Half way Point

I have now spent six weeks on the Bach Prelude.  The last two weeks have been a little different compared to the first four.  I've settled into a bit of a system for a while.  In this post I'll actually explain some specific ways I am practicing this piece.

After looking over the piece fairly thoroughly and working out fingerings, I am now going through and rehearsing sections slowly.  The way I am doing it is looking at 1 to 4 measures at a time and reviewing my fingerings to make sure they work the way I want them to.  After that I set the metronome at 60 bpm (beats per minute) and play through the section.  The way the music is written I'm actually doing it at 30 bpm according to the time signature so it's fairly slow.  I then play through the section until I have played all correct fingerings with the metronome 5 times.  Once I have completed the section, I highlight it in pink and go on to a new section.

I don't know if you can tell but I've highlighted some spots in yellow as well.  I marked these spots to identify sections I thought would be the most difficult.  Another thing you'll notice in the picture is my counter (looks like an abacus).   I was using a LEGO man as my counter by gradually adding a piece of his body to keep track of my count.  With this I just slide a bead over each time I complete the section correctly.

I decide on how many measures to work on by how difficult they are.  Sometimes I'll try 4 measures and it feels like it will take forever to get 5 times correct.  So I scale it back to 2 measures or even 1 depending on my level of focus.  When I come back to the piece the next day I review the sections I worked on the day before.  I try to play through an entire section once at 60 bpm (or 30bpm depending on how you look at it). I do that until I get it right.  

By now I've worked through about half the piece with this system.  I'm guessing it will take about 1 - 2 weeks to get through the rest of it.  Then I will create a new test system to work through sections.  I will try to make the sections longer and make the challenge harder.  

I'll keep you posted.

SDG

End of Fourth Week

The Good Struggle

I was reminded the other day that struggle is a good thing. It can help us to grow. When we are faced with obstacles, it's not always about the outcome but about how we handle it. This is what the Bach Challenge has become for me.

I'm really struggling to meet my goals that I set in the beginning. It is very difficult finding time to practice. I am getting some good focused practice time in but it's just not as much as I'd like. The thing is, I just don't have the time between teaching, taking care of the kids, and so forth. You know how it is. Also, it is very hard to work on the relaxed/ effortless playing as I don't get much practice time that is quiet and without interruptions.

I have been really trying to figure out how to make more time for this and have not come up with any instant solution. What I have decided is that I still cannot give up on this. As mentioned in previous posts, I've had some incredible breakthroughs in my playing even if I am only meeting 60-70% of my goals.

Realization

The realization I had the other day was that God looks at our hearts. He knows our efforts. He knows our struggles. Even though we can't do everything exactly right, it comes down to honest effort. Deep down we know when we are making excuses and wasting time.

I have to be honest here about my efforts as a Christian because this was part of the challenge, that I seek God with what I'm doing in my music and making sure I am on God's side (I almost said that God is on my side). My efforts have been very weak. I'm in that part of the Christian cycle where I don't seem to be nearly as connected with God as I was during the summer. I really struggle to make time to pray, read, and study. However, just by being frustrated about this reminds me that God is still nudging me along. The Spirit really does live in me even now!

This is not an excuse but having kids sure makes it hard to devote myself to anything fully. I know a lot of you probably can agree on this. BUT, I have been learning to be more selfless which is a big lesson I think I need to learn along with so many other lessons I am learning as a parent. So even though I can't devote much time to God, He is still here with me AND He is quite possibly giving me other challenges that I need to focus on to grow as a Christian. So even though I can't fit in a good devotion time every day, I can still do my best to live according to what I know is right by God.

Application and Direction

Now, coming back to the Bach challenge. I know I can't give up on this even though I'm not where I'd like to be with it. I still need to do my best because what I'm accomplishing is better than giving up on this. I also need to continue to try to meet my goals as best as possible. This is really hard because I'm going to have to accept failure as I've experienced in past weeks. I hate failure!

I have worked out most of the fingerings in the piece and have begun practicing different sections to build some muscle memory. Of the four pages of the piece, I have the first page roughly worked out and probably a total of another half page roughly practiced to build some muscle memory. I will be continuing this process to get to a point where I can play slowly through the piece. During this process I will also work at memorizing the piece so as I speed it up I am not held back by reading the music. By memorizing it also means that I really know the piece.

Best wishes to you and your own challenges.

SDG (All Glory to God)

End of Third Week

First of all, I’m sorry for missing last week’s blog post.  I had other things that took priority over this and just couldn’t fit it in my schedule. 

Well this piece is proving to be much harder than expected.  I am becoming doubtful of getting it to a performance level by the end of the twelve weeks.  However, I do plan to continue and do all I can to get it as far along as I possibly can.  I have had some incredible breakthroughs already in my playing so even if I don’t complete the piece as planned I’ve made some great gains that I would not have made otherwise. 

