Gene asked me what my morning was looking like. I replied that had written a practice plan. "Want to see it?" I asked and handed him the paper. He scrutinized it and then said. "If this was my to do list that I had to accomplish today I would have no idea what to do. Roman numeral three... phrygian? raised three?"
One of the things I do with students is play through something with them (most recently it was a duet we were learning) and then set a timer for 3 minutes and have them practice without me interjecting and then we play it again. We do this a few times. Its a low brain power teaching plan for me, but it is also an intentional strategy to get them to understand that even a few minutes of practicing (on the hot seat in front of me) can improve their playing and their fun not abstractly for perfection but for the experience of playing something. It also lets me see how they are practicing and if they are solving problems or just repeating, and what they hear as problems... So today on my practice sheet I gave myself this practice method for Bach. It works well with something you might have learned fairly well but need to perfect/clean up/pay more attention to/need renewed interest for.
In my 13 minutes of practicing before playing through Gigue I started with the obviously out of tune double stops which led me to thinking about how much I am blocking or rolling them, how they are moving. I found a few bowings that weren't working and fixed those, and I changed a fingering. I practiced m.13-15 with double stops focusing on my hand position and shifting in and out of it (for cleaning up the intonation). I also started wondering about how the second half fit with the first half in my style approach to the bowing and I have some questions... Then I played through... I immediately noticed the things I had practiced, and also those questions that need clear answers.
I think that frameworks/tasks for practice are really important. Sometimes we need those specific tasks in advance: fix the bowing. work on the double stops. analyze the style. But sometimes we just need a doable framework for practicing that allows us to drop in and find those things...
In my second session of practicing I wrote in some of my decisions about the chords and their flow and worked on that more. Drawing out the sound with the bow: that physical feeling of drawing out versus attacking or hitting the chord... I noticed this time that m. 5-8 correlate to m. 13-15 and made my approach more similar. I decided that my approach is generally cohesive in the bowing but I need to keep my minds attention throughout similar... Tried to tune the leap down to the c#... and played through again.
One of the most difficult things with students is when they practice something and it doesn't stick. What I tell them is that we don't know how long certain things take to learn... a day, a week, a hundred times... and also that we can come back and ask why? did I miss something in my technique that could fix this problem? (Sometimes I know what that is for my students and sometimes I don't... hence, more study with a PHD!)
I think I'll move on to another movement and come back to some of those issues tomorrow.
One of the things I do with students is play through something with them (most recently it was a duet we were learning) and then set a timer for 3 minutes and have them practice without me interjecting and then we play it again. We do this a few times. Its a low brain power teaching plan for me, but it is also an intentional strategy to get them to understand that even a few minutes of practicing (on the hot seat in front of me) can improve their playing and their fun not abstractly for perfection but for the experience of playing something. It also lets me see how they are practicing and if they are solving problems or just repeating, and what they hear as problems... So today on my practice sheet I gave myself this practice method for Bach. It works well with something you might have learned fairly well but need to perfect/clean up/pay more attention to/need renewed interest for.
In my 13 minutes of practicing before playing through Gigue I started with the obviously out of tune double stops which led me to thinking about how much I am blocking or rolling them, how they are moving. I found a few bowings that weren't working and fixed those, and I changed a fingering. I practiced m.13-15 with double stops focusing on my hand position and shifting in and out of it (for cleaning up the intonation). I also started wondering about how the second half fit with the first half in my style approach to the bowing and I have some questions... Then I played through... I immediately noticed the things I had practiced, and also those questions that need clear answers.
I think that frameworks/tasks for practice are really important. Sometimes we need those specific tasks in advance: fix the bowing. work on the double stops. analyze the style. But sometimes we just need a doable framework for practicing that allows us to drop in and find those things...
In my second session of practicing I wrote in some of my decisions about the chords and their flow and worked on that more. Drawing out the sound with the bow: that physical feeling of drawing out versus attacking or hitting the chord... I noticed this time that m. 5-8 correlate to m. 13-15 and made my approach more similar. I decided that my approach is generally cohesive in the bowing but I need to keep my minds attention throughout similar... Tried to tune the leap down to the c#... and played through again.
One of the most difficult things with students is when they practice something and it doesn't stick. What I tell them is that we don't know how long certain things take to learn... a day, a week, a hundred times... and also that we can come back and ask why? did I miss something in my technique that could fix this problem? (Sometimes I know what that is for my students and sometimes I don't... hence, more study with a PHD!)
I think I'll move on to another movement and come back to some of those issues tomorrow.
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