Nervous Nellie Strikes Again!

Today's lesson was a little discouraging, I must admit. I was so hoping I could actually play the pieces I've been working on, but once again I got all fumble-fingered and made a hash of things. I'm not really sure what to do to make it easier for me to play in front of my teacher, but I'm going to try to come up with something. Maybe memorizing would work.

I'll try memorizing and then performing one piece for my family. It really makes me nervous even to think about it, though.

I should perhaps set aside an extra period of time just for learning the piece. Maybe an extra half hour a day would do the trick. I was able to memorize "Joy to the World" once upon a time. If I can do that, maybe I can memorize an additional tune. But then playing it for someone will really make a difference. If I can play it perfectly, then I will feel a lot better, I think.

Like Sands Through an Hour Glass . . .

I think I'm going to have to eventually bump my practice up to two hours a day if I really want to make progress.

For now, though, I'm content to stick with at least an hour which I can expand if I feel able to press on.

It's becoming more and more important to me to find time for my practice.

Putting My Finger On Progress

Practices have been going well with my new arrangement. The last few days I have been going past the 1/2 hour time limit by about 10 minutes, which means I'm at about 1 hour 20 minutes per day.

I'm experiencing some real gains in the pieces I've chosen to work on. I've also upped the number to 6 pieces so that I'll always have one or two pieces I'm just beginning to learn, one or two in the intermediate stage, and one or two that are nearly complete.

Most of the trouble I'm having with pieces these days has to do with difficult chords. Making my fingers span the neck of my guitar is pretty tough right now, but it is getting easier. I keep working on the fingering in the technical portion of my practice.

So, things are looking good for continuing this practice arrangement.

Two-Timing the Music

Well, I've been using the two-time-a-day method of practicing for five days now and it seems to be working out quite well. After a half hour, my fingers start to get a little sore and so when I take a break they have time to recover before my afternoon session.

I also like dividing up the activities between detail work and through-play. Working on the little segments of the pieces satisfies my desire to pay close attention to the music and it helps when I play the piece all the way through because I can get past those road blocks more quickly and easily.

One advantage I was not expecting is that I find myself wanting to go beyond the 1/2 time allotted for practice. Usually I don't go too far, because I don't want to overdo it and make it harder the next time.

So I guess this practicing thing really works!! Who knew?

The Music Inside Me

Today I continued with my plan to practice technique in the morning and practice play-through in the afternoon. It worked out quite well. I was practicing one particular piece in both parts. It's a piece I was having considerable trouble with as recently as Monday. But after working on the individual measures and then playing it over and over in time using the metronome, I am getting it very close to perfect.

One thing I noticed as I was trying to play the piece through without stumbling, is that it became quite a bit easier when I closed my eyes and tried to play it from memory. When I did that, I noticed for the first time that I could feel and hear the natural progression of the notes. It relaxed me completely, which was very helpful and quite satisfying in a way that I can't quite explain. It's almost as if the music were inside me and I was letting it glide out of me. I didn't write the piece, yet somehow it became something I knew intimately. Kind of freaky, but very nice. I wonder if that's how musicians experience this?

I decided to look it up, and found this quote from Ray Charles:

Practicing Practice

I've been talking with my teacher about "practicing practice," as he puts it. He told me I should play a piece through a few times and then work more specifically on challenging parts and particular fingering techniques with smaller segments of the piece.

I've decided these two approaches might best be assigned to different times of the day. And since my brain is more alert in the morning, I'm going to practice the technical aspects then. In the afternoon, I'll practice the through-play of the pieces.

So I'm planning to practice 1/2 hour in the morning and 1/2 hour in the afternoon. I'm hoping that will allow me to recover from the physical strain of the morning's technical practice and make it easier for me to play through in the afternoon.

I tried it today and it seems to be comfortable, so we'll see what happens.

Bypassing the Conscious Mind

The classical guitar pose with the pillows seems to be working out fairly well, and my teacher seems to agree. Anything that makes it more comfortable for me to play is a good thing, he says. So that's what I'm doing. And I'm still practicing every day at least 1/2 hour and sometimes an hour or more. I'm glad about that and it's starting to be enjoyable. I look forward to those times when I will not want to stop playing when an hour has passed.

Another things I've been working on is what I call "automaticity," where you play in an automatic manner, which means the fingers translate the notes into sound, bypassing the conscious brain.

It's very much like touch typing, which I mastered many years ago. I very seldom have to think about what I'm typing (a bit more now that I'm getting older); I just imagine the word and the fingers do the rest without my having to think about what I'm typing, one letter at a time.

I've been working on that this week with playing guitar, and find that with the easy pieces I can do it for a short amount of time. It's coming along and I can hear the improvement.

So far, so good.