Notes on Practicing

Practice is the one and only way we can better ourselves as musicians. Unless you put in the hours in the practice room, you’ll never advance as an artist. However, the subject of practice is often neglected. Treated as a chore the topic can be thought of as mindless hours spent plugging away at the instrument. However, truth be told, practice isn’t about quantity; it’s about quality. As a guitarist who spent years in school trying my hardest to work pieces of music into something I would feel proud to share with audiences, I’ve picked up a few tricks when it comes to practicing that can work for any musician of any level.

1. HAVE A GOAL

Sitting down to practice without any particular goal in mind is a lot like running on a treadmill: you might be working hard but you won’t be going anywhere. Your goal when you sit down for a practice session should never be too lofty like learning the entire Bach Chaconne in one sitting, it should be something you can actually accomplish in one session without stressing yourself too much. Goals I choose range from memorizing a section of a piece I’m working on to analyzing my left hand technique during a particular section, to playing a scale without mistakes and with great tone.

2. HAVE A ROUTINE

One of the most effective ways to focus and really improve your playing during a practice session is to have a routine. Everyone has a different routine that works for them, I can’t tell you what your routine should be, so I’ve just included my own practice routine:

5-10 min. of warm-up
This is really simple stuff­­––just playing strings one at a time, maybe some simple arpeggios, usually some easy one-octave scales. Think of yourself as an athlete. Would a soccer player step right out onto the pitch? No, they would do stretches and simple exercises to warm themselves up. It helps get our heads into what we’re about to do and it helps avoid injury.

15-45 min. of technique
I can’t stress enough the importance of practicing some technique every time you play. While our musical ideas come from our soul, they have to travel through the arms, hands, and fingers before these ideas become true music. So, our technique must be capable of communicating our musical ideas. If our technical ability isn’t up to par, we’re going to end up frustrated musicians with great ideas we can’t communicate. I usually split my technical exercises into right and left hand exercises. I also recommend investing in some teacher-recommended technique books. Also, make sure you’re constantly switching and evolving the technique portion of your practice session. Notice the range of time I might spend on technique. I don’t push myself to do a full 45 min. every day due to the issue of burning myself out before I’ve begun to play some real music. Often, thirty minutes works for me, however, some days I just don’t have the attention span for that amount of technique. The important thing is that I spend at least a good fifteen minutes on it.

New repertoire
Again, I stay goal oriented with this. I’ll try to nail down one section or passage at a time. A common mistake a lot of players make is playing a piece from beginning to end over and over again––this isn’t going to yield the same results as isolating the sections that need work and analyzing how to make them better. Certain goals may also include working on the expressiveness of a piece or boosting the tempo with a metronome or even slowing down the tempo with a metronome. Try to be creative with how you learn your music!

Old repertoire
I usually play through pieces of music that have remained staples of my repertoire throughout the years that I really enjoy playing.

Improvisation
Finally, this may come at the end or in between any of the other steps, but I always get some improvisation in whether I mean to or not. I think improvisation is really important. It’s good to let your creative side run wild for a little while––maybe you’ll stumble across a great melody for a new song, maybe you’ll discover new rhythms, or maybe you’ll just end up smiling.

3. KEEP A PRACTICE JOURNAL

Keeping a journal about your practice sessions can be a great resource for gauging your progress over the course of a longer period of time. Also, writing your goals down into the journal will provide you with a more concrete reminder of what it is you want to accomplish with the next practice session or even over the next month.

Analyzing the way you practice is the best way to make leaps and bounds with your playing. It’s something I really stress with my students and I notice it with them, and I notice it with myself when I really try to think about the way in which I practice. Finally, don’t think of practicing as a chore. Feel grateful that you get to spend some time alone making music. A teacher of mine once told me that one of the only reasons he is a professional musician is because he loved to practice guitar. To him, practice is the joy in being a musician; the performance is his means to that end.

Morgan Fiddler teaches Classical Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, and Electric Guitar with Brooklyn Music Lessons.