Tag Archives: Practicing Music

Ask Yourself These Four Questions To Make Your Practice Time More Effective

1 Reply

One of the things that many highly accomplished musicians have in common is the ability to practice in an efficient and effective manner. This is a skill that is cultivated and improved upon over a lifetime.

As a practice coach, my main aim is to connect my client’s desires with their actions. In other words: “What kind of musician do you wish to become?”, needs to be connected to, “What are you doing every day to become that kind of musician?”

As simple as this sounds, I’m still struck by the number of  very good musicians who’ve come to me for help who aren’t as clear as they need to be about this. Some are quite frustrated that they’re spending lots of time practicing, but don’t seem to be getting anywhere through their efforts.

Effective and efficient practice comes down to two simple things: prescription (what  you choose to practice), and implementation (how  you practice what you’ve chosen).

Though there are many variables to consider here, I’ve come to realize that virtually any musician’s practice can become more effective if she/he keeps four simple questions in mind. Here they are:

1. Why am I practicing this? It’s not uncommon for me to ask this to one of my clients and have them struggle to find an answer. This should never be the case. You are either practicing something because of a short-term, “closed-ended” goal/obligation (I need to have this piece ready by next Thursday), or a long-term, “open-ended” one (I’d like to improve my sound). Of course, most of the problems with respect to this lie in the realm of long-term, open-ended goals.

Whatever you’re practicing, make sure you have the end  in mind. In the short-term, this is not too difficult (mastering the piece, the chord changes, etc.). In the long-term this means that you need to be  always mindful of the musician you are aspiring  to become (in as specific detail as possible) and that everything you’re practicing is clearly leading you toward that goal. This means lots of self-reflection, assessment and modification.

2. What would I like to achieve today  as I practice this? Have a clear aim in mind every time you set out to practice something. For example, “Today, I want to be able to play this at quarter note equals 142 with the precision and clarity that I know I’m currently capable of.”

Bear in mind that you might not achieve your goal. And that’s absolutely fine. Don’t feel bad about aiming low, either. It is okay to have small, easily attainable goals in your practice session (in fact, I prefer it). Giving yourself a chance to improve in even the smallest degree on a daily basis , not only encourages you, but also, helps you keep things under control and at the highest quality.

3. How am I practicing this? This goes to the core of the Alexander Technique principles of “use”. What are you doing with yourself  as you practice this particular thing? Are you allowing your neck and shoulders (and the rest of yourself) to be free and mobile? Is your breathing mobile, expansive and quiet? Are you letting the floor (or chair) support you as you let your neuromuscular system suspend you lightly upwards? The more efficiently you use yourself as you practice, the more effective the thing you practice becomes. It’s a matter of good  overall coordination supporting fine motor skills.

Also, you need to give yourself ample time and opportunities to stop. Stop and redirect your thinking. Bring it back to your intention and to your more conscious, improved use of yourself. I’ve seen far too many musicians jumping right from one attempt to the next as they practice a particular thing, with no chance for redirecting their efforts. This tends to bring them within the realm of Einstein’s definition of insanity: Doing something the same way over and over, but expecting a different result. Get better at stopping. You’ll be glad you did.

4. Have I finished practicing this? This is the one that most of my clients struggle with the most. When have you done enough work in this practice session to move on to the next thing? It’s time to move on either because: you’ve reached your goal for the day; or, you’ve done as well as you can reasonably expect for the day.

Learn to move on when the time is right. If you find yourself getting more and more frustrated as you practice something, it’s time to stop and redirect your thinking (see number 3, above). Regress the challenge of whatever your practicing to bring it back into your reach. All you need are a few good experiences each day with a particular skill to improve it. You don’t need to repeat that same scale pattern thirty times over and over in one practice session. Aim for four or five (or even fewer) good, consciously directed takes on a particular piece, then move on.

The clearer your aims are, and the more conscientious you are as you go after them, the more likely it is you’ll improve. These four simple questions can help keep you on track.

Change This Habit In Your Daily Practice To Become A Better Improviser

Leave a reply

Ah…good ol’ 4/4 time. It is so prevalent in western music that it is often referred to as “common time”. Most of the compositions in the standard jazz repertoire are composed in this ubiquitous time signature.

But even though the harmonic forms of these pieces are based around this time subdivision, it doesn’t mean that every idea you play as an improviser must be.

