Music Practice Tips

In my last post, I talked about what should be included in a good practice room, and I mentioned a practice journal. Today I look at what a practice journal is, and how it can be used to increase our efficiency in the practice room.

A Practice journal is basically any surface that you can write regular notes on that you can reference at a later date. It may be an A5 exercise book, it may be on a Palm or Blackberry, or other device capable of taking notes, or possibly even on a blog (public or private). You should have it available for all times, as you’ll want to write in it when you finish your practice. So a blog might be useful for someone who only ever practices at home near their computer, where as for someone like me, I would find storing it on a Palm or Blackberry more useful as I actually move around a lot and sometimes practice at university often, so seeing as I take my Palm with me everywhere, it’s a useful place to store my practice journal.

De-brief

The practice journal is mainly a place to de-brief. You reflect on your practice session and see what you’ve achieved. What still needs work? This is the place to jot it down. And it should be done right after you finish your practice session. Why? The longer you wait, the more you’ll forget about it. This isn’t so much of a problem if you’re doing long practice days with 3 or 4 hours consecutively, but if you’re only doing 30 minutes a day, then you’re very likely to forget what you did in the last practice session, what advances you made, and what still needs work.

If you like a bit of structure, here’s a very brief outline.

Successes

Here you outline all the achievements you made in today’s practice session. It might be something like “Worked the Bach to MM=92″ or “Hit every note of my scales within the maximum range set on the tuner” or “Played through the first movement of my concerto from memory without any slips” By outlining your successes, you get a sense that you are actually improving and it helps you to keep focusses.

Areas to work on

Here you’ll outline the areas that you worked on, but still need work. For example “Need to work the Bach up to MM=110″ (So even though you worked it up to 92 is a success, which it is, it’s still something to work on if it needs to go faster), “Land on notes in scale directly in tune, not slightly out of tune then adjust” or “Play through first and second movements of my concerto from memory”

Areas of focus

This is something that probably won’t change daily, but is still important. This reminds you of what technical issues you’re focussing on at the moment with your teacher. Are you focussing on intonation, or articulation, tone quality, or other technical issues? This is the spot to jot down the long term focus to remind you of what you’re working towards.

Questions

If you think of anything that you want to ask you teacher at your next lesson, jot it down in here first. The reason for this is that you may well discover a solution before your lesson for that problem. If I have my lesson on Monday, and then on Tuesday discover something that I’m not certain about, if I jot it down in my lesson journal, I’m going to forget about it during the week and just rely on my teacher to give me the answer. However, if I jot it down in my practice journal, I’m going to be reminded of it each day, and may well find an answer to it before the next lesson, which saves the lesson time for more important things. However, if I still haven’t found a solution before my next lesson, then I can just jot it down in my lesson journal and ask my teacher for advice.

You may also like to include some inspirational quotes that you find over time, or music that you want to listen to, or a piece you heard on the radio that you’d like to learn one day. In reality, you can jot anything you want to down in this journal. When you look back on it in a years, or even a decades time, you’ll see how much you’ve developed in your playing, and may also find new tips on how to work on things in your current state.

Do you keep a journal? On what medium do you use it (exercise book, scrap of paper, online blog, etc), and have you included any inspirational quotes? What’s your favourite?