BY MIRANDA ILCHEF, LEAD WRITER (NSW)
We’d like to welcome Miranda as our new Lead Writer (NSW)! This interview is the first in her exclusive new CutCommon series Mastering your practice.
In this new interview series, we chat with accomplished musicians about their thoughts on and experience with practice.
In this story, Roger Benedict tells us about the purpose of practice, the danger of mentally separating technique and musicality, and about one tragically difficult Schubert excerpt.
Roger is an acclaimed conductor, principal violist in the Philharmonia Orchestra of London and then the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, artistic director of the SSO Fellowship, and now a published author of new book Scale Up.
Roger, I’ve started this series because I’ve come across many tertiary-level music students who were never formally taught how to practice. At this stage, it’s almost embarrassing to admit we might not know as much about practice as we should. Do you think this is a widespread flaw in the way music is taught, or is learning to practice a journey we have to take on our own, without guidance?
Efficient practice and effective practice take a long time to learn, because you have to have the experience of things not working to know how to make them work. We shouldn’t expect people to be able to practice perfectly by the time they get to tertiary education.
There is an art to practising – both mentally and physically – to find that harmony of mind and muscle. It’s something that takes a long time to learn.
I don’t teach [my students] how to play the violin or viola, I teach them how to practice. That’s our job really; to teach students how to work, then how to reflect on their playing and how to act on what they’ve reflected on.
So learning to practice is an ongoing process, then?
You’re always learning. As you get more experienced, you become more efficient in your practice, because you just don’t have the time as a professional musician.
For example, if I have to learn a passage of repeated fast notes, I know the best way for me to learn that is to practice in slurs first. I’m teaching my left hand how to lead. You learn shortcuts like these.
Let’s go back to the basics: the purpose of practice. We unquestioningly accept that we have to do it in order to get better at our instruments, but I want to unpack that a little with you here.
We always have to remember why we are practising. We are maintaining our playing and keeping it in good condition, while at the same time working on the improvement of our playing, finding that harmony of mind and muscle, and building our repertoire or preparing for events like concerts and auditions.
What did practice look like for you when you were training to be a musician, and what does it look like now?
Now, I know what works and doesn’t work. When I was younger, I would have practised through mindless repetition. This can sometimes work, but often doesn’t.
If something isn’t working, there is not much point in repeating it the same way. You learn that through experience. If you practice a shift 100 times and you get it wrong 90 times, those 10 times aren’t as influential as the majority of shifts, which were incorrect. Now, you’ve trained your muscles to play out of tune.
These days, I try and do more ‘mindful’ practice. If you can find many different angles of practising something, it will improve.
From your teaching experience, what would you say is the most common but incorrect belief about practice?
We always talk about technique and music separately. It’s a very modern concept, to separate those two things.
There’s a view that you should just practice on a technical level to start with, and the music can be put on later; like a polish on the surface. I think that’s a big problem, because it’s actually really hard to integrate musical elements like nuance, shape, phrasing, and colour later on.
We have to find ways of connecting the technical and musical, rather than thinking about them as two separate things. They are completely entwined. If you are a sculptor or artist, you connect much more between your technique (how you use your paintbrush) and the artistic effect it produces (the flow of the brushstroke). It’s similar when we draw the bow across the string.
How much of our success as musicians is down to how we practice?
I’d say it is at least 75 per cent of the reason for our success. You can be the most inspired and talented musician, but if you don’t know how to work you can’t really take that ability beyond a certain level. Knowing how to work is the most important thing.
Let’s get practical with an example. Say a violist student was practising the following orchestral excerpt from the final movement of Schubert’s Symphony No. 4, and they were struggling with the tricky fingering and getting an even spiccato. Step-by-step, how would you recommend they practice it?
Ah! This one is a tricky one. It’s called the Tragic Symphony because it’s a tragic excerpt for the unsuspecting violist.
So, firstly, it’s important to work out what is tricky about anything you practice. For this excerpt, that’s the consistent stroke and rhythm as well as keeping it lively and pianissimo.
Once we know this, we can practice accordingly.
After working out a fingering that serves the purpose of A – keeping the excerpt really rhythmic and even, and B – keeping it pianissimo and lively, I would practice it as follows:
- Slurs – one bar to a bow;
- Slurs – one bar to a bow with different rhythms – the aim is to make the left hand lead and to prepare fingers in time;
- Practice without the bow to hear how even your left hand is;
- Then practice it separately and slowly: first in fortissimo, then forte, then mezzo forte, then mezzo piano, then piano and finally pianissimo;
- In order to get it faster, I would next practice it in small chunks i.e. one bar + one extra note so that you practice in the changeover at the barline. If something isn’t clear, repeat that bar until it is. Then try two bars + one extra note, then four bars + one extra note and so on. The rest in between these chunks is important because you mentally and physically prepare for the next chunk.
- Then use a metronome – first put it in minims, then semibreves. Then put the metronome on weak beats (two and four). Then just on beat four. The aim of this is to create a really strong internal metronome as you learn to play against the metronome rather than with it. You can take this further with the next division of weak beats i.e. have the metronome beat on every second quaver of each bar.
Thank you for that breakdown. Before we go, are there any books or resources on the subject that you recommend to our readers?
My newly published scale book!
It’s called Scale Up, published by Partitura Verlag. There are not many scale books for violas, and they are mostly reconfigured violin ones, so I’ve created this with violists in mind. It’s got a whole section at the front of how to practice the book.
Thank you for your time, Roger!
Stay tuned for Miranda’s next interview in her CutCommon series Mastering your practice!
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