How To Get To Carnegie Hall
You may’ve heard this one before, but I’m going to tell it anyway.
A young person, holding a violin case, stops a passing cab in New York city and asks the driver, ‘Can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall.’
The cabbie, without hesitation, quips, ‘Yea, practice.’
Yes, it does take practice if you want to take your fiddle onto the stage of Carnegie Hall. No getting around it. But certainly How you practice affects your chances of doing so as much, if not more, than How Much you practice – and yes, I do realize we don’t all intend or desire to get ourselves on stage at Carnegie Hall.
But I bet you want to make the best use of your time that you can.
Here’re a couple ways you can improve practice efficiency.
Don’t be in such a hurry to play fast. When I was doing a lot of private teaching I found that virtually ALL my students tried to play things faster than they were ready.
Big waste of time.
Now, don’t just drift along playing slowly either. The point of slow practice is to get your hands AND mind around the music. This means inputting into your brain all the physical feelings associated with carrying out the music. It means making sure you are moving as efficiently as possible, playing in tune, coordinating shifts and string crossings to perfection, etc.
When you make a mistake, pause for a few seconds to allow your body and mind to sort itself out.
If you want to see a picture of somebody being ‘reined in’ for not taking time to Think, go to my website and find the picture of Milstein
standing next to me restraining my bow arm. I was being guilty then of exactly what I’m preaching about now. I’d made a mistake, and immediately launched back into the passage, making exactly the same mistake again.
It’s one of the biggest lessons a player can learn. Take a moment, breathe, visualize what you want; then repeat.
Now, if the same mistake happens a third time, look for some underlying cause for the problem; a bad fingering or bowing, trying to play too fast, incomplete visual picture, etc.
And finally, use your imagination to listen objectively to what you are doing – ‘How does what I am doing sound to someone seated across the room.’
This is a handy way to put yourself on the spot. To get the juices flowing and your best efforts coming forth. I use this tactic all the time.
From what I’ve said it’s pretty evident what a successful practice session requires is a high level of consciousness; not just of what is, but of what can be as well.
The beauty of my instructional courses is they keep the visions you want to have right in front of you. They show you the goods, and they show you how to get them. Kreutzer for Violin Mastery is the perfect choice for intermediate players.
All the best,
Clayton Haslop
P.S. This morning I spent time on month 8 of my Beginners Circle Members have been taken from picking up the violin for the first time to playing real repertoire – this month a Tango by I. Albeniz. Along the way I’ve been imparting all the goods on quality violin playing.
