Practice Journal (persistence)

1 hr 47 min (btsw), slurs at 65 bpm

Started doing slurs at 32nds (whole steps), but they're not pretty. Have to work on that.

Spent 20+ minutes buzzing along with my computer (the Buzzing Companion has grown past 20 minutes; I've posted first two exercises at the download page). I'm happy how much my buzzing has improved in the last six months, but I still do lots of funny things as I descend below F2.

Today was mentally quite challenging. Because I didn't practice consistently last week, I've lost ground on the White, Tetra Ergon, mvmt i. Most obvious in the low-register work. But perhaps that's not all bad - I needed to work on it more anyhow, as it wasn't quite right. The tone was shifting around a lot (now more, of course), and I'm not starting the tone reliably (timing). It was quite frustrating this evening ...

Having worked on it a bit, though, I got somewhere. It's getting better again, bit by bit. Blowing well certainly helped a lot, but that didn't fix everything. Gotta keep my arm accurate, and avoid deforming my embouchure (jaw motion forward/backward), etc etc. Keep practicing, keep solving little problems, keep chipping away at the various junk in the playing/sound.

And thus make it simpler.

If I persist, the playing becomes easier. Or rather I change and the instrument stays the same. For:

"That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed, but our power to do it is increased."
-Heber J. Grant (one source)

Trust the practice (says Phil Teele).