Become more present by acknowledging the uncomfortable

Avoiding pain, embarrassment, humiliation. We all do our best to avoid uncomfortable emotions. When we're angry or hurt, we try really hard to get back to a more peaceful state. What would happen if we chose to remain with the painful feelings and acknowledge their presence? What would happen if we realized that we have a say in the matter and that we have an array of possibilities to choose from, rather than the ones that emotion may dictate for us?

Life, with all its twists and turns, can not stay in homeostasis like our biological systems. Life instead seems to have more bad moments than good. Personally, 2012 wasn't a particularly good year but I learned a lot of lessons that I will strive not to forget when the times are good.

What does this have to do with music? The image of the suffering and starving artist is a widespread one in our western culture. We become artists not to make money but to create and move people towards change. Some of the most powerful music has been born from misery.

If you would like to become more present or mindful, accepting rather than fighting what is happening at any given time is a critical skill to develop. The hardest lesson for me in all this has been accepting that while my emotions are real, they do not define me. You can accept difficult situations for what they are, but you can simply notice the emotions they produce. They do not have to control you. Biologically, we feel emotions but research tells us that they take about 90 seconds to pass through the body (if we choose to let them go).

Acknowledge and accept. There are so many ways we can apply this to practice and performance of music.

Here's a way to start in the practice room: when you're having a bad day, it's incredibly difficult to not judge yourself. Any element that isn't going well becomes the focal point of your attention and you gradually pull yourself more and more away from the music itself.

When you notice frustration creeping in, stop and take a moment to notice that frustration and accept it. This doesn't mean that you have to stay with the frustration but instead, you can make a choice about what it is you want to do next. If you choose to stay frustrated, you will choose to remain focused on the element that isn't flowing (such as your tone). Another choice you can make is to step away from the instrument and go do something else for a little while.

Finally, a third choice could be to focus on the wider picture and find something positive in your playing. I can guarantee that you're not going to feel comfortable or even happy about having to play in a frustrated state, but if you choose to not let the frustration control your choices, the negative judgmental voices will dissipate. You may even be able to end the practice session in a productive groove.

Life is all about how we choose to respond to curveballs. Practicing is all about how we choose to respond to our expectations. If we let our emotions control us, choices get made for us. Conscious, mindful decision making can keep us in the game.

Practice Essentials: Easing in after a break

I think the biggest question we all have when returning to the flute after a hiatus is, "What do I do to get started again?" For some, the fact that they aren't able to resume at their previous level is frustrating and overwhelming. Since this was something I had to do a few years ago, I know that there's plenty of good advice out there; however, I've noticed that very few encourage slowly building up the amount of time you practice.

If you are able to maintain a consistent practice routine, keep doing what you're doing! If life gets thrown at you more than you care to admit, then keep reading.

Even a temporary break of a week or two means you need to take it slow getting back into your regular routine. Here are a few of my tried and true tips to get back to practicing:

1) Be gentle. Don't pass judgment as you begin playing your first notes. Simply notice your physical state, your emotions and notice how you sound. Take lots of mini breaks with stretching. Every time you come back to your flute after a break, notice the same things again and if things seem to be flowing more easily. If not, continue this sequence until you find a place that you're happy. 

Being gentle with yourself and reserving your criticism for later will prevent excess tension from creeping in, and you'll be able to find the freedom in your playing that may be missing after a hiatus.

2) Set a time limit on how much you practice in any given day. In other words, don't try to practice for 3 hours when you haven't been playing at all. My goal for the fall is to consistently practice for at least 2 hours a day. Prior to my break, I was practicing my super efficient hour (see my post about that here). When I came back to the flute this week after taking about a 2 week break due to moving, I started with that hour with lots of extra breaks. I'm now up to practicing for 90 minutes, but with the same amount of breaks.

When setting time limits, the breaks give you time to listen to your body. Don't ignore it. I am still actively working away from the flute when I take my breaks. I stretch or I lie in constructive rest. These activities help me reinforce what I'm doing on the flute, and help me find the ease in my playing without gripping or tensing.

3) Choose materials that allow you to explore without pushing you to your limit. My first day back was spent on nothing but tone. I spent a lot of time in Fiona Wilkinson's The Physical Flute while applying it to Tone Development through Interpretation. Part of holistic practice is to cultivate the mind-body-instrument connection so that it's a free flowing cycle that's completely integrated. When this begins to happen in your practice session, amazing things begin to happen and your self and instrument begin to merge into one.

To choose appropriate practice material, ask yourself these questions: what were you working on prior to the break? What was most challenging? Leave that on the shelf for the time being and take a step or two back. Choose one thing to draw your awareness to. This is also a great way to minimize the destructive criticism that can make your practice session less effective.

The bottom line is this - ease in to your practice in order to cultivate the mind-body-instrument connection. Release any blocks in this cycle with gentle, focused and efficient practice. You'll find it doesn't take hours to get back to feeling like your old self again.

