Tag: Practice Techniques

Soaking the Pan – A Practice Technique

Soaking the Pan is a clever name that one of my students and I came up with together. It’s a pretty common technique that most people do already without thinking about it, but I’ll describe it, step by step, just in case it’s a process that doesn’t come natural to you.

How Did We Come Up with the Name “Soaking the Pan”?

You know how when you’re doing the dishes and there’s the crusty pan that had the entrée in it? You will probably need to soak the pan, possibly overnight, but you want to get a good crack at it and see if you can get it cleaned up tonight so you have less work later.

So, before you even start cleaning up the dishes, you fill up that crusty, filthy pan with water. Usually by the time you’re done with all of the dishes, that pan cleans up easy as pie. Minimal scrubbing needed.

This is an analogy of what we can do when practicing music. Here’s a step-by-step description.

The Steps

  1. Identify the tough parts. You may have already been doing this by marking parts that you want to work through later, but you can usually identify them with the amount of black or jumps in that area.
  2. Play through the tough parts. You can run some small section practice techniques during this time, but just playing through helps, too.
  3. Play the whole piece. The tough parts aren’t so tough anymore.

Conclusion

I’ve been using the soaking the pan practice technique ever since I can remember. It’s always been very natural to me. I decided to write about it, anyway, because not everyone thinks the way that I do. I hope it helps!

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.

Being Lazy Can Be Productive

Being lazy can be productive. I know that I’m opening up a can of worms with this statement, but bear with me. I consider myself lazy. Not a sluggard, but lazy.

Definition of Lazy vs. Sluggard

I am unapologetically a Christian. I know what Proverbs says about being a sluggard. I can hear my dad quoting, “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of your hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a thief…” Proverbs 24:33

As with everything, laziness has a spectrum. A sluggard is an extremely lazy person. Someone who is so lazy that they won’t even try. There are no standards of living. As long as there’s food and shelter, everything’s fine. It’s the very bottom end of the spectrum of lazy. I’m not saying this is good at all.

Laziness, in general, is just having a goal of not doing anything as much as possible. The goal is the couch or the recliner.

How Can Laziness be Productive?

The goal is the couch or the recliner, so if something needs to be done, it will be done as efficiently as possible – the fastest, the easiest, and the same quality of work as if I did it the traditional way.

I will spend an extra 5 minutes planning something out so that I can save one minute of doing the task. That seems counter-productive, but what if I have to do that task again? I already spent the 5 minutes figuring out the fastest and easiest way to do it, so that will pay off in the long-run.

Think about all the inventions people have made over the years to make life easier. That even applies to our instruments. Do I *really* need a C# trill key? Hopefully my next flute has one.

How Does This Relate to Music?

My normal practice routine is centered around my version of laziness. I make sure that I do scales, technical exercises, and etudes because they help me learn the repertoire faster. I go into that information in more detail in the linked articles. I call it dividing and conquering.

Another thing I do to increase efficiency is I analyze my music before I play it. I note all the scales (even the modes), the patterns, the form etc., in my head. I know that it helps some people to write it down in the music, but that gets to be too much information on the page for me.

Last but not least, I use a ton of different practice techniques to help me learn my music faster. Here are a bunch of them. I’m always adding more to my list. Sometimes I make them up and sometimes I learn them from other musicians. They’re a way for me to go around, over, or under a wall, rather than try to go through.

Everyone Needs a Lazy Friend

People who aren’t lazy just do things the way they’ve always done them or were taught to do them. Lazy people spend the extra time to figure out the fastest and easiest way to do everything, all the way down to washing their hands. I’ll be your lazy music friend. My goal with this blog is to help you practice faster and easier than you did before.

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. 🙂

The Inside-Out Practice Technique

The Inside-Out is a practice technique that I came up with, myself. If someone else came up with it before 2016, then I’m not aware of it. I use it as a secondary practice technique – a safety net, if you will. Hopefully it will help you just as much.

When to Use the Inside-Out Practice Technique

One example of when to use the Inside-Out practice technique is if you tried practicing backwards and you didn’t learn it as well as you wished. You know that your brain needs to spend more time in puzzle mode, but practicing backwards again would just be tedious.

Another example is when there are two lines of 16th notes coming up. You see them, and you hope you can play them. You get to that section, and you fall apart. It wasn’t that you weren’t prepared to play it, you may have even gotten the first couple of notes from that section, but you were so overwhelmed by it that your eyes didn’t know what to do with it.

How to Use the Inside-Out Practice Technique

Here’s a step-by-step guide to using this method.

Step 1: Find the Middle.

It could be the middle page, measure, or note. Count through to find it. Don’t estimate because as you’re counting, your subconscious mind is reading the notes.

What about if it’s an even number? Let’s say you’re going by measure, and there are 8 measures in the scary section. If the last measure looks harder than the first measure, then #5 is the middle. If the first measure looks harder, then #4 is the middle. That way the harder end of the section is played twice.

Step 2: Play Only the Middle.

This is as simple as it sounds. Only play the middle page, measure, or note. See? It’s not that scary.

Step 3: Add On, etc.

In this step, you add the note/measure/page on either side of the middle and play it. You keep doing that until you get to both ends.

My Experience

For myself, I use the Inside-Out practice technique when practicing backwards wasn’t quite enough. I know that I need to practice the whole thing backwards again, but if I do, it would be really frustrating for me.

