alex_lord -> Structured practice (Aug. 14 2009 12:50:27)
|
Hi all, I have been focusing on technique since the beginning of the year. Unfortunately, I don't get very much time to practice, so I want to make sure that I am making the best possible use of my time. Here is a lenghty description of how I do it now. I apologize in advance if this puts you to sleep. On average, I get about an hour a day of dedicated technique practice. I always use a metronome. My current structure is: 20 minutes of exercises for the left hand and right-left synchronization 30-40 minutes of drilling a specific right hand technique with short breaks (5-10 mins total) to work on other techniques, especially the weaker ones (read: tremolo) For the "specific technique," I cycle through the following each week: - rasgueados - picado - thumb apoyando - alzapua - arpeggios - tremolo - ligados My approach is as follows. I do this with multiple exercises: (1) Start very slowly, with one motion per beat (e.g., one picado stroke, or one finger of rasgeo, etc), concentrate on tone, dynamics, and relaxation of both hands. (2) Keep increasing tempo by 10bpm, and do the exercise several times at each tempo, until I get to a tempo where I can't pull it off cleanly. I then drop about 20bpm and gradually work my way up to "failure", 2-3bpm at a time. (3) Reduce tempo and switch to shorter note durations (8ths, 16ths, 8th triplets), repeat the above. I tend to throw in a lot of triplets to even out the fingers, in the various techniques (e.g., 4 note arps, tremolo, etc). This seems to work pretty well. Unfortunately it translates to less than an hour of methodical practice for each RH technique per week, with a long breaks in between. Is there a better way? I was thinking of breaking up the "specific technique" and doing multiple techniques at a time, say 10 minutes each. Another option I've been thinking about is having combined exercises, using multiple techniques. Perhaps playing actual music is a reasonable way to do the latter :-) In case you're wondering, I use Oscar Herrero (vid #3) and Scott Tenant's Pumping Nylon for the left hand exercises and right-left synchronization, and Manuel Granados' exercises (from Manual Didactico #1) for the right hand. Any commments or tips? Looking forward to your feedback! Alex
|
|
|
|