Holistic Practice at NFA this Friday!

I will be presenting a workshop on "Holistic Practice" at the National Flute Association's convention in Las Vegas. If you're a flutist and will be attending the event, it will be at 8 AM, Friday, August 10 in Octavius 22 at Caesar's Palace.

Why did I choose this topic?

The content of my blog sums up my thoughts about practicing in this way. From my posts about Body Mapping, inclusive awareness, to performance psychology and practice strategies, this presentation has been in the making for several years.

I have found a way of practicing that works for me, which encompasses all my interests and all that I study and want to learn more about. Practicing my flute is a vehicle for me to make discoveries. When I returned from my hiatus in 2009, I noticed such ease with other players but I didn't feel that ease in myself. Emulating that ease without really knowing the internal processes that occur for that ease to happen led to injury in my case.

Holistic practice is about using time effectively, while also providing strategies to explore movement with various modalities, all of which I've written about at some point on this blog. More than anything else though, the presentation is really grounded in Alexander Technique and Body Mapping. I will provide a somatics overview, and my goal with this presentation is to plant the seed of curiosity in others who may not know about these valuable tools, or maybe they do know but don't know how to integrate these things into their practice time.

In addition to presenting, I'll also be volunteering my time to help out with the Piccolo Artist Competition. I'm really looking forward to hearing some great piccolo playing. I'm hoping it'll inspire me to return home and resume a consistent piccolo practice routine. I will also be helping out on Thursday and Friday at the Flute Pro Shop booth (Booth 227).

I look forward to connecting with old friends, teachers and colleagues while also tweeting up with several great musicians and meeting new people.

See you in Vegas!

The Metronome: to be or not to be?

A simple tweet by Erica Sipes last week, “Something I find myself saying a lot these days: Metronomes are not a substitute for counting out loud. It's that simple.” morphed into a full discussion of how to use the metronome (and how not to use it) that left everyone involved a little smarter and inspired to expand our tweets into a larger commentary.

I thought Erica’s tweet was interesting and responded by asking her about wind and brass players who can’t do this when they’re playing. In my studio, I emphasize the importance of the metronome to my students (especially my younger ones) in order to highlight its purpose as a practice tool in order to help you develop an internal and accurate sense of rhythmic pulse.

I have students that take right to the metronome and those who don’t (and even those who don't take to it still manage to have a decent sense of rhythmic pulse). I had consistent problems with rhythm as a student myself until my 10th grade year of high school. My private teacher made rhythm a math problem, and it all made sense. Students who are strong in math will understand this and will grasp the concept easily, but there are students who will not understand. Describing rhythms and time signatures like a math problem or equation that must be figured out will be as abstract as the abstract music notation system in front of them. So how do we help those students?

When rhythm is a specific issue the student is dealing with, I take away the instrument. Regardless of the issue a student is having with a particular skill or element of a piece, isolating the element and prioritizing and focusing on the issue at hand is essential to mindful practicing in order to fix the problem. For my young students, one of the first ways I teach them to practice is a series of steps for their one line exercises. They first count and clap the passage, then clap alone and then they try the line on their instrument. Another element that I add is to begin having the students extract measures they still have issues with. The more isolated we can make the problem, the easier it will be inserting back into the whole and the student will begin actively listening to themselves and will be able to identify areas that need improvement.

Given that practicing isn’t something that is really taught, it’s my goal as a teacher to change this. I make sure that when I offer suggestions to a student in their lesson that I make clear that I am making helpful practice method suggestions to them. No one is going to learn a piece well by playing it over and over until they have just the notes and rhythms down. What about tempo? What about phrasing? What about the structure? These are all skills students will learn over time if they stay with their instrument, but the metronome gets us back to the foundational building block of rhythm on which these other elements can then be added.

As a teacher, don’t be afraid to not use the metronome. Let the student develop their sense of rhythm naturally and when they’re ready (this was my favorite suggestion from @DLP_DSM (Discover Learn and Play), introduce the metronome back into lessons. If you feel like you can’t do this, read and research (neuroscience research about learning is my favorite reading related to figuring out how to help a student) until you feel you have enough strategies available to be able to help a student develop an internal pulse prior to aligning that natural pulse with a metronome.

Music on the page is a way of organizing various complex elements together in a way that makes sense. The metronome is simply a tool and should not be used as an absolute. Be mindful in your teaching and help your students discover for themselves the power of this tool and how it can help them. Most of all, be patient and give your students the freedom they need to explore and develop into fine musicians.

For those others who were involved in this discussion, please read their pieces below:

Erica Sipes/@ericasipes Bowing to the Mighty Metronome?

Janet Bordeaux/@janetbxyz Metronome: Monster or Friend?

Eugene Cantera/@DLP_DSM #musiced, twitter, and the metronome

Kim Hickey/@hickey_kim Metronome - Friend or Foe?

