Practice makes perfect. How do you do it?

I’m a flute player.

For Irish flute (and to a lesser extent for classical too), i just play. Play lots of tunes, a lot of times. I’ve never been good at practicing scales or some other annoying sounds. I do better if i can have fun with the flute instead of practicing.

If i haven’t played for days and my lips feel like they’re rubber, i start with some slow scales to warm up. One exercise that helps me is to start with a comfortable note and slowly go down (by semitones in the classical flute, following the flute scale in Irish), working hard to keep the same quality of tone. Then i start at the comfortable note again and go up.

There’s that great Russian pianist (whone name now i won’t remember), who said that if you practice too much, you end up practicing on stage too. I always took this to heart, since i’m so bad at practicing.

g

Horovitz. That ’s who said that, in an interview with Time magazine i read once.

When I learned piano as a child, I hated practising. I just wanted to play - not learn to play, just play. I’d got through 3 differrent piano teachers by the age of 8, when my mother decided to leave me alone to do my own thing. Being a person of unexceptional talent, it didn’t lead me on to greatness, but it enabled me to develop my own style of playing, and eventually enough technique to take up classical piano to level I needed for a place on a music degree (which was a mistake, as it turned out).

Anyway, I have always applied that principle, if you can call it that, to playing music. I play when and what I feel like playing. If there’s a tune in my head, I play it, or try to play it. If not, I make a cup of tea. If I like a tune enough, I can quite happily play it for 15 minutes without a break. Being a little older than I once was, I now have the discipline to thrown in a bit of real “practice” now and again. If I’m playing a new tune and I come to a sticky bit, I might, if I’m in the mood, work on my technique for a few minutes, drill the motions into my fingers, or perhaps work on variations.

I know that my personal learning method is not perfect. If I were to spend more time on technique, my playing would certainly benefit from it. But it is often obvious which musician has achieved excellence through hours of diligent practice and which through the sheer joy of music.



Anyway

Oops, I did it again. Forget that last “Anyway”.

Hi Sarron
This is a huge subject and everyone has some opinion about it.I could go on for hours about it. As I had a classical training originally I``ll just talk just talk about that.
The main thing I`ve found with practice both in classical and folk is
to have a clear objective of what you are trying to achieve.Its very easy just to keep playing over the same thing hoping something wonderfull will eventually happen. I find that these days I spend a lot more time putting the instrument down, thinking about what are the problem areas and how I,m going to overcome them.
With regard to classical and folk there are many things I do which are similar ie. work on the difficult bits - play very slow and get all the notes clean etc.However there are some very fundamental differences in my approach. With folk I will learn as much as possible by ear. When I can run the tune in my head ( I may check the odd note against music) I then work it out on the instument. I will then spend time playing along to recordings and trying to match the styles as closely as possible. When I started with Irish music I used to learn it from the sheet music, as a result I didn,t get any of the style at all ie lilts, rhythms, and found it very difficult to blend in musically at sessions.
I still will work on technique separately (usually at beginng of practice) but its only areas of difficultys that have arisen from and related to the tunes I,m playing.ie its a means to an end.
By the way interesing phrase “Practice make perfect” I knew someone once who wanted to be perfect. Me I,m happy with a gradually improving average - and if that fails, I,ve still got a life!
Chris

There is at least a couple of ways to address this.

First, practice is what is required to master the mechanical aspects of your instrument, to be able to make it make the correct note, cleanly and clearly when you want it to. Scale practice is a good way to do this because you are not tryng to play a tune, and you can’t really play a tune until you get some elementary mechanics down. i read once that it takes about 1000 hours to teach the human machine a ‘new trick’ i take that to mean that to accomplish this aspect of play will be about 1000 hours, so start hacking away at those hours.

Second is actually playing tunes. I can’t imagine that anyone ever gets so good that they no longer need to work on specific techniques or styles or….

learning tunes is its own skill as well, here is those thousand hours again. Fortunately at some point of learning the mechanics of the instrument you can start learning tunes, so these two period will have a lot of overlap.

When I want to learn a tune (Practice it) I:

A) Listen to it over and over. Make a recording to play on your computer while you are reading mail. No need to focus on the recording, just have it in the background. Just have it on whenever and where ever you can. If I don’t have a recording of it, I will find ABC files, make a midi what ever. I prefer the latter to using CD’s and I will explain that later. The best advice I ever heard was reputed to have come from an old piper “Listen 5 hours, practice one” *think about it*

B) When I find myself humming or lilting the tune spontaneously, then it is time to pick up the weapon and try to find out where the tune hides out on that instrument. If I have printed music I will use it. This keeps up until I can think “I want to ply that tune” and without looking or listening or any other help, I can just play that tune.

