What happens
between lessons is every bit as important as what happens in the lesson itself.
A student can be very sincere, really want to learn and be better, have a good
teacher, practice regularly, and even a lot, but to accomplish one’s aims,
goals, and dreams efficiently, productive
practice* is essential.
Learning
curves will always have their ups and downs, but if practice is productive, the
general trend should always show an upward spiral of accomplishment over time and
not just a turning around and around in
the same circle.
Unproductive
practice is always uncomfortable and feels not unlike those bad dreams of
running as hard as one can and yet not going anywhere. Productive practice, on the other hand, always feels lighter, and
clearer, and has its own unique kind of joy.
There are no
rigid formulas or mechanical methods that will automatically produce productive practice; productive practice is a very personal
affair—it is a process that is written in the sand and not carved into stone,
yet, there are a few simple suggestions I can offer that may help to create
conditions favorable to a productive practice.
Formulate an
agenda and a plan for each week. Be very specific. Don’t just say, “I’ll do technique exercises for the first
ten minutes;” instead, think about what technical issues you specifically
want to address and what studies or exercises you want to use to work on those
technical issues.
I often
remind my students that mindlessly and mechanically repeating any technical
exercise or study will amount to nothing more than a total waste of their time!
But those same exercises or studies become invaluable when used as an
opportunity to address very specific technical and musical issues. Define your
objectives as simply and specifically as possible, for example, playing more on
the tip of the fourth finger of the left hand in scales and chords. Continuity
is very important in productive practice—students
sometimes start things with the best of intentions but don’t follow through.
Control is
another important aspect of productive
practice; go slow enough so that you can control the placement of the
fourth finger every time you use it in the exercise or study you are
working with.
In my book, From
Silence to Sound, ** the teacher, Alex Kubadi
says, “Two should always be present in
your practice; your teacher and your student.” The teacher is the mind and
the body is the student. The teacher works in the realm of concepts and ideas.
The student’s intelligence is in its ability to learn and remember and reproduce specific physical positions and movements in
time. An effective teacher is always very clear with regard to what it wants
the student to do and how it wants the student to do it.
The job of
the teacher is to translate his ideas—his vision—into the language of the body
and then to create the right conditions to facilitate the learning of the student. The student—the body—learns by repeating
an action a number of times, but the teacher must always keep in mind that practice, in the sense of repetition, does
not make perfect, it makes permanent; and that the number of repetitions needed for the student to learn a particular
action is in direct proportion to the teacher’s state of attention while
guiding the actions of the student.
In the
relationship between the teacher and the student, the teacher functions in the domain of the mind—and in that
domain, the body is slow. For example, in my mind I can travel from my house to
my friend’s house at the speed of thought—much faster than the time it takes
for me to physically go to my friend’s house.
But
conversely, in the domain of the body,
the mind is slow. Once the body learns
even a relatively simple action, the mind cannot keep up with it. Think about
even the act of walking and all its components of multiple and simultaneous
actions regarding the coordination of the feet and the legs and the arms and balance,
etc.
Because of
the discrepancies between the relative speeds of the mind and the body in the
mental and the physical domains, it is essential that the mind establishes and
maintains control of the process of work and must never allow the tempo of the
work to get out of its control. Therefore,
if one feels that the work is going too fast for to control, that the body is
allowed to make the same or random mistakes over and over again, then it is
time to stop and think and ask questions that will lead to a better plan of
work.
And this
leads to one of those little secrets.
Speed can be very impressive and its pursuit can become very compelling, but speed is never achieved by trying to go fast.
The capacity for speed is acquired
through perfection and refinement of positions and movements and the degree to which these positions and movements are programed into the body’s
memory—what is generally called muscle
memory. That is why refining and perfecting positions and movements at
slower tempos, tempos that the teacher can control, leads to the capacity for
speed. It could be said, to play fast later, practice slow now.
One further
point on the subject; if you allow the body to learn three different ways of
the doing the same thing, one of which is preferred over the others, when
called upon to reproduce the action, there is only a one in three chance that
the body will reproduce the preferred way.
And finally,
always review your work weekly. Ask the pointed questions. Remember that being critical is not the same thing as being
negative. Negativity has no place in Productive
Practice. As the poet once said, “Ours
is not a caravan of despair!” Ask questions like; “What progress did I make
over the week? Did I meet my expectations? What could I have been better? What
could I have done differently, etc.? As with the initial plan, the answers
should be very specific and simple. Your review should lead to your next week’s
agenda and plan. There is a saying, “A
good plan is a plan that works!”
*&**Because of the initial difficulty to objectively
observe and evaluate one’s work, the guidance of an experienced teacher can be
useful. For one on one lessons in Productive
Practice, or to purchase copies of the book, From Silence to Sound,
please contact Michael Kovitz at FromSilencetoSound142@gmail.com
