Week 1: How to practice when there'sĀ 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.
-
Sor - Andante Largo mm 21-22 before and after 3-minute practice
I am playing the part in red brackets on the score. It's about two-and-a-half measures of music.
-
Eric Phillips Since you ask for an opinion, Iāll offer one! I would say you havenāt fully resolved the main difficulty of the passage, which (it seems to me) is getting to the second position D major chord on the second beat of the first of your two measures. In both recordings you are a little behind the beat - which I presume is unintended. However, you are much closer to being in time in the second take, so I would say those three minutes did result in an improvement - a significant one, in fact. I think if you were to isolate the shift from the fifth to the second position (i.e. beat one into beat two of the first measure) you would be absolutely nailing this after one or two further sessions. (Interestingly, you seem to have no difficulty with the final chord shift, which is no less awkward.) There is one further issue in your performance here, although it may be intentional. Iāll point it out just in case itās not. You introduce a sort of ritardando at the end of the second measure, and come in a little late on the C# at the ninth fret. Your timing is similar in both takes, which suggests to me that the issue is not technical. Weāll, I guess my comments could be termed ānitpickingā but I suppose thatās the idea of this kind of micro-practice. By the way, some time ago I listened to as many recordings of this piece as I could find, and found only one performer who really seemed to nail it - the great Ida Presti!
-
David Krupka Thank you, David. This is exactly the kind of input I want. You are absolutely correct that my switch to the second position D chord in measure 21 is too slow. I tried to work on that during the very short three-minute practice, but it was not enough time to fix it. I'll be honest, I am tempted to just play it as on open position D chord ("cowboy" chord), eliminating the F# in the middle voice. I hope that's not blasphemy, but I don't see what that middle F# really adds, as there is already an F# in the melody, and I see no inner voice leading requiring the middle F#. That does make the shift a little bigger, but my fingers can get to that open D chord much easier, as I've played that, oh maybe, a million times or so. I have always struggled with the major chord voicing used here by Sor. That said, maybe this is the perfect chance to work on it. (I'm so wishy washy!)
Regarding the ritardando in measure 22, you are correct that it was intentional. This is the way my ears hear the natural flow of the phrase. I listened to it on a handful of recordings (not Ida Presti's), and I hear some that have a rit. and others that do not. Perhaps mine is a bit too pronounced, with almost a fermata on the diminished chord in the accompaniment.
I really appreciate the detailed listening and feedback!
-
Eric Phillips I wouldnāt drop the f# yet, not when you are so close to getting it. (And in my view, the voice leading needs it, but I concede that Sor tends to be annoyingly ācorrectā.) Have you considered employing l.h. preparation here? The second finger can be in place (one fret up) when the preceding chord is sounded. You could even have the half bar in place, although that would probably interfere with the shift.
I think the ritardando makes good sense - it probably draws undue attention to itself when heard in such a brief excerpt. And of course it makes sense to practice even a short passage musically!
-
Eric Phillips Hey Eric! Great choice of piece. I think your instinct is right - this is slightly too long of a section to really get the most out of this activity. Just thinking about the math of it all, this is a 0:15 second section which 1 really hard shift in it. 3:00/0:15=12 tries at that shift. If you reduced the amount of material you practiced to just the shift alone it would be about 0:05 seconds, which would yield 36 tries at that same shift. The natural thing to do when practicing is to break music into phrases as you did here, and knowing your phrases will help your musicality of course, but when solving technical issues we want to strip the music down to only its "gymnastic" features and focus on only the spots which are really creating issues.
The other important thing to think about is the degree of success you're shooting for. This piece is a Largo, and in this clip you're almost taking the piece at full speed. Remember, we can really only affect 2 variables when practicing: how fast we're playing, and how much we're playing. In order to shoot for 100% success, try a much slower tempo (~50% of performance tempo is a good place to start) and a much smaller section. This should feel like shooting fish in a barrel - almost TOO easy! Once you can reasonably say that you have a 99-100% success rate, only then should you move the speed up in your practice session. Having this sort of attitude might feel like you're not accomplishing enough or that you'll never get the piece up to speed, but in reality this will give you much faster and more consistent results than trying to speed up before you reach 100% success.
That being said, this is an annoying shift! Here are a couple of crazy fingerings to try: on the last 32nd note chord, try using 1 on the high G, 2 on the E (stretchy I know), and an open G. I found this was a little easier to switch with than just moving the chord shape down from 5th position. Another completely crazy fingering that might be easier (or at least worth a try for a laugh) is to play both the E and the low G open and play the high G on the B string. Further shift, but you have 3/4 fingers free for the notoriously tricky closed D shape.
Hope that helps! Happy practicing
-
-
-
peter hancock Hey Peter! This is a fun arrangement, I love Lucas Brar's videos. So just to clarify, this technique works best with music you have studied for a while and are polishing up, rather than brand new music. 3 minutes will not seem like a lot if you are still figuring out the notes, but it can be quite a bit of practice if you have worked on the notes for a while and are stuck on a certain spot. So again, the method is to take a spot you have been workin on but have an issue with, about 0:05-0:10 seconds in length, and work on it with extreme focus and accuracy for 3 minutes without stopping, going as slow as you need to and working on as little music as you need to in order to achieve nearly 100% success. I think you may have been confusing this method with another concept I was talking about called the pomodoro technique, which you can learn more about here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique
Happy practicing!
