How to Get Started After a Break

Let us face the truth: we all take a break now and then. Maybe we are resting up after a strenuous season of performing. Maybe we have just finished a grueling series of activities that demanded a great deal of our time and emotion. Maybe we just came back from a much deserved vacation. Whatever the reason, we needed a break and we took it. Now we have had our rest and we need to get started back up again with our practice routine. But how? What is the best way to get started up again? I suggest that you follow three steps:

1. Evaluate Your Routine
2. Start Small
3. Build Your Plan

Step One: Evaluate Your Routine

First of all, I presume that you had a routine in the past. That would be good. If you did not have a routine or did not have much of a routine, this is a great chance for you to nail down this important point. As any music teacher will tell you, your child's music education and ability development will go much smoother and be much easier for you, the practice parent, if the child has a regular, structured practice routine. Your child's music teacher will be able to accomplish a great deal more in lessons. Your child's self esteem will grow as the child has more of a sense of accomplishment at lessons and in practices.

However, even if you had a regular, structured practice routine, this does not mean that you must remain tied to that routine. If you have taken a break, this would be a very good time to evaluate the effectiveness of your practice plan and routine. Is the practice plan still serving you and your family well? As you look ahead to the coming month, semester, or year, will your current routine fit well with whatever other demands there are on your time and energy?

Now would also be a good time to introduce any new elements that you planned to include in your home practices. Will you use a new recording system? Have you discovered a goal-planning form that you thought looked promising and useful? Do you have some new practice incentives or review plans? Have you learned of a new practice tip from another helpful parent?

Now is also a good time to do a little research about practicing or reviewing. I have a friend who recently published a book about reviewing. I would love to interview her for you, but in the meantime, you might look into her books now: Sue Hunt and her Music in Practice website.

Another useful website is Leslie Thackeray's The Practice Shoppe. You may find many interesting items here along with numerous practice charts in the site's free downloads section. I hope to bring you an interview from Leslie too one day.

Step Two: Start Small

As with any endeavor, it is better to start with a small step. For my pre-twinkle and early book 1 students, my "small step" is to go back to the very beginning. At first, the student's concentration and focus will need attention. If the student had enough ability to concentrate and focus for a 30 minute lesson previously, I may now find that the student's focus is merely strong enough for half that time. That is alright, because the student's focus will grow back to normal in as little as a week or a few days of concentrated effort.

I start with concentration games: staring contest, look-at-the-toy, peek-a-boo, and other "fascination" type games. I also go back to the basics in terms of posture. I notice that after a break, students seem to forget how to take a bow, stand in rest position, and get ready in playing position with the usual set up steps. So I go back to the beginning and work these initial set up steps again and again until students can once again do the set up steps routine without thinking. I may spend the entire first lesson working on this issue. I try to turn this into a fun game of "Suzuki Says," but my goal is to have my student and his or her parent go home with this issue well in hand. To read my previous article about set up steps, click here.

If there is any time left in the lesson (I would certainly hope so!), then I go to the next step. For pre-twinklers, my next step is to work through the pre-twinkle songs that we learn in lessons and group classes:

• Flower Song (Marilyn O'Boyle)
• Monkey Song (Marilyn O'Boyle)
• Songs from Joanne Martin's "Magic Carpet for Violin" (e.g., Tango, Easter Island Monkey, Bow River Fiddling)
• Songs from David Tasgal's "Strings Fun & Easy," such as:
• Lullaby
• Duck Song
• Blast Off
• I'm Number One
• We also use many of these songs to learn to read music.

For my book 1 students, after I check the set up steps and posture issues, I begin with the Twinkle Variations. If the student and parent have taken a break, then the Twinkle Variations are exactly the place to start. Even though I am a professional performing musician for over 42 years, I still find the Twinkle Variations to be the best method of cleaning up any bad habits in my posture, my playing, or my sound. I begin with the Twinkle Variations for all of my students as well as for myself. From there I progress to songs that occur in later books.

For most of my young students, I find that it never hurts to review songs that the students previously learned; in fact, I highly recommend review as the best step to take to improve a student's learning. I may spend most of the first group class in the fall semester reviewing songs that we already should know. I want my students to review regularly, but I know that unless I check on this every week, it may be skipped in home practices.

