Reflections on Don Greene’s “Strategies for Audition and Performance Success”

I have read the chapter “Preparation I” of Don Greene’s “Strategies for Audition and Performance Success”. It is incredibly helpful as applying it to my practice session has made me realise that my practices could have been so much more productive and efficient.

The biggest takeaway from reading this chapter is that I need to set intentions for every step that I take during my practice. This means that I should pay attention to what I am choosing to practice instead of going into an automated mode of practice. For example, when doing my warm-up finger exercises, instead of just going through the motion of playing it, I should listen attentively to the kind of sound that is made, and evaluate it. Thus, for my practice session, I would stop playing whenever I hear a buzzing noise (created between the nail and string). I would then remind myself that my intention of playing these finger exercises is to develop a more round and clean tone, and avoid the buzzing noises by playing slower the next time.

While my biggest takeaway was setting intentions throughout a practice session, another very helpful takeaway was that I should pace my practice in a way which is more manageable, which the book described as “progress from short to longer, easy to harder, slow to faster” (page 11). Previously, I tend to practice parts in large chunks where I often find myself needing to focus on a multitude of goals. For example, in the passage which I was practicing in the video attached here, I divided the passage into the four 4-bar phrases to practice one by one, instead of playing the entire passage at once. However, I realised that even within a 4-bar phrase, I had too many goals that I wanted to accomplish. Firstly, I wanted to make sure that the tremolo was even. Secondly, I also was aiming for good left-right hand coordination. Thirdly, I also wanted to make sure I was plucking all the right notes. To simplify the practice sessions, I decided that I should work on the basics first, which is to firstly pluck all the right notes, and then work on the first and second goals only when I have learnt the notes well.

Through this practice session where I applied Don Greene’s strategies, I have also learnt that patience is very important for a productive practice session. I think the reason why I have the bad habit of not setting intentions and jumping straight into playing full passages is because I am rather impatient with myself to think of working on my goals one-by-one. Thus, I will work on improving my patience during my next practice.

I have attached a video where I tried out the different strategies described the this chapter of the book. https://drive.google.com/file/d/17FD4uOXghtNQMsgnvZUndgXQ056R1-8v/view?usp=sharing