Liz Knowles
What is "to practice"?
Practice
“To create, we need both technique and freedom from technique.
To this end, we practice until our skills become unconscious."
Stephen Nachmanovitch.
The word “practice” can have a rather bad connotation. There is another phrase that you might have heard in conjunction with that word which unfortunately makes that bad connotation only get worse: we are taught that “to practice” is “to get it right”. And with that proclamation comes all kinds of pressure and expectation that we really do not need when trying to improve our skills as a fiddler. If you took the expectationand pressure out of the word “practice”, what would you have left?
What is “to practice”?
Practicing is simply about making the technical skills required to make the instrument work become a more natural and unconscious act to make room for music-making. Think about how you drive a car. Most of us have gotten to the point where we can drive to a familiar location without even remembering how we got there. We have driven a car so many times that the motions it takes to operate the car have become second nature. It is why you can go on a long road trip and feel relaxed- you are not thinking about all of the gearshifts and turn signals or the gas or break pedals. Conversely, on the fiddle, the more you do not have to think about what it takes to make sound and move the fingers, the more
time you have to think about making music.
This is not to say, however, that music cannot happen while practicing and that the enjoyment of music only happens later. It would be a mistake to think that practicing is just practicing and that the “real” playing happens later. Every time you pick up the fiddle, there is the possibility of music. Some of this depends on how you choose to see, hear and feel it and some of this depends on how your own expectations line up with the reality.
Let's outline the bones of what a good practice session is made up of:
Productive practicing, at its best, is a balance of
1) the reinforcing of all that you know well
2) the pulling apart and the reconstructing of the things you do not know so well
3) the learning of completely new things
4) the assembling of all of the above
In essence, you are doing several things at once in one practice session with these elements.
1) Reinforce: You are supporting what you already know. You are reinforcing those walls that you have already started to build. The skills that you have already begun to build on are ones that you want to exist in the subconscious, much like the act of driving a car. You want to repeat and more fully understand each of those actions and make them feel even more natural. You want to be able to do these actions with less active thought and more muscle memory.
2) Pull Apart: The "pulling apart" phase is about breaking down these actions, pulling apart a bit of the fabric of those walls you have already built in order to see structural problems, and fixing these problems that exist in the foundation.
3) New learning: You should always add to your skills on the fiddle. This can be little things like a bowing pattern or more general things like good sound production. Some of these new skills will be things that you can learn today and integrate in your playing but some of these things will take time to incorporate into your playing and you will need to have a long view about how to practice
4) Assembling: This part of practicing is about putting it all back together. You must learn how to take all the little things and integrate them while just playing. Part of this part of practicing is about learning how to perform or how to play something straight through as if in performance, about having a complete musical thought without being weighted down by all the details that got you here. If you can design your practice time to include a balance of these things, you will progress quite quickly as a fiddle player. This is not to say that every practice session must have these components, but that these are the components to a complete practice session. Now, before jumping into the nitty-gritty of designing practice time, let's talk about PLAY. There are two general kinds of playing time
when practicing and they are both called “play”: focused play and unfocused play.
“To create, we need both technique and freedom from technique.
To this end, we practice until our skills become unconscious."
Stephen Nachmanovitch.
The word “practice” can have a rather bad connotation. There is another phrase that you might have heard in conjunction with that word which unfortunately makes that bad connotation only get worse: we are taught that “to practice” is “to get it right”. And with that proclamation comes all kinds of pressure and expectation that we really do not need when trying to improve our skills as a fiddler. If you took the expectationand pressure out of the word “practice”, what would you have left?
What is “to practice”?
Practicing is simply about making the technical skills required to make the instrument work become a more natural and unconscious act to make room for music-making. Think about how you drive a car. Most of us have gotten to the point where we can drive to a familiar location without even remembering how we got there. We have driven a car so many times that the motions it takes to operate the car have become second nature. It is why you can go on a long road trip and feel relaxed- you are not thinking about all of the gearshifts and turn signals or the gas or break pedals. Conversely, on the fiddle, the more you do not have to think about what it takes to make sound and move the fingers, the more
time you have to think about making music.
