Mike's Oud Forums

How long does it take you to be able to play a piece?

DivanMakam - 6-27-2015 at 06:25 AM

Hey,

I am curious and want to know how long it takes you to be able to play a piece.

2 hours?
2 days?

Not in an ensemble, only on your instrument (oud, etc.).

How long for an instrumental piece (a Turkish Saz Semai for example)?
And how long for a song?

How long do you practice in general?

DavidJE - 6-27-2015 at 08:23 AM

This is really an impossible question... How difficult is the piece? How much ornamentation should/could be added? How well do you want to be able to play it (for family & friends or at a solo performance/concert)?

There are some easy saz semai that I would feel comfortable playing for someone after a couple of hours of practice, but that would be at my own level (~2.5 years of playing) and without much ornamentation. On the other hand, there are more difficult saz semai that I've worked on for an hour or two a day for months.

As far as ornamentation/style...I've been working on playing the Muhhayer Saz Semai by Cemil Bey in the way that Yorgo Bacanos plays it. I've been working on that for about a year and still have a VERY long way to go. But I think I can play it pretty well as it is commonly notated.

Furthermore, different people with different levels of skill will have entirely different answers.

DivanMakam - 6-27-2015 at 10:35 AM

I know it depends on difficulty and ornamentation, I just wanted to know the average time you work to play a piece.

This shouldn't be a scientific survey.

You can give some examples of pieces and say "for piece A I worked 3 days, for piece B I worked 3 months".

I just want to get an impression of what the average is. Again, it is not a scientific diagnosis, I just want to get a feel for it.

For example, for which saz semai did you work for an hour two a day for months?
And which one you could play after a couple of hours of practice?

Just exchanging experiences.

Lysander - 6-27-2015 at 11:47 AM

I think this is something of a minefield for the reasons that David fairly cited. When you say "play a piece" do you mean, play it absolutely flawlessly or play it competently so that someone outside the discipline thinks that it sounds good [even though you may not]?

I am working on several pieces at the moment, some of which I have been practicing every day for many months, and I wouldn't describe any of them as finished. Someone listening may think that they sound OK though.

The only piece that I would describe as "finished" would be Nikriz Longa by Cemil Bey. I think that one took a few weeks till I became happy with it. But there are even pieces that I've written myself that I've been playing for many months which I'm still not happy with.

For instance, I thought my version of Saz Samai Hijaz Kar Kurd was great, I played it to my teacher and he said I was doing quite a bit of it wrongly! Also, I have been practising the Nihavent Longa by Kevser Hanım for over a year now - it sounds fine at 100bpm, but speed it up like the pros do.. and I still have along way to go with it! I think this is part of the problem with Turkish and Arabic music, there is more than one way to do a song, and the sheet music is generally just a skeleton framework, not the definite article, so much of it is interpretive.

So it's not about something being a scientific survey as such, but people have different standards, different understandings and different relationships with music overall.

DavidJE - 6-27-2015 at 02:01 PM

Lysander makes some great points too. I wouldn't say that ANYTHING I am now playing is "finished" (although I know what you mean Lysander).

This stuff is all very relative. Since I've only been playing for 2.5 years, saying that I practiced something for a year doesn't mean much. What would have taken me the last year to learn to the point that I know it now would probably take me 3 months if I started today. And 3 months from now my answer will also be different. To answer your questions anyway...from my relative perspective:

The Ussak Saz Semai by Aziz Dede is pretty easy as it is written. The range is fairly small, the fingering isn't difficult, etc.. If I were to see a piece like that today, for the first time, I could probably read/play it *as written* in a couple of hours, to a passable level if playing for someone who doesn't know all that much about the music. It would sound somewhat nice I think. But that's also only because I'm pretty familiar with the Ussak makam. If I wasn't familiar with a makam, then it would take much longer I assume.

Two pieces that I have worked a long time on are the Sedaraban Saz Semai by Cemil Bey and the Nihavend Saz Semai by Targan. Those pieces both have technically demanding sections (for me). So you can get an idea where I am in terms of playing...I recorded the Nihavend Saz Semai about 4 months ago, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RThRXjzCVno And, I recorded the Sedaraban Saz Semai about two months ago here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjpXgbxQHTk *I* think I can play both of those pieces at a decent beginner level, with a bit of ornamentation in each. When I play them for people I know they really enjoy them, but those people don't know much about the music. I can play both of them much better now then when I made those videos, but it will take at least another year before I feel I can play them at a beginning intermediate level...if not more. To play them like my teacher...that's going to take me 10+ years I assume, if not more.

And with what I said about the Ussak Saz Semai, for example...I could work on that piece every day for the next year and still have a ton left in terms of what could be added to it, the quality of the playing, etc..

Brian Prunka - 6-27-2015 at 06:20 PM

It is certainly an interesting question.

I could look at most Saz Semais, written, and read it on sight (as written).
However, I could practice it for years and it still wouldn't sound like Simon Shaheen or Necati Celik playing it.

