Lesson 12 – Practice, Practice, Practice

New to the instrument? Start with The Bulgarian Kaval: what it is, how it sounds and how it is made.

You’ve successfully finished my Beginner Kaval Course. Now you know how to play simple melodies on the kaval. You can also breathe more efficiently and you’ve raised awareness of how different registers on the kaval work and how to read the fingering chart. It’s time for you to start practicing and mastering all the skills that I talked about in the course. I’ve prepared a few tips that will help you develop an effective practice routine.

“Practice makes perfect”. The general understanding is that “The more time you spend practicing the better you’ll get”. I agree, but partly, I would rephrase it a little – “The more time you spend practicing EFFECTIVELY, the better you’ll get”. It’s a small addition but makes a huge difference. My goal as an educator is not to teach you how to play but rather, to teach you how to practice effectively. Then you’ll learn how to play by yourself. Of course, I can be there to guide you through the process but the goal is to teach you how to handle things yourself. The most important thing is to stay focused, set specific goals, and maintain positive attitudes.

Here’s the small list of tips that I use to improve my practice and make it more efficient:

Improve your sound by playing long notes

That is an amazing exercise. Doing it every day will significantly improve your sound. My teacher used to tell me that if my sound is not good nothing else matters. I think this is totally true. Regardless of how great you can play a melody or how great your ornamentations and embellishments are, if your sound sucks, everything sucks. Here’s what the exercise looks like:

• Inhale as much air as you can
• Start with a note that you can easily play
• Slowly work your way up or down the chromatic scale
• Play each note long enough to really feel that you’re comfortable with it
• Don’t continue to the next one if you’re not sure that the current one is good enough
• Repeat every day for at least 15 minutes, I usually do it as a warm up exercise.

I know… It’s a very annoying and boring exercise. My neighbours stopped liking me because of it but I can tell you for sure that it was totally worth it. Not only it improves your sound but also helps you build confidence and that is also very important for a musician.

Use a metronome

You won’t believe how important playing with a metronome is. I’ve talked about this in Lesson 10 but I’ll say again. Music is about sharing. Playing with other musicians makes it very fun and exciting. Improving your timing is crucial especially if you want to be able to play with other musicians. So, practice with a metronome regularly and your timing will improve significantly.

Record yourself

Have you ever recorded your own voice? It feels very weird to listen back to it. It is very similar to recording yourself playing. It is weird and it usually sounds worse than you thought. That’s normal, though. The honesty of a recording is an amazing tool for improving your playing. You can even use your phone to record. You don’t need professional equipment. You need a decent quality recording to do the job.

Be creative

The most important aspect of playing an instrument is practicing. Efficient and meaningful practice sessions occurring regularly will bring better results sooner. So it’s important to always be creative and find what works for you. Invent your own exercises. Let’s say you have a fragment of a tune that you find very difficult and it keeps giving you trouble. Take it out, break it down, try to understand every aspect of it and create exercises out of it by altering it. The possibilities are endless so it’s also very important to use your honest judgement if something is worth your time or not. This means that if you see that you’re going nowhere just stop with that exercise and maybe simplify it or change entirely.

Learn to practice without your instrument

This sounds ridiculous at first but believe me it is very effective. I do it all the time. Music starts in our heads and the instruments are tools to express our minds. Which technically means that we could train our minds even without the instruments. The advantage of the kaval is that it is a small instrument and it’s very easy to carry anywhere. Yet, I often find myself wanting to practice and not having my instrument around. I showed you a way to start practicing rhythm without your instrument in the previous lessons. Once again, I urge you to be creative and find other ways to improve your playing and practice even when you don’t have your instrument with you.

Thanks for trusting me and investing in this course. I hope you had a good time and you gained meaningful knowledge that will help you become a better kaval player.