Practising method

[QFE]

Hi all,

Now that my charges have been sent off on the Easter holidays, I've managed to rack up a fair amount of practise time on the organ to learn some new rep for the next lot of concerts in my parish.

After a chat with a fellow musician, it occurred to me that teachers of all instruments spend very little time teaching students how to practise i.e. crack the difficult bits.

It would be interesting to hear some thoughts on this from players of all flavours and abilities.

i tend to find that time is of a premium and given that I have no piano in the house, I spend a fair bit of time with the score on my lap at home. Then it's over to the church to play on one of Willam Drakes mini masterpieces and/or over to the upright to crack some manual part without the distraction of the pedal. this works well most of the time, but i must admit that there can be the odd bar or two in a piece that that can be a b*gger to crack and ensure a high level of accuracy.

So how do you go about ensuring that near to perfect performance?

[jhnbrbr]

As a grade 0 musician, I'm really not qualified to advise anyone but I'm not going to let that stop me! Here are a few tricks I have found useful:

(i) practise with a metronome, setting it extremely slow to begin with and only cranking it up a notch when everything sounds perfect at that speed, repeating the process until eventually a sensible speed is achieved.
(ii) try deliberately using wrong registration/manuals so you can hear the part you're having difficulty with more clearly
(iii) if struggling with fingering, try playing it backwards
(iv) memorise problem bars

[JONESEY]

My time on the Pipe Organ is limited, so taking for example the piece I've just started, I'm tackling it on the Piano first and then use my Church time to get the pedals going.

I'd love a setup at home which included a pedal board!

[rovikered]

When I first started organ lessons and had no organ at home, I learnt and assiduously practiced the manuals parts first on the piano so that I could maximize my limited practice time at church spending to learn/Practice the pedal parts and to co-ordinate manuals and pedals.
At the organ itself this is how I practise (for both new pieces and those I'm 'polishing up'):

1. Pedals alone
2. Left hand alone
3. Left hand and pedals together
4. Right hand alone
5. Right hand and pedals together
6. Right hand and left hand together (without pedals)
7. Both hands and pedals together.

I always practice first at a slow speed IN TIME and aim for complete accuracy of notation, rhythm and phrasing, and only allowing a NATURAL increase in speed as the piece gets better known. I never force the pace. If a piece can be played accurately at a slow pace after careful and intense practice, it can be so played at the required pace when the preparation is complete.

For trouble spots like a particular phrase or a single bar (or even part of a single bar) I go straight to the problem itself extracting the phrase or bar practicing that alone until it can be played faultlessly. Then I gradually re-integrate the passage by playing the bar before, then the troublesome bar and then the bar following. Next I return to two bars before the troublesome bar and play as far as two bars after it, and I continue with this process adding a further bar or two bars on either side of the troublesome bar until I get back to the beginning and then continue playing to the end of the piece.

This is my method of practice which I have found satisfactory over many years and it is the method of practising that I teach both to my organ and piano pupils.

[QFE]

rovikered, the idea of playing a piece slowly, but in time, is a particularly useful tip. i always liken it to the slow motion replays of sporting action; it gives you a chance to take in every detail of your playing and think ahead. The important point that is missed by students is that it must be in time. If there are hesitations, then the speed needs to be further reduced.

[rovikered]

Yes, QFE, I have found it difficult to get students to play slowly but IN TIME, and continuously have to insist on it.
I'm glad to see that my post was edited (for continuity) by merging my two posts on this topic.

[AllanP]

ThankI have tried your method and it works in most cases. you for your comments on practicing methods. So far the only piece for which it is not working is the "Washington Post March". The method suggested by my teacher is to play in rhythm nearly up to speed first the left hand and pedal, second the right hand only, and third put both parts together. Work on only 4 measures until the rhythm is correct. Rhythm is probably my weakest point. Playing rhythmically and maintaining the musical flow is difficult without sounding stilted.

Does anyone have comments about how to get the music to flow well? Thank you in advance.

[QFE]

Hi Allan,
getting the rhythm correct in any piece is, IMHO, often the hardest part. Siniging and/or clapping the relevant bits can help a good deal and do not need to be practised at a keyboard. It was the only way i could learn the notorious octave pedal section of the Widor 6 (Allegro). I could get the notes on the organ - but out of time, so I committed the basic rhythm of the offending section to memory and when ever the opportunity arrose, would tap it out on my knees with my feet tapping the pedal part and, rediculous as it sounds, after a few days I was able to play the section correctly, all be it at a slow pace.

Maybe something similar would work for you? Getting you head inside the music away from the organ can be more productive than slogging it out at the console.

[Krummhorn]

QFE,

Odd that you mention clapping time ... That brought back some memories from the years then my organ teacher had me doing just that, too ... clapping the beats to the measures while playing the pedal parts. Very effective - I had forgotten about that until your post ... .

[loodie]

My teacher has often told me that he thinks teachers don't spend enough time teaching people how to practice efficiently and effectively. A few of his tips and other ideas that have worked for me:
-isolating the problem - playing only the very beat that needs fixing and nothing else - not the whole phrase or the whole bar. Sometimes at my lessons my teacher will have me play a single beat over and over again while he conducts. Then he has me add the prior beat (or sometimes only half of it) and keep going back until I'm at the beginning of the phrase.
-doing whatever it takes to play the offending section without a mistake. If I make a mistake more than once, then I know I need to do something differently - either slowing down the tempo or removing one hand or the pedals.
-sometimes I can correct a problem just by training my eye to look at the offending part every single time I play it. I'm always surprised at how effective that is. So if the error is in the pedal, then I play it 10 times while being sure to always look at the pedal notes on the page.
-playing the part with the problem on a louder registration. For example, sometimes I will play the left hand on principals and the right hand and pedal with flutes so that my ear is drawn to the left hand. This works well for me with difficult ornaments or contrasting rhythms.
-playing every possible combination of voices in the piece - works very well with Bach. Not just the left or right hand with the pedal, but playing SA, ST, SB, AT, AB, and TB. This can be tricky with fingering, so works best when I'm already familiar with the piece.
-playing the difficult line by itself (just the single voice, not the entire left/right hand if it has multiple voices) so that it is firmly in my ear - sometimes singing it, too. I find this surprisingly effective - sometimes I play the wrong note because I do not "hear" the correct note - especially true in dissonant passages.
-paying attention to how I "feel" when playing the difficult passage. Sometimes I can play a passage correctly countless times, but I still feel a fleeting moment of confusion when I approach it. I know that I need to keep practicing the passage until that fleeting moment no longer occurs.
-"hearing" the piece when I am away from the organ - just thinking about a piece and hearing it in my inner ear will improve my playing and my rentention.

[jgirv]

...all excellent suggestions both for ourselves and for our students... it's amazing how quickly you can progress IF you can play the passage slowly and in time, as emphasized by the above posters... and you don't usually need to live in the slow practice tempo for weeks... isolate the problem and apply all of the practice techniques suggested.

I might add one small additional bit of advice when it's near recital time: play the pieces at about 90% of your final tempo... often this is the most overlooked practice tempo... it will certainly reveal any remaining problem areas! thanks for the above, jgirv