Practicing- single-pointed awareness.
I want to move from listening (see the last post) to practicing. Ultimately, the goal of practicing is to get to the level of the music we’re listening to. There’s lots of content on the web about what to practice- extending brass range, snare drills, triad drills for saxophone, and on and on. Initially, though, I want to focus on how to practice most effectively.
In this current wave of students, I see a lot of talented, motivated kids, who just aren’t improving as fast or as well as they could. Because here’s the thing- how you practice is as important as that you practice. You can practice well for 15 minutes and make real gains; you can also practice for an hour and not get much done. How much you practice certainly matters, but how you practice matters as much. That’s what I want to explore in these next few posts. Let me tangent for a second:
If you get serious about yoga as I did (I’ve been a practitioner for more than twenty years, and a teacher for fifteen), you can’t avoid meditation- it’s part of the package. Now meditation is in schools and on talk shows, but when I started it still felt a little weird, and sometimes it still does. But at its most basic, least “wu-wu” level, meditation is simple; it’s one or more techniques of stilling the mind, and bringing our awareness entirely to where we are, and what we are doing. (H/T Yoda)
What I see, and I realize in myself- this is a lot harder to do than it used to be. We have more ways of being distracted, of being somewhere other than in the moment, than ever before. This week I’ve been examining how I practice, and I’m not as skilled a practicer as I used to be, because too often when I’m practicing I multitask- I’ll have the computer on, or be thinking about what I’m teaching, or doing, or eating later. So I’m wildly inefficient.
When we are practicing anything at high level, a “flow state” as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi famously calls it, we are so completely absorbed in what we are doing it is the only thing in the universe. And it doesn’t happen all the time. But the more we find that space, the more progress we make, and the easier it becomes to access that space.
So how do we do that, no matter what level we’re at? Get rid of distractions. Specifically, put your phone, your computer, whatever is most likely to distract you someplace else. Don’t use your phone as a metronome or a tuner- I have an old no-frills tablet that has most of what I need (more on that later), and whose internet is crappy, and I use that. Or get an old fashioned metronome and tuner- they are really cheap these days. But take your devices out of your practicing. When you are practicing, let it be just you, the instrument, and the music. That’s where the good stuff is. The good stuff is sure as hell NOT on Twitter.
And I’ll tell you, initially, it sucks. I’m noticing this week how quickly my mind reflexively wants to check my e-mail, or Instagram, or do something, anything else. And then my productivity goes down the drain. And don’t beat yourself up when that happens- it’s the patterning we’ve built, and it takes time to break it down. If you commit to it, it will happen over time, and it’s more than worth it.
References:
Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
The Empire Strikes Back