Practice Props
By Philip Johnston
Page 1 of 6
 No matter how creative our advice to
students is, good
preparation keeps coming back to one not-very-exciting thing.
Repetition.
Taking something that is clumsy and slow, and doing it over
and over and over and over until it becomes automatic and graceful.
If I hear a weak section in a student’s piece, there
is one question I will usually ask first:
“In your entire life, including today, how many times
have you played that section?”
If students give an answer that is less than their age,
then I have a useful starting point for what might be needed to turn this
trouble spot around.
Unfortunately, repetition is boring. Playing that
section once is probably not most students’ idea of a good time. So why
would they torture themselves by playing it fifty times?
The trick is to make sure they are not forced to count up
to fifty in the first place.
It’s time to use some props.
A prop? What do you mean?
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