Practising

LTS Guitar Music
by La Tung-Son

PRACTISING

The pianist Artur Rubinstein was stopped in a New York street one day by a lady who said: 'Excuse me, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?' He looked at her and said: 'Practise!' Practising is a matter of forming habits, and it therefore entails an almost unlimited amount of repetition. It is learning to do something which you could not do before; trainning the muscles, tendons, and joints to work in a controlled and consistent way -- mechanics plus thought all the time.

Practising must begin in the mind; any practising done without the mind engaged retards progress. Putting right unthinking faults takes far longer than acquiring bad habits. (Vivian Joseph, cellist)

Do not expect to master any particular difficulty in a single day. Event with, say, thirty repetitions of a problem passage, played slowly, with full concentration, metronomic evenness, and hypercritical attention to detail, fingers cannot learn new habits at once; the same routine must be repeated day after day at least a week before any improvement can be expected to show.

If I miss a single day's practising, it is enough to make a difference to a concert -- not so much that anyone else would notice, but enough to affect my own fulfilment. (Barry Douglas, concert pianist)

The rate of progress depends as much on the quality of the work done as it does on the length of each practising-session and the number of sessions per day. As a general guide, little and often is always preferable to 'marathon' sessions, when falling concentration begin to diminish the amount of benefit being derived after about forty-five minutes.

The most important precept for all music learning must be: absorb a little over long periods. Never rush yourself; never be rushed; let things soak through, sink in, and eventually fall into place. A carefully planned, well-structured strategy is need right from the start. (Philippe Monnet, Guitar International)

For any progress at all to be possible, a clear sense of purpose and direction is needed. Practising aimlessly, and without the attention being focused on a goal, is mere 'doodling' and time-waisting. The prevalent habit of just 'playing through' pieces leaves all the technical blemishes and musical muddle undisturbed, if not actually confirmed.

It is very dangerous to allow a single mistake in rythm, phrasing, articulation, or technique generally to pass uncorrected; the more this happens, the more faults will become, but what is far worse, the more numbed and anaesthetised will the selft-critical faculty also become. (Peter Norris, Director of Music, The Yehudi Menuhin School)

A carefully planned schedule, written out and placed on the music-stand, will, if stricly followed, ensure that every minute is used productively and that practising does not degenerate into pointless, semi-automatic activity.

The time devoted to practising is a matter of personal choice, depending on a conjuntion of the necessary, the desirable, and the possible. The shorter the available time, the more important the strategy regulating the use of that time. (Philippe Monnet)

Slow practising is the key to ultimate technical mastery; not just slower than usual, but really slow, and with meticulous attention to rythm. Practising one meaningful exercise -- or a difficulty extracted from a piece -- very slowly, twenty times, will prove far more fruitful than playing through twenty different exercises once each.

I like music that can be played slowly! (Igor Stravinsky)

As a preliminary 'locating' exercise, position the fingers carefully on the fourth string, somewhere in the middle of the fingerboard; then, having spaced them accurately to the frets, and made sure that the tips are exactly bisected by the string, press firmly for about ten seconds. This will make 'grooves' in the fingertips, which then act as guides to precision for the exercises and scales which follow.

If I had only one hour a day in which to practise, I would practise scales, and if it were two hours, it would be more scales. (Jascha Heifetz)

Isolate the basic technical problem first, before working on it. Reducing difficulties to their simplest form makes practising them both more meaningfull and more rewarding. A distingished pianist once said that all technical difficulties are 'single-finger' problems.

Study not only the difficult passage, but the difficultty itself reduced to its most elementary principles. (Alfred Cortot)

Avoid at all costs the error of equating speed of execution with progress; music is not a race, to be won by the player who gets to the end of the piece first! Working only for greater speed simply reduces the gap between the notes; it will do nothing to improve the quality of the notes themselves. A composer's most profound thoughts are more often to be found in his slower, contemplative works.

I believe that music must first and foremost stir the heart; this cannot be achieved by mere rattling and drumming. (C.P.E. Bach)

Practise or perform; don't get caught in the 'no man's land' in between, stopping, repeating the mistake once only, and then going on. Progress is made on a broad front if all aspects of technique are covered at every stage. Begin with very simple exercices in single-note playing, slurs, arperggios, chords, etc., then after several days (or weeks), choose slightly more difficult versions of the same exercices and, continue the routine as before.

Technique is a vast empire; so wide are its fields that, unless ploughed, sown and reaped strategically, the yield will be poor, haphazard and disappointing. (Philippe Monnet)

Try, at an early stage of learning a piece, to imagine the finished performance. It is far harder and more time-consuming to attempt to apply 'expression' to a mechanically perfected piece which is devoid of musical feeling; technical habits must first be unlearned before a true interpretation can develop. Expression is not a mere finishing touch -- it is an integral part of the music. In any case, preparing a genuinely expressive performance does not require much more work than a mindlessly technical one, if undertaken from beginning.

Study the score away from the instrument, otherwise your fingers will make interpretative decisions for you. You should first be certain of your artistic purpose, then work out how to do it. (Barry Douglas)

But beware also of wasting time over finger execices away from the guitar; these are useless for developing dexterity. You learn only what you pratise, and finger gymnastics which have no direct relevance to actual playing improve nothing but your ability to perform finger gymnastic!.
Whatever interpretative effect you may be striving for -- forte, piano, crescendo, ponticello, tasto, etc. -- slight exagger-action is always a good thing, just as an actor must declaim a little order to project the audience. What you imagine you are doing does not always reach the audience, since the hoped-for effect as already been half-heard mentally by the player. Performances which are closely modelled on those of another player tend to be just 'smudged carbon copies' of the original, with little feeling of musical purpose or sense of direction. Many guitarist habitually listen to recordings of well-known players, then base their own playing on what they hear. The most prominent features of any performance are often those which are some way misconceived or ill-judged; they 'jar' the ear, thereby attracting listener's attention. He then tends to absorb these mannerisms (for they are little more than that), and to imitate them. A more sensible course when learning a new piece is to resist the temptation to listen to any performance of it 'just to see how it goes', until after you have read it through a good many times--perhaps even memorized it. You will thus avoid compounding your own faults with those of another player. If you experience some difficulty in getting the gist of a piece from one or two readings, then sight-reading and aural perception are obviously in need of attention.

Do not copy slavisly any performer, however distinguished. Be honest and sincere in your musical thoughts and interpretation; play a work as you feel it yourself, but in a style which fits the period and mood of the piece. (Evelyn Rothwell, oboist)

The amount of progress made for a given amount of practising-time depends on the quality and intensity of the work; more can be achieved in a shorter time by the methodical concentration on essentials and vital detail than by any amount of random or spasmodic work.

The purpose of practising an instrument is the pleasurable communication of music; not for dazzle or impress, not to pile up neurotic pyrotechnics which lead more often to psychological compensation than musicianship. Downpours of vacuos technique are so much unsung hail, soon melted; but if the heart is reached and touched, even in the simplest way, the experience will be cherished and remembered. (Philippe Monnet)

'Selft-taught' players, having chosen to ignore the world's great storehouse of musical lore and wisdom, accumulated over many centuries and with contributions from countless musicians, form the humblest to those of towering genius, should perhaps note the humility in the following:

Bach is the father, we are children. Those of us who do anything right to leaned from him. Whoever does not own to this is a scoundrel. (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)

Let J.S. Bach himself, from whom even the greatest composers learned their art, have the last word. When asked in later life to divulge the secret of his mastery, he replied:

" I workd hard! If you are as industrious as I was, you will be no less successful."