Practice Mastery

Before you start practicing, ask yourself:

What do I want to accomplish during this practice. Take five minutes to decide what result you want to attain.

I, ____________________, promise myself that I will practice at least ___ minutes a day. I will be patient with myself and will keep in mind that my instrument is a long term project.

Use reminders on any device you usually carry with you to remind you of your sessions. There are good apps for recording your practice time and techniques.

The one thing that holds back students, by far, is not having consistent practice. SO, set a specific time in your schedule now (ex. 6:00-6:30 PM) and leave it free every day!

• Start by playing the piece really slowly. What matters at first is that you get the progression of notes and chords. (Don’t always begin a piece at the beginning. Start by learning the last page first, for instance. Or the very end. Or perhaps the middle.)
• After you've mastered the progressions and development of the piece, start perfecting your rhythm.
• Use sectioning while learning. Learn sections of the song, master them and then move to the next section. A section can be a melody, a chord progression, a chorus or refrain, etc.
• When practicing more complex pieces, start by practicing the right hand part of the piece, then the left hand (or vice versa) then try to play them together. Take your time, don't rush it. Once you've mastered one part, move to the next, and not before that.

Practice Plan

1. Start by limbering up to a few exercises. If you are more advanced you may like to practice some Hanon finger exercises or Czerny Studies. 1-2 Minutes.

2. Then focus on some technical work or scales and arpeggios for 5 minutes.

3. Spend 10 minutes practicing your assigned pieces for the week; work at them purposefully and slowly, separate hands at first. Use a metronome or try to develop a feel for keeping the pulse or beat – count out loud if necessary.

4. Now spend maybe 5-10 minutes reviewing past pieces. It’s always a good idea to go over old pieces reminding yourself of what you have already learned and to build up a little repertoire of pieces.

5. If you can spare a little more time then try to do a couple of sight- reading exercises. You just need to look at two short passages; look through them noting all their features then play them slowly forcing yourself to keep going in time until the end. Your sight-reading will improve no end if you do this regularly. (5 Minutes)

Practice alternating one hand with the other, having established an absolute and unerring sense of pulse. With this process, using the metronome is not a bad idea. Leave a bar’s rest between each repetition or new variant, being strict about keeping the beat going during this measured silence.

You might have success by practicing the very last bar first.  Then a few bars leading into the ending, and then a few more bars to the end until you can establish an ending section. Then a few bars leading into the ending section, and a few more until there is an obvious middle section. Then a few bars leading into the middle section, and then a few more until there is a definite beginning section. Many pieces will have more sections but the basic idea is to work each section an equal number of times over the long run.

Pick out a difficult section of your piece. Try to play it three times in a row without a single mistake. When you can do this, try playing five times in a row without a mistake. When you can do this, try it ten times in a row perfect. When you can do this, you know you've mastered the passage.

Once you can do all the small sections perfectly, you can combine them and try to play the larger sections perfectly. Keep combining sections until you can play the whole piece flawlessly.

Practice Merry-Go-Round

At first, you might just try to get all the notes. Now is the time to memorize the fingerings. (If you change the fingerings, write them in the music and erase the old ones.)

Later you'll want perfect rhythm, tone, phrasing, dynamics, pedal, balance, evenness, etc. Work on just one small section and one thing at a time, repeating several times until perfect!

You can keep a record of how many mistakes you make each time you play a passage. First, record the passage. If you play it perfectly, put a "P", otherwise put the number of mistakes. You'll be amazed at how many mistakes you make and never even noticed before.

Add-a-note at a time. Practice this tiny bit almost in tempo and only add the next note if the others are „easy“.

For advanced practicers:

Visualize.

Start with a piece you have memorized. Close your eyes and try to imagine yourself playing it at the piano. Imagine the piano keys, and your hands playing them. Try to make it just as vivid in your mind as it is when you actually do it.

Visualising is one of the best practice methods, but it takes a lot of thinking! Here are some ways to make it a little easier:

·      Visualize just one hand at a time. This is much easier than doing both hands.

·      Visualize only a short passage at a time. Play it, then try to visualize, then play it again. Keep doing this until you can visualize it very clearly.

·      Look at the music while you visualize. This builds up your visual image, but you don't have to have it memorized first. In fact, it will help you memorize it more easily.

·      Try table-top practice, that is, play your piece away from the piano. You simply imagine the sound and feel of a real piano as your fingers play on the tabletop. If you can play a piece or a passage this way, you really know it!

Exercising your brain is just like exercising a muscle: with visualization, you have start out with just a little bit, and then gradually work your way up.