In fact, lots of interesting “rhythmic dissonance” can be created by playing melodic ideas that don’t readily fit into the 4/4 harmonic structure. Just listen to Lester Young, Sonny Rollins, Warne Marsh, et. al., and you can hear them build excitement and tension as they “ignore the bar line.”

Yet many of the jazz musicians that I know personally (as well as the vast majority of students who come to me for lessons) practice nearly everything they do, every day, in 4/4 time. This time signature/subdivision becomes their default, their “go to” place. In essence, it becomes habit.

Virtually every time they discover a new idea, concept, or lick, it’s immediately conceived of (and practiced) in 4/4.

In a way, it makes sense for you to spend so much of your practice time thinking/imagining/improvising in 4/4. Because in reality, most of the improvising you’ll do with other jazz musicians will take place in this time signature.

For sure, there are exceptions. A number standard tunes in the jazz lexicon are composed in 3/4 (e.g., Someday My Prince Will Come, Wayne Shorter’s Footprints). So it’s not like you never have the chance to improvise in other time signatures.

But 3/4 time is odd, not just because of the odd-metered subdivision, but it’s also a little odd  (not as familiar) because it you don’t visit it nearly as often as you do the “common time” of 4/4.

In the past, my own habit was to spend about 99% of my improvisational practice time in 4/4. I felt quite comfortable and confident doing so.

But I can tell you with absolute certainty that when I started to regularly improvise in “non 4/4” time signatures, I became a far better improviser. Not just in odd meters, but in 4/4 time itself.

Why? Because it challenged me to stop putting my “evenly organized” ideas into neat-fitting little packages, and got me to start imagining melodic construction in a more organic and expansive manner. The more time I spent improvising in odd meters, the more chances I had to re-discover what I could do as an improviser.

As a result of this, my time, feel and articulation improved. My phrasing dramatically expanded. My melodic organization possibilities from note to note opened way  up. My sense of form become deeply confident. My overall conception of spontaneously creating music became, well…more spontaneous.

All this because I changed a daily habit.

Nowadays when I practice, I choose a “default” time signature that I work in for each day. Typically, it’s one of the following: 3/4, 5/4, 5/8 and 7/8. (Occasionally I’ll work with 6/8, 9/8 and  11/8.)

I also work in 4/4 every day, too, in addition to my chosen default time signature. And I’ll assign at least one day a week where 4/4 is the default.

If you change your habit of spending 99% or more of your daily practice time in 4/4, you’ll be pleased with the results. Besides becoming a more expressive and spontaneous improviser, you’ll also become a better musician, overall.

Take Action

Here are some things to keep in mind (and/or to practice) to help you with this:

  • Stay with one new time signature default at a time-3/4 is a good place to start. Spend three or four days of your practice week spending 90% or more of your time in this time signature. Do this for several weeks. More, if you feel the need. Once you are as free and comfortable in 3 as you are in 4, other odd times will seem immediately approachable (see below).
  • All odd times are just subdivisions of 2 and 3-5/8 is a subdivision of 2 and 3 (or 3 and 2); 7/8 is 2-2-3 (or 3-2-2). Once you’ve mastered playing in 3 (see above), the rest falls into place. It’s just a matter of methodical practice. After 3/4, work on 5/4, then 5/8, then 7/4, then 7/8. (Again, one time signature at a time until you feel confident before moving on to another.)
  • Put scale and arpeggio patterns into the odd time signature-Whether you’re working with a note grouping that you know well (like scales in thirds, for example) or are working out a new pattern, work it out into the non-4/4 time subdivision.
  • Start with open-ended improvisation-When you begin exploring a new odd time signature, choose a mode, scale, or thematic fragment, turn on the metronome (or drum loop) and improvise as melodically and clearly as you can. Always know where beat one is. Always.
  • Put standard songs and cyclical chord changes into odd times-Once you’re comfortable improvising without a bar form (you know where “one” is; you can play melodically), take a tune that you know really well into odd time. (I Got Rhythm changes in 7/8 is a blast!) If you don’t want to start with a tune, practice over some ii-V cycles, or the Coltrane Matrix, or…?
  • Take a jazz lick or cliché that you know really well and modify it to fit into the odd time subdivision-This will really open up your ears as well as you melodic imagination.
  • Work in both a swing feel and in a straight eighth note feel-Either with a metronome or with drum loops, it’s always a good idea to explore different feels. Even if all you want to do is play swing. With all the amazing smart phone apps out there these days, you have lots of fun things to work with.
  • Work with polymeter-This is where it comes full circle. Once you’ve become comfortable improvising in odd meters, you can begin to actively explore odd-metered subdivisions as you superimpose them over 4/4 time. (I have written a very thorough and methodical eBook that helps you to develop this specific skill, called Essential Polymeter Studies in 4/4 for the Improvising Musician.) Polymeter is a highly effective way to build tension and interest in your solos.

