Chris Defossez, Musician

The following are some more thoughts I’ve had about practicing. You can find my old thoughts here.

Let’s Talk Practice:

If there is any concrete law to making music it is this: what you practice, you will perform. It makes sense, then, not only to to practice, but practice well. But what does that mean? The realities of everyday life often make it difficult to ensure that any practicing gets done at all. So, how do we go about improving our practicing skills, while still managing the essential aspects of our daily routine? I believe that the answer lies, not in arbitrarily ‘knuckling down’ and suddenly cranking out hours of practice at once, but to start viewing your practicing sessions as an overall practice, and nurturing it accordingly.

Now, what does that mean?

It’s a very subtle distinction from a linguistic standpoint, but changing our perspective in this way can help to break the unhelpful pattern of ‘practice hard for a few days, lose interest, feel guilty, and practice hard again.’ If you take a more holistic approach to your practice, everyday results don’t matter, the regimen as a whole does.

Think of maintaining your practice like a bodybuilder maintains his or her work outs. If they want to lose some fat and gain some strength, their first steps are quite small. Instead of reaching for a 200 pound weight to start off with, they understand their limits and work within them—while still striving to improve and bring themselves new challenges.

A healthy ‘practice’ for our musical development is structured in much the same way. The goal should not be to jump right into huge time commitments that will scare us away from attempting them, but to just start—and maintain—what will become a new constant in our life.

Here’s my challenge to you: Every day at home, set a timer for 5 MINUTES. No more. No less. Those five minutes are yours to develop your practice. Work on one phrase for five minutes. One scale, one song, one rhythm. Anything. The only rule is that after your five minutes are up, put the instrument away. Just like starting a workout regimen, starting and maintaining a practice is about consistency, not impressive numbers.

Here’s what I think you’ll find when you do this:

-You’ll realize that, because you aren’t worried about blocking off large chunks of time, you will find more opportunities to practice that you didn’t know were there. Waiting for water to boil? There’s five minutes. Commercial break on TV? Five Minutes. Finish eating a bit early? Five minutes. Find your time and capitalize on it!

-You’ll become more motivated to practice again. Five minutes isn’t a lot of time, but a lot can get done. In fact, because of the strict nature of the time commitment it’s normal for it to end when you’re right in the middle of something. Stop anyway. Being disciplined about ending a session does two things for us: it helps maintain the habit of remaining focused and getting the most out of your time, as well as motivate you to do another session soon after to rekindle that fire you started.

A final note:

You might find that, after awhile, you’ve become so good at working some five minute sessions into your day that you want to ‘increase your lifting weight,’ so to speak. Go for it! Try maintaining 10 minute sessions, 15 minute sessions, or any combination you like, (I’m a fan of 10 minutes in the morning, two twenty minute sessions throughout the day, and 10 minutes as a warm down at night) but remember our golden rule: don’t work at “practicing,” work at maintaining a “practice!” If you find that you can’t do longer sessions for awhile, go back to five minutes. If you don’t have an instrument with you, study the printed music and work on improving your ‘feel’ of musical pulses with your metronome. There’s always something you can be doing to maintain your practice, and the more you work at it, the more helpful it will become as you progress musically.

Don’t view practicing as turning on a switch. View it like tending a garden. A switch is either on or off. Flip it and forget it. A garden needs frequent, small actions to keep it thriving and useful.

New students are often told to ‘practice, practice practice!’ but are just as often never taught how to practice effectively. In this busy age it is more important than ever to maximize the efficiency of your practice so that each minute is most useful to you. With this in mind, I’ve prepared a list of tips and tricks which I use when I practice. I hope you find them helpful!

1.) Take time to warm up

Don’t launch into the most difficult parts of your music to start. It’s important to take a couple of minutes to just get used to the instrument in your hands. Pluck some open strings. Get comfortable. Start slowly. Breathe. There is a huge mental aspect to making music, and if you don’t take time to get into the proper headspace, you will find yourself struggling more than you need to.

2.) Establish constancy

Your practice is most rewarding when it is done every day. I know it’s a cliche’d line, but it’s one of the most important aspects to learning music. Reinforcing what you know daily is the quickest way to get material under your fingers.

But…

3.) Less is more.

Practicing can be a daunting task, especially if a student feels like he or she needs to practice for long periods at a time. I’ve found several 10, 15, or even 5 minute sessions throughout the day to be more helpful than one marathon session per week. If you find the time for a couple of hours at once, go for it, but don’t feel pressure to make time to practice that you don’t have.

4.) Focus your time

Practicing for several short bursts is only effective if you know in advance what you’re going to be working on. Have a theme for your sessions, and don’t be afraid to pick something really specific. ‘For 10 minutes I’ll work on smoothly transitioning from playing over a C chord to an F chord’ is a good example. Ten minutes of focused, goal-oriented playing is worth hours of unfocused playing.

5.) Focus on things you don’t know, review things you do

It’s ok to make mistakes when you practice! It’s almost a necessity. You get the most value out of working on things you are still uncomfortable with. Then, once the session is winding down you can relax and play through things you know well as a warm down.

6.) Don’t practice to ‘get better’

At first, this seems like counterintuitive advice, but it’s important to understand. Practicing will not make you better at once. If by the end of your session it still needs work, don’t worry. Practice is an ongoing process of familiarization. The more familiar you are with something, whether its holding the instrument, playing a tune, or picking a string, the easier it is to play. Ease of playing will always translate to a ‘better’ sound! So strive, above all else, to become familiar with what you play, not better.

You’ll know you’re making progress not because the music sounds perfect, but because it begins to feel like it takes less mental effort to play.

***

“Each of you is perfect the way you are…and you can use a little improvement.”

“If you understand the point of practice, then even without a bow and arrow the archery will help you. How you get that kind of power or ability is only through right practice.”

–Shunryu Suzuki