Technique vs. Music

[llama]

To what extent do you like to (or would like to) split your practicing between “technique work” and “pieces of music”? I used to think that it was extremely important to practice everything in an organized manner every day: here are my lip slurs, here are my scales, here are my multiple tonguing exercises, etc. And I would view these all as items on a list and would feel a sense of accomplishment when I could check each one off after practicing it for the day.

But is this really the best way to practice? Recently, I’ve been doubting myself. The ultimate goal of playing music is…to create music. Sure, some people would say that you should be making music with everything you play, even scales or lip slurs - but I feel like there’s only so much you can do to make musical statements with these exercises. I’ve been wondering if what we really should be doing is finding music that challenges our weaknesses. Need to improve your multiple tonguing speed? Why pull out the Arban’s exercises when you could practice Blue Bells or Rolling Thunder, to name two examples? With so much music at our fingertips, there is something (or many things) for every situation, whether it’s written for trombone or cello or voice or bagpipe.

I guess my question boils down to: why spend time on “exercises” when you could accomplish the same goal AND make music at the same time? I can see the benefits of doing both, but I’m wondering what you all think. I’m guessing the answer is somewhere in between, but I haven’t found it yet.

[Burgerbob]

I see music as a pyramid- at the top is music, everything underneath is fundamentals of some sort to achieve that music. For me, if I forego some of the foundations of the pyramid, I can't get to the top.

As with most things, I think the balance is somewhere in the middle. There's plenty of "non-music" exercises that work on individual skills that I wouldn't give up, because a "music" version if it would be less focused.

Of course, there are times when I do too many fundamentals exercises and not enough music as well... oops.

[robcat2075]

...I guess my question boils down to: why spend time on “exercises” when you could accomplish the same goal AND make music at the same time?

I recall once reading that, every morning, 19th Century piano virtuoso Sigismund Thalberg devoted two hours to playing scales. Then he devoted two more hours to playing scales... with expression.

It's only an exercise if you only treat it as an exercise.

I presume the very serious player knows what he needs to work on and works on that until he doesn't.

He probably also knows that some things must be touched every day, to be ready for when they come up even if they are not needed at present.

[GabrielRice]

Here is a short article I wrote about how I think about organizing my own practice:

5 Modes of Practicing

1. Practicing Technique, or Practicing for Your Body – working on the physical coordination needed to play your instrument or sing. For example: scales and arpeggios, long tones, tone or vocal placement exercises, fingering studies, etc. This is the time to cultivate the most relaxed, natural way of managing the interface between your mind, body and instrument. This is a lifelong endeavor, and because our bodies are continually changing, nobody ever has it perfected.

2. Practicing Music for Your Body – learning the music you intend to perform, addressing the technical demands and physical coordination, learning notes, ingraining the musical structures in the inner ear. This is the mode we most often call “woodshedding.” Mode 1 serves Mode 2, and Mode 2 can inform the focus of Mode 1.

3. Practicing Music for Music – exploring the music you will perform in a mindset of experimentation. Finding what makes it happen musically, making decisions – or simply experimenting – about relative dynamics, tempi, articulation styles, tone color. This doesn’t have to happen with your instrument! You can also study scores, listen to other music by the same composer, listen to other music in a similar style, etc. Instrumentalists can sing through music, either with your voice or just in your imagination, to develop phrasing ideas separately from instrumental concerns. Mode 2 serves Mode 3, and Mode 3 can inform the focus of Mode 2.

4. Practicing Performing, or Practicing Music for Your Mind – practicing the music you will perform for the mindset and thought processes of actually performing. What you are practicing now is not the physical act
- you've taken care of that in mode 2 - but the sequence of thoughts that will give you the most consistently excellent performances. Commitment to the moment is vital in this mode – no stopping, no going back. And in order to fully commit, the critical, self-evaluating mind has to be turned off now! Only after you finish do you think back or listen back to a recording of what you have just done, and think about what needs to be addressed in the next session of Mode 2 or 3. This is an extremely important step if you want to be a successful performer, and particularly if you take auditions.

