10 Tips for Success [in your First Year] in Music School

Whether it's your first year or your fifth year, these tips from trumpeter Alex Noppe will set you up for a great year of exploration, learning, and growth!

1. Go to class and do your homework 
Most students that fail classes do so because they don’t show up and they don’t turn in assignments. Too many of those end up paying for 5th and 6th years of college! Don’t let one missed class or assignment spiral into many more.

2. Use your professors for help 
That’s why they’re here – they like teaching and helping students!
Never be afraid to ask questions, whether it’s about class material or anything else.

3. Use your fellow students for help
As much time as you spend around the faculty, you’ll spend way more around your peers. Learn from them. Ask questions. Practice with them. Most older student love to help out freshmen with advice and ideas.

4. Practice. 
A lot. Every day! This is your job right now – to become great at your craft. Nothing else is nearly as important. You don’t get to take weekends and holiday breaks off from practicing any more. The best thing you can do is actually put your practice times in your calendar, and plan on multiple shorter sessions throughout the day. Mental fatigue leads to poor practice and very few people can remain mentally focused on one thing for hours at a time.

5. Use the little breaks in your schedule
Most music majors have tons of shorter classes and rehearsals, often with 20-40 minute breaks between them. You’d be amazed at how much you can accomplish in those short breaks, whether it’s a hyper-focused practice session, theory homework, or meals.

6. Be a good person to everyone around you 
This one is really important. Music school isn’t a competition – it’s collaborative and we all can get better together. Your reputation building begins right now, and many of the connections that you make while in college will be critical to your professional life down the road. Don’t gossip. Don’t cut people down. Assume that anything you say about somebody else will probably get back to them. Both positivity and negativity are extremely contagious, but positive people have happier lives!

7. Try out new things 
One of the best things about college is the incredible variety of opportunities and experiences that you will encounter. This is the best time to explore new fields, take new classes, learn new skills, and do things that will challenge you. I can guarantee that you will leave college a different person than when you started, and you never know what unexpected opportunity might set up you on the path towards the rest of your life.

8. Be smart about money management 
Remember that you have the rest of your life to work a job. This might be your only chance to be a college student. Save money on the things that don’t matter so much (fancy coffee, expensive cars, the newest cell phone) so that you have it for the stuff that does (extra lessons, a study abroad trip, high quality instruments). Small amounts of student loans are probably worth it if it means that you don’t have to spend your precious practicing/homework time working a minimum wage job.

9. Be healthy
Go outside. Drink more water and fewer energy drinks. Exercise. Don’t eat Taco Bell for every meal. Try to find some time to take care of yourself.

10. Remember that your worth as a person is not measured by your music 
In music school, you’ll experience the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, sometimes within the same 5 minutes! You’ll have successes and failures, but you don’t have to define yourself by either. Every audition or performance is only representative of just your music making at one specific
snapshot in time, not a value judgment of you personally.

As music majors, you get a tremendous opportunity to spend a few years (or your entire life) doing
something that is deeply meaningful to you and those around you, and making our society a better place to live in. Enjoy it – it’s going to be an exciting ride and tons of fun. Have a GREAT year!!

Eternal Lessons

Today I was practicing a piece for an upcoming recital, and I decided to finally attack “that one little lick.” You know that lick, right? The one that just never goes exactly as you want it to go.

Before I share with you the [not so great] ways that I practiced that lick, let me tell you a little bit about the way I approach new material. When I learn a piece, I tend to have a process that I follow as I prepare for a performance. It’s kind of like peeling an onion; there are lots of layers!

My first broad brushstroke tends to cover learning notes and rhythms. I try to do this as quickly, correctly, and efficiently as possible. If I make a mistake, I stop and fix it before I move on. If I’m not sure if I played the right note, I check it against a piano. There is a lot of singing involved so that I internalize the new material.

Second, I find large phrase direction and shape. There’s more than one right answer in this step, so I tend to try out several ways to turn a phrase before I settle on my favorite. I make a lot of marks in my music so that I can pick up where I left off when I come back to the piece the next day. This step also involves determining where to breathe…and writing it in!