-
Phil Goldenberg Thanks I will try something using your process. I am assuming your next presentation is 6-14-22 at 1:00 pm CST.
-
peter hancock Yep! See you then
-
-
I think I may have picked too many bars for this practice. 3 mins end up being too short. Probably can break it into another 3 portions next try. Pre
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPkNIChufS8
Post
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1uMxbXQGPg
-
don Hey Don, sounding good! This is such a hard piece for guitar, but so beautiful as well. I would definitely try a much smaller chunk of music to get the most out of this exercise. For this section I would have just done about 4 beats from beat 3 of the last measure in the top line to the end of beat 2 in the first measure of the second line. The idea is we want to get as many repetitions of a small section that's giving us trouble as possible in a short period of time, so when you choose a section that's almost 40 seconds long you're not going to get the results you want to see. 3:00/0:40=~5 repetitions, as opposed to 3:00/0:05=~36 repetitions.
The other important thing to consider is the level at which you're playing the spot. Make sure you're playing it 100% accuracy - even if you have to go reaaaaaaalllllllllyyyyy slow! I know this is under tempo already, but in order to get the most out of this practice technique you need to go so slow that there's almost no chance you'll fail even one time during the 3:00.
Keep at it! This piece is fantastic. I once played an arrangement of it for guitar marimba which was super fun.
-
Phil Goldenberg Thanks Phil. Gotcha! From your other response in the FAQ, it now makes more sense to break it into multiple spots for the 3 mins practice.
Yes this is a fantastic piece and works really well on a guitar. When you mentioned not to learn page by page and I thought oops that's me..:-) I just started on first page of this piece, and this spot always give me trouble. I should now go and go through the entire piece and look out for more problem spots to do spot practices on. Thanks!
-
-
June 8 Update on Sor's Andante Largo measure 21a
Thank you so much, Phil, for the feedback on my videos from yesterday. That was immensely helpful.
Here I am doing it again, only this time:
- I reduced the amount I'm playing to only the difficult shift at the beginning (see score).
- I slowed it way down.
- I went with the first fingering you suggested.
I think this made the three minutes much more effective. Let me know your thoughts.
-
Eric Phillips Definitely effective Eric! It's a great process
-
Eric Phillips youāre making great progress on this tricky passage, Eric. A great example of the effectiveness of this kind of practice! Davidās suggestion to focus on the shift from the D chord from pos. V to II was spot on.. I would also suggest to use a small barre for the latter (you only need f# on (1) and a on (3). You seem to make a full barre over 5 strings, which takes more time and (waste) effort. Personally, I use finger 2, 4 and 3 on the first chord (stretch, but the melody note a can sound longer over the f# in the bass), and then just shift the 2 back on string (1) to g, so I have finger 1 ready for this barre with finger 2 jumping from g (1) to d (2). Hope this makes sense.
-
Ron Thanks for the encouragement, Ron.
-
joosje Thank you, Joosje. I remember you saying that this is a piece you have been working on recently, so I really appreciate your insight.
I made a quick video with what I think is the fingering you are describing. Can you let me know if I'm understanding you correctly?
-
Eric Phillips you got it as I meant it. Yes itās a stretch, but the upper voice is leading, soā¦. And yes, open g after that. Of course, if full barre is easier, thatās a great solution as well. Sometimes half barre is tricky, depends on the position of the hand I guessā¦. Itās such a great piece by Sor.
-
joosje Okay, great. I'll see if I can get that to work for me. And, yes, it's a great piece. I'd put it in my top ten pieces ever written for the guitar, probably.
-
Eric Phillips Well played, Eric. I could really hear the improvement. You played it 3 times in your video, and I like the 2nd one better because the gap between the transition was almost inaudible and the note before the transition was clearer than the 3rd time. Overall, they were all better than before the practice.
I found that focusing on just 1 or 2 movement(s) in the "3 min session" was the most beneficial, but I needed many sessions to start seeing improvement.
-
Eric Phillips This is sounding great! The new fingering seems to work for you, and the transition seems to be much smoother now. Keep at it! The hard part now is not letting yourself speed up too quickly - that's the most common trap here. Now that you have some success, try to build upon that success with more success, rather than push your tempo until you have a failure.
-
Phil Goldenberg Thanks, Phil. Sad to say, I've already fallen for the trap! It's funny, because in life I'm a very patient person, but when it comes to my playing, I am anything but patient. I want to play everything perfectly right now (or earlier, if possible
)! I'll backtrack and try to be more patient with myself.
-
today I practised the way with the 3 minute spot and breaks, then 25 minutes of playing, break...it took me two hours for the guitar and two hours for the Cello but I felt confident in the end, hope, I can keep it up...but its so hard for me to keep the breaks!!!!!those 5 minutes are sooooo loooong
-
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?
-
Ron Hey Ron! That's a tricky question, and one that really only you can answer for yourself. Sometimes a week will be great, sometimes more and sometimes less will be necessary. Its really once you feel like its no longer a problem spot for you that you can re-integrate the larger phrase. The key here is that we're looking to build on success with success, so if you're re-integrating the spot and experiencing failure, change some variables until you succeed. That could mean playing slower or it that could mean only adding one note or one beat to the beginning of your specific spot instead of a whole phrase. Things should always feel easy in your practice rather than hard!
-
End of the Year Challenge: Finish Strong!
