Stephen Fine Posted March 14, 2013 Report Posted March 14, 2013 Some questions for teachers, students, employers, employees, masters, apprentices, etc. . . How do you keep track of progress? And how do you motivate it? I take notes in lessons, tracking repertoire, etudes, technical and musical issues. But I use the notes mainly as a reference aid. I try to tell students what they are doing right and doing wrong, what they have learned recently and long term, and what they should be thinking about "this week." I explain the value of slow practice and the metronome and etudes and scales and theory, but my students and I just write on their sheet music, they don't take notes. I have come to the conclusion that I need stricter measures to ensure adherence to a rigid practice schedule. I know a number of my colleagues make their students keep practice diaries. This is a more hard-nosed approach than is in my nature, but on the other hand, what's not to like about it? How do they work? Does anyone have any suggestions or experience with what [string music] students should include in their notes? Probably the same type of stuff I keep in my teaching notes. Hmm... PS: How do you do etude/scale/excerpt study? 1 per week? Should we memorize etudes? I've tried explaining the Zen of Scales to my students, but they just get glassy-eyed.
gowan Posted March 14, 2013 Report Posted March 14, 2013 I am an adult "relearner". having studied as a child and quit cold for decades before resuming playing. I like practicing scales. I find it meditative (Zen?) and I enjoy them as a multi-tasking way to learn. With one modality I am practicing intonation, tone production, shifting, bowings, positions, ear development, etc.. I also like knowing that as long as I do my scales with focus of attention I am making progress by doing it, however slow it might be. As for my lessons, I use a small recording device, a Zoom H4, to record my lessons. It makes high fidelity recordings so I can clearly hear both pitch and dynamics in my playing and I can hear what my teacher heard when I was playing. Later I can listen to the recording any time I want to and I don't have to rely on handwritten, mostly abbreviated, jottings made during the lesson. Written memos made in my music are also useful when I am playing.
Will L Posted March 14, 2013 Report Posted March 14, 2013 If Galamian can be believed (I believe he can), scales become interesting when we understand what they can do for us. If we are just playing them in a Zen-like trance, they are next to worthless. My way of putting it is that scales and arpeggios do several things. They allow us to develop the ability to go up and down the fingerboard with smoothness and fluidity. They allow us, provided we understand that the fingers go down in slightly different places depending on each key, and at the same time the distances narrow and widen depending on where we are on the fingerboard. And they are a wonderfully unmusical device (i.e. NO MUSICAL CONTENT to get in the way) which allows us to concentrate on the evenness of the notes, dynamically, tonally, and lengthwise. Further, Galamian's scale system has a built in way of ALWAYS requiring concentration. When we are practicing scales in this way, they are never boring and the time flies. When we are just "going through the motions" is when things get boring. MO
Stephen Fine Posted March 15, 2013 Author Report Posted March 15, 2013 Thank you both for your responses. I have one of those Zoom recorders too! Recording lessons... good idea. How much does your teacher write in your music? Are you given fingerings or do you try to make up your own? Will L, I wasn't thinking about playing scales while in a trance. I mean Zen in the sense of focusing your entire self on precisely the task at hand. I give my students Zen in the Art of Archery to read. I like your way of explaining the utility of scales.
JSully Posted March 15, 2013 Report Posted March 15, 2013 My teachers would occasionally revisit old things. That was always instructive.
gowan Posted March 16, 2013 Report Posted March 16, 2013 Thank you both for your responses. I have one of those Zoom recorders too! Recording lessons... good idea. How much does your teacher write in your music? Are you given fingerings or do you try to make up your own? Will L, I wasn't thinking about playing scales while in a trance. I mean Zen in the sense of focusing your entire self on precisely the task at hand. I give my students Zen in the Art of Archery to read. I like your way of explaining the utility of scales. My teacher makes notes such as fingerings, phrasing, expression, to remind me while I am playing. I can't play the recording of my lesson while I'm playing I do try to figure out fingerings and bowings myself. We learn better when we try to do it ourselves before being shown the "correct" way.
