audiotthoughts on music

so small beats large, eh? didn’t i talk about that already? well, this time it’s more like short beats long and i’m talking about periods of time. did you know that it’s impossible for us to really concentrate on something longer than a few minutes?  it’s true, although i don’t know the source of that information anymore. we think we could do something for hours and being focused the whole time but we can’t. by the way, this might be the reason that the ideal length for a song, which is played on radio, is somewhere around 3:00 minutes – keep that in mind when you record your next 70s-sound-alike-mammoth-intro…

anyway, learning is most effective if you do it for short periods of time – about 5 to 10 minutes and then take a break. there are two reasons for this: first, the above mentioned ‘concentration-span’. and the second reason: remember the puppeteer-and-datahighway-building-guys? those fellows are quite assiduous people. when you start learning, they start building – nothing fancy here but when you stop learning, they go on building for at least a few more minutes. ok, if you’re learning for five hours and then you win 5 more minutes, it’s nothing. but if one of your learning units is only 5 minutes and you still get a 5 minute bonus, that means – well, you do the math. depending on how long you need to dig in, learning periods of 10 minutes might be better, you need to check this out for yourself.

so go ahead and make up a plan by first breaking down the task into small pieces (that can be done in 5-10 minutes…), then do one at a time -  slowly and focused and after each of those periods give your brain a break, so the tiny workmates up there can finish up. you don’t need to doze off into standby mode, just do something else you don’t need to focus on. for example, you’re working for 7 minutes on that new arpeggio, playing it slowly and focused up and down the guitar neck. then, as a ‘break’, you crank up the amp and thresh your favorite punkriffs out to the universe. and after that mr. brain is ready to take another bite…

yep, i wanted to add a few words to the last entry of this series. first of all, the doing-it-very-slowly-thing is especially for learning new things. then, it’s not only about doing it slowly but also about doing it well aware and concentrated. so to avoid any misunderstandings, i wanted to clean that up. learning something new on a drumset is a great example because with this instrument, the moves you make are huge compared to a guitar for example. big moves mean you can easily see what exactly’s going on. maybe you want to hit the hihat with your right stick and then hit the lowest floortom afterwards. that’s quite a long way for poor mr. stick. now, if you practice this at normal playing tempo, chances are, your motion is far from perfect. you mostly concentrate on getting this done in time. doing it slomo, however, gives you nice visual feedback on what it is you’re doing. you will immediately see, if the motion is unbalanced, weird, wacky, whatever. and you will be able to correct that aka replace it with a nice round beautiful motion that will not only help you staying in time, but also look a lot better to bystanders :-) – it will sound better (trust me on that), feel better and your hands, arms, shoulders, back, neck will thank you. and one more thing: you will be able to play this a lot faster once you really figured it out and got rid of all wackyness.

of course this goes for any instrument, drums just happen to show it more clearly…

alright, in part one i told you about some basics, things to go for and things to avoid…

so what is the actual workout?

it’s as easy as singing the album and concentrate on one thing at a time. for example: always a good topic to focus on is precision. sing the album and concentrate on singing every single note, every single syllable as precise as you can. i do that at least 2-3 times a week to stay on top of things but if you need to build up precision first, it should be more like once a day. another thing is breathing. again, do the whole album and this time fully concentrate on breathing. do you breathe in the right spots? do you breathe in too much air? or too little? is all air gone before you breathe in again? is there a breathing-rhythm?

power, stamina, height are things that should be practiced very carefully! don’t ever overdo it with those! this could cause damage to your voice! that being said, it’s ok to push yourself a little – but concentrate on how it’s feeling. your body knows when it’s too much. and if your throat hurts, you’ve gone too far. power is not loudness (but you knew that already, right?). it comes from precision, efficiency and clearness. and there’s a slogan (i think it’s from some car-tires-ad…): “power is nothing without control” and that is it! you might get carried away, that’s fine – and one reason why you should do whole albums. if you get carried away too much, you’ll notice by not being able to do more than a few songs in a row. when that’s the case, practice on controlling the outburst as much as necessary. usually this is about volume, you got too loud – but loudness is not power, always keep that in mind. for all three (power, stamina, height) you should use a record that’s a tiny bit too high or too tiring for you, so you can stay motivated. but again: don’t overdo it. if it’s getting too hard, take a break. it will come, don’t worry.

then there’s two kinds of speed you could practice: i’d like to call the first one ‘attack’ because it’s similar to the attack we have with instruments (ask your local guitarist). this concerns the beginnings of notes/words. be there on the spot as fast as you can. i’m not talking about pitch here, although this is another thing you can work on (whole album, try hitting the notes – what a surprise…). be quick at starting notes – fast attack. and be quick at changing notes, when it comes to multiple notes in a row: think stairs, not ramp. this is an important skill to work on. the second kind of speed is the more obvious: be able to talk and sing fast in case this ever comes up. for this, sing the album without playback (just your voice) and speed it up, as fast as you can and even faster – this can be quite funny. choose lyrics with lots of words and off you go.

and then there’s whatever you think you’d need to work on….

the order of above things is not coincidence. as you might have noticed, precision does not only stand for itself, it’s also a factor for all others. without precision, you’ll always sound like….well, just bad. by the way this goes for any instrument – ask any pro. and breathing is everything anyway. so those two are the important ones, the priorities. once you got them down (hint: you’ll never really have ;-) ), the others are the topping. but work on them all to prevent boredom. if something is boring, do something else – that goes not only for music :-)

that’s it for now, the next part will be an inside look at my own workout. wooooooooooooooo…..