TromboneChat

Questions for everybody (free to answer);
1. How do you put yourself into practice mood? How do you find motivation if lost?
2. Your best advice on practice?


My answers:
1. This is what I do to find motivation and to make it fun and to get in the mood for practice.

I'm on vacation. First day of vacation is today. Vacation is when I peek as a tromboneplayer because this is when I practice the most. Other times of the year I practice minimum of 20 minutes a day but usually more than an hour. I do this even the days I play in bands or sing in a choire.

My program starts with about five minutes of factitious notes before I go ahead with a set of Swedish folk songs. I play my Gerdt Bb/G .500 tenor trombone and use my Yamaha Nils Landgren mouthpiece. Register is just easy stuff from to b . I play all from heart. This is about 20 minutes. The songs cover long tones, legato and some fundamental articulations as well as tone/sound. I often include some circular breathing and have added some trills too . After this I change mouthpiece to a Shires MG-signature mouthpiece and play the first of the Bachs cello suites from memory. Ive been struggling with all these suites since the 80ies and never get tired of them. Ive learned to play the first from memory but do not do the movements in order. I start with the easier ones and save the first most difficult one until the end. It is the R. Katarzinsky edition which is a fourth up. These covers more advanced legato and adds big leaps, demands a steady flow and intelligent breathing, a fast slide and a fast legato tounge. This is a real workout. After this I have practiced about an hour. If I continue I might change trombone. Could be any large bore .547 and/or bass trombone. Could also be any play-along record. I have collected about every classical play-along that says intermediate or advanced so I can vary a lot. I use them to train my reading and also to check intonation. It also increase my repertoire. I often listen to the soloists track to get a better picture of the piece. I could also play from any of the two Fake books with audio or any of the Aebersold or the Bob McChesney bass trombone etudes with audio accompaniments. There are too many options. Sometimes I just decide to play the same tune on a various bones. This way of doing it help to keep my interest high as well as my level of concentration. Newest find is classical play-a-long records for tenor voice or baritone voice (I'm a baritone). I'm now doing a lot of sing-a-long too.

What keeps me going is I notice I get better and better. Sometimes I think it's sad I didn't explore this way of learning when I was in my teens. Then I realize all these technical opportunities didn't exist back then. Internet didn't exist. Ebay and amazon didn't exist and most important I had no finances to do it. I just keep going and get motivated as I notice I'm getting better at everything I do. It is small steps, but every half year when I get to Christmas and have a few days vacation and explore, and now when summer vacation starts and I go into practice mood I notice the half year of practice has taken me to new places. I know I will never get back to a career as a musician because that is passed but I don't really want that. I just want to play and be as good at it as I possibly can. I get money and food on the table from my everyday job and that is what's makes everything possible. I play with my local bands and sometimes a few professional gigs and that's all I want.

2. This is my best advice on practice in general

Find a way to make it fun. Do not allow yourself to practice and be bored, because most of that will then be a waste of time. Not all of it, but most and you will be even more bored next time. You need to challange yourself within the session so use all tools available. Be creative. Use the technique and use your finances. Put more into it and you will get more from it. Put up some goals. Learn stuff by heart. Record yourself and listen and criticize your playing. Try to listen objectively. I know this is hard because we are very subjective individuals by nature. This is because we see and hear the world looking and hearing from inside all the time. It is hard NOT to mix the ego into all listening of self. It can be difficult to sort things out. Worst is: either you think you are the greatest already and have nothing to learn or you think you suck at everything. If any of those you are NOT ready to be your own teacher. What to do to find the truth? It is probably hidden by ego somewhere in between. My go at this is while I listen to the recording I made I pretend it's one of my (no particular) friends who is doing all the playing. A friend is someone you look positively upon and is also someone you should treat with honesty and wants that from you too. If you need to hit yourself real hard you could pretend it is an audition. Then you might make notes on anything you hear and perhaps NOT treat the subject as if your best frend. Try to make a mental picture that help you nail things down so you can take concrete actions. You need to practice and improve just that. If I can make myself into that state a new way of learning is possible for me because I (capital I) start to listen differently. It took some time to learn to listen like this, but it was possible after a lot of practicing/imagining as making pictures of anonymous friends who performed what I heard while I listened to the recording. First I only could do it for brief moments but with practice I have now learned how to put myself into the correct mood and how to separate myself from what I hear. This is when I hear what is most important to improve. I zoom into that to work at, and at the good side I can also pick up what I'm doing better. You need to learn to listen to yourself (on the recording) objectively. Try to be realistic. Demand more from yourself but don't be to hard on yourself either. What you can not do today may be possible tomorrow. Find what you are not good at and practice that. Learn how to be your own best teacher.

/Tom