Practice Hints
Plan your practice session
A typical practice session should include balanced approach to learning techniques of the instrument and music. For my students with a year or so under their belts, I suggest practice sessions that might look something like this:
3-5 minutes: long tones
8-10 minutes: scales/thirds/etc.
5-10 minutes: band or orchestra music
10-15 minutes: Other music/songs (the fun stuff)
As students get older and want to practice longer, I encourage them to add time to all the categories except long tones.
Make Goals
As you practice, choose an aspect of your playing to focus on. Try really thinking about strong air the whole time you practice, or correct embouchure, hand position, etc. Focusing on an element of your playing while you practice will help you improve as a player, not just learn more notes on your instrument.
Analyze
Look through the entire piece before you start playing it. What form is it in? (If you don't know what I'm talking about, ask your teacher). Are there any repeating parts? Any passages that look like scales, thirds, or arpeggios that you've already learned. Going into the learning process of a piece with that in mind can be really helpful.
Isolate
Often a piece of music assigned by your teacher will only have 4-5 difficult passages in it, while the rest is fairly simple. Or even a scale will be super easy, except for maybe 2-3 notes. Practice what needs to be practiced! What does this look like practically? When I get a new piece, I will try playing through it at tempo. I put a check mark by any passage that trips me up. Then when I go to practice the piece, I go straight to the checkmarks and practice small chunks (2-4 measures at a time) repeatedly until it starts feeling more comfortable under my fingers. Isolation is one of the most effective ways to practice scales and repertoire.
Slow down
For really technical passages, I love to really slow things down. If a piece calls for a tempo of 120/quarter note, I'll slow it down to 60/quarter note, or sometimes even slower. I'll force myself to practice that slow for an entire week (warning: this requires immense amounts of patience), and then the second week, I'll try jumping right up to 112/quarter note and see how it goes. I'm often surprised that I can play it almost perfectly the first time I speed it up because my fingers never practiced mistakes at the slow tempo.
Speed up
Sometimes we play really beautiful, lyrical slow passages and the difficult part of playing it is to make it to the end of the phrase without taking a breath. For these pieces, I take the tempo faster than performance tempo. I go as fast as I need to in order to make it to the end of the passage on one breath. I slowly, drop the tempo, building endurance and after a couple of weeks can make it through the whole phrase with one breath.
Blow up the Rhythm
Sometimes a really hard passage just won't stick under our fingers, or we can't seem to play it as evenly as we want. In this case, I like to play around with the rhythm. I'll play the passage in several different rhythms, and then go back to the original rhythm. It seems to even things out and give our fingers more control. I have a handout for students, showing them how to do this.
Start with the End in Mind
One of my favorite ways to learn a piece is by learning the ending first. That way I can always finish off strong when I'm playing the piece.
A typical practice session should include balanced approach to learning techniques of the instrument and music. For my students with a year or so under their belts, I suggest practice sessions that might look something like this:
3-5 minutes: long tones
8-10 minutes: scales/thirds/etc.
5-10 minutes: band or orchestra music
10-15 minutes: Other music/songs (the fun stuff)
As students get older and want to practice longer, I encourage them to add time to all the categories except long tones.
Make Goals
As you practice, choose an aspect of your playing to focus on. Try really thinking about strong air the whole time you practice, or correct embouchure, hand position, etc. Focusing on an element of your playing while you practice will help you improve as a player, not just learn more notes on your instrument.
Analyze
Look through the entire piece before you start playing it. What form is it in? (If you don't know what I'm talking about, ask your teacher). Are there any repeating parts? Any passages that look like scales, thirds, or arpeggios that you've already learned. Going into the learning process of a piece with that in mind can be really helpful.
Isolate
Often a piece of music assigned by your teacher will only have 4-5 difficult passages in it, while the rest is fairly simple. Or even a scale will be super easy, except for maybe 2-3 notes. Practice what needs to be practiced! What does this look like practically? When I get a new piece, I will try playing through it at tempo. I put a check mark by any passage that trips me up. Then when I go to practice the piece, I go straight to the checkmarks and practice small chunks (2-4 measures at a time) repeatedly until it starts feeling more comfortable under my fingers. Isolation is one of the most effective ways to practice scales and repertoire.
