Where is your bar?

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Where is YOUR bar? Not the closest watering hole as they say in Texas. Where have you set the bar for your playing? People wonder if it is fair that I say they needed to have things ready on 1 days notice. That depends. Do you want to be the player every one counts on to be perfect, or do you always want to sit in the audience and watch the player that everyone counts on? My level of meanness is based on the level of a students knowledge and skill. I treat a comeback player who stopped in High School a lot different than someone who is auditioning for Grad school and I treat them different than a good full time pro player. The better you get the higher the bar and that is how we constantly improve. But the bar isn’t what we can work up. It is […]

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Scale Trill Practice

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Here is a very mental and physical drill. It is all of the scales connected and trilled.

Fast all you get to do is the written note a note above and the written note before you change to the next note of the scale.

Played slowly you get a trill workout.

When playing slowly do it 2 times so you can use both Baroque (Starting the trill above the written note) and the more modern trill Starting on the written note.

trills Click link for music.

Making a practice routine

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People ask me all the time about a practice routine. The fact is that every player is at a different point and that changes weekly. The best person to give you a routine is YOU. Look through every one of the method books that you can get your hands on and write down the types of technique that are involved. Keep track of how many times each technique is shown in all the books. (That gives an idea of how important that the authors thinks it is.) Now play some of each technique. (ie double tonguing) and rate how well you do that. Play and rate each type of technique. Now on your chart you have each technique and a rating of your skill. The 1st thing is to attack the low scores. You want things to be even. ie you feel slurs are the weak link so then you […]

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