Karg Elert Caprice #1: Finger breaths and finding your effortless sweet spot

Here is my first podcast! One of the ideas I have toyed with is either live streaming my practice or figuring out a way to share some of my practice time with you to see how I do what I do. I have decided to go the podcasting route because I'm able to play and narrate my session. These episodes will have a stream of consciousness quality to them, so expect lots of "uhhhhs" as I articulate my thoughts.

Inspired by two pianists' work on the web, Erica Sipes and her current Pittsburgh Concerto Competition project and Jocelyn Swigger's Chopin etude podcast series, here is my first episode about the 1st of the 30 Karg-Elert Caprices. Since these studies get more difficult as they progress, I thought this would be a worthy project to take on. I've been wanting to study these in depth, but it's been a stop and go effort on my part. I'm hoping this podcast series will keep me accountable.

In today's episode, I talk about using finger breaths to determine the minimum level of effort you can play with to create dynamic contrast. After I finished recording and listened to my playing, I realized that there's very little contrast in my playing upon this initial performance. Being aware kinesthetically, I felt a difference in effort when I played forte passages compared to piano passages but there was no audible difference. This is something I will practice in not only the Karg Elert but also in my recital program repertoire. My plan is to re-record this first study over the weekend and hopefully have more convincing dynamic contrast.

Also, please check out Sensory Tune-Ups, Kay Hooper's book that I reference. It's a great resource to help you develop multi-sensory awareness and it gives you a place to record your observations as you explore.

Listen to this episode

Part Two: "...but I practiced!" A technique practice strategy

In Part One, I discussed strategies for learning a new piece especially if you’re a very detail oriented person. The suggested strategies should help you maintain the overall feel of a piece while working.

In Part Two, I want to discuss a technique practice strategy that B and I devised for them to cover more material while regularly rotating through every major and minor key. This is particularly useful for adults, amateurs and professional alike, who may be squeezed for time to cover everything. I tend to practice technique largely in only the areas I feel need attention. I do try to get through a larger technique practice once a week (a la Practice Like you Train), but sometimes I just don’t have this time. This strategy is a four week cycle, allowing you to visit all your go-to technical exercises once a month while rotating through all keys once a week.

The books B is using are The Flute Scale Book by Patricia George and Phyllis Louke, Marquarre Daily Exercises for the Flute, and the classic Taffanel and Gaubert 17 Big Daily Finger Exercises for the Flute. Since the Flute Scale Book is founded on the Taffanel and Gaubert, most of the work can be done from the Flute Scale Book. In the plan below, I will notate both the Flute Scale Book exercise title and the corresponding Taffanel and Gaubert exercise.

First, decide what you want your material to consist of. You may have a goal of getting through the practice plans listed in the Flute Scale Book or you may want to devise a strategy for getting through all of the Marquerre exercises. The point of this strategy is to devise a plan that will help you achieve your goal. This works because it’s breaking a long term goal into smaller manageable bits. The key to this plan is consistency. You won’t get bored practicing the same things everyday while you’re building or maintaining a strong technical foundation.

There are infinite possibilities when working with E.J. 4 (corresponding Tone Color Scales in the Flute Scale Book) so I keep these scales as a constant every week while rotating through the keys. This sample plan is good for an amateur flutist who only has 10-15 minutes a day to work on technique. This is based on a 6 day practice schedule, practicing 2 major/minor key pairings a day with varied articulations.

If you're more advanced, please adapt to fit your time constraints technical areas of weakness. Please feel free to share other plans based on your material. I’d love to see them!

Week 1:
Flute Scale Book Tone Color Scales (T&G E.J. 4)
FSB Ascending and descending arpeggios (T&G E.J. 8 and 9)
Marquarre Exercises 1 and 2

Week 2:
Tone color scales
Scales in thirds (T&G E.J. 6)
Marquarre Exercises 3 and 4

Week 3:
Tone color scales
Broken arpeggios (T&G E.J. 11)
Marquarre Exercises 5 and 6

Week 4:
Tone color scales
Modal scales in 3rds and 6ths, flats on MWF, sharps on TRS (T&G E.J. 6, played in 6 note chunks)
Marquarre Exercise 7

*For more suggestions on technique books, read Flute Warm Ups

How I warmed up with a phrasing study and a coffee stirrer

I took some time to read the February 2012 issue of Flute Talk over the weekend. I was overjoyed to see Phyllis Louke recap a class (“A Fresh Look at Breathing, Tone, Articulation and Dynamics”) that Keith Underwood gave in Oregon recently. After reading this article and Patricia George’s Phrasing Study on Barret Melody No. 1, I was ready to play with a hefty dose of motivation.

The Barret melody looked vaguely familiar. I pulled one of my old copies of Mrs. George’s Flute Spa handouts (I have handouts from 2002 and 2003 when I studied with her) and there she had included first four of Barret’s Forty Progressive Melodies. I credit Mrs. George for teaching me so many of the phrasing ideas that now have become second nature to me. I felt inspired to explore these melodies again so the phrasing study and a coffee stirrer became my warm-up.

