The 5 Habits of Productive Practicing: Part 5

February 22, 2012 – 2:26 pm

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling (Pianos)

None of us remember our first memories as babies, but many of us remember our first music lessons, as musical babies.  I remember my first lesson as a child, but one of my “first lessons” as an adult I will also never forget!  It was my first lesson as a masters student.  I only knew my teacher as an international performer whose hand I had the privilege of shaking after a concert (I had no idea at the time he would become my teacher), and from an awkward and scary introduction at my new school where we decided on my lesson time.  At that lesson, I felt like a musical baby as I nervously fumbled my way through half-learned pieces I had(n’t) learned over the summer.  I think I got off easy with merely a disappointed grunt from him.  The worst part was that halfway through one piece, the grand piano started to roll away from me on the laminate floor!  Since he didn’t notice the piano but certainly did hear the change in my playing as I tried both to play piano and keep it from rolling away, I came off as even more incompetent!  It is impressive how a nerve-wracking situation like that can get burned into one’s brain forever.

In a more general way, I also remember times during my masters when I had the feeling of having played a passage very well in practice and then totally flubbing it up in my lesson.  Then I’d have to meekly sit through a lecture on how I wasn’t prepared or play some exercises to improve the passages that I knew I could play if only I’d had a second shot.  I think a lot of young students have similar experiences.  Whether a teacher responds positively or negatively to the excuse that “I could play it just fine at home!” is pretty much beside the point that in performance – and often in life – you don’t get a second shot.  Part of learning to be a musician and a human being is to get it right the first time.  I don’t mean never make mistakes, but rather don’t repeat the mistakes you have corrected nor create mistakes where there weren’t any to begin with.

The solution to this problem is Simon Horsey’s last practice habit: Review.

Without Review, Your Hard-Earned Foundations Are Crumbling!

Reviewing is hard because it requires discipline.  In the moment, you might believe that the hard passage you are learning is more important than the hard passage you conquered yesterday, but guess what?  The hard passage you conquered yesterday is crumbling if you don’t reinforce it today, tomorrow, the next day, etc.  What I’m saying is explained very nicely in this graph:

Horsey puts it well when he calls review a time-saving device.  It might seem like wasting time when you are playing spots you don’t have trouble with (red line) but look what happens if you don’t (blue line)!  It’s hard to imagine making any progress if everything you learn is treated like that blue line – which leads to being frustrated, bored and “done” with lessons.

What the French Can Teach Us About Practicing

What does following the red line look like in real life?  Going back to Habit 3, you have to start with your goals.  What did you accomplish yesterday?  Whatever it is, your goal is to accomplish it again today, but in less time.  Play yesterday’s passages through again and work them up to an acceptable level.  That’s step one.  Step two is to practice today’s passages – you will be reviewing them tomorrow.  But before you stop practicing for the day, you should play yesterday’s and today’s goals.  That’s step three.  Like this:

Yesterday’s Practice:

Goals:

Accomplish A

Accomplish B

Accomplish C

Review: A, B and C

Today’s Practice:

Review A, B and C

Goals:

Accomplish X

Accomplish Y

Accomplish Z

Review: A, B, C, X, Y, and Z

Does that sound repetitive?  It should.  The French word for “practice” is “repetition.”  But try to wrap your mind around this saying: by repeating, you don’t have to repeat as much.  That’s because you get better and better, you learn to be more effective and more efficient.  This saves you time and gives you the ability to learn more and harder stuff.  That is called progress or maturity.

One of the most interesting points Horsey makes is that your first practice session should take place immediately after your lesson.  Somehow we have a tradition (perhaps a bad habit) of purposely not practising on the day of our lesson.  This is seen as a kind of reward for putting the effort in at the lesson.  The graph above, however, suggests that if you wait 1 day to start reviewing something new, you are already down to 75% in your ability to do what you learned yesterday.  It will take you 10 days to get back to 90% (by reviewing alone, let’s not forget the other practice techniques which help improvement) – in other words, you potentially guarantee you will be worse off at your next lesson simply by not reviewing immediately after your prior one!  What kind of a reward is that?

Tying It All Together

If you look carefully at the graph you will notice that the red line flatlines at 90%.  To me, this suggests what happens when a person reviews what they learned but does not do anything else.  So to end this commentary on Horsey’s 5 practice habits, I will *review* the last 4:

  1. Get all the notes right all the time.  Play with accuracy.  Slow down, stop, work it out and mark your music for 100% accuracy.  Every time.
  2. Slow practice.  Slow is the key to fast.  Use a metronome.
  3. Clear practice targets.  Set your goals, plan to achieve them, and critique your success.
  4. Plan practice by event.  Plan for success – you can’t have a good practice session if you skip most of your sessions!

