What follows is a list of thoughts that I came up with in an effort to prepare a lecture/seminar that I am going to give my senior high and junior high students tomorrow. It ended up being quite the narrative, and I hope that I can get through it all in one class period! Feel free to use any of the listed thoughts and ideas, and please share if you have anything to add! Exciting side note – first post this school year!! Woohoo! Enjoy!

Thoughts On Practicing

Follow the 3 Golden Rules
- Go Slow!! You should never make a mistake when you are practicing! Why? Because you should go slow enough. If you don’t, then you are practicing mistakes and thus wasting valuable practice time. This means start working under tempo NO MATTER HOW SLOW IT IS! Then you can gradually speed up. This will save a lot of time in the long run.
- Work small sections. Isolate where your problems are. (This also requires you to be a good listener while you are playing). Where is the trouble? Between 2 specific notes, or between 3? Is it just two beats of a measure that you’re having trouble with? Just work on that part! You do not need to practice stuff you can already play! For example, in a long run of notes that is difficult, start with 2 only, then when you feel comfortable with that, add one more note, etc.
- Related to the above – REPEAT, REPEAT, REPEAT! You must repeat these slow, small sections until you know them as second nature! This is how we train our brains/muscle memory to play the passage correctly.

A good minimum practice time goal should be at least 1 hour EVERY day if you want to see real results, but…….quality of practice time is far more important than quantity…it’s what you do with your time that’s important! The most important part is that you spend time with the instrument EVERY DAY (outside the band rehearsal). Remember, our job during rehearsal is to take what you have worked on in the practice room and put it together with everyone else. With that in mind, set a goal for each session, based on the amount of time available to you. Maybe your goal is to simply get better at one phrase if your time is short. Remember, even if you just make one thing better during your practice time, you are still getting better!

GET A METRONOME!! This serves many purposes, but two of the most important – you begin to develop great time & it keeps you from increasing the tempos you are practicing at too quickly. When we GRADUALLY speed up tempos that we are working on, we then give our brain/muscles time to learn. When we speed up too quickly, we don’t learn correctly (and are probably practicing mistakes).

WHEN YOU PRACTICE, IT SHOULD BE PERFECT…NO MISTAKES!! Why? Because we should go slow enough to make sure there are no mistakes.

These techniques seem counter-intiutive. It seems like this will make it take longer to learn a given passage or piece. BUT, in the long run you will actually learn the piece/passage much more quickly! This is because you are practicing perfectly, without mistakes. The purpose of practice is to train our brains and muscles to work together at specific times when music is read or heard.

For any performance, you want whatever you are playing to become second-nature. You must be 110% prepared, because you lose 10% just to nerves.

Individual practice is what will set you apart from other musicians your age.

Many times, practicing your instrument does not provide immediate results. Such are all good things in life! But, dedication to it and your instrument will pay HUGE dividends over time. If you follow the methods above, you will be surprised how much more quickly you will improve.

Do not allow yourself to get frustrated. It happens to the best of us when we are practicing! If you find yourself getting frustrated while working on a particular passage, simply put the instrument down for a minute or two and walk away. Go get a drink, or take a lap around the building and come back to it a few minutes later. You will come back fresh, having given your mind and spirit a short break from your hard work!

Practicing your instrument should also include fundamentals. I begin EVERY practice session with a tonal warm-up to get my mind and instrument ready to play. I then continue by playing my major & minor scales with a metronome. For me, this is a routine that I have established over many years…clearly, I had to learn those warm-ups and scales first. Practice cannot just be about working on your repertoire. Granted, that is a large part of the practice time, but you also just need to get better at playing your instrument in general…this is done through practicing fundamentals that are specific to your instrument, although ALL instrumentalists should know their major and minor scales AT LEAST 2 octaves.

Go take lessons! Individual time with a teacher on your instrument will be very helpful in helping to direct your practice and individual learning.

LISTEN TO GREAT MUSIC (AND GREAT MUSICIANS ON YOUR INSTRUMENT)! How else will you know what your instrument is supposed to sound like? You need to have a “picture in your ear” of what you should sound like. The internet is a great resource for finding recordings, but a word of caution here – not everything on the internet is good. See Mr. Butchy if you are looking for suggestions of who to look for on your instrument. Also, listen to recordings of your band pieces. Mr. Butchy makes them available to you on the web. You should be listening to these recordings A LOT!!

All of this information is based directly on my own experience (and struggles) with learning how to practice. I guarantee that if you follow these suggestions, you will improve by leaps and bounds!

I have run the gamut emotionally in the last week. If you are a music teacher, you are probably already thinking that you know exactly what I’m talking about. Each of us has to deal with the daily frustrations of our jobs. In the music world, this includes things like paperwork, bureaucracy, co-workers, scheduling conflicts, etc. Sometimes, we get bogged down by these frustrations and it becomes easy for us to “lose our way.” This happened to me the day of my concert dress rehearsal this week. The day of the rehearsal, many of my elementary students were coming to me announcing that they had schedule conflicts with the concert. I found this particularly frustrating, because I had been reminding them every day for 3 weeks about the rehearsal and concert. Anyway, it was just “the last straw” and I had reached my boiling point. I was tired. I was annoyed. I was dejected.

