One of my mentors once told me “A daily routine makes your worst possible day, better.” I got to thinking about the daily routine because I have played a lot of gigs where I play the same show up to 400 times in a season. I always find I get better playing those gigs. The gig becomes my daily routine that, at my most, I played 6 times per day. I haven’t always been disciplined with a strict daily routine. I practice fundamentals each day but never the same exact fundamentals. There are people who do the exact same routine each day for extended periods of time. Here are some of the benefits I have seen from playing exactly the same thing each day and why I would advocate that everyone do this kind of practice at some point in their studies.
1. When you make the same mistake every single day you play the daily routine, it’s a lot harder to ignore and thus easier to fix. By playing the same thing everyday you can see trends in your playing that you otherwise may overlook. With this in mind, if you don’t fix those mistakes, you aren’t getting better… You might be getting worse. Some daily routines cause musicians to hit walls. Try to isolate those spots. Use practice strategies you already know and if you still can’t figure it out, ask a colleague you respect or a teacher for advice.
2. You learn to improve something you can already play well. This is crucial in development. You can only build success on success. The best players do the easy things remarkably well. By focusing on making the passages in your daily routine more beautiful and holding them to more specific and higher standards, you improve. However, if you don’t raise your standards… You might be getting worse. Go for compelling musicianship, beauty and evenness of tone, dynamic flexibility and colorful articulations.
3. You can ensure you are covering the core components of good brass playing every day. Entire books have been written on what the core components are so I will not spend much time talking about that. A daily routine should hope to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time. Doing the routine ensures you cover that ground and are not leaving glaring weaknesses in your playing. One short piece of advice- once you make your daily routine, try playing the whole thing at pianissimo. Many people settle on an unengaged and unintentional mezzo forte in their daily routine. Practicing something unengaged is a quick way to not improve or possibly get worse.
4. You can track progress easier. Very little in music is tangible and many musicians get into a “rut” of feeling like they are not improving. When you play the same thing each day it can end up being encouraging because you can hear the improvement from day to day.
These are some short thoughts about the daily routine! A lot of naysayers of a daily routine cite that it doesn’t help them improve. Anything you practice poorly will not help you improve! The daily routine can be a valuable self-motivating tool and in the long run, make both your best and worst days better.
Brendan Ige
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