Filed under: Attitude Helps, baritone horn lessons, Custom Music Compositions, euphonium lessons, Information and Updates, music composition lessons, octavemode, piano lessons, Practice Helps, Stuart Carter, trombone lessons, Trumpet lessons, Tuba lessons, Uncategorized, vermont music, vermont brass music | Tags: becoming a good student, how to practice, music lessons, practice atitude, practice strategies, staying with lessons
With brass playing, everything is understood through our breathing. No matter the quality of the breath, what quality that may be is what you get. All of your understanding in brass playing flows from your understanding of the breath to control the instrument, including how you experience notes, (keys,) rhythms, expression (articulation, dynamics, tempo, phrasing.) These are the foundation of music. You will never understand these by leaning about them once and moving on. You must hear them over and over again, examining them curiously, playing with them variously and practicing them endlessly. To be a good player you must, therefore, learn to control the instrument of the breath, by the breath and for the breath. The rest that is musical follows.
When I meet with a student who does not practice the routine, it is obvious. This is why you hear the repetition that the routine is so important. The fact of the matter is, until a student puts in enough time and effort into playing the instrument, the student has NO means whatsoever to understand how to play the instrument. In my opinion, the routine helps establish a breadth of experience in controlling the instrument in a variety of musical ways. This is what creates a quality player.
When I have students asking me to help them play their parts, they are failing and getting frustrated. This is because they have NO MEANS to understand, and no experience to help them understand. Only practice will help them to understand.
Do not be scared to practice.
When I come across a student who does practice regularly, I find after a while the conversation shifts to much more material concerning the music and the subtlety of making music.
I once experienced a number of good beginning students all at once, Each had wonderful potential. I watched almost all of them leave the studio over the course of a summer. The single impression I got from this experience as I saw the spark go out of each of their eyes was they did not accomplish practice of the routine. It is so obvious, as I remind students of the notes and how to play them, as I see how they play the first exercises the same way as when they started playing. Each of those students then thought, “This isn’t working out.” Or, ‘This is more than I bargained for.” They all left.
Usually, these problems are not really problems. They happen only because the students and their families are not disciplined enough to respect the process of practice and the reality that success happens over time.
Often, in lessons, I allow all kinds of mistakes and make them myself. I let it all show. Only later, when appropriate, do I encourage focus on accuracy. This is because the game is played through our mistakes. It is through the grace of forgiving these mistakes, playing with them, experimenting with learning, learning how to learn, that we eventually become excellent.
Students: beware of insulting yourself with your lack of practice. In the long run, it is your own success that matters. The lessons of music cannot be understood until the practice is.
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