Some Thoughts on Practising

by Helen Paskins

Freelance clarinettist and teacher

Practising can be great fun. I was delighted to hear from the parent of one of my students recently that she happily practises of her own accord. So why is this not such a common occurrence?

In my view, the reasons for not practising are normally far more complex than straightforward laziness. In fact, I am not sure that laziness is ever really the problem and sussing out what is really stopping practice from happening can be really helpful.

Firstly, I think students need to be really clear about what practice is and how to do it. This is where a good teacher can come in. Setting clear, achievable and measurable goals is vital. As I mentioned in my article on scales it is failing that troubles us, what we like best is to succeed. This is why so many people like to practise the things they can do already! The trouble is that in the long run this isn't going to be hugely useful. It is also a good idea to develop a structure for your practice. It can be very beneficial to warm up with technical exercises, long notes, scales and articulation patterns which get the key essentials for good, even sound production in place before you begin working on pieces.

It also enables you to bring your brain from whatever it may have been thinking about previously into musical focus before you start on the main work of your practice.

I feel that all lessons should be a template for good practice techniques. If we can take something we can't do and turn it into something that we can then the practice feels good and will help us to improve therefore, ironically, inspiring us to practise more. The reverse is also true though. Practise something in a rushed, un-rhythmical way or without paying attention to accurate notes, accidentals, articulations or good posture and you will wind up feeling frustrated. Internally you will know that you are being careless. This feels bad. You leave the session not wanting to do anything further. Added to which these mistakes are likely to rear their ugly heads again because the option is now in your fingers. For some reason, bad habits can seem to stick much more stubbornly than good ones which is why it is best, if you can, never to play things without good quality attention. I teach my students to check in with their emotions when practising. They are a really good barometer for how well you are getting on. 

Our feelings are really important drivers in other ways too. Alison Balsom talked a lot about the inspiration for practice in her wonderful Desert Island Discs interview. She described the importance of the friends she has made through music and the excitement of discovering different pieces/performers for herself. The power of the social connections we can make and voyage of intellectual, emotional and even geographical discovery that music can take us on really can help to get us hooked on practising and keep us there. Having friends to chat to who love to explore, enjoy and care about music too can really help to keep you motivated and focused. I have witnessed again and again how a group of students playing music together can create a special chemistry which keeps them all so much more enthused and engaged and how this then feeds into their personal practice.

However, with the best will in the world there is another problem. Children (and adults of course!) these days can be incredibly busy with huge numbers of activities to try and fit into their days. It feels like everyone wants a piece of them. This is where being realistic is important.  I had one student who used to get up early and practise before school. For a lot of teenagers though, their body clocks just can't cope with this. For other people, the problem might be their next door neighbours. Fine. It must be what works for you. However, if you tie practice to some free periods when friends are in lessons or do it every day just after or as a break in the middle of homework or any realistic and regular slot in the week then it is much more likely to be feasible and therefore to happen. Deciding to practise 2 hours a day when you simply do not have that time in your life is only going to make you feel guilty and very likely not achieve much. Ironically, if you commit to a very small slot, for example 10 minutes a day, you will probably do more because having started you will get involved and interested.

This article is in no way meant to be comprehensive. However, I have found that working with these ideas and a compassionate/realistic approach to what can be achieved can be really helpful. At the end of the day, playing an instrument is an incredible experience and fun. It involves solving problems, being honest and patient with ourselves and being creative. If we are open to the idea that gratification might not always be immediate, but that working

slowly,

rhythmically (more vital than many people realise for satisfying practice),

in small chunks,

and with

care, attention, good listening, imagination

and appropriate body use/awareness,

can lead us to solving all sorts of tricky passages,

then it can be an incredibly rich and rewarding experience even, and perhaps especially, for the smart phone/internet generation.

