How Should I Practice?

You’ve heard the old adage, “Practice makes perfect.” Without getting into the weeds of the problems of this statement (that’s a different post maybe for the future…), it is obvious that practicing is an important part of learning an instrument. Throughout my years of teaching, the biggest challenge for me as a teacher has been getting students to practice in a productive way (or at all…). And I get it, practicing is not fun. It is work. I don’t enjoy doing it, and I certainly did not enjoy it when I was young and taking lessons myself. This post is geared more towards pianists, but the principles are the same for singers or any other instrument. So let’s dive in!

The basic concept that needs to guide our practice is muscle memory. Learning to play an instrument is a physical activity requiring the coordination of multiple muscles, similar in some ways to athletic skills. When I was in middle school/high school, I played basketball. I was obsessed with basketball. I practiced shooting free throws constantly, even when I didn’t have a basketball in my hand. That constant practice developed the muscle memory, to the point that my senior year of high school, I shot better than 90% from the free throw line. If you know anything about basketball, you will recognize that that is really good for an NBA player, much less a high school player.

If only I had applied this same work ethic to my piano practice… Let me describe my method of practice when I was younger (think middle school through high school). I generally was working on three piano pieces at any given time. Depending on which school grade we are talking about, my practice time was anywhere between 20 minutes to 45 minutes a day. I would take out piece 1, and I would play it start to finish, no matter how many mistakes I made. I would then play the entire piece once or twice more, and then move on to the next piece. I would do the same thing with that piece and then again for the third one. Invariably, one of these three songs would be in such rough shape that playing it three times would take up at least half of my practice time. I didn’t isolate problem sections or stop to fix mistakes. Just straight through each song.

The problem with this method of practicing (well, there are multiple problems…) is that it doesn’t utilize muscle memory. You can’t develop muscle memory from 3 repetitions a day, five times a week. Muscle memory requires hundreds (or more) of repetitions. The time it takes to play a song, start to finish, doesn’t allow for that many repetitions. I was also spending the same amount of time on the easy sections of the song as I spent on the hard sections. Invariably, in any song, there will be some easier sections that don’t require as much time spent on them. Instead, this is what I should have been doing, and what I try to get my students to do:

Focus on small sections. Music is often organized into 4 measure phrases, so that is a good way to tackle it. For piano, we should generally isolate the left and right hands, although there are some songs that that might not work as well (when the two hands are really interconnected). So, I’m going to play just the right hand portion of four measures (bars). The first few times through, I need to be actively reading each note, making sure I know exactly what the notes are. Don’t play by finger number! I should also be figuring out the rhythm as I go. Counting out loud while playing is a good way to make sure I get the correct rhythm. Once I am confident I have the correct notes and rhythms, it is time for repetition. I will play the section until I can play it over and over again without making any mistakes. I will repeat this process for the left hand. 

Then, it is time to put the hands together. It is important to not try to play the four measure section at full speed when I first put my hands together. At this point, I will start using my  metronome (if I haven’t already…). At the top of the song is generally a tempo (speed) marking. This is my goal. If the tempo marking says “quarter note equals 120 (beats per minute)”, I am probably going to need to start around 60 beats per minute. If that is too fast, I can subdivide the beat and do “eighth note equals 90”, which would be the same as “quarter note equals 45”. (Once you set the metronome much lower than 50 bpm, it becomes difficult to stay with the beat) The important thing is that I find the tempo (no matter how slow) that I can play the section accurately. Once I find that tempo, I stay there and play it through a bunch of times. (20-50) I will then bump the metronome up just a little bit. Every time I increase the speed, I need to make sure I can still play the section accurately. If I can’t, I need to reduce the speed and do some more repetitions. I encourage my students to write their progress (in pencil) in the margins of the music. Let’s say I worked on a section for ten minutes, and got it to 70 bpm. I will write that in the margin. Tomorrow, I am able to get it to 90 bpm, so I erase the 70 and put 90, so I always know where I am in relation to my goal. The better I get at a particular section, the less time it takes to play that section, so I can get in more repetitions in less time. 

Like I said, this isn’t fun. It is monotonous, boring work. However, if a student will commit to practicing this way, they will be efficient with their time and will find that they are making way more progress. And our brains are wonderful things. Sometimes we may struggle with a section and step away from it, only to return the next day and find it much easier to handle! So remember, muscle memory, muscle memory, muscle memory!