The week I spent with Keith at Ghost Ranch became a week with the coffee stirrer. This is a great way to figure out where you are placing articulations inside the mouth. It also encourages you to open up behind the embouchure rather than moving your jaw and lips with every note. Using the coffee stirrer to practice tricky rhythms and articulations maintains the most efficient embouchure so that you do not overshoot the notes. It’s a great, inexpensive tool to improve your tone, breath control and articulations.

In order to practice on the coffee stirrer, place the stirrer inside the mouth (with the tip above the top teeth) at a 45 degree angle. Blow into the stirrer, take the air back and play. The challenge is to take in your air through the coffee stirrer when you need a breath. Since the stirrer doesn’t change size, practicing on the coffee stirrer addresses embouchure size changes between registers and makes the breath more efficient. A three step process to practicing with the coffee stirrer is to play a passage on the coffee stirrer, then without and finally with the flute.

As I practiced, I stayed inclusively aware to recognize tension as I played. I practiced the phrasing study within the context of contour and stayed aware of the places where I felt less efficient and began trying harder to achieve the sound and shape I wanted. I practiced those specific phrases on my coffee stirrer in order to feel how I could open up behind the embouchure while breathing with less effort and movement. By the end, I felt like I was beautifully contouring this first melody with efficient, organized movement.

With this smart, efficient practice, I felt an ease that usually doesn’t happen until after a good warm-up. With a little creativity and inspiration to try new things, I feel that I’m arriving into a new level of practice. Quite simply, it was nice.

Part One:"...but I practiced!" A practice strategy for learning a new piece

I have a student (we’ll call them “B”) who has dysgraphia, a learning disability. We have been working together for a year and it has been a very fascinating journey. B’s background is in special education, so I have benefitted from their expertise as I rise to the challenge in order to grow as a teacher and find new ways to teach music to those that process information differently.

Most private music teachers have a few strategies for helping dyslexic students since that "LD" is more common; however, unless the parent and student are up front, it can be difficult to realize you cannot teach in your usual manner with students who seem "lazy" or "don't try hard enough." Unfortunately, sometimes it isn't until the student gives up out of frustration and you feel like you’ve failed as a teacher that we realize missed opportunities. Since private music teachers are in no way trained or ethically able to diagnose a student, we must be patient, armed and ready with a variety of strategies and solutions for each problem that arises in order to customize a student's instruction.

I appreciate B for hanging in there with me. It has been a mutually beneficial path of discovery. Lately, we’ve had a series of lessons where we’ve been discussing practice strategies to help them systematically work on achieving a faster technique and ways to help them learn new repertoire faster. Thanks to a great conversation on twitter*, my own research and input from wonderful collaborative pianist and practice coach Erica Sipes, here is a strategic stepwise plan that I created for B in order to learn a new piece. I wanted to post this online for others that may have trouble seeing the trees for the forest.

What happens when you hit the wall and take longer than everyone else to achieve the same goal? What happens if you cannot use what we typically refer to as chunking (playing groups of notes with pauses in between to allow the brain to process short term information into its long term memory)? Use this practice plan to strategize and increase your chances of success in the practice room if you've tried other ways and they haven't worked so well.

I myself have been inspired to work in this new way especially with music that is out of my comfort zone. Going from larger to smaller details and back again creates a process that encourages confidence in the music.


Start with the big picture:

1) When learning a piece of music, outline the piece to get the big picture before moving on to details. Analyze the piece in order to determine its overall shape, phrase structure, range, key and key changes, and scalar and arpeggiated patterns. If you are able, analyze the piece's chord structure. Listen to the piece at this point to keep the big picture.

2) Play the piece through. Mark places immediately that you know will need attention, but don't get stuck on small mistakes. Stay focused on the big picture in this initial playing.

Begin learning and exploring the finer details of the piece:

3) Learn one musical idea at a time. Too often we get stuck on playing through the material until we feel somewhat comfortable. This way can be time consuming and inefficient. One idea suggested by Erica is to start from the end of the piece and work backwards on one musical idea at a time.

Working within the context of musical ideas versus chunks is one issue that I've encountered in my work with B. Because of the amount of time needed to learn a new piece, a chunk determined by number of notes and not musically becomes ingrained with the break that you take between each chunk. Practicing musical ideas keeps the phrases intact without arbitrary breaks in your final performance.

4) Practice by ear. Work with a recording to learn parts of music that is giving you trouble. I recommend this step especially if you're not a particularly aural person. B is visually dominant, and I suggested this step as a challenge. Practicing this way will help develop your ear and help you tune in to wrong notes and mistakes faster.

5) When you’ve worked through this process, play the piece through to find where you are. Mark any places that are still troublesome and work through the process again until you feel confident of the piece.

