Studio dates, and On Practicing

Studio Dates:

Thank you my wonderful students for another year filled with music, honing techniques and having loads of fun with our instruments.

Please note:

  • We are only closing on the 12th of December.  (No orchestra practice that day.)

If you want to reschedule lessons ahead of time in case you’ll already be on holiday, please arrange this with me as soon as you can.  Otherwise lessons go on as normal until the 12th.  (Keep your children out of boredom during the first part of the holidays! 🙂 )

  • There is a Ceilidh on 5th December.  I’ll patch through the details once everything is finalized.

And lastly:

  • Next year we restart (the studio, not the violin hopefully :-D) on the 11th of January.

 

This brings me to the second part of this blog post.

On Practicing

I know I’ve posted on this before, but let me give you a potentially new angle.

Brain physiology studies show that the way we learn most efficiently, is by playing small bites (2 – 3 seconds) repeatedly (8 – 20 times) slowly and perfectly.

Bit like programming, isn’t it?  Except for the multiple repeats.  Our brain runs a GIGO system (garbage-in, garbage-out) that shall give back exactly what was put in – but only if it is put in consistently, often enough, and exactly the same way.

So, repeat after me:

Practice

  • small phrases (1 or 2 bars)
  • slowly
  • perfectly
  • repeated 20 times without a mistake.

If you simply skim over a piece a few times, all you’ve really done is practice your mistakes, and if you don’t fix them, you can literally practice for a year and the piece will not improve.

It is important to prepare a piece by playing through it without stopping, too:  When you are sight-reading it, or when working on flow, pacing, expression etc.  There is nothing more frustrating to a listener than a player who stops, hesitates and backtracks on his piece every few moments.  You need to be able to play past mistakes.  But you must stay aware of them, and fix them the second you start your in-detail work.

Here is a suggested practicing process:

  • Play the whole piece to get a feeling of the melody etc.
  • Mark the problem areas with pencil.
  • Focus on 1 problem area at a time, do not budge from it until it is good. (Sometimes this takes many days, even weeks, depending how difficult the technique is that that spot requires.  If that one single spot is extraordinarily more difficult than the rest of the piece, discuss this with your teacher – (s)he can give you additional exercises or studies dealing with the new technique.)
    • Remember when working with technique:  You are not only training your brain, but muscles, tendons, motor neurons, reflexes.  There is physical growth involved.  Give your body the time it needs to grow these facilities, just as you would with a sport.  Playing the violin does not only change your brain structure!
  • At the end of the practice session, play through the piece again to retain its musical flow.

Your focus is like a laser.  It can shape, cut and drill things.  Use it properly!

Had to share this: Music and brain development in young children

So they tested it out.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060920093024.htm

We could have told them, long ago.  Music has a physical impact in the brain development in young children.  It is surprising how deep this goes.  An amazing study, a must-read for music parents, children and musicians.

A fun concert and a mixed box.

The Studio Concert last Friday night was a lot of fun.  Hopefully also for the audience!  Of course the main purpose of our studio concerts is to provide that performing experience for the students; it fulfilled those criteria beautifully.  We also hold the concerts to allow the parents, relatives and supporters that social experience, to have an opportunity to chat with other violin / guitar parents and compare notes.  All round, the fact that some of the performances were truly fun and good to listen to comes as a delightful bonus.

The weather had something special in store for us on the night, though.  It was so hot and dry that ALL, yes, every last one of our violins (including mine!) needed retuning more than once, even on stage.  While I expect a few (1 to 4, usually no more than that) slipped strings on any studio concert, this one was over the top.  Eventually I was even apologizing for the weather!

The concert was concluded with a flourish by the Irish band that has been going for a little while now.

So today I picked up the results of our violin exams.

As a studio we have a complete spread.  Bravo to those who aced, and well done to those who passed.

If you did not pass (even if you did pass or ace), there are a number of things to learn from this.  I’m summarizing them here.

