other competitors but because the judges and audience seemed to say, "Nice job! We enjoyed that."

         I got 2^nd place by just doing my thing and not worrying about winning. It didn’t matter that my arrangements were nothing at all like what the other competitors were playing. In fact that might have helped my chances since they were so different. I might as well have won I felt so sky high.

         Would I have done so well if I had worried and practiced, and over practiced before the competition? Maybe, but maybe not. I might have been all worked up and nervous and worried about not playing well. I think the lesson to be learned from my surprising success at this particular competition is that a musician’s mental state is incredibly important. Indeed, it’s the most important element of a musicianship. Getting control over ones mental state is an often difficult and mysterious element of being a musician. Fortunately improving one’s mind for music is possible and easily done if a musician asks him/herself the right questions.

What Practice Is. What Playing Is.

What Practice Is.  What Playing Is.

         Let’s get a few things clear right from the start. Practicing and playing are not the same thing. I think both are important in a musicians development but a distinction needs to be made. Practice is making the decision to improve something specific in your playing. Playing can be anything from jamming your favorite song of the moment, noodling a few notes from a scale, lick, or song, or it could be making noise with no focus whatsoever. Practice is narrowing your focus to a specific goal or set of goals and maintaining a focus only on that goal. Playing doesn’t need to have a goal other than getting your instrument in your hands and getting it to make sounds.

         To put it another way, practice is playing with the intent of improving an element of ones musicianship. This is where many people go astray. 

         Here’s a typical scenario. A music student goes to take a lesson. The teacher says, “Here’s some music to go home and practice.” The student goes home and tries to play the assigned music. Since the student doesn’t really know how to practice they never quite get it just right. They go back to the teacher and the teacher says “OK, well you need to practice some more. Here’s another song to work on.” The student works on another song that they don’t quite get. Now the student can sort of play two songs.  By this point they are no longer practicing when they play these songs. They’re just playing, and perhaps what they play doesn’t sound so hot.

         Perhaps the student starts to feel like they’re not really good at music. They feel like they’re missing some ingredient in their DNA that prevents them from playing well. An unfortunate and pervasive notion in society today. At this point the student may not strive to go much further with their music. Maybe they keep learning songs but they never understand the method to improve their skills. Maybe they give up altogether. 

         I took several lessons with guitarists that I admired and not one of them told me how to get better. I even had one tell me that my left hand technique needed work but made no mention of what was wrong and how I should fix it. In fact, my first few banjo lessons were exactly like how I described in the above scenario. I learned all the material as best I could but I had no idea how to practice it “properly.”

         How did the folks I went to for lessons learn to play so well?  Perhaps these teachers simply didn’t know how to practice either.  It is possible they had been taught so well they never got into any of the “bad habits” you so often hear about. Good practice was elementary to them and how to practice seemed obvious and not worth mentioning. Perhaps they just weren’t good communicators. Or maybe they just flat out didn’t care whether their music students learned how to play well or not.

         The thing about music is that getting better at playing music means you have to get better at practicing music. They are the same thing. If you don’t learn how to practice better you won’t play better. It’s very simple really. A devotion to improving your playing should start with a decision to understanding what practice is and what the best way to approach it is. 

         It is absolutely possible to get better at music every time you practice. Every time. You start your practice at point A and when you get to point B you have somehow improved your playing. It’s that “somehow” stuff I hope to shed some light on. I know I was frustrated for years. I worked harder and harder but somehow my playing just kind of stayed the same. 

         Practicing should place a great deal of focus on elements of your music that are not good. Things that are in need of improvement. It can be great fun to sit down and play a song you’ve played a hundred times before but it’s not practice. Practice goes after weak points, reinforcing what you already play well won’t improve you as a musician.

         Practicing is a constantly evolving process. It should not be the same each time. To grow you need to keep tweaking and adjusting your routine. In fact practice should never be considered routine. It’s about evaluating where you are musically and making an honest assessment of what you need to do to get where you want to go. Then move in that direction.

         To make continued improvements in one’s playing one needs to make continued improvements in one’s practicing. But how?  The next 6 chapters will lay out what I consider to be key elements of practicing.  They are:

1.   Playing with ease.

2.   Goal setting

3.   Knowing where your fingers go.

4.   Developing muscle memory.

5.   Polishing things up

These are not presented in order of importance as they are all equally important. However, I feel that in learning how to practice this is an appropriate progression.  Feel free to jump around as you need to while learning about these concepts but remember that to practice well  (and ultimately play well) you’ll need to pull all these concepts together into a cohesive whole.