So give up the daily habit of 4/4 as the “go to” time signature (you already know it well enough by now, I’m sure!), and enjoy a new adventure in your learning process, and in your musical expression.

Teaching And Learning Music: A Built-In Problem In Exhanging Information

1 Reply

The longer I teach the Alexander Technique to musicians, the more frequently one particular issue arises: the lack of clarity between cause and effect where practice and technique are concerned. Below is a brilliant description of this potential obstacle to progress:

The players/teachers do what they do; they tell the student what they think they do; the students think they heard what the teachers said about what they think they do; the students then try to do what they think the teachers said about what they think they do.

-Denis Wick, Retired Principle Trombonist, London Symphony Orchestra

Let’s look at this quote in detail.

“The players/teachers do what they do;”  Yes, they do. For better or for worse. Truth be told, there are a number of very fine musicians who play well despite  what they do. In other words, their misdirected efforts or sub-optimal overall coordination are obstacles that they’ve overcome well enough to let their skills shine through.

“they tell the student what they think they do;”  This is often where the confusion begins. It’s a matter of causality versus coincidence. Just because something happens while getting a specific result doesn’t meant that it was the cause of the result. For example, if you do this “thing with your tongue” every time you take a breath to play a wind instrument or sing, it doesn’t mean that “thing” you do is helping you produce an optimal breath. As a matter of fact, it might be even interfering with your breathing.

“the students think they heard what the teachers said about what they do;” So maybe you try to describe this “thing you do with your tongue” to your students, but because of their sensory perceptions/experiences, and how they take in your words, they completely misapprehend what you’ve explained to them. (In essence, they’ve misapprehended your misapprehension.)

“the students then try to do what they think the teachers said about what they think they do.” And the confusion continues. Because the students now “know” what to do, they try to carry it out, no matter how far it is from the original understanding/intention of the teacher, nor no matter how far it is out of accordance with their human design and/or with acoustics.

So now, this “thing with your tongue” that your teacher taught you not only doesn’t help you with your breathing, but also, it’s not even what your teacher thinks it is in the first place.

And this is how a good deal of misinformation is passed on from teacher to student. Some of these students themselves becoming teachers to further perpetuate misconceptions.

So how do you counter this tendency?

1. Question things. Try to understand the cause and effect relationships between specific efforts and results. Doing something a certain way just because a master musician says to do it that way may not necessarily guarantee success. Become a respectful, but healthy skeptic (like some of my favorite students). Same thing if you’re on the teaching side of things. Question why, and understand why,  you do the things you do as you play (especially before you tell your students to do likewise).

2. Study the science. The more you understand your design (more specifically your musculoskeletal anatomy and physiology), the easier it is to filter out (or at least re-frame) counterproductive advice. Same with understanding acoustics. If something is acoustically impossible or flies in the face of anatomical reality, you can simply discard it. Aim, as scientists do, to understand the “mechanism” of how and why something works they way it does. (This also applies to the point above about “questioning things”.)

3. Improve your sensory perception. This is where the Alexander Technique comes in handy. You’re often not doing with yourself exactly what you think you’re doing. Part of the study and application of the Alexander Technique is bridging this perceptual gap between what you think you’re doing, and what you’re actually doing.

4. Be wary of words. There can be so much flexibility in the meaning of even the most carefully chosen words. What you read, or are told, may not at all reflect the intention and understanding of whomever read or spoke them. When it comes to teaching and learning highly skilled activities, words without a direct and clear kinesthetic experience can often be misleading for both teacher and student.

So whether you are learning, are teaching, or doing both, staying cognizant of these potential communication gaps between teacher and student can significantly improve results.

