What is Priming, and How Can it Help You Play Better?
I was a triple major in college. This wasn’t because I was industrious. It was pure, unadulterated indecision: I was REALLY INTERESTED in a lot of different things, and it seemed impossibly wrenching to narrow it down. This caused me a lot of angst when, after five years, I graduated with not one, not two, but three degrees of questionable utility (recorder performance, psychology, and creative writing) and couldn’t figure out what the heck I was supposed to do next.
A couple of decades later, I’ve discovered that recorder teaching is a fabulous fit for me, allowing me to roll all my skills and interests into one endlessly fascinating bundle! I especially enjoy when I can make connections across fields, which is one of the reasons I’m so excited to talk to you this month about priming, and how it can help you learn and play better!
In the field of Psychology, priming means changing how you react to a thing by previewing something else- usually something related. If you prime a person with the word “taxes,” he or she will subsequently react more quickly to a related word like “accountant.” In other words, exposure to the first stimulus changes how you respond to the second.
The great news is that you can harness the concept of priming to improve your playing. Here are three examples of how I use priming in my playing and teaching:
Prime difficult notes
Are you having trouble leaping to specific high notes during a difficult passage? One thing that can help immensely is playing a long, beautiful tone on the note you’re struggling with immediately before you attempt the passage. Having the experience of producing a beautiful, resonant tone on, say, high F on the alto immediately before you have to leap to it can make accessing that F feel more natural and less risky. It diminishes the urge to clench up or push that difficult notes often evoke, and helps pair the note with the memory of success in the mind of the player.
Prime a clef or key
Are you struggling with a piece in a key you don’t play a lot in, like E major? Or maybe you have to read a difficult piece for bass, when you’ve only recently learned the clef? In cases like these, you can improve your success by priming yourself immediately prior with an easier selection in the key or clef in which you’re struggling. Ground yourself in bass clef by playing through the bass part in a hymnal, for example, or play through an exercise in E major before you tackle the main event.
Priming in Van Eyck
Van Eyck’s collection for solo recorder, Der Fluyten Lusthof, is one of our masterworks, containing sequences of variations on a host of different themes. These variations become quite complex, and as they do so, it can become harder and harder to hear the tune amidst what becomes a forest of notes. That’s where priming come in. My favorite way of practicing Van Eyck, for both myself and my students, is what I call phrase-by-phrase practicing. Instead of playing the theme all the way through and then the variation all the way through, try matching each phrase of the theme with its corresponding phrase in a variation. Play these matching phrases side by side, with the theme coming first, to gain a deeper understanding of how Van Eyck is transforming his tunes.
Can you think of any other ways to prime yourself for increased success?