Slow down
For really technical passages, I love to really slow things down. If a piece calls for a tempo of 120/quarter note, I'll slow it down to 60/quarter note, or sometimes even slower. I'll force myself to practice that slow for an entire week (warning: this requires immense amounts of patience), and then the second week, I'll try jumping right up to 112/quarter note and see how it goes. I'm often surprised that I can play it almost perfectly the first time I speed it up because my fingers never practiced mistakes at the slow tempo.
Speed up
Sometimes we play really beautiful, lyrical slow passages and the difficult part of playing it is to make it to the end of the phrase without taking a breath. For these pieces, I take the tempo faster than performance tempo. I go as fast as I need to in order to make it to the end of the passage on one breath. I slowly, drop the tempo, building endurance and after a couple of weeks can make it through the whole phrase with one breath.
Blow up the Rhythm
Sometimes a really hard passage just won't stick under our fingers, or we can't seem to play it as evenly as we want. In this case, I like to play around with the rhythm. I'll play the passage in several different rhythms, and then go back to the original rhythm. It seems to even things out and give our fingers more control. I have a handout for students, showing them how to do this.
Start with the End in Mind
One of my favorite ways to learn a piece is by learning the ending first. That way I can always finish off strong when I'm playing the piece.
Performance/Competition Hints
Prepare. Prepare. Prepare.
Find out as many details prior to the actual competition well before hand, so you don't have to stress about it the day of. (Where to park, is there a place to warm up, is there a place to rehearse with your pianist, do you need to bring copies of the music for the judges, etc.)
If you will be performing/competing memorized, practice your piece in front of lots of different people in lots of different settings - memorized - of course.
Eat a banana an hour before a performance.
Do yoga breathing right before a performance.
Remember that people, even judges, enjoy hearing a good performance. They WANT you to do well. So give them the best you've got.
If you really know your music, remember that.
Keep breathing. Keep breathing. Keep breathing.
If you make a mistake (we all do) during a performance, forget about it. Let it be part of the performance, but don't think about it again during the performance. And don't make faces if you make a mistake. EVER.
Have fun. Have fun. Have fun. Performances are always more fun to listen to when the musician is having a good time.
Think of a story that you can tell with your music, and think about that story during your performance instead of all the people in the audience.
Find out as many details prior to the actual competition well before hand, so you don't have to stress about it the day of. (Where to park, is there a place to warm up, is there a place to rehearse with your pianist, do you need to bring copies of the music for the judges, etc.)
If you will be performing/competing memorized, practice your piece in front of lots of different people in lots of different settings - memorized - of course.
Eat a banana an hour before a performance.
Do yoga breathing right before a performance.
Remember that people, even judges, enjoy hearing a good performance. They WANT you to do well. So give them the best you've got.
If you really know your music, remember that.
Keep breathing. Keep breathing. Keep breathing.
If you make a mistake (we all do) during a performance, forget about it. Let it be part of the performance, but don't think about it again during the performance. And don't make faces if you make a mistake. EVER.
Have fun. Have fun. Have fun. Performances are always more fun to listen to when the musician is having a good time.
Think of a story that you can tell with your music, and think about that story during your performance instead of all the people in the audience.
Listen toGood Recordings.
French Clarinet Art (Paul Meyer)
Sabine Meyer Plays Romantic Music (Sabine Meyer)
Mozart: Klarinettkonzert: Claude Debussy: Premiere Rhapsodie: Toru Takemitsu: Fantasma/Cantos (Sabine Meyer)
Harold Wright Recital No. 1 (Harold Wright)
Larry Combs, Clarinet (Larry Combs)
The Very Best of Benny Goodman (Benny Goodman)
Anything by Sabine Meyer
Sabine Meyer Plays Romantic Music (Sabine Meyer)
Mozart: Klarinettkonzert: Claude Debussy: Premiere Rhapsodie: Toru Takemitsu: Fantasma/Cantos (Sabine Meyer)
Harold Wright Recital No. 1 (Harold Wright)
Larry Combs, Clarinet (Larry Combs)
The Very Best of Benny Goodman (Benny Goodman)
Anything by Sabine Meyer