Practice… makes what?

It may have been the first week of the last term for 2009, but it was no surprise to find that the majority of students I teach hardly completed any practice during the two week break.

I’m sure a lot of other instrumental teachers would be echoing the same sentiments too. After all, students are getting at least 30 hours back per week when education takes a rest. Another way to think of it is you are getting 1800 minutes back, especially when you have a lot of younger students that would not be prepared to work, or focus, in hourly blocks of practice. This current break, students have received about 60 hours, or 3600 minutes, back and have used it for what? Of course when you travel away it can make things a little difficult, but what about those that have stayed at home?

Even when you explain to students that there are 10080 minutes in a week (and if they say they need to spend some of it sleeping, which is roughly a third of the week, they are quickly informed they have 6720 minutes remaining) and all they need to do is spend 15 minutes a day practising (giving a grand total of 105 minutes out of the week) the message still seems to fall on deaf ears.

For a lot of students this week, about half of their lessons were spent discussing practice. I believe this is something other instrumental teachers should consider doing with students that are not getting the message. The discussion was broken up into two sections; “What is the purpose of practice?”, and “Scenarios of practice.”

What is the purpose of practice?

This is a question I don’t think is ever asked enough by instrumental teachers. In fact, if I asked some teachers for an answer to this question I would be very interested to find out their response. When I was younger, none of my teachers asked me this question or even went into explaining the purpose of practice. And to be honest, I could be lazy at times when I was younger when it came to practice.

The most common answers I received to this question were…

- a shrug of the shoulders
- to get better at playing the instrument
- to be able to practice longer (i.e. build stamina)

Instead of giving the answer, I went straight to the “Scenarios of practice”.

Scenarios of practice.

My students would now be placed in my shoes. Suddenly they have all become clarinet/saxophone teachers. Everyone has two students each.

Student one is dedicated to practising for 30 minute blocks, a decent amount of time. This student only practices for 2 days a week.

Student two is dedicated to practising every day of the week, but they only practice 5 minutes a day.

Which student would most likely be doing better, and why? The most popular response was that the first student would be doing better because they are completing 60 minutes of practice per week, compared to the second student completing 35 minutes of practice.

The amount of students that went with the second student could be counted on one hand. To give you an idea of how many students I currently teach, it would be close to fifty students. Those that gave the correct response as to why the second student would most likely be doing better were even less.

What is the purpose of practice? Could it be that practice helps us remember what we have learnt from our lessons and rehearsals? The concept of PRACTICE = REMEMBERING is something I don’t think is drilled enough into students. There is still a belief today that you have to practice in set blocks of time, from the beginner through to the emerging experienced student. Even telling students to practice one day on and one day off is not proving beneficial, and I will be the first to admit I tried to use this as a teaching strategy.

The belief is that “quantity” determines the skill and ability of a musician. My response to this is that it is not of “quantity” or “quality”, but of “consistency”. I have had students of beginner to intermediate standard, regardless if they were mine or someone else’s, come up and say they practiced for anywhere from one hour to four hours a day. Then when they go to play they forget basic things in their music or do not understand the technique they are to use whether it is in the air, the embouchure, or the fingers. Either they are seriously burning themselves out physically and/or mentally with their practice, or they are lying. Simple as that.

If a student is consistent in their practice, the quality of their practice and playing will emerge. Why is this? Because they are remembering what they have learnt! As soon as a student decides to take a day off after a good solid practice session the previous day, the information they were remembering from their last session will start to leave their brain. Take two days off, and the information is essentially gone. Three days, it’s been flushed away. We want information that has been given to us not to float around in our head, but to be engraved in our memory. This includes technique and performance practice of pieces (despite whether we perform from memory or not). We want the information to transform from floating around to becoming more solid and remaining firm in our memory. Once the information is engraved, we have succeeded in practice.