Optimizing Practice: Habit Versus Choice

Leave a reply

After teaching the Alexander Technique to musicians for a number of years now, one thing I can assert with confidence is that there’s never such thing as a “typical” lesson.

In fact, I usually have no idea what I’ll be working on with my student at the beginning of a lesson. My only agenda is to follow her/his needs, as I observe and ask questions.

But there is always one underlying theme to any lesson I give in the Alexander Technique: habit versus choice.

The subject of habit versus choice is always front and center in any Alexander Technique lesson. The musicians who seek my help do so because, in the simplest sense,  their (primarily unconscious) habits are creating difficulties for them as they make music.

It might be excess tension that is leading to pain and/or injury. It might be an issue of coordination that is interfering with their skills. It might be that they’re just stuck in their progress, no matter how hard they’re working to find a way forward.

Whatever the reason, it all comes down to habit. So often, what I work on with my students is teaching them how to replace habit with choice.

Because many habits are so deeply ingrained, they can tend to fall below the consciousness of even the most self-aware musician.

This is partly out of necessity. I mean, after all, a habit is really just a response pattern that you learn in order to make a particular movement/gesture/posture immediately available. In a sense, it’s your nervous system’s attempt at efficiency. For example, you wouldn’t get very far if you had to completely reinvent how to hold your instrument every day. You can rely upon habit to do that for you.

Yet “how you hold your instrument” might be the very thing that is causing some of your problems, especially if you have chronic pain, or get easily fatigued as you play, or struggle with your technique.

This is where choice comes into play. Through choice, you can learn that there is a better way to hold your instrument, a way that is not only in agreement with your desired musical outcome, but also, with your human structural design.

This begins by bringing the unconscious (habit) into consciousness (choice). In fact, once you bring habit into your consciousness, you bring it into the realm of choice.

For the practical purposes of a musician, I categorize habits in two ways:

1. Reactive

2. Strategic

Reactive habit is what you do with yourself immediately, and unconsciously, as you begin to play your instrument, or sing (as I’ve explained above). It starts the instant you think  about playing, and manifests itself into a set of bodily reactions (posture/movement).

Many of these reactions are necessary to the act of playing.

Yet many others are not…

For example, if you stiffen your neck and pull your head down into your spine as you pull your shoulders up toward your ears as you are preparing to play, that’s an habitual response to the thought  of playing that will never  help you to achieve your desired goal (no matter your instrument).

What you’re doing in effect is interfering with your gross motor coordination as you attempt to carry out a skill of fine motor coordination. It’s simply counterproductive.

Many of the problems of pain, as well as coordination, that a musician struggles with are a result of their reactive habits (how they maintain posture and balance, how they move as they play).

A large part of my job is in bringing these reactive habits into my students awareness, and then teaching them a practical way to prevent them.

Strategic habit is how you steer your practice efforts in the long run, and in the moment:

How effectively do you choose, organize and carry out your work in the practice room? How well do you regress and progress an exercise to suit your need? How willing are you to explore being “wrong” to find the possibility of a new kind of “right”? How flexible are you in your practice process in general? In your daily practice routine?

Being habitually stuck with practice strategies is a huge source of frustration for many serious musicians. Bringing habit into the light can give clearer choices about how to proceed in a more productive and efficient way.

And of course, many “strategic” habits are supported by “reactive” habits and vice versa. (Rigidity in thinking goes hand in hand with rigidity in the body.)

So if you’d like to change, start by addressing your habits. Question things. Notice what you do with yourself as you start playing. What happens in your neck? What do you do with your balance? What happens in your breathing? What about your arms and shoulders? Your legs and feet?

Once you notice something you “do”, ask yourself, “Do I want to do that?” If the answer is “yes”, then ask yourself if what you do is helping you along, and is accordance with your human design (this is where a good Alexander Technique teacher can really help), and in support of your desired outcomes as a musician.

If the answer is “no”, you’ve just moved habit closer into the realm of choice by opening up the possibility of changing  how you respond. You can choose to rethink what you do.

When you choose, you make yourself free to improve, free to move toward optimizing your potential, free to believe in your ability to change and adapt, free to step with confidence into the unknown.

