Day 19 - Formal...

Research shows that there tends to be two types of practice, formal and informal, and pupils who make the greatest progress do a mixture of both. Formal practise is the sort to assist technical development through exercises, scales and work set by a teacher on repertoire. Informal practise is playing for fun such as duets with a friend, improvising, revisiting older pieces and is generally pupil led. With this in mind I specifically attempted two practice sessions, the first a tough regime of scales, exercises and repetition designed to sort out the weaker areas. I managed 45 minutes which was excellent and will delight Hayley, a clarinettist with Walden Winds, who has this practice dedicated to her. She has said she will double her donation if I get a distinction! After a gruelling warm up I moved onto pieces and tried playing Rondo. There are bits I struggle with and can feel myself tensing up so I used an exercise I got from The Inner Game of Music (by Barry Green and Tim Gallwey, a recommended read for musicians and anyone keen to do battle with "nervousness, self-doubt and fear of failure". That'll be most of the grade-1-a-bees then). By deliberately over tensing we can understand what tension really feels like, and then by relaxing we go back not just where we were originally but a more relaxed state. Repetition of this means we learn to control our levels of tension. I played Rondo with everything as tense as possible, then played it again relaxed. The difference in sound was noticeable and I could feel where muscles wanted to relax. However as soon as I stopped being aware of tension levels I think I tensed up again. To really hear the difference I recorded myself then played it back. Listening to yourself in this way can be very revealing (it's like hearing your own voice!) and I discovered there is still a somewhat ploddy nature to my sound. It was a useful exercise and I'll record them again at the half way point, then in the exam week so I will hopefully have evidence of some progress!