         For now let’s sum up.

          

·   Your practice habits need to equal your goals. 

·     Become of aware of when you’re practicing and when you’re playing. These two things are different.  They’re both important but a distinction should be made.

·     Improving at music every time you practice is possible with a thoughtful approach.

·     Practicing spotlights elements of playing that are weak and in need of improvement.

·     The rules for practicing are the same for the virtuoso and the amateur. There is a right way to do things and a wrong way. Make a choice to practice the right way and you’ll always improve.

"Deep" Practice

Here's a useful little piece of practice advice I came across on the Musician's Way website. It talks about the concept of "Deep" practice. It involves 3 components.

1. Discovery
2. Repetition
3. Evaluation

These concepts are not unlike some of my own ideas about practicing. I might add a few thoughts to these components.

Discovery:

During the discovery phase pay particular attention to the fingerings, bowings, etc. There is usually a lot of information to remember. Don't get in a hurry to learn it all at once. Take it in small chunks. The article also mentions singing or vocalizing the music. This is key! Whatever music you want to play you should listen to that music all the time. It needs to be firmly in your head before you start trying to practice it. It will get in your fingers much faster.

Repetition:

Their advice about repetition is spot on. Learn the music in small parts and slowly join the pieces together. Playing SLOW during this stage is super important. I wrote a blog post outlining how to practice slowly with a metronome a few years ago. They encourage playing a passage 3 times before moving. That's cool but I say go with what feels right. Sometimes it will be more, sometimes less depending on how hard the passage is for you.

Evaluation:

This is where you're looking for mistakes. What do you do if you're making mistakes? Ask why. In this older blog post I describe ways to fix those mistakes you might be having. Using a recording device is the best to hear what you need to fix.

Another excellent article from Musician's Way. Happy Practicing.

Slow Practice is the best practice

I've come across some excellent research regarding how slow practice is the best.  Through the The Bullet Proof Musician website I read some interesting information on slow practice.  The first bit of info comes from Dr. Frank Wilson, a hand specialist who has studied the connection of how our brain and hands work together.  An article of his was uploaded the Bulletproof site and this little article had some really interesting points.  I'll try to sum it up.

• The Cerebellum is the part of the brain that controls fine motor skill.  This part of the brain works best when left alone.  Remember this post of mine? It's about playing through the subconscious.
• So it turns out that the part of the brain that controls the playing of music sort of runs the hands on an auto-pilot when everything is up and running.  Of course it will only work as well as you have practiced. 

So, we want to practice enough to where we can get to a point to where we can let our hands take over and not "think."  How do we do that?

PRACTICE SLOWLY of course.

The Bulletproof website mentioned golfer Ben Hogan, someone I had actually never heard of since I'm not into golf, who is one of the great legends of the game.  Can you guess how he honed his swing to perfection?  That's right, SLOW MOTION practice.  Hogan perfected his swing through years of carefully analyzing his movements at a snail's pace. 

These links are excellent insights into how slow, observant, and mindful practice yield the best and fastest results. 

Check them out.

Gaining more precision

For the longest time the Bach piece I've been working on has caused a touch of nervous anxiety.  Just the thought of picking up the guitar and starting to work on it would get me feeling a bit jittery.  It's such an undertaking.  And of course I really want to play it well.  No actually, that's not true.  I want to play it beautifully.

You see this is all very simple really.  My ego wants what my intuition instinctively knows to be truly false.  In other words: I'm not ready, I know it, but I wish I was, but I don't know if I'll ever get there.  So, I worry.  It's so hard to not make mistakes with this piece.  There's so many dang notes.  There's so many difficult moves to make.

In my desire to regain some sense of control over this entropy I decided to take several steps backward and my results have been encouraging.  I came across this video of Glenn Gould.  In the video an old childhood friend and fellow pianist talks of a unique technique they both learned from the same teacher.  With this technique the piano student taps the fingers of a relaxed hand to help train it to play. Using the opposite hand the student would literally tap the fingers of the other hand.  This to me seems like an excellent way to develop precise moves for piano playing.  You're not even moving the muscles of the hand actively, you're moving them from the "outside".  The reason to do this , to me anyway, seems that you're training the movements with absolutely no tension.  As soon as you start "trying" to play you're tensing your muscles potentially slowing them down and making mistakes.

