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The Confident Musicianing Podcast
Four ways I practice as a conservatoire student
When we practice, we tend to think it is just playing our instrument. But that isn't everything! Here are four ways I practice.
This episode is available as a blog post. Click here to read!
Click here for more on how I mentally practice.
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Hello and welcome to the Confident Musicianing Podcast. My name is Eleanor and I am a British American oboist studying at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland literally my dream school and it took me a long way to get there. I applied and auditioned for 12 schools in three different countries. It was a lot of hard work but, oh my gosh, so worth it. I want you to have the confidence to work hard in achieving your goals, so come with me as we go on this journey together. So sit down, pull up a chair, take a seat or, if you're on the go, welcome to the Confident Musicianing Podcast.
Speaker 1:I am an oboe student at a conservatoire and if all I did when I practiced was just play the oboe, then I would not have grown as much as I have at the oboe. I think it's such an interesting thing. I feel like when we think of practice a a lot of the times me included we just think of sitting down with your instrument, making noise, doing the same thing over and over again until you get it right, spending hours and hours, and hours and hours in a room just making noise, making noise, and I mean that is good to a point. But I think it's also really important to apply different kinds of practice, because there are, you know, kinds of practice where we play our instrument, but then we can also practice in ways that are a little different, maybe even without our instruments. That can still help us in specific things. I think if all we did was one thing to fix a multitude of issues, some of those issues would not be fixed as well as they could be if we had. You know, if we just do one thing, which is just practice by playing and making noise. So today we are gonna dive right into different ways of practicing. I have four different ways that I practice and, like everyone's, I suppose everyone's levels in terms of like how much you do one thing versus another thing is gonna be different, but these things have really helped me in my practice. So let's get into it.
Speaker 1:I think it's really important to understand the different kinds of practice, first and foremost to get better in the ways that we specifically need. So for me, I am currently changing styles, oboe playing styles from the American style to the European style and unless you're an oboist, you might not know like it it's. That is a lot right. That is completely a different way of playing the oboe. My embouchure is different, the way I breathe is different, the way I, you know, support my air is different All of these things, the reads are different, they're so, so different, and because of this I'm actually training different muscles than I would be using if I was doing the American style.
Speaker 1:And because of this I, you know, get a lot of fatigue from this. Especially at the beginning, I like I couldn't play for longer than like 10 minutes at a time because my face was just so tired, because it's doing something it's not used to, and so. So, in order to kind of just get everything done that I needed to do practice wise, I couldn't always just play the oboe, and that can also be the case if maybe you struggle with pain as well. I have some chronic illnesses, and that they contribute to pain when I play the oboe. If I play the oboe for too long, I do get some pain, and so you know, if I have a day where I'm having more pain than usual, then I might need to have an alternative way of practicing that day.
Speaker 1:So here are four ways of practicing that have helped me grow so far. So the first one is regular practice. We're starting off with the regular one. I mean, I suppose regular is subjective, but the practice we think of when we think of practicing, just playing the oboe, just practicing and I think there are different ways of doing this specific thing. I mean we could just like get into a practice room and just like play whatever and then just keep going and then just like just make noise, or we can be extremely intentional with every note. It is easy to just play whatever we want, but being intentional with everything, even every single note, is really really helpful.
Speaker 1:I think something that I have been working on in my regular practice, and just the standard practice that I do, is really channeling joy through the oboe and fullness of sound. I think this is really important because I recently failed my midterm technical exam at my conservatoire and I'm doing a reset and one of the things that I'm working on is kind of preparing before playing scales and making sure that it is basically just as musical as it possibly can be and full of just joy and just fullness and confidence and you know all of these good things, um, to help especially with, like the stress of it right, and so when I'm practicing, being intentional with every single note that I play is really helpful. It can be tiring. I feel like sometimes I get done with some practice and like this was, this was really tiring, I'm really tired. But that is kind of a similar idea of just being intentional with every single note, even if it does make you tired. But that's much better than just playing, to play If you want to get better. You know, if you're focusing on something, it's much better than just playing whatever and not actually being there and thinking about it, because then you're just wasting time, you know I mean. So that's the regular practice. That's the first kind of practice and I think we probably all all have been acquainted with this kind of practice. That's a practice, that that we all do, um, and that we all think of when we think of practicing.