Third, I find smaller nuances that I want to make within each phrase. It’s around this time that I find little technical inconsistencies that I may have missed when I peeled off that first thick layer. And that’s where I found “the lick.”

[See my full list of steps for learning a new piece at the bottom of this article.]

You see, this particular lick is really difficult because the figure goes between eighth notes and triplets, and it has four notes in four different positions, but the positions are really close to each other, and in fact you have to play two different 3rd positions to adjust for tuning and, and, and…

Well, at least that’s what I told myself for the past week or so. That’s probably why I haven’t gotten very far with this lick.

So today, it was time to take care of “that one little lick.” (Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of other “little licks” throughout my recital program. But today was the day for that one.) What did I do first? The wrong thing: I didn’t make a plan. I just made a goal. My goal was to fix it. I had no idea how I was going to do it because it’s really difficulty lick because the figures goes between eighth notes and triplets, and it has four notes in four different positions, and….

All I had in my mind were the thoughts “this is hard, it doesn’t sound good, I need to fix it.” Somehow, I still fixed it, but only afterwards did I realize that I went about it backwards. My mental approach should have been more planned and more positive! I probably could have saved twenty minutes and some chop fatigue if I had taken a second to think about my approach.

That being said, this is what happened: I played it over and over. The same way. At least forty or fifty times. If I hadn’t made it clear yet, this is what NOT to do!

What was I doing? I was waiting for one of those repetitions to give me the answer. I was waiting for it to sound good so that I could capture that approach and sound, and then replicate that.  I was using the lowest level of problem solving: trial and error. Unfortunately, I was also practicing it incorrectly…over and over.

Nothing changed until something in my brain said “play it longer.” Aha! A style change! Imagine that!

I played it longer, and it definitely helped. Then something in my brain said “direct the phrase to the last note.” Aha! A musical change! Imagine that!

I played it more musically and it was instantly 100% better. You might even say it was fixed. Looking back, I realize that it only took me one creative thought and one repetition carrying out that thought to “fix” my technical problem. I wondered why I had just mindlessly practiced the lick fifty times. Why didn’t I just stop to think for a few seconds?!

And then the echoes of one of my teachers, Carl Lenthe, rattled in my mind. A musical solution to a technical problem. Of course. It makes so much sense. Why didn’t I listen to him more often? No, why didn’t I just do what he said more often?

I practiced the piece for about 45 minutes today, but I took away much more than that. I learned a very valuable lesson, one that I have learned before and forgotten, many times: making music and learning how to play your instrument is not a technical pursuit. Rather, it is a mental pursuit. You have to learn how to learn. You must learn strategies that guide yourself to improve efficiently and mindfully. That is the answer! Yes, we all have technical shortcomings that we would like to improve, but the first step is not finding out which exercise to play. The first step is knowing yourself, making a plan, and teaching yourself how to learn.

If you are an artist and you are trying to really improve, I strongly encourage you to take this approach. Really take a look inside yourself and figure out how you learn. Teach yourself to learn well. Listen to your teacher, because they are giving you the answers all the time. You can only benefit from them if you are ready to learn.

The other lesson that I learned (again) is to just try something different. If a lick isn’t working, you’ve got to attack it from all angles. If you’re not sure what else to do with it musically, start with technical approach variations. Play it slower, faster, lower, higher, louder, softer, change the articulation--anything that will pull you away from playing it the same, boring way that you always play it. There is virtually no benefit of playing something over and over again unless you’re doing it well every time (correct rhythm, notes, intentional musical direction, etc.).

I hope my practicing woes and triumphs will help you bring a new angle to your practice, even if it is to simply incorporate more intentional thought into your precious practice time. We are all busy people, and we owe it to ourselves to get the most out of our practice by planning, learning from our mistakes, and making conscious musical choices every time we pick up the instrument.

How to Learn a New Piece

Sarah

Distracted? 6 Practicing Tips to Improve Your Focus

Does this conversation sound familiar to you?

Friend: “Hey (your name), how are you?”

You: “Great, and super busy!

