on marching band memories

Temperatures and heat indices have soared here in the past couple of weeks, making practicing in my tiny apartment something of a challenge. And by "a challenge", I mean "nonexistent". No matter how many curtains I close, where I put my fans, or how much ice I put in my swamp cooler, my apartment is still unfortunately hot.

The swamp cooler: doesn't quite make the apartment a practice-encouraging temperature. 

This all reminds me of the days during summer break from high school when I would set about memorizing my marching band music in my sweltering hot upstairs bedroom at my mother's house. We had an air conditioner, but we ran it in the downstairs living room, and all of the heat rose... to my bedroom. I spent many a night sleeping on the couch in the cold, and many a hot summer afternoon torturing myself by playing the trombone in a hot room.

Why? Well, to prepare myself for mid-August marching band rehearsals, of course. True, we had them in the morning, so it wasn't at the hottest that it could be, but it was still hot -- and in Northeastern Ohio, it was humid. I was no stranger to endless stretches of 100% humidity days, with the sun beating down on our only-sometimes-sunscreened heads, girls wearing as little clothing as they could get away with and boys going shirtless. Several times, all I wanted was to march the drill barefoot.

To be quite honest, I miss it. I miss the farmer's tans we all inevitably got (especially the poor flute players with those armband lyres -- ugh!), the avoidance of certain people who sweat a lot more than everybody else, and the water breaks when we'd all run to the small section of shade on the far end of the field. I miss using AOL trial diskettes as extra spot markers, keeping stashes of  SweeTarts for my squad- and section-mates, and carrying drill sheets rolled up and tucked into the back waistband of my shorts. It was hard work, and I loved every second of it -- even the hours memorizing music in my sweltering hot bedroom.

Ah, motivation. That was when I had it. Now what reasons do I have to practice in my ninety-degree apartment? Absolutely none. I'd rather just sit in front of my fan and play video games.

on not posting for a while and small horns

Boy, we have been away, haven't we? Trust me when I say this was totally unplanned. Oh, what, I wasn't supposed to tell them that? Err... well, gentle reader, trust me, we had this planned all along.

So in honor of Summer Concert Season, and the inevitable boredom it brings with playing marches and cheesy Broadway medleys, Jon and I have broken out some... unusual horns. I'll leave him to discuss his, but for the moment, I'll discuss mine. You can almost see parts of it in the picture below!

This horn is colloquially referred to as the Dumpster Trombone, a name which fits since it describes how I acquired it. Its real name is Henry, named after Henry Fillmore, who wrote the first piece that I ever played on the horn. (This is, coincidentally, how my other trombone got the name Dmitri. Guess who!)

When I found Henry, he (it?! pronoun failure!) was tarnished all over. I didn't even know that was silver under there, since I thought it was all dirt. I polished it as best as I could, but the slide was in terrible condition. (It kind of reminded me of a horn I played at the RLMU, but that one stayed tarnished and didn't have a slide lock. Coincidentally, that horn went missing for a few years after I graduated... maybe someone threw it in a dumpster, too.)

Anyway, Henry sat in my closet for two years until Jon proposed that we try straight horns for this summer's concert season. I dragged Henry out and reminded myself of how terrible the slide was, and promptly took him to Volkwein's Music. The pros there fixed up my slide so that now it is infinitely more playable (even if it still has a slight hitch to it at times), and even buffed it up so it's nice and shiny.

This horn sounds incredible. It's a small bore, and so my volume has skyrocketed, but combine the volume with the silver and... mmm. The sound is so different from my Conn 88H-CL that I can't even compare them. I'm having trouble blending a little bit, and by far the biggest problem I have is with third and fourth position. The slide on this horn is long, and shaped differently from what I'm used to. The practical upshot of this is that I have no idea where third or fourth position really are at any given time. I have had to play around a lot with my intonation to figure out what was going on at all, and I just haven't had enough face time with the horn around other people without a tuner staring at me.

Then, today, I picked up my 88H-CL and played my warmup on it. Ahh... it felt like coming home. It's almost as if I relived the switch all over again.

April Recap

April: 25.5 hours = win!

In April, I made my practice goals for the first time since January. \o/ Also, I was pleased with my consistency of practice -- no more than one day off consecutively, and a fair amount of 7+ day strings of regular practice. 