Finally, Review.

There are many ways to practice, many lists and many advice articles.  Each one, I’m sure, has its merit.  This list covers the bases very well and when you get right down to it is pretty common-sense and simple.  If this is the first time you’ve thought about practicing – welcome!  You are on an exciting road and will probably achieve your dreams sooner than those of us who dallied around for a bunch of years.  If you’re like me and good practicing habits take, well, “practice” to hone – never give up!  Performances are not a journey, they are a destination; however, learning to practise is definitely a journey (marked by performances).

The Piano Didn’t Roll Away For Long

One final anecdote about my days in a masters program.  I did finally succeed at improving my practice habits and the memory that reminds me of that is this.  I was warming up before a performance and I could tell that all the spots I had worked on properly were going to go well.  And they did!  But there was this one part I had not put the kind of attention on and I knew it.  Lo and behold, that part did not go so well in performance.  But the point is that I knew beforehand where I would do well and where I wouldn’t.  This is so much better than feeling like performances are completely random as to whether they will go well or not.  I felt in control of my playing, and as a result less nervous and much more excited about sharing beautiful music with others!  Cultivating good practice habits are worth it!

Happy Practicing!

By Graham | Posted in Practicing, Students | Tagged , , | Comments Off

The 5 Habits of Productive Practicing: Part 4

February 13, 2012 – 10:28 am

The number one killer of continuing music lessons and students reaching their musical goals as adults is loss of interest.  And no matter how invigorating that weekly lesson is or how inspiring the teacher, how motivated the student or how dedicated the parent, practicing at home between lessons is where the rubber hits the road.  Successful practicing is foundational to successful music education.

Make Beautiful Music – Throw Out the Stopwatch!

To recap, I am commenting on Simon Horsey’s free ebook How to Practice: 5 Habits to Help Make Your Music Practice More Efficient and Effective.  Habit 4 is called “Plan Practice By Event” and he makes some excellent points against the common practice of using a clock or (worse!) a timer to make sure practicing gets done.  Why?  Horsey’s argument is this: “It is easy to become frustrated if we are late starting, it encourages concentrating on the clock instead of practice targets, it means that no matter how much progress is being made towards a goal we feel we should be stopping at the end of the session.”  It seems there is no benefit to using a clock or a timer – neither for sitting down to practice (because it makes us think constantly about getting back up) nor for accomplishing practice targets (because it suggests that the job will get done merely by putting the time in).

Sleeping on the Job

How not to practice your music lessonThe “learning by osmosis” joke is a great illustration of why practicing by the clock doesn’t work.  Sleeping on your homework doesn’t count as “studying” and playing your instrument while the timer runs down doesn’t count as “practising.”  Another illustration comes from an episode in my life.  This weekend, I had to prepare dinner for some guests.  I needed to marinate the meat, prepare the stuffing, cut the vegetables and clean the house.  If I missed any of these tasks, the dinner “experience” would not be the best I could offer my guests.  At least, this was the standard I set myself (it could be that my guests just wanted full bellies regardless of what they put in them, but I doubt it!).  I like this comparison to music practice because it highlights the element of a deadline.  Practicing goals need to be accomplished by the weekly music lesson, and pieces need to be in tip-top shape by the time of the performance.  It is very rare that these deadlines are flexible.  My dinner guests were arriving at 7:00 and if I told them I wasn’t ready yet they probably would have left and eaten somewhere else instead.  There wouldn’t have been much point in inviting them over for dinner.

Imagine what would happen if my guests arrived and I had said, “Dinner’s not ready yet, but don’t worry, I spent over 3 hours cooking so that means I did my job.”  Imagine us sitting down to a meal of raw meat and uncut vegetables and everyone being pleased with that because, after all, I had spent 3 hours in the kitchen doing… “something.”  This is what happens when a student shows up for his lesson believing that he is prepared merely because he did 6 days of 30-minute practice sessions.  No, your practice time doesn’t matter, what matters is what you accomplish during it.

