A comment came in last week about my audition advice for high school students post. It reads:
Hello–
Great website. Awesome to see so much info dedicated to the DB.
Can you explain/expand on this point:
Sectionalize your music and write down a plan – I always smile when I see a student come into a lesson with a practice log and a written practice plan–these people usually end up doing very well at whatever it is that they’re trying to prepare. It’s amazing to me just how powerful a written plan really is to the practice process, and I’m amazed that more people don’t do it. Perhaps one in ten students to whom I suggest that they do this actually does it.
I have taken lesson before in BG and DB (short time many years ago). Neither of my teachers had me do anything like this. How does it work? Why type of things go into a plan? Thanks.
Tom
I’ve always thought that the very act of trying to write down a sequence of elements in your practicing helps lead to better practicing. I usually guide students through this even from early lessons. An early plan might look like something like this (perhaps a 4th or 5th grade student):
- C major 2 Octave Scale – play through 2x, 4x on each note (Lower Half!)
- Perpetual Motion mm. 12-13 – add a note
- PM last 2 lines – slow with metronome (qtr = 60) – (Straight Bow! Thumb in Center of Neck!)
- Bourree – play through & review
That way, the student is working a little technique (the scale), diving into some new material (Perpetual Motion), and reviewing the last song (Bourree). I also make sure that our lessons follow the same order and format that I want their practice session to go, and I practice with them through the lesson, not only to serve as a model for them, but to get them comfortable with what practicing actually is.
By the time they’re in middle school (7th or 8th grade), I try to encourage them to come up with their own written plan. It all depends on the type of learner the student is–some really benefit from this, while it just glazes over the eyes of others. For those who really get into it (and these are the more serious ones), I also encourage them to track how long they practice and what pieces they cover, in order to get an idea of how they are using their time and if they’re devoting their resources in an efficient manner. A more advanced plan will vary more depending on the nature of the student, but for a very organized it might look something like this:
- CM/cm 3 Oct scales/arp – 2,3,4,6,8,12/bow – senza vib
- CM shifting drills – A string – vib, cresc/decresc
- Rabbath Thumb Position exercises – 10 min
- Sevcik p. 36 #153-162 – qtr=70-132
- Bottesini mvt 1 mm.1-12 – non-vib fermata practice w/ drone
- Bott. mm 32-34 – qtr=50-90 4x/level
- Mozart 40 mvt 4 – warm-up exercise qtr=60-138
- M40 mvt 4 lick 2 – build lick backwards – 4 reps/build
That is too intense for some, so a list for a different student might look like this:
- CM 3 oct
- LH warmups
- Sevcik
- Bott – slow pg 1
- M40 – warmup & build
Some students will click with the former, some with the latter… and some just don’t seem to benefit from any written structure at all. For most, however, I find that at least guiding them through this process helps them to figure out how to break something down and practice it.
Thoughts?
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Great advice! It’s so easy to spend our practice time meandering rather aimlessly when we don’t have a clear agenda.
Might I share an additional thought? As invaluable as a practice plan is, one of the hidden dangers can be the temptation to carry out the plan on autopilot mode, and forget that the plan is really just a means to an end.
When you think about it, the goal of practicing is not just for us to sound better, but to figure out HOW to sound better, so we can encode these instructions into our muscle memory and execute these complex motor movements on command. Experts in the field of expertise refer to this as “deliberate practice”, and for those who may have read “The Talent Code” (highly recommended), it’s the same thing as “deep practice”.
Great article!
I’m literally 2 hours out from having successfully played a performance exam related to work (I’m a musician in the Canadian Forces). One of the things I really tried to do was to practice the way I intended on playing it. In the military, we call it “battle procedure” but there’s no reason to think that the same principles can’t be applied in an audition setting (and really, auditions are just a musician’s form of battle :))
One of the biggest things I tried to focus on as part of my preparations was to prepare for the _WHOLE_ day and not just the music itself. This meant going through several days of doing everything that was part of what the audition day would be like. From planning my day so that I was getting up early in the morning to get a warmup in, to getting my kids up and ready and to the bus for school (which I had to do on exam day), to making sure that I was practicing my tunes at the time of day that my exam was scheduled (so I understood what my level of alertness would be, influences such as hunger, over/under-caffeination, etc), and even so far as to changing up the sequence of music (which happened at the last minute this morning during the exam), I felt confident and prepared that I could handle anything that came my way.
I also used tools like the video recording function in PhotoBooth and audio recording in GarageBand to record my practice sessions so I could identify, deconstruct and fix parts I was having difficulties with and get a little bit of that “red-light syndrome” that can plague us when the tape is rolling and you’ve only got one shot.
And wouldn’t you know it, things went down as I’d planned.
Keep the articles coming!