In 2001, William Shaheen taught me Balad il Mahbub by Mohamed Abdel Wahab. At that time, I was able to play it as written after a few days at a moderate tempo, practicing it about an hour a day. After six months of moderately consistent practice, I could play it reasonably well at the original tempo, with some ornamentation. After two years, I could play it quite well with a fair amount of ornamentation. After 8 years I could play it very well, with a lot of ornamentation and variations. Even today, almost 15 years after first learning it, I still find subtle ways to improve it and add depth. All this to say that in Arabic and Turkish music, no piece is ever completely 'done'. A samai will repeat the taslim many times; a master player will play it slightly differently each time (this is true of any repeat in any piece). Often a player will sound good, but then you realize that they play the same variations exactly each time. It still sounds good, but it is a limited version of the music.

Each piece is an infinity within the cosmos of maqam/makam music . . . there is a lifetime to be spent on any piece. The good news is that you will never run out of things to practice! Also, all of the maqam music is interrelated, so everything you practice will impact everything else. Eventually, the subtleties, ornamentation, and variation become second nature and come more readily (a lot of this is training oneself to hear these things in one's aural imagination).



On a more practical note, one way to think about it is this:

How long does it take me to play a new piece as well as I can possibly play it at my current level of development?

For me, it depends on how demanding it is (in length, technical demands, and complexity). If you graded complexity on a scale of 1 to 10, I would assume ±10 hours of practice for each level of difficulty (so a piece rated 9 would require 90 hours of practice, more or less).

Brian Prunka - 6-27-2015 at 06:29 PM

I will note that it is more challenging to play a piece solo than in an ensemble, as any flaws are magnified and uninteresting playing will become dull quickly. Most pieces I could play passably in an ensemble setting after 2 or 3 times through. Maybe 4 times if it is long and challenging.

Lysander - 6-28-2015 at 02:24 AM

Quote: Originally posted by Brian Prunka  

For me, it depends on how demanding it is (in length, technical demands, and complexity). If you graded complexity on a scale of 1 to 10, I would assume ±10 hours of practice for each level of difficulty (so a piece rated 9 would require 90 hours of practice, more or less).


So now we have the question - where do certain pieces fit within this scale? A very simple and short Rast or Bayat piece would be a one, easily doable to an excellent standard in ten hours. The Cemil Bey piece I mentioned earlier would probably be a three, I imagine. Munir Bashir's Samai Hijaz Kar Kurd, I couldn't say, but the Huzzam Samai by Haydar must be in the region of a five or so, or maybe more?

I want to cite that Nihavent Longa by Kevser Hanım again as a key example of the difficulty we experience in this overall question. To play it at a moderate speed [as it's written] it would be a three or four. But to play it as quickly as some of the pro live performers do, its number surely increases. So even then nothing is cut and dried.

oudistcamp - 6-28-2015 at 07:38 AM

We also have to practice correctly to be efficient on time.
That is why a good teacher is essential.
Elegant left hand fingering, smooth right hand picking technique and accurate rhythm practiced with a rhythm loop will increase your learning curve.
All this with every note yielding a beautiful, warm tone on the oud.
Extract difficult phrases and use them as exercises before focusing on playing through the whole piece.
It is very painful to listen to someone who has practiced 100 hours on a piece, with confused fingering that is hindering him, poor picking techniques, missing beats here and there on the rhythm, with a strangle hold that is choking the tone.......

Quality, not quantity. Enjoy the process, and the hours will not matter.

Brian Prunka - 6-29-2015 at 06:21 AM

Quote: Originally posted by oudistcamp  
We also have to practice correctly to be efficient on time.
That is why a good teacher is essential.
Elegant left hand fingering, smooth right hand picking technique and accurate rhythm practiced with a rhythm loop will increase your learning curve.
All this with every note yielding a beautiful, warm tone on the oud.
Extract difficult phrases and use them as exercises before focusing on playing through the whole piece.
It is very painful to listen to someone who has practiced 100 hours on a piece, with confused fingering that is hindering him, poor picking techniques, missing beats here and there on the rhythm, with a strangle hold that is choking the tone.......

Quality, not quantity. Enjoy the process, and the hours will not matter.


You're right that many hours of poor practice will not get anyone closer to their goals.

A good teacher can guide you in 'what' to practice, but not really in 'how' to practice in a general sense (I consider fingering, picking, rhythm and all similar technical and music issues to be "what" to practice, not "how"). I often tell students that it took me 10 years of practice to understand how to practice. My practice now is extremely efficient, with no wasted time and very rapid results (and consequently I find practice very enjoyable). But the ability to get my practice to that point took a long time, in order to simultaneously practice, analyze my practice, and continually refine the practice to be more effective and efficient.

A helpful way to understand practice is that you can only practice one thing at a time. If you are working on the risha technique (which is where tone comes from), then you can't also be working on intonation or fingering. Whatever you are not focused on will revert to your default habits. The goal of most practice is to develop good habits so that what happens when you are not thinking will still be good, because you can't think about every aspect of playing at the same time. From this perspective, playing 'pieces' is not the goal of practice most of the time (especially for beginner/intermediate players)—the pieces are just tools for gauging and exploring the more fundamental deficiencies of one's playing and provide a framework for developing needing skills and habits. Impatience is the enemy of development; find the pleasure in small improvements and the big improvements will come more quickly.