Organize Your Practice (Practice Music Better - part 5)

Think about what ususally happens when you sit down to practice. You setup, start playing some stuff you know, and start jamming. MAYBE you work on an exercise or two that you kinda sorta remember from that one video you saw or book someone recommended.

That’s how my practice sessions used to unfold, and I remember often feeling unproductive which frustrated me and turned me off from practicing.

I never thought about planning my practice sessions until I started music school in college. All of my teachers kept mentioning that I should plan my sessions. Eventually, I did SOME light planning, but it was very general.

Initially, planning my practice felt unnecessary and rather silly. But soon enough I learned to see the “big picture” that planning allowed me. I was able to make reliable predictions about my progress which lowered my stress levels for performance deadlines. Having a plan of attack made the practice process more manageable and more enjoyable. To this day, I go into more than 90% of my practice sessions knowing EXACTLY what I am going work on.

Seriously, Plan My Practice Sessions?

It seems odd to think that artistic endeavors need forethought, after all; aren’t creatives born with the artistic skill that just manifests on its own? NO WAY! Ask any musician how they got good at their instrument and not a single one will tell you that they just picked it up and knew how to make it sound good.

Musical skill, just like any other, is trainable and teachable, AND just like any other skill, the music-learning process can benefit from being methodically planned. An article titled, “Learning Is a Learned Behavior. Here’s How to Get Better at It," says

Effective learning often boils down to a type of project management. In order to develop an area of expertise, we first have to set achievable goals about what we want to learn.

That’s right, PROJECT MANAGEMENT. As you learned from skimming the above linked articles, music is taxing on the brain! Without a good plan you’re susceptible to quitting out of frustration.

Your time, and the gift of music is too precious to be wasted on redundant, ineffective, or otherwise unnecessary practice routines.

The article continues, “A targeted approach to learning helps us cope with all the nagging feelings associated with gaining expertise: Am I good enough? Will I fail? What if I’m wrong? Isn’t there something else that I’d rather be doing?” Having a plan will quell such time-wasting thoughts, since you can just refer to your plan to see if you are on pace. You will be able to more easily refocus, and continue doing what matters in your practice sessions.

Be Specific

Your goals should be specific, for example, “I’m going to practice this song( or passage) 3 times in a row without any mistakes,” or “ I’m going to play this exercise at this tempo 10 times.” The more specific the goal, the better.

Consider this: if you set your goal to, “be better at my instrument,” your options for what to do next will be overwhelming! There are literally thousands of things you can do to get better at your instrument.

But if you said, “I want to successfully play the chorus and transition into the bridge of this song by the end of my practice session today,” that will greatly narrow your list of possible actions you can take since you have specific target.`

Plan Ahead

Decide ahead of time what specific thing(s) you’re going to practice. If it’s your first time planning a practice session, start with a general plan. Something like "practice song A, and song B, do this exercise for 10 minutes, and play along to that song I like.”Starting with a general framework is easy, and will get you accustomed to thinking about how to organize your practice.

After a while, you will have a better understanding for the kinds of things you tend to/need to practice which will lead you to specific routines like, “practice those 2 measures from song A, smooth out the solo from Song B, play this exercise at 140, 150, and 160 bpm, break for 10 minutes, and improvise over the bridge section of the song I like."

Soon enough, you will be able to estimate how long each practice session will take and eventually be able to plan a whole week of practice sessions.

Take a tip from athletes and body builders. They plan which groups of exercises they are going to perform, for how many sets, how many reps, and even how long they are going to rest in between sets. If you approach your practice sessions with this kind of forethought you will see your progress skyrocket!

and finally...

Give Yourself A Cut Off Time

I used to go into my practice sessions with a “I’ll practice until I can’t” mentality. Those sessions were often unfocused, unproductive, and consisted of much noodling, since I knew deep down that I had the freedom to go for hours and hours.

This is Parkinson’s Law in action, which states, “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” This means that if you give yourself 2 hours to do something it will take 2 hours to do it. Put another way, “If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.”

Remember all those college papers that you waited for the day before it was due to get started on? Remember how hyper focused you suddenly became? The concept is the same even with a self-imposed time restriction.

If your practice sessions on average take you two hours, limit yourself to one hour and use the other hour for another activity. I promise you will get the same amount of work done! If you find it difficult to this, email me, or DM me on Instagram @practice_percussion and I will help you through it!

One advantage to schedules and deadlines is, if in your plan, you have that you need to learn THIS SONG by a THIS DATE, then you can take inventory of your remaining days until the deadline and adjust your practice time accordingly. If you are behind, you can schedule extra practice session to catch up, or, if you are ahead, you can give yourself some guilt-free downtime!

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Conclusion

Music practice is highly stimulating for the brain and therefore can be overwhelming. Plan your practice session with specific goals. As you gain experience planning your practice sessions, your goals will become more and more specific, so IT’S OKAY TO BE GENERAL AT FIRST. Soon enough, you will be able to make weekly routines like a weightlifter or athlete. Give it some time and see your practice sessions become shorter and more productive.

If you’re still unsure about how to go about it, or have doubts, email me or DM me on Instagram @practice_percussion.

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