Monthly Practice Report (November, 2014)

Recalling one post from 2009 (The Third "M"), and another from 2012 (One Twenty-Minute Interval at a Time), here is my November (2014) practice report:

And while we’re on the subject, I’d like to clarify a few things about the way that I record my twenty-minute intervals. First, I keep a countdown timer beside my bala. (I picked this one up for around $8 at a local electronics store.)

I set the timer for 20 minutes and when I’m ready to begin practicing, I press the start button. Then I do my best to "tune it out" entirely. Now, practicing for me means that I need to be at my instrument. I can be playing, working things out, experimenting with technique, doing exercises, learning a new phrase, etc., but if I have to get up for any reason, I pause the timer. This means that I do not count transcription-making, video-watching, studying transcriptions that others have made, checking audio recordings, nor focused listening as "practice." All of these activities are of course necessary and they certainly contribute to my growth and development as a musician and as a bala player, but the only practice time I record is when I am physically at the instrument, tapping keys.

I do count practice time with others, however, but because I have much less control over tempo and because I can’t readily stop the music to isolate a part and then error-correct, I only count it at half of it’s actual value. (So, for instance, if Stan comes over and we go through material for two hours, I’ll fill in only three little boxes. Same goes for rehearsals with Katenen’s group.)

As best I can, I try to prepare myself to stay at the bala for at least twenty minutes at a time. I feel that my practicing is more effective this way than if I were to, for instance, record two minutes, pause, go do some cooking, record two more minutes, pause, go to the washroom, etc. (I will do it that way if I have to—I do feel that "a couple of minutes here, a couple of minutes there" is helpful—but I prefer to work in more substantial blocks.)

Every month I print a new practice sheet. (And these days, I post it on the door of my apartment so that anyone who comes over can, at a glance, see how consistent I’ve been.) But I allow myself to "backfill" up to the beginning of the month. This means that if don’t manage to practice very much on a given day, I can catch up at some later date—up to the end of the month. My current goal (even though there are three hours on the sheet) is to practice for at least two hours every day. If I practice for more than two hours (i.e., more than six boxes) on a given day, then I can fill any box that I had previously left empty—again, up to the beginning of the month. However, I can’t fill "forward." If I have filled in all nine boxes for all the days from the beginning of the month, then if one day I practice for more than three hours, I simply stop recording. It's rare, but it has happened.

Low Arc

This is my current keyword list. It's a 3x5 card that I have taped to the wall across from where I practice. In this post, I'd like to address the first keyword: low arc.

Any one mallet-head, moving between any two keys, makes an "arc" through space. And the height of that arc is important.

In the image above (and you can click on it to see a larger version), I have moved my left hand "down" (1) a sixth; that is, first I struck A2 and then I struck C1. (Play example.) The arc of my mallet-head could have followed the red, yellow, or green lines (or some other path through space.) As any of my friends will tell you (since I all too frequently whine to them about it), my left hand has been a thorn in my side for years. Well, lately I've been letting my focus drift more frequently to my LH's arc. And I've been noticing that by simply paying the arc some attention, other aspects of my LH's deficiencies are beginning to fall into place (cf. Feldenkrais; awareness.)

Sory Diabate has superlative technique. Just look at how low he keeps his LH. The height of the arc, of course, relates inextricably to the height of the . . . whatever that's called: the lift, the recoil, the upstroke, and I've heard of snare drum teachers having students play under tables, so that they are forced to control their upstroke—and in so doing, they learn to generate power in their attack, without needing to lift their sticks up above their heads. I described this to Sory once and he thought it was a great idea; we even implemented it for a while. In fact, come to think of it, I've found that in high-tempo music, for movements of a sixth or greater, trying to follow a yellow or a red arc can be downright impossible. If one of the goals in instrument technique generally, is economy of motion, obviously the green arc is the way to go. Anyway, all I'm saying is, insofar as technique is concerned, lately I've been aiming for a low arc. It's something I'm paying attention to, and that attention is doing some good.


1. In the conception of some—though not all—bala- (and other West African xylophone-) players, A2-C1 would actually be an "upward" movement since for those players, the terms "low" and "high," and "up" and "down" refer not to pitch, but to the physical characteristics of the instrument. On that conception, the lower-pitched notes are called "high" notes because they are physically higher up on the trapezoidal keyboard. Here, I am referring to a movement from the higher-pitched A2 to the lower-pitched C1, so for me, that's a "downward" movement.