#3 - Part 1: Philosophy of Practice

November 23, 2003 – Revised August 3, 2006

Practicing a musical instrument, in a general sense, is the act of chasing an aural image: how you want to sound. This chase leads you to the practice room where you can use all of the tools (internal and external) at your disposal: mirror, piano, metronome, tuner, CDs, breathing devices, intellect, creativity, imagination, repetition, patience, persistence, and more. Among the goals of practicing are consistency, surpassing obstacles, and developing good habits. Since habits are constantly forming, one should practice attentively and thoughtfully.

We learn how we want to sound by imitating teachers, interpreting their instructions, listening to live performances, and listening to recordings of many instrumentalists, vocalists, and genres. It follows then, that developing musicians should take lessons, build their recording library, attend live concerts, and listen! The most successful students want to do these things. These behaviors are the natural result of loving music enough to learn an instrument. However, everyone comes to different things at different times, so it’s okay if a student plays an instrument for five years and then discovers Sonny Rollins or Mahler or Dixieland or The Water Music or Carmina Burana. It’s also okay if he/she is a music lover first and takes the plunge to learn an instrument later than most.

More information about practicing can be found in Norman Bolter’s brief but potent text, Methods of Effective Practice and in the articles listed here.

#3 - Part 2: Efficient Practice Techniques (excerpted from A Modern Guide for Trombonists and Other Musicians, third edition)

There are many ways to improve those pesky angular passages, those pyrotechnical runs, and those long, slow, lung-busting phrases. You have probably tried some of these methods before. The important thing is that you are your own best teacher. When you encounter a difficult passage, try to determine the nature of the problem and address it with the most appropriate of the following techniques or with your own inventions:

Expressive

• Record your playing. Try to evaluate it from the perspective of an audience member who attended your concert to be moved.
  
  
• Give yourself permission to fail. Choose a passage, forgive any technical errors in advance, and go the extra mile. Even aim for too much expression (rarely achieved). This experiment may offer the surprise of increased accuracy. Also try developing expression with an easy piece or free improvisation.
  
  
• Ghost play: do everything you do when playing a passage besides creating sound. Release the air, move the slide (valves, keys, bow), and articulate as indicated. Be sure that each slide position or fingering is accurate. Imagine a beautiful tone, stellar technique, bulls-eye accuracy, and musical inflection coming from your instrument, then resume normal playing and match that ideal.
  
  
• Sing or buzz a passage with complete musical abandon, then play it on your instrument the same way. By momentarily removing the instrument, you increase your musical connection. (Arnold Jacobs)
  
  
• Write lyrics to an etude or passage. In addition to providing a syllable to think for every note, adding words can enhance sensitivity to phrasing, important notes, and shifts in mood.
  
  

Mental, Aural

• Ghost play (see above). Have you ever heard the adage “it’s 90% mental?” This exercise capitalizes on that idea. Ghost playing reveals sloppy thinking, missed notes, and when one is using the instrument as a crutch. It can also improve sustained breath support if you create a constant rush of air through the instrument. Also try it without articulation for that purpose.
  
  
• Sing. This addresses intonation. Solid, well-tuned singing is the best proof that you are producing accurate pitches in your mind before playing them. Correct intonation begins before any sound is produced. For a revealing variation sing and play a passage, alternating each note.
  
  
• Play the passage on your mouthpiece. Mind the accuracy of rhythm and pitch and give a strong air supply (without straining) that you can feel if you hold your free hand up. This will create an airy sound. The buzz is to brass players what vocal cords are to singers, so mouthpiece practice requires thinking in tune. It also creates a vibration for every note, just as a singer has a syllable for every note. For these reasons, buzzing usually results in a richer more resonant sound, better accuracy, and better intonation.
  
  
• Practice the weak sections of a piece first. You can progress quickly by identifying and improving the difficult parts before becoming tired.
  
  
• Use your metronome at various beat divisions, from sixteenth notes up through one beat per measure and at even longer intervals. The longer between clicks, the more you are forced to internalize the pulse.
  
  

Physical, Muscular, Technical, Breath Support

• For fast music, start slow and increase the metronome speed over weeks, months, or years. Reverse that process for slow music to achieve breath support through the long phrases.
  
  
• For high music, start low and slowly transpose the key up over weeks, months, or years. Reverse this for low music.
  
  
• Practice technical passages in small sections, then seamlessly connect these sections or add notes bit by bit.
  
  
• Practice the difficult passage slowly, without tension, with all of the musicality and other features desired at full speed. Gradually increase the speed over several repetitions. When you reach your ceiling, slow down to a tempo that you can play, and repeat. This works the details of the piece into your muscle memory without tension. Many passages can be brought up to speed without tension in this way.
  
  
• Build the phrase one note at a time: A, AB, ABC, etc. When you make a mistake or notice tension, remove a note and repeat until you are ready add it again. After you have done this to a ten-note passage you will have played the first few notes at least ten times, and they should easily flow out of your instrument the next time you play the passage in context.
  
  
• Build the phrase backwards, one note at a time: Z, YZ, XYZ, WXYZ, etc. You will still be playing the notes in order.
  
  
• Practice a passage without using the tongue (sometimes producing glissandi on trombone–valves/keyed instrument will produce legato). Strive for solid, constant sound. Increase wind wherever sound quality is weak, usually at note changes and phrase endings. This improves air flow and tone quality. Flutter-tonguing is a variation of this exercise that provides more resistance.
  
  
• Alter written rhythms. Changing a straight eighth or sixteenth note rhythm into a dotted rhythm (or inverted dotted rhythm) can improve slide technique and evenness, as the heavy and light notes are altered.
  
  
• Transpose the beat. One can develop evenness by shifting the beat over to upbeats or to two and four instead of one and three in cut time, for example. Once again, this is because the heavy and light notes will be redistributed. As with all of these techniques, this is purely for the practice room where one is woodshedding difficult passages. The composer probably wants the rhythmic inflection created by the piece in its original form.
  
  
• Practice sixteenth note (or cut-time eighth note) passages in one-beat clips, resting on the downbeats and playing each next downbeat as follows: Rest E&A2, Rest E&A3, Rest E&A4 and so on. This adds a flowing, driving, effortless characteristic to difficult passages.
  
  
• Play a note connection in reverse. Sometimes reversing the direction of a difficult slur or angular note change can enhance accuracy.
  
  
• Play in well-tuned octaves, unisons, or fifths with others for ear training.
  
  
• Intentionally increase or exaggerate a problem. This may help you understand the nature of the tension or difficulty and lead to a solution. If you can make it worse then perhaps you can feel it and turn it off.