When I’m teaching, I use it in these situations:

  1. The student needs help practicing and they already know how to practice backwards.
  2. The student’s eyes glaze over when sight-reading a new piece as they crash and burn (overload).
  3. I assign to alternate between practicing backwards and inside-out, every other day, for the week. I usually do this after they’ve gotten the bones of the piece down, but need to spend more focused time with it.

Conclusion

The Inside-Out practice technique is a unique tool for your toolbox. For me personally, I use it as a secondary technique. It’s my safety net for when my favorite doesn’t work as well as normal. Some respond to it better than practicing backwards and use it as their favorite practice technique. How about you?

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.

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.

How to Reduce Homework Time by Half

When I took grade school curriculum class in college, the professor said that 5th grade is the hardest. This is because the children are finally fluent in reading, their brains have reached the next stage of development, and the textbooks increase the load. Quickly.

I try to teach the information in this article at the beginning of 5th grade, but sometimes the problem crops up earlier or the student forgets about that conversation. So, I often have the following conversation:

Student: I didn’t practice this week because I had too much homework.

Me: How much homework did you have?

Student: 2-3 hours per night.

Me: Wow, that’s a lot. I completely understand, and your homework is more important than everything else. Can I give you some advice on how to make your homework go faster?

Start with a Piece of Music

Play something. Anything. Play something that inspires you. Something that helps you with any emotions that you’re feeling at the time. Something that you might already know. Play just for the enjoyment of playing.

This supercharges the brain so that you can work at optimal level (an article containing research on that statement is here.), and you are able to do your homework faster from the start.

20 Minutes

Focus begins to wane after 20 minutes (an article containing research on that statement is here, scroll down to the end). Therefore, I recommend that the student sets the timer for 20 minutes and does their homework.

After the timer goes off, they should switch from homework to practicing one piece, whether it be a scale, something from the lesson book, or the current repertoire piece. The student should be away from their homework for at least 5 minutes to allow their brain to reset.

Notice I said, “reset,” and not “rest.” The brain is going to supercharge itself for the next 5 minutes. After the 5 minutes of practice, they can go back to homework for another 20 minutes. Keep cycling in this way until the homework is done.

Here’s what the cycle looks like in list form (I think lists are easier to read).

  1. Play something that’s fun, inspiring, or emotionally cleansing.
  2. Do your homework for 20 minutes, with a timer.
  3. Practice for at least 5 minutes. Usually one item. Scales don’t take long, so it might be scales and something else.
  4. Do homework for 20 minutes, with a timer.
  5. etc.

Results

Over the years I have had several students take me up on this advice. Invariably, they say that their homework time is cut in half. I haven’t timed it myself or witnessed it, but the parents confirmed that it happened.

Some students don’t like this method because they have a tendency to hyper-focus. Hyper-focusing tends to cause loops in thinking, so it’s imperative that a hyper-focused person break up their focus into 20-minute increments (This information is from Healing ADD by Dr. Daniel Amen). This practice technique is something that a parent would have to force on the student because the hyper-focused student wouldn’t allow it for themselves.

From what I’ve seen, most students with attention problems tend to do very well with this method. They love it because they feel that they get part of their lives back. Sometimes these are the ones that report they got their homework done in less than half the time.

The Flip Side

Because of the 20-minute focus rule, if a student is practicing for longer than half an hour, I tell them to set a timer for 20 minutes and stop practicing for five minutes or so, then finish it up.

For myself, I stretch and get a drink of water during this five minute break. Sometimes I’ll even foam roll my shoulders. I come back to practice ready to go.

Not only does this make you more productive in practice, but it also gives you more stamina and it’s good for your muscles and joints. Many musicians have sports injuries from playing an instrument. The practice of taking a short stretching break every 20 minutes helps to prevents this, in addition to other things.

Housework

I hate doing housework. When I’m particularly loathing cleaning on any given day, I like to play Lorie Line’s Heritage II book on the piano. First I straighten the house for 15 minutes, then I’ll play the first piece in the book. Then I dust. Then the second piece. So on and so forth until the house is clean.

By the time I’m done cleaning the house, I’ve also played through the whole book. It’s my way of rewarding myself.

I’ve tried practicing flute while doing housework in this way, but it doesn’t work as well for me. Part of the reason is the fact that I’m feeling emotional. Piano moves my emotions and helps me deal with them more efficiently than the flute.

Another part of the reason why piano helps me clean better is the fact that the piano is a standing instrument. It feels easier to get on and off the bench than it does to pick up my flute, even if I leave it put together while I’m doing the next task. I know that it isn’t actually easier, but sometimes you can’t argue with your subconscious.

The final reason I can’t do housework while playing the flute is because I forget that I was cleaning the house because I’m having so much fun playing the flute. I end up playing for an hour or two, look around the house, and say, “Oops!”

Conclusion

Cycling between homework and practice really helps a student be more efficient with their time. I’ve seen it decrease the amount of homework time, reportedly by half. I haven’t witnessed it, but enough students and parents have reported to me how well it works.

I wish I would have known about this back in college when I was struggling to write papers and doing all-nighters. It might have been a little disturbing for my roommate if I pulled out my flute at 3AM, though (mischievous smile). I wonder how many college kids would be knocking down the door of a practice room if they saw the person inside doing their homework.