PRACTICE SMART - Ten tips for a productive practice.

Have you ever found yourself practicing without improving? Or maybe you think you don't have enough time? Here are some tips to spend your limited practice time and see improvements.

1. FOCUS - First off, if you cannot concentrate then don’t practice your pieces. You’d be better off practicing scales and arpeggios, or exercises like Hanon or Czerny. If you want a productive practice, you have to do it consciously. Try to make it a habit that when you hold your instrument, your mind is ready to process information.

2. SET GOALS - Be it profession or hobby, setting both short and long term goals will help you plan out your practice time. It will make you understand how much effort it would require to reach the level that you’ve envisioned to achieve.

3. CHECK YOUR POSTURE - Your posture may affect the quality of your practice. If you ever feel your arms, back, shoulder, or fingers aching (and you’re not playing Bartok), you should check if you’re still in the right posture. Try to do some stretching to reposition your body.

4. TAKE NOTES - If you’re forgetful as I am, try to jot down practice records so that you’d know instantly where to start during your next practice session.

5. KEEP RUN THROUGHS MINIMAL - Run through a piece once while taking notes on the places where you made some blunders. Just keep in mind to keep “run throughs minimal”. And do not repeat when you make a mistake. You fix mistakes during detailed practice.

6. IDENTIFY AND CATEGORIZE - Identify and categorize your mistakes during practice. What kind of mistake did you do? Does it concern note-reading? Wrong finger placement? Expressive techniques? Or consistency? Knowing how to diagnose your own mistakes can help you improve further.

7. DIVIDE SECTIONS - Divide your piece into practice sections. Sections can be done in different ways, you can do it by stanza, systems, phrases, and measures. Different mistakes may call for different types of section.

8. MIND THE REPEATS - If you’re repeating the same passage thirty to fifty times with the same mistake, it means you’re consistently doing something wrong. Go back to tip number 5 or approach someone who can help. If you can’t do either, shelve that passage and practice something else. If you repeat a mistake too much, it might turn into a habit.

9. REMOVE DISTRACTIONS - While checking some techniques or expressions, sometimes I end up watching youtube videos about other people playing ( especially child prodigies to lower my self- esteem). Although by itself it isn’t bad, doing such things in the practice room usually ends up consuming my practice time. Like me, learn how to put proper things in its proper place.

10. STOP - Stop practicing if you’re sleepy, or if you’re backstage and nervously waiting for your turn in a recital or concert. The idea is, know when you need to stop.

These practice tips aren’t limited to the piano alone and can be used with any instrument that you’re using. Unlike other tips, this focuses on the cognitive area of practice, which includes awareness and mind setting.

So that's it for the tips! Thanks for reading. I listed this practice tips based on my own experience, so if you have other helpful practice tips you want to share, please leave it in the comments below.

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DID YOU KNOW?
Everything you see and hear in music can be categorized into four basic elements.
See y'all in the next article: The Basic Elements of Music

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Credits for the photo goes to StockSnap @ Pixabay

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