C) Record yourself playing the tune. Does it sound like you think you sounded. This step is vital in the early days. When we learn from professional recordings played over and over we will be listening to that tune in our head, in our own little private CD, and not what is actually coming out of the instrument in our hands. This can come as a real shock when you realize how far different your recording is from what you think you played. *However* be careful to not let this discourage you. Continue to practice the tune and try to listen to the music you are making. it may help to use a loud metronome at this stage. Not only will this help your timing, very critical, but it will make you take your music out of the privacy of your own head and make you focus on what you are playing. It will also prepare you for session work where you *have* to be able to listen to what is going on around you while playing. Even at the first recording of the tune, find the parts that you play well, that made your feet want to move. This is proof you can do it, think on these, rather than your failures.

You asked how multi instrumentalist choose what they want to play. Mood, simply that, what do I feel like tonight, and it is usually pipes.

Mike
concertina/pipes

There is at least a couple of ways to address this.

First, practice is what is required to master the mechanical aspects of your instrument, to be able to make it make the correct note, cleanly and clearly when you want it to. Scale practice is a good way to do this because you are not tryng to play a tune, and you can’t really play a tune until you get some elementary mechanics down. i read once that it takes about 1000 hours to teach the human machine a ‘new trick’ i take that to mean that to accomplish this aspect of play will be about 1000 hours, so start hacking away at those hours.

Second is actually playing tunes. I can’t imagine that anyone ever gets so good that they no longer need to work on specific techniques or styles or….

learning tunes is its own skill as well, here is those thousand hours again. Fortunately at some point of learning the mechanics of the instrument you can start learning tunes, so these two period will have a lot of overlap.

When I want to learn a tune (Practice it) I:

A) Listen to it over and over. Make a recording to play on your computer while you are reading mail. No need to focus on the recording, just have it in the background. Just have it on whenever and where ever you can. If I don’t have a recording of it, I will find ABC files, make a midi what ever. I prefer the latter to using CD’s and I will explain that later. The best advice I ever heard was reputed to have come from an old piper “Listen 5 hours, practice one” *think about it*

B) When I find myself humming or lilting the tune spontaneously, then it is time to pick up the weapon and try to find out where the tune hides out on that instrument. If I have printed music I will use it. This keeps up until I can think “I want to ply that tune” and without looking or listening or any other help, I can just play that tune.

C) Record yourself playing the tune. Does it sound like you think you sounded. This step is vital in the early days. When we learn from professional recordings played over and over we will be listening to that tune in our head, in our own little private CD, and not what is actually coming out of the instrument in our hands. This can come as a real shock when you realize how far different your recording is from what you think you played. *However* be careful to not let this discourage you. Continue to practice the tune and try to listen to the music you are making. it may help to use a loud metronome at this stage. Not only will this help your timing, very critical, but it will make you take your music out of the privacy of your own head and make you focus on what you are playing. It will also prepare you for session work where you *have* to be able to listen to what is going on around you while playing. Even at the first recording of the tune, find the parts that you play well, that made your feet want to move. This is proof you can do it, think on these, rather than your failures.

You asked how multi instrumentalist choose what they want to play. Mood, simply that, what do I feel like tonight, and it is usually pipes.

Mike
concertina/pipes

sorry for the double post, my server timed out and I thought the send failed.

Mike

Hi Sharron!

I like to practice daily, an hour at least if possible. It gets interesting somtimes because I have 5 kids who want to help, one who is a step dancer and she likes to try to practice dancing at the same time I’m practicing, which is ok most of the time. I just gotta stay focused!

I try to keep my practice sessions along these lines.

1. Make sure I’m in Tune.
2. Decide on a couple of new tunes I’d like to learn.
3. Warm up with tunes I know just to get loosened up.
4. Work on one of the new tunes a bit.
5. So as not to get totaly frustrated with the new tune (Such as the “B” part of “Tommy’s Tarbukas”) if it is hard coming I go back to a familier one for a bit.
6. If I have a dance coming up I try to work on medleys, and transitions between the tunes, making sure they are smooth.
7. I always end it playing something fun. If by chance I got one of both of the new tunes down, usually run those a couple of times.

The Lord has blessed me with the ability to play Fiddle, frailed banjo, tenor banjo, mandolin, guitar, and mountain dulcimer. All lf which I can do to performance level.
I tried to maintain a high practice on each of them but with a full time job, wife and kids, and other activities there was just no way to keep up with it. I found that when I tried to only spend a little time with all of them they all suffered. So,, I decided to focus on one being the fiddle. (My favorite)

I do pick up the others now and again, but keep my focus on the one I enjoy most.

That’s my two cents worth.

