Practice
This!
October 2009
Andy Clausen provides a student’s perspective
by David M. Marriott
We’re doing something a little different this month in presenting a student’s perspective in our new Practice This! column. One high school player I’ve been consistently seeing crossing the threshold into local professional performing groups is trombonist Andy Clausen. A Roosevelt High School senior, he’s not only chalked up awards for Outstanding Trombone (Lionel Hampton and Essentially Ellington), but also the Monterey Jazz Festival Gerald Wilson Jazz Composition Award for his composition “Fly.” He has also had his band and compositions featured as part of Earshot’s Jazz: The Second Century concert series. Clausen has made amazing strides in the past four years – truly the definition of making your own success story – so I wanted to talk to him about practicing and what habits have made the biggest difference for him.
“I try to be as effective as possible with everything, getting the most out of every exercise or etude,” said Clausen. “I generally let my ears tell me how to find the natural variations, whether it’s about changing keys, moving across different ranges, or just developing the ideas further. When I started high school, I spent too much time getting ‘warmed up’ and was too mentally drained to really practice improvising.”
Finding a practice routine that works is hard for everyone, but Clausen found a schedule that worked for him about eighteen months ago, and it has paid off. “I started practicing during lunch, about 45 minutes. By the end, I was fully warmed up for jazz band rehearsal, and I was that much stronger when it came time to practice after school. Plus, by adding that session earlier in the day, I was able to get the physical practicing elements out of the way and could focus on improvising-related ideas after school. I wish I had made the change sooner.”
Another shift in his practice habits came at the suggestion of trumpeter Cuong Vu. “He had me turn my focus away from scales and toward chords and chord tones. It’s really helped me to hear and understand harmony in a way that the scale-Aebersold-pattern method hasn’t. Practicing with just a metronome and playing a melody of chord tones has helped me a great deal.”
The idea of “using your ears to guide you” is an important one for young students, as they are too often taught specific ideas and patterns to play that they may not naturally hear. Clausen has learned the value of listening to himself in a variety of ways. “When you let your inner ear guide you, and can see those ideas come to fruition, you start to see the benefits right away. Cuong Vu suggested I start recording myself, which allows me to track my progress more effectively, and when I’m able to hear that change in my playing that I’m listening for, it motivates me to improve further. It also helps me focus my practice attention, as I can clearly identify those things that I need to work on.”
If you are a young student and need some inspiration, look no further. You’d be hard pressed to find a better example of how to do it right than Andy Clausen.
