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Post by pavane on Feb 1, 2023 9:41:27 GMT
I genuinely want to improve, and I know that the best way to do so is to practise efficiently to maximise the benefits from the time spent. I've read a few guides about how to achieve this, and all agree that sitting down and playing through your half dozen best pieces is not the way to go about it. Yet that's often exactly what I do. I was thinking about this and I realised that it's often because I'm tired. I'm retired so I have the luxury of being able to schedule practising time anywhere within my day, but I've fallen into a pattern where I do "other stuff" in the morning and early afternoon, then settle down to some practice around 4 o'clock. My idea was that, having got all the dull stuff out of the way, I could play without distraction for as long as I wanted. However, I think my body clock is set to lowest ebb at about that time.
I'm going to try restructuring my day and move playing to the morning and sorting out the bathroom radiator etc etc etc to the afternoon. I'm not expecting a Great Leap Forward, but I do hope for some improvement!
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Post by keff on Feb 1, 2023 10:49:29 GMT
I find morning is best for me to solve the tricky bits with music and I don't get sleepy as I'm trying to read a score. I like to start before breakfast because those other jobs do not prey on my mind. At the moment the garden needs some attention but it is either wet or cold. Evenings are not a good time to tackle serious piano practice and if I do want to play something it is usually stuff I can more or less sight read. These 10-20 minutes of violin time on the other hand are possible in the evenings.
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Post by Zi on Feb 1, 2023 11:04:44 GMT
We take the collie for a walk first thing in the morning. As soon as it's light. In summer that can be as early as 5am - before it gets too hot. Then we have breakfast. Then I prepare lunch for later in the day so practice is either then (before lunch) or in the afternoon. I try to play when Mr Z is practising piano because he uses headphones and he doesn't then have to listen to me (and sometimes the collie doing singalong). I play treble and descant recorder one after the other and sometimes swap to and fro because I'm trying to get used to playing both. But the clarinet just fits in when there is 15ish minutes (+ time to put on harness and assemble it).
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Post by Zi on Apr 25, 2023 9:25:44 GMT
I haven't been playing with anything approaching a routine. There are just too many life things at the moment which need prioritising. I've been snatching 10 minutes here and there on the recorder. I may have forgotten how to assemble the clarinet... However, I just snatched some minutes on the recorder and I was wondering how I could tell how bad it's got when I realised that The Collie no longer singsalong to the treble. I've always assumed that she sangalong because it was awful and I'm going to stick to that evaluation. I was playing some Susato - Mon Amy - and I noticed she'd dozed off and was sleeping gently... I'm going to take this as a huge positive and award myself a star!
I do hope everyone else's practise is coming along and that life things aren't being too invasive for everyone else!
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Post by pavane on Apr 26, 2023 15:03:42 GMT
I haven't yet switched from afternoon to morning practising and I would like to do that, but I am still doing some every day that I'm at home. For me, it's easy to prioritise short term jobs over playing, but I feel I've done that most of my life and I need to prioritise the music now, or I never will. I keep meaning to say, also, that I have come across some Susato in the recorder books and that the music was a complete unknown to me before that, but it is indeed very enjoyable. I don't know why history forgets some composers (and artists and etc etc) but remembers others. Maybe if they wrote exclusively for instruments that ceased to be played, but I don't think that can often be the issue because early composers weren't so fussy about what the music was played on.
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Post by Zi on Apr 27, 2023 7:16:19 GMT
I'm definitely a Susato fan at the moment! I agree about history. It doesn't always make the best choices and it doesn't always reflect what happened at the time. Kit Marlowe was stupendously popular in his time but now most(?) people think Elizabethan drama means Shakespeare. I'm not very knowledgeable about music but from the little I've come across it seems Telemann was considered 'better' than Bach. Maybe societies look for their own shape in the past and thus choose what fits it and reinforces its self-image. I'm glad you like Susato too, pavane! I'm still not practising at all methodically. But I'm hoping that things will even out by the end of next month...  |
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