For IFR students practicing Exercise 1: Landscape, this is a demonstration of the Exercise 1 Daily Meditation. Marina Vallet demonstrates the exercise on the soprano saxophone using the interval of a whole step.

Practice tip

Don't be in a rush to advance through the steps too quickly. The key to the exercise is to take lots of time with each step before you move on to the next. Deep learning only takes place after something has already become familiar.

For beginners this can be a difficult concept to understand. We are accustomed to moving ahead just as quickly as we are able to. But that’s precisely what blocks the really deep learning that we are after. If your mind is always working, thinking about the next note or making some other sort of calculation, then your attention is always on your own thoughts instead of on the experience of playing the notes.

So try to get out of your own head. Focus on a couple of notes and really jam with them. Listen to them, express yourself with them and forget about what comes next. Then when you are thoroughly exhausted, that’s when you can move on to the next step.