Practice Tips, cross instrument suggestions Options

[plonkee]

Ok, I'm looking for practice tips. Specifically, I'm thinking of things that you think are common knowledge in your instrument, because I may well not have heard them.

For example, I've been playing the oboe for about 18 months, and my teacher, and other (very good) teachers, and other woodwind players in general have suggested that a good way of practicing tricky sections is to use different rhythms. I actively played the viola for about 10 years and didn't hear this suggestion at the time.

Do you have any tried and trusted tips? - maybe different instruments (inc voice btw) have different ideas to share.

[vectistim]

I think varying the rhythm is fairly common, with the right rhythm put back in you can vary it from very legato to very staccato too.

Another might be to only play the first beat in each bar (or in each beat) to understand what is going on underneath some fancy decoration.

[STRINGMUM]

My son's viola teacher has him use different rhythms on tricky bits and it does seem to work.

[kenm]

One of the reasons for using different rhythms is to give time on the long note to prepare for the fingering shift of the next two. This is more likely to be a problem on woodwind, where some shifts involve several fingers going in different directions, than on strings, where most of the time only two fingers are involved. I would expect different rhythms to be most useful in a double stopping passage.

[stevensfo]

I never found changing the rhythm very useful but what I often do is change the time of the piece to make it easier to cut into small sections.

e.g. If a complicated bar is in 4/4 time, I split it in two and treat each half as 4/4, sometimes subdividing even more to make notes easier to count. Subdividing the bar is particularly useful where you have phrases ending and beginning within the bar or sudden legato/staccato changes or minims suddenly followed by horrendous dotted quavers, semiquavers...etc.

Then when you have the feel of the piece, you put it all together and increase the tempo.
Does this make sense?
Anyone who's played Ferling studies will know what I mean! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif)

Steve

[Roseau]

I never found changing the rhythm very useful but what I often do is change the time of the piece to make it easier to cut into small sections.

e.g. If a complicated bar is in 4/4 time, I split it in two and treat each half as 4/4, sometimes subdividing even more to make notes easier to count. Subdividing the bar is particularly useful where you have phrases ending and beginning within the bar or sudden legato/staccato changes or minims suddenly followed by horrendous dotted quavers, semiquavers...etc.

Then when you have the feel of the piece, you put it all together and increase the tempo.
Does this make sense?
Anyone who's played Ferling studies will know what I mean! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif)

Steve

I do both (changing rhythm and changing tempo) because they solve different problems.

Changing tempo solves pieces with tricky rhythms (such as Ferling). Changing the rhythm is helpful for passages of equal note length (eg fast semi-quavers).

[Juan Carlos]

I don't know in other instruments, but I guess it's quite similar to what happens in piano playing. Changing the rhythm is an invaluable exercise and there is a neurological foundation to this. In manual skills, our nervous systems works by 'stop' and 'go' signals transmitted to the muscles which must actually move (the hands/fingers in the piano) and by lengthening some sounds and shortening others (this is what actually happens when you change rhythms) you exercise both 'stop' and 'go' signals in different positions. My scales and arpeggios, for instance, have improved a lot since I added different variants. I did it on the advice of my piano teacher and then found the neurological side to it on the Internet.
Another method is taking this technique to extremes and exagerate pauses. Play, say a crotchet (but pause on it longer than 1 beat ) and then 2 quavers, then another crotchet (stop as long as you did the previous one) and then 2 quavers and so on with many variants. The following (in order of difficulty) are the most widely used on the piano for four-note groups, say groups of 4 quavers are:
a. dotted quaver - semiquaver - dotted quaver - semiquaver / dotted quaver - semiquaver - dotted quaver - semiquaver / etc.
b. (the opposite of the previous one but seldom used because it alters the accents pattern) semiquaver - dotted quaver - semiquaver - dotted quaver / semiquaver - dotted quaver - semiquaver - dotted quaver
c. quaver - semiquaver - semiquaver / quaver - semiquaver - semiquaver / quaver - semiquaver - semiquaver / quaver - semiquaver - semiquaver
d. semiquaver - semiquaver - quaver / semiquaver - semiquaver - quaver / semiquaver - semiquaver - quaver / semiquaver - semiquaver - quaver
e. quaver - triplet of semiquavers / quaver - triplet of semiquavers / quaver - triplet of semiquavers / quaver - triplet of semiquavers

[Tom Piano]

Wow, Juan Carlos, I didn't know about the neurological foundation to varying the rhythm. I'll incorporate into my practice schedule today!! Great advice - thanks.

Tom

[Juan Carlos]

I read about the "stop-and-go" neurological stimuli somewhere some time ago and then found confirmation in a book by Philip Johnston called "The Practice Revolution", though he doesn't go deep into the neurological details.
I, too, find this aspect of learning the piano among the mopst interesting. Rhythm variations, though, can be applied only to regular rhythm patterns and only when the notes have been learnt extremely well. Try it and you'll see how well it works.

Oh, I forgot. Another side to this is that excellent legato can be obtained by playing the passage staccato while practising. Staccato is basically more difficult because of the temporary in-between notes "detachment" from the keyboard, which forces the mind to re-calculate hand position, keyboard geography, etc. This also helps concentrate on each note as a single unit and enhances the smoothness of the legato obtained.

[Arundodonuts]

Ok, I'm looking for practice tips. Specifically, I'm thinking of things that you think are common knowledge in your instrument, because I may well not have heard them.

For example, I've been playing the oboe for about 18 months, and my teacher, and other (very good) teachers, and other woodwind players in general have suggested that a good way of practicing tricky sections is to use different rhythms. I actively played the viola for about 10 years and didn't hear this suggestion at the time.

I do that on the oboe and did the same on the viola 20 odd years ago.

Also different articulations, breaking down the passage into chunks, overlapping the start and end points.

Play the important notes in a phrase first then add the twiddly bits.

Play slowly.

Oh and having recently started on the Ferling, I know what kerioboe means.

[stevensfo]

My scales and arpeggios, for instance, have improved a lot since I added different variants.

Thanks a lot for this information. Fascinating! Scales are so boring to learn.

Just to take it further, I wonder how useful it would be to use some patterns for major and some for minor scales.

Steve