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Welcome, this is Terry Ewell. These are my comments on Weissenborn study #8. Many students
always start at the beginning of a study or composition when they practice. It feels good
to play over and over things that you can perform well. It takes greater courage, however,
to confront the most difficult aspects of an exercise such as this. The quickest way
to make progress is to address the problems and spend more practice time on them. More
time should be spent on the most difficult sections of an exercise than on the easier
sections.
I suggest you try a new technique that will improve your practice time: Sight read through
study number 8 a few times. Make a careful note of the passages where you have the most
difficulty. Put an "x" over those places. You probably didn't have too much difficulty
with measure 1. In fact, you might have played this measure well every time. Other places,
however, such as the fourth line probably have an "x" or two.
Decide this week to practice the problem spots first! Don't start at the beginning. Only
read through the entire study after you have worked carefully on the problem areas.
I tell my students that once they have identified a problem area, they should next find at least
three practice methods to address the problem. Let's assume that line 4, measure 3 is a problem
area for you. Here are some practice methods to consider.
We have already seen that rhythms can help with finger coordination. Here are a few rhythms
and other exercises to use for this passage:
Tonguing might be an issue for you as well. Let's address tonguing separately from fingers.
I call short bursts of tonguing or fingering patterns "sprints." While slow practice is
helpful for reinforcing proper technique and muscle memory, you can't master playing rapidly
without working on speed. Here is an exercise to increase tonguing speed. Be sure to push
or sprint to the end of the pattern. Don't slow down.
Last of all, let's do a little more work with drones. Since the first line of the study
features two chords, the tonic and dominant, we can use a drone on the fifth scale degree
to help us with intonation. The fifth scale degree of B flat major is F. Listen to this
example of slow practice of the first line with an F drone.
"The unexamined life is not worth living." (Socrates, Apology 38a)
Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, "Where are you?" (NKJV, Genesis 3:9)
Too often we try to avoid our problems. I mentioned in this lesson that often students
avoid the difficult areas in a musical study. All of us want to avoid difficult areas in
life as well! Sometimes we even avoid thinking about life's difficulties. However, hiding
from issues won't make the issues go away. It is difficult to examine the issues that
are harmful to life. Identifying problems in musical studies is the most efficient way
to master an exercise. Likewise, confronting a problem in life is the best start towards
the solution.