So I just finished my practice. Because I get so caught up in my scales and etudes I sat down today and made a practice schedule.
Mistake 1) I should have followed it! Nearly ALL of my 2 hrs was spent on scales and etudes and I have 4 pieces in my young soloist book and three decent length works for my community orchestra. By the time I made it to young soloist my fingers were shot and I only made it through one more piece and none of my orchestra repertoire. I just have so much technical work to do in so many areas I can't let it go. To be fair, I actually LOVE working on this stuff so it isn't as though I missed anything in the way of regret I didn't get to do something I liked.
Mistake 2) I think that based on what I have been practicing I probably practiced too much. My fingers were tired in my bowing hand AND my left hand to the point they are vaguely sore in a muscular sense. (I am an active guy and train/exercise reguarly but these particular muscles I can't ever remember being tired in this way...quite interesting!) In addition I have rehearsal tonight for 2 hrs!
Mistake 3) Not taking enough breaks! I should have recognized the signs and slowed down and taken more breaks.
Mistake 4) Not recognizing my sore and tired fingers sooner and struggling to get any decent intonation or tone. Blah. It was a constant fight and I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong which probably made me tense, which probably made me even worse.
As soon as I decided I was done this all came to me. I was just so focused and determined that I was not thinking about much else. Oh well. You live and learn right?
So there you have it. My horrendous practice.
I would love to hear your horrible practice stories! Were you able to make them better? What, if anything did you get from them? Do you have any advice for me in this area?
Jessy
My worst practice is the one I didn't do.
Jessy, that sounds like an awesome practice because you learned so much from it! It felt wasted but you learned your limitations and what you need to change; now you will be that much more successful going forward! :)
I know one teacher that likes to average 6 minutes per technique point. Enough to make progress, not so much you lose focus. I like to go in with a goal for each exercise and makes sure it's clear in my mind, not just on paper if that makes sense.
I agree with Kathryn. And your orchestra pieces are probably that much better for your work on scales and etudes. On the other hand, if you're getting sore, then yeah, you need to build in breaks, or get some help with your hand positions and overall posture so that it does not happen in the first place. Make sure you understand the difference between fatigue and pain.
Well, Steve wins the award for worst practice! At least you didn't break your violin!
Kathryn and Paul, you are right I am sure. It just is intensely frustrating when you KNOW you are playing terribly and can't figure out why.
Paul I do know the difference though I can see someone who does not hurting themselves. My teacher has me working on staccato with just finger movement. It is a movement fairly unique to violin playing and even as much as I have great grip strength from other endeavors it is quite singular in its movement pattern in the apparent development of he flexor and extensor muscles at and around the finger joints.
I totally get what you're saying.
Sometimes I work too hard. That was the case when I was playing with my violin strung as a viola awhile ago. I wanted an even sound between my C and G strings and I knew that wasn't impossible so I kept trying. I learned that I was striving for things too much.
One day in the middle of practice, my E string went severely out of tune and it took me about 20 minutes to tune because the peg kept slipping. I pushed the peg in as far as I could with the string tuned. That really helped.
One day, after having played about a month, I got bored while practicing and had the bright idea of giving my bow a bath in warm water and then sticking it tip first in the pedestal fan in my bedroom. The tip broke right off and shot out at me. My dad was especially angry since the bow belonged to my school and he superglued the tip back on and let the bow dry on the balcony. Somehow no one else noticed when I took it to school after that. Since that fateful incident quite a few years ago, I have definitely learned not to bathe bows and stick them in fans.
These days I had one of those practice sassions where nothing seemed to go right. Awful sound, shifts uneven, lots of mistakes. That's when I usually get angry with myself, because yesterday... and why bother anyway, apparently I'm too stupid for violin in the first place. Anger and self-pity are bad practice companions, therefore my playing not surprisingly didn't improve.
In situations like this my mum always used to tell me to stop and restart fresh the next day. It took me years to find out that this is, at least for me, not good advice. I never stop practice on a low. Instead I aim for something in this session that I truly master - then I stop. For me, this makes all the difference to carry on the next day.
Oh, and there was the practice session where I knocked over my heavy wrought-iron music stand (gift of my parents) and it broke out a piece of my laminate floor. Still have to fix that.
Oh boy.
I still remember the time I started to practice right after I changed my own strings. Halfway in I noticed my bridge was leaning forward, so i stopped to fix it.
Unfortunately, I pushed too hard on it and it snapped in half...
That was a real nightmare for me.
Another time I dropped my bow and the tip fell off. I suspect it was a real cheap bow....
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March 15, 2016 at 12:51 AM · After 30 minutes of scales, I decided to take a break, I put my violin on its hanger attached to the music stand.
10 minutes later, I got back to it, I picked up the violin, and I was a little too close to the stand, and during a shift, I've decided to swing my entire body and the violin very enthusiastically, and the scroll hit the stand hard enough to knock the stand over. I've decided to continue practicing in the basement, on my way down, my slipper fell off my foot, and I slipped down two flights of stairs and I had a choice between using my left hand to grab the rails(and drop the violin) and drop the bow and grab the rail with my right hand.
I dropped the bow, then the motion strained my right shoulder, so my bowing was terrible, or maybe because the bow had a new chipped teeth from being dropped down the stairs.
Later while I was putting the violin away, I knocked over an open bottle of isopropanol on the desk. I picked up my violin before alcohol got to it, in motion, I pushed over a powerbar against a mirror which fell and shattered.
That was a heck of clumsy practice.
I think the moral of my story is to get enough sleep, and stay at least 2m away from the music stand.