Ultimately, I think this process helps those who have trouble processing smaller details. Backwards chunking and practicing by ear for the smaller details help integrate these into the larger picture that you need in order to have a successful performance.

I encourage you to try this for yourself and see what happens. Instead of getting by on innate talent, sometimes a little more focus or discipline is needed in the practice room for the results you want. Stay open to experimenting and adapting the suggested steps in a way that works for you. If you had to adapt any of this to fit your personal needs, I would love to know. Please e-mail me at adelpalazzo (at) gmail.com.

Part Two will be about devising a technique practice strategy. Stay tuned!

*Thank you to my colleagues on twitter for a useful and practical discussion of practice techniques when I asked for advice. Be sure to follow @quartertonality, @TammyEvansYonce, @ericasipes, @AnythingPiano and @hickey_kim!

*Photo credits: Psychologies and Arctangent

Practice with your head, perform from your heart

While I’m trying to separate from my ego (read my previous post here), I’m beginning to answer some of my own questions about how to practice for performance and artistic success.

There’s lot of great resources about practicing, but you are ultimately responsible for integrating what works for you into your performance.

A simple reminder to ourselves should be, “Practice with your head, perform from your heart.”

When I begin feeling like I’m too much in my head during my practice sessions, I tune in to my heart. This is one of the reasons why I have to practice in a room with a view. It helps me stay connected to the outside world plus the natural beauty keeps me refreshed. There’s nothing like nature to get you out of your head and encourage gratitude for the gift you have to share.

We must practice fine, technical details to access a higher artistic level; however, we must also practice finding our heart if we are to play on stage the way we really want to and as well as we know we can. Because practicing is such a solitary activity, we tend to constantly instruct ourselves rather than staying inclusively aware of the music and the body. Humans are not designed to be solitary creatures. Music is one way of staying connected and our practicing should nurture that.

As you practice today, try tuning in to a deeper source beyond your brain’s mental chatter. Whether you go to a spiritual place or visualize an image that you can use to diminish the chatter, use it often. You’ll find that this type of practicing will connect you more with your audience while performing as well as make practicing itself more enjoyable.

Hitting the wall

I practiced last night. I had several wonderful moments where I felt like I knew what I was doing.

But my practicing ended on an ugly, frustrated note. I spent most of my time on tone work so I could explore Body Mapping principles, using my ball, using my pneumo pro to incorporate some more work into my playing.

It backfired.

Music is the goal of everything I do. I ended up frustrated with myself because the exploration became a study in concentrating and scanning. Instead of freely playing, I began concerning myself with organizing my movement which is still a concept I'm struggling with. I'm still struggling with finding balance and trying to hold it because I'm scared I'll lose it.

The moments of absolute freedom and musicality make my journey worthwhile and exhilarating. But it's these moments of frustration that bring the fighter out in me. Already, I feel a desire to pull my flute back out and try again. I refuse to give up.

I'll bottle that desire up and try again tomorrow. We all feel like this. It's how we choose to deal with it that matters. Honestly, I sat down, put my face in my hands and cried a little. But I got over it. I'm not performing tomorrow. I'm simply giving myself the time I need to make changes in my playing that will let the music shine through. Explore and challenge yourself to grow.

I simply gave myself permission to fail. I wasn't successful last night but I'm one step closer.

*photo courtesy of daarkeaagejeethai.blogspot.com

Movement in Martinu

I was finally able to spend some quality time with my flute.

In my practice training layout, I had designated that day as a "Whatever" day allowing myself to transition based on what drew me, rather than a prescribed routine of Moyse and scales. I jumped into playing repertoire immediately, which isn't my modus operandi.

Although it takes longer, I've found that giving myself a two to three hour block of time gets me more in a state of flow than if I try to jump into my practice and get it done. Instead, having this block of time lets me rest as I need to while feeling like I'm not pressured for time. This state of flow happened to me as I was practicing the first movement of the Martinu Sonata yesterday, and I stood on the edge of discovering something really truly great about integrating my movement with the music so that the movement frees my body to release the music that is within.

I can't quite describe it yet, but the experience was there. I was grounded, letting the floor support me. And that support resulted in effortless music making. I stopped fighting my body and started letting my body do what it naturally does.

Then I got to the 6/8 section, and I resumed my old movement patterns of tension. But that brief moment of effortless music was enough to motivate me to get through the rest.

It's a process and I'm grateful to be able to start experiencing music in this way now. Through my study of body mapping, Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais, I'm refining my awareness and learning more everyday and those elements are now emerging in my playing.

A side note about my practice routine. If I had used my time yesterday to practice like I usually do, I don't know that I would have ever gotten to the Martinu before I reached my limit. If that had been the case, I wouldn't have had the experience so that's certainly a plus for this practice like you train idea.

Explore your movement. Move purposely, move naturally, and move well.

Here's Dr. Kristen Stoner performing the 1st movement:

Practice like you Train

I had a perhaps not so novel idea today. Why should we practice the same things every day? Instead, why shouldn't we have a larger purpose for every single practice session and take some ideas from runners?

