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Your Weekly Practice Tip by David Brickman
Week Four: Performing in the Practice Room Back to Weekly Practice Tips
Many of us have had the experience of coming to a violin lesson eager to show the teacher how well we can play the piece we've been preparing. We have spent hours lavishing attention on every passage, on each beautiful detail. Then, to our dismay, as we play through for the teacher, things fall apart. "It sounded better at home!", is a common refrain in my studio. When my students tell me this, I believe them. But, why does this happen?
When we learn a piece, we take it apart. We examine the piece musically and technically. We practice short passages and even isolate single shifts or string crossings. We practice slowly and in rhythms. We experiment with different ways of phrasing and different expressive slides. After all of this, many players forget the obvious: After taking a piece apart, you must put it together again! Playing through a piece - performing it, you might say - is how we put it back together again. What do I mean by performing? We must play through the piece as we would for an audience: no stopping! If you stumble, do not go back and fix the error. If you are playing from memory and have a slip, continue. Don't walk about the room; stand as you would in a concert.
Performing at home should be a regular part of your practice routine. I suggest devoting perhaps one quarter to one third of your daily practice time to running through repertoire. It is through performing at home that we discover what parts of the piece are in good shape and what parts need more work. When you go to your lesson to play through a piece for your teacher you should have "performed" the piece at least a half a dozen times in your practice room. Better still, invite a sibling, parent, or friend - or even a pet - to devote a few minutes to being your audience. This will give your home concert a greater sense of occasion and you'll benefit all the more from it. With this kind of preparation under your belt you will approach your actual performances with greater confidence and you won't have to assure your teacher that it sounded better at home!
Happy practicing,
David Brickman
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