BY MIRANDA ILCHEF, LEAD WRITER (NSW)
This is the fourth interview in Miranda’s exclusive 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 interview series, we chat with accomplished musicians about their thoughts on and experience with practice.
First up, we heard from conductor-violist Roger Benedict, and we’ve also spoken with talented artists including oboist Shefali Pryor and French horn player Francesco Lo Surdo.
Now, we chat with Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra co-artistic director and concertmaster Rachael Beesley. This violinist has recorded more than 50 CDs, worked as a chamber soloist the world over, and has led and directed orchestras and ensembles.
This interview has been edited for length.
In 2020, musicians are having to rely more on developing our skills in isolation, and less on the feedback of peers, colleagues, or teachers. Self-reflection has never been more important. Do you rely on active listening alone when practising, or do you record yourself?
In the lead-up to performances, I record all rehearsals – whether solo, chamber, orchestral, or opera – and listen back every night, even until very late in the evening. This process of listening back is akin to absorbing the process of rehearsal again, so you can see what is working and which aspects still need adjusting before the concert in relation to tempi, intonation, ensemble, direction, or effect of the music.
To have an objective view of the music – much like a recording producer – you can then annotate your part and score to refine the rehearsal process in a way that is difficult to do while you are playing or directing yourself. So, even in the recording studio, the aim is not perfection! It is to create music which speaks to you and moves your audience, and the beauty of the recording process is that you can remain flexible, spontaneous, and expressive.
The beauty of the recording process is that you can remain flexible, spontaneous, and expressive.
This technique can most certainly be applied to your own practice, where you record the entire practice session and listen back afterwards to notice how effective your practice process was, and to objectively learn how you are progressing. Recording short excerpts – a requirement these days for lessons on Zoom or Microsoft Teams – is also helpful to gain immediate feedback on the result of your practice.
The danger, though, is to become addicted to the act of recording, editing, and perfecting – and not allowing time enough in your practice to become absorbed in the resonance and physical pleasure of playing and listening to your sound.
Practice time in isolation is traditionally the most important factor of a musician’s education. To be able to study well in an individual situation is fundamental for the success of the study. Therefore, learning to make good use of your practice time is crucial.
Apart from using our phones as metronomes or recording devices, there are now apps that can track intonation accuracy rate. What do you think about the use of technology in practice? Is it something you encourage your students to explore?
Trusting and refining your own ear – in relation to intonation as well as your physical sense of a pulse – enables you to bring your whole body feeling into the practice room and ultimately performance space; whereas a metronome and tuner offers limited feedback about a purely digital concept of tempo and intonation. Therefore, recognising the specific purpose of these aids should be understood.
For example, used effectively, metronomes provide us with a guide to tempi, a tool to increase dexterity and speed or help us to slow down and not rush – whilst tuners provide a guide to temperament when a keyboard instrument is not present, or help us to develop harmonic or expressive intonation against a fixed pitch.
However, the most difficult job we have as creative artists is not be drawn into the web of our devices, as they are actively designed to distract us into a flow state where we no longer recognise the passing of time, and become lost in the tunnel of social media. Learning to separate the devices which aid our learning from the ones that block our absorption of new material is as easy as turning on aeroplane mode. The hard part is not taking a sneaky peak every five minutes!
How do you recommend practising memorisation? Is there a smarter way than mindless repetition to get something ‘off-book’?
Having the ability to focus on one note at a time, and to make it the most beautiful you have ever heard, is the starting point to practising memorisation. Unless every part of your body is totally absorbed in the physical and mental process of playing, memory will be short-term and fickle. When we enjoy the sound we make, and find pleasure in the process of playing while aligning with perceptions of our ideal, there is a greater connection to mind and body that enables memory to be stored in our long-term memory banks with laser-focused concentration.
The aural traditions of learning and performing repertoire offer us insights into a focused way of absorbing short pieces and retaining them in a physical sense. Also, there is much in a written score that fails to inform musicians of today about the essential practices of the time when the music was composed. Therefore, reading intelligently from a score, creating a visual and aural memory of the score whilst bringing the music to life, takes practice.
Improvisation becomes fundamental for the creative and learning processes in music.
This is where improvisation becomes fundamental for the creative and learning processes in music. By exploring and being curious about the notes on the page – and those added by the astute performer – we can start to build up pathways that lead to in-depth learning and absorbing of musical information in a deep and permanent way.
For instance, start by adding scalic figures in the key of the piece, in a legato, smooth, and slow way – meandering around all the notes printed on the page. You can try this reading from left to right and from right to left to explore the music in both directions, each time adding different variations of the scale. Adding a variety of trills on every note as a way to start improvising also allows us to feel more comfortable with this creative process.
Always keep a good connection from your body to the instrument, noticing anywhere you feel vibrations back through the instrument. These points of resonance are where you will build up a pleasurable feeling of playing, which will support your memory and fully expand your possibilities.
How important is knowing the score? Should we be spending practice time doing score analysis, translating directives, or reading through the piano part?
It doesn’t matter how much you already know: knowledge continues to fuel one’s imagination, and the score is a wonderful place to start exploring! If you can access the manuscript or early editions, you can obsess over every detail in the score to glean the intentions of the composer, while early recordings can also give us an insight into the performing traditions of the time. Search for the characters in the music, and the more experience you have with each genre, the more you will be able to detect if the composer is trying out new ideas – harmonic, rhythmic, articulations – or if they are conforming to the traditions of their times.
