“Our object is to minimize the contrast between studio practice and public performance.”
–Philip Farkas, hornist
The Art of Musicianship, p. 48
When you start practicing an unfamiliar piece, does your learning process go smoothly and then culminate in secure, expressive performances?
I’ve found that many young musicians run into unwelcome surprises when they debut new repertoire.
All too often, they find out under the spotlights that their control isn’t as solid as they thought.
Performance-oriented practice, though, can ensure accuracy and expressiveness on stage because it instills all of the qualities we want in concerts.
Ease? Check. Expressiveness and accuracy? Check. Focused attention? You bet.
I distribute performance-oriented practice across three zones: New Material, Developing Material, and Performance Material.
Each of these zones involves particular strategies, which I condense below. See Chapters 3 & 4 of The Musician’s Way for detailed guidelines.
Performance-Oriented Practice
New Material
- Divide into sections. After I get an overview of a piece, I carve it into digestible sections that facilitate learning. Such sections can be as short as a phrase or as long as several phrases, depending on the complexity of the material.
- Establish a provisional interpretive/technical plan. Next, I zero in on a section and make interpretive decisions, notating dynamics, articulations, fingerings and so forth on a score, as needed.
- Slow tempo. As we execute, it’s vital that we work with manageable chunks of music and at tempos that instill ease. Once we can play or sing an entire piece expressively at an easygoing tempo, it graduates to Developing status, and then we ratchet up the tempo.
Developing Material
- Refine interpretation. To lift my interpretation of a piece to a higher level, I reconsider its compositional structure. I look for fresh ways to generate drama and bring out contrasts of dynamics, tone, and emotion.
- Increase tempo. The problem-solving tactics in Chapter 3 of The Musician’s Way equip us to hike tempos and resolve difficulties – those tactics include working from the end of a passage, omitting then reinserting pitches, and modifying the rate of change. I also step up tempos by degrees as opposed to increasing them abruptly.
- Memorize. As soon as I can execute a solo piece securely at a slow tempo, I begin to memorize it. Some musicians memorize earlier in the learning process; others opt to wait until a piece matures.
Performance Material
- Practice performing. When we can easily execute a whole piece at its final tempo, it reaches the Performance material zone. Then, one of our principal tasks is to practice performing the music. I advocate three formats for doing so: 1. alone for a recorder; 2. in front of friends and peers; 3. in low-stakes public settings.
- Maintain memory. Memorized music degrades in our minds unless we refresh our internal maps. Mental rehearsal and score study greatly help here.
- Renew and innovate. To retain my mastery of a piece and elevate my interpretive ideas, I review passages in detail while considering new expressive possibilities. I also go over self-recordings.
In sum, expert performers can pick up unfamiliar music and proceed through a mastering process that consistently results in precise, expressive public performance.
If your practice strategies don’t bring you comparable confidence, try the recommendations in The Musician’s Way, and get feedback from teachers and peers.
Most of all, enjoy the process of refining your practice and advancing on your musical journey.
Related posts
The Benefits of Accessible Music
The Four Stages of Memorization
Maintaining Repertoire
Practicing Performance
Self-Evaluation: The Key to Artful Practice
© 2010 Gerald Klickstein
Photo licensed from Shutterstock.com
Hi, Gerald. Thank you for your entertaining and informative blog! I have some thoughts about a couple of points you’ve outlined in this post, and would love to hear your response.
First, Mr. Farkas’ quotation echos strongly my collaborating colleagues’ philosophy about rehearsal, which is to typically make the practice create exactly what the performance will be. I have made the point to them and offer it to you as well, that a large portion of my training and nearly twenty years of professional singing, had been geared toward “using rehearsal to prepare yourself for as much freedom with the material as possible so as to be spontaneous in a meaningful way to the audience”. I don’t think this idea negates the premise of this article, but I think it offers a very different goal. Both ideas have risks (stagnation on the one hand, looseness on the other), but I think it comes down to what one wants to accomplish onstage. I think both can offer polish, but may be dependent on the amount of time available (and of course the style of music you are performing).
The second thing I’d like to ask about is how firm the “interpretive plan” is for you. For me, I think I prefer working out a few possibilities and choosing from them in the moment/after I’ve felt out what the other musicians or conductor feels best with. Do you find you gravitate toward one and hone it into perfection?
Any conversation would be appreciated. Again, thanks!
Hi Gary – Thanks for contributing! My goals are the same as yours: to be secure yet spontaneous in performance. The ability to be spontaneous arises because we prepare in ways that make it easy for us to execute (i.e., we know the fundamental technical map) and therefore we can perform securely according to whatever interpretive ideas we have at the moment or that arise via the process of collaboration on stage. The ‘interpretive plan’ I refer to represents a blueprint of the phrase structure, emotional climaxes, and such – understanding that blueprint is what gives us the options you speak of such that we can flexibly deliver varied interpretations that communicate both the content of a piece of music and our feelings.