If I was to ever refer to “quantity” in practice it would not be in minutes and/or hours, but frequency in days. The consistency of even just a little bit of playing squeezed in on the “off day” will help a lot more than not doing anything at all. We do not need to burn ourselves out physically or mentally with constant set blocks of practice. Some people are capable and have the stamina to be able to do this, but not everyone will be able to do it. You push yourself to your own boundaries, and not to someone else’s who may be well behind or beyond yours.

I’m going to close with a quote from a translation of The Art of War by Sun-Tzu. An excerpt of this quote was brought to my attention earlier this year, but when it was brought into context with the rest of the quote it became so much clearer. If there ever was a personal battle with instrumental practice and its results, this phrase from the chapter Making Plans would sum it up nicely.

“Victory belongs to the side that scores most in the temple calculations before battle. Defeat belongs to the side that scores least in the temple calculations before battle. Most spells victory; least spells defeat; none, surer defeat. I see it in this way, and the outcome is apparent.”

Riverina Tour 2009

After being away for ten days, and travelling 3063.8 kilometres, I finally have the chance to sit down and put in yet another late update. Term three was ending as I toured with a select group of 41 students from the Riverina region as part of the combined schools regional touring group for 2009. The last time I was part of a touring group was four years ago as part of the University of Newcastle Wind Orchestra program.

Before I go into detail about the tour, my own journey has been amazing travelling through four DET regions, completing over 3000 kms in one event alone (I've lost track of how many kms I've completed this year for the camps, but it would be close to 5,500 kms), being in two states, and visiting many regional towns and areas people would not normally encounter. This year alone I have been to Lake Keepit, Borambola, and Burrendong as part of the regional camps for New England, Riverina and Western regions and now tour. The only region missing is North Coast. Until some of their tutors visit these other camps, or even bring tutors from these other camps on board, the region will still be dwindling. After having three students selected to represent the region that did not attend the regional camp, and the camp's nominations of students were denied, perhaps a change of mindset and approach could be in order. They're my thoughts anyway.

Back to the tour!

The Riverina students were selected after the regional camp was held earlier this year. From the clarinet section, all students were invited with only one student being unable to attend. The selection of students enabled us to assemble a strong ensemble performing charts of up to 4.5 stars.

The first three days were spent on repertoire previously played at the camp, combined with a few new pieces including an arrangement from "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory", and a medley of Australian folk tunes entitled "Down Under". The funny thing about "Down Under" is that the piece was first introduced to the conductor, Di Hall, by a German wind band that visited earlier this year. The pieces, ensemble, and even individual technique was refined in the first three days at the Lake Hume Resort in Albury. And there was even time to spare for the male tutors to duck away after a rehearsal to briefly visit the other side of the fence (for about 5 minutes) before complaining about how cold Victoria was and returning to New South Wales.

After the three days were up, it was time to take the tour on the road playing Albury, Wagga Wagga, Collingullie, Narrandera, Leeton, Griffith, Ardlethan, Young, Cootamundra, then a final concert in Wagga Wagga again. Performances varied from one location to the next, but probably not to the same degree of quality as the accommodation. From the plasma widescreens and surround sound systems of Wagga Wagga to the doors that wouldn't lock in Young, there was many an experience for students to enjoy and perhaps even cherish less.

The school performances enticed appreciation from both primary and secondary students. Primary students had the delight of seeing and hearing instruments they wouldn't normally know about, as well as hearing some popular tunes including those from "High School Musical 2" and "You Can't Stop the Beat" from Hairspray. Secondary students on the other hand were able to listen to and appreciate the arrangements and compositions of pieces that caused them to think about the music and even paint a picture in their heads. Selections from "Pictures at an Exhibition", "Fantasia", and wind band composition "Flashpoint" were the best examples of drawing audiences young and old into the concert band world of music.

I don't think I could have asked for a more enjoyable group of students and teachers to join for this experience. There were the shades from "Top Gun", with some singing to Smash Mouth, Queen, and Art vs. Science, plus the tour chant (which sounds remarkably similarly to the "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie" chant... hmm...), plus the mini-wars between students and tutors whether it was through tennis, or glad-wrapping each other's doors.

The next challenge is to start finding more music to work on for this group.