I'm a lapsed runner of sorts. I still run regularly, but I haven't trained since I was an overly enthusiastic newbie two years ago. I'm in a rut. In this rut I let my subscription to Runner's World expire, too.

I resubscribed in a hope to get some kind of motivational tip that would spur me back into a crazed training phase. I've been reading a few pages here and there and I read today about how and why you should have a purpose before you even begin running. Without a purpose, it's too easy to get bound up in time contraints, the weather, or any of the million other reasons we usually fail to do what we say we're going to do.

Yeah, we should have a purpose when we practice. That part is pretty obvious. But have we related our purpose to longer term goals in a meaningful way?

I run about 3 to 4 times a week. One day consists of a long run, which serves to build up endurance and help strengthen the legs and I do speedwork once a week to get faster. The remaining 2 days are easy runs, where I'm letting the work of the harder two workouts settle in.

I hate doing the same thing every day, so I'm not one for making up a routine. Instead, I tend to go with the flow which sometimes sets me up for failure. Translating my running workouts into my flute workouts might help me reach my goals faster. So here's a quick sketch of how my different training runs relate to my practice sessions:

The Long Run - A longer than average practice session that gives you adequate time to cover all the areas of your playing that need consistent attention. It's also the time to just enjoy the feeling of being able to play your instrument and not have to watch the clock.

Speedwork - Technical practice. Want to bump up your scales a couple notches on the metronome? Treat this "workout" as speedwork and limit to one or two days a week.

The Recovery Run - Focused, slow practice. Practice what you need to, but let your body assimilate the changes you're making in your playing. Enjoy the recovery.

The Social Run - Jam session!

The Whatever Run - Play what you want without pressure. Use it as opportunity to explore different areas of your awareness. Or don't.

I'm going to play around with this idea, and create a weekly practice plan that engages all these elements. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Opening the Heartspace

The phrase "opening the heartspace" is one I was first exposed to when I started taking yoga classes over two years ago. At first, I thought it simply meant opening and stretching across the chest; however, this phrase has become more significant to me of late.

This summer, I've been reading The Art of Practicing by Madeline Bruser. A piano teacher and authorized meditation instructor, Bruser explores musical, meditative, and psychological aspects in this book. The ideas of staying inquisitive and opening yourself to what can happen in a practice session are firmly grounded in a pedagogical foundation that allows your mind to connect with your body in a healthy, productive manner.

Shortly after beginning to read this book, I attended the Andover Educators' Biennial Conference and was immersed in five intense days of body mapping. As cliche as it may sound, this conference was a life changing experience. I opted to play in one of the supervised teaching sessions, where I worked with a recently certified educator. The concept of "inclusive awareness" is one that I didn't quite connect with, and it showed in my performance. I was glued to the stand, unaware of anything else around me.

And here we are at the heart (no pun intended) of this post: while opening the heartspace is about sharing love and compassion, opening the heartspace in our music making makes us vulnerable and a more likely vessel for the music to flow through, allowing us to connect with our audience and share in the same experience.

Bruser's book has a anecdote where she had someone outstretch their arms. Their response was fear because they no longer felt safe. Through the study of body mapping and tapping into all my senses to maintain awareness of not only the music but myself, along with reading this book, I feel myself connecting more to my audiences and to my music. This is happening because I'm looking at my audience, I'm connecting my movement to the music, and I'm staying open to the experience, not battling it.

Staying open, staying receptive. There are numerous benefits to remaining inclusively aware, and keeping your heart open. Performance anxiety can be minimized, you can enjoy more of your performance, and you are connected on a more human level to your audience. I read somewhere that if you're only performing to please the heckler in the audience, then you're losing a critical component of yourself...YOU! 99 percent of your audience is there to see you succeed.

How do we stay open? I change my body language. If I'm in the practice room, I outstretch my arms as I were giving the room a big hug. If I'm in public, I mentally picture this action. My arms are suspended over my rib structure, my chest opens, and I feel more comfortable and confident.

Please comment if you have any questions. The more I tune into my body, the more musical answers it has given me. This is the gift that all of us should have.

Flute Warm Ups

My favorite part of practicing is warming up. I love the routine and security of staying in shape, and having an entire hour to feel like I am "ready." But nowadays, I don't have that hour and more often than not, I have to jump in whether I feel good or not.

With my recent practice project, I realized I needed more time in my warm up to correct tonal deficiencies I was hearing in my sound. So I returned to my old Moyse De la Sonorite routine. I love using the low and high register long tone exercises, in addition to his interval exercises. The end result? A more open, resonant high register and more timbral control.

Fast forward to my current situation which seems to change daily, sometimes hourly. All of us experience times like these, where we may only have 30 minutes or an hour to practice and feel like we're moving ahead on our goals. While it's incredibly difficult to maintain within this time, I believe that with an efficient structure, you can still make progress.