Also read up on the history of the composer for fun facts and the historical context of the work. This gives you a unique and personal approach into the repertoire, and sparks your curiosity about each expressive word and marking the composer indicates – so research constantly, everything!
I’ve read a little about the use of vocalisation in practice. Can singing be useful to instrumentalists? Do you ever use it in your practice?
Focusing on technical mastery as an instrumentalist – through the use of visualisation, vocalisation, declamation, gesture, and improvisation – starts with the human voice as the creator of sound and ideas. As musicians, our connection to our ‘voice’ is the most important starting point in our daily musical journeys. Singing is paramount to bringing your inner voice alive, and only through singing do we learn about breathing, phrasing, intonation, articulation, and tempi in our technical work, etudes, solo, chamber, and orchestral repertoire.
Any skill takes practice, so start by singing a phrase. Notice where you need to breathe and if you are able to pitch all the notes. Very often, we stop ‘singing’ when the music goes out of our natural vocal range, so always octavate the music to fit your vocal range.
Ask your inner critic to ‘take a hike’.
Next, ask your inner critic to ‘take a hike’ as, unless you are a trained singer, you will likely not be satisfied with your own voice! Then sing in a good full voice – not humming! – with a vowel sound on each and every note of your phrase, followed by playing the same phrase. Then, sing again, and see if you are able to find all the notes and shapes of the phrase as a singer would. Finally, sing and play at the same time – on a wind/brass instrument, ‘sing’ loudly in your mind.
Your inner critic will wail that it sounds awful and that you want to stop, but persevere and each time you practice singing and playing, it will become more familiar, and more useful to you.
Let’s get practical with an example. Say a violin student was practising the first movement of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5. They are having problems trying to capture the style of the slow opening and the character of the Allegro theme. Step by step, how would you recommend they practice this excerpt?
When we feel bored, we tend to give up and go on with something else. Instead, try to explore the passage you’ve been working on, and delight in having an artistic process that leaves room for creativity and fantasy.
Play the phrase down the octave where possible, and don’t try to be musical! We can spend this time luxuriating in the resonance of the instrument and practising with a clear mind with no distractions of the past or expectations of the future. Turn your focus inward, and allow yourself to become self-absorbed in your sound with no room for any other thoughts.
Start slowly, and search for feedback through the instrument’s resonance on each note without rushing to the next note. Rhythm is the one thing that prevents us from being ‘in the moment’, so dare to explore sound without this boundary to always be going on with the next note. Pivoting, use of intermediate notes, gliding, and connecting between notes then becomes intrinsic to the learning process, as you constantly refine your awareness.
The more rewarding path is to be ‘in the moment’.
When we already know how the music goes – and the more famous the work, the harder this is! – we are often tempted to play through the phrase, as that makes us ‘feel good’, as if we are close to being ready to perform! But the more rewarding path is to be ‘in the moment’, and find a concentrated but curious approach to each note, exploring how it turns in to the next note and searching for a full-bodied resonant tone. By exploring short sections of the music in this way, we will quickly begin to find the music is ‘playing’ in our minds. Our memory will be connected to a pleasurable approach rather than a catch-up approach where we quickly learn the notes then figure out how to play them musically.
Once you are in this flow state of being completely focused, you can then ‘try out’ the passage and see how it feels. You will soon notice where there are feelings of roughness or disconnect, so observe those in a curious way that is providing you with useful information rather than an overwhelming expectation to get it right.
Also, if you notice you’re getting anxious while practising – especially in the lead-up to a performance – this is when you can walk through the piece and take the scenic route to make sure every corner has been thoroughly explored and all the bumps smoothed out. Generally, this means super-slow practice, singing, and engaging with the movement in your body.
Every day, you’ll find more fulfilment in your practice, which in turn leads to a multi-faceted, independent, and especially self-aware student and artist.
Before we go, are there any books or resources on the subject that you would recommend to our readers?
- Leopold Mozart’s 1756 A Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing.
- Annotated editions of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No.5 in A Major, K219 from the CHASE website — a collection of 19th- and 20th-Century annotated editions of string music, including editions annotated by Ferdinand David and Joachim/Moser, and articles on string playing.
- Recording and performance markings from a performance of the Mozart Violin Concerto No.5 in A Major, K219, Mvt. 1 by virtuoso violinist Marie Soldat-Roeger (1863-1955) who was active as a soloist, chamber musician and in orchestras in the Vienna of the late-19th and early 20th centuries.
- Recording of Mozart’s Voi che sapete from The Marriage of Figaro, K492 by preeminent 19th-Century soprano Adelina Patti (1843–1919).
- As I’ve written on my personal website: “In practising and performing music, flow is achieved through four basic steps: continuous contact with the instrument, developing a sense of resonance produced by the instrument and one’s body, an ease in playing, which is enhanced through movement, and the use of improvisation to study repertoire.” Find out more in Flow Skills for Musicians by violinist, psychotherapist, trainer, and coach Andreas Burzik, M.Ps. M.M.
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Catch up on the previous story in Miranda’s Mastering your practice interview series with Francesco Lo Surdo.
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