Music Practice Tips

What’s the point of practicing music if we’re not working towards anything. Setting goals is a very important tool to aiding our practice, and will often help us manage our practice sessions. Concerts, performances and exams are obvious goals to be set, but what if you’re not aiming for a exam? What sort of goals can be set then?

Long, Medium and Short

It’s very important to know what are important goals to be working towards, and also what are your more pressing concerns. Long, Medium and short term goals help us prioritise what we’re working towards. But how long is Long? And how short is short?

Long Term Goals

Long term goals will be things that you hope to achieve a long way from now, but might not necessarily be working on at the moment. Some books and websites will say that your long-term goals will be things you hope to achieve in 5 to 10 years. 5 to 10 years is a long time, agreed, and possibly too long if you’re only 10 years old. There’s quite a lot of living to be done before then. You long term goals will vary in length, and it could be anything from a year to 10 or even 20 years. Here’s some examples of long term goals.

• To get a music scholarship to a private high school
• To be accepted to a Music Conservatory
• To perform a concerto with an orchestra
• To play for someone
• To be able to play a whole Concerto from memory
• To play Paganini’s 24th Caprice
• To win an Eisteddfod
• To get a job with an orchestra

You’ll notice that some of these definitely seem long term, but for some of them, they could also be short term. It all depends on your context. For someone who has just started learning Paganini’s Caprice, it might be a short term goal, but for someone who is just starting out, it would be a very long term goal.
Everything that you practice and play has an indirect result on the outcome of this goal. While you might not be asked whether you learnt this etude before an Audition for an orchestral job, the work you did on that etude will have shaped your ability to play and hence affected the outcome of the audition.

Medium Term Goals

These will be goals that you may have started work towards, but aren’t in the very near future. Books and websites may have these at 1 to 3 years, but in reality could be 6 months away. Some examples may be an aim to Win an eisteddfod, in which the eisteddfod might not be for another 9 months, but you’ve started learning the music for it now. Everything that you’re doing on that piece will have a direct consequence on the result of the eisteddfod performance. These goals will often seem more tangible than long term goals, because you know that you’re working on things that are going to be put to use soon.

Short term goals

Depending on your scope, these goals might well be anything from One day to one year. For example, one short term goal might be to get an A in your end of year exam, whilst another might be to nail that tricky bit in your music for tomorrow. They’re wide ranging, and will very much depend on your situation.

Using Goals

To put goals to the most use, you’ll have a few different goals sheets. In effect, a Long, Medium and Short term goal list, each with Long, medium and short term goals.
You long term goals will be ones that are about 5-10 years away. This might be career orientated, so looking more at what you want to do with your life. Where do you see yourself 5 years from now. You would then figure out what you need to do in order to get there. What would you need to be doing 2-4 years from now to be on a good track to be where you want to be 5 years from now? And then your short term goals would be what do you need to be doing next year in order to be getting on track for your 2-4 year goals and your 5 year goals?
Your medium term goals would then be what you want to achieve by the end of the year, or perhaps 2 years. These will draw on your long term goals, but may also add some goals which may not be directly linked to the long term goals. You’ll have long term goals of 1 to 2 years, medium term goals of 6 months to one year, and then short term goals from tomorrow to 6 months.
You then heave your short term goals, which will draw off your medium term goals. We’re working here on the period of tomorrow to 6 months for the entire range. Long term will be the 6 month goals, medium will be 2-6 months, and short term will be tomorrow to 2 months.

An example

Michael decides that in 5 years time, his goal is to have a permanent position in a professional symphony orchestra. In order to achieve that goal, in his 2-4 year goals, he will want to be holding a casual position with an orchestra, be auditioning regularly for orchestras, and freelancing. In one year, he wants to be getting into the freelancing scene, and getting as much orchestral experience as possible.
So for his medium term goals, his one year goal is to be getting into the freelancing scene, and getting as much orchestral experience as possible. He would also like to have a regularly gigging string quartet, and also a teaching studio of 10 students. So for his 6 month goals, he’s going to want to have the string quartet set up, and also building up his teaching studio to about 5 students. He’ll be aiming for a bit of freelancing gigs (even if they don’t quite pay as well as he’d hope), and also playing in local youth orchestras or community orchestras. In one to 6 months, he’ll be looking at finding his string quartet, and starting rehearsals, learning the most common orchestral excerpts really well, and looking for students.
His short term goals will be more focussed on his playing. His long term goal in this situation may well be to have learnt the first violin parts for all the Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky symphonies. His medium term goals might be adding in a Eisteddfod win, and short term might be learning a certain fingering, or fixing a technical problem before his next lesson.

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

A Rolling goal chart is one that is reviewed on a regular basis. You might have a Rolling 1, 3 and 5 year plan, or you might have a rolling 1, 3 and 5 month plan, depending on how far out you’re looking. The basic idea of this is that after each year/month you review your goals and adjust your plan to make sure you’re still on track. You may have decided that you don’t need to be aiming for this goal any more, so you would take it off at the review. Keeping your goals up to date will keep you focussed and help aim your life and your practice.

Do you plan with goals? How far ahead are your goals, and do you review them frequently?