BY MIRANDA ILCHEF, LEAD WRITER (NSW)
This is the second interview in Miranda’s exclusive new CutCommon series Mastering your practice. Please note that these stories may include a more technical discussion of instrumental practice and the theory of music, as well as score annotations.
In this new interview series, we chat with accomplished musicians about their thoughts on and experience with practice.
We first met conductor-violinist Roger Benedict, who talked about the very purpose of practice. Now, we meet Sydney Symphony Orchestra oboist Shefali Pryor. Shefali sheds light on motivation, self-criticism, and a particular passage penned by Schumann.
In the COVID-19 climate, with so many concert and event cancellations, it can be hard to stay motivated to continue our development as instrumentalists. Even in normal situations, getting yourself motivated to practice can be tricky. Have you had experience with this?
I sure have! It’s something that I’ve been struggling with myself since we all had to so abruptly press pause on life as performers. This time is so strange: it’s an unprecedented set of circumstances, and I think that we all need to give ourselves space and time to figure out an approach that works for us individually.
As an undergraduate, I had the good luck to work with the wonderful flute teacher Margaret Crawford. She used to say that we can’t expect to love practising the minute that we start, and that it’s okay to take a while to get into a practice session before you start connecting with the instrument. I like to think of this when I need to practice but I’m just not ‘feeling it’.
The first step is easy: just unpack and pick up the instrument! Sometimes, I can get straight into it. But sometimes, I need to let myself warm up mentally as well as physically. I might then choose a simple study or scale exercises, or something that I love to play like the Telemann Flute Fantasies. Letting myself just play for a while can help to warm up my brain for more focused work.
So what happens when we lose our motivation to practice? Is it something we should actively seek to regain or do we have to wait until it comes back?
Ordinarily, I’d say that managing waning motivation requires a balance between knowing when to give yourself a kick to get started and when not to push yourself into practice that will be unproductive and negative. At the moment, I’m encouraging my students (and myself) to be kind to themselves; to spend time doing something that they enjoy and can be productive with, rather than trying to force the issue. There’s a time for the carrot and a time for the stick: the trick is to know which!
That being said, whilst we’ve all been going through a period of adjustment lately, I think that now that we’re settling into a routine, we should see the incredible opportunity that this slowing down of life gives us. Maybe now, there’s time to work on those projects you never usually get to, or to finally address those technical issues that are harder to correct when you’re constantly trying to deliver for rehearsals, concerts, and exams.
I don’t think just waiting for motivation to magically return is particularly useful. The drive to do what we do doesn’t come solely from within us, and there’s a lot we can do to fire ourselves up outside of the practice room. Obviously at the moment, we don’t have the option to go to concerts, which is definitely something that I have always used to pick myself up. But there is a wealth ofmaterial available online, whether it’s orchestras streaming performances, the activity of inspirational artists on social media, or thought-provoking writing about music in magazines and on blogs. If you’re finding it hard to be motivated to sit down with your instrument, it could be that your musical soul just needs a bit of nourishment. Try listening to someone new. Pick a new work to sight-read, go back and play through an old favourite, or plan a project with a friend that you can tackle over Zoom. Give something new a go and see if it creates sparks!
Still, maintaining concentration for many hours of practice can be difficult. Even if we remove physical distractions like our phone or pets, it can be hard to stay completely focused and on the ball. Do you have any tips for maintaining concentration, once that motivation has finally been achieved?
I often think that if I’d studied during the time of smartphones, I’d never have made it as a musician!
It’s certainly hard at times to keep focus, trying to ignore tangible things like phones – or for me, it’s the fridge! – or to tune out the constant spinning of what I call the mental ‘hamster wheel’: all the things we should do, could do, are behind on or need to find out.
The simple things are easy: turn off your phone. Set up your practice space to be as uncluttered and conducive to focus as possible. Personally, I always like to take a cup of tea with me when I start. Somehow, it helps me feel like I’m settling in to work.
But I also think we need to be flexible with the length of time we expect ourselves to focus. For sure, some people can sit down for two hours and work well and thoughtfully, but that’s something that takes practice. If you work better in small bursts, then it’s perfectly legitimate to approach your practice in shorter segments of, say, 30 minutes and break up what you’re working on over the course of the day. Of course, teachers can help us with learning how to practice and what to focus on, but there’s also a certain amount of self-discovery involved.
