Category: General Practice

Dude, Just Practice.

I have a lot of clever practice techniques. I love practice techniques because they work so much faster and easier than traditional practice. Whenever I talk to a different musician, I ask what their favorite practice technique is. This is one way that I’ve collected the practice techniques over the years. Another way is that I make them up on the spot.

All the clever practice techniques in the world won’t make up for not practicing. Sometimes you just have to practice the old-fashioned way – play through, stop when you have an issue, work on the issue, and keep on going. Just run through like this once a day and you’ll have it down.

Take your time with the music. It’s a puzzle that you need to figure out. Sometimes you need to just practice and spend some time with the puzzle.

The Octave Practice Technique

The octave practice technique was something I learned from my college piano teacher, Rebecca Mattek. I had worked and worked on hitting this one chord all week, and I just couldn’t get it. She had me do this practice technique and I was able to hit the chord immediately.

This was the first practice technique I ever learned that truly felt like magic. After that, I started to see the magic in all the different practice techniques.

When Do I Use the Octave Practice Technique?

The Octave Practice Technique is supposed to be used when you always miss that one chord. Usually it’s a jump, but sometimes not.

Sorry, winds/strings/percussion, this practice technique is for piano, only.

The Process

Step 1: Play the chord, as written, both hands. You may have to start with the bottom note and add one note at a time until you get to the top note.

Step 2: Play the chord an octave up. If you had one incorrect note, make sure you fix it, then play the entire chord again, correctly.

Step 3: Continue to do Step 2, going up an octave each time, until you run out of room.

Step 4: Do the same process as in steps 2&3 except going down an octave each time until you run out of space.

Step 5: Same process as 2&3, going up from the bottom octave, but stop when you reach the point where the music is written.

Step 6: Back up to the beginning of the phrase and try playing it. If it didn’t work, try twinkling.

Why Does This Work?

Simple answer: repetition.

You just played the same chord in every octave on the keyboard. Twice. How many times did you repeat it?

You also just jumped to that chord in every octave on the keyboard. Twice. You practiced jumping to the chord as many times as you practiced playing it.

Conclusion

This practice technique works like magic. I use it a lot, and I hope you will, too.

How to Play with Emotion

Being able to play with emotion is necessary. Being able to fake it is necessary, too. It’s not ideal, but it’s a good skill to know.

Some days you just can’t access that particular emotion, so you need to fake it. Sometimes you haven’t been through enough life to bring the idea across. These are good examples of learning the mechanics behind playing with emotion and learning how to do it on demand.

I’ll talk today about playing with emotion for real and how to fake it. I’ll also talk about how to put emotion into the most bland things in order to make them sparkle.

How to Play with Emotion for Real

Before you start playing, take a minute to bring up old memories or current situations that make you feel the way that this music is trying to emote. Holding that picture in your mind, begin playing the piece.

Allow the part of your mind that holds memories to wander as you play. The piece will hold you in the emotion(s) that the composer wants you to feel. You’ll feel the emotions ebbing and flowing through your body, out your instrument, and into the air.

When you hit the last chord, you will feel free, like everything that your memories were working through were resolved with that last resolution in the last chord.

Notice I only said to allow part of your mind to wander. You still need to concentrate on the notes.

How to Fake Play with Emotion

You’re having a hard time conveying the emotion in this piece. Maybe you haven’t gone through enough in your life so you can’t access those emotions. This is a good thing – it means you have had a good life.

Maybe you’re not an emotional person so you can’t access those emotions. Don’t beat yourself up over that. It’s just not how you’re built. Usually those who are in your boat, though, are really good at following directions. Here they are, step-by-step.

I find that I have to teach 3rd and 4th graders how to fake play with emotion because they just can’t access their emotions on demand, but they’re starting to get into music that requires it.

Step 1: Analyze

Take a moment to analyze each phrase. Each phrase has a sunshine moment. This is usually where the melody goes up, but it can be other things. You get to decide where the sunshine moment is in each phrase because you’re the artist. Draw a sun over each sunshine moment.

Step 2: Dynamics

The piece will crescendo to each sunshine moment and diminuendo away from it. If there are a ton of dynamics already written into the music, these dynamics will be very slight. Same with if it was written before the Romantic Era.

If it’s a piece that doesn’t have much written in there, and it was written after the Classical Era, let her rip. Bring your own dynamics out.

Step 3: Rubato

General rule: Crescendo = faster. Diminuendo = slower.

Rubato should only be used after the Classical Era.