1) Have a plan This is my goal. I'm in the process of devising various warm up plans that I can go to when I'm pressed for time, have a little bit more time, or for those rare days where time is not an issue.

2) Be flexible Some days, you are going to sound like crap. Fix it. You may spend all your time on long tones, but that's OK. Our obligations don't stop just because we're having a bad day with our instrument.

3) Have fun One of my favorite practice strategies is included in Burton Kaplan's book, Practicing for Artistic Success. Always plan out what you're going to practice, for how long, and for what purpose. THEN give yourself 10 percent less. You will surprise yourself with how you structure your practice to fit your time constraints. Interestingly enough, it frees your playing and allows you to relax into your session. Below are some great resources for tone and technique work.

Marcel Moyse De la Sonorite

Marcel Moyse Exercices Journaliers pour la flute (Daily Exercises for the flute)

Taffanel and Gaubert 17 Big Daily Finger Exercises for the Flute

Walfrid Kujala Vade Mecum

Trevor Wye's Practice Books for the Flute (Books 1-5 come in a nice omnibus edition and cover tone, technique, articulation, intonation and vibrato, and breathing and scales)

Peter Lukas-Graf Checkup (the whistle tones exercise in this book is to die for!!)

Robert Dick Tone Development through Extended Techniques (an excellent resource to pair with De la Sonorite or Wye's tone book)

Paula Robison Flute Warmups Book

Perspective

I can't believe it's been almost a month and a half since I last posted an article here. You have to forgive me. As a military wife, I've been charged with planning a move all by myself while also practicing as much as possible in preparation for various auditions and a competition. Once the move is over, I will have more time to write and post on a regular basis.

With everything in a chaotic state, I've lost my perspective over the past two weeks. In addition to my perspective, I also lost my mojo to practice. So with an audition next week glaring at me and a competition the week after in addition to presenting my first ever workshop, it's easy to see why I lost perspective.

My advice to myself and to all of you reading, when life throws you a major life change while also involved in career pursuits, don't compare yourself to others. I certainly don't follow the status quo musician route. I'm not going to have the amount of time to practice like I wanted. I like to keep negative thoughts flowing through my head. Instead of looking at my situation practically, it's much easier to shut down and focus on other things.

Planning, efficiency, and structure can get you through these phases. Have conversations with yourself (out loud, even) about your expectations and goals. Be open enough to change and adapt your goals if your life is constantly changing as it is for me. For me, my goal for my audition and competition has changed from winning to one of gratitude for the opportunity to perform and use these as experience building events. Between now and then, my goals could change again. Even if I don't win, I will celebrate the accomplishment of working through my personal challenge.

Adaptability and creativity make us unique as musicians. Don't let your perspective interfere in those processes. By working through major life events, you will discover strength that you didn't know you had and you will be able to meet future challenges in an even more productive way.

Perspective counts.

Daily Practice Management Strategy

Since my post on efficient practice (http://sensibleflutist.blogspot.com/2010/07/efficient-practice-tips.html), I've been exploring Burt Kaplan's strategies in his book, "Practicing for Artistic Success."

I have just completed Day 2 of his 3 day prescribed practice management strategy. The theory is that by pre-planning your practice and coming into your daily session with a schedule, a strategy, and a kitchen timer, you will be better able to realistically guess how much time you need to reach your goals. Included in the book is a nifty Daily Practice Organizer that you can copy and use for this exercise.

Managing your practice time effectively and efficiently is a little like how you shop at the mall. Some of us are very focused with a mental shopping list. We do well managing our time (for the most part) so that we don't waste time; however, we sometimes get unfocused and distracted especially when we just can't seem to find the item we want. Others just spend a lot of time and money on impulsive purchases with no evident goal. Our shopping personalities give us a glimpse into our practice personalities, and taking three days to create a daily practice schedule will help you better manage your time and focus.

Kaplan's ideas of practice management are similar to what I have developed and use in my own practicing. The intent of his exercise is to easily plan out your available time in a way so that you're not creating a regimented practice schedule, but building a schedule that has "free" time incorporated for when we want to just play for fun or we want to work further on something we left earlier.

But what about those days when we plan for that extra 20 percent, but other things are getting in the way? Creating a schedule with twenty percent less time than what we think we may have on any particular day safeguards us from unexpected life crises that require our attention but take away those precious minutes. Practicing in less time than what we have also shows that with a focused plan, we can get our work done in less time than we think we need in order to achieve our goals. The actual and expected times will begin to mesh much more easily, and the stress that usually accompanies thinking about everything we must prepare will begin to dissipate.

After two days of regimenting my practice a la Kaplan, I realize that my own problem doesn't lie in an inability to plan but my inability to effectively strategize how I'm going to work on my priorities. My personal goal in this exploration is to transform my practicing into a super efficient vehicle through which I can achieve my short term and long term goals while having time for other pursuits.

Stay tuned for more self-discovery.

