Learning to Learn the Mandolin
Managing my Practice Time
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How many hours?
Practising is the key word when it comes to learning music. And most of the time, musicians talk about practising mainly in terms of minutes and hours. Of course, the more you practice, the better you get? Hummm!... Not sure!
Sadly, I’ve seen people spending hours and hours practising… mistakes! Or people repeating and repeating the same tune, the same way, with the same mistakes until they get completely bored, worrying why they don’t get any result! Learning is not a magical process! We must plan ahead, we must organize our learning sessions in order to get fast, solid and permanent results. The secret is to concentrate on what and how we practice! Even if there’s no credo in this matter, the important thing is to organize our practice time instead of picking here and there tunes to play. Here is how, personally, I manage my practice time. Every day I follow the same pattern, beginning with the most important topics; this way, if something happens and I have to shorten my practice time, the most important work will be done. |
The Unavoidable Scales
Recently, I had the immense privilege to attend a workshop with Ekaterina Skliar and Aleksei Aleksandrov, two wonderful mandolinists from Russia. When they spoke about practices, they stressed the importance of playing scales by saying: “When you practice a piece, you practice nothing but this piece; when you practice scales, you practice every piece”.
On my site, I already wrote an article about the importance of playing scales. Click here to read it. Let’s never forget that the worst enemy of practice is boredom. Variety and challenges are our best allies. In addition to playing regular scales we can get excellent exercises from the traditional methods: Bracony, Branzoli, Calace, Munier, etc. One of the greatest series of exercises is Munier’s Lo scioglidita (excerpt D.D. 2 —4): four books of scales, arpeggios, chords, broken chords, cadenze, in all positions and on all the tonalities of the cycle of fifths. |
We can find useful exercises in more modern methods like Marilynn Mair’s Complete Mandolinist (Mel Bay). Scale exercises cover almost the entire part devoted to what she calls “left hand technique”. In fact, there are 71 pages of selected exercises. It’s a very good source of exercises even if most of them are small variants of Munier’s Lo scioglidita or transcripts from traditional mandolin or violin methods (Branzoli, Odell, etc. for the mandolin— Bériot, Wohlfahrt, von Sponer, Kreutzer, etc. for the violin) We can also find very relevant exercises in Marga Wilden-Hüsgen’s Technische Studien für Mandoline (Verlag Vogt & Fritz): I Tonleiterübungen # 1 — 27; also in Gertrud Tröster’s Technique on eight Strings (Verlag Vogt & Fritz): Heft 2; in Caterina Lichtenberg’s Highlights der romantischen Etüdenliteratur für Mandoline (Verlag Vogt & Fritz): ex. 15 — 18. |
Speaking of scales, it’s impossible to ignore Alison Stephens and Chris Acquavella’s Mandolin Companion (Astute Music) with two chapters (3 and 4, pp. 5 — 19) dedicated solely to scales and arpeggios.
Practising scales and scale exercises is probably the best and most useful way to warm up.
Practising scales and scale exercises is probably the best and most useful way to warm up.
Techniques
Mastering new techniques is the only way to become a better musician. Since we all know that many techniques take years to master (tremolo, duo style, harp arpeggio for instance), it’s important to dedicate a large part of our daily practice to this topic.
Personally, I usually practise at least two techniques every day. I collect exercises from every source I can find. For example, right now, I’m working on the third position (D.D 12 — 14) and on harp arpeggio technique; for the third position, I use exercises from Munier’s method, from Lo scioglidita, and a collection of exercises written for violin; for harp arpeggio, I work with the Mandolin Companion to improve my technical skill to link chords, and for harp arpeggio itself, I work with exercises from Odell, Leone, Lichtenberg, Bracony, Munier and Calace. For the time being, I concentrate on these techniques and I will certainly keep on the work for several months to come. There are so many techniques we must master to be a complete mandolinist: tremolo on 1, 2, 3 and 4 strings (D.D. 5), arpeggio techniques on 2, 3 and 4 strings (D.D. 6 — 10), duo-style (tremolo-staccato) (D.D. 11), positions (1/2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) (D.D. 12 – 14), double-stops (D.D. 15), double picking (D.D. 16), pull-off and hammer-on (D.D. 17), ornaments (D.D. 18 – 19), glissando (D.D. 20), harmonics (natural and false) (D.D. 21), pizzicato (D.D. 22 – 23), tone color (tast., nat., met.) etc. |
Repertoire
Practising pieces for either an upcoming concert or a quartet rehearsal, or simply for the fun of learning new material, is usually the main goal of our daily practice. But at the same time, it’s the most complicated part to manage.
Let’s never forget that each time we play something on our instrument, our brain stores the information. Might this information be right or wrong, our brain stores it. That’s why it’s imperative to play it right every time. |
We play a wrong note? Our brain takes it for granted. We repeat and repeat this wrong note, it will be very difficult to get our brain to forget the wrong information and replace it by the right one; learning involves a very complex network of neurones and once a wrong network is established it’s very difficult to build a bypass to get to the right information.
One way to prevent learning mistakes is to follow Itzhak Perlman’s advice to practise slowly and paying attention to each note. Once your brain has stored the correct information, speed will come. But it’s also very important not to focus solely on notes. Right notes are only one part of music. Beside practising notes, we must take into consideration all the elements of music. Right from the beginning, even if we’re practising slowly, we must be careful to accentuate appropriately, to respect phrasing and breathing, to link all the notes properly, to respect the full value of every note but also of every rest, to use the right fingering, the right picking, the best position, etc. We should never postpone practising dynamics, articulations and tone colors. Deciding to first learn the notes and then add dynamics and articulations only makes it harder. Remember, the network in our brain is already built but with incomplete information. |
Personally, every time I practise a piece, I first decide on which element I wish to focus on. Sometimes, it may be pretty confusing, especially when I decide to focus on elements like fingering or picking: what are the pros and cons of this picking technique? What are the consequences on accents? Will it affect speed? Should I stay in the comfortable first position or should I move higher on the fingerboard where it might be musically much more interesting?
My way of managing my daily practice is the result of years of personal research on the learning process. I’m very conscious that it might not suit everybody. My only hope is that sharing my experience may help somebody to find ways to achieve his personal goals.