I hear a lot of people talk about how they've practiced 10 hours in one day, or how they've pulled an all-nighter with playing. I'll admit too, when I was first starting out on horn, I would have a tendency to do this too. At a certain point though, you have to learn when enough is enough.How much practicing is too much?
If you're a new player just starting out, going way too far can hurt you in the long run more than it will help. Even though it might seem fun to start playing and just go at it for the next four to six hours, this can easily damage the tissue in your lips and lead to serious injuries down the road.
Take it from me, when I was in my first year on the horn, I was trying to push through Kopprasch all day, everyday. This lead me to over exert myself and lead to me developing a "rougher" sound for awhile. My teacher thought this sound problem might have caused by damages to the facial area. Once I started backing off the playing by only an hour or two, and spacing out my practice sessions, I realized a huge change in my sound and became a much more relaxed player. Limiting yourself to only a couple half hour practice sessions a day will get you great results.
For a seasoned veteran you still shouldn't push it too far. For someone who has gotten used to the half hour practice sessions but thinks they need a little more, 45 minutes is an ideal number in my head. It's long enough where you have time to break something down, figure it out, and then get it ingrained in your head. All of that without getting too fatigued. I still wouldn't do too many practice sessions a day, even for more experienced people. Two or three on a normal day, then if you're really feeling up to it, no more than five.
Now here comes that issue of building endurance. To be able to play pieces like Mahler and R. Strauss, we need to be able to play for longer than 45 minutes. The way to practice dealing with this, without hurting yourself, is in the last practice session of the day, you'll start to feel a bit tired toward the very end. Push through it for about five to ten minutes and learn what it feels like to play well, even though you've already started to reach your limit.
The main point I'm driving at here is that you need to learn how to be more efficient with your time. If you can learn a phrase in 20 minutes, instead of an hour, simply by focusing more, then go for it! You also don't need to learn everything in one day, your mind isn't designed that way. Pick a few things each day that you want improve on, really improve on them, then call it a day and chill. Your mind and body need the rest, and it will pay off in the long run.
Very interesting article! Practicing less has always brought very interesting results for me. Natural horn playing can be, in some ways, even more taxing for the lips than modern horn playing, especially when you are working on the high baroque works. One thing I realize quite young actually and helped me along the way was that it is always better, to my experience, to play a concert with fresh lips then having practiced too much and having to play with beaten up muscles.
ReplyDeleteOne other thing that is interesting to experiment with is how little you need to practice in order to keep your playing at a normal stable level. I have come to realize that by playing about 30 minutes a day (mostly working on some technical aspects), I can keep my playing level equal and can keep going for weeks, without getting better or worse. This is every important as we don't have to get better everyday. Personally, I choose the periods I want to improve (when I have less concerts to play) and the periods when I prefer having fresh muscles and the mind in a good disposition!
I whole heartily agree that natural horn can be more taxing than the modern horn. I was doing a recording of Villanelle for a competition and I was surprised by how tired I was after the first page.
ReplyDeleteAlso before my DePaul audition I made sure everything was spotless, but then, I also did ease back a couple days before the actually audition. My face felt great, I had better than usually endurance, and I was pleasantly surprised my overall technique hadn't noticeably deteriorated at all.
I find you're theory that not every day has to be a day when we get better, for a longer period of time, very interesting as well. For the sake of consistency that is very true and that I've never thought about it quite like that. Kind of like, if something is already sounding great, why keep fixing it.