Music Practice Tips

I’ve talked in the past about how you can use 10 minutes to practice some more. Today, I’m going to explain how you can use 7 minutes (or less) to focus your practice, and make it more efficient, and most importantly, more interesting.

This tip was given to me by a lecturer who said that this is how he practiced. Intrigued, I gave it a go, and found that not only was my practice more efficient, but also my mind was able to stay concentrated on the larger task of practicing for a longer period of time.

This system of practice works in 7 minute intervals. You practice one thing for 7 minutes, and then when the time is up, you move onto something completely different. Now I mentioned in the opening paragraph that you could do it in less time. For me, who’s aiming at 4 to 5 hours practice a day, 7 minutes is an appropriate time, it gives me enough time to work on the aspect that I want to improve, and keep the mind fresh. However, if you’re not practicing that long, you might not want to spend 7 minutes on each item. For one of my students who’s preparing for an audition, we outlined 8 areas in the piece that he’s working on. We conceded that for one or two, he might like to repeat a session, so we decided on 3 minute blocks.

Why it works?

There’s a few reasons that I can see why this works. First of all, because you’re changing material so often, it keeps your mind fresh. Every 7 minutes, it gets a rest from what it was working on, and can focus on something else. Secondly, because you know you only have 7 minutes, you don’t feel tired - “oh, just another 5 minutes.” Also, because you’ve only got 7 minutes, your mind tends to focus harder, and you work more effectively because you know you’ve only got 7 minutes on that section. When you get into it and you realise how short 7 minutes is, you see how hard you need to work during those sessions.

How I structure mine

At the end of each day, I print out a practice plan. This has every 7 minute block for the day. It has what piece I’m going to do, and what bit I’m going to work on. It doesn’t need to be difficult or complicated - I just use a Text file (in notepad) and just change the entries. I don’t put actual times down, as I might not always practice starting at the same time. Instead, I use 0:00-0:07, 0:07-0:14 etc. I do 7 blocks of 7 minutes, then take an 11 minute break, which equals a total of 60 minutes. To count the time, I use the countdown clock on my mobile phone, but any electrical device in which you can set the time easily would work - even something like a kitchen timer. In my blocks, I’ll rotate the pieces that I’m working on, and also throw in technical work. It’s amazing what 7 minutes focussing on just an arpeggio can do.

I hope this powerful technique gets you practicing, and doing more effective practice as well. I’d love to hear any comments you’ve got on this.