What Really Happened in the Kitchen

I love Simon Horsey’s suggestion to practice by “event.”  What he means by that is to think about your day in terms of its events, not its “clock.”  Plan to practice after you come home from soccer practice (whenever that is) rather than 6:00, for example.  Because what happens if your soccer goes overtime or there’s a traffic jam and you don’t get home until 6:15?  Will you only practice until 6:30, or go overtime until 6:45, or just skip it altogether because you’d have to start late?  As you can see, it keeps you thinking about “time” rather than on goals.  Horsey has good ideas on what are useful “events” to think about: when you get home from school, after dinner, after your favourite TV show is over, after your morning routine, etc.  He suggests doing a week-by-week practice budge – much like adults should do a month-by-month financial budget – rather than having a one-plan-fits-all approach that denies the fact that our schedules vary week-to-week.  Remember, “life happens” so set yourself up for success with a reality check.

Without even thinking about Horsey’s suggestions, I naturally used this concept to prepare the dinner for my guests.  I have to admit I wasn’t super motivated on Saturday night to think about cooking for Sunday, but I knew it was my only opportunity (you can’t marinate meat overnight if you don’t start the night before!).  So I made myself a promise: I’m going to watch some TV shows on DVD and in between episodes, I will accomplish one task.  So I watched an episode, then I chopped vegetables.  A second episode, and I prepared the meat.  A third episode and I made stuffing.  I had a lazy evening just like I wanted to have, and got my chores done, too!  If I had said I will cook from 5:00-7:00 I may not have gotten everything done and without working in some recreation (it was the weekend after all!) I would have felt a little miserable, too.

The Journey Is About the Destination

My cooking example works because I knew exactly what my goal was – the meal I had planned – and I knew the specific tasks – chop vegetables, prepare the meat, make stuffing.  It is one thing to retire your practicing timer, but if you don’t have practicing goals how will you know when to stop practising?  Refer to Habit 3 below for my commentary on Horsey’s ideas on practicing goals.

Remember, what matters in practicing is the same as in cooking: it’s the end product that matters.  It sounds anti-philosophical to say the journey is not important, but at least in the performing arts the journey is irrelevant if there is no destination.

Stay tuned for Habit 5, and Happy Practicing!

By Graham | Posted in Practicing, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments Off

Something to Think About: The Coalition for Music Education

January 9, 2012 – 2:51 pm

Check out this well-produced, well-articulated video about the importance of music education.  It highlights the work of the Coalition for Music Education who advocate for proper music programs in public schools, and features an exciting Yamaha group piano class.

There are just so many benefits to music education and most people have heard the gamut:

  • There are cognitive benefits, resulting in smarter children and adults who can earn more in their careers and have more work options;
  • There are social benefits, resulting in well-rounded personalities that are able to get farther in life;
  • There are therapeutic benefits for students with physical, mental or emotional impairments;
  • There are philosophical/spiritual/aesthetic benefits resulting in people more in tune with themselves and the world.

I could go on, but the point I want to make is that at a certain point we don’t need these explanations.  When we see a video such as the one above, with kids racing through a complicated, upbeat melody with perfect solfege, kids responding so intelligently to a watch-and-repeat exercise, kids with bright eyes that are learning to be creative, kids with great smiles and obvious energy put to an edifying use, and parents looking on with joy and wonder at what their kids can do….  There is no fact sheet, study or opinion piece that can add to or detract from that.

It is unfortunate that many people don’t see the significance of a quality music education.  It is an uphill battle to try and make a convincing argument because such people literally don’t know what they (and others) are missing.  We need music programs in public schools, if even just to show others what they are missing by not having them!  (Analyze that statement as you will!)

Chilliwack Academy of Music is proud to be partnering to help bring music lessons to the schools.  Currently, we have assisted in placing volunteers to lead and play piano for 30-minute singing classes at Central Elementary school.  We also, through generous funding from 89.5 The Hawk, offer select spots in our kids choir “Tayosei” to be filled at no cost to students chosen by their principals for their interest in participating and their financial need.  Both of these initiatives are relatively new and we don’t think they can replace the essential need for actual music curricula for all students.  But it’s what we can do, right here and right now.

Please send me your comments for more information on either of these programs.

By Graham | Posted in benefits of music lessons, Community, Students | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off

The Ukulele Craze Continues, So We’re Building a New Program: “Uke Club 3.0″

January 5, 2012 – 10:59 am

Adult learners continue to be captivated by the recent craze over the ukulele.  Once thought of as the disposable, silly instrument from music class in childhood, the “uke” has become a stepping stone for people looking to finally take up music for fun. Not only is it an easy and versatile instrument to learn, but it is also nearly impossible to play – well or poorly – without bursting into smiles and laughter.  Professionals, too, have been picking up the ukulele to add a folksy element of heart to their sound.  Last year, Eddie Vedder released an all-ukulele album.  Then there’s the ever popular uke version of “Over the Rainbow” featured on Glee last season.  CBC Radio recently did a segment on “Ruby’s Ukes,” a music studio in Vancouver, and the therapeutic qualities of learning the ukulele.

