Tag: burn-out

Winter Break – Did You Practice?

In the USA, schools and studios alike are just coming off of Winter Break. Some students took the opportunity to practice every day. Some didn’t touch their instruments. Let’s take a look at this phenomenon a little more closely

The Students who Practiced

These are students who practiced at least three times per week. There are several reasons students practice over winter break.

  1. Intrinsic Motivation – this is the goal. This means the students practice because they enjoy playing.
  2. Parents – the parents make their children practice. This is a really good reason, too. It will eventually turn into the intrinsic motivation. This was my motivation when I was growing up.
  3. Boredom – there’s nothing going on, so I might as well practice. This is a really good one, too. It’s the stage before Intrinsic Motivation. This was also one of my motivations when I was a student living in the country.
  4. Habit – this is why the pros practice. They always practice at this time, so it’s habit.

The Students who Practiced a Little

These are students who practiced five times or less in the past two weeks. Their reasons are the same as those above, but their motivation wasn’t as high.

Their practice might have a little more to do with their parents, but that’s just fine. It shows their parents are invested in their musical education.

The Students Who Didn’t Practice

This category accounts for about 25% of my studio. There are three reasons for no practice over Winter Break:

  1. The student was on vacation with no access to a musical instrument.
  2. The break was over scheduled – Christmas is a time of running around like a chicken with its head cut off.
  3. The student didn’t want to practice.

The first two reasons are out of the student’s control. The last reason is the heart of the matter and the most common.

It’s Okay to Take a Break from your Instrument

Everyone gets burned out sometimes. That’s when we need to walk away for a week or two. When you come back, you’ll remember how much you loved it and will be able to play with a zest you forgot you had.

Notice I said a week or two, not longer. As with any discipline, you need to schedule a time to get back into that discipline. Practicing is definitely a discipline.

Getting back into the discipline of practicing will be hard for the first few weeks. You might want to take a look at some of these tactics to help you get back into the swing of things.

Prevent Burn-Out

Make sure you schedule time to enjoy life. I don’t mean video games or television, I mean go outside of your house.

  1. Go for a run or a bike ride.
  2. Climb a tree.
  3. Go to the art museum.
  4. Garden.
  5. Get together with friends.
  6. See a concert.

I’m sure there are plenty of better lists out there, but this is a start. Another thing I do is go online and do a search for “free things to do in [your city here]. ”

Music Is Art

We can’t produce art if we are only practicing all day. We need to go out and enjoy life. Then we use a studio break to take a break, we do just that. Experiencing life gives you the maturity to play better – more emotion, more tone colors, more artistic expression.

Conclusion

If you practiced during Winter Break, I’m proud of you.

If you didn’t practice over winter break, I hope you were able to fill your bucket so you can come back to your instrument and create art.

Focusing in Practice

Some students come to lessons perfectly prepared every week. Some don’t. Those not perfectly prepared don’t prepare for various reasons – schedule, burn-out, going through a low time in the music progression, etc. Not everyone is able to practice perfectly every week. Even those who are normally prepared have off-weeks sometimes.

Expectations

In a normal practice session, you would play each of the following things, depending on your level and instrument:

  1. Tone
  2. Scales
  3. Technical Studies
  4. Etudes
  5. Sight Reading
  6. Repertoire

If you’re curious about this list, I go into more depth about it here.

What Do Good Practicers Do?

A student who is really good at practicing basically works up all their pieces really well the first two days or so of practice, then coasts for the rest of the week.

Coasting looks like them playing through everything once, maybe working on a problem here and there, then finishing practice with things they have already learned and enjoy playing.

This takes a lot of drive for the first two days, but the benefits are fabulous. It makes practicing fun. It saves time in the long run. It makes it so the student can perform better in the lesson.

What if I Don’t Have the Drive to Do That?

You may not have the time, energy, or drive to focus on everything on your practice list any given day. This can happen for various reasons – schedule, feeling burned out, etc.

Focus on one or two categories per day. I’m not saying that you should skip a category. You should at least run through every category at least once, unless you’re in big trouble. Then I would recommend using my time crunch technique.

Take a look at your categories. If your technical studies book is really easy, you probably won’t have to focus on it all week. Just play through it once a day and call it good. If you just got a new section for your repertoire, you might have to focus on that a couple of times that week.

Burn-out

If you are going through a burn-out phase, try using the two-stand method. It will insert some fun and joy into your practice and pull you out of your funk. The two-stand method takes more time, but it works.

If you’re having scheduling issues in addition to the burn-out, then go ahead and focus on one or two things per day, as described above, but make sure you’re playing music that you’ve already learned at the end of your practice session. Pull out an old lesson book. Pull out an old piece that you learned for a recital or contest. Goof off on your instrument. Discipline is great, but remind yourself why your play.

You will find yourself coming out of your burn-out quickly.

Conclusion

Everyone goes through times when they can’t focus as well as normal on their practice. Everyone goes through times when they can’t practice as well as normal. It’s good to have more than one way to do things. It keeps things fresh.