Keep it in good taste, though. It’s all supposed to equal out to the same amount of time in the end.

Adding Emotion to the Mundane and Boring Music

Wait, I’m admitting there are boring things to play? Yup. They’re called scales and technical studies. Sometimes etudes, too.

Scales are a necessary evil – I go into that more here. Technical studies might be even more boring than scales, but they’re also necessary. I go into that more here.

I’ve heard it said that if you don’t play everything musically, then you’re wasting your time. How do you play scales and technical studies musically? Add emotion. You can even make a game of it. Make a list of emotions and alternate between them while you’re practicing your warm-ups.

If you’re having a hard time playing warm-ups with emotion, try faking it, using my directions. It will give you good practice for having to fake your emotions with other pieces.

Conclusion

It’s a wonderful experience to play your instrument with emotion, but sometimes we have to develop that skill. It’s good to have a step-by-step plan to add emotion to anything. It helps with your overall musicianship and adds some sparkle to your music.

Using Different Sounds as a Practice Motivator

Using different sounds is a great motivator for anyone who needs to run through something multiple times, but can’t get themselves to play something more than once. I know that I’m guilty of only playing through everything once!

What do I mean by using different sounds?

Depending on the instrument, you could think about it as experimenting with different ways of playing it – 8va, different tone colors, play loud, play quiet, etc.

I will give examples below for each instrument that I teach.

Electric Piano

It’s probably the easiest to change the sound on an electric piano. You just push a button and it sounds like an organ, a harpsichord, or even a brass band.

You should see the way kids light up when I tell them that they need to use their pieces to help them decide which sound effect they like the best. When they come back the next week, the parents tell me that they went through their pieces 3-7 times per day. Woohoo! Grown-ups can have that fun experience, too.

Acoustic Piano

When my oldest daughter started playing the piano, she loved to practice every piece in every octave on the keyboard.

She started with the bottom octave, moved up to the next octave and played the same piece. Moved up to the next octave. So on and so forth until she got to the top octave, then started over on the process with the next piece.

I’m not saying you have to be that meticulous, but you could do it a couple octaves down or a couple octaves up, just to hear the tone color change. That would be a grand total of three times through.

Flute

When I was in college, I was the piccolo player. I would practice everything on both instruments. My fingers were faster on the piccolo, so sometimes I’d work things out on that instrument then switch to the flute. That would be one option for using a different sound, if you have a piccolo. 🙂

Flutes can change our tone color at the drop of a hat. I wrote about that more in detail here. Why not use that to our advantage? You could try that rhaspy, airy tone that the Irish use on the flute for almost a percussive instrument. Try playing the piece in every tone color of the rainbow, one at a time, and decide which one you like.

All Instruments

Using different sounds as a practice motivator has a lot of different applications for any instrument. Here is a short list of different options, feel free to add to the list.

  • Volume – ff, f, mf, mp, p, pp
  • Emotion – try playing it sad, happy, angry, etc.
  • Articulation – staccato, legato, marcato, accented, etc.

Seriously

I’ve mentioned a few things that serious musicians do to create their own interpretation of the music – dynamics, tone color, emotion, and articulation. They experiment with how they want to play a phrase to get their message across in the best way.

Using different sounds might be a great practice motivator because it’s fun. It’s also serious work. If fun doesn’t motivate you, maybe discovering your interpretation of a piece will be motivating for you.

Conclusion

Everyone likes to experiment with different sounds on different pieces. It not only makes kids light up, it also has a really good purpose. Sometimes that purpose is to convince yourself to, “Play it again, Sam.” Sometimes it helps with your interpretation of the piece. However it helps, don’t be afraid to experiment. 🙂

Dealing with Frustration During Practice

Dealing with frustration during practice is a huge part of having a good practice technique. Who hasn’t given an angry stomp or jumped up and down while growling because you just can’t get that tough lick? How many times have you banged your fist on the piano because your fingers won’t do what you’re telling them to do?

The point is, how do you get past the frustration without giving up? Here is step-by-step what I do.

Step 1: Display Your Frustration

If you’re not alone in the room, skip to step 2.

If you are alone, don’t be afraid to show your frustration. You’re angry with your body, the music, the composer, and yourself. Go ahead and yell. Scream. Growl. Throw a mini-tantrum. This step shouldn’t take longer than one minute, ideally it should be about 20 seconds.

Step 2: Breathe

I usually take a one or two very deep breaths after my 20-second mini-tantrum. This gets oxygen pumping into my brain so that I can work on a solution.