Four Skills Every Beginning Jazz Improviser Must Develop

3 Replies


One of the unfortunate things that beginning students of jazz improvisation often face is frustration. To create music spontaneously can seem like such a vast, daunting, almost shapeless subject.

As a teacher, many of the novices I encounter have already started practicing improvisation. But because they are working on it in an illogical, or inefficient way, they don’t seem to get past square one:

I can’t seem to make any music out of it all when I try to improvise. Just random, seemingly unrelated attempts at stringing notes together.

Exasperations such as this are quite common from the beginner, especially if she/he has lots of experience (and reasonable skill) playing notated music.

How do you approach such a discipline as jazz? Where do you begin?

You begin with having a genuine passion about the music, and with the thrilling process of spontaneous creation we call improvisation. Without that, nothing really happens.

Improvisation is a process of self-expression. It’s not a “right/wrong” type of skill like engineering or grammar. You can’t really learn it in a sterile, “test tube” kind of way. It’s more of a “I want to say it like this, because that’s how I feel” kind of thing.

If you’re passionate about the music, you can then commit to regular serious study (regardless how limited your time is).

So what to study? How do you minimize frustration?

Well (if you haven’t already), listen to lots and lots of recordings of the artists you most admire. The more you listen, the clearer your internal conception of the jazz language becomes.

Then, work on developing a constructive  practice process to help you cultivate the skills that will enable you to express yourself within this language.

There are essentially four skills that every jazz musician is constantly (or should be!) developing in order to grow. These four skills are necessary no matter where you are in your journey. They are:

1.Hearing-You need to be constantly working toward connecting what you hear  with what you play  (or would like to play). Ultimately, improvisation is a process that is driven by your aural imagination. This applies to rhythm and time feel, pitch and form (see below). The more vividly you hear something, the more likely it is to come of your instrument as you improvise. This includes listening deeply to the improvising musicians you would most like to emulate. Pick a solo that you absolutely love, and listen to it as many times as it takes for you to be able to accurately sing it in unison with the soloist.

2. Controlling time and rhythm-You must be able to move. It’s that simple. Improvisation involves moving pitch in time. If you have nothing to imagine (which rhythms, what kind of time feel), you lack the necessary impetus to move.

3. Controlling pitch-Of course you need to gain control of the notes you’re playing. Whether you’re improvising over harmonic progressions, modes, or even freely, the question of how you choose and organize pitch is a never-ending pursuit. Scales, chords, passing tones, melodic patterns, classic licks, etc., all need to be studied and absorbed over time in your practice process. But all of your note choices must be integrated with (and driven by) your rhythmic and time/feel impulse.

4. Internalizing form-Being able to feel  bar forms, song structures, etc.,  without having to think about it (get distracted by it) is crucial  if you’re going to express yourself  freely as you improvise. Learning to feel the building blocks of two-measure phrases and then learning to connect these blocks to internalize longer forms (like standard songs, for example) is necessary to allow you to play confidently with other musicians, as well as give you a broader perspective of the canvas on which you’re painting your improvised picture.

It is important that you prioritize these skills in the most productive manner, and organize your practice efforts around these priorities.

The biggest mistake I see novice improvers make is putting far too much emphasis on which notes to play. Sure, pitch is important. It’s very important. But if you can’t move, if you can’t dance with the pitches, you have nothing but nondescript spatterings of random notes.

Start with controlling time and rhythm  instead. Start by working on simple, pre-determined rhythmic patterns, with a limited pitch set (for example, a pentatonic scale, or blues scale). Find easily singable melodic patterns that you can bring to life. You should be able to dance  to what you play. Work in two-bar phrase segments, in order to help you deepen your sense of form.

The second biggest mistake I see novice improvisers make is biting off more than they can chew. Simpler, easier, clearer and more precise…all better choices. If you’re getting frustrated with what you’re working on, regress it. Make it more doable and  more satisfying. Avoid what the great pianist Bill Evans described as “approximating”. Build patiently on what you have.

Sing as much as you can! If you learn a blues scale, for example, practice improvising without your instrument. Sing your solo. And listen to your favorite improvisers very mindfully, noting as many details as you can about their time feel, phrasing, rhythmic  and pitch choices. Listen to a solo until you can sing it vividly, bringing it to life with these details.

Your clear conception in conjunction with your ability to move (rhythm, time, form) will have you steadily and surely developing your true voice as an improviser.