The Goal of Practice is to achieve consistent and beautiful results in performance.

Practice is of ultimate importance for with practice alone, an artist can attain extremely good results on even mediocre equipment. Anyway, it is only after years of training that you will be able to understand, choose or obtain great equipment. In the end, great musical results will only be attained by the perfect union of the reed, the instrument and the skills you acquire through practice.

To practice is to find the technical solution to support and create every musical element or gesture.

To practice is to improve, maintain, repair or prepare.

To practice is to replace indulgence with discipline; ignorance with awareness.

Practice so that every element of the music has a lifetime--a beginning, growth, maturity, decay and ending appropriate to its position and function in the form. This will give create unity, a sense of completeness and reveal the natural pacing and proportions of the music.

Know the small to be able to create the large; understand the large to be a balanced unity of the small. This is of primary importance, for from this principle flows every
success.

Practice until every principle is realized from within, not imposed from without.

When and How Long to Practice

It is important to do your work every day. What counts most is the slow accumulation of skills through the sustained action of patient, repetitive, attentive, deliberate and precise practice.

With energy, practice hour after hour, day after day until the years melt away. Shedding anxiety in the knowledge that you are relentlessly pursuing your goal, you will acquire a sense of unbending intent that will clear the path to the realization of your full potential.

As a general rule, you must practice at least four hours every day. It is usually best to set regular and undisturbed times, splitting up the hours to relieve mental and physical fatigue.

Where to Practice

The sound in the room must be correct--neither too dry nor too reverberant.

The setting should be quiet and conducive to artistry as well. Remember that it is impossible to learn a good sound in a room that is too small.

How and What to Practice

You must practice in order to be able to perform, but you must perform in order to know how and what to practice. The way others will measure your skills in the concert hall will be decided by your meticulous attention to detail in the practice room. This requires a phenomenal amount of effort.

You must practice with your mind so that you may play from your heart.

When you practice, practice. When you rest, rest. Above all, no guilt.

Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.

Be thorough. Your preparation for performance must be flawless, for the path to perfection in performance is only lit by perfection of preparation. You must be so well trained that you are automatically immaculate in performance--when you will be
nervous and excited.

Every practice session must be victorious, but the size of the victory is not necessarily important. Move forward inch by inch and step by step. What matters is the final result of the progress, not necessarily the speed of the process. Even one note of improvement out of a full day's struggle is a true victory. On your toughest days, consider it a victory if you make no headway, yet do not backslide.

As with the adjustment of the clarinet itself, success is created by the attentive focusing of all the details to obtain the desired result.

As with concept of sound, the musical result that you are striving to achieve is
your preconceived strategy.

How and what you practice are your tactics--the means to the end.

Learn to practice with a critical ear and a nonjudgmental attitude so as to maintain your emotional equilibrium as you grow musically.

To practice is to have the strength of character to observe and analyze yourself with unblinking objectivity. Be honest, for to fool yourself is the greatest seduction that
exists.

It is psychologically important to always end every practice session positively and beautifully--even if it is only one note. Never walk away from your instruments and the music feeling depressed or defeated for you will carry this burden with you throughout the remainder of the day.

Practice is the process that replaces fear or hesitation of any sort--physical, mental or spiritual--with confident, instantaneous action. The eradication of all mechanical
hesitation is a function of the adjustment of the reed and the instrument. Do not confuse the two.

Practice to eliminate any technical and musical quirks that are unique to you alone. Be
vigilant, for these will be the first things to deteriorate from inattention or crack under the pressure of performance.

Practice until every note in every register possesses absolute evenness in every musical respect within the same beautiful tone quality. Only then will you have the skill to control nuance, flexibility and color at will.

Practice to be able to play any part of any passage at any time.

Practice to be able to go from any note to any other note with absolute surety. Obliterate insecurity.

Practice the rational side of the music to master the technique; practice the non-rational side of the music to master the spirit. For music is both rational and non-rational.

Intonation, rhythm, the correct notes, accuracy, endurance, dynamics, form and articulation are in the domain of the Rational. Rational is Doing.

Color, feeling, nuance, flexibility, spirit, inspiration, impeccability, timing and the stopping of time are in the domain of the Non-Rational. Non-Rational is Not-Doing.

To perform is the Not-Doing that results from practice, for when performing the
mind should be nowhere in particular. Most musicians practice only the Rational, somehow expecting the Non-Rational to simply appear.

You must practice the Non-Rational as well if you expect to present these qualities consistently in your performance. The Non-Rational can be practiced, but cannot be obtained by trying; only by not-trying. The Non-Rational can often be discussed only
by discussing what it is not.

Practice to attain the technical mastery that will allow you to transcend technique, for the notes themselves are irrelevant unless you cannot play them.

Be carefree, but do not play carelessly.

Practice to expand the absolute extremes of your technical limitations. Have the courage to perform up to that edge but the coolness not to go beyond.

Learn to play with care, but do not play carefully.

The path to excellence and beauty is paved with sweat. Therefore, your practice will not always be pleasant to listen to by others. Pay no attention to their remarks, for they do not understand that the purpose of your practice is not to play for their
pleasure.

