Debbie Cave (photo opposite) has joined the faculty to implement and lead these classes, which are offered to beginners aged 3-8, as well as adults.  “Ms. Debbie” has been teaching the method for 26 years and was even a national Yamaha teacher-trainer.  She herself learned to teach it during several trips to Japan, where it was initially developed.  In Asia, the Yamaha method is as universal as the Royal Conservatory is in Canada. Ms. Debbie is looking forward to establishing the method in Chilliwack because “it’s a very musical community,” and it will enhance the community by “opening up another way of learning and sharing music.”

The cornerstone of the Yamaha program is its simple teaching process: Hear, Sing, Play, Read, Create.  In group class, students learn through the senses and confirm what they hear by singing it expressively and musically.  They then learn to reproduce what they sing onto a digital keyboard.  “Children love to interact and play with others,” Ms. Debbie comments regarding the group nature of the program.  “Ensemble play is another way that children learn about orchestration, arranging and musical form, all while having fun with their peers.

Finally, students learn to create their own music through improvisation and composition.  “Being able to express their own musical ideas and thinking creatively is truly a gift and an asset that will enhance their lives through adulthood.”  Indeed, improvisation is a skill that has largely been lost in classical music, which is seen as a disadvantage by popular musicians.  The Yamaha method helps re-establish the lost art of classical-style spontaneous expression.

Though the method is often associated with the piano, Ms. Debbie emphasises that students exiting the program can enter private lessons in any discipline, whether instrumental or vocal.  The program will dovetail with the Academy’s existing Kindermusik classes for babies and toddlers to form a continuous path of excellent music education and enjoyment throughout early childhood.

The program starts in July with Music Wonderland for 3- and 4-year-olds, and Keyboard Club for adults.  These 7 week sneak peeks will give interested people a taste of the full 36-week courses which begin in September.  The method will be taught in the newly furnished “Lidstone & Co. Music Lab” at the Cultural Centre on a fleet of high-quality digital keyboards purchased through the generous funding of 89.5 The Hawk.

Speaking of excellent music-making, there was another huge event that took place here yesterday that got very little exposure: the internationally recognized Langley Ukulele Ensemble came and did a workshop with the Tayosei kids during their regular rehearsal.  No word yet from the students, but from the few minutes I spent looking in, it looked like an energetic, incredible experience.  Imagine our young choir plucking out Chopsticks with such a gifted ensemble as back-up!

It reminds me that Tayosei has done extra-ordinarily well this year in the Lions Festival.  They won the opportunity to compete at the Provincial level next month in the choral division, and they won a trophy in the ukulele division.  Hearing them perform at the Lions Music Festival Honours Concert was a treat!  Below are some You Tube clips of Tayosei performing their choral numbers.

Where the Wind Blows

Peace Drum Song

Perhaps one of the most difficult tasks is to review a subject whose qualities are so near perfection that words lose their meaning.  How can I write “beautiful” when what I mean to indicate is the quality of Beauty herself, or “excellent” when I really mean to indicate true Excellence?  The description is too much like the essence that on the one hand the reader will not believe me if I write plainly, but too many words will trivialize the subject.

This is the season of Lent in both the Christian East and West.  Cappella Romana’s latest release, a compilation of tracks from past albums, seems fitting for the season; in part because it contains several tracks of Lenten hymns (“Now the Powers of Heaven”, “Let All Mortal Flesh”) as well as suggestions of the coming Paschal joy (“As Many of You as Have Been Baptized”, “O Great and Most Sacred Pascha”).  But the album is called “Angelic Light” and so the theme is universal and appropriate to all seasons.  Listeners will notice there are four contrasting versions of the Cherubic Hymn, for instance.  You can listen to one of them, Track 3, here.

For casual listeners, this album is an accessible introduction to the majesties of this sacred choral ensemble.  It is the ideal accompaniment to a peaceful time of contemplation – perhaps during the drive to church.

For connoisseurs, it is the apotheosis of church music in both Eastern and Western styles.  As an example of the height of its standards, Cappella Romana expects new recruits to be familiar with the following specializations: “Reading Byzantine or other chant notations at sight; familiarity with Greek or Slavonic; the employment of non-Western vocal timbres; understanding pre-modern Western mensural vocal timbres; the ability to apply historically and culturally appropriate forms of performance practice (tunings, ornamentation, musica ficta, etc.)” (from their website).  All of that and they must sing well too!

Some faithful listeners will recognize the Slavonic “O Tebe Raduyetsia” (All of Creation Rejoices) or the melody of the English-language Communion Hymn (Track 6).  “Ikos Six, from the Akathistos Hymn” (the rather generic title of a Christmas hymn about “The Noble Joseph’s” doubt) is an excellent example of Eastern harmonies and ornamentation executed with Western sensibilities and polish. The final track is an exquisite Cherubic Hymn that seems to me to be suitable for a chamber choir, in contrast to much Orthodox music that is written for large, powerful ensembles.

