How many stumbling blocks are there between the instrumental teacher’s vision of home practice and the reality? Take the idea of isolating an individual phrase for concentrated practice. The pupil needs to be sure:

• where exactly to begin and end
• how long they will have to get back to the beginning
• how many times are required to ensure improvement

Then there are questions of tempo:

• beginning slowly enough to rule out the risk of entering false data into the memory
• increasing gradually
• keeping a steady beat within each repetition

You could jot down suggested metronome marks for the pupil to use. However, there may be stumbling blocks:

• no metronome at home
• access to an online metronome driving the family up the wall
• even if they own a metronome – exasperation at stopping, adjusting and recommencing every few seconds = possibly even dropping the instrument

Alternatively, you could do this in class – this particular example, created in Sibelius and exported as a midi file, takes only 35 seconds. Even running through it 3x in class would only take 1′ 45” and you could see the improvement taking place. Moreover, you could see the pupil seeing improvement taking place.

Experimenting with it yesterday I discovered a couple of tips:

• enter the increased metronome mark in the space between phrases – not at the beginning of the new phrase – so that the pupil can hear the increase before playing
• choose a suitable place to stop and, if necessary, insert a suitable gap
• consider differentiated versions – creating alternative versions with more or less extreme increments will take less time than starting pupil’s out on the wrong one

While I’m pleased to have stumbled upon this idea, I couldn’t believe that I’ve had this software for years and never thought of it before. In the words of Homer Simpson click

Categories: Music, Technology