Being alive now is in fact an incredible opportunity. There are so many resources online to help us make practice even more productive than perhaps ever before. There are websites like sightreadingfactory.com to help us with sight-reading so that you can check what you are doing is actually correct. The ABRSM has aural apps to help with aural. You can have a metronome and tuner on your phone so they are always with you. On Youtube or Spotify we have access to an unbelievable quantity and quality of recordings and videos which can inspire us and help us to learn about the harmony, accompaniment or different ways of playing/phrasing the same thing. Using Wikipedia we can inform ourselves in seconds about the background of the pieces and composers. IMSLP will provide you with the orchestra parts or scores for almost anything out of copyright.  Wow.  How lucky we are. Let's get practising!

(I am grateful to David Warwick and Nicola Summerscales for their very pertinent input into these thoughts.)

LINKS

Helen's edition of 'Syrinx' by Debussy for bass clarinet is published 
by Emerson Edition (E700) and available from June Emerson Wind Music here.

More information about Helen Paskins can be found here

Preparing for Music College Auditions

First Impressions:

Audition Tips

by Kevin Price

(Head of Brass and Percussion,

Royal Welsh College of Music Drama)

Travel Well

Avoid travelling on the day of the audition. A night in cheap hotel or B&B is a good investment and easily outweighs the embarrassment and cost of a missed audition due to transport problems. Be careful to pack copies of your music to give to the panel and to read all audition requirements with great care, packing a copy for last-minute reference during your journey. Aim to arrive at least one hour before your allocated time in order to acclimatise and feel relaxed. Avoid excessive caffeine and sugar in the days leading up to the audition and take plenty of long walks or light exercise before the big day.

Dress well

Make sure that you dress in a way which reflects your professionalism and dedication. Wear smart clothes that you have worn before (new clothes or shoes can often feel uncomfortable and make you a little uncertain). Suits and ties for men always look good and long smart casual for ladies works well too. Low or medium heels are also recommended, as it is common to see high heels undermine efficient posture and breathing strategies on the day of a performance or audition.

Perform well

Remember that the panel wants to discover what you know, rather than what you don’t know. They will ask you questions which are always intended to relax you and to discover what you are like as a person and as a musician. Try to be open, to smile and to take time to answer questions thoughtfully. Prepare your own questions too, as the panel want to see your enthusiasm and to gain an understanding of your aims and long-term goals.

Audition requirements vary greatly between colleges, with some asking for “set works” and others offering a “free choice” of repertoire. Choose from the “set works”, selecting pieces that you are comfortable with. It is important to offer two pieces which contrast in style and that are of at least Grade 8 standard. You do not necessarily need to choose pieces which are technically demanding. It is best to select repertoire which you can play comfortably and which shows off your musicality.

Remember that the 10-15 minutes of your audition potentially represents the first stage of your College course, therefore the panel generally views the audition as part of the “learning process” and as an opportunity to provide you with constructive feedback and advice. We are looking for “learning people” who respond to advice and constructive criticism, as opposed to a “perfect” performance on the day.

The 'S' words

Scales are the “alphabet” of music. They build brain patterns and physical reflexes that enable us to respond instinctively to the written suggestions of composers. Not all colleges ask for scales in auditions, but a working knowledge of the Grade 8 scale requirements will do you no harm. The confidence that scale preparation gives you will also help to develop a better ability to deal with the other “S” word: sight-reading. When looking at sight-reading, take your time and pay attention to details of tempo (candidates usually play too fast when under pressure) and musical moods. Details of articulation and note-lengths are commonly overlooked, along with dynamics. Try not to focus solely upon “the notes”, but always aim to convey the emotion and moods of the music. My peripatetic teacher at school always said “You are allowed to make mistakes, but you are not allowed to be boring!”

(Grant Jameson, winner of the BBC Young Brass Award 2015)

Although brief, I sincerely hope that this advice will help you to feel more relaxed 

on the big day. Remember - we want you to do well and we are here to help,

rather than to judge you.

If you are organised and work hard, you can achieve anything.

Good luck!

