The Joy of Practicing

March 1, 2012 at 8:09 PM

A Question: how much would you practice this passage until you got it right?
Answer: a teacher of mine at Gonzaga once said, "a million times."

I of course thought she was crazy, and perhaps it is that sort of drive that merits success. Students, and myself, I've realized, often stop at 80%-- when we're just about to reach our goal-- then we stop for a number of reasons. Some of it could be:

1. We feel we've reached what's acceptable.
2. We feel it's good enough to be tackled tomorrow.
3. We simply don't know the next step after it's solid, or don't know what solid means.
4. Too scared to get it right-- too scared of the success/responsibilities/more music.

I've been in all of these predicaments. I think thought, that the main issue has been stopping too soon: "yeah, I nailed it once or twice correctly, time to do something else." What about three or four times correctly? What about ten times correctly?

There's a "Part B" to this, and it's to start slow in fast passages and speed up in chunks. Don't blow through a whole passage that is hard. When I start small, and listen to where the system breaks down, I start to have ears to hear with. I tell myself: tackle those parts first, even just a half measure at a time. Then, once I start to speed up, (this is where I fall short) drill the small parts at tempo many times over, until there's no issue of a mistake. I often will stop at a few times quickly, maybe just enough to get it right, and then: gotta move on! Wrong. This is where the next day I will find that my practice has fallen short. Something to watch out for.

This takes discipline, time, and patience. I have yet to have much patience.