Tiny

Funny, isn’t it, Tiny? I started with piano, then accumulated guitar, mandolin, 5-string banjo, hammered dulcimer, bodhran, harp and fiddle. The fiddle is pretty much the only instrument I practice. Maybe this is because it’s easy to play all the other instruments passably, but when you slack off on the fiddle, it really shows.

I like to think that when I’m practicing one instrument, I am actually practicing them all (except maybe the pipes). I can use improved fiddle fingering on a mandolin, I can use deepening understanding of the structure of the melody when I set out to play accompaniment… I haven’t really played my guitar in months, but surprisingly, on the rare occasions I do pick it up, my playing has really improved.

At least, that’s how I justify my neglect of my poor, sad, untouched collection.

Fiddler on Vermouth, That sounds good to me.

No justification needed here.

Fiddle players rule!

🙂

Tiny

Hi Sharron

There’s a lot of good advise here in every posting, and not much more to add other than be clear about how you want to sound.
I personally like a very clean strong tone so I do a lot of bowing excersises and scales.
I don’t agree that just playing tunes over and over for hours will do you any favours at all. During a practice, use that time to focus 100 percent on what you want. Part of the skill of teaching yourself lies in the ability to diagnose your own problems and come up with a solution. If you can’t do that then you need a teacher.
Recording yourself, while demoralising, is vital. There is absolutely no way you can concentrate on practising something difficult and listen at the same time.
I would advise scales. For me intonation is important. As a fiddle player you need to put in much more work on scales than a fixed pitch instrument. Repetition and more repetition.
Don’t think of ornamentation as something you put in afterwards. It’s a vital and intergral part of the tune. Whether you use a lot or not much. A nice excersise (which you probably already know) is to play a scale with a long roll for each note (use a cran for the open strings).
Play slowly. Better to be great slow than shit fast.
Sing as much as possible.
If it hurts, put it down.
Remember it’s all for fun.
Barney

As someone already said it, the most regularly you practice, the best it is. I always heard that it’s better to play 10 minutes per day than 1 hour every two days… (of course ten minutes per day won’t make you a great player very soon!!).
I like to start with tunes I love, and I work on it mostly the sound and style (I try to listen as if someone else was playing). Then I learn to sing a new one, then play it slowly and faster… and all the time like this, playing old and new tunes alternatively… and I practice more the part I don’t play well…
That’s pretty much it. I know it’s not the best way, but well… it’s enough for me!

Update on my former post:
Barney is more than right on tone and intonation. I took that very much for granted so it wasn

This is a great topic. Practicing daily at least ten minutes and having good practice methods
is everything. I’m always looking for better methods, and being a better practicer. Here’s a
list of good habits I try to keep in mind. I try to vary techniques, and always have goals on something to
improve each day. Some days I only practice ten minutes, then I play tunes for an hour, if you know what
I mean.
- Always practice as relaxed as you can. If you practice relaxed, you will perform relaxed.
1 METRONOME! I’m working on my rhythm and timing. Practicing at varying speeds with a metronome is vital.
I always learn a tune as slowly as I can stand. All the good Irish players I have met tell me to learn tunes at a
slow tempo. It works like tai chi. You’ll sound better when you play faster later.
2. Playing along with CD’s helps with timing and playing in ensembles when your friends aren’t around.
3. Record yourself for quick feedback, playing tunes at different speeds.
4. On the whistle and LN pipes, I do long tone exercises to improve the steadiness of my tone and to imrpove
intonation. (Do this when nobody is in the house with you. It drives people crazy.) Also, keep a guitar tuner in front of you to see if
you can keep the intonation right in the same spot on the needle. Play the same note as long as you can, watching
the intonation and tone. Then play the next note up.
5. If you have trouble with your fingers flying too high playing a woodwind, then first relax, and try playing in front
of a mirror. Play slowly, and watch your hands in the mirror. Concentrate on looking relaxed and keeping those
from “waving down a cab.” Play a few tunes you already know well when you do this.
6. If I hit a trouble spot in a tune, I slow down - way down - I mean SLOW. Turn on the metronome, and try to play
it right the first time, very slowly. Then speed up almost imperceptibly the next time you play it.
7. I try to play with my friends in an ensemble as often as possible. It’s so importatn to me to play well with others,
even if I can’t do it well yet.

8. On playing slowly, Tim Britton taught me and some others how to play a low-d cran. We started out slow, playing
four notes alternating with the bottom D took about ten seconds to get through the first time. Each time we had it down at the new
speed, we would speed up, almost imperceptibly. We worked on this about half an hour. By the end of the half hour, we
were playing the cran in about two seconds. I kept doing this excercise for a week, and by the end of the week, I could play
this cran in less than half a second - full speed.
9. Spend some time with your instument away from practice time doing maintainance. For pipers, it is vital to know the instrument
and keep the !@#$ thing working. However, do you want to be the type who is always fidgeting and adjusting things on stage at a
performance, or the type who gets it working before hand, and can keep it going with minimal fuss? I personally can’t relax if I’m
fidgeting more than is necessary while either practicing or performing.

