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:
- Tone
- Scales
- Technical Studies
- Etudes
- Sight Reading
- 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.