Step 3: Puzzle Mode

If you think of the situation as a puzzle, you will automatically engage the part of your brain that solves problems. What is the source of the problem that you’re encountering? Fingers? Embouchure? Rhythm?

When you’ve figured out the source, you can decide on a good practice technique. I have a bunch of articles describing different practice techniques in this section of my blog if you’re blanking on which one to use.

Figure out two or three different practice techniques to do, starting with the most likely, just in case the first one doesn’t work.

Step 4: Use your Plan of Attack

Go ahead and use the practice technique(s) that you chose. If you need to take another mini-tantrum break, go ahead and do it, but you’re not going to let this problem have the better of you.

Side Note for Gifted Children

Gifted kids tend to have the hardest time of all with frustration during practice. They don’t understand how to handle themselves when they can’t get something right the first time. They’re used to everything coming easy, without effort. Sometimes they don’t even realize they’ve learned something in school because they learn it so quickly.

Many gifted kids don’t encounter a problem they can’t solve or something they can’t easily learn until they’re an adult and then they don’t know how to handle it. This process will help them learn how to logically get them through problems they can’t instantly solve rather than get frustrated and walk away.

This is why learning a musical instrument is especially important for them. They need to learn how to learn. They also need to learn how to solve hard problems.

On top of everything, gifted kids’ emotions have a tendency to run higher, which causes the frustration to instensify. That can be a recipe for disaster, unless you have a process to work through it.

Conclusion

This is my process of how I work through my frustration when I’m practicing on piano or flute. If you have a different process, feel free to share!

The Silent Practice Technique

The silent practice technique simplifies your practice in some ways by eliminating certain aspects of your playing. This helps you focus on certain aspects of your playing, especially your fingers. It can be done on any instrument.

Silent Practice on the Flute

This is taught to be done in band while the director is working with another section. It’s helpful for when you just can’t get those fingerings down. While sitting, you put the head joint on your left shoulder and rest the foot joint on your right knee. This provides a stable resting place for your flute while you run through just the fingerings.

Silent practice can also be practiced on a pencil. This is very handy for things like sitting in a waiting room or in a car for a road trip. Nice for when you don’t want to disturb others, but need to run through your piece.

Each of the silent practice techniques have their own purpose. The mechanisms take extra time to push down and allow to come back up, while the pencil doesn’t have mechanisms to deal with. Practicing with a pencil helps create faster fingers. Silent practice on a real flute helps your brain to process the extra time it takes to deal with the keys.

If you also want to practice your articulation, go ahead and create an air stream and do your articulations along with the fingerings. It’s still beneficial to not have to worry about your tone.

Etiquette Note: Some people like to run some air through their flute while they do this. Please don’t. It’s rude because sometimes you accidentally make a noise. It also creates embouchure confusion.

Silent Practice on the Piano

One way to do silent practice on the piano is to use an electric piano, turned off, or with the volume all the way down. I used to do this all the time when I was playing organ for church, during the sermon. I turned off the organ and ran through everything for the second half of the service. Sometimes I just ran through the harder stuff.

The greatest part of this is that you’re not worried about sound or dynamics. It’s just your fingers. It simplifies your practice.

Another way to do this is to print out a keyboard. I found one here. Use it on a table top. This is much harder than using an electric piano that’s turned off because the black keys aren’t raised, but it’s still an option. Because it’s harder, it might be more beneficial, especially if you’re using the paper keyboard for mental practice (hearing it in your head while using your fingers to play).

Just as with the flute, each of the silent practice techniques have their own purpose. The keys take extra time to push down and allow to come back up, while the paper version doesn’t have keys to deal with. Therefore, practicing with a paper keyboard helps create faster fingers. Practicing on a turned off electric keyboard helps your brain to process the extra time it takes to deal with the keys.

Conclusion

As of this writing, playing an instrument is the activity that uses the most of your brain function. It’s powerful for your brain, but sometimes you need to simplify it before you can get the notes down. That means taking certain aspects of playing out of the equation so that you can focus on the things that are giving you problems.

Fake Performance Practice Technique

Fake performance can be done in many different ways, and it’s vital for during the last few weeks before an actual performance. It helps you learn how to keep going despite mistakes and it helps get your jitters out before the performance.

Simple Definition of a Fake Performance

The simple definition of a fake performance it to play through a piece without stopping. This is so hard! We want to go back and fix the mistake. It’s a knee-jerk reaction, but try to fight it.

