Music Practice Tips

Have I gone off my nut? Effective practice is all about reducing distractions, how on earth could television channels have anything to do with effective practice? The reality is that TV channels is an extremely effective way of focussing your mind in your practice.

Have you ever gone shopping for a TV? Generally, the store will have every TV that they sell in one area, usually on one wall so that you can compare them. The good stores will have them all on the same channel, the bad ones will have them on different channels. When all the TV’s are on different channels, your mind gets distracted and you’re not able to really compare the difference between the TV’s. When they’re on the same channel, your mind doesn’t get distracted, and can focus in on the differences.

Music Channels

So how does this relate to music practice? Often when we practice, we’ll be thinking about the notes, the intonation, the rhythm, our technique, and the musicality. If we’re directing all our attention to all of these at once, we will most likely get distracted and not notice mistakes. By creating specific channels to focus our attention on, we’ll be able to approach our practice with a detailed mind and really notice what’s happening and fix it.

An Example

I’m preparing the Prelude from Bach’s E Major Partita for Solo Violin. My channels at the moment are:

• L.H. Perc
• L.H Pistons
• R.Elb Movement
• Inton.
• S.B

Doesn’t give you much detail, but it gives me quite a bit. My first channel, L.H. Perc, stands for Left Hand Percussion, and is to focus me in on getting an active attack on each note that my left hand puts down. L.H. Pistons - channel 2, is to make sure my fingers aren’t moving too high off the strings, and are staying over the strings… working like Pistons. Channel 3, R.Elb Movement is to make sure that I’m not moving my Right elbow too much in the string crossings. Inton. is focussing on my intonation, and S.B is to focus on a straight bow.

I can then take a passage and work on each of those channels separately. My mind will focus in on the one channel that I’m “watching” at the moment, and not worry about the others. The improvement on that aspect in that passage improves, and then I switch to the next channel. Hopefully the previous channel remains, but that’s not the point of the next channel, the point is to work on a different aspect.

Have you used channels in your practice? What are some channels that you’ve used, and what are your favourite channels?