I think I can attribute the success of April to two things: 1.) the new mouthpiece at the beginning of the month breathing new life and interest into my practice regime, and 2.) a pretty big deal concert on May 1. I had something new and interesting to play with, plus something generally motivating me.

This far into May, I am mostly unable to keep up the consistency I did in April, due to my long, exhausting days on Tuesdays and Thursdays that result in me being unfocused and generally tired and grumpy when I get home. I'm trying to make up for it with longer blocks of practice time on other days, which is working pretty well so far. 

on trying new things

Last week, I made this sort of half-assed resolution to try three new things every week. This mostly came about because I figured out that I had tried three new things that week (a new mouthpiece, Mediterranean food, and soy milk) and, since everything worked out nicely, I felt I should continue this pattern.

The new things don't have to be spectacular, but it's all about expanding my experiences. This week is proof of that -- I have tried a new way of taking notes on articles I read for school, I tested out having Maxime Talbot as an object of fannish interest, and...

..I practiced while sitting cross-legged on the floor.

I would not advise the last one for frequent use. I wound up doing it because one day I found myself walking around almost obsessively while practicing, to the point that the walking became almost a time-waster. And then when I sat down in a chair, my cat was like "HOORAY A LAP TO SIT ON" and, despite repeated discouragement of this behavior (including a really loud musical instrument right above her head), kept trying to get on me for cuddles. She stopped at nothing to get up there, even to the point of using her claws on my legs to get my attention (ouch!).

So I plunked down in the middle of my floor, sat cross-legged, and practiced. Admittedly, my leg fell asleep after about a half hour, and my cat wound up curling up in my lap anyway, but at least I had stopped walking around and getting my legs clawed up. The only benefit to practicing in this position is that you quickly figure out just how lazy you are -- elbows on the knees, hunched posture, drooped shoulders. And then after you get all that figured out, it's really mostly just annoying in little ways like having your ankle rubbing against the hardwood floor.

I would much rather practice while sitting on the edge of a table, like I used to do in music school.

What's the wackiest thing you've done while practicing?

March recap

April means...

March: 24 hours. FAIL.

To be fair, March showed a big improvement over February. I practiced a lot more, and a lot more consistently, than I did before. I developed a plan (and taped it to my calendar -- you can see it in the image at the top) and stuck to it for the most part (although I intend to make a couple of changes for April). I switched up my warm-up and my daily routines, and always tried to keep myself thinking and doing new things. 

In fact, I would have made my 25 hour goal if tragedy hadn't struck on Tuesday the 30th... my beloved cat, Magic, passed away on that day. I buried him on Wednesday, driving 2 hours to my father's house and the family kitty graveyard to do so. It was tough to practice after his passing, because Magic used to sit in the dining room and stare at me and give me commentary as I practiced. But, I'm starting to get back on the ball and into the swing of things, and hope that I can remember his vaguely disapproving meow in future practice sessions.

RIP Magic: The Cat (1994-2010)

On Recurring Themes

Lauren’s discussion on boredom got me thinking.

I have a small handful of recurring problems trombone-wise. I mean, there are a lot of things I could do better, and a lot of things that I’m sure the better players and teachers in the section would fix if I gave them the opportunity. But when it comes down to it, there are maybe three or four big problem things that keep happening over and over again. The stupid, frustrating part of it is that the symptoms are always the same, and it always takes me a long time to pick up on them.

The easiest to pick up on is lack of practice time. That’s been a constant since I got out of high school and stopped playing five or six hours a day. But I usually know when I’ve had a run of bad practice time days, so it’s easy for me to figure that one out.

Another is a constant problem with my bottom lip. It will either roll out (I think this is simply a conditioning issue- see above) or I will start using an overbite, downstream set to try to compensate for a lack of conditioning (see above again) out of a misguided belief that it will help me in the high register. I think that goes back to the days when I would do a lot of uncontrolled, semi-conscious embouchure shifting to try to get an obnoxious high range. This one is harder to diagnose: I have to be pretty vigilant in the practice room to notice it, but I’m always looking out for it. It was actually my friend Andy in the trumpet section who pinned me down on it last time it got to be a real problem! It often comes down to an observant section mate pointing out that I sound kind of like a wet balloon; it tends to make my tone thin, squeaky, and vaguely nasal, even if it does temporarily add a third to the top end. It makes lip slurs next to impossible anywhere outside of maybe the third and fourth partial. And it hurts after a little while.

