Category: Practice Stuff

The LMusA Diploma Journey – Update #3 – Practicing Whilst Travelling

Nicole Neal6 Comments

I’ve been doing a lot of travelling with work recently – Sydney this week, outback Queensland last week, Adelaide the week before that. Next week I’ll no doubt be somewhere different again! I used to stress a little about travel time and time away from the guitar, especially when aiming to prepare for a concert or something or other. I learnt though that that really wasn’t getting me anywhere (just giving myself a blooming headache!), so I decided to let that stress go as it wasn’t really serving me at all and thought what else can I be doing to “practice” whilst I’m travelling.

I’ve tried the travel guitar thing (and I’ve written a post about that some time ago), but I’ve found that travelling around even with that can be a bit of a struggle and that the airlines are insisting now that it is checked in.cropped-guitar.jpg

So, this is my latest “practice routine” whilst I’m away – take a piece or the piece I’m currently most focused on in my practice (La Maja de Goya for me at the moment, as regular readers will know) and apply the following exercises:

  • Play the piece in my head through from the start (like an internal mp3) and with the aim of playing it through to the end. Whilst doing this in the early days (or even not so early days) of a piece there will be spots or even whole sections where the memory of the tune is a little fuzzy or where I can’t continue through. I make a note of this, as these are the spots where the aural memory is weakest – the spots I know least well musically. So the next time I come to sit down with the guitar these are spots to target before any others.
  • Play the piece in my head, visualising my left hand movements  – this is definitely way more patchy at the moment for me with La Maja de Goya than the aural memory. I probably get around 10 -12 bars in before things get a little fuzzy, but those opening bars I can clearly see the movement of my left hand. This tells me I most definitely know those opening bars and am feeling comfortable with them, and that next time with the guitar focussing on those in my practice is the least of my concerns. This is where some self-discipline comes in and resisting the urge to play through things from start to finish in practice time and being really focussed about what’s going to give the biggest bang for your practice buck in the time available.
  • It’s interesting to note that I’ve never done any visualisation with right hand movements, possibly because I tend to play just really looking at the left hand (if I am looking at hands), so I’m not sure right hand visualisation would be as effective for me. I may, however, next time attempt exploring mentally some of the chord voicings with right hand visualation. Kind of like checking to make sure I’m playing the correct strings but without actually playing them!
  • The next one is the most tricky (for me anyway) in the early days of getting to grips with a  piece and that’s visualising the score. Again I can very easily see the opening few bars, but beyond that it starts to get pretty fuzzy. At this stage I can visualise the approximate shapes and so on in a reasonable amount of the score, but nothing concrete. So I make a note of whereabouts it gets fuzzy and next time I have the score in front of me I’ll know where I need to start building up and securing the aural, physical, analytical knowledge of the music.
  • Not something I’m doing yet, but one to start trying next time I’m away from the guitar and that’s writing out the score on stave paper from memory – this will really show up how well that memory and knowledge of the piece is working! It will also help me in getting under the skin of the melodic and harmonic structure of the piece and getting to know it inside out.

This little routine, in whatever order and which ever steps, is something I can do in hotel rooms, aeroplanes, trains, airports, wherever. You could even do this on your daily commute to work on the train, tram or bus. Possibly not if you’re driving a car though!

Next time I’m travelling (which could well be next week again!) I think I may take a copy of the score with me (an electronic version on the iPad as that’s something I always have with me and I like to travel light) and add close study of that to the routine, plus using it as an aid to push a couple of extra bars with the memorisation of the dot points above. I’ll let you know how I go!

The LMusA Diploma Journey – Update #2 – An Example of A Day’s Practice

Nicole Neal4 Comments

Last weekend we were treated to a fantastic four day long weekend with the Easter break – yes!

This meant plenty of available practice time and plenty of unadulterated, non-tired-from-10-hours-at-work type practice too! It also meant I could get stuck into two practice sessions in the one day a couple of times too. I find this a particularly effective way of practicing as it means your concentration remains focussed across a shorter time period (you’re not trying to concentrate for 3 or 4 hours straight), which tends to mean the practice is of higher quality. It also means that it gives the brain a chance to rest, digest and assimilate the new information coming in. A bit like an athlete, I understand that it’s when you’re at rest that changes occur, when your muscles  and neural pathways repair, rebuild, adapt and grow (so long as you’ve put in the right kind of high quality training prior to taking that rest).Classical Guitar

Last Friday was such an example of a double header practice day. A great 1.5 hour session in the morning concentrating on reading through and getting under the fingers for the first time the second section of La Maja de Goya. This didn’t involve just reading from the start of that section through to the end though. I initially focussed on the first 10 bars of that section, understanding the musical shapes, direction and the mechanics of the music – where the right hand needed to be (which strings and initial thoughts on tone colour) and where the left hand needed to be too, examining fingering choices – and scribbling notes furiously into the score. I then did this with the following 18 bars of the section, really focussed in on deliberate, slow movements, concentrating on accurate placement of left and right hand fingers to start building the muscle memory in the way I intend from the get go. Going back to fix up a bad habit that you’ve played over and over or a niggling little knot that you’ve ignored can be a real pain in the backside, so I think it’s worth taking the time at the start of a piece. Even if you’re playing it ridiculously slowly it will pay dividends as you become more familiar and comfortable with the piece.

And then in the afternoon, coming back to the guitar for another hour or so, I honed straight in on the most tricky elements of the material I had been working on in the morning, before then working on stitching that together to the first section that I’d been working on in the week prior. That probably took me around 45 minutes all up (not that time is really of significance, I believe – these things take as long as they need to). I then spent some time on the second section of the Fuga from J.S. Bach’s Lute Suite BWV 997 (a favourite of mine to play and a constant on my music stand in recent months), pulling out specific bars and phrases and treating them as left hand accuracy exercises (Bach’s great for that!).

And continuing on with the Bach theme I then did around 5 minutes sight reading with the Fuga from BWV 998 (the first 28 bars to be precise). This piece is on the repertoire list for the LMusA diploma, so was keen to start exploring it and definitely keen to get working on it as a possible part of the program  for the exam.

So, yes, two practice sessions in a day, where I can fit it in, I find really helpful and my progress shoots along, even if the practice periods themselves are on the shorter side. The upshot of a total of five days of practice in a similar manner to this across the last week (including a three day trip to outback Queensland!) means that I now have the entirety of La Maja de Goya underway, it starting to really come together, a great foundation to get stuck into the details of the material and sound like the semblances of a fantastic piece of music.