The purpose of a fun practice session is to keep up your morale towards your instrument. It takes longer than the regular practice session, but it has a different overall purpose. It brings the joy back to practicing when everything feels a little dull. Jennifer Cluff mentions this kind of practice briefly in this article.
Two Stacks of Music
You should start with two stacks of music – the music that you’re working on and music that you already know and enjoy. The enjoy part is the most important.
Put the stack of music that you already know and enjoy in order of easy to hard. I like to have the first one to be something from a Disney book, like this or this. That way I can do something fun and enjoyable, yet still be able to concentrate on form or tone.
Fun Practice Session Order
Here’s an example of the order in which you would practice on a day you need a fun practice session.
- Easy Fun Music (used instead of tone studies for winds)
- Scale warm-ups
- Easy Fun Music
- Technical Studies
- Old Repertoire
- Etudes
- Old Repertoire
- Repertoire
- Old Repertoire
Old Repertoire
Let’s talk about that old repertoire for a minute. It can be your standard definition of repertoire – music that isn’t an etude or a technical study and you’ve already learned.
Here’s the thing – there’s no reason why it can’t be an old etude that you loved. Why not? It’s your practice session, your rules. I recently pulled out an old Level 3 lesson book to play Irish Washerwoman because I wanted to.
Prevention
Preventing the need for this kind of practice session is easy – make sure that you play something fun at the end of each practice session.
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t do the fun practice session just because you want to. Have an unexpected couple of hours? Do this because it’s fun!
Conclusion
Sometimes things get a little too intense in practice, and everything starts feeling dry and boring. We all need a pick-me-up every once in awhile, and this kind of practice session helps remind you how much you love music.