Begin playing your piece.  Have a friend say “Stop.” Keep thinking (playing) the music in your head.  When your friend says “Start” again, pick up where you are in the piece. This technique is easier with a metronome.

Think the first beat and begin playing on the next.  Think the first two beats and begin playing on the next. Then three beats, etc. Can be done with metronome.

Practicing in a variety of ways, with a variety of touches, builds and strengthens your memory. If you have practiced your piece soft, loud, staccato, legato, with and without pedal, with five different kinds of stops, hands separate, visualized it, counted it, recorded it, played it with metronome at a variety of tempos, and practiced in small and large sections until they were flawless—you really know it.

Draw a "Board Game" that includes several of the items on this list.  Roll the dice and do the thing on which you land. 

Make practice flashcards, with each one listing an item from this list that need attention in your piece.  Select one at a time and practice that way.

For example, the cards for one piece might say

a.      “Play 3 times at quarter note equals 88

b.      “Play right hand three times”

c.      “Play left hand three times”

d.      “Count or verbalize and clap rhythm in measure 8”

e.      “Imagine an angry dragon (happy clown/ dancing girl) and play the middle section” 

Play one hand while singing the other, in solfège syllables, note names, or counting numbers, a good exercise in coordination and musicianship.

Metronome:  Start very slowly with metronome.  Play the piece or passage again, and increase the metronome number by a click or two.  Continue, gradually increase the tempo again, until the goal tempo is reached.  Write down the top metronome marking achieved each day, and try to surpass it the next day. 

Micro-metronome:  Assign the metronome to the smallest unit of the beat in the piece and subdivide each longer note in relation to it.

Double Bubble:  In 4/4, with 16 sixteenth notes per bar, do this at tempo, but with pauses after doubled notes: 

a.  double first note of each group of 4

b.  double second note of each group of 4

c.  double third note of each group of 4

d.  double fourth note of each group of 4

Play a certain finger number, say 1, with an accent. Every time that you play the first finger, say “one” out loud and accent the note. Do this 3-5 times.

a)   do the same with the second (third; fourth; fifth) finger. Always say the finger number out loud.

b)   Now say the names of the notes that a particular finger number are playing. Accent the note, too.

In each group of four equal notes (eighths, sixteenths), play the first note a bit longer and the others fast. Lengthen the second note. Then the third. Then the fourth. The others are played fast.

Practice Principles for the Young Musician

Don't start at the beginning of a piece each time you sit down to practice it. Work on the passages that are giving you difficulty first. Play them slowly, so you can see where the problems lie. Break down a hard section into small bits, perhaps even to the point where you are playing single notes, and practice each several times until the music becomes easy to play. Then put the piece back together and gradually bring it up to tempo. 

 

If you can't play a measure or phrase, you shouldn't go on to play the rest of the piece until it has been mastered. Practice these “hard parts” or “yellow measures” as I call them very slowly and carefully. See if you can learn to play them perfectly and in tempo. Then see if the parts “stand up” under pressure by playing the whole piece or section straight through.

If you are having problem with tempo, practice with a metronome. Set it at a slow count at first, and then gradually increase the pulse until you arrive at the final tempo.

If you are making mistakes, it means that you are playing too fast. Slow down! Remember that if you play a passage wrong several times in a row, you are actually teaching yourself to play it incorrectly!

It is often easier to master difficult rhythmic patterns if you first play the passage on a single note. Add the melody after you have mastered the beat. Make sure you use the rhythm language we learned in the lessons (ta, titi, toa, etc.).

While the duration of the practice will vary from child to child and according to age and commitment, it is important to play daily, including on the day of a lesson. Sometimes, two or even more shorter practice sessions are better than one extended period. You can fit in some work before school, for example, then another short period later in the day, perhaps after supper so as not to conflict with other after-school activities. 

A tape recorder is a great tool to use when practicing. Use it to record yourself so you can hear problems, particularly regarding to tempo and interpretation, that you might otherwise miss.

Listen to a recording of the pieces you are learning. That increases 1) motivation and 2) the speed with which you learn.

End a practice session by playing beautifully a piece that you know well. Like your recital piece. Or something you learned and don't want to forget.

Intelligent Practice is the Key

Talent is overrated – Intelligent Practice is the key

There is not necessarily a correlation between how much practice the kids do and how confidant they feel while playing a recital. But there is a direct correlation between intensity/amount of practice and how well they play!

