Practice
Tuesday, March 15, 2022 by Vincent Santoro | Tips and Tricks
As students of music (adults or kids), we always hear people tell us that we have to practice or practice makes perfect, but what does what mean? Does practice actually mean that we will perfect something? Is there a difference between practicing music and playing music? Some might say that 'playing music' is practicing it while others would argue 'playing music' is more like a performance. Let's talk about it!
There are multiple definitions of practice, but I believe there is one that suits this particular situation. As a verb, the first definition is to perform (an activity) or exercise (a skill) repeatedly or regularly in order to improve or maintain one's proficiency. You might be thinking, 'oh, it says perform an activity so if I keep playing the music, that means I've practiced it.' There might be a smidge of truth to that, however if you already know how to play something and play it well, then is it truly practicing it? It is important to be able to play a piece of music and keep it in shape so you don't forget how to play it, but what about new music? If you see a new piece of music that looks difficult or had to play a new piece of music in band that was hard to play, do you avoid it? Play it over and over again in hopes of magically getting right one time? Well, it might be time to rethink your strategy.
One of the most common ways to practice a piece of music, is to play it slow. Use a metronome (I know they can be annoying, but it's an incredible tool) and pick a tempo that seems comfortable to you. Not sure what tempo to start with? Depending on the difficulty, it might be best to start around 80bpm. If you can't play the entire piece at that tempo, lower the speed until you can play it without restarting, or until you get the notes and rhythms right. Once you're able to play through the entire piece, start increasing the tempo by 2 (for short pieces/sections) or by 4 if you're in a rush. Don't increase the tempo if can't play the piece at the current tempo you're on. For more difficult sections of music, (measures with 16th notes, dotted rhythms, triplets etc.) start slow and only increase the tempo by 2. When you increase the tempo by 2 it becomes difficult to notice a difference. If you do that for 5 minutes, you'd be surprised at how fast you can increase your tempo. If there are quite a few measures of 16th notes in a row, you can try using alternate articulations/rhythms to break them up so you can digest them better. Two methods that I prefer most are long-short-long and isolating each 16th note.
The long-short-long method is a relatively quick process. As it states, the note lengths will alternate long then short. Next, you should reverse the process by playing the first note short and the second note long and so on. After playing both ways, try to play them evenly. Don't move from one step to the other until your able to get all of the right notes. The second process takes more time, but in my opinion is the most successful. When you isolate each 16th note you hold the first 16th in each grouping for a few seconds, then play the rest of the 16th notes in time (ex. 1---e+a 2---e+a 3---e+a 4---e+a). Then you repeat the process, but instead hold the 2nd 16th note in each grouping for a few seconds (ex. 1e--+a 2e---+a 3e---+a4e--+a). The next step would be to hold the third 16th (ex. 1e+---a2e+---a3e+---a4e+---a). After that you hold the 4th 16th note (ex. 1e+a----2e+a---3e+a---4e+a)and finally, after all of the steps are completed, you play all of the 16th notes evenly. Just like the previous method, you shouldn't move from one step to another until you're able to successfully play all of the notes.
Hopefully this sheds some light on practicing. What it means and how to approach it.
Happy Practicing!!