Hi Jorg

I’m not probably the best person to ask about crans seeing as we are in the presence of pipers. They know it best and if I have this wrong, please let me know any of you pipers out there.
This is my understanding crans (and yours no doubt): pipers cannot roll on the low d because there is no time to take the chanter off the knee and back on again to get the lower note. This is the same for fiddlers on open strings. We haven’t got the time for a string crossing to achieve the lower note so….. we cran.
For a d cran you play d,g,d,e,d. For an a cran you play a,d,a,b,a etc…
This takes place in the time of a dotted crotchet, or a ‘long’ roll, and takes the same timing. I play long rolls with a very drawn out first note and do the same with crans. As with the roll you should not ‘hear’ any of the pitch. I think you used the word percussive in your posting, which is perfect. The real trick is to make sure you don’t play d,g,e,d and miss out the middle note. This is very common. To avoid this practice slowly and build up the speed over a couple of weeks or so. Finally, I don’t actually try to press the string onto the finger board, just enough to stop the string vibrating. Similar to playing a harmonic.
As for following a d with a short e roll, I don’t understand how that works ? You must resolve on d, yet the short roll will finish on an e. Which note do you finish on? I would like to give it a try.
If anyone out there has a different version of events, then let me know, but this works for me.
Jorg, apologies for the long drawn out description which I’m sure you already knew, but I thought that others might find this usefuI as well.
I hope this is of use to you. Let me know how you get on.
Happy cranning.

One I try: occasionally, start at the end of the tune and repeat, starting a few bars further back each time until you are playing the whole thing.

The reasoning for this is that most people start at the front, and then give up someway through the tune, so over a period of time you can end up with a tune which sounds great and then goes a bit downhill.

This way, you should get a tune which starts *and* ends well - those are the bits most people remember!!

Hope this doesn’t sound like heresy, just a useful extra trick for when you get bored practicing in the usual start->end direction!

Mark

I’m a classically trained ‘cellist, but play folk tunes on it too. Reels are tricky, but O’Carolan tunes sound sweet. Anyway, my tip is: I always start my practise by improvising for about 5 minutes non stop. This means I begin my practise from the point of view of playing music, rather than from the point of view of trying to get lots of technical stuff right - I get onto that later in my practise, though. It works for me.

Hope this is useful.

Love,

Jonathan.

No need to apologize, Barney. Actually I was thankful you mentioned it. Being a teacher myself -- free lance though, to make some pocket money for when times get rough, it just reminded me of one of my faults: forgetting to mention things because they are natural to me, but aren

By the way, folks, I don’t believe pipers have a monopoly on how to play a cran. Besides,
I can’t even spell “sting insturnemt.” So, happy cranning! 🙂

-Dirk

Wonderful advice! I may take some of it.. (smiling) I have to say, absolutely, practice with someone else. It makes it more fun.
And you are hopefully more likely to practice with that added incentive of getting together with a friend to do it.

I also really enjoy sight reading/playing tunes. I find tunes I might not ever hear on a recording that way.
One of the things I do a lot when I’m not someplace I can play, is sing the fiddle tunes. This is great
when you are XC skiing!

- birgit

If there is no one around to practice with and your computor is capable of it, I have discovered some great internet sites that play music that you can play along with. One I found on the links here on “The Session”

It’s the BBC Virtual Session. They play kind of slow and have the sheet music you can follow. Kinda neat!

Tiny

That’s a fun one, isn’t it, Tiny? Kind of fun to be playing with musicians of that caliber, when I’d NEVER insert myself into a session like that!

Zina

Zina made mention of listening to the music in another discussion in which she could not be more correct, listening is very important.

I’ve also found that watching is good. When I’m practicing with other fiddle players I like to watch their fingers. I guess I got into that habbit while playing guitar and learinging chord progressions. It actually works with fiddlin’ also. I suppose it would with anything.

Have you ever practiced in one of those rooms where they have planitariums? The big domed ceiling? It’s pretty wierd, but neat at the same time. Kinda like playing in a giant bathroom, only no tub or toilet. Just big echo.

One of the coolest places I’ve practiced was in Silverton Colorado. Actually, there is a campground just North of Silverton called South Mineral. From there, there is a jeep trail that goes up a mountain to a small crater lake called Clear Lake. It is surrounded by high walls that does something to the sound when you play. It is just awsome. Kind of an erie echo effect.

I was up there one time and heard somebody playing Bagpipes. We never found ‘em, but could sure hear ’em.