Remember the 10-Minute Rule? You can click here for the why and wherefore, but the rule itself goes like this:

Never practice any one thing more than 10 minutes at a time.

The 15-Minute Rule is one of only two exceptions I make to the 10-Minute rule.  It goes something like this:

If you are memorizing, you may work on a single small section for up to 15 minutes.

I make this exception for several reasons.

1. Memory work takes longer than regular practice.
2. Memory work is a combination of physical practice (playing) and mental practice (thinking/observing), and so you can go a little longer on a single passage without the same risk of repetitive stress injury.
3. Memory work is a focused mental effort, which means you can go a few minutes more before you start to drive yourself crazy.

For me, it is not unusual to have to do two sessions of 15 minutes on a single passage –  especially if it is one that involves a lot of technical work and I have to start slow and work my way up to a faster tempo.  Many times, one session of 15 minutes and a second of 10 or less is plenty.  If you find yourself repeatedly having to spend more than two 15-minute sessions per passage, that’s probably a sign that you are trying to memorize too much music at once, and need to choose smaller sections.

As you may know, the 10-Minute Rule has one other exception, the 12-Minute Rule, whereby if you are
SURE you will get your one thing mastered with just two more minutes of practice then you can go for it.  There is no such exception with the 15-Minute Rule.  If your chosen passage isn’t memorized in those 15 minutes, come back to it another day.

As I’ve said, one of the main ideas behind the 10-Minute Rule is preserving your sanity. This is even more important when memorizing music because of the fear so many of us feel about standing up on stage with no music in front of us.  You want to make your memorization practice as sane as possible, so that you will feel as confident as possible up on stage. When memorizing music, you are really learning two things at once:  how to play without the music in front of you, and how to feel when playing without the music in front of you.

If, while memorizing, you allow yourself to do what I call “desperation practicing” (Another two minutes!  Just another two!  I can quit anytime!  Really!), you will carry that feeling with you onto stage.  You will have, in effect, practiced feeling desperate.

In contrast, by observing the 15-Minute Rule, you practice feeling calm and in control. Know that you will have another session if you need it.  Know that you are in control of how you use your time.

Feeling in control of how you spend your practice time will translate directly into feeling in control in performance.

Photo Credit:  CarbonNYC

Zara Lawler is a flutist, interdisciplinary performer and coach based in New York City. Contact her for information on performances, coachings, and lessons (including via Skype) at zara [at] zaralawler.com.

Here’s a trick for working on certain difficult technical passages. I say “certain” because this only works for passages that begin and end on the same note – as I will demonstrate later in this post. But first, the trick:

It’s simple–just take the passage, and make it into a loop. Play it through, and when you get to the end, that is the same as the beginning, just keep going like a tape loop.

Here is a phrase that I’ve been working on recently that works well this way. It’s from Judith Sainte Croix’s beautiful and mysterious piece for solo alto flute, Arctic Wind, written for and premiered by Andrew Bolowtosky, and I will be performing it in March (see end of post for details):

My goal was to get it to quarter note equals 92, so you can see that the 32nd note passage would be very fast. It conveniently ends just like it begins, so I was able to practice it as a loop, playing bar 58 over and over, like so:

I practiced it using Metronome Trick No. 1, and at each tempo level repeated the loop at least 4 times.

Making a loop is effective for two reasons. First, it takes the passage out of context, and makes it an abstract unit. This makes it easier for your brain to conquer. As you repeat the unit, it creates a particular neural pathway (maybe this one was called Arctic Wind, bar 58), and because you are looping it, this neural pathway gets super-strong, even stronger than it would be just repeating it in the context of the phrase. Looping a passage out of context relieves some of the anxiety associated with its difficulty, making it easier for your brain to focus on how to play it, rather than how daunting the task is.

The second reason is that playing something several times in a loop is harder than playing it once by itself. It’s kind of like when baseball players get warmed up by swinging several bats at once. Once you’ve mastered the phrase as a loop, it’ll seem easy-peasy in context.