LINKS

Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama

&

RWCMD Brass Department

Learning Scales - Overcoming the Psychological Roadblocks

Learning Scales -

Overcoming the Psychological Roadblocks

by Helen Paskins

Freelance clarinettist and teacher

"I hate scales"

In my experience, this sentiment is one shared by the majority of students. This may be because it is thought that the average person may retain only about 4 different units in their short-term memory, which means that unless the scale is divided into two halves, it constitutes overload for the brain. (If this is true for you, then thinking of your scale in two halves can be a really helpful way to tackle them.)

Add to this the fact that when you play a scale incorrectly, because of the logic of the pattern, it is excruciatingly obvious that it is wrong. We hate to be wrong! 

Fundamentally, scales are deemed to lack the magic ingredient - fun - although in my experience this viewpoint begins to alter once the scales are mastered, which would rather suggest that it is the feeling of failure which is the most de-motivating factor.  How 'fun' they are is ultimately up to the person playing them. With a few dynamics or rhythms they can become much more creative and interesting.

Scales can be awkward on the clarinet. You can't 'see' them in the way that you can on the piano and there is no logic to the movement of fingers in many of them. Once you start to move beyond C major (in which the notes follow neatly, finger lift by finger lift), there can sometimes be a three-finger lift in order to move from one note to the next, which can seem confusing - until it is repeated enough times to become habitual and familiar. A difficult scale on the clarinet is not simply a question of one with many sharps or flats. In fact, some of these supposedly more complex scales actually lie quite well. It also has to do with how easily the transition from note to note works for the fingers in that key.

However, I think the main problem with scales is in the way that they are learned. Because they are annoying rather than fun. Because they are a chore and only done because they have to be - if they are practiced at all - and then people tend to adopt what I call the 'hope for the best' scales method. The steps of which are:

1. Start                                     

2. Hope the right notes come out

3. Noodle around until they do

There are many problems with this. The brain isn't actually actively involved, so even if the scale is performed correctly this does not necessarily mean that the why or the how has been understood, and therefore that it could be replicated. Normally, the scale isn't performed correctly and, unfortunately, this then means that the fingers become programmed with wrong turnings and for some reason - probably connected with Murphy's Law - the brain seems to be much better at remembering wrong turnings than right ones!

However, there is another way. I teach this to my students and encourage them to learn to recite it because it is a way to re-programme how they think about and approach scales. Do not be put off by the simplicity. My experience has been that it is the most obvious things that can be the most useful!

1. Scales are easy and fun.

2. All you have to do is play the right notes.

3. To play the right notes, you need to know what they are!

If these steps are followed, the scale will be performed correctly. Every time. It really does work. But only if you do it. In order to do it, you need to GO SLOWLY ENOUGH TO THINK. The desire to get them over with makes playing too fast to be able to do this properly a common pitfall. If you don't know what the right notes are, find out first.  Check the key signature. Look at your fingering chart. How on earth do you expect to play them otherwise?!

This provides you with a correct scale once. However, the scale then needs to be memorised. CORRECT REPETITION is the key here. It may take ten times. It may take twenty times, but if you continue to work that scale correctly into your fingers then it will be learned and learned well and then you will find that it becomes enjoyable! It is playing scales wrongly, not playing scales, that is the real cause of the hatred!

To play a scale correctly you will need to know:

1. What it sounds like (aural memory)

2. Where your fingers go (kinaesthetic memory) - make sure you take care to use the correct alternate fingerings. Practice makes permanent. It is so much simpler to get it right from the start than to learn it wrong and so have to put it right later.

3. What the scale looks like on the page (so as to recognise it at speed) and what the key signature is so as to develop a sense of key (visual/intellectual memory)

This involves a lot of different types of 'knowing' simultaneously, but they all come as a result of following the steps given above.