This is not to say, however, that music cannot happen while practicing and that the enjoyment of music only happens later. It would be a mistake to think that practicing is just practicing and that the “real” playing happens later. Every time you pick up the fiddle, there is the possibility of music. Some of this depends on how you choose to see, hear and feel it and some of this depends on how your own expectations line up with the reality.
Let's outline the bones of what a good practice session is made up of:
Productive practicing, at its best, is a balance of
1) the reinforcing of all that you know well
2) the pulling apart and the reconstructing of the things you do not know so well
3) the learning of completely new things
4) the assembling of all of the above
In essence, you are doing several things at once in one practice session with these elements.
1) Reinforce: You are supporting what you already know. You are reinforcing those walls that you have already started to build. The skills that you have already begun to build on are ones that you want to exist in the subconscious, much like the act of driving a car. You want to repeat and more fully understand each of those actions and make them feel even more natural. You want to be able to do these actions with less active thought and more muscle memory.
2) Pull Apart: The "pulling apart" phase is about breaking down these actions, pulling apart a bit of the fabric of those walls you have already built in order to see structural problems, and fixing these problems that exist in the foundation.
3) New learning: You should always add to your skills on the fiddle. This can be little things like a bowing pattern or more general things like good sound production. Some of these new skills will be things that you can learn today and integrate in your playing but some of these things will take time to incorporate into your playing and you will need to have a long view about how to practice
4) Assembling: This part of practicing is about putting it all back together. You must learn how to take all the little things and integrate them while just playing. Part of this part of practicing is about learning how to perform or how to play something straight through as if in performance, about having a complete musical thought without being weighted down by all the details that got you here. If you can design your practice time to include a balance of these things, you will progress quite quickly as a fiddle player. This is not to say that every practice session must have these components, but that these are the components to a complete practice session. Now, before jumping into the nitty-gritty of designing practice time, let's talk about PLAY. There are two general kinds of playing time
when practicing and they are both called “play”: focused play and unfocused play.
Practice is Play
You’ve played at it, played with it, played around it, and played in it. This is how you learned about the world. When practicing, there two kinds of play: First, unfocused play. The more you play around, the more you experiment, and the more fun you have while practicing, the more you will improve on the instrument in the long run. Time spent with the instrument in your hands is never wasted, especially if you are a beginner. You might not be learning anything specific or fixing any particular problems but you will be familiarizing yourself with the instrument.
Think about the first time you held a pencil. It felt awkward and uncomfortable. Today, you can pick up any writing instrument, pencil or pen, and make it work for you without thinking about it. It doesn’t feel foreign or strange in your hands. It feels natural. This is how you want to feel with the fiddle in your hands. Once you have this kind of familiarity with the instrument, you can spend so much more time thinking and acting on techniques and skills. This kind of "play" time is about getting to that place with your instrument. Play for Intermediate players
For intermediate players
This kind of play is about finding out what you and the instrument can do together. Remember, this is not about fundamentals or tunes or exercises so avoid playing full tunes or practicing something specific.
Play for Beginners
If you are a complete beginner, take the time to hold the fiddle and bow in your hands as much as possible. At first, do not worry about holding it correctly. Just hold it in your hands and have a good look at it. Imagine how your hands will hold it, how you will put fingers down on the strings, and how you will make the bow move across the strings.
Spend some time holding the fiddle separately from the bow and vice versa. Look at how each are made and what they look like in your hands. If you want to go as far as putting the instrument up on the shoulder and the bow in hand, see if you can get it to make a sound, any sound. Make no judgments about whether is good or bad. Just make sounds. Move the bow hair across the strings or put the bow down altogether and pluck the strings with your right hand.
Try this:
Take out the fiddle and hold it while watching TV. Try holding the bow while talking on the phone. Hold both the fiddle and bow while listening to music.Let yourself get familiar with how it feels in your hands before trying to dive into the playing of the instrument.
Also try this:
As a beginner, I was given a wrapped box of Crackerjacks© with sticks glued to the box to use as a fiddle. It wasn't until we learned our first tune,
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star that we were given a real violin to play.
