When one is learning to play a musical instrument, the most important time spent on the instrument is spent without the instructor present. Practicing efficiently and properly will lead quickly to the mastery of the instrument because that journey comes from within. Here are some practical tips to make that journey move faster.
Quality Over Quantity
Don’t worry about practicing long hours. Make the your practice time count! As a music student, your job is to improve, master, and remember what you’ve accomplished.
Most students fail in one of two basic ways.
- They practice in a way that fails to produce improvement.
- They practice in a way that fails to ensure a lasting memory of the items learned.
Listen to the Music
Music is about listening. Well trained ears help you learn music easily and quickly. If you read music, try to understand how the notation communicates what you are hearing. It should be easy to schedule some listening into your day. If you enjoy music, you will already have listening time built in. Take the song that you want to learn and listen to it. Play it in the background. Listen when you’re in the car. Listen to it while you work out. Listen to each new piece for a few days before you start to practice it. The biggest advantage in listening is that it will help prevent mistakes in rhythm. Rhythm mistakes are the hardest to fix!
Practice Daily.
Daily practice makes for steady progress. I often say in my practice that 5 minutes a day is better than 3 hours all at once in a frantic push to be ready for your lesson. People often underestimate the value of a daily commitment. They don’t prioritize their practice time and skip days with the intention of doubling-up the following day. If they skip a few days, they pledge to catch up with one or more marathon sessions on the weekend.
Unfortunately, these make-up sessions seldom materialize. And when they do, they’re typically counterproductive. Long marathon sessions cause mental, aural, and physical fatigue which leave the student frustrated with little to show for the effort. A regular regiment of marathon sessions may easily take the fun out of music, and lead to a bad attitude toward practice.
Daily practice keeps your physical abilities up to par with your mental understanding. Music practice places many demands on you body. If you don’t warm up and prepare yourself before you practice, you run the risk of developing bad habits and physical tension. If you have trouble practicing every day, try alternating with days of light and heavy practice.
There will come days when you really don’t have time for a full practice session. I realize that there are only so many hours in the day! Things will always come up and some days you’ll honestly feel too tired to practice or you just don’t feel like doing it. On days like these go easy on yourself, but don’t skip practice. Put in five or ten minutes and then call it a day. Consistency is key!
Warm-up First.
Why does everyone want to skip the warm-up? This is true for beginners, advanced students, young students, and adults. The complaint is that the warn-up “it keeps you from getting to the fun part.” A good warm up makes it easier for you to play better during the rest of your practice.
Always start your practice with something familiar. Play some scales. Follow that up with an easy piece or
two. In doing so you’ll establish a baseline for the day. Then continue your warm-up and try to improve on these points before working on new or challenging material.
Strive to Improve from Todays’ Baseline
It’s rare that you pick up right where you left off the day before. This is especially true for beginners. It may take five to twenty minutes to get yourself warmed up and back in touch with yesterday’s best.
With many tasks, you pick up Tuesday right from where you left off on Monday. Unfortunately, this isn’t so with music. There will always be days when your best efforts will fail to surmount yesterday’s accomplishments. You know what? It’s okay. Your improvements aren’t linear. Always set a daily baseline in your warm-ups and try to improve from there.
Technique!
When you learn a piece of music, your attention gets spread over several tasks: reading notes, interpreting rhythm, keeping a steady pace, creating good tone, playing in tune, etc. Because of this multitasking you’ll often lose track of your technique. It is essential that you practice on technique during your warm-up period. Practice technique first and you’ll be more ready to tackle the difficult multi-tasking that goes with learning a new challenging piece of music.
Divide and Conquer
Break tasks into small manageable pieces. If you have a huge hamburger in front of you, do you just shove the whole thing in your mouth? No! Take small bites and you won’t end up with indigestion. There’s no shame in breaking pieces down into a phrase, a measure, or even two consecutive notes. To learn large groups of information efficiently, you must study the material in small sections.
Work on any size piece you want, but make sure that you make steady progress. If you don’t, divide the section it half, and work on the smaller loops. Continue dividing until you reach a size where you can progress quickly. This can be as small as 2 consecutive notes. Learn the piece equally well using this method. It is important that there aren’t any weak sections. This brings us to our next point.
Don’t Obsess
Once you determine an appropriate size section, practice it briefly in a loop, just for a minute or two. Then shift away from this portion of the music to the next section. This approach allows your memory to absorb the experience subconsciously.
Review Frequently
Review is your best practice tool. If you’ve worked on several new sections, review each section occasionally during your practice. When you’ve learned a piece completely, don’t just put it away. Review it occasionally to keep it fresh.
Alternate Between Learning and Reviewing
Don’t spend an entire practice reviewing. Push yourself to learn something new each practice, no matter how small. By the same token, don’t spend an entire practice learning something new. Use review to give your brain a chance to work our the new pieces you are working on. Every practice should contain elements of both new pieces and review pieces.
Get it right the first time!
You’ll learn whatever you practice. Bad habits are learned at the same time as good ones. Be meticulous about your wrist and thumb positions. Make sure you count and practice your rhythms. If you get a piece into your muscle memory the wrong way, it will be more difficult to “un-learn” it. So play it SLOWLY! I often recommend separating the melodic, harmonic, and rhythm aspects of the music into manageable chunks. If you can’t play a piece on time, play it in quarter notes to make sure your hand positions are correct and manageable. Then, when you are ready, count the piece out slowly and play it properly in time. The things to remember is “practice slowly, learn quickly!”
Consistency is Key
Do everything the same way as often as possible. This will help speed memorization and allow your body to relax when you play the piece.
In conclusion, practice is the only way to truly master an instrument. You may see practice as tedious, but it can be challenging and fun, especially if you follow the tips outlined above!
