Galamian Principal of 3rds

Ivan Galamian was one of the great violin teachers of the 20th Century. He held teaching positions at Curtis, Juilliard, and eventually founded his own school, the Meadowmount School of Music in Westport, New York. He wrote two violin method books, which are still commonly used today, and managed to churn out countless world-class musicians, such as Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman.

One of Galamian’s teaching philosophies that I’ve come across is a way of effectively dividing up your practice time. Referred to as his “Principal of 3rds”, one-third of the time would be dedicated to improving technical facility on your instrument. Another third would be used to conceptualize what you want the piece or exercise to sound like i.e. creating a strong mental image of this in your mind.

And the final third was set aside for…

Performing!

How often do you incorporate performing into your regular practice routine? I’m not talking about performing on stage to a full concert hall, or even anything formally organised. More like a complete run through of a piece or excerpt, either in the practice room whilst recording yourself, or for a few people sitting in to make you feel a little on edge.

It’s often the case that so many musicians do not put themselves into performance situations on a regular basis. Sometimes it might be weeks or months between performances. No wonder performing becomes an extremely stressful and daunting prospect if it’s done so infrequently!

But the question that comes into my mind is “Why do we practice in the first place? Why do we spend hours and hours refining our technique, coming up with new and interesting ways of interpreting a piece, or listening to recordings for inspiration?”

Whilst many musicians might answer that it is for your own enjoyment and sense of achievement, I think a lot of people are practicing with the goal to eventually perform what they are working on.

The way I look at it, and the way Ivan Galamian trained his students, we need to treat performing as a separate entity to practicing. If we look at performing as another skill that we wish to master, we’ll start spending more time refining that particular aspect of our playing. And by doing this we will start to see greater improvement in performance quality, whilst reducing the impact of performance anxiety along with it.

Performing is not just about playing the right notes at the right time. There is so much more to it than that. Connecting with the composer’s true intention of the music. Connecting with the audience and taking them on a spiritual, emotional, and musical journey. Connecting with your fellow musicians to create something that is more beautiful and more amazing than the sum of everyone combined. Learning how to effectively and appropriately present yourself on stage. How to announce what you are about to play to the audience. Becoming accustomed to tuning with an audience watching you. Overcoming mistakes and keep on going without stopping. As well as letting go and just playing, without analysing and critiquing each passing phrase.

All these skills can be developed with far greater clarity and accuracy under performance conditions, as opposed to slaving away working on technique, or trying to perfect your musical ideas in the practice room all day long.

So whilst this is a pretty easy concept to grasp for most performers, the real catch is following through and applying it to your practice routine, and believing that it will actually work!

One reaction I get sometimes is one of dismay; that the thought of doing less technical and musical work will result in a worse result overall. But by trusting in this concept you will begin to change how you practice, as well as how you perform. You will automatically become more efficient, more focused, and structure your practice in a more effective way. The link between preparation and performance will become clearer. You will be able to refine your playing more efficiently, by discovering where it gets a bit shaky under some pressure, so you can target those areas with greater intensity in the subsequent practice sessions.

So for this week, start to incorporate performance as a more significant part of your practice routine, and let me know how you get on. If you’re feeling really brave record yourself performing and email it to me so I get to hear your beautiful playing! Good luck!