Make the Most of Your Practice

Do you have limited time to practice? Or do you feel like no matter how long you practice you still seem to be having a hard time making progress? In this blog I will share some tips on how to make the most of your practice no matter how much time you have.

Have a Practice Routine

This is so important, when you sit down to practice you need to know what you are going to be practicing! Not only can it save time to know beforehand what you are going to do, and for how long you are going to be doing it, but you also won't forget to practice something or accidently spend too much time on one thing and run out of time for another.

I recommend you do a weekly routine, because you won't neccessarily need to practice something every day, so having a weekly routine lets you assign certain things to certain days. If you are taking lessons, your teacher will probably be telling you what to practice, so you won't have to figure that out, but you may have to figure out the times.

If you are taking lessons with me I will help you with all this, but you may have to ask other teachers how much time they suggest for the assigned pieces or exercises. If you are learning on your own, I would start by figuring out how much time you have each day to practice. If you have plenty of time, or don't know how much time to try and make, I would start with a half an hour, and then work from there.

This is an example of what your practice routine might look like. Checking the box for each thing you practice is a great way to make sure you get everything in.

Then figure out what you want or need to practice. I suggest you spend at least a third of your practice time on technical exercises, such as scales, finger independence, arpeggios etc. So that would be ten minutes if you are practicing for a total of thirty minutes. Then you will probably need at least ten minutes a day to work on the song you are learning, and the remaining ten minutes could be for sight reading, or improvising.

Now there are different ways you could decide to do this, for example, if the last ten minutes of your practice are for sight reading or improvising, you could either do five minutes a day of each or alternate ten minutes of sight reading every other day and ten minutes of improvising every other day. You will probably just have to start with what you think would work and then try it for a week. If it doesn't work you can change it and try again for another week and so on.

I would suggest that you have your practice week start either the day of your lesson, if you usually get the days practice in after the lesson, or the day after if you usually get your practice in before the lesson, that way when you get assigned new material you have the whole week to practice it and you don't have to change your routine in the middle of your practice week.

You may have noticed on the example practice routine that there are only 6 days, it can be very nice to have one day a week off, where you can just do whatever. Music should be fun, and having a break from the "strict" practice to just have fun can be very helpful in keeping you motivated.

Set a Timer

Setting a timer is very important, otherwise it is very easy to spend too much time practicing something you really enjoy, and not enough time on the things you don't particularly like.

Use a Metronome

This is so important! A huge part of music is proper timing, and a metronome helps so much with that.

At first it can seem impossible to play in time with a metronome, but like most things in music, it gets much easier with practice.

Gather Everything You Need Before You Start Practicing

This can also save time and ensures you don't skip something because you did't feel like getting up to find it! If you read music off a computer from many different files, it will also save time if you create one PDF of all the different PDF's you need so they are all in one place.

Practice in Front of a Mirror

Practicing in front of a mirror is very helpful for correcting things things such as flat fingers, not sitting up straight, etc. These things can be hard to notice if you can't see yourself from the side.

If you have a mirror that can be set up to play in front of you can use that, otherwise you can use a camera set up so that you can see yourself playing.

If you have a hard time watching yourself as you are playing you can always record yourself and watch the recording.

Record Yourself

This might sound strange at first, don't you hear yourself playing every time you practice? You do, but when you are playing you have to be focusing on what you are playing, so, especially when you are just starting out, it can be hard to really focus on how you sound. When you listen to the recording, make note of things you want to change or improve, then record again after you think you have fixed the issues and see if you really have.