On Practicing

"The road to violin mastery is long and arduous, and great application and perseverance are needed to reach the goal. Talent helps to ease the way, but in itself it cannot be a substitute for the hard work of practicing. Even hard work will be of little avail if it is of the kind that fails to bring results, for there are both good practicing and bad practicing, and unfortunately the bad is far more common than the good," (Galamian, 93). Although I practice a lot and hard, what Galamian said is true, the practice I do is about 70% bad practice. I'm always slouching, thinking about something else: homework, what I have going on that evening or week, finals, and tests. My father has a saying: 'Practice doesn't make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect.' I love this saying, I try to follow it as much as possible; with violin, softball, and even school. One reason why I cannot do practice perfect is because my mind is always occupied with something else. This could consist of homework, what is going on that evening or the next week, finals and tests. Galamian says: "It happens only too often with too many students that the mind wanders to different spheres while the fingers and hands are engaged in mechanical routine-functioning and endless repetitions," (94). This practice is the kind that lacks both direction and control, but it is also a complete waste of time for the player and the teacher. If you continue to practice like this over and over there will be mistakes that are repeated constantly and are rooted so deep it takes forever and a determination as hard as rock to break that habit.

Galamian believes: "both technique and interpretation have to be objectives in practicing. The shape and coloring of a phrase [of music] has to be worked. I9t is very important to have an intelligently balanced division of practice hours, distributed between (1) "building time", (2) "interpreting time", [and] (3) "performing time,"' (94-95). The first of the three is the 'building time' which "should be spent partly with scales and similar fundamental exercises and partly in dealing with technical problems encountered in etudes and in the repertoire,"(95). During this time you have to make sure your mind is mentally alert; this can be done by marching while playing to keep on beat, looking at your fingers to make sure you are hitting the correct notes or it could be looking at the contact point of the bow to see if the bow is sliding over the finger board or bouncing everywhere.

 The second is the interpreting time'. "During the interpretation time the emphasis should be placed on musical expressiveness, the shaping of a phrase, of a larger section, of a whole movement, and finally of several movements, as a convincing unit," (100). For my group lessons and private lessons we have to memorize the pieces so we can put feeling in the song. One song we are playing for group is called Preludio by Michael McLean. This song is very slow, we were told it is very depressing and yet I find if you play it a certain way you can make it romantic. Another song we are playing is called John Williams Trilogy by John Williams and arranged by Calvin Custer. This song has the theme song from Star Wars, Raiders of The Lost Ark, and Jurassic Park.

 VIDEO OF PRELUDIO

Finally the third of the three; the 'performing time'. "The necessity for adding musical playing to analytical dissection of difficulties is well demonstrated by a phenomenon that can be observed time and time again," (Galamian, 101). Every time we practice at group we first practice with the music in front of us but as we get closer to the performances we start losing the music and trying to go by memory with every song. The only people that get music are the pianist and the percussionist.

DO YOU THINK TAKING TIME FOR ALL OF THE MAJOR PARTS OF VIOLIN PLAYING AND INTERPRETING IMPORTANT? IF NOT, TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK IS MOST IMPORTANT.


Galamian, Ivan. "Ivan Galamian: A Biographical Sketch." Principles of Violin:
     Playing & Teaching. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2013.
     vii-108. Rpt. in Ivan Galamian: A Biographical Sketch. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N.
     pag. Print.