Learning my way around this “fiddle” was a good lesson and a great way to start. It took the pressure away from the thought that I was holding this expensive instrument only to make horrible sounds. You can simulate my experience with the Crackerjacks box by holding a cereal box with only your shoulder and the left side of your chin.Try other inanimate objects like pencils or a mailing tube. Hold the pencil like a bow or place a mailing tube up on your shoulder, placing your left hand in playing position on the "neck". Never mind the strange looks you might get from co-workers or family or friends! Seize the day! Pretend that cereal box is a violin!
You’ve played at it, played with it, played around it, and played in it. This is how you learned about the world. When practicing, there two kinds of play: First, unfocused play. The more you play around, the more you experiment, and the more fun you have while practicing, the more you will improve on the instrument in the long run. Time spent with the instrument in your hands is never wasted, especially if you are a beginner. You might not be learning anything specific or fixing any particular problems but you will be familiarizing yourself with the instrument.
Think about the first time you held a pencil. It felt awkward and uncomfortable. Today, you can pick up any writing instrument, pencil or pen, and make it work for you without thinking about it. It doesn’t feel foreign or strange in your hands. It feels natural. This is how you want to feel with the fiddle in your hands. Once you have this kind of familiarity with the instrument, you can spend so much more time thinking and acting on techniques and skills. This kind of "play" time is about getting to that place with your instrument. Play for Intermediate players
For intermediate players
This kind of play is about finding out what you and the instrument can do together. Remember, this is not about fundamentals or tunes or exercises so avoid playing full tunes or practicing something specific.
- Make funny sounds. Make bad sounds. Make beautiful sounds. Make fast notes.
- Make slow notes. Play high notes and low notes.
- Play a tune that you know really well in your head like Jingle Bells or
- Summertime or a Michael Jackson song.
- See if you can play a simple melody in a different key than you normally play it.
- Get a tape recorder, record yourself playing a melody.
- Play it back and make up Make up your own tune.
Play for Beginners
If you are a complete beginner, take the time to hold the fiddle and bow in your hands as much as possible. At first, do not worry about holding it correctly. Just hold it in your hands and have a good look at it. Imagine how your hands will hold it, how you will put fingers down on the strings, and how you will make the bow move across the strings.
Spend some time holding the fiddle separately from the bow and vice versa. Look at how each are made and what they look like in your hands. If you want to go as far as putting the instrument up on the shoulder and the bow in hand, see if you can get it to make a sound, any sound. Make no judgments about whether is good or bad. Just make sounds. Move the bow hair across the strings or put the bow down altogether and pluck the strings with your right hand.
Try this:
Take out the fiddle and hold it while watching TV. Try holding the bow while talking on the phone. Hold both the fiddle and bow while listening to music.Let yourself get familiar with how it feels in your hands before trying to dive into the playing of the instrument.
Also try this:
As a beginner, I was given a wrapped box of Crackerjacks© with sticks glued to the box to use as a fiddle. It wasn't until we learned our first tune,
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star that we were given a real violin to play.
Learning my way around this “fiddle” was a good lesson and a great way to start. It took the pressure away from the thought that I was holding this expensive instrument only to make horrible sounds. You can simulate my experience with the Crackerjacks box by holding a cereal box with only your shoulder and the left side of your chin.Try other inanimate objects like pencils or a mailing tube. Hold the pencil like a bow or place a mailing tube up on your shoulder, placing your left hand in playing position on the "neck". Never mind the strange looks you might get from co-workers or family or friends! Seize the day! Pretend that cereal box is a violin!
Focused Play:
This is when you get to strengthen what you already know and build on those things by adding new techniques and skills to your already growing “bag of tricks”. Focused play is about finding new and fun ways to support and reinforce the skills you have today as well as work on the ones you want to have tomorrow.
It is important to know how to appreciate both what you know now and what you hope to know later. So, first, a little explanation about expectations.
Expectations
Some of the true joys of playing an instrument happen when the skill it takes to make it work disappears into creativity. When you do not have to think as much about what you are doing, you can pay more attention to how and why you are doing it. This is not to say that you have to be a virtuoso in order to be creative. It simply means that the more you know about the fiddle and how to play it, the more informed you will be about what it can do, thereby giving you the tools to be that much more creative.
