Our goal as teachers of anything is to make our students independent of us. One way students need to develop ownership is in their ability to prepare pieces independently.

I am choosing to complete my graduate performance recital this semester, my second of four semesters at Ithaca. I will play a full Bach sonata and Schnittke’s Violin Sonata No. 1. Both are hefty pieces, and I need to have them ready by April 7th.

I thought I would use the opportunity while learning them to develop a piece learning process and to get it down on (the proverbial) paper.

Having a tried and tested process written down will help me to guide my advanced students to fool-proof preparation. When my advanced students begin work on a brand new piece, they can use this process. I can also look ahead to this process as intermediate students are developing, and have them take ownership of parts gradually.

Here it is…

1. Prepare away from the instrument
   • PART
     • number measures
     • look up words
     • estimate tempo
     • decide sections (workable chunks of music)
   • DEVELOP AURAL AWARENESS
     • passive: saturate your environment in the piece
     • active: listen to music while tracking along with the score, then part
   • HISTORICAL RESEARCH (quick wikipedia search)
     • who is the composer? where did they live? when?
     • what is the significance of the piece? what would it have been performed for?
     • is there a text, story or images that accompanies the music?
2. Uncover implicit meaning of the music
   • analyze and mark the score
     • identify mood/style
     • get big picture of the from (notice repetition, key changes, etc)
     • go section by section audiating and marking the expressive nature of the music
       • notice where the music is trying to deceive
       • look for larger form structure
       • decide on colors/dynamics
   • expressively vocalize the part
3. Map out the technique
   • (still mentally) work section by section marking technical instructions that will facilitate the implicit nature of the music. Determine…
     • bowings
     • fingering
     • types of shifting
     • articulation
   • image and vocalize yourself doing this technical choreography section by section
4. Execute the map
   • Execute each section six consecutive, successful times (three imaging, three on the instrument)
   • Link sections together
     • Overlap: play the first few notes of the next section each repetition
     • Larger structures: start doing repetitions of multiple sections at a time
   • Continue repetitions at steady, comfortable tempos to encourage ease before building tempo (there’s time to do this after the learning stage)
   • Record yourself to verify the expression is coming across
   • Set limits. If you try to put too many things together to quickly you will sour the whole process.

The majority of the process I enumerate above I found in Gerald Klickstein’s incredibly wise book Musician’s Way: A Guide To Practice, Performance, and Wellness.

I’ve adopted it precicesly because it feels so different from the conventional tactics many of my peers at school use. Rather than sight reading the entire piece with a metronome (yielding limited success) and repeating until either disgusted with the piece or disgusted with one’s own skill, Klickstein prioritizes the following…

• Music before technique
• Mind before body
• Small repetitive chunks over long run throughs
• Ease over difficulty

Even if your (or my student’s) process doesn’t look exactly like this, I’m confident that setting up a system that favors music, mind, focus and ease will yield fantastic results.

Give it a try the next time you decide to incorporate a new piece into you repertoire.