Housesitting, scales and practice sessions

March 11, 2006 at 11:26 PM

Ok, time for a bit of a fuller blog entry than my previous one, as there is kinda a lot more to tell.

I've completed my first week of living in the house that I'm house-sitting. My first week of shopping was more than my buget, but when I went shopping yesterday, I brought it back down. Good to know.

I've been having trouble with Technical Work. There's no problem with it in how I can do it, that's fine. It's just getting up and doing it. After my break, all I want to do is play my recital pieces, but I know that I need to do all my technical work in order to pass this year.

I was talking about this with someone on Friday (we went to a local pub during a break for a couple of drinks). She mentioned a couple of ideas, including pulling scales out of a hat. After thinking about that for a bit, I went about putting together some small cards to take around with me. I have made two sets, one has every scale that I do (G Major, G Harmonic Minor, G Melodic Minor etc) and the other has every piece of technical work I do (Two octaves, 3 octave arpeggios, oneing scales, Kreutzer 2 etc). The idea is that each day I start off with technical work, so I'll go through my normal routine of technical work, but choose a different scale for each piece of technical work. And then, before each practice session, I'll also choose a piece of technical work (and scale if neccessary) to begin with.

Also, talking about my practice sessions, I'm trying to get away from the feeling that I need to practice for three hours a day, all in one hour blocks. Instead, I'm breaking them up into ultra-productive sessions of whatever length. I'll go into a practice session and say "Ok, in this practice session, I'm going to play this section of my Beethoven. When that section is up to an acceptable level at this point in time, I'll go make myself a coffee" The idea behind it is that by spending lots of short productive sessions, with each one having its own goal, you eventually get more done each day, plus you get a better sense of memorisation, because you've memorised each section, and you've memorised each section extreemly well, so when it comes to put it all together, it's all there in stone.

So yea, that's basically what's been happening.

Until Next time...

From Patrick Hu
Posted on March 12, 2006 at 12:05 AM

Ben, your practice regiment sounds very productive. I think I'm going to start incorporating that style of practicing (pulling a scale out of a hat...who would have thought?!?!?) into my own practice regiment. ;)

Hope it all works out! Let me know!

From Pauline Lerner
Posted on March 12, 2006 at 1:35 AM

Your method wouldn't work for me. I'm never satisfied that I'm making enough progress.

From Wanda Jenkins
Posted on March 12, 2006 at 4:51 AM

After the independence of house sitting you'll not want to go home again. except to eat and do laundry. :-)

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