Last summer, the Chilliwack Academy of Music launched a ukulele program for adults called Uke Club.  The idea was to encourage families to learn music together by spending one evening a week in a ukulele class.  “We decided to run it as a drop-in class,” says Academy Principal Graham Yates.  “We had no idea if it would run or be a complete failure.  It was a risk.”  But the class was a hit, not with families, but with groups of adult friends and couples.  “One night we packed 26 people into a small classroom,” Yates continues.  “That’s when I knew we’d hit on something good, something worth nurturing.”  Several of the participants bought their own instruments during the course of the series of classes (they had previously borrowed from the Academy’s stock) and showed them off proudly to their fellow students.  Many were sorry when the classes ended and wanted to know what was next.  One participant even signed up for private ukulele lessons last fall, the Academy’s first and so far only student devoted to that instrument.

As a result of the summer program, the Academy now offers beginning ukulele group classes periodically throughout the year in two levels: four weeks of Level 1 lead into four more weeks of Level 2.  But after eight weeks – then what?  The solution: “Uke Club 3.0” – a self-directed weekly gathering of ukulele enthusiasts that will test run this month.

“Uke Club 3.0 is different from any class we’ve offered.  We’ve chosen to take it out of the classroom and into the coffee shop to help establish the right atmosphere,” Yates explains.  The “class” will meet Wednesdays at 7 pm in the meeting room at Decades Coffee Club.  The first meeting is January 11, but if you miss it, don’t worry.  “Participants can buy punch cards so that they can drop in whenever it is convenient for them, rather than have to pay a tuition fee and risk losing out if they can’t make every class.  It’s also not the kind of class where learning progresses in a straight line.  It’s an example of group learning: you can pick up a tip from someone who’s more advanced, and share one with someone who’s still a beginner.  We’ve also kept the cost low –  $30 for 6 classes – to encourage commitment, cover the rent, but keep it affordable.”

Rod Swanson, who teaches the classroom version of Uke Club and compiled the “official” Uke Club Songbook, may drop by from time to time as a mentor.  But the idea is that people who are at least a little bit competent on the instrument (either through their own experience or by taking Uke Club Levels 1 and 2) will set the pace.  “Maybe one week someone will bring in a chord chart they’d like to share and someone else will teach a strumming pattern they picked up on You Tube.  People can also work on perfecting the songs they began learning in the Levels and start adding to the official Uke Club repertoire.”  Ultimately, Yates says, he’d like to form out of Uke Club a thriving ukulele band in Chilliwack that can give performances and continue to attract adults who struggled with music lessons in the past or never had time to learn.

“Making music is such a gift.  You might think you’re giving it to yourself, but then realize you are actually giving to others.  You don’t have to be a guitar-type person to pick up the ukulele, either.  I’m a classical pianist, and I’ve become quite fanatic about this class and about the uke I bought last summer.”  He has taken ukulele hero Jake Shimabukuro’s quote to heart: “If everyone played the ukulele, the world would be a better place.”

More information about ukulele programs, Uke Club Levels and Uke Club 3.0 are available at the Chilliwack Academy of Music registration desk in the Cultural Centre, by calling 604.792.0790, or by visiting www.chilliwackmusic.com.

By Graham | Posted in New Programs, ukulele | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off

The 5 Habits of Productive Practicing: Part 3

December 14, 2011 – 1:54 pm

This is a continuation of a series of posts I am making commenting on an excellent resource by Simon Horsey. Get your own copy of his free ebook here.

Have Clear Goals

Today’s habit is about setting clear targets, or goals, and achieving them during each practice session. How often do you hear even well established musicians ask each other, “How much do you practice per day?” It’s a question that makes me cringe. Imagine, for example, a real estate agent measuring the number of minutes he’s with a client every day, or a chef how many minutes she spends cooking – and using the answer to show how good they were at their job! Instead, they should be interested in how many properties he sells, and how much diners love eating her food. For musicians, it’s not about how many minutes you spend practicing that counts, it’s whether you can play music or not.

I used to tell my students that if they accomplished my weekly instructions in, say, 2 days, they could stop practising for the rest of the week. (They never believed me, but I was being honest!) After all, why “practise” when you can “do”? If the goal of practicing is to play well, the goal of productive practicing is to practice the least amount necessary so you can spend the most time actually making music.