In sum, Cappella Romana is a lighthouse on the horizon of sacred choral ensembles, and “Angelic Light” is a magnificent and timely compilation of their greatest recordings.  I have no doubt that it will delight all who hear it.

You can order or download the album here.

But as I was clearing away star stickers, post-its, pencils, and paper clips; tightening screws and winding wingnuts; I noticed the following words printed on a piece of paper: “The Least You Need to Know About Singing.”  Well, it turns out, the least you need to know will take you years to understand when guided by a seasoned professional! I have sung all my life and still only have a rudimentary knowledge of how to relax my muscles to improve my volume, tone, range, stamina and general enjoyment.  (Mind you, I only took actual voice lessons for three years because I had to so that I could belong to a certain choir – and not because I was a voice major.  If I had truly studied voice like many of our young students, I would have made more progress.)

Point number 10 below reinforces the goal of all that effort (which can in itself be enjoyable with proper instruction): to enjoy making music for and with others.  Often, we want the enjoyment before we put in the effort, but if we put the cart before the horse (so to speak), the enjoyment will not be as great as it could have been.  It’s good to remember that music study has a purpose: to enjoy what we do.

And now, without further ado:

The Least You Need To Know About Singing

1. Your voice works best when you can take a deep easy breath and release it freely as you sing, while keeping your belly muscles active.
2. Your body works best when you stand tall, keep your head erect, and your shoulders relaxed.
3. Your face works best when your mouth and jaw can open and close easily and freely, your facial muscles can move without tension, and your eyes are relaxed and alive.
4. Your mind needs to be harnessed to the lyrics of every song you will ever sing. You need to truly understand not just what the song says, but what it means and what it implies. You must also allow the words to have an effect upon you in a way that is vivid and expressive. Just understanding it in your mind without allowing it to show up in your body and on your face isn’t enough.
5. If you do not believe yourself when you sing, no one else will either.
6. Your throat should never squeeze, tighten, feel tired or choked up when you sing, NO MATTER WHAT IT IS.
7. The choice of songs is as important as what you do with the song in performance. Not all songs are appropriate for all people or all voices.
8. You need to understand how to put the song in the proper key for your voice. A song sheet is printed in a certain key because it makes the sheet music easy to play on the piano, not because it is the appropriate key for you to sing. Not all songs that you sing will be in the same key. In fact, that is highly unlikely.
9. There is no one way to learn to sing that is THE ONLY correct way, but all methods of singing should make sense physiologically (in terms of the way the vocal cords actually work). Doing things that are contrary to normal vocal function for musical purposes is never necessary.
10. Remember that the point of singing is to enjoy making music in front of (and sometimes with) others. You might need to work very hard in order to learn how to make this happen every time. That is the purpose of studying — to improve not only your skills, but your ability to enjoy being a singer.

Scholarships and Bursaries

Monies for Community Service and Students in Need

89.5 The Hawk has endowed the Academy with seven years of funding for specific projects totalling over a quarter million dollars. For the 2012-13 academic term, that translates into $9,000 to award to graduating Chilliwack students looking to study in a post-secondary music program, and $10,000 in bursaries to families with budgetary constraints but who want to register at the Academy for music lessons in the fall.

Ability-Based Awards

Lygo Scholarships, on the other hand, are awarded to current Academy students who are chosen based on competitive auditions held in May. This year, the Lygo Scholarship fund is $5,000, meaning the Academy has been able to double both the number of awards available in each category as well as double the amount of each award. This has made Academy principal Graham Yates very pleased: “Our scholarships are now at the level they should be for a school of our size and calibre. Scholarship applicants work extremely hard to compete for these funds so to be able to reward more students for that effort and to know that the awards will have more impact on their tuition price tag is very gratifying.” Award winners are featured in a free public performance, the Student Honours Concert, held in the Cultural Centre’s main theatre on May 26 at 1 pm. All are welcome to attend and celebrate the achievement of their community’s young musicians.

Getting the word out about financial awards – especially bursaries – has proved challenging, though, because not enough people apply. “We know the need and desire are there,” says Yates, “but I would like to see a lot more families applying for bursaries because they will probably get something for their effort. The purpose of the Academy being a non-profit is that we want to make learning music from some of the best teachers in the region possible for everyone who wants it. Scholarships and bursaries are meant to help accomplish that purpose.”

What Past Award Recipients are Saying

Past bursary recipients agree that music lessons have greatly impacted their lives. One eleven-year-old student said that music lessons had made her a more disciplined student in school. A mother of a 5-year-old said the lessons had given her child “tools through which her patience, self-control, social skills and confidence [had] all improved.” A 20-year-old bursary recipient provided the following testimonial: “I was able to attend a workshop at the Victoria Conservatory of Music which included all styles of music, even jazz. There I made lifelong friends who impacted my life greatly. If it were not for music lessons I would not have had those amazing experiences.”

Would-be scholarship and bursary recipients for 2012-13 need to get their applications in shortly. The deadline to submit applications is Monday, April 2 at 4:30 pm. All of the forms are available to download here.  For more information, readers may contact the Academy.

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:

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!

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

The “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!

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.

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.

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!