Tag: practicing piano

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. 🙂

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.

Time and Practice

It’s December. Our fast-paced world just got a million times faster. What with holiday parties, extra gigs, Advent services at church, and getting ready for Christmas, everyone is walking around in an exhausted stupor. How will you fit in practice?

Here are some ideas.

Get Up Early

Get up earlier than normal. If you do all your normal stuff, quietly, earlier than normal, then you can practice during the time you normally would get ready. It’s late enough that you aren’t disturbing the household, and it checks that item off your list. Woohoo!

Alternate Practice and Something Else

I talk about this a little more extensively in this article. I personally like to use the timer and alternate between housework and practicing. My oldest daughter likes to do this kind of practicing while she’s cooking supper. I endorse this kind of practice to help make homework go faster.

The Time Crunch

Normally you would practice for an hour, but you only have half an hour today. What do you do?

Do a Five Minute Warm Up and run through the toughest pieces that you’re working on. It might be your etude (lesson book) and bits and pieces of your repertoire. Start with the toughest stuff and work from there. That way, if you get to everything, great! If you don’t get to everything, at least you did something.

Mental Practice

This is a good one for during a commute or something like that. Run through the piece in your head, all the way down to what your fingers are doing on each note.

This article explains in better detail how to do it (not an affiliate link, just a fan) and how much it helps.

Practice on a Pencil (Flutes Only)

Sometimes you find yourself waiting or with some dead space in your schedule, but it’s not socially appropriate to whip out your flute in the middle of the Doctor’s Office or the Laundromat. Believe me, I’ve been tempted!

You can still practice your fingerings on a pencil. It’s advisable to also breathe as if you were playing the flute and try to articulate the notes, too.

What’s great about this technique is that it takes out some of the factors that may have been troubling you, like making sure you’re still making a good sound or balancing your flute. In other words, it simplifies things so that when you go back to your flute, you can rock it out.

Listen to your Repertoire

This isn’t practicing per se, but it does help you play things better. It helps your musicianship, your articulations, your dynamics, your phrasings, I could go on and on, but you get it. It helps.

I recommend that my students listen to their repertoire (recital pieces) at least five times per day. Get it stuck in your head. Have the biggest ear worm of all time.

Conclusion

These are all my tricks! If you have a way of fitting in practice that I didn’t think of, feel free to share.

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?

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.

How To Practice Using Rhythmic Changes

I remember when I learned how to do this, it seemed like magic. I could take every tough section of my music and learn each one in minutes. Trevor Wye talks about how to do this in his books, and I learned it from my college band director.

How Do You Do It?

First, you take a tough section of music, like below.

Then you change the rhythms to a dotted eighth/sixteenth pattern. Do not write it out, just make the changes in your head.

Change the rhythm to a sixteenth/dotted eighth pattern.

Change the rhythm to a triplet pattern. When it ends unevenly, just make them into quarter notes at the end. In a case like this, you could start with two quarter notes and do triplets to the end, in addition to how I wrote it below.

Play as written.

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If the tough section is longer than four bars, then take it in four-bar sections, overlapping by a measure.

Why Does It Work?

If you already feel your eyes glazing over, just skip this part and say that it’s magic. 🙂

The first two steps force you to make a quick change between first one half of the notes, then the other half. The root problem is that your fingers are revolting against some of the switches between the notes, and this technique forces your fingers to behave.

The third step, with the triplets, forces you to think about the notes differently. You’re changing the natural accents of the notes, and you’re also doing the math in your head rather quickly. Because you’re paying such close attention to the notes, you learn them faster than normal.

The fourth step is important because it brings everything together. You realize that you really can play that tough section. Afterwards, when you put the tough section back into context, it helps your brain say, “I’ve got this!”

In What Situations Do You Use This?

You use this when there’s a small, fast section of a piece of music that’s really hard to play. You’ve run through it a few times and your fingers just get tangled on themselves and don’t know what to do. This is my go-to technique for small, fast sections because it’s fast and it (usually) works.

Practicing Music Backwards

This is my favorite practice technique. It works like magic, and it’s perfect for your first practice session of learning a new piece.

Practicing Backwards - A practicing technique that will take you from overwhelmed to fabulous, fast.

When I was a Freshman in High School, my band director handed out Mars by Holst, arranged for concert band. This was the hardest piece my young eyes had ever seen. Even the Seniors were flinching.

My band director, Linda Moeller, said, “I am so excited to learn this piece. It’s a little hard for us, but I know we can do it. What do we do when we’re learning something really hard? We practice backwards!”

I was confused, but I was taught to never talk back to a band director. I kept my mouth shut while I listened to her directions.

We played the last chord. She said, “Check your fingers and toes. Are they still there? Great!” Then we played from the last rehearsal mark to the end. We played from the second-to-last rehearsal mark to the end. We kept going like this until we started at the top of the third page. The whole song was getting easier.

What was this magic? Even the new parts were getting easier. We began to start at every other rehearsal mark, then every third. When we got to the beginning of the music, we played the whole thing with only a few mistakes here and there.

I use this technique all the time for myself and for my students. I use it a couple of different ways.

Learning a Whole Piece of Music

Start at the end. If it’s a long piece, I have a goal of playing the last page or two. If your eyes are going crazy just looking at the thing, just play the last chord. Then the last line to the end. Then the last two lines to the end. Keep working forward like this until you get to the beginning of your goal.

Each day, keep going forward, page-by-page, till you get to the beginning of the piece. Each page will get easier and easier as you get used to playing the same theme in different ways.

Learning a Small Section of Music

This is for tough licks in the music that you just can’t seem to get. Play the last 3-4 notes, as slow as you need to play it correctly. Add 3-4 more notes. Keep adding notes until you get to the beginning of the section.

If 3-4 notes is too big of a chunk for you, just add one or two notes at a time.

Each time you add a section, you will naturally go a little faster than last time. When you reach the beginning, you won’t have it up to speed, but you’ll have the notes under your fingers. You’ll be able to speed it up easily from there.

Why Does This Work?

Okay, I’m going to get technical, here. If your brain doesn’t work that way, just call it magic, and don’t read on. I’m very careful who I tell why this works.

Whole Song Technique

Music is written so that it introduces a theme at the beginning, then the composer shows how many different ways the theme can be played throughout the piece. Each time the theme is played, it gets more and more complicated until the end.

Since you’re starting at the end, you’re playing the most complicated part of the music first. It feels easier the farther forward you get in the piece because it is getting easier. This forces you to play the hard part more than anything else.

Small Section Technique

This works for two reasons. First, it puts your brain into puzzle mode, using the math center of your brain. This is the part of your brain that solves problems. When you normally play through something, you’re using too much of the language center of the brain to solve the problem.

The second reason it works is pretty obvious. It forces you to practice the same lick a million times. It becomes cemented into your fingers through muscle memory.

I hope you give this practice technique a try. It really helps. What is your favorite practice technique?