Even my most advanced students benefit from a review of early songs. I have my favorites for checking various points: Perpetual Motion, Etude, Minuet 2 or 3, Musette, Waltz, Gavotte from "Mignon," Minuet in G, Becker's Gavotte, Bach's Two Gavottes (book 3), Bach's Bourrée (book 3), the Seitz Concertos, the outer movements of the Vivaldi A minor Concerto, and so forth. Still, all of the songs in the Suzuki repertoire serve an important purpose in advancing a student's skill development, so all of the songs are worth reviewing.

I focus very strongly on review after my students have taken a break. I find that this type of intense review may take a few days or at most a week, but if a parent approaches this review with the right focus, the Suzuki practice world will improve immensely.

Step Three: Build Your Plan

Once you have evaluated your previous practice routine and plan and done some intense review of the building blocks of posture and playing well, it is time to build your future plan. There are several important ingredients to a good practice plan no matter what the age or level of the student or musician. I include the following components when I build a practice plan for my students: listening, review, tonalization, technique building, interpretation time, and performance time.

• Listening

I ask my students to listen every day to the repertoire they are studying. For example, if a student is in book 1, then I expect that student to listen to the book 1 songs daily. I ask parents to play the CD with a "background" volume and set it to repeat ("background" volume is a volume that allows you to talk without feeling a need to raise your voice to talk over the recording. When you set the volume appropriately, you will quickly forget that the music is playing, but the music plays and the listening magic happens). When appropriate, the student can add the book 2 CD, and so forth. I knew one mom who made a special recording of all ten of the Suzuki violin volumes and looped it through the house every day. I myself listen regularly to the repertoire that I study.

I have heard criticism about the listening program from non-Suzuki teachers that says listening will cause students to be robotic in their playing. I do not agree. As painters learn from studying and imitating the great masters in the Louvre, I believe that music students will learn with study to imitate the great performers that my students hear in good recordings. My advanced students do not automatically copy what they hear on a recording but instead bring a discussion to lessons about what they like and dislike in the recordings that my students heard. I encourage this sort of scholarship. This discerning evaluation all begins with a solid and consistent listening program.

• Review

A practice plan should include review of previous material that the student learned. Everything in the Suzuki repertoire builds on previous material. It is simpler to introduce new skills by incorporating them into material that is familiar and therefore easy for students to play. I strongly recommend that parents develop a systematic plan that will review previously learned material. Whether this plan includes a review chart, a coffee can full of popsicle sticks, an envelope with slips of paper, or a creative game challenge, parents should develop a system that will keep the student's focus on this important part of skill development. I like to include review items in the beginning of a practice routine to warm up the student's muscles, mental processes, and memory.

• Tonalization

Vocalists vocalize by practicing long tones to develop a beautiful sound or tone. Dr. Suzuki created the term "tonalization" to represent the similar study that other instruments do. Brass and woodwind players practice long tones. Dr. Suzuki thought that string players should also work on building tone through similar exercises. There are many possibilities to practice tonalization in the Suzuki repertoire; Dr. Suzuki included many such exercises throughout the Suzuki books. For more advanced students, a scale program or etude book might also serve as a place to develop a good tone and strong sound. Even pre-twinkle students may work on tonalization by playing open string songs or simple Twinkle rhythms on open strings. Every student of every level should incorporate tonalization of one kind or another in a practice plan. I like to include tonalization exercises early in the practice plan while the student is still warming up. Tonalization exercises provide a nice connection between warming up and technique building, the next area of my ideal practice plan.

• Technique Building

This area of the practice plan would include any areas of new skill and ability development. Perhaps the student has several previews of new songs to practice, or the student is adding new skills to previously learned songs. I would include anything new in the student's practice plan in this area. For advanced students, this could also include scales and etudes. I like to add technique building items early in the practice plan while the student's energy and focus are still fresh.

• Interpretation Time

This area is especially important for advanced students, but even younger or less advanced students can include this in the practice plan. I find that sometimes students and parents focus too easily on the technique building phase and neglect the expressive phase of music making. By focusing some time and attention on the skill of expression and interpretation, students learn how to build something larger than themselves. Students learn how to use music to connect with listeners and others, including fellow musicians.

Interpretation time includes attention to phrasing, dynamics, style, and musical expression. Here is a link to an article about artistic phrasing rules that was written by Leila Viss.

• Performance Time

One of the best ways to get back into a practice routine is to set up a performance schedule. Look ahead and schedule any possible performances. Perhaps it is a monthly community performance. We have a local coffee shop that provides performance opportunities for young students on the first Thursday night of each month. Performance opportunities might also include school talent shows, church services, studio recitals, community Christmas programs, or book graduation recitals. Put these performance opportunities on the calendar and work backwards to figure out mini-goals to prepare for the performances.