5. Practicing Joy – refreshing your memory of why you are doing all of this practicing. Listen to music you love, dance, sing. Play music you love, for yourself, just because you love it, even if you have no intention to ever perform it. Also, get together with friends to play duets, trios, quartets, small jazz combos, etc. This is crucial to a life as a musician, and feeds all of the work we do.

[Wilktone]

Interesting topic.

Here is a short article I wrote about how I think about organizing my own practice:

Nice! Thanks for sharing that.

I guess my question boils down to: why spend time on “exercises” when you could accomplish the same goal AND make music at the same time? I can see the benefits of doing both, but I’m wondering what you all think. I’m guessing the answer is somewhere in between, but I haven’t found it yet.

I find it interesting that you would title this thread "Technique vs. Music." I don't think you intend to suggest that these things are in competition with each other, but sometimes we end up discussing them as if they were. For example, it's not uncommon to have someone suggest that they would rather hear someone who is playing with expression and not really nailing the technique over someone who has great chops but plays unmusically. Ideally, strong technique should free us up to play with musicality.

There's nothing wrong with practicing exercises, scales, etc. with as musical an approach as possible. Doing so can often make the technique fall into place. However, I think it's worth thinking about what your goals are for practicing these things in the first place. Do you have some mechanical issues that you're working to improve? If so, then perhaps focusing on expression might distract you from making the correction. Many exercises that we work on are by design not very musical so that we can concentrate on playing correctly.

It also can depend on how you're already playing and where you want to go. If you're already playing with pretty good technique you can afford to spend your time more on playing musically. If you have little trouble concentrating on music while playing, then maybe you don't need to spend as much time working on expression and can spend more time practicing things that build technique.

What your performing and rehearsing schedule is like can also come into play. When I'm playing a lot with other people I feel less like I need to practice playing music at home and I will tend to concentrate on technique at home. Part of this strategy is based on my schedule and when I can practice (morning and evening), so I tend to split my practice up into mostly technique in the morning and mostly music in the evening. If I have a rehearsal or gig that night I will sometimes just practice some routine work for technique in the morning, since I know I will be focused on playing with expression later that night.

Dave

[ArbanRubank]

Good stuff!

How can I expect to improv through a Bm7 chord if I don't know the Bm scale? Learning the scales, chords, etc is technique. Applying that knowledge to make music is the goal. Practicing scales, chords, or anything else that is "technique" - in a musical manor is a given.

[Crazy4Tbone86]

About 10 years ago, I changed my approach to practice and preparation. I guess a better way to describe it would be.....I changed my allocation.

For many years, I would practice the fundamentals that we all know about......lip slurs, articulation, breathing, scales, arpeggios, high range, low range, etc..... However, I only devoted a small portion (maybe 15-20%) of my time to those routines. I found that my skills were coming up short while preparing music. Many times, I would find a phrase that had something that my underlying skill level could not navigate with clarity. I had to stop and play hundreds of repetitions of that "problem spot" in order to make it work. It was not a knowledge or mental understanding issue.....my mind knew exactly what I wanted to play and sound like. My mind was saying "do this" but my body was not able to make it happen.

I decided to delegate much more time to fundamentals and physical routines. I started to spend 60-75% of my time on exercises intended to keep me in top physical condition on my instrument. In addition to the fundamentals listed above, I added: extended sessions of long tones, very wide intervals (slurring and tonguing), rapid patterns involving the trigger, something I call "cross training" (playing short chromatic or linear patterns in 4 or 5 different octaves) and a few other things. The result was that I became able to play many more things at first attempt than I was ever able to play before. My mind can now say "make it sound this way" and it happened immediately!

