Product Over Process
You're
standing at the free throw line holding a basketball. Are you looking at
your hands or the basket? You're waiting to bat at home plate. Are
you watching the ball or your bat? In the bowling alley, are you looking
at the ball or the pins? All of these situations have one thing in
common: your focus and concentration is on the end result, not the process
by which you are going to achieve it.
So
as a musician, what is your product? How about your sound and your
musicianship? These should always be the ultimate goal of any
performance. Nobody has ever come up to me at the end of a concert and
said "I loved how your triplets were perfectly in time" or "My
favorite part was that your low D's weren't sharp." At the end of
the day, what matters most is how you sounded and the musical/emotional message
you conveyed to your audience.
In
order to do this, of course, you need to understand what a great sound and
great artistry are. The best way to do this is by spending regular time
listening to world class musicians. I always ask students who their
favorite players are--if they don't have any, it's clear to me that they don't
spend nearly enough time listening (it's okay to have many favorite players and
they can change all the time!) Once you have a great idea of what you want
to sound like, then start recording yourself and listening back. Do you
sound like your goal? If not, focus your practice on what needs to happen
to get there.
Obviously,
I'm not suggesting here that you ignore the mechanics of how to play the
instrument. Imagine a quarterback working on his passing. He might
make subtle changes to hand position, throwing motion, or footwork. But
then, (and this is the crucial step), he practices those new techniques
hundreds or thousands of times so that they become completely automatic,
controlled by the unconscious part of the brain. That way, when he
actually gets in the game, his attention can be solely on his targeted receiver
downfield. We can do the same things as brass players. Nobody
should be thinking during a performance: "Keep your finger out of the
ring!"
Achieving Balance in Practice
Those
people that have been on a well-coached sports team already understand this
process. How many times has a soccer coach said, "Today we'll work
only on penalty kicks. Tomorrow, we'll do just headers." Good
coaches intuitively understand that to develop complete players, you have to
practice all facets of the game, repeatedly and continuously. In
fact, many elite teams use a practice model where players engage in a short
drill working on one particular skill set, then run to the next drill for 10-15
minutes, then on to the next one. By keeping them constantly moving and
on their toes, the coaches avoid mental fatigue and much more closely simulate
the actual game situations that their players are working towards.
I
think most brass players understand this concept of balance. But how many
times have you found yourself playing the same Arban exercise over and over
(and over and over)? How many times have you worked for an hour on the
same 4 lines of an etude only to realize that you used up your entire time and
never got to the rest of your practicing? I highly recommend that every
brass player come up with a great fundamental routine that addresses all
of the skills that you need in order to be successful (air, sound, technique,
articulation, flexibilty, sight-reading, etc.) This should be the very
first thing that you practice every day--and becomes even more important as you
prepare for a recital, audition, or major performance. I also thing it's
critical to recognize when you are mentally or physically tired and learn to
take a break, or move on to something else. Continuing to practice when
you are working against yourself won't really help you get better!
I've
found a couple other great tricks for helping to organize and find balance in
your practicing. First, keep a practice journal. Write down
what you worked on, for how long, and possibly even what you achieved or
learned from that practice session. By going back and looking at your
journals for the past week or month, you can learn where you being efficient
vs. where you might be wasting a lot of time and what you are working on a lot
vs. what you are ignoring. A second trick that seems to work will is to set
a timer. This works well both for people like me who often had give
myself time goals in order to get all of my practicing done ("20 more
minutes on my Charlier etude and I then I can watch one episode of
Colbert") or for people that obsessively practice they same thing until
it's perfect (once the timer goes off, you must move on).
Fundamentals Over Repertoire
This
seems like a simple concept, but it's critical to brass players in every stage
of their career. Think about your favorite team--how much time in their
practice do they spend working on skills and drill compared to the amount of
time playing scrimmages and actual game simulations. At most, it's
probably 50-50. At other times in the season, practices are devoted
almost exclusively to fundamentals.
The
same goes for brass playing. Which do you think will lead to developing
better multiple tonguing more quickly: working out of the Arban book on a
variety of exercises designed to teach you to multiple tongue repeated notes,
scalar passages, and arpeggios in a variety of keys, or just compulsively
practicing Carnival of Venice over and over again? Learn the
fundamentals first, and then apply them to repertoire.
The
trap that many people fall into is, "But I have to learn my band music, so
I spend most of my practice time working on that!" If you spend more
of your time learning to be great on your instrument, the director/conductor
will thank you later because the next piece will be so much easier to learn.
Don't forget about the importance of sight-reading every day! Think
about it: if you practice your fundamentals until you are a great player and
learn how to sight-read anything in front of you, what piece of repertoire will
present a serious challenge?
Besides
the actual content, there is very little difference in the preparation and
process of great athletes from great musicians. We have as much to learn
from Peyton Manning and John Wooden as we do from Joe Alessi and Maurice Andre!
Now go practice!