I offer two recitals each year to prepare the children for playing in public. This is not an easy thing to do and can actually only be practiced by doing it! Theoretically, it is also possible to practice performing in your head by imagining performing and everything is going well. This relaxes the overactive and jittery limbic system. But the kids are too young to really take the responsibility for practicing this way.

I went home after the recital and worked on some notes that might interest you.

Purposeful, deliberate, intelligent practice

Deliberate practice is purposeful practice that knows where it is going and how to get there.

The right sort and amount of practice carried out over a sufficient period of time leads to improvement. Nothing else.

Research has shown that, generally speaking, once a person reaches the level of “acceptable” performance and automaticity, the additional years of “practice” don’t lead to improvement. Automated abilities gradually deteriorate in the absence of deliberate efforts to improve. You have to push yourself to get better.

Purposeful practice has several characteristics that set it apart from what might be called naïve practice, which is essentially just doing something repeatedly, and expecting that the repetition alone will improve one’s performance.

 Purposeful practice is much more deliberate, thoughtful and focused. It has the following characteristics:

• Deliberate practice involves well-defined, specific goals and often involves improving some aspect of the target performance; it is not aimed at some vague overall improvement.  It knows where it is going and how to get there. Develop a plan for making a series of small changes that will add up to the desired larger change.

For instance, “Play the piece (or section) all the way through at the proper speed without a single mistake three times in a row.” or “Accent each first finger in the scale/run to give the brain a kind of anchor to hold on to.”.

Without such a goal, there is no way to judge whether the practice session has been a success. A well-defined, specific goal, broken down into baby steps if necessary, plus a plan: What exactly do you need to do to … (play at performance tempo/play three times without a mistake…) What exactly will you do to get there? You will need to figure out what is preventing you from reaching this goal. My job as a teacher is to lead the kids to this way of thinking. Parents can too!

The key thing is to take that general goal – get better – and turn it into something specific that you can work on with a realistic expectation of improvement.

•  Purposeful practice is focused. You seldom improve much (if at all) without giving the task your full attention with conscious actions. The student must concentrate on the specific goal for the practice activity so that adjustments can be made to control practice. No computer or phone distractions, no babies “helping”, etc. Focus and concentration are the key.

• You need feedback from someone – yourself, your teacher, your friend, a recording or a parent. You have to 1) know when you are doing “it” right and, 2) you need help to find out how to do “it” correctly if you are wrong. Simple, direct feedback after every attempt – correct or incorrect, success or failure. “How many times did you play it correctly?” I can send you recordings of the pieces or we can record them in the lesson (smartphone) for home study. Mom, Dad, Grandparents, older siblings can listen in and give constructive feedback. “Something sounds funny!” may not be enough. ;-)

•  Purposeful practice requires getting out of one’s comfort zone. This is perhaps the most important part of deliberate practice. Many students show no signs of ever pushing themselves beyond what is familiar, comfortable and relatively easy.

This approach just doesn’t work.

This is a fundamental truth about any sort of practice: If you never push yourself beyond your comfort zone, you will never improve. Playing the same set of songs in exactly the same way over and over again may accumulate many “practice” hours, but will never lead to mastery and unconscious excellency. That’s a recipe for stagnation, not improvement.

Getting out of your comfort zone means trying to do something that you couldn’t do before. It means constantly trying things that are just beyond current abilities. It demands near-maximal effort, which is generally not enjoyable. Finding ways around barriers is one of the keys to purposeful practice.  It is surprisingly rare to get clear evidence in any field that a person has reached some immutable limit on performance.

People more often just give up and stop trying to improve. It’s so easy to blame it on lack of “talent”!

 Maintaining the focus and the effort required by purposeful practice is hard work, and it is generally not fun. Some people are able to motivate themselves anyway. Most don’t and never reach their full potential.

The most effective forms of practice are doing more than helping you learn to play a musical instrument; they are actually increasing your ability to play. With such practice, you are modifying the parts of the brain you use when playing music and, in a sense, increasing your own musical “talent”. Regular training leads to changes in the parts of the brain that are challenged by the training. The brain adapts to these challenges by rewiring itself in ways that increase its ability to carry out the functions required by the challenges.

But, the cognitive and physical changes caused by training require upkeep. Stop training, and they start to go away.

The reason that most people don’t possess (these) extraordinary capabilities isn’t because they don’t have the capacity for them, but rather because they are satisfied to live in the comfortable rut of homeostasis and never do the work that is required to get out of it. They live in the world of “adequate”. We learn enough to get by in our day-to-day lives, but once we reach that point, we seldom push to go beyond ‘good enough’. We do very little that challenges our brains to develop new gray matter or to rewire entire sections.