This transition has made me a huge advocate for practicing fundamental skills religiously. I shifted the way I teach to include more "fundamental routines" and my students seem to be better than back in the old days. The only problem is that I cannot use such a large percentage of time on these fundamentals with my students. Why? They need to have exposure to large amounts of literature in order to understand why the fundamentals are so important!

I don't think that my method of practicing is practical for everyone. I have been playing trombone/euphonium for 47 years. In those years, I have practiced, rehearsed, performed thousands of pieces of music (mostly classical or "legit" music). Thus, there is not much out there that will surprise me. I plan to retire in a couple of years and devote much time to jazz improvisation. I can see that a shift in my practicing habits will certainly need to take place so I can devote a large percentage of my time to being creative.

[baileyman]

Some guys are always playing music, but in such a way they work their fundamentals. And if it doesn't come out, they back up and do it again till it irons out. Then back to music.

Personally I haven't figured out how to do that, but it seems it should be superior.

[ArbanRubank]

You wouldn't ever have been the only one, regardless of what those who want to sell you something would have you believe!

[VJOFan]

I read a quote from Albert Manglesdorf about his practice. He said that he never practiced the things he did on stage. He practiced the things he needed to be able to do what he did on stage.

Sounds like technique practice honed to produce the capacity to play music.

It makes sense that if you are very thorough in practicing a huge range of possibilities, you will be able to realize any musical thought you have.

I would think the other part of the equation is loading in musical ideas with listening to music and experiencing life.

[Ozzlefinch]

To what extent do you like to (or would like to) split your practicing between “technique work” and “pieces of music”? I used to think that it was extremely important to practice everything in an organized manner every day: here are my lip slurs, here are my scales, here are my multiple tonguing exercises, etc. And I would view these all as items on a list and would feel a sense of accomplishment when I could check each one off after practicing it for the day.

But is this really the best way to practice? Recently, I’ve been doubting myself. The ultimate goal of playing music is…to create music. Sure, some people would say that you should be making music with everything you play, even scales or lip slurs - but I feel like there’s only so much you can do to make musical statements with these exercises. I’ve been wondering if what we really should be doing is finding music that challenges our weaknesses. Need to improve your multiple tonguing speed? Why pull out the Arban’s exercises when you could practice Blue Bells or Rolling Thunder, to name two examples? With so much music at our fingertips, there is something (or many things) for every situation, whether it’s written for trombone or cello or voice or bagpipe.

I guess my question boils down to: why spend time on “exercises” when you could accomplish the same goal AND make music at the same time? I can see the benefits of doing both, but I’m wondering what you all think. I’m guessing the answer is somewhere in between, but I haven’t found it yet.

It seems to me that you answered your own questions. But here's my 2 cents.

First off, "making music" isn't really a functional goal. What kind of music? To what level? What genre? The first and by far the most important question that needs to be answered before any practice program can be decided on is to ask yourself:

"what is it that I specifically expect to be able to know or to do at the end of the day? Where do I want to be in 1 year, 3 years, 10 years?"

Be specific. Without clearly defined and achievable goals, it's not going to matter how or what you practice. Are you wanting to play professional in a symphony, or are you playing Ska in clubs? Two different objectives with very different pathways to achieving the goal. Write your objective in the form of a verb. For example: "at the end of my training I want to be able to improvise jazz solos". "To Improvise Jazz" is the operative word that can be used to create your training regimen.

To paraphrase Lewis Carol: "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."

Or to quote specifically:

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where--" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"-so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."


After you have decided for yourself what your goal in music actually is, then the next step is to determine what skills will get you to that goal(s). Identify them specifically. Maybe it's timing, or intonation, or whatever. But find those things that are foundational to achieving your own stated goals. Write them down.

Next, assess yourself. Be honest. Find out where you are RIGHT NOW skill-wise. Now match your personal skill assessment to the list of skills you previously identified. The areas in which you are weak are those in which you must focus your practice in order to master them.

