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Hi Noa,
I’ve been trying to implement these things and yea I realized was stopping at the precise problem and not really thinking exactly why it happens.
Something that I found was that when I’m chaining, I develop a lot of rhythmic unevenness in my fingers. In the sixteenth note passages that I was working on, I’d have a lot of intervals where it sounds like dotted rhythms (32nd note- sixteenth note or sixteenth note- dotted eighth). It’s happened in about 90 percent of the things that I’ve chained and I don’t notice the problem until I’ve already done more than half of the passage. And these problems come coupled with having interval cracks to worry about. I’ve tried doing the opposite rhythm to counterbalance it (if note 1 of 1-2 is rushing then I played note 1 long and note 2 short), but I don’t think it’s helped that much. I feel like I’m just doing something wrong when chaining but I’m not sure what to do to not create these issues in the first place.
For context I play Bassoon, so when there’s an issue with a finger not being fast enough it’s more like my fingers aren’t coming down at the same time or that the timing between a finger(s) coming down and the other coming up is not in sync. When I used my phone to view it in slow-motion, a lot of the times its still pretty hard to see which finger is off; since I have to angle myself sideways to be able to see the thumb keys as well as the front fingers. Because of this, I easily get stuck replaying ethe video for ten minutes straight and end up coming out with nothing concrete. I’ve only been able to fix/ better some intervals that had a glaring issue like my finger was releasing too wildly. When I fixed an interval issue in isolation (as in it works when I play notes 2-3), but it doesn’t work when I add note 1, I’ve recorded it and looked at the video. What happens is that notes 2-3 revert to the state they were in before I fixed it. So for example if the problem was that my index finger would cover the hole too much, I can fix it if I play the interval leading up to that (2-3) but add 1 and I cover too much again. So how should I practice maintaining the solved 2-3 when adding note 1, would this change if I had to do the same thing but the interval was deeper in the phrase (like note 14-15).
The main problem that I’ve had for a long time is just maintaining mindfulness throughout a practice session. Part of it is not knowing when I should take a break and for how long. The other part is keeping track of the reps that I do and being deliberate with them. It happens whenever I find a solution and I’m looking to make it more consistent/ easy to recall, I’m not sure how to do that other than repeating it a bunch of times and hope that the solution sticks. The worse scenario is when I’m looking for the problem (like when looking at the slow mo video), checking a finger and I’m not sure if it’s that that finger isn’t actually the problem or that I’m just not moving it fast enough; which then leads me to just repeat the interval with the same focus a bunch of times, getting me frustrated and making the mistake harder to unlearn. How can I work on making each rep worth more? What should I do before and after a rep when I’m looking for a solution vs a problem/ cause to a problem? How does this change when I’ve found the solution and I’m trying to reinforce it/ play it that way consistently?
Sorry that its so wordy, would it help if I put a video of me chaining, or trying to solve a problem through deliberate practice?
Thank you,
Luca