Effective music-practice-habits

by Kathleen Briggs

1. PRACTICE EVERY DAY WITH SPECIFIC GOALS IN MIND

To help you understand what music-practice-habits are, let us pretend there is a new kid that moves into your neighborhood. His name is Agorondorf. That's a very strange name, and it's hard to remember. If he goes to your school class you'll see him every day and hear his name every day. The first day you have to ask him what his name is. The second day you remember that it begins with an "A." The third day you think you remember it, but you don't quite get it right. But on the fourth day you take a minute and finally remember it, and on the fifth day you have no trouble at all. It has only taken about a week to learn his name.

But pretend Agorondorf isn't in your school class, but he does come to church every Sunday. The first Sunday you hear his name you think how strange it sounds. The second Sunday, after seven days of not thinking about it, you remember his name is strange, but you can't even remember what it begins with. The third Sunday is the same and so on. You really have to work and maybe even write the name down and read it over during the week to remember what it is.

Learning music is the same. When we first learn something we need to play it again soon, so we don't forget anything that we learned. It is a good idea to play through your assignments when you get home from your lesson. It's like making a mosaic full of colored pieces of paper. Once you have them in the pattern you want, you can't just lay them there, you need to glue them in place in case a breeze (or a sneeze) blows them away. When you learn new things in your music lesson, you need to go home and glue them in place by practicing before all the information "blows away."

Practicing every day, even if it's for five or ten minutes, is better than practicing an hour or longer two or three days a week.

Set daily goals, then do them.

When your Mom finally gets you to clean your room, after bribing you with a movie you've been really wanting to see, what do you do first? My guess is that you do what I do: stand at the doorway for awhile and try to decide what to do first.

You should do the same in your music practice. The first time you practice, carefully read over your assignments. Find the pages your teacher listed and look to see what you are to do on each one. Think about how hard each one will be. Maybe a few of them are some you've had for two or three weeks already and you just need to fix one or two mistakes to pass them off. That won't take very much time.

But maybe on your last lesson you passed everything off and all of your assigned pages are brand new. They will take extra time to pass off.

Now is the time for decisions. Choose which pages to start with and write them down. Then choose which ones to do next. Start with those that you have already begun to learn or maybe have almost passed off in your last lesson. This will make sure that you can pass them off next time and not have them assigned again.

Don't feel too pressured to pass everything off each week, because sometimes that's just not possible. If you work hard on one page that is especially challenging for you and don't get to the next page, that's okay. You're making progress, and that's what we all want to do. Especially in the higher grades, it is often impossible to pass off a song in one week. However, in the beginning levels, it is usually very possible to pass off all of your assignments in one week because they are easier to learn.

To get to Salt Lake City, take the road that leads to Utah.

I grew up in Rexburg, Idaho. If you want to travel away from Rexburg (and people there usually do) you can go north, south, east or west. If you go north, you'll eventually get to Island Park maybe for some snowmobiling or fishing. If you go south, you'll get to Salt Lake City to maybe go to a Jazz game or visit relatives. If you go east you'll find Jackson Hole, Wyoming and the Grand Tetons and maybe go skiing or on a run down the Alpine slide! If you go west, you'll eventually get to ... well, you'll EVENTUALLY get to ... well there's really nothing much out there, west of Rexburg.

So if you want to go to Salt Lake City you need to go south. It's silly to even try getting there by going east. If you want to go skiing in Jackson, you had better take the road going east or you might end up in a river in Island Park! When you take a certain road, you get to a certain place. You MUST start down the right road in order to reach the place you want to go. And if you head west, well, don't expect to go anywhere worth mentioning. It's a pretty lonely road because there's not much traffic, but the road can be icy at times, so you may be sorry you took it.

Practicing music is just like traveling. The way I see it, when you sit down in the driver's seat of your piano, there are four directions you can take.

• Practice for 30 minutes
• Play each page three times
• Make a goal for the day and then accomplish that goal
• Not practice at all

If you sit down with the idea of practicing for 15 minutes or 30 minutes, then at the end of 15 or 30 minutes, that's what you will have done. You will have kept the sounds coming for 15 or 30 minutes. Does that mean that you have fixed any problems? No. Does it mean you will have played through all of your lesson? No. Does it mean that you will probably pass something off at your next lesson? No. Is it dangerous to do? Yes. You see during that 15 or 30 minute time, mistakes can be made and as long as you don't care much about fixing them, they'll just be played over and over again. At the end of the 15 or 30 minutes, those mistakes have been glued firmly into place!

