Tag: Practicing Musical Instruments

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.

Practice vs. Play

I didn’t know the difference between practicing and playing my instruments until I was in college. I just played through everything that was assigned, usually making lots of mistakes – the same mistakes every time. By doing this, I was practicing the mistakes into my music.

When mistakes are practiced into the music, they get baked in, like a stain that went through the dryer. You can get them out if you know the right way to do it, but it’s really hard. Much harder than if you practiced from the beginning.

Why Don’t We Learn the Difference Between Practice and Play?

When you first start out, you practice by playing through everything a 1-5 times every day, because everything is too short or easy for the practice techniques. It’s a gradual change to learn how to practice, which not everyone picks up on. On the piano, it usually starts when you learn to play with your hands together. On the other instruments, it’s usually taught in band or orchestra.

The reason not everyone picks up on the difference is because the way the techniques are taught. My teachers showed me how to do the practice technique(s) and figured that I knew how to apply it to my own practice. I didn’t put two and two together.

What Is the Difference Between Practice and Play?

Practicing means to work on things in a piece that are giving you trouble. There are a ton of different techniques to do this, many of which are described in the General Practice section of this blog. The most common would be to slow down the troubled section in different ways.

Practicing is like doing the dishes. You’re cleaning up the dishes that need to be cleaned. When you play instead of practicing, it’s like pulling all of the clean dishes out of the cupboard and cleaning everything.

Playing means to play through the piece. This is the most fun part of learning your instrument, and the whole reason why you’re learning your instrument. It should be done after the practicing is done. You get to reap the rewards of all your hard work.

When Should We Practice or Play?

You should end each practice session by playing something you already know. This is your built-in reward and ends your practice session on a good note. Because you end each practice session with something fun, your brain processes the entire practicing session as fun. This helps you come back to practicing over and over. It also helps you keep up the old pieces that you spent so much time learning.

For regular weekly lesson pieces such as etudes or technique, you practice towards the beginning of the week and play towards the end of the week. These are pieces designed to take you only a week to learn.

Repertoire will be practiced for months. Ideally, you would be playing, rather than practicing, the song for the last month or so before your performance. Repertoire is designed to take up to a year to learn, depending on your level.

Conclusion

When I learned how to practice, my practice time became much more efficient. Sure, it’s fun to play the music, but it’s not fun to play with mistakes. Practicing correctly makes everything more fun.

When did you figure out the difference between practice and play?

I Don’t Wanna Practice!

How many times have you heard this phrase? How many times have you said this phrase? I know I’m supposed to practice, but I don’t want to. Here are some tactics to get over that hump.

How many times have you heard this phrase? How many times have you said this phrase? I know I’m supposed to practice, but I don’t want to. Here are some tactics to get over that hump.

My big jar of big candy on my piano. The metronome is in the background.

Prevention

First of all, let’s talk about prevention. While everyone gets in a practicing funk sometimes, it’s best to prevent the lack of motivation if at all possible. The way to prevent this is to always end your practice with a song that you know and enjoy. You’re ending your practice on a good note, which sends, “Practicing is fun!” signals to your brain.

The Big Piece of Candy

This is for when you know you will be fine with practicing once you start, it’s just starting that’s the problem. Have some big pieces of candy (jawbreakers, ring pops, etc) next to your practicing area. When you’re done practicing, you get to have a piece of candy.

Little Pieces of Candy

This is for when you are having a hard time getting yourself to practice the right things. You line up M&Ms, Skittles, or whatever you love, and it’s one candy for each item. If you want to practice a certain piece of music twice, you put up two pieces of candy. Eat them as you go.

If you’re playing a wind instrument, make sure to swish your mouth out with water after eating each piece of candy. This method is from Lara Moldenhauer.

Seeing the candy lined up is powerful. If you don’t want to eat while you’re playing, you can put them in a cup and eat them afterwards.

The Two Stand Method

This is for when you’ve lost all the joy of practice. Practice has become a chore. Create two stacks of music – one that you’re supposed to play, and the other that is music that you already know. Alternate between the two stacks of music. It will bring back the joy of playing and remind you of how far you’ve come. This method is from Jennifer Cluff.

The Bossy Friend/Parent

This one is very simple, but it works. It’s for when you’re having a hard time starting, but you know you’ll be fine once you start. Call your bossiest friend or parent and have them order you to practice. They’ll enjoy it and it’ll get you going.

The Alarm

This is for the forgetful people (Guilty!). Set an alarm for a certain time of day to remind yourself to practice. It will become automatic eventually, and this way you’re fitting it into your schedule.

Schedule a Gig

Scheduling a performance will be enough of a motivating factor to get you into the practice room. It will create an intrinsic motivation (motivation from inside of you) because you don’t want to look like a fool for not practicing.

Need ideas for creating a performance?

  1. Ask to play for church.
  2. Sign up for a competition.
  3. Sign up for a performance at a museum at Christmas.
  4. Join a new ensemble.
  5. Find a production for which you need to try out.
  6. Create a recital of your music.

How about you? Are there any tricks that you do to make yourself practice?