Get to know your own brain so you can work with your strengths and learn your own weaknesses. I get easily distracted by remembering things that I have to do, so I keep a piece of paper next to me that I can jot things down on. Once they’re out of my head and written down for me to address later, I can then get back to focusing on what I’m practising.
When something isn’t going as planned, it is easy to get frustrated, which can have physical manifestations like tension that then affect our playing. Once we feel that frustration coming on, what should we do? Is it best to walk away from your instrument momentarily or should we try to consciously relax?
In my experience, telling yourself to simply relax doesn’t work – particularly on an instrument like the oboe, which takes a fair bit of effort just to produce the sound! But it’s also very easy to fall into habits where we work harder than we need, and for me that’s the starting point if I begin to feel I’m putting up physical obstacles for myself.
Hone in on exactly what doesn’t feel good. Is it your shoulders, your embouchure, your fingers, your breathing, your air? Always know what you’re aiming for in your playing. How do you want it to sound, what are you trying to say, and what is getting in the way?
For example:
- This passage is uneven because my fingers are tense, so I will play slowly and in patterns, working on having light and precise fingers. Only then, I increase the tempo just to the point that I can maintain a feeling of freedom in my fingers.
- I can’t sustain the phrase as long as I’d like, and I think it’s because my breathing is too high. Is there an exercise I can do to quickly remind myself of how I want to take in and expel air?
- My embouchure is working too hard and tires too quickly. Is it my reed? Or can I relax my embouchure a little for the same result? Am I making it harder by having too much reed in? Have I been playing too long and should I just take a break?
- I’m working too hard in general. What if I play lazily and actively use less effort? How does that affect what I hear? What can I take from that ultra-relaxed technique into my next attempt?
If that approach fails, I am a big advocate for knowing when to walk away and make another cup of tea! A good practice session doesn’t have to be a long one. But a useful break doesn’t have to be a long one, either. Leave your room for 20 minutes and take a quick walk or whatever works for you.
It’s not about giving up; it’s about giving yourself the chance to reset and try again.
Our mental chatter can play a big role in practice. Some students I’ve spoken to find that even if they have practised a passage so that it is sounding musically and technically great, they still struggle with getting their brain to cooperate. It can be easy to think negative thoughts like “You are going to stuff this up!”, or “Oh no, here comes a really high note – this will be hard!”.
The art of constructive self-criticism is so important, but we need to remember that this doesn’t just mean isolating the negatives. It’s equally important to practice the positive side.
Being able to recognise what went well — what was good — is also informative and helps to direct our practice. It’s one thing to always be able to hear our faults; we need that to know where to direct our focus. But being able to recognise the good as well has a twofold benefit: firstly, it shows us what we don’t need to work on; and secondly, we all need to pat ourselves on the back once in a while.
It’s important to balance out the negative self-talk with the positive. Otherwise, you can get stuck in a spiral of destructive self-criticism — something I’m sure we’ve all experienced.
Do you have any tips for practising a positive attitude?
Firstly, knowing that you are well prepared is the best foundation for a positive approach in performance: ‘I have put in the work, I know I can do this’. Also, being disciplined with how you talk to yourself during practice sessions is important. For example, I once had a student that could not stop saying ‘I can’t’. So we started a game where every time she said ‘I can’t’ in a lesson, she had to give me a dollar! Of course, I gave it all back at the end of the lesson, I promise! But giving her that quantifiable symbol of her negative self-talk helped her to rein it in. We both noticed an improvement in her confidence when she simply stopped putting herself down.
It’s important to not repeat the same errors over and over in practice, because then we’re giving our muscle memory the wrong information. But in performance, we want to be able to let go and focus on something entirely different. Hopefully, if we’ve trained our muscles properly, we can leave them to do what they know how to do, and think about communicating and reaching our audience.
