Sometimes working on the things that we are bad at is daunting. I mentioned recently about Gabe Dimartino encouraging me to explore concepts that I struggle with for at least 50 hours. That might be 10 minutes a day for a year, or 20 minutes a day for 6 months, etc. Then I remembered Dr. Murray's approach to working on skills. He teaches fundamentals through a musical context. We would end every warm up session with a Rochut etude to make sure our flow and pitch center wass in place within a musical context.
So I combined these two ideas. For example, I'll explore lip slurs and the role of the tongue for 5-10 mins, and then put it in a musical context. I just make something up that is musical or recreate a musical phrase that has several lip slurs already in it. My favorite one recently has been the wild west theme, "the good the bad and the ugly" to work on my fast lip slurs. This is much more enjoyable than exercises exclusively, and I get to see if my exploration is working or not. Synthesizing information from various teachers is the best way to teach ourselves. After all, we are our own best teacher.
Time to keep exploring,
Adam C White