The last one (that I can remember right now) is one of those things that’s so fundamental to playing that it’s embarrassing to even admit. Every now and then, I’ll get nervous and just cut off the air, start pushing from my throat. This is one of those things that almost every brass player knows about, but probably sounds ludicrous to the non brass-player, but I’ll let it go on that and hope everybody understands. I’ve had this pop up lately. I’ve been a bit nervous coming back to the AWCB after a long layoff, bouncing my replacement out of his chair, and generally wanting to prove I belonged there for more than my quick wit. And well, there are some high parts for a change, and that’s what I do, or at least what I claim to do: play high. So I get to the high parts, want to prove I can play them, get nervous, cut off the air, can’t play the part, get mad, get more nervous, cut off the air more. I try to compensate for the lack of air with brute chop force, so I run out of lip a third of the way through rehearsal, where I should be good for two hours with no problems. Two members of the section actually said something to me about air Monday, for which I am grateful, if mortified.

So what does this have to do with boredom? Well, these are the things I think about when I’m doing the same exercise for the umpteenth time. And when I get bored and let my guard down is when they tend to recur. So having taken my lumps and been reminded, I’m back to being a little more conscientious with the horn. For a while at least.

on warming up

In my February recap, I talked a little bit about my battle with boredom in my trombone playing. The first step was my warm-up. I have been using Brad Edwards's routine for about a year now, and it has been amazingly helpful. Except now, I got used to it, and it has become boring. But there are only so many ways to warm up, right?

Wrong.

I read a thread or two over at the Trombone Forum and several posters mentioned a similar idea: we don't need a complicated warm-up. A note or two to get the lips moving should do it. 

I decided to test it, starting this past Monday. Usually, I warm up with glisses from first position down into lower positions all through the partials (a la the Remington warm-ups). I began on Monday by playing a simple tuning note Bb down to F down to low Bb, then started immediately into scales and new articulation exercises. And -- guess what? They were fine. And guess what else? I have consistently, every day this week, gotten tired at the same time I usually do when I warm up with the full routine. That means I have longer to work on actual exercises rather than going through my boring routine by memory.

My practice time has become more productive, and I no longer allow myself to settle for "not being warmed up enough".

February recap

Hey, it's March! That means that it's time for my February recap.

19 hours 45 minutes -- epic failure!

(Although, let's be fair, this is about 5 times more than I practiced last February, so mild success?)

I already wrote a little bit about why I failed so much at practicing this month. I also discovered something that has been plaguing my practicing for years: 

BOREDOM.

In pretty much every practice session, I played the same stuff, worked on the same exercises, ran through the same music. In retrospect, I think to myself "what the hell was I thinking?" But at the time, those exercises were the ones I knew that I could do in order to work on certain parts of my playing... and I got myself stuck in a rut. My chops became really good at doing those particular exercises, but not at the things I was trying to work on.

My approach for March goes something like this: change it up. I've got some plans, which I will write about in upcoming posts, and we'll see if March goes a little better for me. 

on motivation

So, the AWCB hasn't had rehearsal for the past two weeks, thanks to "SNOMAGGEDON", or the large snowstorm that blanketed our area with -- gasp! -- two feet of snow!* Our city shut down -- my university was closed for three days, and I don't think the area's elementary and high schools have been back to normal since. Lawn chairs have appeared all over, and vigilante parking authorities have been ruling our streets. I didn't even get my car dug out of its parking spot on my street until... um... this past Wednesday.

I can hear you readers asking -- what does this have to do with trombonery? Absolutely nothing, except that it has killed my motivation. I seem to periodically forget how important it is to me to have a regular event where I have to go and prove that I'm not a terrible trombone player -- and thus, when that regular event gets, well, irregular, my need to not be a terrible trombone player somehow disappears.

It's an interesting study of my own motivations as a musician. Some of us practice to get personally better, and to have the satisfaction of finally nailing that tough lick. For me, however, my own motivation comes from playing with others, which is why playing in ensembles is so important to me. I practice so that when rehearsal comes, I can be a little bit better, and the people sitting around me won't think to themselves "What the hell is this scrub doing here?"

So when we don't have rehearsal for weeks, I think "Eh, I don't have to play for anybody this week, what's the use?" And then my carefully maintained schedule of practicing every day when I get home from school -- no matter what time it is -- goes out the window. And then it's really freaking hard to get back into the routine.

Now... I'm going to go practice.

