February 2017 Posts

Make Sound Your #1 Priority During Practice

Instrumental practice often consists of the classic combination of long tones, scales, and etudes. While this combination of exercises is “classic” for a reason, there is one glaring omission: sound. Sound is the most important of playing no matter if you are a beginning 6th grader or a seasoned professional in the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.

If you are playing a scale at a very fast tempo, the number of notes passing is irrelevant in each note has poor sound quality. If you are hitting very high notes on your instrument and they don’t sound good, they don’t count for much. If you are playing in an ensemble and you are “in tune” but have a poor sound quality….you get the idea.