Posted by Jason Ladd on October 15, 2000 at 10:42:42:
In Reply to: Re: Practice Time posted by Sean Chisham on October 15, 2000 at 00:14:14:
I think this is one fo the more interesing topics that isn't addressed more often. Going up and down the halls of a music school for the past seven years the largest percentage of people just play through stuff and don't really fix what they need to. I'm guilty of this myself. There are some days I feel that I have to play for the sake of playing but I don't get anything accomplished. I find that my most productive days are when I will pay detail to every note. I can mentally only last 45 minutes before I go crazy and if you know me you will know that I have gone crazy. The other week I played a measure out of Semper Fidelis for 20 minutes over and over again. I played it slow and fast, soft and loud, slurred and staccato, legato and marcato, forwards and backwards but I was still having a problems. Then I remembered that reading somewhere about studying for a test that it takes eight hours for your mind to fully remember something. With this in mind it is a great tool to work things to a certain point and then come back to it.
Getting back to the original topic of practice time, I only have 45 minutes to an hour most days to play. I have a "theme of the week" of what on want focus on. This next week it will be multiple tonguing and I will spend a third of my time on that. Then I will play through a solo or two that I'm working on for a recital. Next I will play a group of standard excerpts (band or orchestral, mix and match) to keep them in my repitoire. This is about 45 minutes worth.
This is just what I think works best for me and it may not work for other people. I believe that a lot of students don't organize their practice time well and are inefficient. It would be great if someone would write a thesis or a book on practicing, different peoples approaches and some surveys. For instance I would be very curious as to how Allen Vizzutti got to be so good.