When starting up after a break, remember to think and start small. Build slowly. Reevaluate what you have done before. Add the components of a good practice plan that I have listed above a few at a time. It may seem overwhelming at first, but the process of igniting the practice fire will actually take less time than one would imagine.

The tricks are simple:

Get started.

Start small.

Practice Rut? Expand Your Thinking!

It is easy to get into a practice rut. Your practice sessions with your child become routine, and your interest wanes.  You lose your enthusiasm for the number of repetitions that your child’s teacher thinks are important (Ten times a day? Really?). Even professional musicians suffer from this problem and have to work to discover the fun that can be found in practice. I have a solution: expand your thinking.

I know. It sounds like that tired cliche, “think outside the box.” But really, that is what is required. Here are three examples where expanding your thinking produces something entertaining and interesting.

Squares of Eight

I borrowed this idea from an article I read at http://practicespot.com. If you have not visited this site, there are many free articles and theory tools that you will find useful and interesting.

The purpose of the “Squares of Eight” game is to teach the student the best way to master something and what quality effort is involved. The game also provides the student with an interesting and fun way to do repetitions. I want to demonstrate to the student how important correct repetitions are. You have heard the old adage that “practice makes perfect,” but in reality “practice makes permanent,” and that is the true lesson that I want a student to learn and take away from this game.

Before we begin the game, the student and I identify a particular passage or finger exercise that we want to improve with practice. In the squares of eight, I take a piece of paper and fold it in half. Then I fold it in half again, so that the paper has been quartered. Then I fold it one additional time; the paper is now evenly divided into eight squares. I number each square sequentially from one to eight. I put a small game piece (a poker chip or a small piece of candy will also work) on square number one.

The student plays the passage or exercise. If the student plays correctly, the student then advances the game piece to the next square. The student plays the passage or exercise again. Now the game becomes interesting. If the student does well, the game piece is moved ahead. But, if the student does not play the passage correctly, the game piece gets moved back a square. We continue the game until the student finally reaches square 8.

As a teacher I find it amusing to watch how different students work through this game. Some students keep “banging their head against a wall” by doing the same thing over and over without ever addressing the issue. I have to offer more guidance in these cases. Usually though a student soon figures out that a slower and more careful repetition will net a positive result and advance the game piece further ahead. In other words, the student learns that slow and steady nets quicker practice results.

Then we play with this game and “expand our thinking” to keep the game interesting. One student drew a race track that wound among the squares and used a little match car as a game piece. Another student turned the game into a pirate story that had various obstacles to successfully navigate to reach the treasure in the last square. Another student nicknamed the squares to represent the difficulties that each square represented. For example, square number four was the “habit breaker” and square number six was the “habit maker."

The Scary Story

Here is another example of expanding your thinking. In this example, the student was learning how to navigate some of the tricky places in “Humoresque” in Suzuki Violin book 3. I stuck some colored highlighting tape on each tricky place to make it easier for her to isolate the passages that needed extra attention and repetition. The student would also see the areas to come, and the colored tape would “foreshadow” the areas before she played them, reminding her to take her time and be careful. The different colors also helped the student to get a picture in her head of the piece’s logical structure, which would help her with her memory.

We used yellow, purple, blue, pink, and green tape and one teensy bit of red. To make the practice sessions even more interesting to think about, we gave each colored area a name. The yellow tape referred to the patch of “Yellow Yucky Yuccas.” The purple place became the “Purple Pools of Poison.” The blue tape spot became the “Blue Bogs of Bubbles,” and the green tape became the “Green Gorge of Ghosts.” We also have the "Pink Patches of Prickles." The little red tape spot became the “Red Rose of Ramputa,” which was isolated in the middle of the purple spot to remind the student of a particular grace note place.

When the student plays the song, she concentrates on making her way through all the treacherous spots with exotic names. We giggle about the names and use goofy voices like TV announcers in a wild animal documentary. We added a “swaying bridge” over the “Green Gorge of Ghosts” to imitate the swaying motion that the bow uses to make the string crossings.

Do the Opposite

Sometimes a practice rut can be overcome by expanding your thinking with a different or opposite expectation. For example, I have trouble on a particular Bach Allegro movement. I have always had difficulty with this particular movement because it stretches my tiny hand in an uncomfortable way. There is nothing I can do except practice it enough times so that it eventually improves. I noticed that my frustration was increasing, so I decided to do the opposite with my expectation. Instead of making music of it, I turned it into an etude.