*Note: Where I come from, two feet of snow isn't really a lot; however, it has been so long since I've seen so much snow that it kind of took me by surprise!

on playing loud

Something I have always struggled with is playing loud. Yes, I could say "playing loudly", but there seems to be a whole different mindset, even a culture, that goes along with playing at high volumes. So in my mind, it's not just a modifier of one's playing (i.e. the adverb "loudly"), but a modifier of the type of music being played and the style.

Anyway, that's a completely different topic than I want to talk about today. The point is that I came across a very nice handout by Alastair Kay from a Yamaha clinic in 2002. On this handout are a couple of exercises for playing both loud and soft, as well as some excellent pointers about the shape of the lips in each dynamic. I've been trying to find that "burn" in my sound for a few days now (much to the chagrin of my neighbors), and although it cracks around the edges especially when articulating, I am already starting to think more about how I play loud rather than just expelling as much air as possible through the horn.

Excellent, excellent resource.

January report

It's the first week of February and I do have certain resolutions to uphold, so I figure I should report.

25 hours of practice -- January is a success!

25 hours per month, I said. Each line going across a square represents a half hour, so when there's an X, it means I practiced one full hour. You'll see some days, like the 18th, when I practiced two hours. (Okay, let's be fair, I actually counted band rehearsals into my time this month because of stamina issues -- I didn't think I could survive a 2-hour rehearsal after practicing for an hour earlier that day. So I'm counting rehearsals as half time, for now at least.)

I am particularly disappointed about the 19th, 20th, and 21st, where I did not practice at all. Those three days totally kicked my ass, trombone-wise -- I picked up my horn on the 22nd and sounded like ass. I still haven't recovered. I had a shaky but present F5 the week before, and after those three days off, my F5 totally disappeared and now I'm back to only squeaking out the Eb5. 

So -- goals for February. This is a shorter month, so if I practice one hour per day, I only have three potential days off. I do not want to take off any consecutive days -- even if I just play for a half hour, it's better than going backwards. I want that F5 back, damnit! 

Tune in next month for the next installment.

on that post I made last week

So last week I talked of being inspired by Mark Twain and deciding to practice unmuted in my little apartment for a while.

...this did not work out so well this afternoon. I began to practice at about 5:00, as I usually do, warming up with my usual routine. Suddenly, the people upstairs seemed to be totally unable to handle this fact. The sounds of three or four people jumping up and down on the floor and stomping were heard, followed by what sounded like throwing books down on the ground as hard as they could. This abated for a moment, but was soon followed by what sounded like two televisions turned up all the way and a radio blaring static, followed by more stomping.

Are these people really this impatient, or am I really that bad?

I still got my hour in, as usual, but wow did they make it hard on themselves. Now instead of listening to their downstairs neighbor play some Bordogni (and very nicely, I thought), they had to listen to two televisions and a radio blaring, and probably wore out their shoes and made a mess by throwing things around their apartment. How sad.

on a bit of inspiration from Mark Twain

I have posted before about my issues with practicing in my little apartment. Since I have been practicing more and more lately, I've noticed some very unfortunate things happening as a result of one of my restrictions -- namely, the need to play with a mute in all the time.

Besides screwing with my articulations and my intonation, which is something mutes do anyway, I've noticed that the simple weight of the mute added to my horn must be too much for me to support entirely with my left hand. I've begun subconsciously shifting weight to my right hand -- the slide hand -- which does all kinds of crappy things to one's tone. Most noticeably, it's made my slide movement slower, resulting in glisses between the notes. However, if I consciously attend to moving the weight of the horn back to my left hand, my arm gets very tired after about twenty minutes.

And so, deriving some inspiration from Mark Twain, I decided to let my neighbors know the true meaning of the opening line,

If it please your neighbor to break the sacred calm of night with the snorting of an unholy trombone, it is your duty to put up with his wretched music and your privilege to pity him for the unhappy instinct that moves him to delight in such discordant sounds.

I took the mute out. I still practice at reasonable hours of the day, and I try to sound nice, but the whole exercise has really helped. My high range opened up, my weight and balance issues vanished, and what's more, I've developed a whole new sense of confidence. I make these people listen to me flub all those F5s I've been working for, so maybe they won't mind listening to me drill the syncopated lines and running sixteenths in Eric Whitacre's Equus until I (or they) puke.

