Practice blog
These are occasional inspirations about practising.
Ways of practising I am interested in are:
● try and do again the mistake I have just done
● try and do the mistake I expect to happen
● aim for a different outcome from the required one
● do nothing at all
● listen and accept
● awareness and acceptance of an ongoing body movement or feeling
● work hard: do exercises diligently
● do a thing you find difficult everyday - put it in your warm-up
● amplify something you don’t like. What is the help that is emerging, and that we are so keen to dismiss?
● amplify a physical problem, ditto
● improvise by hearing mistakes accurately and building on them. The wrong is the new right.
9th March 2011
Practice 9/3/11. Visualisation
I noticed today that while warming up I don’t use written music so I sort of visualise the notes in my head. They seem very clear, though I don’t think I could draw them (maybe I will try...). Well, good warm up, feeling good, able to bend all those out-of-tune baroque horn notes quite well.
Then I started playing from music (Handel Solomon for next week) and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bend the notes, atall. What’s happened? Ah. Because I’m reading, I’m not visualising the notes.
Can I do
7th December 2010
Practice 7/12/10. Doing Nothing
I’ve just done some yoga. What if I play in a post-yoga way (feeling heavy, relaxed...)?
I notice tension under my armpits. I try to do it more, to find the wisdom in it. I notice tension coming into my legs and lower back. Sometimes it works to see how this tension ebbs and flows with my breathing. But I couldn’t get into it.
What to do? What’s in my toolbox?
Amplification of the tension
Following it without judgement
Doing nothing
I decided to try the last one. Don’t assume I
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