Sometimes a tricky phrase is too tricky for this trick! Check out this passage from Righteous Babe by Randall Woolf:

You could loop it, repeating bar 100 a number of times before going on to 101. However, the goal tempo of this passage is quarter equals 96. Only a bit faster than the Sainte Croix, but even more difficult for two reasons:
1. The fingerings are very awkward (flutists, give it a try, you’ll see what I mean!)
2. There are no slower notes in the loop, like the dotted eighths in the Sainte Croix) where you can get a break.

So, I did eventually practice this as a loop, but not before practicing it just two quarters at a time, and then 4:

You may be wondering why bother to loop it if you can play it all 4 beats already … Since this is one of the most technically difficult passages of the piece, I wanted to feel extra confident that I had it down, and looping it gave me that peace of mind.

So, the next time you are faced with a particularly difficult passage that happens to end the way it begins, give this method a try. Become a live-action tape loop in your practice, and enjoy increased confidence and success in your performance.

Note: If you’re in the New York area and you’d like to hear Arctic Wind and Righteous Babe, please come to one of the following performances:
• 7 March 2009, 7pm, South Nyack Recital Series
• 15 March 2009, 3pm, Rockland Conservatory of Music Faculty Recital

Another note: The reel-to-reel photo is from:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/fridgemonkey/3294979647/

Zara Lawler is a flutist, interdisciplinary performer and coach based in New York City. Contact her for information on performances, coachings, and lessons (including via Skype) at zara [at] zaralawler.com.

If you’ve been following along at home, you have hopefully tried Metronome Trick No. 1 by now.  Hopefully you’ve tried it more than once, hopefully everyday or practice session for a whole week.  And you’ve probably noticed that, what with all that repetition, it can take a long time to get from your starting tempo to two clicks above performance tempo.

Here’s the basic rule:  never practice any one thing more than 10 minutes at a time.

What do you mean, any one thing?

If you are working on getting a technical passage up to speed, “any one thing” means a small section of that passage that you have chosen to practice.  If you are working on the sound and expression of a slow movement, “any one thing” means a reasonable section of the movement, maybe one or two phrases.  If you are working on a technical exercise (scales or arpeggios), “any one thing” means any one exercise (i.e. for all you flutists out there in practice-land, Taffanel & Gaubert’s famous scale pattern No. 4).  If you are working on a particular skill (i.e. smooth legato leaps, “any one thing” means that particular skill.

What if it’s going to take more than 10 minutes to master?

Then come back to it during another practice session and give it another 10 minutes then.  Even if you think you could nail it in 15, you’ll get it even better if you give it two separate sessions of 10 minutes.

Really people, if any one thing deserves more than 10 minutes of your time, you might as well give it 20, and get it done for sure.

But why, and wherefore?

I invented the 10-Minute Rule in response to two things:  fear of tendonitis, and fear of going crazy.

The 10-Minute Rule can help prevent overuse/repetitive stress injury by the obvious mechanism of restricting how much repetition you do at a single stretch.  It also gives your brain a time limit on obsessing about some small detail of your playing, thus preventing craziness.

The 10-Minute Rule also has a much more subtle but equally powerful benefit:  it carries with it the assumption that there will be a next time, that you will get 10 more minutes on this particular passage, and it’ll get better then.  That assumption of a next time goes a long way toward removing the feeling of desperation that often comes with a real desire to be good at an instrument.

Seriously, though, never?

I make two, and only two, exceptions to the 10-Minute Rule:

• The 12-Minute Rule:  if you are SURE you will get your one thing mastered with just two more minutes of practice, go for it.  Once the clock strikes twelve, though, your metronome turns into a pumpkin and you have to stop, even if you’re just one click away.  Come back to it next session with another 10 minutes.  And if you are more than a few clicks away from done, don’t go past 10 at all.

• The 15 Minute Rule:  this is only for when you are memorizing something, and will be dealt with in a later article, I promise!

Note to beginners/amateurs: Try this idea as the 5-Minute Rule, as most of your issues can be solved in shorter sessions than those of more advanced players.  You can work your way up to the 10-Minute Rule as you get more experienced.

Another note: the cool picture above is from http://www.flickr.com/photos/laffy4k/367822192/

Zara Lawler is a flutist, interdisciplinary performer and coach based in New York City. Contact her for information on performances, coachings, and lessons (including via Skype) at zara [at] zaralawler.com.