Practicing - Reichert No. 1

I'm experimenting filming myself with my new computer, and I figured a practice clip would be a good place to start. I'm exposing myself a lot in doing this, but since I've been discussing and researching practicing lately, why not continue in that theme?

I filmed this last night after dinner, discovered Windows Movie Maker tonight, and now I'm on youtube practicing Reichert No. 1. I was wrapping up tone/tech work for the day, and I would normally run through these but I was trying to get maximum resonance at the points I typically lose it. Just getting this visual of myself means I need to open my chest more and raise my head so it doesn't look like my head coming out to meet the flute. Visuals are so important.

Please excuse the poor sound quality and awkward beginning (I need practice editing these clips). Please leave feedback, too! We're all in this journey together.

Efficient Practice Tips

I am a private flute teacher and a freelancer. But did you know I work in a full time management position by day? I got the job fresh out of college when I was burned out, and wanted a steady paycheck and the chance to do something different for a while.


Now I'm working towards a return to school to earn my master's, and hopefully develop more opportunities to do this music thing full time. So with the backstory out of the way, I've been asking a lot of my twitter and Facebook pals for their tips on efficient practicing. I live in an area with a limited number of students and paid freelance gigs. So at my busiest, I'm teaching a couple nights a week and rehearsing on top of that. That leaves me with very little time to practice to get ahead in this rat race.


I've always had problems staying consistent with my practice. For those of you reading this that are still in school, GO PRACTICE! The "real world" changes everything. For full time professionals and those of us still doing it as a part time affair, efficient practicing means we must be mindful of our practice time. Otherwise, we're just wasting time and missing out on family time, other hobbies, and life in general. That isn't a good place to be.


So the tips I got were very interesting. Some I had considered before, others I hadn't. Here's the list:


1) Work on things that require the most control (thanks, @adrenalsenorita). Articulation, speed, intervals, dynamics, etc. all are crucial elements of a good warmup to make sure you're ready to tackle your rep. I wholeheartedly agree with this tip and already integrate into my practice on those days I just have no time. Do these and you'll find yourself progressing quickly. For quick pick me ups on bad tone days, do some vocalizations and whistle tones, too. You'll open up your sound immediately.


2) Another tip I received from @multiphonic was to have a specific plan going in. Knowing what you're going to work on helps you focus on your goals. He also recommends to not do more than one thing at a time, but instead isolate specific tasks. I would add that this strategy requires consistency. If you have just an hour to practice, then practice as much as you can in that hour but come back the next day to build on the previous day's work. If you have lots of ideas to explore, realize that it's going to take you a longer time to explore those same ideas than someone with a lot more time than you. Don't let it overwhelm you, but approach your practice time sensibly and you will begin achieving your goals.


3) @multiphonic also gave me a great reference to @DTclarinet's site (http://blog.davidhthomas.net/). You can become a member of a practice journal group and share your experiences with other members of the group. This is a great concept and keeps you accountable in the practice room, too.


4) A strategy of mine in order to efficiently practice is to treat each chunk of time in your day that you have the opportunity to practice is to approach it as if that's the ONLY time you have to practice that day even if you think you may have time later on. Divide the time up so that you have adequate time to warm up and save time for repertoire (your "priorities"). For example, I have 40 minutes at lunch time during my day to practice. Instead of using that 40 minutes solely on my "warm up," I take 20 minutes to warm up and the remaining 20 minutes on repertoire or excerpts...anything that needs my precise attention at that time. If I can return to the flute at another point later on that evening, then I will do another section of my "warm up" to include work on issues I noticed in my first practice session and more work on rep. I'm in the process of testing this strategy out, and I think it will help me for several reasons. 1) I like warming up too much...I think all that work has made me a strong technical player, but I could do more with rep and I have less time now and 2) it's all about balance. We must have a healthy work/life balance, and we should mirror that in our practice sessions.


5) Finally, work only on what you have problems with. It's gratifying to play what we already know, but if we're time crunched, stick with what you have issues with. It's not "fun," but it will get the job done. That's what practicing is. As Erica Sipes (check out her wonderful blog at http://ericaannsipes.blogspot.com/ who also recently blogged about this topic) tweeted to me, schedule time to play fun stuff. Erica also points out that in the course of your practicing, if you make a mistake more than two times, something needs to change. It's so true, and I think that's a rule a lot of us like to ignore (myself included).


I came across a book about two years ago called, "Practicing for Artistic Success" by Burt Kaplan (http://www.amazon.com/Practicing-Artistic-Success-Musicians-Self-Empowerment/dp/0918316057). I just received a copy today, and future blogs will discuss what I learn from this resource. In the meantime, practice with heart and maturity, and you will progress faster than wasting hours upon hours of precious time. And you didn't have to spend all that time holed away in a practice room, either. It's all about devising effective strategies for yourself and/or trying strategies that have worked for others. Now go forth and be productive, practicing members of society!