Practice takes music from impossible to easy

I spent much of my teaching career telling students that,

…if the notes are on the paper, it is your job to play all of them — well.

We often talked about HOW to master technical passages.

When our practice did not bring everyone to the proficient level, occasionally I had to tell someone (or some people) to simplify or not play a particularly tough passage.

I only recall one time that I actually, after exhaustive (I thought) time devoted to one piece with outrageous runs, that I actually gave the woodwinds a “cheat” run. It worked, as the judges either didn’t catch it, or chose not to ‘ding’ us for it, but I always regretted resorting to that.

Refer to my 5 Steps to Cleaning Technical Passages for Instrumentalists for those techniques.

5 Steps to Cleaning Technical Passages for Instrumentalists