Now you can make a practice plan that will be focused on the skills you need to develop the most. Maybe it's time keeping, maybe it's intonation or music theory. Maybe you will find that you know all these things and it turns out you are just bored with repetitive drills and need to play music as part of your learning curve. Whatever it may be, it will be personalized to addressing your training needs.

The last step is to remember to have fun. If you fail at that, you have failed in toto.

[llama]

Lots of great replies so far. Thank you for all your input.

I see music as a pyramid- at the top is music, everything underneath is fundamentals of some sort to achieve that music. For me, if I forego some of the foundations of the pyramid, I can't get to the top.

I like this way of thinking. If you don’t practice fundamentals, you can’t reach the top, but if you never practice music, you can also never reach the top. I guess finding the right balance is the ultimate quest for us as musicians.

Here is a short article I wrote about how I think about organizing my own practice:

Wow. That seems like a very good approach. I feel like, as I’m reading these replies, what seems evident is that my fundamental question boils down to how to structure my practice, and this is something very individual that I will only learn with time and guidance from a teacher.

Interesting topic.

I find it interesting that you would title this thread "Technique vs. Music." I don't think you intend to suggest that these things are in competition with each other, but sometimes we end up discussing them as if they were.

However, I think it's worth thinking about what your goals are for practicing these things in the first place. Do you have some mechanical issues that you're working to improve? If so, then perhaps focusing on expression might distract you from making the correction. Many exercises that we work on are by design not very musical so that we can concentrate on playing correctly.

Yeah, the title for this thread probably wasn’t a good choice, but at the time I just wanted to put the question out there and didn’t want to think too much about a title.

And I can see the truth in that second paragraph. I often find passages in solos or concert repertoire where I have to focus so much on keeping the technique clean that I can’t focus on the musical aspect of it. Getting a better grasp of these fundamentals would then allow me to play with more expression because I could spend my energy focusing on that instead.

About 10 years ago, I changed my approach to practice and preparation. I guess a better way to describe it would be.....I changed my allocation.

For many years, I would practice the fundamentals that we all know about......lip slurs, articulation, breathing, scales, arpeggios, high range, low range, etc..... However, I only devoted a small portion (maybe 15-20%) of my time to those routines. I found that my skills were coming up short while preparing music. Many times, I would find a phrase that had something that my underlying skill level could not navigate with clarity. I had to stop and play hundreds of repetitions of that "problem spot" in order to make it work. It was not a knowledge or mental understanding issue.....my mind knew exactly what I wanted to play and sound like. My mind was saying "do this" but my body was not able to make it happen.

I decided to delegate much more time to fundamentals and physical routines. The result was that I became able to play many more things at first attempt than I was ever able to play before. My mind can now say "make it sound this way" and it happened immediately!

Thank you for sharing your story. It’s a great example that highlights the importance of what other people have said in this thread.

I read a quote from Albert Manglesdorf about his practice. He said that he never practiced the things he did on stage. He practiced the things he needed to be able to do what he did on stage.

Sounds like technique practice honed to produce the capacity to play music.

It makes sense that if you are very thorough in practicing a huge range of possibilities, you will be able to realize any musical thought you have.

I would think the other part of the equation is loading in musical ideas with listening to music and experiencing life.

This comes back to the pyramid approach and makes a lot of sense. If you’re practicing enough fundamentals, theoretically everything you perform should be some combination of those. It’s still important to listen and play music though!

The first and by far the most important question that needs to be answered before any practice program can be decided on is to ask yourself:

"what is it that I specifically expect to be able to know or to do at the end of the day? Where do I want to be in 1 year, 3 years, 10 years?"

Be specific. Without clearly defined and achievable goals, it's not going to matter how or what you practice. Are you wanting to play professional in a symphony, or are you playing Ska in clubs? Two different objectives with very different pathways to achieving the goal. Write your objective in the form of a verb. For example: "at the end of my training I want to be able to improvise jazz solos". "To Improvise Jazz" is the operative word that can be used to create your training regimen.

To paraphrase Lewis Carol: "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."