The only response I've gotten so far is my upstairs neighbors turning up their television. It's a fine trade-off for improved performance and confidence!

on resolutions

So it's 2010 -- wow, when did that happen? And, coincidentally, it's also my day to post to the blog. And so, here you go, obligatory New Year's Trombonery Resolutions.

1.) Have F5 solid by the end of the year.
2.) Practice 25 hours a month.
3.) Get the quartet back together.

How do I plan to accomplish these things?

For the F5: I will keep going as I have been going. I've got a shaky D, which is a lot farther than I was last year at this time when I had a shaky Bb. I figure with upping the practice time and with already extending myself into the upper register, the F is a feasible goal.

For 25 hours a month: I plan to obtain a calendar and hang it in my dining room where I practice. Couple this with a Sharpie and I have a visible timekeeping system that will help me keep myself motivated. I figure I will give myself a mark for each half hour practiced each day, hopefully with two marks on most days.

For getting the quartet back together again: This really depends on the other four people. (Yes, we have a five-person trombone quartet, hush.) I really think the others enjoyed our rehearsals and we had an excellent thing going. Unfortunately some external unpleasantness forced us into hiding, but hopefully it will soon be time to get past that. I have an eye toward March, when spring starts again, and when Easter gigs may be a possibility.

So now it's your turn. What are your New Year's Resolutions, whether trombone related or not?

On the Prayer of Saint Gregory

Of the pieces I’m working on right now, Alan Hovhaness’ Prayer of St. Gregory is probably the least well known among trombonists, owing to the fact that it’s really written for solo trumpet. It started life as an “elegiac intermezzo” for the opera Etchmiadzin, although I have never seen a recording of the opera, or even Hovhaness’ 21st symphony of the same name. Arrangements exist for trumpet with orchestra, organ, and band, and recordings are plentiful (relatively speaking) for all three versions: it is more difficult to find a recording of anything by Hovhaness without the Prayer on it than with.

It is, I admit, a fairly odd choice for me to be working on, but from a musical and interpretive point of view, an exciting one. There are only a handful of markings on the page, and most of them simply follow the line: crescendo as the line goes up, decrescendo again as it comes down. The peak, both in terms of dynamic and pitch, happens on the root, which usually works out to A4. There is a lot of room to work here in terms of markings, and not a whole lot of guidance from the composer. The sheer number of recordings available means a lot of precedent is available. But this simply means it is up to the performer to make some choices!

There are some more interesting aspects to the piece on a slightly deeper level. The “solo” part accounts for a mere 50 bars out of 130, which seems to diminish its importance somewhat, turning the piece almost into an organ solo with trumpet accents. However, in the places where the soloist plays, the organ is holding chords: the solo becomes quasi cadenza, although there are once again scant indications of presupposed tempo variations. Another crucial aspect of the piece is in the resolution. While the solo lines always resolve to the A, either as the peak of a line or as the final resolution, the resolution at the end of a line is delayed half a beat, with a G on the downbeat resolving to A on the upbeat. This weakens the cadence and the resolution, and is repeated until the final statement of the solo part. In the last statement, the G is played at the end of the last figure leading to the resolution on the downbeat of the last measure: the resolution is more firm, grounded.



The solo and accompaniment parts taken together, the piece sounds like a journey to me, and works best slowly, with an eye towards introspection. The solo parts come through as a pause in travel for reflection, perhaps on some eternal question that St. Gregory might have carried with himself in his reputation for scholarship and contemplation. The answer doesn’t come, but the journey continues: resolution is delayed, and the moving lines in the accompaniment begin again as soon as the solo ends, and is given much more time than the solo. Or perhaps the message is that the journey, and the question, is more important than the answer, or the destination. But this is all reflected in the final note. There is no dynamic marking, and is not the high dynamic mark for the piece: once again, resolution is found, but the weight and importance of that resolution is left up to the performer.

Update from the mothership

So those of you who read this blog regularly (all three of you) may remember that about six weeks ago, I posted a list of goals. Those of you who don't read the blog regularly can click the link! Anyway, I've been cracking on these pretty hard the last couple of weeks, and I just knocked off a pretty solid practice session, so I thought hey, let's update the mothership goals!

1. The trombonery is actually going fairly well. I've been paying close attention to beginnings and ends of notes, and while I'm not completely happy with them, I think they're getting better. I think I could almost perform the Prayer of St. Gregory, although I would need some time with an accompanist. I think the Tuba Mirum is coming along nicely, I can play it well enough to play it for an audition for the level of ensemble I usually play for probably six out of eight times I practice. Still a little ways to go on those!

