Chicago Bass Ensemble

Some very brief notes about my practice and recordings for days 3—8 of my 100 days of learning a new piece. (Rather than post to the blog each day, I’m gathering up the better part of a week. I noticed that probably people who have subscribed to this blog were getting an email each day. I didn’t want to subject my friends to that!)

39-42 (27 Nov) – I did my practice and recording at the end of a long-ish day. I had forgotten I have a Messiah performance this coming weekend, so I “warmed up” by running through the first ten or so peices of the Messieah. My arm is tired—I’m suffering a bit of what is commonly called “tennis elbow.” Find that I had not perfectly remembered measure 40. Caught myself doing bad habit, imperfectly corrected that behavior. Still rushing, even though I checked tempo against a metronome as I was recording!

38-42 (28 Nov) – This day, I worked only on this. I had better discipline, but also added the practice in different rhythms stuff. REALLY rushing when recorded. Felt better about remembering the later measures. Liking my dynamic at the end. You’ll find that because I boosted the mic gain just a little, there will be some difference in sound/volume.

37-42 (29 Nov) – I did a lot more of the different rhythms practicing, less of the 1+4 repetition. To be honest, my discipline was a little lax. I went back to an old technique of playing with the metronome and starting slow, increasing a click at a time, which was a good idea—one that everyone really should use as a tool in the practicing toolbox. My overall problem is that I just don’t have a lot of time in the evenings. But then again I’m only doing a measure at a time!!

36-42 (30 Nov) – I stipulate that 10:30 pm after having a beer is NOT the best time for me to practice. I was not very disciplined at all although maybe I still got a decent result. I’m willing to give myself some congratulations for the discipline to not have a second beer with friends at the bar but instead come home and do this.

35-42 (1 Dec) – This was recorded using my Zoom recorder, while practicing at the school at which my wife teaches. If you listen closely you might hear in the background some of the pandemonium of the Chicago Waldorf School Holiday Fair in progress. I began the day by sitting in in the bass section of the school’s chamber ensemble, playing a selection of frankly mediocre arrangements of holiday tunes. Then a trombone playing friend and I played duets for 90 minutes to accompany the candle-dipping room. All good fun, and for a good cause! Exhausted, I took a nap on the floor of the music office, then practiced measure 35 for a while and recorded what you hear.

34-42 (2 Dec) – After a lightning-quick-through-the-major-pieces rehearsal and then a “sing along” performance of Handel’s Messiah, I came home, had dinner, practiced ever so briefly without any discipline whatsoever and recorded measures 34 to 42 of the Armand Russell Whimsical Prelude. As on the 30th of November, I’m giving myself props for actually doing this and not just claiming my right to break my own rules, but I won’t hold this up as a stellar example of how best to organize your life as a practicing musician.

So, what are my overall observations thus far? Well, forgetting about commitments you have made is a bad thing … you might note that in the blog post that began this series, I said “I don’t have much coming up …” well, I actually did, and I had forgotten that. Second, I’ll confess that discipline to do this ‘exactly’ the way I set out has been lacking, but I’ll also argue that my initial framework was probably a little over-limiting. Third, I’m having fun, even if I am exposing the sloppy underbelly of my playing.

I’m adding all the recordings I am making to a SoundCloud playlist: you can listen to the progression measure-by-measure.

I’d love to hear any comments that anyone has!

The start of a new little project.

100 days

I don’t have much playing on the schedule for the next month or so. And I have wanted to do this “100 days” thing for a while: Pick an endeavor, do it every day for 100 days, post to the world as you go. I think I have seen people do it with dancing and the results are a) entertaining and b) show how working on something small every day can make a real difference, an improvement.

My daughter’s first violin teacher challenged her with this once; the reward was to be that if she practiced 100 days in a row, he would take a horseback riding lesson!!

Here’s a link (which I hope works) to David Heyes announcing the start of his 100 day quest.

A Way to Practice Better?

One of the flaws I have in my practicing is that I often approach learning something new by just hacking through it over and over and over. And I think this means that what I really learn is all the wrong ways to play something. Then I spend a lot of time undoing all of that learning.

Noa Kagayema has written extensively about practice strategies (here’s one blog post for instance). One technique that I think must be great but always feel too impatient to do is to practice a small section of something in the following way:

• play it once
• mentally rehearse it—”exactly as it should be” in your mind four times
• repeat the above two steps two more times.

So when you’re done, you have practiced the section fifteen times, but your hands are only tired from three times. And you’ve given the section a lot of thought.

So What Does this Add Up To?

Here’s what I’m going to do. I have picked a piece. Not completely at random, it happens to be a composer I really like, Armand Russell. But it is something that I have never played before and have never heard. I am going to work on this piece for 100 days. I am going to work on one measure per day, using that “15 reps” method I described above. And I’m going to work backwards, i.e. starting with the last measure and moving to the first. Each day, a new measure.

The piece I’ve chosen is “Whimsical Prelude” from Russell’s Preludes and Nocturnes for unaccompanied double bass. (Recital Music RM1000) The piece is actually only 42 measures long, so when I get to playing the whole thing (about 42 days from now), I’ll either continue to work on it for more days or move to another of the 5 pieces in that collection. So here’s a link to the recording of the first day: https://soundcloud.com/jacque-harper/whimsical-prelude-41-42

I stipulate that I have already broken my pledge; I worked on and recorded two measures today. But measure 42 is only a held quarter note followed by a sixteenth and an eighth note. It was just begging for more. Also, I fully expect that I will miss a day here and there, so this won’t be the last time I break my own rules. But the spirit of the idea is intact!

I’ll tag each of these blog posts with “100 days.” And they will almost certainly follow each other with very little interruption, so you should be able to just go next next next through the posts and fast forward through my progress. I love to hear comments!