If you sit down with the idea of playing through each page three times, the same holds true. At the end of your practice time you will have reached your goal of playing through a lot of music, but probably have not fixed much and probably will not pass much off at the next lesson. Heading down this road is even more dangerous than the other one because you will be in a hurry to get through the pages and not have time to fix anything.

If you head out with the decision not to practice at all, you obviously won't get very far. You won't fix anything, but at least you won't be practicing mistakes. However, just like the icy road going West, you maybe be sorry you made that choice later on.

BUT if you sit down to practice with problem fixing in mind then that's what you'll get when you're through. Find the problems you are having with the pages in your assignments and decide which ones you can fix that day. Then do it! Sometimes it will be just a matter of playing a song a little faster than you already are. But other times you may need to spend the whole time on one measure. That's great! Do it! You'll be that much closer to passing that song off in your next lesson, and you won't have been practicing mistakes.

Maybe you can only fix one problem that day. Or maybe you can fix one thing on each page or one page in each book. THE DECISION IS YOURS but you have to make it to get anything done! (It might be a good idea to have a parent or older brother or sister sit with you and help you decide what you want to get done that day.) Then the next time you practice, you start all over again, deciding what you want to get done during that practice time.

I understand that many parents have asked their children to take the road that leads to practicing so many minutes each day. Contrary to how the previous tirade sounds, I actually encourage that IF it's combined with the problem-fixing kind of practice. Left alone to make the decisions, many children will "decide" to fix one thing and say they did what their teacher said, when they could actually accomplish much more in more time. So why not make a vacation out of it and visit both Jackson Hole AND Salt Lake City!

We've talked a lot now about why you should practice every day and why you must set goals in order to fix the problems. Remember the story of Agorondorf and that a little practice every day is better than a lot of practice every once in a while. Each time we practice we must decide what to work on that day. It's like heading out for Salt Lake City. To get there we must drive on the right road. In order to get anything done in our music practice, we must begin on the right road with goals in mind. But remember one thing: no matter how much you know, practice isn't practice until you DO IT!

2. FIND PROBLEMS AND FIX THEM

When an artist paints a picture she has to stand close to the canvas to apply the paint to it. She chooses just one small part of the whole picture to work on at a time and concentrates on that area until she's ready to go on to another. But while she's working, she frequently steps back away from the canvas to get a better picture of her entire work. Doing this lets her see how the work she has done fits in with the whole picture and what areas need to be worked on next. While she is back away from the picture, she doesn't try to keep painting. All she does is look and think. Up close she applies the paint; back a few steps she looks and thinks about how the painting is coming along.

The art of music is the same way. Every once in a while as we're working, we should listen to the entire song in order to hear which parts still need work and how the parts we've been working on fit into the whole piece. But while we're doing this, we shouldn't try to keep painting or, in other words, keep fixing problems. That is done when we step back up and work on a small area that needs work.

Listening while playing is much easier said than done. Personally, I have a hard time with it because it's like splitting my brain and sending the two parts in opposite directions. For this reason, it's best to actually record your playing, then listen to it without having to play at the same time. Most of you have done this during your lesson, but it would be even better if you could do it at home.

If recording your playing isn't possible, then we are forced to play and listen at the same time. Our brains are wonderful machines, and they can really do this even if it is hard. But the important thing to remember is to LISTEN CAREFULLY TO EVERY PART OF THE PIECE. To do this, you may need to play through it several times.

It also helps our poor brains if we have a pencil handy to mark the music with reminders of which areas need work. Most musicians agree that music that is full of pencil markings is a sign of a good musician! I've seen many creative ways to mark your music. In an orchestra, a player may draw a pair of glasses over a certain phrase to remind him to watch the conductor. My flute music is full of little drawings of lips to remind me to pucker to get the high notes. Whatever you choose to draw or write on your music, make sure it will catch your attention when you're reading it, or it won't do any good. HOWEVER, please don't write or draw too darkly in case someone else needs to use the book after you do.