Gasp!

Yup. I turned that fine piece of music into a thing of drudgery. Instead of frustrating myself about making the piece sound beautiful, I altered my expectations. Some might say I lowered my expectations.

An interesting thing happened as a result. I started to improve. I still have some trouble playing it but not as much trouble as I did before. I am still not ready to make music out of the exercise just yet. I want to keep working on this etude project a while longer before I decide to add the additional complexity of a musical expectation. My goal is to continue with this “exercise” throughout January.

You can invent your own opposite expectation whenever you encounter a practice issue or frustration by first identifying what your expectation is. Then figure out a way to change that expectation.

I provided three examples above of ways that you can expand your thinking. These are just three ways that popped up this week during my teaching sessions. Take a look at what you are practicing this next week and consider whether you can use any of these ideas to shake things up a little.

Quick Practice Tip: Warming Up is Hard to Do

I have never enjoyed warming up. I understand the reasons why warming up is a good thing, but in general, I have never been very good at it. Even when I exercise, whether weight training or running, I tend to move right to the good stuff rather than start slow with stretching or slow movement.

Warming Up for a Recital

When I am preparing for a recital, I find it useful to "warm up" on the very first piece that I intend to play on the recital, at least the first half page. That is because in my experience I feel "cold" when I begin a recital, no matter how much I have warmed up before the recital. Despite this cold feeling I am confident anyway, because I have practiced performing this part of the recital from a "cold" start. Nothing unsettles me psychologically about the "cold" start anymore because I have prepared myself to perform well under these conditions.

Also, when I am playing regularly, I seldom actually go "cold" in the first place. My memory and physical state stay ready. The most that I have to do is use some hand lotion to lubricate my dry skin. Otherwise, I am pretty much ready to go.

Warming Up for Practice in General

Still, I understand that there is a value to routine, and so I continue to construct a warm up routine that will suit my lifestyle of the moment. At this moment, I have little free time because I am teaching at a strings camp in a neighboring town over an hour away. So what warm up or practice time I have is limited in time and scope. I need to pack a wallop in a short time. I have turned to Kreutzer to help me do this.

I have identified four of the earlier Kreutzer etudes, and I play them every day. You might select four different etudes to fulfill your needs, but the four I selected suit me perfectly for right now. I play through #5, 8, 10, and 12. Here are my reasons why.

#5 causes me to hold my left hand a little higher to accommodate the Eb finger patterns. My left hand is quite small (I should be playing a 7/8 size violin), and Eb is tiring unless I hold my hand a little steeper. I play this etude and focus on keeping my left hand high enough to keep a nice curved shape to my left pinkie. I might add one or two of the bowing variations suggested.

#8 causes my left hand to stretch to play the E and B major finger patterns contained in this etude. These finger patterns are huge reaches for me, so practicing this etude daily helps to keep my left hand limber and unfurled. I also add one or two of the bowing variations, but just playing through the etude is quite a chore by itself.

#10 is one of my favorites. I have always enjoyed this one since the day I first learned it. My teacher Helen Kwalwasser had me perform the etude at opposite ends of the bow. I would play a whole bow on the first eighth note and the next groups of 16th notes at the tip, and then play a whole bow on the next eighth note and play the 16th note grouping at the frog. This style encouraged me to play equally at opposite ends of the bow. I would be careful to make good contact points at the tip and to use the appropriate amount of finger motion at the frog. I would work to make my notes at the tip sound stronger and my notes at the frog match the volume of those at the tip (and vice versa). There are good opportunities to make thoughtful shifts as well.

#12 is a good exercise in shifting, intonation, arpeggios, and extended fingers in the higher positions. I have always found this etude to be a little tough, because it requires the extended reaches at the top end of the arpeggios. I can easily play this etude if I were to rewrite the fingerings to a more accommodating position for my small hand, but I find it useful to insist that I continue stretching my left hand at every appropriate opportunity, always being careful not to over do things and injure myself.

Every day I play through these four etudes. Even after a few days, I noticed a huge improvement in the ease of playing them. Maybe sometime down the road I will switch to four different etudes. There are occasional days when I do different Kreutzer etudes just to add variety, but generally, I like these four etudes. I hope to have them completely memorized so that I can draw on them at any moment.

What are your favorite warm up routines?

