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My New Rule (for practicing and studying)
By Ernesto | December 20, 2007
I recently came upon a sort of epiphany. In a way, I’ve always known this, but somehow I get distracted very easily. Now that I’ve made it a rule for myself, it’s made my music-making and practicing much more productive.
Here is the rule: Everything I play and practice should be music.
I can hear all of you letting out a big collective “DUH!” after reading that, but let me elaborate.
Sometimes I’ve gotten a little obsessed with a certain topic. For example, when I was 19, I was REALLY into Dream Theater. I wanted to pick as fast John Petrucci. So I turned on the metronome and started practicing the “1-2-3-4″ exercise. It’s a very common exercise that I’ve seen in a lot of places to help develop speed and finger dexterity.
I’d do it everyday, at least for a while. Now, I did see improvements, and my picking speed was definitely increasing. But it got to a point that all I did was that stupid exercise and barely played any actual music.
Furthermore, all I was accomplishing was to play really fast semi-chromatic runs up and down the fretboard.
Jump to not-too-long-ago: I was (and still am) studying jazz. Occasionally I’d get distracted trying to incorporate some fancy concept that would make my lines “hipper”. So I’d sit and practice something like “triad-pairs” over a static chord or some tune I already knew. The problem is I’d lose interest really fast and get bored.
The reason I got bored is because I wasn’t playing music…I was playing triad-pairs! So I decided that any area of my musicianship I wanted to improve, I’d do it by practicing actual music.
I don’t want to say that the 1-2-3-4 exercise and triad pairs are totally useless. But if you want to play fast, isn’t better to practice something that you’re actually going to play in a musical situation instead of some unmusical, ugly-sounding exercise? *(Funny side note: at one point during my daily speed regimen, one of my non-musician roommates came to the conclusion that I played jazz because all I did was play strange-sounding scales up and down).
And if you want your lines to have more of an intervallic and modern sound, wouldn’t it be better to compose your own lines and etudes (not to mention, transcribe and imitate the masters) instead of applying some abstract, theoretical formula?
This point was driven home to me when I read J.S. Bach’s bio by Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician. While he was up to date on all the theoretical treatises of his time, Bach wasn’t interested in applying boring theoretical principles.
Both his learning and teaching methods were based on full-on practical applications. He’d copy other composer’s works and re-arrange them. Or he’d take a theme from another’s fugue, and write his own fugue with it.
Many of his own pieces were written for educational purposes: The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Inventions and Sinfonias, the Little Organ Book, etc… He’d have students play from these pieces, as well as harmonizing hymns and practicing figured bass. All of it designed so that the student would learn about keyboard-playing, composition and other aspects of musicianship directly through music.
So learn from the master, I say. Since I’ve followed my new little rule, I feel I’ve become a lot more productive. I’m learning more every day, and I’m constantly inspired because I’m always playing music.
Topics: Guitar, Jazz, Practicing |
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January 25th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Bach wasn’t the only one to do this either. I’ve often heard people talking about guitar etudes (and sometimes preludes) as being similar to sections of larger pieces (concertos and sonatas) of the same composer. This presumably means that the composer/performer wanted to practice that particular technique and so wrote an etude that emphasized it. There doesn’t seem to be any good reason (aside from laziness and lack of compositional knowledge) that people shouldn’t be writing their own etudes for working on their technically weak areas.
January 26th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Congrats, Ernesto.
Back when I was at Berklee, I wanted to be as fast as Al DiMeola, so I practiced scale patterns for hours a day, and I got really fast. However, my improvisation was quite diatonic, and I wasted so much time on scales that other aspects of my musical development suffered.
My main technique now, since I’m a solo performer, is to practice my pieces with a metronome slower and slower until I have them at half speed, then back up to tempo again. Scales are a waste of time compared to this.
And Fox is exactly correct: If I have a weak spot in my technique I want to work on, I compose studies to address that. My standard for studies is simple: They have to be fun to play and enjoyable to listen to. IOW, if they are not good enough to go into my set, I don’t waste my time with them.
January 28th, 2008 at 4:10 am
Fox, totally. A great example is Leo Brouwer’s etudes. He expands on ideas on those in many of his larger works.
The great thing about etudes is that you’re not only practicing your instrument, you’re practicing your composing and, hopefully, developing your own language.
January 28th, 2008 at 4:19 am
Hucbald: yeah, if I practice scales, it’s usually to warm up, but practicing actual music and slowing it down to a crawl until you get it perfect is the way to go. It has been said time and time again by the masters in all styles.
It takes a lot of discipline though…it still takes me alot of effort not to “cheat” sometimes. Usually it’s because I’m too lazy to turn on the metronome
February 29th, 2008 at 3:03 am
[...] while back I talked about how one should always relate their practicing directly to music, and not spend so [...]