Minor Scale Exercises
This week I wrote a little set of exercises for my students that explore the different types of minor scales. The exercises are in the form of five four-bar tunes, that I’ve transposed into all the keys for easy practising.
Learning
Exercises For Improving Tone
When we first start playing a wind instrument like the clarinet or the saxophone, we begin learning basic tunes and technique as soon as we can get a sound from the instrument. This initial sound, however, can be thin and squeaky, and usually doesn’t match up to the sound we hear from more experienced players. How often have you felt demotivated because of wobbly notes or an involuntary screech? Good tone is so important on any instrument, not only because it indicates good technical habits but also because it makes playing so much more enjoyable and rewarding. To help you improve the quality of sound on your wind instrument, here are some useful exercises that I often use with my students (with audio examples).
Why The Cultural Idea Of Talent May Be Holding You Back
Recently I have been researching a topic that I find very interesting: how our culture perceives and treats ‘talent’.
Before reading some books and articles on the subject, I thought of talent as being akin to a plant you were gifted as a child; everyone was given one, and some people’s may have been bigger or leafier to begin with, but ultimately your ‘talent’ plant will only reach its full growth potential if it is consistently watered and replenished and pruned. If you stop nurturing even the hardiest plant, it will wither. If you tend lovingly to an initially unremarkable plant, it will flourish.
Avoid Forgetting Old Pieces With This Idea
Finally mastering a piece that you’ve been working on for a while can be really rewarding: our fingers seem like they’re moving more effortlessly, we don’t have to think so hard about what’s coming next in the music, and we achieve a flow and fluency that only comes with familiarity and hours of practice. However, we can sometimes be too quick to file away a piece as ‘finished’ in our eagerness to move on to something new, only to find weeks later when we revisit it that we’ve forgotten parts and lost some of that proficiency. (Nobody wants to end up in musical Groundhog Day having to learn the same piece over and over because they’ve forgotten it!)
Eight Time-Saving Practice Techniques
Although investing a great number of hours into your chosen instrument is crucial, the quality of that practice time is just as important. According to the leading authority in the psychology of expertise, K. Anders Ericsson, it is ‘deliberate’ practice that causes significant improvement, rather than mindlessly going through familiar motions. It is often much more beneficial to do twenty minutes of deliberate practice with a clear intention than it is to play aimlessly for an hour. With that in mind, here are eight practice techniques that I use in every lesson with my students and in my own practice, which will improve the efficiency of your learning and save valuable time.
Tips For Setting Up An Inviting Practice Space
One often overlooked factor that can make or break the effectiveness of your practice is how you set up your practice space. Most of us probably haven’t given the subject much thought (me included until recently!), but having a space that has been set up thoughtfully can have surprising effects on your musical progress and enjoyment. In this post I’ll look at the benefits of having a good practice set-up, and give some tips for how to make the most out of your music space.
Starting A New Instrument As An Adult
I often hear adult students expressing regret that they either gave up an instrument as a child, or never learned one in childhood at all. They feel that they are late to the game, and most seem to hold the belief that they would have found the learning process easier or been able to pick the physical technique up faster had they started younger.