Good morning!
I often read the blog by Leo Babauta called "Zen Habits" and really enjoy his insights into meditation and self awareness. Today's post by Leo is great, and totally applies to the art of practicing. It is called "The Frustratingly Slow Pace of Change" and while he's talking about exercise or diet most of the time, just replace those words with "practicing" and you'll see how the post applies.
I know there are many teachers reading this blog now, and you may ask: this is great, but how do I help a young player understand that the process is worth it, even when the results take weeks or months to show up in their playing?
I have no idea.
In my studio, I try to help students be aware of the sounds they are making, and connect what physical actions they take that make those sounds. That way, there's no "bad" sounds, just ways to identify what caused a particular sound (very close to bridge? super firm right hand?) and the sound itself. Especially in the case of playing extra ponticello, I'll let them know about the times we DO want that sound - Stravinsky, and many of our contemporary composers use that electric sound.
As they develop the ears and self awareness, I'm always hoping they can start to connect this action=this sound. And I praise them at every new sound/action they can figure out. Hopefully that helps to keep them going during the months it usually takes to get a great tone the majority of the time. Remember, great tone isn't one thing, or we'd all have it mastered rather quickly. We're always compensating for the string length, dynamic, amount of bow we can use on a given note, etc. It's always a moving target!
Here's Leo's post for your enjoyment:
http://zenhabits.net/slowchange/
Happy practicing!
Gaelen
Showing posts with label zen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zen. Show all posts
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Monday, February 3, 2014
procrastination and practicing
I came across an article on procrasting "hard tasks" today, and loved it. Basically, replace "practice" everywhere you see "hard task" and you're up and running. Now, fair warning, it's from a zen blog I follow, so it may strike you as touchy-feely. There, you were warned. But to chime in on one of the biggest things I see happening with my students (and myself), it's the dread of the hard thing we need to work on. It all seems to big and daunting, and I'd much rather indulge in facebook, angry birds, even washing dishes if it means I can avoid having to practice arpeggios against the drone.
Of course, if I set my mind to WHY I'm doing that drone practice in the first place, it's really not so big and scary anymore. Here's my personal why's for that one part of my daily practice:
1. to stay loose in my arms, paying attention to where I tend to hold tension
2. to hear/sing my next note well before I shift
3. to maintain a big, open sound in all registers (this is a 2 octave cycle I'm working through, and take this from the open E up to the high D harmonic on G through a progression)
Once I look at what/why I'm doing this, it's really pretty easy. I use a drone pitch (on iTunes, The Tuning CD) which plays each key for 3 minutes. Granted, I'm going to go through about half an hour of this if I do the whole thing, but break it down ...... 3 minutes in each key... and my arpeggio cycle has 8 different chords I outline, so there's plenty to focus on, one step at a time. I play each of those chords several times, each pass asking myself about the goals of loose arms, hearing ahead of shift, big sound. I keep it simple and keep coming back to the basic questions.
I think that's the part we fail on - breaking it down from Big & Daunting into lots of small little chunks to work through, step by step. When I was working on my book, my husband asked me why I hadn't published it yet. I had already had it tested in many studios, but there were soooooo many little edits that just felt like the thing would never be done. He said, "put it into action steps, rather than focus on the whole block of work." Boy did that make it a lot easier. One etude per day, where I knew I had the time to do it. Of course, work makes for more work as I discovered more and more that I wanted to add or change. But, even that got put into steps that were "do-able".
So friends, take a minute to read the zen post on procrastinating (now that you're done putting off other work by reading this).
http://zenhabits.net/read-now/
Happy practicing!
Gaelen
Of course, if I set my mind to WHY I'm doing that drone practice in the first place, it's really not so big and scary anymore. Here's my personal why's for that one part of my daily practice:
1. to stay loose in my arms, paying attention to where I tend to hold tension
2. to hear/sing my next note well before I shift
3. to maintain a big, open sound in all registers (this is a 2 octave cycle I'm working through, and take this from the open E up to the high D harmonic on G through a progression)
Once I look at what/why I'm doing this, it's really pretty easy. I use a drone pitch (on iTunes, The Tuning CD) which plays each key for 3 minutes. Granted, I'm going to go through about half an hour of this if I do the whole thing, but break it down ...... 3 minutes in each key... and my arpeggio cycle has 8 different chords I outline, so there's plenty to focus on, one step at a time. I play each of those chords several times, each pass asking myself about the goals of loose arms, hearing ahead of shift, big sound. I keep it simple and keep coming back to the basic questions.
I think that's the part we fail on - breaking it down from Big & Daunting into lots of small little chunks to work through, step by step. When I was working on my book, my husband asked me why I hadn't published it yet. I had already had it tested in many studios, but there were soooooo many little edits that just felt like the thing would never be done. He said, "put it into action steps, rather than focus on the whole block of work." Boy did that make it a lot easier. One etude per day, where I knew I had the time to do it. Of course, work makes for more work as I discovered more and more that I wanted to add or change. But, even that got put into steps that were "do-able".
So friends, take a minute to read the zen post on procrastinating (now that you're done putting off other work by reading this).
http://zenhabits.net/read-now/
Happy practicing!
Gaelen
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