There are many facets to playing and practicing music. As a musician, you will have different practice strategies
depending on the length of practice time available for a particular session, your frame of mind, your location and the distractions
present. Let's talk about some scenarios.
5-10 minutes waiting - you may have a technical exercise you're working on, you could review a couple scales, you could
play a tune for fun you already know or you could exercise your memorization muscle to see if you really do have that new
song your trying to memorize down. Pick one or two. If it's noisy and chaotic do some technical exercises, you'll
get frustrated trying to make music with chaos going on around you.
15 minutes of quiet dedicated time - 5 minutes on one or two scales you don't normally do but should (band instrument
guys-chromatic scale please); 5 minutes on a tune you're memorizing; 5 minutes recalling a tune you used to do but aren't
sure if you remember the words or notes or chords.
30 minutes of dedicated practice time - 10 minutes on scales (don't forget the blues, pentatonics, natural, harmonic
and melodic minors), 5 minutes of technical exercises you may have memorized (is the metronome handy? what! you don't
have one!! uh, uh, uh), the next 15 minutes is for reviewing a piece you're working on, working on memorization, covering
your 3 newest songs.
More than 30 minutes - always review scales and technical exercises - work on material that is giving you difficulty. Play
through the tune, when you get to a part you are having a problem with isolate that part. Slow the speed down until
you can play it through SLOWLY, then at that same SLOW speed play the entire tune. This will be the
speed you need to play this entire piece for a week.
Practice mistake #1 - You don't practice because you think you need at least 30 minutes to make it worthwhile -
Ha - it's much better to play your instrument multiple time for short intervals than to wait for that right time of 30 minutes.
Sometimes you can do more damage than good in 30minutes without guidance.
Practice mistake #2 - You keep playing the same tune over and over at the same tempo making the same mistake or
changing the speed of the tune when you get to a hard part. 1) If you make the same mistake 3 times in a row; slow down,
here's your sign! 2) isolate the problem, just work on the hard part (boy is that against human nature)
Practice mistake #3 - Are you listening to yourself?? How does your music sound? Does it sound like music?
Can someone tap their foot your music? Is each note beautiful and can it stand on it's own?
Metronomes are an essential part of your music gear. Metronomes are your private teacher at home. They alert
you to timing problems and also allow you to slow a piece down to a playable speed and then gradually (one click at a time)
increase the speed to perfection.
Have a practice book or pad in which you have listed the scales you're working on, technical exercise, tunes you know,
tunes you want to learn, tunes you want to memorize, 3 tunes you can play on demand (for friends or family to show you really
can play after all that investment!)
Of course, if you have a private teacher hopefully they will have given you a specific assignment for the week.
The material assigned should always come first because you want to have your assignment perfected by your next lesson.
Assignments should be written down and quantified, either by you or your teacher. By quantified I mean, how manys times, how
long, how manys days. AND, your assignments show have milestones. Can you measure your progress?