It is possible to be a complete beginner, for example, and get great joy out of playing just the open strings, making different sounds - full, bright and smooth tones and then a quiet, small and gentle tones. Now, you might be thinking, “well, that is definitely not enough for me. I won’t be happy with just playing the open strings. I want more!” Of course you won’t be happy with that forever. You will want to progress and get beyond these first steps.
But be aware! Too much thinking about what you want to have without a realistic understanding and appreciation for where you are now can keep you from experiencing the joys of playing today. If you are only aware of where you want to be rather than where you are, you will only find disappointment in the now. Remember to find something good in where you are today and look to the future as the chance to become what you want to be. Be happy with what you have today and use tomorrow as an opportunity to work for more.
Recognizing and honing the skills you already have and learning new skills are the only ways to keeping up with all of that great music out there waiting to be played!
There are many facets involved in the playing of the fiddle. These might be intonation, bowings, sound, finger patterns, vibrato, articulation, dynamics, phrasing, just to name a few. Focusing in on each of these things during dedicated practice time will help you to get the skills needed to be able to “play around” more freely which will, again, in turn make you a better player. Focused playing is also about the honing in on specific details about your playing that might be troublesome, tricky, difficult, or just plain new. It is about recognizing what you need to work on, finding a way to work on it productively and effectively, and then integrate what you have worked on into your playing.
These two types of play, focused play and unfocused play, can work together or be addressed separately whenever you pick up the fiddle. Learning how to tailor your playing time to one or both of these elements to address specific techniques and skills (as well as your overall playing) will help you improve on the instrument. This is what any good teacher will do (or should do) for you.
This is when you get to strengthen what you already know and build on those things by adding new techniques and skills to your already growing “bag of tricks”. Focused play is about finding new and fun ways to support and reinforce the skills you have today as well as work on the ones you want to have tomorrow.
It is important to know how to appreciate both what you know now and what you hope to know later. So, first, a little explanation about expectations.
Expectations
Some of the true joys of playing an instrument happen when the skill it takes to make it work disappears into creativity. When you do not have to think as much about what you are doing, you can pay more attention to how and why you are doing it. This is not to say that you have to be a virtuoso in order to be creative. It simply means that the more you know about the fiddle and how to play it, the more informed you will be about what it can do, thereby giving you the tools to be that much more creative.
It is possible to be a complete beginner, for example, and get great joy out of playing just the open strings, making different sounds - full, bright and smooth tones and then a quiet, small and gentle tones. Now, you might be thinking, “well, that is definitely not enough for me. I won’t be happy with just playing the open strings. I want more!” Of course you won’t be happy with that forever. You will want to progress and get beyond these first steps.
But be aware! Too much thinking about what you want to have without a realistic understanding and appreciation for where you are now can keep you from experiencing the joys of playing today. If you are only aware of where you want to be rather than where you are, you will only find disappointment in the now. Remember to find something good in where you are today and look to the future as the chance to become what you want to be. Be happy with what you have today and use tomorrow as an opportunity to work for more.
Recognizing and honing the skills you already have and learning new skills are the only ways to keeping up with all of that great music out there waiting to be played!
There are many facets involved in the playing of the fiddle. These might be intonation, bowings, sound, finger patterns, vibrato, articulation, dynamics, phrasing, just to name a few. Focusing in on each of these things during dedicated practice time will help you to get the skills needed to be able to “play around” more freely which will, again, in turn make you a better player. Focused playing is also about the honing in on specific details about your playing that might be troublesome, tricky, difficult, or just plain new. It is about recognizing what you need to work on, finding a way to work on it productively and effectively, and then integrate what you have worked on into your playing.
These two types of play, focused play and unfocused play, can work together or be addressed separately whenever you pick up the fiddle. Learning how to tailor your playing time to one or both of these elements to address specific techniques and skills (as well as your overall playing) will help you improve on the instrument. This is what any good teacher will do (or should do) for you.