Most of all my technique is improving greatly.  I had a gig the other night and was pleasantly surprised to feel a greater ease in playing, better tone control, and more fluidness in my playing.  I owe this partly to my teaching and having to come up with different exercises to address different technical issues each student is having.  As I come up with these exercises I apply them to this piece and my own playing and put it into practice.  I’m also working hard to make this Bach piece sound as good as possible so I’m working on my control more than ever.  If anyone is interested in specifics of what I’m doing I’d be happy to share so please make a comment or send me a message on facebook.

As I have been discovering how hard this piece is I am trying to practice smarter.  Right now I’m putting most of my focus into working out fingerings.  This piece has so many options for fingerings and some of the ones indicated in the music don’t work well for me so I have been analyzing the whole piece to figure this out.  My goal is to work out the fingerings by the end of this week.  I decided to get together with my previous teacher, Brian Roberts, to get some help in this area in making good decisions in fingerings and articulations.  We met for a lesson this last week and it was so great to get his expert advice and opinions. 

I continue to struggle to practice 6 days a week but I have discovered a new way of going about this.  Some days it is possible for me to fit in a couple of sessions while other days I simply do not have any time to practice.  So I’m doubling up on some days to get as much time in as possible.  I’m having to put in late night practices and I think I’m going to be getting up to practice from 6 – 7 AM tomorrow.

I’m sorry if this blog is kind of dry.  I’m unsure of who is reading it and trying to decide what information would be the most interesting and beneficial to you readers.  Right now I’m just trying to give a general idea of how the challenge is going.

Thanks for reading.

SDG

First week of Bach Challenge

This is quite a challenge for me. I started out well but I had trouble fitting in time at the end of the week for this. Thursday and Friday I just had absolutely no time for this. I really tried but couldn't fit it in. Saturday I worked in some practice and I was up early this Sunday morning so I worked on it for about 40 minutes. I had been thinking that I should just give this up because it seems too hard to fit in an hour each day plus the 30 minutes of Alexander Technique practice. Then I decided that just because I couldn't do everything I wanted with it doesn't mean I should completely give up. I will stick to my plans and see if I can do better this week.

I have made some good progress. I've worked through the first quarter of the piece working out fingerings, tone, articulation, etc. I'm trying to figure out exactly how I want to play this so I don't waste time practicing it in a way that I don't want to play it. I've been watching videos of other well known performers such as Manuel Barrueco, Christopher Parkening, and Ana Vidovic doing this piece to see what they are doing exactly to help me make better choices.

I think the best thing I can do is plan my week today of when I will work on this and write down the main things I will focus on. I was just planning in the morning of each day and some days I scheduled too many things. So it was too late to make room for guitar practice.

I have also realized that I need to practice very smart. I was feeling like it will take a really long time to master this piece. So I thought I need more time with this. Instead I decided that I should make the most of my time. I've been trying to write down things that stand out to me as the most important things to work on in this piece. Then in my next practice session I can work on those rather than wasting time trying to re-figure out what to work on.

The final thing I need to step up is praying. I get busy with other things and I forget about God. Today I was reminded in church that if I am not “wow'd” by God then I am not studying and understanding. I've become more reliant on my own abilities. It's interesting that another name given to this Bach prelude is We Thank Thee, God. I have learned that music is at it's best when there is a soul or spirit to it. I hope to add this spirit of thankfulness to God to this piece by learning just how thankful I should be to God.

Bach is known to sign his works SDG which translates to soli deo gloria. This means all glory to God

SDG,

David

J.S.Bach Challenge... What?

After recently completing the Body-for-LIFE challenge I was inspired by how well I was able to discipline myself during the program to complete it and work towards my goals.  I thought about how I could apply the  principles used in the challenge to other areas of my life.  So I've decided to try it on learning a new piece of music.  Even though I'm more of a steel string guitarists, I have been wanting to dive into some Classical works.  The Prelude of J.S. Bach's 4th Lute Suite has always been one of my favorite pieces performed on the Classical guitar and I've recently had more reason to learn it.

So here is my challenge.

Because I have other music I need to work on for my performances I can't devote a ton of time to this piece but I would like to devote one hour a day (6 days of the week) to this piece for 12 weeks.  Along with this I will devote 30 minutes a day to Alexander Technique practice to help me play as effortlessly as possible.  Actually for me this is a lot of time as I already have trouble finding time to practice.  But in the scheme of what I am going after in my music career this really shouldn't be that much.

My Goals include:

1. Memorizing the entire movement
3. Implementing what I know to be proper technique and be able to say at the end that I've applied everything I know to be technically accurate and efficient.
4. Being able to perform the piece as effortlessly as possible based on a weekly assessment of my own effortless scale.
5. Putting as much attention on the music as I possibly can.  Be able to say that I have considered every individual note by the end of 12 weeks to be as close to the way I want it to sound as possible.
6. Having a general knowledge of the history of the piece
7. Making a recording and video to share at the end of the 12 weeks.

I wanted to share this process in a blog because I am hoping it will keep me accountable.  I'm not exactly sure where it will lead and how I will structure the blog but I hope it can possibly help you in your own things that you are pursuing.

If you'd like to here an amazing interpretation of the piece I am working on, here is a link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du5nysmlpLA

God bless,

David