Speaker 1:The next thing that I think is interesting and that has helped me so much is mental practice. This is practice without the instrument. You're not playing the instrument when you do this, and I think it's interesting because if we think about it, if you think of your instrument, whatever it is, if you set it down on the floor, it's not going to make noise. You know what I mean? It's not, it's just going to sit there If you're like go make noise, it won't make noise, it'll just sit there. What it needs is you. It needs you to kind of initiate that noise and then it'll create music. So, basically, what that means is that you are the person that actually creates the music. You just use a tool and that's your instrument.
Speaker 1:I think it's very easy for us to think that, you know, the instrument is the thing that creates the music, but we are the thing that creates the music. The instrument is just like, kind of just the tool that we use to create it with you know. And so, with that in mind, in order to kind of get things in your head, especially if you feel like the oboe well, for me, the oboe, whatever your instrument is, is in the way. This is a great way to work through that with mental practice. I think, especially if I'm playing oboe and especially if I feel quite fatigued and the issue that I'm worried about or I'm working on is like my fingerings, maybe, like I'm struggling with a note change or something, but the thing is, my face is so tired that it's distracting me from actually working through the fingerings and the notes. That is when the oboe is in the way. Do you know what I mean and that that is a great opportunity to mental practice.
Speaker 1:So what I do, if you're watching this, um, if you're listening to this, I'll kind of describe it. These are some, some things that help me. Um, I kind of just kind of think about the notes. So what I do is I kind of put my hands together, so I've put my hands together and then I've like put my fingers like down, so kind of like I'm holding my hands, I suppose, and then I just put pressure on each finger that has the note. So if I play like a B, flat, major scale, I'm thinking through each note as I play and I'm putting pressure on the fingers that are used to engage that note. Right, and for this you couldn't go so slow. Speed does not matter, right? When speed happens, it's like, ah, so speed does not matter, this is just brain connection, solely for you. So you're just thinking through it very slowly, just to work through it, and that's something that is really helpful and really important in our practicing just getting through it and working on each note. Right, you can also do it. I've seen people do it on their knees. So you put your hands, each hand, on your knees and you just put pressure on the fingers that are used in each note and you're just thinking in your mind like, okay, now we're going to play a G and then a C and then whatever it is, and that can really help just get it in your head. Do you know what I mean? So that's one way of doing it. There's I do have an episode all about mental practice. If that's something that you're interested in, um, I will link it in the description in the show notes and you can go take a look at that if you want to Um. But that is just kind of an introduction to one way of how I mental practice. I go into more depth in that episode if you want to take a look at it. Um.
Speaker 1:The next thing is active listening. Active listening, um, this is really interesting because you know, I feel like when we think about you know, as musicians, we got to listen to music. We got to always be listening. There are different kinds of listening. You can put music on in the background where you get work done. That's not active listening, that's passive listening. This is active listening and I mean don't get me wrong, passive listening is great as well, but what we're talking about with this is active listening. And I mean, don't get me wrong, passive listening is great as well, but what we're talking about with this is active listening. So, for instance, putting on the music and reading along with it, get the score out, maybe finger along as well, maybe do it like in the mental way without your instrument, maybe bring your instrument into the mix as well.
Speaker 1:A lot of times for me, I enjoy conducting, so if I am listening to the music and I have the score out in front of me, so maybe I see the oboe and the piano part, for instance, if I'm doing, say, a concerto with a piano or something, and I am really just focused on that and I'm conducting the beat and I'm just seeing how things are fitting in with each other, I might clap as well and I might say things out loud. I may be like one, two, three, four. You know one, two ready and do you know, or whatever, I might be singing along with the piano part so that I can understand that better. That is great and it's like actively listening, right, actively hearing how your part fits in with other players, and that is very different from just putting music on and just listening to it right or dancing to it or whatever. This is serious, focused. We are here to solve the mystery of where do I fit in. So that's one way of active listening.
