Musical Practicing

Last week I was invited to give a master class at La Guardia Arts High School in New York City.
While I was struck by the wonderful talent there, I saw a recurring pattern in the way young students prepare music. Even more advanced students at festivals and chamber groups with which I work suffer from a practice method that often doesn't work.  Here is my take on the problem: 

Learning a new piece usually is broken down into two parts.

part 1: slowing learning "the notes, understanding the rhythms, figuring out the bowings, fingerings..."

part 2:  after mastering all the "technical aspects" of the piece, is the musical side: the phrasing, developing the singing quality of the line(vibrato, dynamics) and gaining a better understanding of how a piece in its totality it put together(a quartet, or a sonata, or a concerto.)

Here is the problem I see with this process...it takes twice as long.
Why not combine the first and second parts? I think the key to combining these two parts is Slow Practice.

Everyone knows that slow practice is key. We are always told this. If I hear my son practicing too fast I cant resist advising him to slow it down. We are taught to do passages in rhythms and to implement the metronome, building up the tempo.  Ive heard many students build up the tempo and then when they "perform" , it falls apart. Here in lies the problem with the conventional method of slow practice: when practicing slow one tends to only incorporate part 1 to slow practice and not part 2.

Combine parts 1 and 2 in your daily slow practice:

Playing musically is a technique in itself. Use slow practice to work on connecting bow strokes, develop continuous vibrato from one note to another, make you shifts slower, more fluid and seamless while, at the same time learning the notes...slowly.  When we practice a technical passage slowly, something in our brain turns off. Its like Commander Data from Star Trek: he turns his "emotion chip" off and goes into computer mode.  Why not "always" have your "emotion chip" on, especially when practicing slowly?  This will end up saving you time in the long run.  And as an added benefit, the more you practice "musically" the better prepared you will be when you find yourself in a stressful situation such as an audition or high stakes performance.  The musical practice you did "while learning the technique" will help carry you through especially if nerves are a factor. 

So give this a try for the next new piece or etude you prepare. From the onset, practice the piece slowly AND musically.  You may feel like you are learning a piece slower, but you may surprise yourself at how much quicker you are really preparing this piece and future ones!  And besides, its more fun to practice slowly while keeping the music going!