Once you've listened carefully to the whole piece and marked your music to remind you of what needs to be done, step back up to it and start working. If the artist I talked about stayed away from her painting looking and thinking without stepping back up and working on a small part of it, the picture would never get finished. Playing through the piece over and over again doesn't fix anything.

Start with a snowball

When you build a snowman I'm quite sure that you don't shovel as much snow as you can into a big pile and start carving out the shape of a snowman. No, you begin with a single, small snowball, and uou pack it hard and tight until you're sure that it won't fall apart. Then you add a little snow all around it and pack it hard again. Then you put it on the ground and roll it around to collect more snow that you pack down until it's as hard as it will get. You keep this up until you have a snowball big enough and hard enough to support the weight of other ones on top of it. If you don't pack the snow hard enough, your snowman will fall apart before it's finished.

When we have a problem in our music that needs to be fixed, we shouldn't try to fix a whole page at once. That's like starting with a big pile of snow and carving out the snowman. It won't work. Instead, we need to start with one small problem and work on it, packing it together until it is fixed nice and solid. Then we add a few notes on one side (notes that come just before the ones we've fixed) and practice them until they're nice and solid. Then we add a few notes on the other side (notes that come after those we've fixed) and pack them nice and solid. When we start adding notes, if the notes we've been working on fall apart again, we need to start all over and pack it tighter this time. Once we've packed a good-sized chunk of music into a ball that won't fall apart when we play it, we're ready to move on to another problem area.

Ask yourself four questions

While you're trying to fix a problem in your music, it's good to ask yourself four questions:

• What happened?
• What made it happen?
• How can I fix it?
• What is my plan for fixing it?

The answer to the first question, "WHAT HAPPENED?" is usually one of only a few things. The answer could be, "I played the wrong note," or "I used the wrong finger," or "I didn't play the right rhythm," or "I didn't use the pedal." Whatever the answer is, make it as simple as you can. Answer only what happened, not why it happened. That comes next.

Answering the question "WHAT MADE IT HAPPEN?" is sometimes easy and sometimes hard. But this is probably the most important of all the questions because the next two depend on how you answer this one. If what happened was that you played a wrong note, then "What made it happen?" could be a number of things. Maybe you weren't sure what the note was. Maybe your finger slipped. Maybe you played what you THOUGHT the note was without really making sure of the note first. As you practice answering this question, you'll get better at it.

The answer to the third question "HOW CAN I FIX IT?" is usually so easy it's silly. It usually is the exact opposite of the first answer. If the answer to "What Happened?" is "I played the wrong note," then the answer to "How can I fix it?" is "Play the right note." But sometimes it gets much more complicated than that. For instance if what happened was using the wrong finger, then you might have to adjust your fingering for several measures in order to land on the right finger in that measure. Or if what happened was that you didn't play certain measures as a good, loud, forte, then maybe you'll have to back up a few measures and carefully work up to that dynamic level to get it just right.

You may think that the fourth question, "WHAT IS MY PLAN FOR FIXING IT?" is just like the third question. But it's in this fourth step that the work really begins. Whatever happened, it probably has happened more than once, which means that you're not only fixing a problem, you're fixing a bad habit, which must be replaced by a good habit. People have said that to do that, we need to repeat the good replacement at least three times more than we ever repeated the bad thing we did. In other words, lets say that you have been practicing every day for one week and had not noticed a certain wrong note until now. During each of your practicing sessions you probably played the wrong note at least three times. Three times a day for six days means that you've played that wrong note 18 times. So to fix it, you will need to practice that measure, playing the right note three times 18, or 54 times. Ask a parent or use a calculator to help figure out how many times you must practice the new, good habit.

Your plan should always include how many times you are going to play it correctly in a row. In other words, the snowball may not be packed tight enough unless you can play the problem measures three or four times in a row. Maybe you can play them two times in a row, but on the third try the mistake happens again. That means your snowball wasn't strong enough to support the weight of the others and you must start counting over again until you get all three in a row, played correctly.

Don't forget to also include a reward in your plan. Fun rewards are sometimes little pieces of candy or cereal or a hug from Mom or a run around the house, or even getting to quit practicing a little early that day.

