I found that even with fewer hours put into practicing my left hand gets more wrung out if the gut strings are aged. Consequently I tend use more pressure to get a clean note — which, in turn, ages the strings/frets even more. It’s a bad cycle. Same goes for frets. When I’m unconsiously fighting for better tone I waste a lot of energy.
When I was practicing for a concert at the Fringe this month, I parsimoniously put off replacing strings and refretting till late in the game. When I realized the extent of the problem (about two weeks before the event) I had to take almost a week off and then no more than an hour and a half of daily play till the show. Sean On Jun 26, 2016, at 7:00 PM, Ed Durbrow <edurb...@sea.plala.or.jp> wrote: > > On Jun 27, 2016, at 4:11 AM, John Mardinly <john.mardi...@asu.edu> wrote: > >> it seems >> to take longer to memorize things than it did when I was young, so >> there is a second meaning to the phrase “mindless practice".... > > +1 on that. > >> As for how much practice is necessary? I read an interview with Paul >> O’Dette in which he stated he practiced 3.5 hours per day, > > I remember a seminar long ago where Paul said he did a lot of four hour days > when he was learning. We had heard about an Australian lutenist who was > reputed to practice 16 hours a day and Paul said he couldn’t do that, he > loved life to much - as he snuggled a puppy. I ended up rooming with that > Australian lutenist in Basel. He wasn’t practicing that much, but he was > frightening as a musician. He would come out of his room and play half a > piece that he had memorized and then say just a minute, go back in and come > out a while later with the whole thing memorized. And I’m talking > Gianoncelli! Robert Clancy was his name. > > > -- > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
