The big "practice" question....

Playing/Techniques
#1

Whats up people!

So here are some questions I have been dying to ask for a long time but was too lazy to sit down and write out. Basically, I want to ask anybody and everybody who is an experienced musician on here about practice in general and I would also like to ask those who are experienced in Shamisen if they would kindly shed some light on the specifics of there practice. So here it goes …breaths in deeply

When it comes to practice what is your schedule?

Id like to hear what experienced people have to say this…do you set goals? if so how? How many days a week do you practice? how many hours? How do you deal with days when you cant find time to practice? Whats your general philosophy about practicing? or anything you think is important…

When you do sit down and practice what do you practice?

Did you just go in a cave for ten years and recite mantras until you were epic, or is there more to it? Specific details for Shamisen would be really great here. Ive read Kyle’s book and there were some great descriptions of how to execute certain techniques. Ive also been reading some of Kevin’s posts about how tone is more important in Shamisen than say learning scales. With some really great descriptions of techniques to develop that element. So I’m curious about what the core skills of learning Shamisen are.That’s the question what are they? Any great techniques or exercises? How did/do people who have achieved a high level in this instrument (or any instrument) practice?

From my ten years of experience in Karate it seems that a positive attitude, consistency and masochism…i mean… slow incremental progress are general keys to improvement. But what do you guys think about the specifics? Any help would be great and I hope this will be of use to everyone.

#2

Hi Nathan,
I’m sure there are other people on the board who will have useful things to say about this, but to get the ball rolling, I’ll throw my two cents in here.
About a practice schedule:
As Kyle said somewhere else, 10 or 15 minutes every day is better than 2 hours once a week. The key is to play as often as possible. If you can play an hour a day you will improve faster than if you only play 15 minutes a day.
One other thing I might (add probably anyone who has tried seriously to learn an instrument would agree) is that it isn’t always fun. I had many days where I wanted to smash my shamisen against the wall out of frustration with some technique I couldn’t seem to master. This never happened with the guitar, which I learned on my own (and never got particularly good at). I think with the guitar I never really pushed, but with the shamisen I knew that I would have to play whatever I was learning that week in front of my teacher, and if I couldn’t do it, I’d look stupid.

As far as what to practice, my teachers only taught pieces, they never assigned me scales or exercises, but from those pieces I naturally practiced the parts that I couldn’t play well. These parts end up turning into exercises, which I practiced for hours and hours before being able to play them with any fluency. The two most obvious ones for Tsugaru players might be the 430 00 00 00 climax at the end of each section of the Jonkara pieces, and the third string descent from 0 to 19. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say I’ve spent hundreds of hours on these two.

You can learn the basics of Tsugaru shamisen from a piece like Rokudan, which contains many of the key riffs that define the style. The Absolute basics, though, might be better learned on easier pieces than Rokudan. There are lots of min’yō pieces that work on rhythm and basic bachi work and are much less technically challenging than, though not as flashy or impressive as Rokudan. To my mind, you are better off playing a simple piece well than playing a difficult piece poorly. A slower piece can get you to concentrate on intonation (where to put your fingers to get the right pitch - since it’s fretless, this takes work) and tone (which is mostly affected by how you use the bachi).

The more I teach and watch my students progress (or not) the more it strikes me how important form is. By this I mean holding the shamisen correctly, holding the bachi correctly (making sure your right wrist is bent to almost 90 degrees, and holding the bachi at the proper angle to the strings), and positioning your left hand properly (perpendicular to the neck, as opposed to using the guitarist’s grip). Form is something you improve over time, but you have to work at it the same way you work at learning tunes. Sometimes you work on just getting the notes down any way you can, but other times you’ll want to focus mostly on your form, even though it makes your playing much worse while you are doing it. Eventually you’ll get the form down and won’t have to think about it anymore. Sloppy form works for a while, but sooner or later you will find that it limits what you can do, and you’ll either give up playing or re-learn it properly.

So, that’s a start…

#3

Gerry McGoldrick is an awesome source for answering questions like this. Much of what is said in Gerry`s post is really cutting to the core issues specific to Shamisen practice.

So instead I will add something about my own personal thoughts on practicing music in general.

Something I have found to be true (for me) is that mental visualization is very important. One`s personal relationship to music is well… “personal” so I am not asking anyone to agree or disagree with this but I have noticed that a lot of the time when I have been able to flow with music and specifically on Shamisen it happened within my mind long before it happened through my fingertips.

