Tag: emotions

Using Different Sounds as a Practice Motivator

Using different sounds is a great motivator for anyone who needs to run through something multiple times, but can’t get themselves to play something more than once. I know that I’m guilty of only playing through everything once!

What do I mean by using different sounds?

Depending on the instrument, you could think about it as experimenting with different ways of playing it – 8va, different tone colors, play loud, play quiet, etc.

I will give examples below for each instrument that I teach.

Electric Piano

It’s probably the easiest to change the sound on an electric piano. You just push a button and it sounds like an organ, a harpsichord, or even a brass band.

You should see the way kids light up when I tell them that they need to use their pieces to help them decide which sound effect they like the best. When they come back the next week, the parents tell me that they went through their pieces 3-7 times per day. Woohoo! Grown-ups can have that fun experience, too.

Acoustic Piano

When my oldest daughter started playing the piano, she loved to practice every piece in every octave on the keyboard.

She started with the bottom octave, moved up to the next octave and played the same piece. Moved up to the next octave. So on and so forth until she got to the top octave, then started over on the process with the next piece.

I’m not saying you have to be that meticulous, but you could do it a couple octaves down or a couple octaves up, just to hear the tone color change. That would be a grand total of three times through.

Flute

When I was in college, I was the piccolo player. I would practice everything on both instruments. My fingers were faster on the piccolo, so sometimes I’d work things out on that instrument then switch to the flute. That would be one option for using a different sound, if you have a piccolo. 🙂

Flutes can change our tone color at the drop of a hat. I wrote about that more in detail here. Why not use that to our advantage? You could try that rhaspy, airy tone that the Irish use on the flute for almost a percussive instrument. Try playing the piece in every tone color of the rainbow, one at a time, and decide which one you like.

All Instruments

Using different sounds as a practice motivator has a lot of different applications for any instrument. Here is a short list of different options, feel free to add to the list.

  • Volume – ff, f, mf, mp, p, pp
  • Emotion – try playing it sad, happy, angry, etc.
  • Articulation – staccato, legato, marcato, accented, etc.

Seriously

I’ve mentioned a few things that serious musicians do to create their own interpretation of the music – dynamics, tone color, emotion, and articulation. They experiment with how they want to play a phrase to get their message across in the best way.

Using different sounds might be a great practice motivator because it’s fun. It’s also serious work. If fun doesn’t motivate you, maybe discovering your interpretation of a piece will be motivating for you.

Conclusion

Everyone likes to experiment with different sounds on different pieces. It not only makes kids light up, it also has a really good purpose. Sometimes that purpose is to convince yourself to, “Play it again, Sam.” Sometimes it helps with your interpretation of the piece. However it helps, don’t be afraid to experiment. 🙂

Dealing with Frustration During Practice

Dealing with frustration during practice is a huge part of having a good practice technique. Who hasn’t given an angry stomp or jumped up and down while growling because you just can’t get that tough lick? How many times have you banged your fist on the piano because your fingers won’t do what you’re telling them to do?

The point is, how do you get past the frustration without giving up? Here is step-by-step what I do.

Step 1: Display Your Frustration

If you’re not alone in the room, skip to step 2.

If you are alone, don’t be afraid to show your frustration. You’re angry with your body, the music, the composer, and yourself. Go ahead and yell. Scream. Growl. Throw a mini-tantrum. This step shouldn’t take longer than one minute, ideally it should be about 20 seconds.

Step 2: Breathe

I usually take a one or two very deep breaths after my 20-second mini-tantrum. This gets oxygen pumping into my brain so that I can work on a solution.

Step 3: Puzzle Mode

If you think of the situation as a puzzle, you will automatically engage the part of your brain that solves problems. What is the source of the problem that you’re encountering? Fingers? Embouchure? Rhythm?

When you’ve figured out the source, you can decide on a good practice technique. I have a bunch of articles describing different practice techniques in this section of my blog if you’re blanking on which one to use.

Figure out two or three different practice techniques to do, starting with the most likely, just in case the first one doesn’t work.

Step 4: Use your Plan of Attack

Go ahead and use the practice technique(s) that you chose. If you need to take another mini-tantrum break, go ahead and do it, but you’re not going to let this problem have the better of you.

Side Note for Gifted Children

Gifted kids tend to have the hardest time of all with frustration during practice. They don’t understand how to handle themselves when they can’t get something right the first time. They’re used to everything coming easy, without effort. Sometimes they don’t even realize they’ve learned something in school because they learn it so quickly.

Many gifted kids don’t encounter a problem they can’t solve or something they can’t easily learn until they’re an adult and then they don’t know how to handle it. This process will help them learn how to logically get them through problems they can’t instantly solve rather than get frustrated and walk away.

This is why learning a musical instrument is especially important for them. They need to learn how to learn. They also need to learn how to solve hard problems.

On top of everything, gifted kids’ emotions have a tendency to run higher, which causes the frustration to instensify. That can be a recipe for disaster, unless you have a process to work through it.

Conclusion

This is my process of how I work through my frustration when I’m practicing on piano or flute. If you have a different process, feel free to share!