Do not practice what you already know how to do. This is an indulgent waste of time. Practice what you don't know how to do.

Be patient, but do not confuse patience with complacency. Patience is passionate and fierce; complacency is passive and docile. Fight when necessary.

If you are having a great deal of difficulty learning a particular passage, or if a particular
passage just will not seem to come out of your instrument correctly, it is more probable that you do not understand the music--not that your technique is inadequate. Examine the score again; analyze it thoroughly. Try exaggerating every musical aspect in every possible manner--no matter how seemingly odd. The flaw in each attempt usually becomes immediately apparent until through the process of elimination the proper technique to obtain the correct musical result will be all that is left.

Occasionally you will find yourself always playing a note or passage wrong, even though you may intellectually know what is right. Slow down and retrain your body properly.

Always practice with the final musical context in mind, especially when practicing a fast passage at a slow tempo. Do not make the mistake of learning and ingraining incorrect
articulative lengths, number of breaths or musical inflections. Often they will be improper or inappropriate at the correct speed. (The same is true regarding certain qualities of sound and dynamic extremes.)

Practice very slowly to be able to hear and call for the next tone within the tone you are playing. Then, with a flexible embouchure, merely glide the fingers to smoothly release the next tone--no matter how small or wide the interval may be.

When you are approaching the higher note in a wide interval, increase the energy on the bottom note and then release the top note with a feeling of coming down on it--not squeezing up to it.

When approaching the lower note in a wide interval, decrease the energy on the top note and then create the bottom tone with a feeling of coming up to it--not of straining downward.

Practice your scales and arpeggios until they possess all the qualities of great music. Then merely play your music like your scales and arpeggios.

Practice to achieve unshakable concentration. The essence of learning concentration is to think about less and less for longer and longer.

Focus your practice skills until your spirit and body are fused into flexible awareness and instantaneous action.

Hone your spirit until you are beyond mental decision. Hone your body until it is beyond muscular hesitation. Then merely play what you feel.

Practice for stamina. At the end of a long practice session, learn to rally yourself to play with a burst of renewed precision and beauty. You will often have to do this towards the end of a major performance.

Practice to be able to overcome the things that will surely happen at some time in performance. During a performance you may be exhausted, sick or in pain. Your reed may be failing you or your instrument may go out of adjustment. You will be hot or cold and you will always be fighting for accuracy of intonation. There may be any aural or visual distraction from the audience, stage or backstage areas. Since these things also
happen in the practice room, learn to overcome them there.

Prepare yourself for anything through experience, flexibility and confidence.

Practice for tonal size, characters and colors.

To create the proper "O" shape of tone you must first achieve a beautiful rounded quality of sound for the top half of your tone, but do not be satisfied with this alone. With a proper reed, instrument, embouchure and air flow, you will then be able to open down to a tremendous depth and power in the bottom half of the sound. For in reality, the clarinet is an instrument that is built slightly sharp in pitch so that the embouchure can open up to blow the sound slightly flat. Like a great singer, you must open down into the sound; you must come down to the correct pitch. Open your mouth and blow through the clarinet to achieve a sound that is beautiful in tone quality, large in size and
accurate in pitch.

Practice to master a beautiful and singing sound in the complete dynamic range of the instrument.

To cultivate a beautiful and sensitive clarinet sound at only "mezzo forte" and below is not total artistry. You must learn to blow through each phrase, for beauty without strength is only cloying and weak. Sing out with powerful emotion, but remember that strength without beauty is crude and coarse.

Practice so that the sound of the clarinet will always be beautiful even while expressing the character of the music that is harsh, angry, violent, chiding, muscular,
tense, or agitated.

Remember that even though you are alone for most of the time you are practicing, the performance of music almost always happens with musical partners. With the exception of solo works or in isolated solo passages, the sound of the clarinet is heard at the
same time that other instruments are being played. The sound of an "ensemble" instrument like the clarinet (as opposed to solo piano or guitar) must be balanced in terms of volume with instrumental partners yet is always perceived of by the listener
as a function of blend.

Practice with others (especially by playing duets) to understand the difference between blend and balance, for blend has balance, but the reverse is not necessarily true.

Blend is far more difficult to achieve than balance, for every type of interval (and at different dynamics) requires a different voicing between the first and the second parts.

To achieve a blend between two or more parts requires different playing techniques for each part. To play either part is a different matter both musically, technically and in quality of sound.

A sound that is always polished too highly will deflect the sounds of other instruments. A sound that will blend is somewhat porous.

The ability to sightread flawlessly is a necessary skill that can be learned and must be practiced. Sightreading is primarily the visual recognition and technical reproduction of standard melodic, harmonic and rhythmic patterns. Your eye must then learn to be drawn to the deviations from the norm. In order to sightread well, you must have mastered the basic fundamentals of scales, arpeggios, thirds, etc. throughout at least the entire major/minor tonal system. You must also master the standard transposition for playing parts in C on the B-flat Clarinet. Learn to think both harmonically and intervalically.

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