This blog post is a recap of the
information covered in my two part series titled Some Secrets to Effective Practice, posted on 6/25/14 and 7/2/14. I had a recent question from a Learning Music With Ray You Tube
subscriber that illustrated the value in revisiting this topic. I have added some information since the last
posts, and also created an accompanying You Tube video.
The truth is that there is no quick fix to instrumental or
vocal performance. I spent most of my childhood assuming that I did not
possess the ability to achieve mastery on my instruments. I loved music,
but my ability to understand theory seemed to far exceed my physical ability to
perform. It wasn’t until I grew older that a realized the level of
practice I was investing was not equal to the result I was hoping to achieve.
Time Management
This leads me to the first secret to effective practice which is to set
realistic and reachable goals. We are not all professional musicians, but
this does not mean we cannot pursue musical performance as a hobby. We
just need to set realistic goals for what we want to achieve. Many top
level professionals practice 4-8 hours every day. Many public school
music students practice 15-30 minutes a week (out of those who even
practice). Where do you fall within that range? How much time do
you have to devote to the study of musical performance? What level do you
wish to achieve? If you answer these questions honestly, it will help you
to set more realistic and achievable practice goals.
Once we have set our practice goals, there are ways to ensure that we achieve
them in the most efficient and effective manner. One is to regulate the
amount of time spent in any one sitting. Studies have shown that we
retain information most effectively during the first and last ten minutes of
any study session or lecture. Some practice technicians use this
information to suggest that the most effective form of practice is to break
one’s time into twenty minute segments throughout the day. A lower
“hobby” level musician may have just one twenty minute session per day.
More serious musician will have multiple practice sessions per day.
I have personally experienced practice
sessions that have extended beyond twenty minutes in which I was totally
engrossed in the task at hand. For this reason I do not apply this twenty
minuet concept as a hard and fast rule, but I do use it as a guideline.
If I am in the middle of a very productive practice session, I will continue
until the current thought has concluded. However, even during productive moments
I do find it helpful to stop for a brief water break and relax my mind.
We must learn to both focus on our practice material and be mindful of our
state of mental fatigue. Eventually it becomes easier to judge when to
continue and when to take a break.
Have A Plan
It is easy to get lost in minutes or hours of meaningless practice when we
approach our sessions without a plan. A practice plan usually is centered
around a musical piece (or pieces) that we are studying and the concepts that
we are currently striving to master within that piece. We should start
with warm-ups that develop tone, dexterity and flexibility. Incorporating
warm-ups that are related to the difficult concepts of the main piece helps to
center our practice. Finding warm-ups that relate to the focus concepts
of the piece is surprisingly easy, but implementing that focus while playing
the warm-ups is often difficult to remember.
Scales, for example, can be used to reinforce tone, intonation, knowledge of
key signature, dexterity and many other skills. However, scales can
easily turn into rote exercises that we run through thoughtlessly. To
maintain effectiveness we must concentrate on the desired skill and
deliberately develop it while playing the scales.
Keeping A Journal
Keeping a journal is a huge aid in
maintaining focus. Seeing the warm-ups and practice goals written down
helps us to remember what we did last session and what we should do now.
We can monitor progress in each area of practice and easily determine when a
concept is mastered. Within the piece, we can remember which sections we
were focusing on last time and keep a record of further progress.
Work In Sections
Breaking the piece into sections gives us a
logical format for progressing to completion. The human brain retains
small chunks of information much more effectively than large strings of
data. This is the reason why we separate seven digit phone numbers into a
group of three and a group of four digits. Separating a musical piece
into sections aids us in developing a clear practice strategy for mastering the
piece. The progress within each section can be monitored within one's
journal. Smaller sections can be eventually combined into larger sections
until the piece is finally performed as a whole.
When studying a piece of music in this way it is important to understand the
form and musical patterns contained within the music. All music is
composed of patterns. This is the fundamental element that causes music
to be so memorable. Breaking the piece into sections that correspond to
the musical patterns will aid us in understanding, learning and remembering the
music. While practicing this way we will often find patterns that repeat
throughout the music. Identifying these repeated patterns will further
aid in efficiency.
Tempo
Another key to effective practice is the careful monitoring of tempo. We
will perform whatever we practice. Many people (including myself at times)
practice difficult passages at a tempo that is too fast. This prevents
them from achieving true mastery of the passage. It is important to
practice difficult passages at a slow enough tempo to allow yourself to achieve
mastery of the passage. It is easier to play the pitches, rhythms,
dynamics, articulations, etc. correctly at a slow tempo and then gradually
increase the tempo. Once those other elements are practiced incorrectly,
the mistake becomes ingrained in our mind and is difficult to remove.
Journaling metronome settings helps us to achieve this gradual increase.
Section Size
The other variable (beside tempo) that can be manipulated while practicing is
section size. Difficult passages are already examples of this, since they
are isolated sections within a larger section of the piece. Isolating
these passages in our practice helps to gain mastery more efficiently since
repetition is not wasted on measures that we have already mastered.
Breaking these passages down into smaller sections can make them more
accessible (or digestible). Once mastered, these smaller sections can be
combined into larger ones, and then the entire passage. The correct
combination of tempo variation and section size can make any passage learnable.
Be Willing To Vary The Routine
With any activity
(working out, studying, practicing) repeating the same routine over and over
can become counter productive. Rehearsing the same material in a
different way can keep you interested, alert and more effective in your
practice.
Here are some suggestions for varying your routine.
If you worked in sections from the top down last time, try starting at
the end of the piece and moving backward in sections today. If you worked in smaller sections with a faster
tempo last time, try working in larger sections with a slower tempo today. Also, you can vary your warm-up and warm-down
material.
Balancing Practice And Performance
Many of the things mentioned above (sectional work, tempo, ...) pertain to
learning new pieces of music. We must also practice performing in order
to become good performers. Once we have learned the sections of a piece
of music, brought them up to performance tempo and combined them, we need to
practice performing the piece straight through. This step is where most
beginning students start. They play through every piece without breaking
it up and employing the practice strategies we have discussed. However,
one can also error on the other side of things and get caught up with focusing
only on sectional work. It is important to work toward an end goal and
take the time to apply the final polish to our performance. Playing
through a piece (after it has been correctly rehearsed) presents its own
problems of flow, continuity and endurance. Once these elements are
mastered, the piece is ready for public performance.
Balancing Work And Fun
This topic is somewhat related to the last one since performance
is usually the fun element of our studies. The feeling one gets when
comfortably and expressively performing a beautiful piece of music in front of
an audience is extremely rewarding. This reward is what pushes us through
the daily grind of diligent practice. Maintaining a balance between the grind
and the reward is important. If our schedule consists of mostly
performance and little practice we will not advance in our skill (and my even
lose some skill). If our schedule is skewed in the opposite direction, we
may become burnt out. To quote The Shining, "All
work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." One way to prevent this is
to mix the review of finished pieces in with the study of new ones.
Another is to look for an ample amount of opportunities for public performance
(even if it is house concerts for friends and family). Finally, work some
straight fun time into your musical schedule. This could consist of
fooling around and exploring sounds on your instrument. It could also be
playing along with recordings of your favorite songs, or getting together with
some friends or family members and jamming. These are the moments that
inspire us to continue in our practice.
This
Learning Music With Ray video discusses some tips for effective musical
practice. We have all had
unproductive practice sessions where we lose track of what we are doing and
feel that we haven’t gained much in the end.
These tips are meant to help us stay focused and get the most out of
each practice session.
