Mike's Oud Forums

The best way to practise

Lysander - 3-30-2014 at 08:55 AM

I came across this article today and wanted to share it, since I was looking for answers to how often people practise. This article is very good in that it tells you not necessarily how often to practise but how to practise effectively.

I have noticed that if I mindlessly play it is less interesting or motivating than if I have a proper goal to work at. Also one hour is the maximum I can play for at one time [actually about 45-50 mins is] after that it becomes just pointless repetition.

Parts such as this were very helpful:
Quote:
So what is deliberate, or mindful practice? Deliberate practice is a systematic and highly structured activity, which is, for lack of a better word, scientific. Instead of mindless trial and error, it is an active and thoughtful process of experimentation with clear goals and hypotheses. Violinist Paul Kantor once said that the practice room should be like a laboratory, where one can freely tinker with different ideas, both musical and technical, to see what combination of ingredients produces the result you are looking for.

Deliberate practice is often slow, and involves repetition of small and very specific sections of your repertoire instead of just playing through (e.g. working on just the opening note of your solo to make sure that it “speaks” exactly the way you want, instead of playing the entire opening phrase).


Here's the full article, it would be good to know peoples' thoughts or if they had anything to add.

http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/how-many-hours-a-day-should-you-...

rootsguitar - 4-23-2014 at 07:58 PM



Enjoyed that article much. Good for attitude...

danieletarab - 4-27-2014 at 06:12 AM

extremely intresting! After all I have always been thinking that improving tecnique is not matter of "phisical exercises", like if we would need to "strenghten" the fingers and working on the mouvements like we do in fitness when we want our muscles to get stronger.
It's mainly a mental thing. It's not even a matter of mentally "control" your body or your things\ It's rather a matter of connecting mind and body through cosciousness of specific mouvements.
That's why sometimes I get lot of improvement after 2 hours practising, and some other times, I don't get benefits whatsoever after 4 or 5 hours. It really depends on the mental attitude.

I would be very happy if I could find a book or some articles that approach the musician practice from a "meditation" attitude.
I really think that we could use our practice as a form of meditation whose benefits may be extraordinary in mnay fields of our lives. There's a lot of ZEN involved on it.

I would really like to read or hear something about from wiser people than me!

Lysander - 4-27-2014 at 07:09 AM

I completely agree that we don't have to "strengthen" our fingers for oud and that almost all [i.e. 90%] of the battle with an instrument is a mental one.

I am a relatively new oud player and though there are some physical things which help oud-playing [i.e. warming-up exercises to make the finger muscles supple, keeping nails very short, not putting too much pressure on the strings] the playing of the oud is really done with the ear and not the hands. When playing is going well it's because a] I'm confident and sure of the structure of the makam I'm in b] I have played it many times before so can repeat patterns that sound good c] I can combine these two points to be sure of experimenting and improvising successfully without stepping outside of the boundaries of experience d] knowing exactly what I want the next note to sound like before I play it and its relative position to the note I'm currently on e] having a general idea of where I want the improvisation to end up, and the path to be taken through. All these points lead me to be able to relax into playing subconsiously, making things sound more fluid, natural and unforced.

All these important things are mental elements, and making them stronger leads to more confidence, which leads to a better sounding instrument and player. This is why when I sit down to play rast, huseyni, bayati it can sound quite strong, but give me saba and it will sound repetitive and even hopeless. This is because - at this stage - I have little experience of saba so would resort to playing very clichéd passages which would sound limited, stolid and dull. Likewise if you are playing a challenging piano piece it's not about your hands being 'fast' enough, but about your mind being confident and experienced enough to put them in the right places at exactly the right time based on precise, trusted knowledge of what you want to sound like.