[The Lesson]

[Overview]

This week I’m going to try to follow my teachers advice on how to practice, but adjust it to my learning style. I’ve always been told that playing linearly is not good because you don’t end up allocating most of your time to the most difficult parts of the piece. Because of that, working linearly might not be the most efficient way to learn pieces. The thing about that is, I’m still a beginner, so I don’t really know exactly which parts are “hard”  for every piece. Some pieces have sections that are obviously hard because they include a technique I haven’t learned yet, or they are supposed to be played super fast. But for some pieces like the etude I’m playing now, there isn’t a part of the piece where I just feel like it’s objectively difficult for me to play. So I think the way I’m approaching learning the piece is not that efficient as it could be. I want to leverage the small amount of time that I have to get the best results I can. The way my teacher wants me to go about it is to just play one measure on repeat until it’s right, and then move on to a second measure and play that on repeat until it’s right, and then going back a measure and playing those two measures together until they’re beautiful. Then, I’d move on. If I were to purely follow his way, due to my perfectionist nature, I’d be stuck on two measures for an hour.  However, I still think his way would be effective for me in someways. I’ve been frustrated that I’m not getting through pieces quickly enough, even though they are not too complicated. I think it’s because I get wrapped up on trying to focus on the hard parts so much, that I end up ignoring playing through the actual piece. So I’m going to try to combine my current system of five minute focused intervals with his way of linearly drilling pieces. That way I will have forward progress and I’d still be able to hit those trouble spots hopefully. Also, I’m going to rethink my overall division of time for practicing. Roughly, I will give myself 10 minutes for a warm up, 30 minutes for working on new sections, and 20 minutes to work on old sections. For new sections I’ll work linearly like my teacher suggested. But I’ll aim for four measures within a 5 minute chunk structure like I’ve been using. If I can play a measure correctly 3 times in a row, I’ll move on to the next measure. After all four measures are completed, play them all together and make it beautiful. If I realize that a certain chunk becomes too easy to play, I’ll cross it out and continue to learn new measures of the piece.

[Repertoire]

Grade 3 Pentatonic Scale, 我是草原小骑手, 小花鼓, B Flat 上把位音准校正练习

[The Practice]

[Practice Breakdown]

Warm Up

Vibrato @ 120BPM

B flat Major Scale with drone tone

B Flat 上把位音准校正练习

Measure 33-36: Add vibrato on the quarter notes. 

Measure 37-40: Make sure that you give re it’s full note value.

Measure 41-43

Measure 44-48

Measure 49-52

Measure 53-56

Measure 56-59

我是草原小骑手

快弓 section

小花鼓

Play through piece, take note of the sections that are a problem.

 

Thanks for reading! Please checkout some of my other posts~

[No.16] ErHu Practice Log | 二胡練習日誌: Learning a New Piece (小花鼓：Little Flower Drum), Learning 勾弦（Left Hand Pizzicato)

[No. 6] Guzheng Practice Log | 古筝練習日誌: 連托(lian tuo)，滑音(hua yin)

[No. 15] ErHu Practice Log | 二胡練習日誌: Exam Results, Vibrato Progress, Polishing Pieces