Music Practice Tips

I’m rehashing an old post today. This originally came from LifeDev, and then Chris Foley modified it to suit the Piano in The Collaborative Piano Blog. I then modified it slightly at my blog Top Left Hand Page for the violin. And now I present to you - 15 things you can practice in 10 minutes.

1. Practice a study

Spend 10 minutes working on a study. It could be either one that your teacher has set you, or maybe one that you’ve found and want to read through. Can’t encourage working on studies enough (although not to extremes. Everything is best in moderation), so always try to have one on the go. You might even like to go back and look at a study that you’ve done in the past. Keep an idea of what studies you’ve done, as if a technical problem arises, then you’ll know where you can go to fix it again (though with a fresh mind as it obviously wasn’t permanent last time).

2. Spend 10 minutes on that difficult passage

Having trouble with those 10 bars or so? Rest of the piece is fine but it all comes apart just there. Spend 10 minutes working on it each day. Just those 10 bars. Put 10 minutes of intensive practice and you’ll start to see improvements soon enough.

3. Focus on playing a piece with the most beautiful tone you can manage

Playing with a beautiful tone is a skill, and it takes practice. Playing around with a tune to find out what makes it more beautiful will help you know what to do when it comes to other pieces.

4. Sight-read

Sight-reading is a great skill to develop, and is one that you do need to practice. I suggest getting a tune book with lots of short tunes in there - something such as The Fiddler’s Tune-Book 200 Traditional Airs would be ideal due to the large number of tunes in there. Take a tune, look through it, play it through, and then try doing it again with some musicality (or develop a habit of playing it the first time with musicality). You’ll then be able to transfer these ideas through to your new pieces.

5. Memorise

Have you been trying to memorise something? Spend 10 minutes going over it, making sure it’s absolutely solid and not going to slip. Doesn’t have to be the whole piece, you might just want to spend 10 minutes working on one section. Memorisation has many benefits, but I’ll leave that discussion for an upcoming post.

6. Ultra-slow practice

Everyone knows the benefits of slow practice. However, as I said in a previous post, you’ll want to be careful with slow practice as you use a different technique, and you end up practicing the wrong thing. However, apart from the techniques I described in that article, another practice method to avoid getting used to something is to practice ultra-slow. Slow the piece right down, and really get an idea of what’s happening. If the piece is normally Crotchet=120, slow it down to quaver=60, or possibly even slower. This is great for violinists as you can really focus on your intonation, wind players will need to focus on their breath support.

7. Try out different interpretations

Whether it’s a difficult passage, or one that you’re not sure what to do with musically, 10 minutes is a good chance to try out some different interpretations of that passage. Try exaggerating the dynamics, playing around with rubato and vibrato (if applicable), try it at some different tempi to see what feels best. Remember what you try and what sounds good.

8. Play through the passage focussing on one area

This goes back to the TV Channels post I did, which advised focussing on one “Channel” at a time. It helps you focus your mind and really pick up what’s going wrong. Some areas you might like to focus on are: just the right hand, just the left hand, articulation, dynamics.

9. Sing your part

Singing is a great, yet perhaps underused practice tool. We discover when we sing where are natural places to breathe, natural places to add rubato, and also we can visualise the attacks on notes. Is it a Ka or a Sa, a Ma or a Ba. That will help you determine what sort of attack you want.

10. Visualise a Passage, then play. Repeat

The mind is a wonderful, powerful tool. Visualise the passage you’re working on, and note everything about it. How the attack works, where the rubato is, the line of the piece, the phrasing. In your mind, this can all happen without having to worry about technical difficulties. Then play it, trying to get everything that you visualised. Compare it to the visualised version. Try it again.

11. Visualise

As above, but without the playing. This is a great technique to do if you’ve got 10 minutes, but you don’t have your instrument with you. You can visualise your practicing, and actually learn instead of just sitting around doing nothing. James Morrison, the great Australian Jazz Trumpeter, in his book Blowing my Own Trumpet, talks about how he learnt many of the instruments that he knows how to play by dreaming. He dreamt about playing the double bass, and woke up the next morning with calluses on his fingers. The power of the human mind.

12. Play a piece in a completely different style

This comes back to my post on “Playing” Music. PLay around with your music, and try it in a different style. If you’re playing a Brahms sonata, try playing it in a Baroque Style. If you’re playing Bach, try playing it like it was Brahms (There are plenty of recordings available of this very thing). You’d never perform it like this, but it can sometimes show us parts of the music that we had never listened for before.

13. Play through related repertoire

It helps to know what other pieces are similar to the piece that you’re working on. Playing through similar pieces will help you realise links and similarities. But also think further a field. If you’re learning a Mozart Violin Concerto, you might play through the other violin concertos by Mozart, possibly the ones by Haydn as well, but you might also want to listen to and play through some of Mozart’s Opera overtures, which have some very similar compositional ideas.

14. Listen

Music is obviously an aural experience. We need to listen when we’re playing. But I also encourage you to listen to music as well. Just as you have played through similar pieces in the previous point, you can also listen to them to get an idea. Learning “Summer” from the Four Seasons? Makes sense to at least listen to the other 3 concertos.

15. Cool Down

Music is very much a physical activity, so a warm up and cool down is a very smart idea. Some of the ideas at the top are great ways to warm up, and can also be used to cool down. What you ideally want is somethig not too difficult that will let your body, and your mind, rest. Folk tunes are great, but any simple piece that you can play through will do the job.

Have you got any other ideas that you can practice in 10 minutes?