– Firstly: You will perform exactly the way you practiced.

Perhaps this exam session was the most accurate reflection I’ve seen yet, of that principle.  Ask yourself:  Did you practice for passing, merit or distinction?  Or didn’t you really bother practicing much?  Were you too busy with other stuff?  Did you practice daily, or at least 5 – 6 times per week?  Did you practice for an hour every time?  Did you practice carefully, isolating and polishing every problem area, or did you simply skim over the pieces a couple of times and pack away, smug in the idea that you’ve “done your practicing”?  Did you simply rehash your mistakes, or did you approach every piece like an artwork to be improved, chiselled, smoothed into shape?  Did you ever stop for a mistake?  When you did, how often did you play it correctly?  Did you work on your expression at all?  Did you fully integrate your expression into the movements of your bow arm?

You see, when you perform (and especially in an exam), you are under stress.  When under stress, the adrenaline in your body inhibits your creative thinking.  Biochemical truth!  And when you can’t think creatively, your brain will run along well-trodden pathways and do exactly what it has been practicing; it is physically inhibited from trying anything new.  So, the better you have laid down the pathway for your brain to run along, the better you will play.  End of story!

– Secondly:  Failing, or falling short of what you wanted to achieve, is always an opportunity for learning.

So perhaps you failed, or perhaps you wanted a distinction and didn’t get one.  It really is the same:  An opportunity for growth.

Do you realize that some people struggle in school?  Every math test is an adventure for them, a horror story they need to survive, every time they shiver and worry whether they will even pass?  In my experience, my violin kids as a group don’t have that problem.  Perhaps you’re not an A-student, but I’ve rarely had students who did badly academically (and those who did, improve fairly quickly once they start playing!).  So, as a rule, musicians tend to find school easy – almost too easy.  They are not used to failing.  So failing a violin exam may be a brand new experience, and feel like the world is about to end.

You know, it isn’t.

Perhaps you need the challenge of failing, to teach you how to deal with it.  Perhaps this is the only opportunity you’ll ever have, to fail at something and realize that it isn’t the end of the world; that one simply tries again, or carries on along the path.

Think about it.

A word to the parent:

I’ll write a word to the parents later.  There is no time now to finish this post.  Look out for the next one.

A medal for bravery

Well done to my exam students for taking on that exam.  You are all very brave.  It turns out that the examiner was a very nice person; we’re hoping his smile was beyond professionalism, a tiny indication that you played well and pleased him.  I have to take my hat off to examiners, too; they travel all over the world to hear 2579 renditions of “The Lark”, and still smile anyway.

We will know the results after the 10th of November.

11499226-Music-Doodles--Stock-Vector-music-violin-cartoon

Studio Concert moved.

Please note, all students:

Our concert has moved from the 30th October to the 6th of November due to too many students having attendance problems.

Please be there at 17:30, fed, dressed and prepped, with your instrument, music, audience you are bringing (parents, sibs…), and finger food to add to the reception table after the concert.  Tune beforehand, so that the last tuning is just a checking.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

IMG_0141
Last year’s concert is a fuzzy memory by now… 😀

Exam and Studio Concert Dates

Violin exams for our studio will take place on the 23rd October, from 9h forward.  (Also see previous post.)

The Studio Concert for the second semester of 2015 has been booked. 

The date is 30th October, starting 18:00 (be there at 17:30 at the latest to settle in, tune etc). The date is a Friday night, and while I apologize to anyone who is writing exams, please try to be there anyway.  With proper planning, the lost study time can be caught up ahead of and after the time.  The Concert is a major event where you can show off your beautiful technique and what you have achieved over the past year.  There aren’t many such events in life.

Please also note that the Studio Concert does not conclude our program for the year!  The Studio remains running until schools close down for the December holidays; with luck we will also fit in another Ceilidh closer to the end of the year.

That’s all for now, enjoy the October break!

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started