It’s a particularly interesting point at the moment, because by necessity so much of our performance has moved into a digital, recorded form. I’ve seen a student paralysed by self-criticism, recording the same work over and over again because, with recorded performance, it is so easy to listen back and write it off for not being ‘perfect’. Perhaps now, more than ever, it’s important to remind ourselves that the never-ending quest for perfection, whilst being an admirable goal, should be a means to an end and not the end in itself.
Let’s get practical with an example. Say an oboe student was practising the following excerpt from the second Romance of Schumann’s Three Romances for Oboe, and they are struggling in the middle section with phrasing. There are not a lot of places to breathe and they are having trouble sustaining their phrases. Step by step, how would you recommend they practice it?
You picked a doozy, Miranda! This excerpt is all about context: to play these five lines on their own is not too much of a challenge, but in the context of what has come before and what comes after, it’s much tougher. It’s also a work that rewards a close connection with your pianist. Knowing and understanding the piano part is crucial.
The musical concept should be our driver from the beginning. Sure, we need to isolate and hone certain technical aspects, but the starting point should always be: ‘What do I want to say, what do I want to hear?’ Then, we develop our technique to fulfil what we imagine.
This excerpt is perfect for that because Schumann gives us so much information that is both immensely helpful technically but also conveys so clearly the intent and energy of his phrasing.
The first step is to make a plan for breathing. This can change as you work more [on the work], but it’s important to be thoughtful about where you breathe right from the start. It stops you getting stuck with nowhere to breathe, and equally importantly it stops you breathing too often. This is a unique problem for oboists, as we can easily end up with too much air.
I’ve written sample breath marks with a V onto the score. The good thing is that we can use the breathing to emphasise the phrasing. If we play the first sforzando piano convincingly, then the decay of the minum gives us room to breathe. Then, by breathing before the sforzando piano at the bar line, we actually heighten the accent. It could be that, as you become more comfortable with the length of phrases, you can experiment with separate in and out breaths, thus saving the need to breathe out before the intake each time. Your approach will also need to be different on the repeat, as we need to phrase differently to transition back into the A theme at the Im Tempo. I’ve suggested an alternative breath two bars before the second-time bar: this allows you to play through the ritardando and not break the phrase of the first theme.
It’s not just about where we breathe, though. It’s about how we breathe, and how we use the phrasing to prepare for and absorb the breath points. Focus on the upswing of each group of quavers and the momentum that they give you. If you can channel this energy, then it can carry you up to and over the top of each 4-bar phrase. The breath then feels natural and almost necessary as a form of musical punctuation.
Also, don’t be afraid to take the time you need to breathe. That’s where the work you do with your pianist is so important. For example, it is unavoidably tiring to play through the lebhafter into the im tempo, but you have time at the double bar to recoup and reset.
Think of the phrasing in terms of how you would speak. You begin a sentence. There is a point that you aim for, and there might be a comma or two, but eventually you round up and reach a full stop. The way we communicate musically is the same, and there’s a pretty nice correlation if you think about the breathing this way, too!
Before we go, are there any books or resources on the subject that you would recommend to our readers?
A student of mine recently put me onto Noa Kageyama’s Bulletproof Musician. He writes thoughtfully about practice and I’m finding his blog very relevant at the moment. My high school music teacher had us all read Timothy Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis. I’m also reading a book on The Biology of Music Performance and Performance-related Injury by Alan H. D. Watson, which is fascinating. The mental and the physical are so inextricably linked – it’s so helpful to understand how our bodies work when we’re playing.
Other than that, what I find most inspiring is reading the writings of, or interviews with, other musicians that I admire and respect, whether that’s a short interview with violinist Christian Tetzlaff, the Instagram posts of oboist François Leleux, or pianist Stephen Hough’s wonderful book Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More.
My best advice would just be to read often and widely. It doesn’t have to be about music. I subscribe to the theatre and find I learn just as much from watching the actors, or from absorbing the rhythm and contour of a beautiful sentence on the page as I can from seeing a musician live.
Of course, we learn from reading about music and music performance, but there’s also a lot to learn from gaining an appreciation for language and art of all forms, from other artists and also sportspeople: they know an awful lot about performing under pressure, too!
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Catch up on the first story in Miranda’s Mastering your practice interview series with Roger Benedict.
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