How & Why To Organize Your Practice Time – Part 1

Thursday night kendo practice by Vincent® via FlickrI’ve taught private lessons for a few years now and have encountered students who have had lessons, have been taught in school, or who just come in knowing they want to learn how to play some music.  But one thing that seems to be common with all these students is their approach to practicing and why they practice the way they do.  After noticing this with amazing consistency for the first year, I thought I would change my teaching approach slightly, and turn all first lessons with students from just doing evaluation/planning of future lessons, to evaluating them as players and teaching them how to develop a practice schedule.  If you’re not doing these things, you should.  I’ll explain why, and what other things to keep in mind, but it really is necessary to have some kind of an idea of what you are doing and most importantly why.

The ratio that I’ve found to work best for practicing is 1:2:3.  So for everyone 1 minute you spend warming up, spend 2 minutes reviewing old material, and 3 minutes working on new ideas/techniques/concepts.  So a 30 minute practice session would look like this:

• Warm Up – 5 Minutes – Play slowly, stretch, noodle around, get your fingers and wrists warmed up to play, etc…
• Review – 10 Minutes – Look over some exercises/techniques that you haven’t worked on in the past week, do some sight reading, work on rhythm exercises, work on transcriptions, generally continue to refine concepts that you still have not perfected…
• New Material – 15 Minutes – Take whatever the new concept(s)/technique(s)/or idea(s) from the weeks lesson/practice plan and work on them here.

Hopefully this immediately makes sense to you, and if it doesn’t it’s OK, I’m going to explain it right now.  Just like any instrument, you want to warm up prior to beginning your shredding, double-thumbing, blast beating practice session.  Taking a few minutes to warm up by playing slowly and stretching is the same thing that professional athletes do to prevent injuries, so why should musicians risk repetitive stress injuries or carpal tunnel syndrome when we can use the same concept to protect ourselves?  By reviewing some of the materials that you’re already familiar with, you are essentially continuing your warm up, except this time you’ll be warming up your mind.  Since your fingers have already been warmed up, it would only make sense to warm up your mind and get you thinking musically and warmed up for musical situations. Since your fingers have already been warmed up, it would only make sense to warm up your mind  More importantly, since all the new things you’re learning are built from material that you already have familiarity with; it will allow you to see the connection between the new things you want to learn, the old things you already know, and how you think about and approach music.  Working on the newest material at the end allows you to be completely warmed up (physically and mentally) and will help you focus and avoid distractions that might otherwise interfere with your practice.

But wait…there’s more…

How many of you have thought about where you practice?  Drummers, you don’t count since you’re probably not going to want to move your drums every time you practice.  Creating a space and time when you practice every day can help you speed up how well you practice and how well you learn.  Just like when you go to school and sit in the same seat at the same time each day, when you take a similar approach to your practicing you’re creating the muscle memory that will allow your body to know: when I sit in this place at this time I am going to practice.  More importantly than just the place itself, is finding a space that will allow you to be distracted the least.

Although the internet is a great tool to have to learn new songs and read awesome articles (like this) about music, it might not be the best place to practice if you don’t have the self-control to not spend all your time on facebook, myspace, AIM, or anything else that would take time away from your practicing.  You also need a place that has a good seat (since it’s a bit on the difficult side to practice guitar/bass if the arms on the chair don’t allow you to sit with your instrument), good lighting, and good air supply.  The last thing might seem a bit weird, but if you’re practicing in your moldy basement then your body is going to be working to fight off mold spores rather than concentrating on developing the muscle memory it needs to help you become the musician you want to become.

So, I’ve talked to you about your practice space and your practice time, but not too much has been spent on how to practice those new and difficult concepts that you all want to learn…and for that you’ll have to read the next article…

Keep Practicing,
Billy bass