After you have decided for yourself what your goal in music actually is, then the next step is to determine what skills will get you to that goal(s). Identify them specifically. Maybe it's timing, or intonation, or whatever. But find those things that are foundational to achieving your own stated goals. Write them down.

Next, assess yourself. Be honest. Find out where you are RIGHT NOW skill-wise. Now match your personal skill assessment to the list of skills you previously identified. The areas in which you are weak are those in which you must focus your practice in order to master them.

Now you can make a practice plan that will be focused on the skills you need to develop the most. Maybe it's time keeping, maybe it's intonation or music theory. Maybe you will find that you know all these things and it turns out you are just bored with repetitive drills and need to play music as part of your learning curve. Whatever it may be, it will be personalized to addressing your training needs.

The last step is to remember to have fun. If you fail at that, you have failed in toto.

THIS is what I need (and I suspect I’m not the only one). This is probably the one thing I have neglected the most: writing down concrete goals with timeframes and then sitting down and figuring out how to accomplish those goals. I really like that Lewis Carol quote. I have to be careful not to turn into that!

I think we could all benefit from taking a step back, assessing where we’re at and where we want to go, and making a plan for the future. Then we just need to follow that plan and reevaluate on a frequent basis.

And it’s a good reminder to always have fun. That is the ultimate reason we play music, and we should remind ourselves of that fact often. There’s no point in spending time on something we don’t enjoy!

[Burgerbob]

Lots of great replies so far. Thank you for all your input.

I see music as a pyramid- at the top is music, everything underneath is fundamentals of some sort to achieve that music. For me, if I forego some of the foundations of the pyramid, I can't get to the top.

I like this way of thinking. If you don’t practice fundamentals, you can’t reach the top, but if you never practice music, you can also never reach the top. I guess finding the right balance is the ultimate quest for us as musicians.

Actually, thank you for putting it that way. Sometimes I forget the goal is to get all the way up.

[Ozzlefinch]

Lots of great replies so far. Thank you for all your input.



I like this way of thinking. If you don’t practice fundamentals, you can’t reach the top, but if you never practice music, you can also never reach the top. I guess finding the right balance is the ultimate quest for us as musicians.

Actually, thank you for putting it that way. Sometimes I forget the goal is to get all the way up.

I guess that's the struggle. You can't play music if you don't know your instrument, but knowing your instrument doesn't amount to a hill of beans if you can't play music.

We all can't be virtuosos, and it's hard to admit when we've reached our limits. I will never be first chair in the Boston Pops, but I've come to terms with that reality. Therefore, I don't play with that goal in mind. I love playing in Christmas and Easter pageants and at the local music shop on open mic day. That's good enough for me. I am always seeking to improve my skills, but I only measure my abilities and progress against myself. I simply try to be better today than I was yesterday. However "good" that is is good enough for me.

Music is an individual thing. It's very hard to pattern any one given learning system and say that it will work for everyone. Each person learns in their own way. I hate doing drills, they bore me senseless and I really don't learn anything from them. But if I do "drills" while playing an actual tune, then that interests me and I tend to learn a lot more from it. What works for me may not work for somebody else.

[BurckhardtS]

There's a lot of really good stuff in this thread. I'd like to add as it's been mentioned before that balance is very important. However, balance does not mean you split your time evenly between fundamentals and music or any other category.

Balancing your routine should be dynamic and meet your current needs. If you are preparing a lot of literature and don't have much time to do fundamentals because you are learning a lot of content, it would make sense to spend more time on literature and make sure the fundamentals are still there and focused, but they may be reduced. If you are running into a major fundamental hurdle that you need to get past and can not worry about literature for a little while, then do it. I have found it to be totally productive to have periods of time where I am focused 99.9% of my time on music/rep or vice versa when it's needed.

It is good to have a routine but it is even better to have a routine that can be adjusted to fit your needs. Everyone has a mental/physical limit to some extent, and while it is possible to extend your limits you should always be aware of them and use your time and energy effectively.