Let's review: Music isn't music until it is played correctly. Until then it's just sound. Finding problems and fixing them is the main reason we practice. Remember to step back and listen to your music every once in a while, but don't try to fix things while you're doing this. Build strong music just like you would a strong snowman, by packing small pieces together first and then adding them to the overall piece. Don't keep playing parts that don't need to be fixed. As you fix problems, whether large or small, ask yourself (1) What happened?, (2) What made it happen?, (3) How can I fix it?, and (4) What is my plan for fixing it?. Then, of course, DO IT!.

3. BE A GOOD TEACHER TO YOURSELF

Think about your favorite teacher. It may be a woman or a man. My favorite teacher was Mr. McKinley, my sixth grade teacher.

Mr. McKinley had a long, pointy nose and was mostly bald on top and a little too round in the middle, but none of that mattered to me. I'll tell you what did matter to me.

Mr. McKinley was fair. Not only was he the sixth grade teacher, but also the first Principal of Kennedy Elementary School. Because he was Principal, it was his job to break up fights that started out on the playground. Every time that happened, he would try hard to learn who was at fault and who was not. Everyone in school knew that if you were the one who started the trouble, you'd better be ready to be punished by Mr. McKinley. But if you didn't start it, you didn't need to worry about being punished. We knew that if we behaved, he would be our best friend.

Mr. McKinley was kind. Since my Dad had died when I was six years old, when it came time for our Primary class to have a Daddy-Daughter date I invited Mr. McKinley. I told him that he didn't have to do anything, just come and play a few games with me. But he did a lot more. When he picked me up, he gave me a corsage of beautiful flowers. At the party he danced with me and then gave me a letter about how much he liked me as a student.

Mr. McKinley made sure we learned what we were supposed to learn. I had a bad experience in fifth grade with my science studies: I had gotten a bad grade on a report on the solar system, and after that I felt that I was too stupid to learn about science. That could have continued on through all my grades after that, but luckily Mr. McKinley turned that all around. He made science so interesting that it made me WANT to learn more. He had known that it wasn't easy for me to learn, but he didn't let me give up or goof off, and pretty soon I felt like an expert in science. Guess what? Science has been one of my favorite subjects ever since then.

Mr. McKinley always rewarded us well for doing well. He let us know that if we did our best, he would make it worth our while. He started a little candy store in a room next to his office. For those students who were all caught up in their work and got good grades, he would let them run the store. We got to order the candy, count the money and everything that there was to do in the store. It was one of the best rewards I could have had.

Mr. McKinley cared a lot about each one of us and how we felt about ourselves. I used to be kind of sad, and I would walk with my head down, watching my feet instead of anything else. One day I happened to walk past his house. The next day he took me aside and told me that if I would just look up as I walked that I would see the rest of the world, and that it would be wonderful to me. I didn't believe him at first, but then I decided that he hadn't been wrong on anything else that he had taught me, so I should try it. I started to lift my eyes and look at things as I walked. HE WAS RIGHT! With my head up I could see beautiful trees and birds and flowers and clouds and people. It wasn't long before I came so see just how wonderful the world really is.

Mr. McKinley gave us courage to try. He knew that I had an interest in drawing. He told me that if I kept drawing a lot that I would become better and better. All during the year I kept drawing. I drew trees, sunsets, my feet, animals, cartoon characters, just about anything I saw. Then towards the end of the year Mr. McKinley asked me if I would draw a picture of his only son. I didn't think that I could do that, but Mr. McKinley said that he had been watching me draw and he thought that I could. He gave me a picture of his son and I took it home. It took me many days to get it just right and still I was afraid it wasn't good enough. But when I gave it to Mr. McKinley, he seemed to really love it, and he even put it in a frame and hung it on his wall at home. He knew more about what I could do than I did!

I bet you could tell me stories about your favorite teacher. And I'll bet that many of the things Mr. McKinley did, your favorite teacher did, too. I'll bet she (or he) was strict enough to make sure you didn't goof off. But I'll bet she was fair to everyone. I'll bet she worked you hard, but gave great rewards. And I'll bet she made you feel good about yourself and made you feel like you CAN do things you never thought you could.

Why should you be your own teacher?

