How to Practice Right

It’s always a bit eye opening when you realize that what you have been telling your clients to do is exactly what you should have been doing yourself.

Let me explain.

I’m preparing a new piece for a recital. It’s called "Omaramor" by Osvaldo Golijov. It has no bar lines and is scordatura. The piece is rhapsodic, free and demanding. Playing this piece takes me WAY out of my comfort zone as an orchestral player.

Just like I would do for an audition, I gave myself a lot of lead time to practice. I was diligent, I practiced hard. I memorized the part.

But it wasn’t until I started playing it for others that I found big holes in my preparation.

  • Why didn’t that passage go the way I had planned?

  • Why did I feel like I was scrambling through the piece?

  • Why was everything so uncomfortable?

  • Why did I sound so much better in the practice room?!?!?

Sound familiar?

Returning to the practice room, I began the painstaking process of self-recording (I really hate this part!). Lo and behold, the recording revealed A LOT of things I hadn't noticed. And not always in a good way.

I wound up playing the piece for a cellist who suggested that I really needed to “crawl my way through” the piece—he wanted me to take it so slowly that I knew EXACTLY what was happening at each moment. He promised that if I did this (and if I could stay in the present while doing it), the piece would sear itself into my brain.

It was around this time that I realized, "this is the same thing I tell my clients! Why couldn't I see this for myself?" Wait a minute. That’s what I tell my clients!

Ugh. As hard as it is to listen to advice, it's apparently even harder to listen to my OWN advice! Sometimes, you just have to hear it from someone else.

This slow and often painful practice is opening up new solutions to my challenges. And knowing the piece at this level helps me stay in the present, since I'm not as concerned about what is coming up next.

The moral of the story is, if you aren't 100% certain your music will hold up under performance stress, do the following:

  • Take it apart, passage by passage.

  • Play it SUPER SLOWLY.

  • Be hyper-aware of what each hand is doing.

  • Make each note clean and articulate when you put your finger down.

  • Make sure the sound is exactly what you want it to be.

Happy practicing!

gloria lum