The art of practice
Many teachers remind their students to practice at every lesson without ever really teaching them how. If you haven't begun actively talking to your students about the art of practicing, it's time to start. Is it enough for them to simply sit with their instrument for a set number of minutes? Is it enough for them to play their current piece from beginning to end? Who determines whether they've played their music correctly? The answers are different depending on the age of the student of course. Some of these skills are better shared with parents, but getting children of all ages to engage with the idea of good practice cannot be underestimated.
Practice for an adult or older student can be a wonderfully intimate experience. The physical connection with the instrument (or one's own body, if singing), opening our ears and minds to the sounds we are producing, absorbing the music in time and space, these are all powerful motivators that get us to come back, to feel the lure of our instrument when we spot it across the room. As an adult, practice for me is deeply satisfying. It engages my brain completely and mutes everything else around, the noise of the internet or my job, the dishes, everything. I have learned to really listen, to hear things that could be improved without a feeling of self-loathing, my heart and mind open to my own potential for growth. When something isn't right, I simply return to it, choose one of the many skills I have in my bag of practice tricks, fix the problem, and move on. If I play it again and I find that I still need to return to the bag of tricks, I do so. It is without pain, it is satisfying, it is successful.
When I was a kid, that was not the case. As a child, I was clueless. I played my music assignments again and again, never having any idea whether it was improving, counting the minutes until I could stop. I loved music, but I hated practicing. I wanted everything to sound good immediately. I wanted to reach the goal: perfection. I had no idea that the only way to reach so-called perfection was to embrace the experience. Eventually, I barely even practiced. I began to spend my time "playing" instead. I made up melodies and found harmonies that fit. I actually started to listen. But I couldn't find a way to apply the openness and "play" to my practice.
At some point, probably around high school, I became uncomfortably aware of how much better some students were than I was at my instruments. I was a good enough musician to know when others were more polished or technically proficient than I was. I wasn't good enough at practicing to know how to improve my results.
It took me until well into my 30s to figure out how to practice. Mainly I needed to learn how to be present and responsive, how to focus my attention on what needed to be done and to do so without feeling the need to denigrate and deride myself every time I made a mistake. This last bit was probably the most challenging for me. Allowing yourself to fail, to be human, and allowing yourself to grow and succeed, without condition, these things don't come easily to some of us. Sadly, none of my practice techniques will help you forgive yourself for being human. That's up to you. But maybe it's a healing process that you and your instrument can work on together.
At some point, probably around high school, I became uncomfortably aware of how much better some students were than I was at my instruments. I was a good enough musician to know when others were more polished or technically proficient than I was. I wasn't good enough at practicing to know how to improve my results.
It took me until well into my 30s to figure out how to practice. Mainly I needed to learn how to be present and responsive, how to focus my attention on what needed to be done and to do so without feeling the need to denigrate and deride myself every time I made a mistake. This last bit was probably the most challenging for me. Allowing yourself to fail, to be human, and allowing yourself to grow and succeed, without condition, these things don't come easily to some of us. Sadly, none of my practice techniques will help you forgive yourself for being human. That's up to you. But maybe it's a healing process that you and your instrument can work on together.
Here are some things I have learned about good practice:
1) When learning something new, never practice it faster than your mind and body can handle. Maybe this seems obvious, but many students play the easy parts as fast as possible and then stumble and stop and start and stumble again over the difficult parts. I don't mean large sections of music, I mean even within a single measure. They learn the music in little chunks, with disruption a constant part of their practice. Getting students to slow down until they can actually play the music without stopping and without mistakes must be a constant goal.
2) Play musically even when you play slowly. When you focus on playing musically, you make listening a fundamental part of your practice, as it must be if you are truly to improve. You wouldn't believe how many students become so focused on what they see (on the page or watching their hands) that they forget to listen. This is a vital part of fixing intonation and tone quality issues on instruments that are vulnerable to these challenges.
3) When you make a mistake, stop immediately and fix it. It can be tempting to finish a phrase even when we know we've done something poorly. We must get into our minds that practice makes permanent (not perfect!). Whatever we practice will become our habit. Habit is immensely powerful here. If we keep going back to the beginning and keep making the same mistakes in the same places, those mistakes will become deeply ingrained. The longer we allow this to continue, the harder it will be to fix it. The groove becomes quite deep and almost impossible to avoid or correct. When you make a mistake, stop. Fix the mistake, just that small section, repeating it until success is the new habit. Then let the section grow by a note or two in either direction. Allow the section to grow until you've succeeded at playing the full phrase. If the mistake returns, go back to the segment length that you did correctly, and begin to work up to longer segments again.