Did you ever stop to think that really you've been your own teacher since you were born? Your mom didn't teach you to walk. You did that on your own. She was there to make sure you didn't fall and hurt yourself, but you were the one who wanted to do it and you were the one doing the work. Your first grade teacher didn't really teach you how to read. She showed you how the English language works, but she couldn't make your brain sound out the letters. You had to want to do that and then you did it. Your piano teacher can't make you read the notes, either. Neither can your parents. All we can do is to put you in the right place and give you the tools you need if you want to do it. The rest is all up to you.

Your parents can pay for your music lessons and your teacher can show you how music is written down by the composers, but only you can actually make it happen.

You are the only person on earth who has that power!! Will you use it or throw it away?

How can you be your own teacher?

To be your own teacher, simply do all the things a good teacher does, only do them for yourself:

• Be fair to yourself.
• Make sure you do the work and don't goof off.
• Give yourself good rewards.
• Do things to make yourself feel good about what you do.
• Give yourself the courage to do things you think are too hard.

You may think that being a teacher to yourself is kind of weird, and you may not know how to start. So here are a few tips that may help.

Think of how to be strict on yourself. Decide what you should do, and then decide what will happen if you don't do it. Then be strict with yourself. Pretend that it was someone else that broke the rule: what would you do to them? Then do the same thing to yourself. I'm sure you'll be fair and strict at the same time, just like Mr. McKinley was.

Maybe what you should be doing is practicing every day. It would be easy to make an excuse like, "Look how busy I am. I have something to do every night of the week." But your favorite teacher wouldn't let you make excuses and neither should you. You know that there are always 10 minutes here or 10 minutes there when you could practice. Think about the reward and then MAKE yourself do it. Or maybe there is that one measure that you know doesn't sound right, but you haven't stopped to fix it yet. Be strict with yourself and MAKE yourself stop and fix it.

Remember to make the rewards worth the work. Rewards can be bits or cereal or candy, or a run around the house or a hug from Mom or the pooch. Or they can be bigger, like a candy bar for not missing a day of practice. Be creative, but don't skip this part. We all need rewards in life. As you get older, though, the rewards will come automatically. For instance, now when I practice hard on a piece, the best reward I could have is the joy of playing it well, because I just love that feeling. Someday you will, too.

Maybe the best reward you can have right now is to look back at all you've learned since you started learning music. It's fun to go back and play through the songs that used to be hard, but are now as easy as pie. It's fun to see how far you've come. It also gives you courage to keep working because the songs that are hard to play now will soon become easy just like the old ones did. Give yourself courage to keep trying until that happens.

This idea of being your own best teacher is perhaps hard to understand, but give it a try and I think you'll agree that it really is the best way to learn. Remember to be strict with yourself, give good rewards and always have the courage to do what will make you feel good about yourself. But no matter how good of a teacher you are to yourself, practice of any kind is no good unless you DO IT!

4. GIVE REGULAR PERFORMANCES

It is in a bird's nature to sing. It is in a dog's nature to dig. It is in a cat's nature to prowl. It's in a frog's nature to hop. It's in a cougar's nature to hunt.

Music has a nature, too. It's in its nature to excite. It's in its nature to calm. It's in its nature to effect the listener in hundreds of ways. But none of these things can come to be unless the music is performed. IT IS THE NATURE OF MUSIC TO PERFORM. Without performance, there is no reason to practice. Without a performance, music is not music; it's silence and has no power at all.

Audiences

1. The Performer

   The performer has a lot of responsibility. If he or she hasn't prepared well enough by practicing the way we have talked about earlier, the music won't even reach the audience.

2. The Audience

   The audience can be anyone who listens to the music. It can be one person or 400 people. It can be in a concert hall, or in a practice room. It can be a king and his court or the performer's best friend.

   You can find audiences in many places. They are in your own home when you play for a family party or meeting. They are in your church when you have prepared a special song for them. They are in your school when there are others performing for each other in a talent show. All of these performances are important and each one lifts you up to a new level of playing.

   But of all the audiences a performer could play for, there is one that is the most important: himself. The audience that cares most about the performer, that knows the performer best, that spends the most time with the performer and that is the most excited to hear the performance sits in the best seat in the house: right between his two ears. If you can please yourself, you can please any audience in the world. Because that audience doesn't clap unless the performance is really good. And as long as he likes what he hears, that audience will give the performer everything he needs to keep on performing. REMEMBER, YOU ARE YOUR OWN MOST IMPORTANT AUDIENCE!