Will L Posted March 6, 2015 Report Posted March 6, 2015 Thank you both for your responses. I have one of those Zoom recorders too! Recording lessons... good idea. How much does your teacher write in your music? Are you given fingerings or do you try to make up your own? Will L, I wasn't thinking about playing scales while in a trance. I mean Zen in the sense of focusing your entire self on precisely the task at hand. I give my students Zen in the Art of Archery to read. I like your way of explaining the utility of scales. Since we're opening up this thread again, I didn't intend to take a poke at your use of the term. I should have just said "trance." I feel like so many players use scales almost as a mantra; or as a thing they simply feel they must do to feel like they have covered their daily bases. I like c.m.'s post above. I hate to sound like a stuck record in my continual praise of the De Beriot Method, particularly since I can't seem to even find it available should anyone want to try it. Since the title of the topic is "Progress, Steady or Otherwise," my first and abiding memory of that method is that it had a built in sense of order and direction. And by going through it in order the student had a sense of progress which I believe is very important. Just the physical act of going forward through page after page of two volumes lets the student sense forward motion. I suppose any method does that to some extent. But some seem rather disjointed to me. When I have taught I never seemed to have much luck with having students keep notebooks. If we conclude—as I personally have—that playing all the music we are required to play demands we learn a number of actions, then the best way to make this stick in a student's mind is to have an order that progresses in difficulty and some actions are best learned on the backs of others, adding new techniques at an easy but steady pace. The final goal is always to perfect each technique without letting it pass or slide; the player must eventually reach a stage with each technique where it has become automatic. And he can switch in and out of conscious attention to it. All of us who have performed know that during a performance we are going in and out of awareness of what we are doing. If we can't do this, we are in trouble. Personally I think fellows like DeBeriot were infinitely more qualified to develop systems than certain famous pedagog of recent decades. And I think they took their task very seriously. And they took the sense of progress as very important. Students simply have to feel they are progressing, and to go a few weeks sensing stagnation is painful to them. I speak from experience. This may be all wet and poorly written since I'm in a hurry, but it's for discussion: my excuse for all my limitations, I'm afraid.
Stephen Faulk Posted March 9, 2015 Report Posted March 9, 2015 I use scales in relation to a piece I'm working on. I don't run through the whole scale system everyday, I rotate through all the scales in a few weeks. I take a work and practice the scales, arps and chords related to that work. Then I go to the work and look at more than one edition with different fingerings and then isolate passages with fingerings I find difficult. I work on those passages at a more molecular level, breaking them apart and even abstracting them to only work on two to three notes at a time. One way of problem solving that has self taught me a lot is to look at different editions and try to get into the head of the editor and reason out why they choose those fingerings. Even if I don't like the fingering or may not even use them I still try to see what the overall logic is to the way they think. Most of my final choice has to do with playing the passage with the best intonation. I use this method as a way of not falling into mannerisms about how I solve problems. I challenge myself to work out fingerings in positions that I find uncomfortable and make them natural. This seems to register as progress because I don't find myself hitting scary passages, just objective problems to solve. I don't want to practice scales and etudes robotically, I think that is a waste of time. What my aim in practicing scales and thorny fragments of difficult pieces is to learn problem solve at playing speed, or slower. I'm looking for sequences, landmarks, listening for ways of solving fingering paths through a piece, or to be secure enough that I can decide at playing speed which fingering to play. I keep those goals in mind and focus as I practice and I notice I get stronger at that part of the playing. I find that in jamming through scales as a routine to play through all of them only ends up feeling like race or a task to "get through". Then there is the bowing practice, but I include some of that in the fingering/scale analysis. Some teachers may not like my way, but one advantage is that if you have limited time to practice you don't waste 30 minutes running through several scales when you can't afford that time. I just play long tones and noodle for 4 or 5 minutes and settle into the instrument and then start working in a scale, then take up a piece in that scale and find two or three sections that are tough. Then I just work them out. I can pass 30 40 minutes of scale work and have a practical result that sticks with me. I may get three notes nailed that day or I may get two measures sorted out. Or some days practically nothing I can take away, but something in happened. I have noticed since working this way my sight reading has been improving. Next I've been thinking I'm going to work out some ways to practice more difficult rhythmic cells through bowing, separate from difficult fingerings. That will probably also increase sight reading. And charting progress is not straight forward. I also notice it seems like nothing happens for long periods of time, then there is a change or new understanding. Teachers might want to contemplate that idea, that students may be progressing, but may not show big leaps or only make small progress on the outside. I find that applies to my instrument making as well as those who I have taught.
joe positive Posted March 18, 2015 Report Posted March 18, 2015 I keep a practice diary but my teacher couldn't care less about it. I just use it to plan out what I'm going to do at next practice, and then check things off and make brief notes as I go. I also use it to take notes at lessons. I suppose I should go back through the pages to track any progress I may have made.
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