Week 1: How to practice when there's no time 
Welcome to Week one of "Change your Habits, Change your Playing" with Phil Goldenberg! This is the thread for posting your submissions and assignments for the first week!
Watch Phil's Livestream on June 7th here!
Assignment:
Pick a challenging 20-30 second spot in your repertoire. Play it once or twice, then record it. Then, practice that section in a hyper-focused matter for exactly 3 minutes, then record it again and check out the improvement! Feel free to see everyone else's improvement and see if you can tell what they worked on for those 3 minutes.
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No videos, but I identified a number of spots where I'm not getting the concistency I want in Sor Study Op 35 No. 17. What I found was:
- I needed to focus on way shorter spots than I had been - sometimes just a single shift!
- Really slowing down not only helped my accuracy but doing so highlighted aspects of my playing which I hadn't noticed before - really helping me to get to the "root cause" of the inconsistencies
- It's amazing what you can discover and achieve in just 3 minutes!
Next practice session it will be interesting to see how much this has has drip fed my long term memory!
One question I'm wandering about is when is the right time to integrate these spots back into longer excerpts or the whole piece? My current thought is that, after a week (say), if I can continue to achieve 100% accuracy for 3 minutes then that might be the right time. Any thoughts?
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Phil Goldenberg Thanks Phil, that's really useful. I think adding only one or few notes at a time will work well for me - it's like zoomimg out but not all at once!
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Stefanie Mosburger-Dalz That's an interesting piece, Stefanie (or segmental least). I second Phil's request for the name and composer of that piece. Looking forward for your progress.
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Jack Stewart this is a bar out of an jazzy version of Valsa sem Nome by Baden Powell
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Stefanie Mosburger-Dalz Thanks for the info, Stefanie.
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My teacher changed ma fingerings, so that was my spot for today, I hope it will feel naturally tomorrow
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Stefanie Mosburger-Dalz Hi Stephanie! Very cool piece, what is it? For me I would try to make the session slightly more focused. It seems like in the 2nd video you mostly are having trouble with the first 5 seconds or so, until you go back to the 5th position. Instead of doing the entire phrase, most of which you already play beautifully, I would focus in on just those 3 or 4 chord shifts right at the beginning of the video that need the most work. I think you'll see that fastest results that way. Happy practicing!
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Stefanie Mosburger-Dalz Hi, I am also wondering what the name of the piece is and who composed. it. Very nice fragment.
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Phil Goldenberg this is another spot! I try to play the chords straight becaise I tended to arpeggiate everything. That spot Is under construction now ;-)
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Dale Needles Baden Powell, Valsa sem Nome, but it is an arrangement by who I do not know!
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Phil Goldenberg the peace is an arrangement of Valse sem Nome but I dont know who arranged it-
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Phil Goldenberg today I did the passage of the second video in sections of two bars that I treated as spots, next week I will try to make a new video....thank you for your advice
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First, I would like to say that I really appreciate Phil Goldenberg approach to focusing on short, concentrated passages. Makes a lot of sense to me. I have been working lately on Abel Carlevaro's Microestudio #9 and have been having a little trouble with a scale passage. So, I put Phil's suggestion to the test, and definitely felt improvement after three minutes. For the video I played measures 19 to 24 with a focus on the scale passage in measure 22 (last line on the first page to the first two lines on the page 2). Disregard the reference to Microestudio #6, on the video, it is actually Microestudio #9.
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Dale Needles Thank you for introducing Micoestudio to me, Dale. I am still struggling with preliminary exercise #5, but I started seeing improvement after hearing Blaise Laflamme and your advice, and of course after the 3 min practice session. I will start practicing Micoestudio #1 after tackling preliminary exercise #5.
The scale passage in your video sounded clearer and evener after the 3 min practice, I think the method really works.
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Dale Needles This sounds great! These Microestudios are new to me but they're very cool. This section seems slightly long to work for only 3 minutes, so I would pare it down to just the most difficult spot, the Campanella scale. However, you got great results out of the session, so maybe don't mess with success!
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Wai Thanks. You are really going to like Microestudio 1. Yes, I agree Phil's approach works.
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Phil Goldenberg Thanks. I really appreciate your approach and words of encouragement and advice! Your approach reminds me a lot of how Maestro Carlevaro taught to master difficult passages - breaking them down into small sections and working in small concentrated time periods. And as you say, always starting very slow! Also, glad you like the Microestudios. There is a published set of 20 of them.
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Dale Needles Dale, that sounds great and there seemed to be definite improvement in the second video. The study is also really nice. Thanks for sharing.
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- Dale Needles Oh, and I forgot to compliment you on your 'live action' video.
- Dale Needles Oh, and I forgot to compliment you on your 'live action' video.
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Jack Stewart Thanks. Not my favorite way to record but it seemed the best way to show before and after with the three-minute practice study. Maybe, I will try it with an entire piece in a future challenge.
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Sor's Andante Largo measure 21a June 9 update
I have decided to go with Joosje's suggested fingering of this measure so that the A in the melody can ring out. As a result, the chord change that is so difficult for me is a bit more difficult. So, I shortened up the excerpt to focus solely on the change in question. I am now playing just the part circled in red.
I am playing it with a metronome to give myself a benchmark. It is at 54 (sixteenth-note). Tomorrow, I hope to be able to increase that a bit.
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Eric Phillips your change looks very sold. Minimal movement , smooth change, rhythmically even and all notes are clear. Great job.
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Jack Stewart Thanks, Jack. I have always struggled with this fingering of a major chord. Unfortunately (for me), it is used quite a lot in the repertoire.
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End of the Year Challenge: Finish Strong!