Preparing for a performance

Before we begin talking about how to prepare for a performance, let's make sure we know the difference between a performance and a rehearsal.

A rehearsal is the practice we've been talking about all this month. That's the time when you look, and listen and work and build snowmen and go to Utah and all that stuff. That's the part where, note by note, measure by measure, line by line, the music starts coming off the page it was printed on and comes alive. It starts out as black spots on white paper and gradually becomes a wonderful living thing that can change people's lives. You might say that it is in the rehearsal where the music is born. The performance is where the music is presented as a gift to the audience. Just like any other gift you give, the audience may choose to ignore it or let it die without even listening to it. But more likely, the audience will open their ears and their hearts and let the music into their souls. Then the music can do its magic and make them happy, or sad, or excited, or relaxed, or whatever it was meant to do.

This whole process is a wonderful thing. It's exciting to be there, whether you're in the audience or you're the performer. There is really nothing to fear, but it's surely human to be a little nervous. And we are all human, so it's a good thing to talk about being nervous when you perform.

When I was a lot younger, I would get very nervous when I would perform. I remember my legs shaking so bad I didn't think I could walk in them. But now, I hardly ever get nervous. Do you know what made the difference? Two things took away the nervousness I used to have as I performed: (1) performing a lot, and (2) being my own most important audience.

If I were to count how many times I have performed since I started learning to play music, I imagine it would mostly likely be close to a thousand. And each time I was less nervous than the time before. How many times have you performed? Wasn't the last time you did it easier than the first time? Imagine how easy it will be next year after doing two or three more performances. Can you see why you need to look for places to perform? You could ask your friends over for a mini-recital after school, you could ask your mom to listen to you play while the potatoes are boiling. You could sign up to be in a school talent show. You could go to the nursing home and play for the old people there. If you did all of those this year or even this month, by the time you were through, you would be a lot less nervous than you were the last time you tried it. It gets easier every single time you perform. I promise.

Keep in mind that the music is alive as long as you have done your practice before the performance. You brought it alive when you learned it, and the better you learned it the more alive it will be when you perform it. But once it is alive, it won't die again because you make a mistake. Just like you can survive a cut or bruise every now and then, the music can survive a mistake here and there. Such mistakes won't make the audience hate you or feel sorry they listened to you play. You may be disappointed in yourself, but they won't be. Each mistake you make makes you perform better the next time. That's why it is very useful to perform a lot before an important performance like a festival or recital. Look for places to perform and set a goal of how many performances you want to have before the one that's most important. Start out performing for yourself, then for friends and family, then maybe in a small recital. Just like your song needs practice, performing takes practice as well, and the more you do it, the better you'll be at it.

Remember that the second thing that has made me less nervous as I perform is being my own best audience? Let me tell you about a time I was performing on the flute in a church meeting. I was performing the adagio movement of a flute sonata by Johann Sebastien Bach. You probably already know that I love to play Bach like my dog loves to play fetch. This particular piece was one of my favorites, and I had practiced it a lot until I felt I could do it well. So there I was, up in front of a church full of people, playing Bach. The pianist played the introduction and I began playing. The notes were so beautiful to me - not my playing, but the notes that Bach had written. I wasn't worried about making a mistake because I had practiced so hard not to. I just let the notes out of my flute and into the air one by one the way Bach had wanted them to come. I had the piece memorized, so slowly I let my eyes close let the music take me wherever it wanted to take me. It seemed to carry me away to a higher place where God himself was listening with me. By then I knew that it wasn't me that was performing - it was the music itself. It had truly come alive! Slowly, the piece came to an end and when the echo of the last note had faded away, I opened my eyes. To my amazement, there were people there looking at me. I had completely forgotten that they were there, that I had been performing in front of them. Self-consciously I sat down, confused about what had just happened. I didn't figure it out until much later, but from that moment on, I knew two things for sure: (1) once music comes alive, it is on its on its own power, and it can do wonderful things; and (2) I was my own most important audience. I hadn't been nervous to play in front of people because what they thought of me wasn't nearly as important as what I thought of me. I really hoped that the other people that heard the music loved it as much as I did, but even if they didn't, the music had taken ME to a place that I loved and that was worth all the practice and work.

Remember, remember, remember: the nature of music is to perform and you are your own most important audience. Performing is good for you. DO IT!