I’ve definitely been busy lately. I’ve been busy for the last…10-15 years, really. It took me a while to realize it, but “busy” is my style. I say “yes” to a lot of things, and I am comfortable maintaining seven different agendas. It’s not necessarily good for me, but I’m good at it.

The truth is, we’re all busy. We have so many options in our lives for work and entertainment, there’s no way we could be bored. 

The problem is when my busy-bee mentality gets in the way of my focus, which is something I must have as a musician. I notice my focus wandering especially when I practice. I have so many other things running through my mind that I struggle to quiet my constant train of thought. Then I catch myself writing three emails in the middle of a practice session – and I don’t even know how I got there!

Luckily I realized that I had a problem – no, it did not take an intervention! I started trying out some practicing techniques that would me focus on the task at hand: playing beautiful music.

I’m sharing these with you so that you will benefit from these practice techniques. We’re all different people, so some may work better than others. But one thing is for sure: we’re all busy! So I challenge you to incorporate at least one of these techniques into your practice routine this week. Which leads me to my first tip…

1.  Build a Routine

Wouldn’t it be ridiculous if we slept at different times every day? Like you know you need to get 8 hours, but you worked it into your schedule whenever it happened to fit? That would be crazy! We need our sleep to be consistent and regular. Humans like routine. So, why not use the same approach with your practice? If your daily routine is to wake up, shower, eat breakfast, and warm up, soon it will feel so natural, you won’t remember a time you didn’t warm up first thing in the morning. And then you don’t need to waste any time or energy worrying about when you will get your practice time in.

2. Schedule It

And why stop at the morning? Try scheduling all of your practice sessions. If you’re a person who uses a daily planner or the calendar on your phone, this one is for you. I find that if I write down my practice time in my calendar, I am more likely to stick to the plan and less likely to do something else instead. Here’s an example of my daily schedule on Google Calendar:

      3. Commit

Don’t half-ass your practice session. If you’re not totally in it, step back and evaluate why. I make sure I fully commit by going through all of the important fundamentals in my morning warm up: 8 minutes of Breathing Gym, 2 minutes of buzzing, long tones, slow slurs, fast slurs, articulation, high range, low range, etc. Sometimes I catch myself wanting to skip the breathing exercises and then I think, “What’s the point? You’re too good to spend time doing this halfway. Either commit now or do something else.” If you know a method to achieve superior practice and performance, why wouldn’t you follow it every time?

      4. Make 1 Goal

So if you’re having trouble committing to a practice session, design a goal for yourself. There are three rules for this goal:

Your goal must be:

·      Specific

·      Measurable

·      Achievable

This is especially good if you have less than 30 minutes to practice. Here's an example of a good goal:

“In this practice session I will practice my memorization of Bolero. I will divide the excerpt into phrases and play each phrase once with music and once without. I will repeat this process until 30 minutes have passed.”  

My goal is specific; it outlines the exact process that I will use.

My goal is measurable; at the end of 30 minutes, I can report that I did it.

My goal is achievable; notice it didn’t say that I would memorize Bolero, because I don’t necessarily know if I can do that in 30 minutes. I do know that I can play phrases back and forth, with and without music. I set an achievable goal that would take me closer to memorization. I am practicing my memorization in small chunks so that it is more likely it will be memorized at the end of the session.

Not only will your goal direct your focus, but you’ll have the added bonus of feeling accomplished at the end of your practice session. And who wouldn’t want that?!

      5. 10x10

This is for those mornings when I have to get some work done on the computer, but I also have to practice. I set the timer on my phone to 10 minutes, repeating. And then I go! For the first ten minutes, I play my trombone. When the timer rings, I work on my computer. Rinse and repeat. Once an hour, take a ten minute chunk to go outside and run around in the sun. Then get back to it. This technique works for 1-2 hour increments. It helps keep me focused because I have a sense of urgency in everything I do.

      6. Metronome ON

Still getting distracted? Take out your loudest metronome, turn it on, turn the volume all the way up, and then don’t turn it off. Trust me, it’s really annoying to have a loud click in your ear while you’re trying to check Facebook. It’s a good reminder to get your head back where it should be: in the music.

-Sarah