So how can we make the repetition fun? The brain actually enjoys a certain amount of repetition, and while the brain is enjoying itself then you will be focused and productive. However, after a while the brain might start to make silly mistakes and this is a signal that it has switched off and stopped concentrating. How can we deal with this? This is when I like to bring in 'Scales Eye Spy'! On a long car journey we might look out for things to keep our attention off the fact that we are actually starting to feel a bit bored. We can do the same with scales. Five rounds of Scales Eye Spy could include:

1. piano

2. forte

3. dotted rhythms

4. staccato

5. legato and crescendo up/diminuendo down

The options are numerous and limited only by your creativity. The key is to decide on your goal in advance and stick to it. It might take you three goes to achieve your Scales Eye Spy task, but that's three more times you've played the scale without feeling annoyed and is very likely to have helped another area of your technique too!

This brings us to why we're doing all this in the first place. Scales are fundamentally really useful. They're not just some sadistic creation of the ABRSM to make learning an instrument more annoying. A colleague of mine describes them brilliantly as a language. Phrases or sentences which, once learnt, enable musical communication. Scales help enormously with sightreading and all the technical aspects of playing an instrument. They are a great way of working on tone and intonation and once learned become a fantastic way of warming up and checking the whole range of the instrument is working well and ready to go.

I'm not going to pretend that learning them won't take time and care but I do believe that if we make it fun and easy for ourselves then the process will be much more enjoyable.

Often, there is almost a moment of embarrassment when I spell it out like this because as soon as you think of scales in this way, it seems ridiculous to do anything else. But that is the beauty of it. It is almost as if the brain is loaded with an earlier version of the software we need. Our instinctive sense of how to learn a scale isn't perhaps the right one, but once we upgrade to the new method then we start to progress and as we begin to reap the rewards there is no looking back.

However, to my mind the psychological roadblocks extend much deeper than this. Take the Grade 7 or 8 scales requirement - ALL OF THEM! This sounds dreadful. Mount Everest. The fact that this isn't that many more than than for Grade 6 once you work it out, doesn't seem believable. The idea of getting them all learned feels insurmountable, so how can we go about it?

Firstly, it only actually takes five minutes to play every single major and melodic minor scale at the tempo 2 quavers = 120 or 4 semiquavers = 60. As soon as we know this, the psychological hurdle is greatly reduced. I suggest my students time their scales in order that they can see for themselves just how quick to play they actually are. It becomes harder to resent playing something when you realise it only lasts 30 seconds!

And for the other golden rule: ALWAYS USE A METRONOME. There are many advantages to practising scales with a metronome. The metronome doesn't lie. If you can't play the scale at that speed yet, it will tell you! This is actually really good to know. Always go at a comfortable tempo. The speed will come, as if by magic, once the scale is familiar and you will find it much more enjoyable to be beautifully in time and even. The satisfaction of doing something well is a great feeling and once you learn to achieve it as you practise your scales, you will find it a much more fulfilling and rewarding process.

So the final challenge is really one of goal setting. You need to be realistic. If you set a massive goal and fail it feels much worse than setting a reasonable goal and achieving it. Every time you feel successful, you will feel like doing more and this will then feed into more and more good results. With my students I have found that setting a challenge like 'all the majors chromatically E-Eb' is an enjoyable goal because it feels like a lot has been achieved, and there is a good feeling associated with doing all of something. Take care to go onto the minors though, because we are often tempted to stick doing what we know rather than branching out into what we don't know.

Are you serious about learning your scales? Then read all this again. Several times. It is not actually that complicated but there is a lot to take in. Each idea is important and they feed together to build a whole. I have been using these concepts with my students for a while now and they find them helpful. They're still human beings. It hasn't magically imparted the scales to them without any work on their part, but bit by bit they are getting there and when they are there, they relish the achievement - it's what the joy of learning is all about. Ultimately, we human beings are a funny breed: if it was too easy, it wouldn't be so much fun!

LINKS

Helen's new edition of 'Syrinx' by Debussy for bass clarinet is now published 
by Emerson Edition (E700) and available from June Emerson Wind Music here.

More information about Helen Paskins can be found here