The 5-Minute-A-Day Virtuoso

The key to effective, goal-oriented practice is being prepared. If you put the time in up-front to prepare for your practice session, it will become easier and easier to knock off your goals, one by one. Here’s an example of how efficiency works in an office: One of my jobs is to remind donors to make their annual donations, which benefit our community outreach programs. I used to do everything from scratch: load the letterhead template, write down the names of donors I needed to send a letter to, copy and paste each address onto each letter, search the pre-composed letter for words that need changing depending on who I’m writing to, etc., etc. Then, one day this summer, I created an address list, mail merged it onto the letter document, made it so the date would auto-update… It took several hours to work out all the kinks, but the result is that now I can not only prepare 10 letters in ten minutes (including stuffing the envelopes), but I can even add personal touches like a short, hand-written message to each recipient (which I had no time for before)! My goals were clear: don’t waste unnecessary time writing letters, and make it easy to send letters so I won’t avoid doing it. Practicers, here are your big goals: don’t waste your life practicing, and make your practice sessions enjoyable so you won’t avoid doing it.

“Be Prepared!”

It is hard to establish goals. It takes mental energy, and it would be easier to just start playing. So here’s a tip: read your teacher’s notes from your last lesson. Those are your goals for the week. Then, download this handy chart . Write all the goals in the box at the top, then – “divide and conquer” – split them up over each day of the week that you plan to practise. Plan to spend more time working on difficult goals, and less time accomplishing easy ones.

What are Clear Goals? Bad, Better and Best

The following are not clear goals. When you catch yourself thinking these things, you are preparing yourself for time-wasting practice:

“Practice for 30 minutes.”

“Work on the Mozart.”

“Play through my pieces over and over until I get them right.”

Here are better ones. If you try to accomplish these, you are on the right track:

“Play all of the hard parts in all my pieces, so I know where they are and how hard or easy they really are.”

“Play through the Mozart so I can hear how it sounds and maybe how long it is.”

“Play through my pieces and make notes in my book about which ones (which parts) need the most work. Make a plan for how to tackle each kind of problem with a good solution.”

The best goals are really clear: they name a specific spot, a specific problem, a specific solution, and how to measure when the goal is met.

“Play the Seven Stages of Misery for my top 3 hardest spots every day. Every time I come to practice, I will decide which hard spots are my top 3 hardest at this moment. The day before my lesson, I will play the Seven Stages of Misery for all of my hardest spots for the week to see how I’ve done – if I they have improved, great; if not, I will ask my teacher for help.”

“Work on the second theme in the Mozart because I always start with the first theme so the second gets neglected. I’m never happy with it because I can’t put the emotion into it that it needs, so I will just play the melody and sway my body or sing along until I feel the way it should go. Then I’ll stop swaying or singing and see if the melody has improved. I’ll try this for two days, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll try something simpler like dividing it into smaller sections.”

“There’s a spot where the tempo changes and then changes back again, and I always end up at the wrong speed by the end. I will set my metronome to the first speed, play, ignore the metronome during the second speed, then realign myself with the metronome when the first speed comes back. I’ll use this crutch for 2 days, then on the third I will use the metronome only to get my speed, turn it off, then turn it on when I’ve finished the passage to check if I got back to the right speed.”

I’ve had to invent problems here and communicate them, so it’s made my goals look long. You will have to invent your own short hand in order to shorten your goals to a writable length. Just don’t fall back into the habit of writing vague goals that can’t be measured.

Two Out-of-the-Box Examples

Here are two real examples of ways I’ve created goals for myself in the past.
I was hungry, so I was in the kitchen making food. I knew I was avoiding practice because there was a spot in one piece I was sure I was never going to play well. I decided that I would change my practicing plan for the day and focus on that spot – find out why it was hard for me and use my tools to improve it. “If I do nothing else today, as long as I can play that difficult run slowly, accurately and with confidence, I will have accomplished my goal.”

I was learning Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini which was too hard for me (still is, I think!). I photocopied the entire score, cut out the hard parts with scissors, photocopied them onto pages and put those pages in a binder. I put away my score and only practised the parts in the binder until they were easy. Actually, the whole process made me focus so well on those hard parts that I barely needed to use the binder, as I had memorized many of the hard parts just by studying them!

I hope my stories will help you create some interesting stories of your own, and that the effort you put in deciding on your goals will give you encouragement as you measure your progress. It’s much more fun to do that than to swim in a vague sea of practising the same piece over and over the same way and not getting any better at it (or not noticing you are getting better.

Happy Practicing!

By Graham | Posted in Practicing | Tagged , , , | Comments Off