There`s a kind of trick that I seem to have unconsciously (or Subconsciously)
developed in which I listen very intently to a performance that I love. Be it Kinoshita Shinichi or Takahashi Chikuzan or whoever. Somehow without even being aware of it I seem to fall into a mental state where my inner-mind stops separating the music outside from my experience within. To put it another way I have often experienced a type of trance-state in which I felt mentally convinced that I was the one creating the sounds I was listening to. Even though consciouly I could tell that it was actually a performace by someone else. The more I love the music that I hear the more naturally this seems to happen.

Then when I return to my own mind or consciousness and pick up my Shamisen, I
do it with the utter conviction that there is no possible way on earth that I could not produce that same sound since I have already seen and heard and felt it within my mind`s eye with absolute clarity. If I hit technical barriers or challenges they seem to melt away within moments and I experience these more or less as the sensation of having to stop and remember… like when you say to yourself “Now what was it I was doing back when I had this mastered a minute ago?”

I have also noticed then when I sit down to just practice and do it from the mind (without the aid of this trance state ) it seems suddenly to become 1,000,000,000 times more difficult and something that might have taken me two seconds to master all of a sudden feels like it could take a year .

So I guess my point is that in my personal experience there seems to be a kind state of mind in which the practice of music becomes effortless, automatic and doesnt even feel like practicing at all. More like something you just cant help but do and you don`t even know why…

Of course you might say this doesn`t apply to beginers but I would have to disagree and point out that there are 4 year olds that have been known to shock everyone by busting out the most incredible music and you would swear you are hearing an experienced veteran adult play.
Children seem to be better at this sort of thing sometimes simply because their minds are too young to think “Oh gee… I would have to practice for ten years to be able to do that.” They just hear something they love… and they do it…just like that! because it never occurs to them that it was someone else doing it in the first place.

#4

Wow! lots of great information here :slight_smile: going to try to learn from this! thanks!

#5

Wow, Mr. McGoldrick and Kevin thank you so much for your input! I was hoping to hear from both of you so I’m really grateful! I’m sure anyone who reads this can get a lot out of it.

Personally, as far as how to practice Id say I got a lot of information from what both of you said. But there’s a couple things that peaked my interest in both of your comments

In terms of a practice schedule I promised my self when I started playing Shamisen that I would do it everyday for at least one hour for like…well forever, haha. However,there are some days I miss so sometimes I really get down on my self about it. But its good to hear as long as I can squeeze in a little time its better than nothing. And everything Kevin was saying about visualization was just great. One question about that though is, do you put yourself into that state by some sort of meditation every time before you practice? or is it something else? Seems similar to what we use to do in Karate…

Another thing I worry about is I don’t know when I am wasting my time. Which is largely why I asked this question and I do feel better informed. But I still I worry that I will go off playing something that I’m already good at for a while and practice my weak points for a much smaller portion of time. Have you ever felt that way?

I may not always have a teacher because I travel a lot so I’m worried if I don’t have some situation of a possible shaming I will just slip into whats comfortable more. Did either of you have to deal with that at any point?

#6

Nathan,
Yes of course technical practice is technical practice and is definately something to take seriously by itself if you are serious about getting good at any instrument.

and I think it goes without saying that when you practice only what is comfortable
you will get predictable results. I am very much into improvisation with music so something I like to do to keep myself challenged is put on a variety of (recordings of) different music from all over the world and from many different eras. Then I try to improvise along with it. Many times if the music is challenging enough I find myself reaching out for melodies or intervals I may not be able to physically handle. When that happens I might take the time to stop for a while and actually work out an idea in terms of fingering and melodic flow. This is more like traditional “Practicing” I guess you could say…

As far as meditative states, I cant say I have ever applied anything like that but I am guessing that the state of mind I was speaking of earlier is already a type of meditative state. for me it just happens automatically whenever I hear a melody or composition that blows my mind. Like when you are watching a really engaging movie and find yourself clenching your fists or laughing or crying etc. For me that sometimes happens with music. Its the same kind of trance.

#7

wow sorry it took so long to reply, thanks for the information Ive taken it all to heart and have been applying it daily. And I’m also interested in how you have conditioned your mind to reach certain states when listening music that connects with you. I’m going to see what I can do in that regard, anyway thanks again!

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