The Grondahl is coming along, but is not perfect. I still have trouble with endurance, especially with popping out the E-flat in the ossia in the third movement consistently, and with that lovely string of high Cs at the end of the piece. But if I'm careful about where in the practice session I work on them, I can get through any of the movements straight through and play most of the notes in the right place with some vague semblance of musicality. Much better than it was!

I am still having some note issues with the Ride excerpts. That's probably because of my general dislike of the excerpts; I'm just not taking them as seriously as I should be. But I've been trying to pay attention to things like accents and dynamics, so I'm making progress anyway. I've been thinking a lot about whether I like a brassy, brash tone for the B-major section, or just an oppressively large fortissimo. I've been working on trying to play it both ways, as well as trying to play it like comic relief on horseback. That's definitely an interesting mental exercise!

Bolero's a pain in the neck. I used to knock this off all the time and get ridiculed for being a showoff, and now I just can't pull it off. At least I'm having problems with the hard parts. I added some more lip slurs in the high range to try to help with the string of D-flats, and have been working slowly through the falling sixteenths to try to get that down.

2. I've gotten through Blood+ (which I really liked), Romeo x Juliet (which I also really liked) and the first Evangelion movie (which I thought was not as good as the tv show, which I didn't really like in the first place). I've started His and Her Circumstances which is fantastic and a complete surprise for a Gainax show, and Spice and Wolf, which I am really liking. Victory on the sitting around watching cartoons front!

3. I've cleaned most of the mothership, but have not yet ventured into the hold. Still some work to do there!

4. I haven't even started FFVIII yet, but I've been working on Half-Life 2. Does that count for anything?

on productivity

I just had the most interestingly productive practice session. This is how the span of about two hours went:

1. Picked up the horn and warmed up using my usual routine.
2. Walked over to my computer and answered an e-mail.
3. Picked my horn back up and did some flexibility exercises.
4. Checked on my applesauce which was cooking away in the kitchen.
5. Played some high range exercises.
6. My cat demanded to be played with, so I made her chase her feather toy for a few minutes.
7. I played through the second movement of the Kelly Sonata.
8. Potty break.
9. Worked through some tempo issues in the Kelly piece.
10. Answered a phone call.
11. Played through the whole second movement again, much better this time.
12. Put the horn down.

My chops lasted much longer doing this, and feel better afterwards, than if I just play for an hour straight -- and I probably got just as much accomplished, if not more. This reminds me a little of a typical rehearsal in any band -- you play for a few minutes, then you listen to the conductor tell you something, then you play for a little bit longer, then you sit there while the clarinets are being worked with, then you play again...

I have always heard that taking frequent breaks during practice can help the practice session be more productive. Joe Jackson writes that practicing in short, varied sessions is one of the seven habits of highly effective trombonists. It's difficult to do this when your only venue for practice is a practice room somewhere, but I have taken to leaving my horn out on its stand in the dining room to encourage myself (and anyone who happens to drop by) to pick it up randomly and play something. So far, it's made a big difference -- maybe I'm finally learning how to practice.

on practicing in an apartment

So I live in a one-bedroom apartment in an ancient apartment building in close quarters -- to the point that I know exactly what my neighbors' daily routines are -- surrounded by fairly quiet people from all walks of life who only sometimes blast their music.

I rarely hear anyone else practicing a musical instrument, much less one that can shake the foundations of a building like a trombone. I actually had a noise complaint filed against me in the first year that I lived here because I was practicing after 6:00 PM. Since then, I've been working under the following constraints:

• Always after 11:00 AM but before 5:00 PM (so many people will be at work and not have to deal with me).

• In the corner room farthest away from adjoining walls (I actually choose my dining room though it’s not on the corner, because it has fewer windows facing directly into other apartments).

• With a mute in when I’m woodshedding. I only take out the mute when I feel like I can play something beautifully enough for my neighbors to consider it “music” and not “horrible racket”.

• At mezzo-forte or below.

 I wish that circumstances were different and I could really open up and play like I mean it. I also wish that I could practice in the middle of the night, because sometimes the urge does strike me. But there are neat things too -- like how my Russian-speaking neighbors who otherwise can’t communicate with me like to show their appreciation when I finally nail a Blazhevich etude.