Play your mistake as if you meant to do it by extending the length of the wrong note, rather than changing it right away. For example, if the note is supposed to be a half note, then hold your wrong note for a whole beat before correcting it. If it’s a sixteenth note, hold the incorrect note for the entire time of a sixteenth, then move on to the next note.

If your mistake was an incorrect rhythm, just make sure that the number of beats equal the correct amount for the measure and move on. You get the idea. No one needs to know that there was an actual mistake.

Different Ideas for a Fake Performance

As I said before, there are several ways to do a fake performance. Here are several ideas. Each fake perfomance style increases the nervousness, which helps you get ready for being nervous for the stage.

Toys

I don’t care how old or young you are, perform for a stuffed animal or a doll. It will help you because you’ll see their eyes staring at you out of the corner of your eye. Toys are generally non-judgemental, from what I’ve noticed. 😉

Metronome

I know I didn’t mention it here, but I personally get a little nervous with the metronome. This helps with the gradual increase of nervousness that I try to build up before a performance.

The metronome forces me to not stop. I just own my mistake by playing it for the length of the note that I was supposed to play, then move on to the next note that I’m supposed to play. This is really hard. If you’re having a hard time doing that, try holding your mistake for twice as long as the note you were supposed to play – this gives you time to think.

Record Yourself

Recording yourself creates nervousness. Creating a sound recording makes me less nervous than a video, but you might be different. I’m not saying that you should do anything with the recording unless you want to, I’m just saying that creating a recording helps a lot.

Play for One or Two People

I am a very non-judgemental person, so those are the kind of friends that I have. I have been known to play for a friend and have them pretend to be judgemental, all the way down to the looks on their faces. It really helps me get the jitters out ahead of time.

Play in a (Somewhat) Public Place

Play your wind instrument outside. It’s not necessarily around other people, but someone could come along.

Play with your windows open. People might be walking past your house, they might not. You don’t know.

You can go to any public piano and start playing. No one will stop you (unless there’s a pandemic). No one might be there, but someone could walk by.

Ideas for public pianos? Movie theaters, nursing homes, churches, shopping malls, just keep your eyes open. You’ll see them. As I said before, don’t do this during the social distancing thing.

Conclusion

As you can see, the ideas for fake performance get harder and harder. This is on purpose. The whole purpose for fake performance is to practice performing. This way the real performance goes off without a hitch. Or maybe less hitches.

Practicing with a Metronome

Practicing with a metronome can be frustrating in many ways, but it is necessary. I hear a lot of different reasons why people hate practicing with a metronome, but there are many reasons why it’s good, too.

Frustrating Things about Practicing with a Metronome

There are many frustrating things about practicing with a metronome, so I’ll talk about each frustration.

It Feels Too Mechanical

There are two reasons that playing with a metronome makes the music feel mechanical.

  1. It forces you to use the problem-solving portion of your brain rather than the language center. This one reason why you should use the metronome, anyway, because as you solve the problems in the music, you are able to play it better.
  2. You have a natural rubato that is really hard to turn off. This is a reason to use the metronome, anyway, because rubato is not always encouraged in music, especially if you’re playing in an ensemble or something written before the Romantic period.

It Makes Me Mess Up

The metronome is a treasure hunter for mistakes. If you’re messing up, that means that the metronome is set too high. When you start using the metronome, you’re supposed to go a few (or more) clicks slower than you have been playing. This is because you subconsciously slow down on the tough parts.

Uses for Practicing with a Metronome

Now that we’ve gotten the most common excuses out of the way, here are some things that the metronome really helps.

Finding the Mistakes in your Music

I’ve already mentioned that the metronome is a treasure-hunter for mistakes. It helps you find them because, first of all, it makes you slightly nervous, and second you subconsciously slow down on the tough parts.

Speeding Up the Music

When you start a piece, you start out slower than slow. Largo’s got nothing on you. Once you start feeling comfortable with the music, if you speed it up naturally, then you go really fast on the easy parts and really slow on the hard parts. Than becomes your norm and it’s really hard to come out of it.

Evening Out the Tempo

Let’s say you have a really good natural rubato, but you want to play in an ensemble. Rubato is not a good idea for that. You’ll want to play at least once with the metronome each day.

Conclusion

I used to think that the metronome was evil, but a necessary evil. As I grew as a musician, I was able to embrace the metronome. It saves me precious practice time and makes me a better musician.

