How to Practice Anything
One of the core functions of a music director is to prepare the cast and orchestra to perform the music. This usually translates to 7-10 rehearsals dedicated to the cast learning the music, and then a sitzprobe plus 3-4 tech rehearsals to practice with the pit.
The point of practicing
… is to become fluent in the material to the point of being able to tell the story.
This is different than “to get it correct.” This idea of “correctness” is always ambiguous, potentially unhelpful, and occasionally even counterproductive.
There IS an aspect of mundane “correctness” that’s worth devoting time to; that is, we learn the notes and rhythms. But these notes and rhythms aren’t the goal. The goal is storytelling and communication.
This might seem like a semantic difference, but I think it is an important shift in mindset.
A score is not a work of art in itself. It is a recipe that a talented chef can follow to create art. But even the greatest recipes have to be contextualized for a given moment, a given audience, the skillset of the performers, and the ingredients on hand.
So, this leads to the question, how do we master the notes and rhythms to the degree of being able to use them for our storytelling?
Practicing Tactics
The basic building block of practice is isolation. If something is challenging, isolate aspects that are not challenging and master them, and then introduce elements back in until you have accomplished the entirety of the challenge.
Practice Slow
Practicing slowly is often the single easiest way to gain mastery. This is true for soloists, ensembles, and music directors. There is usually too much happening at once to be able to give adequate attention to each aspect. Slowing it down (often, way, way down) allows us to consciously train our brains to perform a task with muscle memory that persists when we speed up again.
As one of my piano teachers quipped (in a heavy Russian accent), “First you must practice slowly, then you practice slower, then finally, you can practice slow.”
Increase difficulty gradually
Isolate one particular aspect of the music and focus on it, then add other degrees of difficulty back in. In ensemble rehearsals, this might look like
Clap the rhythms
Speak the rhythms
Sing the rhythms
Repeat
It’s not enough to get it correct once. You have to repeat it correct over and over. You have to master it to the point of not needing to think to accomplish it.
This means that running a passage once is essentially useless. There is value in practicing an entire song to work on the overall flow and storytelling. But doing so is not helpful toward learning particular notes or rhythms.
Increase the Stakes
Another important aspect is to up the stakes and incorporate anticipated challenges. How will you perform when you are flooded with adrenaline, or wearing a clock costume?
Beyond the apparent methods like practicing while wearing such a costume, I also like to use a metronome to “up the stakes.” A metronome is also very helpful in forcing slow practice and then increasing the difficulty by a few beats per minute on each subsequent iteration.
I used to drink a bunch of coffee right before practicing piano to simulate nerves, though maybe this wasn’t all that effective and was just an excuse to drink a bunch of coffee.
When I knew I would have poor sightlines in performance, I hung my coat on a microphone stand to obscure the orchestra’s ability to see me.
While you likely can’t simulate every performance condition, the more you can do, and repeat, the less you will have to think about when the performance comes. And that’s where storytelling lives.