[Doug Elliott]

Compare to an athlete:
You have to do a certain amount of stretching and targeted strength training, in order to play your sport effectively and without injuring yourself.

It's really no different. If you don't do both, sooner or later you're going to get injured

[StevenHolloway]

I heard somewhere that Christian Lindberg does his warm up and then he only practices solo repertoire after that. Not even any etudes. I found that to be very interesting.

[Doug Elliott]

He does what he needs to do. Why would he need to play etudes?
Don't waste face time on stuff you can already do.

[harrisonreed]

I heard somewhere that Christian Lindberg does his warm up and then he only practices solo repertoire after that. Not even any etudes. I found that to be very interesting.

If the stories about him practicing 8 hours a day for five years in London and California are true so he could "get good", he probably had worked through every etude with his teachers and got sick of them or memorized them all in the first year, and played more trombone than most career brass musicians do in 40 years by the end of those five years. He's self-described OCD, and even checked into a hospital for psychosis when he was first trying to figure out how to manage practicing. I think he said he stayed up for a couple days in a row doing nothing but practicing and smoking and then woke up in a hospital.

His "warm-up from hell" was what helped him ensure his physical system was more or less in the same place every day, and then his practice was pretty much focused on memorization and getting down the tough licks. Imagine if you could get your technique to the point that you could basically play anything and maintain that with your warm up practices, and you naturally had a good ability to interpret a new piece and make it sound musical in your head by score study and listening to midi, before you even started practicing it. And your job is to only appear as a soloist. What do you practice? Memorization.

[llama]

I’m not really sure where to put this but it seems related enough to this thread that it doesn’t make sense to start another one, so I’ll just add on here.

These have all been great replies, and I have been thinking about everything a lot over the past few weeks. A couple days ago, a different way to think about practicing occurred to me, and I wanted to share it with everyone. I doubt it’s a novel idea, but I thought it might be useful for others, or at least generate some conversation.

In trying to take a more logical approach to “technique work” - instead of just playing scales, or lip slurs, or tonguing exercises because we’re told to do so - I have come up with four questions to guide my practice. I believe these four questions help me make sense of why I practice what I practice to help get better at solos, ensemble music, etc.

They are:
1. How does the note start?
2. What does the note sound like?
3. What does the note do while it is being played?
4. How does the note end? OR How does the note transition into the next note?

Some of these questions (especially the third) seem pretty wordy, but I’m trying to avoid using the word “you” or using “musical” terms like articulation, shape, or tone because these words might tend to limit our imaginations.

After writing down these questions, I was immediately able to identify a relative strength of mine (the sound of my notes) and a relative weakness (clean transitions between notes). Bam, just like that, I know what I need to focus on in my practice.

I believe that thinking in terms of these questions, and structuring my practicing around them, will benefit me greatly. As I said above, I only thought about this a few days ago, so I haven’t had much time to test it out. But I’m looking forward to seeing what happens - and I’d love to hear if anyone else has done something similar to this or what you think about this approach.

[Doug Elliott]

An excellent approach.
That's pretty much exactly what I do.

Practice techniques that give you control over each one of those.

And record yourself so you check that what you think you're doing is actually coming out.

[BrianJohnston]

I teach myself & my students this in a three part system:

1. Understand what kind of sound & phrasing you want. (Listen to recordings. What draws you in? Mimic bits and pieces of your favorite top-notch professionals).

2. Practice singing/playing and recording to see if the sound on the recording is matching the sound in your mind.

3. Gain the technique you need to arrive at your musical goals. (What tone are you trying to achieve? What slurs are you trying to get? What phrasing do you want... then; & find practice regiments to get yourself there).

In summary: Do I just practice just technique for the sake of getting technically better? never. I practice technique to clear a path for my musical ideas.

Your instrument/voice is a vehicle to express oneself through music.
The goal is the MUSIC. The TECHNIQUE is the means to get there.