Practice Tips

Practicing every day or at least 5 days a week (on a busy week) is the ticket to being successful with music.

The 3 best times to practice are:

– Right when you get home from your lesson

– Later that night

– The next day

Practicing at these 3 times will help you retain all of the things that you learned in your lesson, where as if you wait until the day before your next lesson to practice, you’ll often forget details, practice things wrong and it’s like cramming for a test – which DOESN’T WORK!

Important Practice Principles:

PLAY IT SLOW!!!!

Practice small chunks – 3 or 4 notes only

Goals – 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x, 12x, 16x, 20x, 1m, 2m, 3m

Don’t practice ’til you get it right, practice ’til you can’t get it wrong

Stay relaxed

Count out loud

Perfect practice makes perfect

Create a daily practice habit – make it feel weird to miss a day

It’s better to play it slow & right, than fast & wrong

Take deep breaths & take breaks to curb frustration while practicing

Real practice is annoying to family “Can’t you play anything else?”

LISTEN TO THE SONG EVERY DAY

Choose practice tempo based on hardest section

Work transitions

Repetition Repetition Repetition

Do it so many times that it’s easier to do it right than it is to do it wrong

We can’t work on musicality until a certain level of consistency is reached

PRACTICE FOR RESULTS – NOT HOURS

The ultimate goal is to be a self sufficient musician

Rome wasn’t built in a day

If you learn one song and then learn a second song but forget the first song then you still only know one song – use it or lose it – practice old songs so you don’t forget them!

Zoom in/zoom out – practice small bit then put it in context – repeat process until it’s as good in context as it is isolated

And of course… PLAY IT AGAIN!!!