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.