Practise what you preach
When you find yourself in the position of being an educator, you often feel the spotlight is on you to follow your own advice, it seems hypocritical not to. This morning I started off with some soprano practice as I aim to do another shootout article on soprano mouthpieces, I have quite a selection sitting on my shelf just itching to be tested, but I thought I should work at building up my soprano chops first.I generally start any practice with the exercise I recommend on the lessons page. This exercise is great as it covers all arpeggios in all keys and covers the whole range of the instrument. It’s also great for getting the sound and relationship of the arpeggios as chords into your brain.So far so good - I start off and I’m concentrating on what I play, but when I get to F#, I notice a short sequence of notes which didn’t work too well - there was a bit of a squeak and I felt intonation wasn’t spot on (well let’s be honest, intonation for me often isn’t spot on, but this seemed a bit “spot off” to coin a phrase).Of course I always recommend “focussed” practice, ie keep your mind on what you are doing. Ideally I would have made a quick mental note to work on this problem later and continue with the warm up exercise. But no, I repeated that phrase a few times and suddenly a little tune popped into my head that was inspired by those three notes so off I go playing around with a tune and bang goes the focussed practice regimen.I could argue that I benefitted because I wrote a tune that I might not have done otherwise, on the other hand how can I advise people that they should focus 100% on the task at hand. Answers on a postcard please.
June 15th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
<p>”how can I advise people that they should focus 100% on the task at hand. Answers on a postcard please.”</p>
<p>Hello Pete,</p>
<p>Yes focus on the task at hand is often hard for Creative types, and most people who are interested in Jazz surely fall into this category.</p>
<p>I find that setting a timer and doing it until it goes off works for me, however I also see the benefit of getting something new down. Whose to say that your doodle may be potentially more worthwhile (in the long run)</p>
<p>Maybe to have some way of capturing your brief doddle to work on later is the answer (like writting down some notes or a brief recording)<br />
Be sure to stop your timer while doing this and return to it once your idea has been recorded, this way you get your full alloted practise time in!</p>
<p>If you only fucused on the exercises and nothing else, what sort of player would you become!</p>
<p>The perefect balance it to do both, it’s your choice, and time is always an issue.</p>
<p>Cheers<br />
Saxophonically yours<br />
Jimu</p>