Intonation, part 4: a Hodgepodge

In addition to our previous discussions about intonation, I have included here a mixture of additional ideas for practicing intonation. Please leave me a comment about your own personal favorite intonation exercises.

Drones: Have a note playing like a drone while playing scales or some passage. Most tuners are capable of sounding a note like a drone. At first play the tonic note as the drone. Later play other important notes in the key, such as the dominant or subdominant notes. When the exercise seems fairly easy, try playing to a drone note in an unrelated key, e.g., drone E natural while playing in the Bb key, or drone F# while playing in C major. It is also possible to play and use one's own open strings as a drone during practice.

Fun with Scales: Have someone whose intonation you trust play a scale a major third below you. For example, if you are playing D major, have the other person play Bb at the same time. I got this idea from a scale book entitled "Scales Plus!" by William Starr published by Alfred Music Publishing.

Have someone play a scale a major second below you. For example, if you are playing a D major scale, have the other person play in C major. This is another idea from William Starr.

Doublestops: Have the student do extensive practice with doublestops. There are several possible books that one can use:

A popular book for intermediate and advanced students is "Scales for Advanced Violinists" by Barbara Barber published by Alfred Publishing. For each key, Ms. Barber has provided the basic scales for doublestops in thirds, sixths, octaves, tenths, fingered octaves, and harmonics along with the basic major and melodic minor scales, broken thirds, and the general arpeggio routine through all the arpeggios related to the major scale (tonic minor, tonic major, submediant, subdominant, subdominant minor, diminished, and dominant seventh).

"Melodious Double-Stops" by Josephine Trott, volumes 1 & 2, published by G. Schirmer, Inc. Initially Ms. Trott presents doublestop etudes that incorporate the open strings, but the volumes progress in difficulty. My students generally like the tunefulness of the melodies versus just practicing scales alone.

"Quint Etudes for Violin" by Shinichi Suzuki, Revised Edition, published by Suzuki Method International. This book is my personal favorite. Dr. Suzuki discusses the difficulty of keeping the fingers in the correct placement across the various four strings. As the fingers move from one string to another, they may not land in the correct placement because the student's perception is inaccurate due to the finger angle changing. And, if the student has another problem, such as not moving the elbow under the instrument to accommodate the various string levels, then the fingers will not land in correct placement. The Quint Etudes address and correct these problems, and the etudes use perfect intervals such as fourths, fifths, and unisons to strengthen the student's ear. I have had great success with this etude book in identifying left hand placement issues and in strengthening the student's ear.

Hand in hand with the Quint Etudes, I have used the "Position Etudes" by Shinichi Suzuki, Revised Edition, published by Suzuki Method International. As a student plays progressively higher in pitch up the violin fingerboard, the tonal quality of the notes sounds thicker to the ear, and students can become confused about the correct pitch. This etude book can help to address that problem by progressively exposing the student to each position using a song that is very familiar to Suzuki students, i.e., "Perpetual Motion." Suzuki students learn this basic tune in book 1, but later in book 2, students are introduced to a transposition of this song into Bb. From that transposition, the students learn the basic fingering of the song beginning with the first finger. This fingering is then used to introduce the students to each successive position, still using the melody of "Perpetual Motion."

Playing Along: My husband is a professional trombonist, and I was curious as to how he worked with his students to build proper intonation, as the trombone seemed similar to the violin in terms of how easy it would be to "land" on the incorrect pitch. He told me that he plays along with his students constantly at their lessons and is relentless about having them match pitch.

We Aren't Finished Yet: Finally, the subject of intonation is more complex than I have presented here. So many areas of a player's technique and general life condition can have adverse effects on pitch, including improper posture, lazy ears, sloppy practice and listening habits, health considerations (waxy ear build up, or a cold or sinus infection), and less than stellar equipment (false or old strings and lesser quality instruments). And I haven't even touched upon the advanced tuning strategies that professionals employ to fine tune intonation in performance. The ideas included above are just a few of the many possible ideas I know about how to address intonation problems. I like to think of these ideas as arrows in my quiver: I have many different arrows stored up for use depending on the particular student and his or her intonation problem.

I look forward to hearing from you what ideas you favor and find useful that I may not have included here.

We are winding down 2010. Just a few days left to vote in the polls printed here in the right sidebar. Let your vote count! New polls are coming in 2011.

Stay tuned for the new year on January 1, 2011, because I will be issuing a practice challenge. You won't want to miss January 1st and my practice challenge! Everyone can do this!