On woodshedding

I've been working up the Rimsky-Korsakov Concerto for Trombone lately -- for what purpose, exactly, I'm not sure, but this is one of those pieces that I have always wanted to play somewhere.

I've been woodshedding the third movement. Today I was working on the passage leading into N, which is deceptively tricky for me. Here's the passage I was working with (6:03 in the video):

It doesn't look like much.The first thing that gave me fits was getting those Gs in the fanfare-like second line to speak. I had to reorganize the last four bars of this excerpt in my brain so that each G was connected into the following Cs like a pickup note rather than being just another sixteenth note in the line. That worked nicely, giving definition to the lower pitches (it's amazing what a little psychology can do!).

Then there's that happy little sixteenth note string at the end of the first line. The attempt to transition from the C at the end of the first line into the Gs in the next was messy, and attempts to psychologically reorganize the line only made that E-natural disappear into the ether. Then I remembered the age-old advice: "Relax and blow." I turned off the metronome. I closed my eyes, I relaxed, I blew, and it came out. The only problem is that relaxing makes me drag -- but yet, when I turn on the metronom, I find it impossible to relax enough to get the sixteenth string out with any clarity.

One trick that has helped me with this is changing the metronome to beat in half notes instead of quarter notes. I was running this passage at about 100 bpm -- turning the metronome down to 50 like it was being conducted in 1 really helped my ability to relax first to get the troublesome sixteenth note strings out, but to also attend to playing in time. Try it -- maybe it'll help you too!

On practice methods

It's a theme; I'm now riffing on my own post from last week, but at least this time I'd already said I was going to do so.

So, about practicing and how I've changed my methods. I hate to admit this, especially in front of the public, but with graduate school and a romantic relationship kicking my ass and a general lack of musical motivation (which came from rebellion at being away from music school), I don’t think I practiced a lick between the summer of 2007 to the summer of 2008. Then I got better, but my routine was nowhere near regular. On January 1, 2009, I made a New Year’s Resolution to practice twice as much as I had the year before.

Not that that was a big difference, but still.

(Two times zero is… zero!)

I didn’t kick it into gear until May. I would make excuses – or, rather, my Little Hater would make excuses for me. It was only after I realized that the AWCB had a concert coming up very soon and my parts were nowhere near ready (and I feared embarrassing myself in front of my amazing sectionmates) that I realized that I needed a routine.

So, I promised: every week, I would practice for three hours. Whether this was one hour on three days or a half hour on six days or one and a half hours on two days, I would do it.

Needless to say, this worked about as well as my regimen in music school did. The Little Hater was back with the same old song. So...

I changed my routine.

I set goals for myself in outcomes, not in times, and this was something my Little Hater did not know how to deal with. Let me give you my goals for August 1, for example:

1. Be able to produce a high C when warmed up without working up to it.
2. Re-master the Blazhevich clef studies in C, Bb, G, F, and D.
3. Practice triple tonguing T-T-K until I can play Castles in the Air at 50 bpm using T-T-K only.
4. Be able to play any Bordogni etude using jaw/lip vibrato and not sound like ass.

When you consider that my chops hadn’t even fathomed a high C in about a year, #1 was a lofty goal (I made it, by the way -- the C isn't totally consistent and still sounds a little strained, but I got it!). #2 was easy, it was just there as a motivator to get me working actively with tenor and alto clefs again. #3 – working from T-K-T triple tonguing to T-T-K – is something I’ve always known I needed to do. And #4 is the subjective goal, depending on your definition of “sound like ass” (mine is, usually, "play it so that my neighbors don't call in a noise violation on me").

My Little Hater got to me the most with #3. “You’re never going to play this piece publicly again,” she said, “why are you working on it? Furthermore, you can already play it hella fast using T-K-T, why change a good thing?”

And then I would flub a T-T-K once, and it sounds better as T-K-T than everything else I’ve been trying to use T-T-K on, and my Little Hater would tell me that I shouldn’t mess with something that’s not broken. “You’ll never be able to change it, Lauren,” she said.

My response? “I have to get this down by August 1.”

Sure, this leads to some procrastinating at the beginning of the month. Sometimes my Little Hater will tell me things like “You don’t have enough time!” at the end of the month. But this leads to those intense practice sessions that do the most good for me, the ones where I get a lot accomplished in a short time because I’m really focused.

So thank you, Little Hater, for forcing me to work around you and inadvertently making my practice time more worthwhile.