Doing the same thing over and over again in exactly the same way is not a recipe for improvement; it is a recipe for stagnation and gradual decline. Unless you are using practice techniques specifically designed to improve those particular skills, trying harder will not get you very far.

 Yet it’s important to remember that the option exists. If you wish to become significantly better at something, you can.

The goal is not just to reach your potential but to build it, to make things possible that were not possible before. This requires challenging homeostasis – getting out of your comfort zone - and forcing your brain and your body to adapt.

Mental representations are patterns of information – facts, images, rules, relationships, and so on – that are held in long-term memory and that can be used to respond quickly and effectively in certain types of situations. A mental representation is a conceptual structure designed to sidestep the usual restrictions that short-term memory places on mental processing.

The main purpose of deliberate practice is to develop effective mental representations. Then the mental representations play a key role in deliberate practice.  This opens up new possibilities for improved performance. (Kids smile at my “pinkie popcorn” and “squashy” but they are mental representations of harmonic chords. Ta, ti-ti, To-a are also rhythmic representations that stick in the brain and can be identified immediately on sight, recognizing chords (broken and block) and their inversions as well as scales and scale fragments in the music are other representations.)

When practicing a new piece, beginning and intermediate musicians generally lack a good, clear idea of how the music should sound, while advanced musicians have a very detailed mental representation of the music they use to guide their performance of the piece.

A clear mental representation of the piece allows a player to recognize most of the mistakes, remember them the next time, and correct them.

One form would be an aural representation – a clear idea of what a piece should sound like, including dynamic and agogic changes, harmonic relationships, etc. Another is a visual representation (not seeing that the notes are on spaces but recognizing immediately that it is an F major chord), which chunks the information together so the player doesn’t “reinvent the wheel” each time he learns a new piece. (If a child is having trouble playing a measure, I just say “C major broken chord” and they can play it immediately! But not until they have established that representation in their brains.)

Maintain close attention to every detail of performance, each one done correctly, time and again, until excellence in every detail becomes a firmly ingrained habit. This is the recipe for maximum improvement from practice.

Shorter training sessions with clearer goals are the best way to develop new skills faster. Just “filling up time” doesn’t get us far.

How not to practice: just doing the same thing over and over again without any focused step-by-step plan for improvement.

Get past the New Year’s resolution effect and make deliberate practice an ongoing part of your life.

If you stop believing that you can reach a goal, either because you’ve regressed or you’ve plateaued, don’t quit. Make an agreement with yourself that you will do what it takes to get back to where you were or to get beyond the plateau, and then you can quit. You probably won’t.

What matters is that teachers divide up what can look like an infinite amount of material to learn into a series of clear steps, making the student’s progress more concrete and more encouraging. That is why I have Piano Karate, Note Mastery, Practice Clubs, etc. The kids need to know where they are going and what the steps are to get there. Have the positive results posted for all to see (and to inspire and motivate others).

Students are supposed to practice and meet their goals (they're enjoying the games & other incentives while they're being trained), and then they celebrate their skills sharing the beauty of music with others at their recitals.

© Linda Langeheine, December 2016

So little time - so much to practice

What to practice if you have only a few minutes:

1 minute	1 scale (major or minor)	Pick a difficult scale and practice intensely HA/HT
2 minutes	one scale – 1 minute one difficult passage from one of your pieces – 1 min.	Make yourself focus intently. Listen and correct. Try to play perfectly and/or slowly.
3 minutes	scale – 1 minute finger or trill exercise – 1 min. one difficult measure/line from your piece – 1 min.	Yes, just doing these few minutes will make a difference. Not practicing won’t.
4 minutes	breathe – 10 seconds scale  - 50 seconds trill exercise (back and forth between fingers as fast as you can) – 1 minute difficult passage or line from a piece – 2 minutes	Breathing helps you focus. Minor scales are important. Use other practice methods. Don’t just play through. Ask me for tips!
5 minutes	breathe – 10 seconds scale  - 50 seconds learn a few notes/fingerings from a new piece or a piece with weak passages – 2 minutes difficult passage from a piece – 2 minutes	If you are avoiding certain passages, now is the time to attack just a tiny bit. Practice just a few notes with correct fingerings several times.
6 minutes	breathe – 10 seconds scale  - 50 seconds learn a few notes/fingerings from a new piece or a piece with weak passages – 2 minutes difficult passage from a piece – 2 minutes Play through one page of a piece – 1 minute	The breathing helps you focus and the scale warms you up. Make yourself attack the measures that are not easy.
7 minutes	breathe – 10 seconds scale  - 50 seconds learn a few notes/fingerings from a new piece or a piece with weak passages – 2 minutes difficult passage from a piece – 2 minutes Play through the last page of a piece – 2 min.	The last page of a piece is generally practiced less than the beginning. That is why it also sounds weak! Attack that last page!!
8 minutes	breathe – 10 seconds scale  - 50 seconds difficult passage from a piece – 2 minutes play the difficult passage in your head – 1 min. Play through your whole piece for the rest of the practice time – 4 minutes	To practice in your head, look at the notes and imagine in your mind that you are playing them. You can almost feel the instrument with your fingers. This demands concentration but keep at it.
9 minutes	breathe – 10 seconds scale & arpeggio  - 50 seconds difficult passage from a piece – 2 minutes play the difficult passage in your head – 1 min. Work on the last line of your most difficult piece. – 1 minute Play through your whole piece for the rest of the practice time – 4 minutes	Make use of these few minutes of practice. Even if you practice only 9 minutes per day, you’ll have practiced almost an hour by your next lesson! Concentrate.
10 minutes	breathe – 10 seconds scale  - 50 seconds learn a few notes/fingerings from a new piece or a piece with weak passages – 2 minutes difficult passage from a piece – 2 minutes difficult passage (last page!) from a piece – 2 minutes Play through your whole piece for the rest of the practice time – 3 minutes	You can get a lot done in 10 minutes. Set the clock if you want but keep your mind on the tasks to be done. Every little step you take brings you closer to playing excellently!

11 minutes	breathe – 10 seconds scale  - 50 seconds learn a few notes/fingerings from a new piece or a piece with weak passages – 2 minutes difficult passage from a piece – 2 minutes play the difficult passage in your head – 1 min. difficult passage (last page!) from a piece – 2 minutes Play through your whole piece for the rest of the practice time – 3 minutes	It is most important that you not call a play-through practicing. Save playing through to the end of your session and get some short yet really focused work done before that.
12 minutes	breathe – 10 seconds scale  - 50 seconds learn a few notes/fingerings from a new piece or a piece with weak passages – 2 minutes difficult passage from a piece – 2 minutes play the difficult passage in your head – 1 min. difficult passage (last page!) from a piece – 2 minutes Play through your whole piece (or two short pieces) for the rest of the practice time – 4 minutes	If you are tired, jump up and down a few times to get your energy back up. Run up and down some stairs. Then set the clock and start breathing to help you concentrate on the next few minutes of deep work.
13 minutes	breathe – 10 seconds scale  - 50 seconds learn a few notes/fingerings from a new piece or a piece with weak passages – 2 minutes difficult passage from a piece – 2 minutes play the difficult passage in your head – 1 min. difficult passage (last page!) from a piece – 2 minutes play the difficult passage in your head – 1 min. Play through your whole piece for the rest of the practice time – 4 minutes	A difficult passage is a measure or a musical phrase that is not easy yet. If you have made mistakes there in the past, that is the passage you want to attack and conquer today. Even playing one or two of the notes that are difficult, or a tricky position change can be practiced. It doesn’t always have to be long. Enjoy your play-through at the end. Note difficulties for tomorrow’s practice!
14 minutes	breathe – 10 seconds scale  - 50 seconds learn a few notes/fingerings from a new piece or a piece with weak passages – 2 minutes difficult passage from a piece – 2 minutes play the same difficult passage in your head – 1 min. difficult passage (last page!) from a piece – 2 minutes play the same difficult passage in your head – 1 min. Play the last page of the piece – 1 minute Play through your whole piece (or two short pieces)  for the rest of the practice time – 4 minutes	If you practice every day at the same time, you will soon be conditioned to concentrate immediately at that time of the day. You will practice better and happier if you practice when you are fresh and full of energy. Lots of students practice before school!
15 minutes	breathe – 10 seconds scale  - 50 seconds learn a few notes/fingerings from a new piece or a piece with weak passages – 2 minutes difficult passage from a piece – 2 minutes play the difficult passage in your head – 1 min. difficult passage (last page!) from a piece – 2 minutes play the difficult passage in your head – 1 min. Play through your whole piece (or two short pieces)  for the rest of the practice time – 6 minutes	Don’t confuse focused practice with “messing around” at your instrument. You can do that afterwards or at another time. Now is the time for deep, concentrated work at your instrument. 15 minutes isn’t long but it can speed your progress immensely - if you do it daily in a focused manner.