How to Practice

How to Approach Practicing

What you practice is very important, but HOW you practice is critical. The old saying “practice makes perfect” is not strictly true: perfect practice makes perfect. In other words, the way you practice is the way you will perform. If you practice the wrong pitches, rhythms, dynamics, and/or articulations, you will have to “unlearn” them and re-learn them the correct way. Not only does relearning usually take more time, but you will be prone to reverting to the incorrect way. Psychologists call this “regression”.

SET GOALS.
1. What are you going to accomplish today? This week?
2. How fast are you going to be able to play it today? This week?
3. How long are you going to take to learn each section? The whole piece?
WARM UP FIRST
RELAX, with GOOD POSTURE and GOOD HAND POSITION.
READ THE MUSIC CAREFULLY. Don’t guess – the information is there on the page.
IDENTIFY THE CHALLENGES. These will typically be spots where you can’t keep the tempo using a metronome.
1. Difficult scales and arpeggios (Arban is great for learning these)
2. Difficult non-scalar fingering combinations (see Clarke, Nagel, Plog, Vizzutti)
3. Fast tonguing passages
4. Difficult or unexpected rhythms
5. Transitions between sections of the composition
6. Changes in dynamics, key signature, or tempo
7. Page turns
Work on the HARD THINGS FIRST
1. Break it into manageable segments — individual measures, or even parts of a measure. Work them out, then stitch them together.
2. Start slowly. Repeat it until it’s perfect at least 3 times in a row. Slow back down if you lose it.
3. Then speed it up, just a few bpm. Again, repeat until perfect several times in a row, and slow down if you lose it.
LEARN IN SECTIONS. Start with small sections, then piece them together.
1. One measure at a time.
2. One line at a time.
3. One section, one page, etc.
USE A METRONOME. This will help you realize where the problems spots are located.
1. Start with tempos at which you can play perfectly
2. Speed up GRADUALLY.
USE A PENCIL
1. Figure out the best places to Breathe, and MARK them. I use a comma for a small breath or phrase break, and a check mark for a bigger breath. If I really need to take a Big Breath, I make a check mark labeled “BB”.
2. If you find you are consistently forgetting an accidental (sharp or flat), MARK IT above (if stem down) or below the note. These are sometimes notes that were changed earlier in the measure, or the first such note after a key change.
3. Figure alternate fingerings if necessary, and practice the same way every time.
WARM DOWN

- It turns out that the best way to ensure you are ready for the next session or the next day of practice is to play easy, low notes to relax your embouchure muscles and restore blood flow. This allows your muscles to recover more quickly.

Specific Challenges

Pitch Challenges

For passages with strange intervals, just play each pitch, one-by-one, slowly, MAKING SURE EACH FINGERING AND PITCH ARE CORRECT. Play them that way until you can “hear” the note in your head and, ideally, are able to sing it. Then add the rhythm and relative durations, again starting slowly. Standard ways to ensure you are getting the right pitches include:
1. Play the note on a PIANO. Be aware of the key of your instrument (e.g. Bb, F, C) and do the correct transposition from your written note to the piano. For example, The C on a Bb trumpet is a Bb on the piano, so every note you read is one note lower in “concert (piano, violin, flute, oboe, xylophone, etc.) pitch”. The C on a French Horn is an F on the piano, so an E on the horn would be an A on the piano, etc.
2. Find a pitch you are sure of on your instrument, and play up or down to the pitch in question.
3. Use a TUNER
If the pitches are in the high range and hard to play over-and-over, PLAY THEM DOWN AN OCTAVE. Once you learn the pitches, you can play them where they are written.
Play the pitches FORWARD AND BACKWARD. This will tend to lock them into your memory.

Rhythm Challenges

CLAPPING. To learn difficult rhythms, READ THE MUSIC CAREFULLY, put your metronome at a slow tempo, then clap the rhythm. Gradually speed it up until you get a feel for the rhythm.
ONE NOTE: play the rhythm on one, easy note, to get a feel for how your tongue feels playing it
AS WRITTEN: Start slowly, as written, using a metronome, and gradually speed it up (this is the Golden Rule of Practicing).

Tonguing Challenges

Remember to always keep the air moving!
Work on creating overlap between the maximum speed of your single tonguing (shoot for 16th notes at 120) and the minimum speed of your double and triple tongue (shoot for 16ths at 108 bpm). Work on both until that is true!
START SLOWLY and gradually speed it up (the Golden Rule of Practicing). Sometimes it is actually harder played slowly than at full speed, especially if there is double- or triple tonguing involved. But do it anyways! and focus on the clarity of each attack.
Pick a nice, easy, single pitch, and play the tonguing pattern on that pitch.
Sometimes, a difficult tonguing passage is also a difficult fingering passage. Work out the fingers, first, then the tongue.
Sometimes, the challenge is really lip flexibility. Try to SLUR IT, FIRST, then adding the tongue.
If it’s high, play it down an octave until it is secure, then play in the written range
If it involves complicated combinations of slurs, single, and double- and/or triple tonging, carefully figure out what works (e.g. T-T-K or T-K-T?). MARK IT and play it that way every time!
Change triplet patterns into 8th+two 16th rhythms, then two-1/16 plus 8th, then back to triplets. This will reveal where the hard part lies. ******** insert example here ********

Fingering Challenges

Always, always, always SLAM YOUR VALVES DOWN AND RELEASE THEM QUICKLY, even in slow passages. You don’t want that “in between” sound unless you are doing it deliberately. Not only does it make your playing cleaner, it better trains your muscle memory.
USE YOUR METHOD BOOKS. Fast fingers are fun to develop, and become a form of “muscle memory” that you recall over and over. The best way to start is to learn all of your major, minor, and chromatic scales until you can play them smoothly and quickly by memory. Then work on various patterns, as is illustrated in the Arban Book, Clarke Technical Studies, Nagel Speed Studies, Plog Method, and Vizzutti Method. The hardest patterns involve “cross fingerings”… where two adjacent fingers are going in opposite directions. This is especially true of the 2nd and 3rd finger, since your third finger is the weakest of the three. To get better, try a few of these:
FINGERS ONLY; For highly technical passages, play with fingers only, slamming the valves down and listening for the precise rhythm of the valves. Use proper hand position!!
ISOLATE THE HARD PART, AND PLAY IT IN A REPEATING PATTERN. For example, if you have trouble with low D-to-F# (1-3 to 2), play just that combination over and over without pausing.
PLAY IT BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS. This also works for pitch challenges. If you are having trouble, for example, with the beginning of your C# major scale, just play the first 5 notes, up and down, in a repeating pattern (note that this is like Clarke Technical Studies, Fifth Study).
CHANGE THE RHYTHM of difficult fast sections, just for practice and to keep it interesting… and also to speed up portions of the passage. For example, try playing a difficult stretch of 1/16 notes as follows:
1. As a dotted-eighth-sixteenth rhythm
2. As a sixteenth-dotted-eighth rhythm
3. As an eighth-plus-two-sixteenth or eighth-plus-triplet rhythm.
PLAY IT WITH YOUR LEFT HAND. You would be surprised how well and how quickly this works. I don’t know why it works; perhaps because it forces you to focus, or maybe there is some kind of brain symmetry going on. But it does! Try it!