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. 🙂