In a way you're telling the hand what moves to make without the hand actually "thinking" about it.   There are several articles that go into more detail about why this technique works.  To me it seems obvious.   No tension is allowed into the hands while they play.

This reminded me of a technique I've used quite a bit of but have neglected lately.  The "touch" technique.  It's simple.  With your right hand you touch the string very lightly before you play a note.  The benefits of this technique I find to be invaluable.

Think of it.  You never play a wrong note with this technique.  You have to go slow enough that you touch the string first.  This trains precision, accuracy, and you have to absolutely know you're playing the right note before you play it.  Over time you've trained the movements much more accurately and with a minimum of muscle tension.

Try this:

• No matter what style/instrument you play practice by simply touching your finger/pick (right hand for guitars, banjo's, mandolin's, etc.)  to the string BEFORE you sound a note. 
• At first this technique forces you to go slow (a good thing) and allows you more time to get everything in place before you sound a note.
• Over time increase your speed and you'll find that your picking accuracy will be much better.

Good luck

Playing through the subconscious

I've been playing the Bach piece more and more in front of people.  I'm pretty much forcing myself to perform it in front of people.  I figure if I perform it enough in low pressure situations I'll have less nervous energy when I perform it in front of a larger audience.  I even performed it out at an actual gig about a month ago.   My nerves were pretty wound up and I hit a few duds and got a bit lost for a second but overall I was happy with the performance.  A classical guitarist told me that it would be 2 years before I would be ready to take this out of the oven.  I'm not quite to the 2 year mark so that performance was a bit ahead of schedule.  I'm figuring that by next spring it should be on lockdown and I'll have full confidence to perform it.   It's pretty close to that now.  But how do I break through to next level?  How do I get this thing where I hardly make a mistake or make none at all?  Most importantly though, how do I make this piece the most musical?

I've been noticing that when I'm playing the piece my mind will wander in and out of consciousness.  At some moments I'm having an inner dialogue that is not really helpful.  In fact it is distracting.  Maybe I'm thinking about my hands or feeling nervous.  Then a moment later I'm focusing only on the sound I'm hearing come from the guitar and suddenly I'm not really there at all.  There is only the sound and the music.  I'm controlling it but not actively.  It's just happening all on its own.  This is an amazing place to be.  This is where music happens.

 I've read about this musical state in a couple of books on the subject.  One notable book is "The Inner Game of Music" by Barry Green.  This book is an excellent introduction to playing through the subconscious.  It highlights lots of exercises designed with the goal of getting to that place I mentioned earlier.

I've also read some quotes from John Hartford where he mentions that he really tried to play through the subconscious.  He didn't want to be thinking much about the music at all.  In one quote he said that when he's playing his best he's just a set of eyes floating above his hands, detached.  He's no longer thinking.  Charlie Parker also said something to this effect.  He practiced until he could just forget everything.  Here's a quote I found.  I've seen it a few places.

"You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail."

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/charlie_parker.html#tySCM1tITlhqshiy.99

Clearly something is going on here we can learn to use in our music making but how do you get there?  Here are a few suggestions to help you play through the subconscious.

• You've got to know your fingerings.  If you hope to play subconsciously you can't be thinking about what finger goes where.  Know that stuff cold.  Learn it then forget it so to speak.  Or at least learn it, then stop thinking about it.
• When practicing focus only on the sound of your instrument.  Don't think about anything else.  You'll find that sound is telling you all you need to know
• Hopefully music lifts us out of everyday existence.  It's transportive.   Liberating.  Strive for that feeling of detaching from day to day complacency.  Try to go somewhere else with your music making.  
• If you hit technical problems go back and work on those problems when you find them.  Maybe you need to revisit some fingerings or improve your muscle memory over certain passages.  Playing through the subconscious means that mistakes should be few and far between.  They should be so small that they won't upset the music.  Everyone makes mistakes but not everyone makes music.  
• Don't worry about making mistakes when playing through the subconscious.  Worry about making music.

I hope that helps.