But that night at the dress rehearsal, some amazing things happened. Almost every elementary student attended. This is particularly exciting, because we have never done a performance like this. I combined all three elementary bands into one larger group. Usually, they just all play separate concerts. This is especially difficult at the small schools that only have about 12 kids in each “band.” But, I knew that if I could get all 60 kids together from all 3 schools, it would be an awesome experience for them.

It was so wonderful to look at that group and see all of them playing together…they LOVED it! They had such a good time playing in a huge band all together, and you could tell by the looks on their faces! Even better, every time I stopped to work on something, they were extremely quiet and attentive. This I did not expect, but it was awesome! It was also exciting to think that in just two years, I could have upwards of 50 students in the Middle School group. This would be BY FAR the largest group I have ever had at that level. Again, I owe much of this excitement at the elementary level to the change in the elementary program this year.

The Middle School group rehearsed equally as well, but the most gratifying part of the evening was the dedication of my Senior High students. After our dress rehearsal for the concert, they stayed later and worked on our pieces for our upcoming Adjudication. This included the entire Holst First Suite. They were extremely focused and they worked very hard, which was really gratifying.

Of course, the concert was outstanding. My students always step up and do the absolute best that they can. It is pretty rare that I am not pleased with their effort in performances. It was a wonderful event, with performances by our orchestra and choir as well. We truly celebrated Music In Our Schools Month.

These great experiences came for me just at a time when I was feeling down and out about my job and teaching music in general. I don’t want to sound cliche, but we really have to hold on to these good times and keep them close in our minds so that we can remember why we do what we do. It is very difficult for me to do this – it always seems that the rough times outweigh these great times. Nonetheless, it always seems that these great moments come to us at just the right times, helping us to find our way again!

I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to all of you who have offered me words of encouragement via Twitter and Facebook! You are all dear friends! Thanks so much!

If you read my last post, you know that I was given a challenge of coming up with my top 10 favorite songs or recordings.  Well, after sifting through some 8000 or so songs on iTunes, I have finally picked 10 (well, 13 actually). Here they are in no particular order, and my reasons for picking them.

1. Chameleon – Maynard Ferguson – The first time I ever played a saxophone solo in public was a junior high jazz band concert in 7th grade. This was the song.

2. Hello City – Barenaked Ladies – When I first met my wife, she introduced me to the Barenaked Ladies. Every time I hear this song (or any song from the “Gordon” album) it makes me think of her and when we started dating. I like that.

3. The Rain Song – Led Zeppelin – I had to include a song from my all-time favorite band, and I just think this song really showcases how well they wrote music. I have always enjoyed music that was written with a lot of creativity.

4. Third Symphony, Mvt. 3 – Mesto (for Natalie) – James Barnes – One of the most moving pieces of music that I have ever played in an ensemble. I can remember weeping while playing this piece several times.

5. Shiny Stockings – Count Basie – This is the tune that introduced me to the Basie Band. I can remember specifically playing this song at a jazz festival in high school. It has been one of my favorite big band charts ever since.

6. Mercy, Mercy, Mercy – Cannonball Adderley – This is the song that introduced me to Cannonball. He has since become one of my top two favorites and biggest influences.

7. Irish Tune from County Derry – Percy Grainger – Hands down, my favorite wind band piece of all time. To me, this piece is the standard of beauty in the wind band literature.

8. Ornithology – Charlie Parker – This is from one of the first jazz recordings I ever owned – Charlie Parker at Storyville. I can remember just being amazed when I first heard it as a young saxophone player.

9. Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag – James Brown – I can remember hearing this recording on the local oldies station that my parents listened to. Probably my first introduction to soul/r&b music. I have always loved this tune!

10. Daphnis & Chloe – Suite No. 2 – Maurice Ravel – When I played this piece in college, it was the first time I really connected emotions to performing music. I mean deep emotion. I had always heard directors and conductors talk about playing with emotion and feeling, but it never really clicked with me until I played this piece.

11. Delta City Blues – Michael Brecker – This one is from my other biggest saxophone influence. What Michael does with overtones in this recording just blows my mind. He is one of the all-time greats. I wish I could have seen him live before he passed away.

12. Cheese Cake – Dexter Gordon – I was introduced to this recording at a jazz camp that had a huge impact on my life when I was in high school. I wish I could have picked every track from this album entitled “Go.”

13. Bu’s March – Benny Green – I always wished that I could play piano, and I love this album from Benny Green recorded live at the Village Vanguard. This recording has one of the hardest swinging shout choruses I’ve ever heard.

So there you have it. Looking back at this list, I noticed that each song has had a particular impact on my life as a teacher and musician, and I suppose subconsciously, that is why I picked them. I hope you get a chance to check out any that you are not familiar with, and I challenge you to do the same and pick your top ten. Please share the results here!

Someone forwarded this episode of “This American Life” from NPR to me, and I found it very entertaining as a music teacher.  Below is the description from the TAL website.  Click on “Full Episode” under the graphic to stream it.  Enjoy!

104: Music Lessons

What’s frustrating about music lessons, what’s miraculous about them, and what they actually teach us. This show was recorded in front of a live audience at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, with help from KQED-FM, during the ’98 Public Radio Conference in San Francisco.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=104