So you've got your instrument be it Guitar, Piano, Singing, Drums, Ukulele and you've had your first couple of lessons, got your learning materials, then the teacher asks you to practice what you've done in the lesson. Sounds pretty straight forward.... yes but no....
I've had a lot of years practice and a lot of years of teaching so I've heard all the excuses for not doing it. 'My little brother stole my work', 'I didn't have time', 'I lost it', 'I forgot it and left it at home'. Oh and the one about the dog eating it. The classics never get old!.
So what's the under lying issue here. Well it can vary of course, but most of the time it comes down to organisation. Simply setting a time and day each week to practice goes a REALLY long way. For example every Tuesday at 4:30pm is your set lesson day and time, so you should set a set time each week for you practice.
I always think its good if when you get home after your lesson just quickly for 5 minutes go over the lesson notes and practice what you did in the lesson. That way it's fresh and more likely to stay in your head.
Leaving it a few days or the day before the lesson is likely going to set you back. You'll have to do all the that remembering what the teacher said and realise you don't understand the notes or what was even said!.
Can you remember what you had for breakfast last week on Monday? It's hard to retain information when don't practice retaining it. Music is about repetition so that our brains can develop that muscle memory.
So here are some little tips for 'How and When to Practice your musical instrument'.
- When you get home from the lesson run over the piece of music, scale or whatever it is for 5 minutes while it's fresh.
- Set a day (not the same day as the lesson or the day before) in the week where you know you can schedule in 30 minutes to practice. Make sure it's a quiet space with no distraction (brothers, sisters, tv, computer games).
- Try and practice the parts that are harder in the piece more than the parts you can play with your eyes closed, this will allow the harder part to catch up with the more fluent parts.
- Try and make the process fun by introducing some fun games (more on these in a further blog!)
- Overall have fun!. As soon as it becomes a chore kids and adults a like switch off and when that happens. So try and break the practice into 2 parts. One fun piece that you love, one harder piece and finish the practice off with a bang so play a piece that you know off by heart. That way you'll end the practice on a high and it will reinforce a positive experience and not one where you're just bored out of your mind reciting scales!.
Remember this is just to get you going. Each student children and adults are very different so what works for one person isn't always going to work for another but that's the beauty of being a human being!.
Listen to lots of music, learn lots of songs and learn to do what they're doing in the songs, then go do it your own way... that's the key!
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