4) Let go of mistakes once they're corrected. I once heard about a teacher who always wrote suggestions in their students' music with very light pencil. Once the issue had been corrected, that pencil mark was erased to reveal nothing but the music underneath. If we keep these correction marks in our sheet music, we are constantly reminded of our difficulties and our failures instead of savoring the music that we have worked so hard to master.
5) Make flexibility one of your strongest habits. You are not a machine, thank God. (Some people love the way machines make music, but it's not really for me.) You must practice flexibility so that you don't sound like a robot. Don't get me wrong, you want to be able to perform with consistent accuracy, but when you aim for that accuracy, you must never forget that musicality allows for a broad range of "accurate" performances. You should always be pushing yourself to deliver something different (yet still accurate) every time you play. Perhaps there are some who would argue that there are times when being able to play it exactly the same every time should be the goal, but what is the point of live music if that's what we're going for? You might as well record it once and go hang up your instrument.
There are likely many other ways to improve your practice (and mine!), but these are a few that have consistently yielded positive results for me and my students. I hope you find some inspiration in them and that you're picking up your instrument at this very moment to go try them out.
1) When learning something new, never practice it faster than your mind and body can handle. Maybe this seems obvious, but many students play the easy parts as fast as possible and then stumble and stop and start and stumble again over the difficult parts. I don't mean large sections of music, I mean even within a single measure. They learn the music in little chunks, with disruption a constant part of their practice. Getting students to slow down until they can actually play the music without stopping and without mistakes must be a constant goal.
2) Play musically even when you play slowly. When you focus on playing musically, you make listening a fundamental part of your practice, as it must be if you are truly to improve. You wouldn't believe how many students become so focused on what they see (on the page or watching their hands) that they forget to listen. This is a vital part of fixing intonation and tone quality issues on instruments that are vulnerable to these challenges.
3) When you make a mistake, stop immediately and fix it. It can be tempting to finish a phrase even when we know we've done something poorly. We must get into our minds that practice makes permanent (not perfect!). Whatever we practice will become our habit. Habit is immensely powerful here. If we keep going back to the beginning and keep making the same mistakes in the same places, those mistakes will become deeply ingrained. The longer we allow this to continue, the harder it will be to fix it. The groove becomes quite deep and almost impossible to avoid or correct. When you make a mistake, stop. Fix the mistake, just that small section, repeating it until success is the new habit. Then let the section grow by a note or two in either direction. Allow the section to grow until you've succeeded at playing the full phrase. If the mistake returns, go back to the segment length that you did correctly, and begin to work up to longer segments again.
4) Let go of mistakes once they're corrected. I once heard about a teacher who always wrote suggestions in their students' music with very light pencil. Once the issue had been corrected, that pencil mark was erased to reveal nothing but the music underneath. If we keep these correction marks in our sheet music, we are constantly reminded of our difficulties and our failures instead of savoring the music that we have worked so hard to master.
5) Make flexibility one of your strongest habits. You are not a machine, thank God. (Some people love the way machines make music, but it's not really for me.) You must practice flexibility so that you don't sound like a robot. Don't get me wrong, you want to be able to perform with consistent accuracy, but when you aim for that accuracy, you must never forget that musicality allows for a broad range of "accurate" performances. You should always be pushing yourself to deliver something different (yet still accurate) every time you play. Perhaps there are some who would argue that there are times when being able to play it exactly the same every time should be the goal, but what is the point of live music if that's what we're going for? You might as well record it once and go hang up your instrument.
There are likely many other ways to improve your practice (and mine!), but these are a few that have consistently yielded positive results for me and my students. I hope you find some inspiration in them and that you're picking up your instrument at this very moment to go try them out.
How to practice... for kids
Because these techniques are not written in a kid-friendly way above, I'm posting a different version of these ideas below. Feel free to print out and distribute these resources to anyone that you think could use them!
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Click below to download PDF in black & white:
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