Remember that the conscious mind can only focus on one thing at a time and conditioning is about practicing how to focus on the new way of playing without allowing any distractions clutter the mind. If successful, the new way of playing will become a new habit. Once it becomes a habit (as a result of conditioning) then a student can move on to the Reinforcement phase of practicing. Reinforcement is the act of repeating something “over
and over” again. This is where most students get into trouble—they think that practicing is reiterating some- thing repeatedly until they “get it,” and then, in some cases they don’t ever truly attain the goal and ultimate- ly quit. The biggest problem here is that they often are repeating something recurrently that is actually flawed, thinking that the repetition will “fix it,” but the only thing that they are actually habituating is how to play something incorrectly. It is only after the discovery of how to play something, followed by conditioning a new habit, that repetition should be employed. Now, as students re- peat this new, healthy habit, they need to understand that they have a choice. They either repeat the conditioned technique enough times to “get it right” (tricky) or repeat it enough times so that it can never go wrong—students should endeavor to do the latter, thus ensuring the new skill becomes an extension of their voice. Only then is the student ready to utilize this technique into Repertoire. The first three stages of practicing can easily be em-
ployed into learning a piece of music. Here is where we shift gears. The main purpose of practicing (and the pre- vious three stages) is to have complete ownership over the technical challenges of one’s musical instrument—so
much so, that when it is time to work on Repertoire, the focus is on the music itself. As educators, recall that the conscious mind can only effectively focus on one thing at a time, so when students are practicing music, the focus should be solely on the music. Most of the time, I see students struggle with a piece—not because the music is challenging, but because they have deficiencies in their technique. The goal prior to practicing repertoire is to have complete ownership over technique to be able to focus on how to communicate the music. Frustration, in these instances, can be demoralizing to the student. Stu- dents must be taught to never become frustrated with themselves, as frustration leads to anxiety. If anxiety is developing in the practice room, then the student is ef- fectively practicing being anxious. Then, when it is time to perform, anxiety will unfurl because that is what has been practiced. In Repertoire, the students’ mind should be focused on how to interpret the music and not the technique to play the instrument. At this point, the in- strument should be an extension of the student’s body and not get in the way of what is intended to be expressed artistically. Teach the student to relax; this stage is sup- posed to be fun. We don’t work music. We play music.
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Joe Montelione has been on the trumpet faculty for Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, New England Music Camp, National Trumpet Competition, and Music Academy International’s Trentino Mu- sic Festival in Primiero, Italy. He is currently on the faculty of Florida Tech University where he teaches trumpet and directs the jazz band.
JANUARY 2021
51
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