A Rushed Practice Session

The rushed practice session is a useful tool. It’s for when you have a limited amount of time to practice on a certain day. It can also be used for when you need to devote more time to your repertoire that day. It shouldn’t be used all the time, but can be used until a crisis is over.

This is the last in the series of the three kinds of practice sessions I do – regular, super fun, and rushed.

How the Rushed Practice Session is Set Up

The rushed practice session is pretty simple. It’s a five-minute warm-up followed by the things that you need to learn.

On the other hand, there are different things you can do based on your situation to help things along

Not Enough Time in the Day

When you have over-scheduled yourself and there’s not enough time in the day, just run through everything once. Don’t stress about it, just run through it. It’s the slow way around, but it works. Usually when you do this, whatever you’re working on usually includes a real warm-up. Therefore, you can skip the 5-minute warm-up.

This article will give you some more ideas on how to find more practice time in your day.

Crisis-Learning Repertoire

When you need to use your normally scheduled practice time to concentrate on repertoire, the rushed practice session is the ticket. This, in addition to the rushed practice sesion, also helps.

Too Much Repertoire

Sometimes you get bogged down with too much on your plate – a ton of gigs, recitals, competitions, etc. If you do a regular pracitice session, you might spend a longer time practicing than you should. What that means is that if you’re used to practicing for an hour and you have an hours’ worth of repertoire to practice, you should do the rushed practice session at least once a week. You don’t want to overwork your muscles and tendons.

Here are some more ideas for how to deal with that problem.

Lack of Motivation

Let’s say you’re forcing yourself to practice. This is one way to get yourself to do it. You promise yourself that it’ll be quick, so you just do a rushed practice session.

Here are some other ideas for how to help with motivation. Towards the end of this article, I talked about how to prevent a lack of motivation.

Conclusion

The rushed practice session is a great tool. It shouldn’t be overused, but it’s an option for when you find yourself in a bind.

Are there other situations where you find yourself needing to use this tool?

The Interleaving Practice Technique

Interleaving is a newer practice technique that I stumbled upon in the past week or two. It’s different than spacing, which I refer to in this post, but they can be used together. It can be hard, but it helps with retention.

What is the Interleaving Practice Technique?

Interleaving is to mix up information within a subject area and study it in different orders, but not studying it all the way through. It’s kind of like using flash cards, but mixing up the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

First Step: Make Sections

You can do this on a macro or a micro scale. If you’re learning a 5-page sonata, it would make sense to make sections that are approximately one page long (macro). If your goal is to learn one page this week, then you might want to divide that page up into phrases (micro).

Second Step: Randomize

Two out of my three sources (this and this) recommended to go through each section three times, so they picked a random order of sections and repeated that random order three times. It could look like this:

2,4,1,5,3 2,4,1,5,3 2,4,1,5,3

If you want to do spacing in addition to the interleaving, you could do other things like scales, long tones and technical exercises in-between each interleaving section, or do non-music related things.

Third Step: Get Out Your Timer!

Two versions of interleaving involved a timer. This version has you switching between subjects every 3 minutes, and this one every 5 or 10 minutes. This way you know that you’re not going to fully practice each section in the amount of time that’s allotted, which is part of the interleaving process.

I don’t know about you, but I feel more productive when I use a timer for anything. It doesn’t matter what it is, I feel like I get more done.

Applications

Obviously, you wouldn’t want to use this practicing technique every single time. You need to play through it from start to finish at least once a week, but I can see how this can really help, especially in the beginning stages of learning a piece.

Memorization

This could help a lot with memorizing your piece. The experts are always saying to divide it into sections and memorize those sections. If science says that this helps you memorize things better, give it a try. Let’s see if it works for you.

Beginning Stages

This would really help with the beginning stages of learning a piece. It forces you to work through parts of the piece rather than gloss over them. It would also help you analyze the piece easier, making choices about dynamics and the feel of the piece.

Middle Stages

You know how it is in the middle stages of learning a piece. You play it through a couple of times and think, “It’ll gradually get better.”

In this practice technique, you could pull out the tough parts and interleave just them for a practice session here and there. I do this all the time with ensemble music, but not usually with solos. Who knew that I was already interleaving?

End Stages

I’m not sure how I’d apply this to the end stages of learning a piece. Those last few weeks are usually just about adding the nuances to make it a great performance.

Conclusion

I love adding to my bag of tricks! Any time I can find a new practice technique, it makes me more efficient. I know this technique is hard, but please give it a try.