4 Practical Practice Tips

“How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice, practice, practice!” You’ve heard that one, right? Well, it’s a truism that we shouldn’t forget as musicians. If you want to improve on your instrument, practicing is 90% of the process. So here are 10 music practice tips to make the most out of your practice time.

1. Keep a practice log

Keep a log of dates and duration of practice. Set your goals, write them down and then when you are finished practicing, write down whether you accomplished your goal or not. If you didn’t, reflect on why.

2. Remember that practicing is NOT just about playing through your music

Yes, certainly there will be times when you are preparing for a performance and you need to play through your entire piece to check memorization and gain stamina. But when perfecting a piece, playing through your piece from beginning to end may actually hinder your progress. If you still have technical difficulties or memorization mistakes, you are simply ingraining those mistakes into your muscle memory and it will be twice as hard to get rid of those mistakes. Perfect small sections of your piece and then string a few small sections together to make a longer section.

3. Repetition is key

In order to break a habit, you need to do something the correct way 100 times. So every time you miss a note you are going to have to repeat that passage the correct way 100 times! Break large passages up into smaller passages and repeat them correctly until they become part of your muscle memory.

4. Record yourself

By recording your practice sessions – audio and/or video – you can listen back and catch some things you may miss in the moment. Listening to yourself can help you find tone issues, watching yourself can alert you to tension and performance issues that you didn’t know you had and much more.