Speaker 1:The fourth thing is score study. Score study and active listening are very similar, but I think score study is more about understanding where you fit in and what are the other parts playing, and it can also be a bit more like theory. So, for instance, I'm currently working on a sonata that I literally today I am planning on sitting with it and figuring out kind of the theory aspect of it, kind of the keys and the key changes and the chords and kind of how that goes, because I have a lot of notes with this and I know that if I understand the harmonic structure of it, I will be able to play it much more musically rather than just seeing a sea of notes and getting overwhelmed. And so that's something that I'm working on today actually just understanding where I fit in with the music and what the other parts are playing and also how that works harmonically right, melodically and harmonically in the whole idea of the piece. I think that score study there's probably a lot of different ways of doing it and I feel like maybe that's something I want to kind of dive more into, just like for me personally, um, in my, in my performing and in my studies, but for the at the moment, that is specifically how I do score study and I think it's really really helpful for me as well.
Speaker 1:So there's a lot of different kinds of practice, and the thing about different kinds of practice for me, I think, is when I do a lot of different kinds of practice, sometimes I feel like I well, I have a hard time remembering how much I do. You know, because now you might be thinking to me, eleanor, like what, how do I know how much regular practice or how much mental practice, how much active listening or score study should I do? Like, what are the ratios that I should be doing? And I think that it's it's different for everyone. I don't think that I personally can like say you should do this, you should do that, you know, 50%, 60%, 20%, whatever, um, I don't think that I would be able to do that because it is very different for everyone and it's different in different times. So, you know, if you say for some reason, if you're, if your instrument's in the shop, you're not doing regular practice and you don't have access to an instrument. So you're going to be doing mental practice, active listening score, study, all of these things, but then you know when your instrument comes back then it'll change or you know all of these things. So it is. It's very specific to the person and I think something that we were, something that's helpful when we are trying to figure out what the ratios are, is really tracking our practice and planning our practice so that we can go back and see what worked and what didn't and what we were doing.
Speaker 1:And the way that I personally track and plan my practice is with a notable practice journal. This practice journal has really helped me in my first year of music school. It is a great way for me to plan my practice, make sure that I have ticked everything off on my practice checklist for the day and also reflect on what I think. So what I do with this is I write down all my different practice and then I put whether it's regular, whether it's mental, active listening score, study, all of these things and then when I reflect I can say I think you know, the mental practice was really helpful, but maybe the regular practice seemed a bit redundant, or maybe the active listening wasn't as focused. Tomorrow I want to maybe work more on that. Or, you know, maybe the active listening today was really good, or maybe I didn't do any active listening today, maybe it was just regular practice, but tomorrow I know that I should do some active listening. All of these things can be tracked in this notable practice journal.
Speaker 1:As soon as I realized that this notebook was helping me, I knew that I had to tell you about it and I knew that I had to give you a code. So use code Eleanor15 for 15% off your journal, and I will link a link in the description, in the show notes, for where you can get your journal and where you can use the code Eleanor15 for 15% off your journal. You know me, I do not recommend anything that I don't absolutely love. This code is an affiliate code, so I do receive a commission with no extra cost to you. All right, let's do some or let's do a recap.
Speaker 1:So the first thing is regular practice. We all know this regular practice practicing with your instrument, kind of, but also making sure that you are intentional with every single note. And that that's hard. You know, if I think of all the notes that I play in the day, um, and how many I've been intentional with it really fluctuates sometimes. I really struggle with it, so like it's hard. But that's one way of practicing mental practice doing it in your head really, and like really focusing on the, on the mental side of it, of the like you thinking through it as well and just really working through it mentally and imagining. It is a great thing to do. I have an episode all about that, which I will link below.
Speaker 1:The next thing is active listening putting music on, reading along with it, fingering along, clapping along to the beat, saying things out loud. You're probably just going to be really loud and just like listen and sing along on all these things, but it's a good old time. And the last thing is score study, so understanding where you fit in, what the other parts are playing and kind of also figuring out maybe the more theory aspect of it, the harmonic um structure of it. All of these things are all good things, um, and of course, make sure you get yourself a notable practice journal to track these things and to reflect on them so that you can get better every single day. All right, that is about it for this episode.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for hanging out with me. I'm so grateful that you did. As always, everything to do with this episode will be in the show notes all the things from the blog post that goes with this episode to the link for the mental practice episode and also the link where you can get your notable practice journal. If you enjoyed this episode, please do show the love, share the love, like, comment, subscribe, follow, share this episode with all of your music friends and I will see you in the next episode. All right, take care. Bye-bye.
