Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Structuring your Practice Time

There should be a balanced amount of structure and chaos in your practicing. Balanced does not mean equal, it means that they both work together to make your time as effective as possible.

A proper practice session should have three main parts to it: an introduction, a body, and a conclusion, just like a well-written paper.

--The introduction should include a warm up for the body (including back, fingers, and wrist)--this is some stretching both with and without the keys, and for the mind--this can be integrated into the body warm-up or can be separate.  It should then include a time to work on technical exercises, such as scales and arpeggios, or more specific exercises (Czerny, Brahms, etc.) for whatever techniques you are working on.

--The body includes first briefly working on at least one piece in your repertoire. The vast amount of practice time should be spent on your current pieces. Creating goals--challenging, yet achievable--can make this the most effective. I will write much more on this later.

--Finally, the conclusion should include playing something that you feel confident with--this can be playing an older piece that you have already mastered, repeating the part of your current piece that you felt great about during your practice session, or improvising.

The chaos fits within the structure...allowing mistakes to occur, improvising when you feel moved to do so, breaking "the rules" when it feels appropriate.

This first post is a HUGE topic, and I will be writing future posts on each of the sections I mentioned above, including: structure vs. chaos, warming up, technical exercises, repertoire preparation, working on your current pieces, improvising, and confidence.

Further posts will include such topics as performance anxiety, self-defeating thoughts, sticking to your program, posture, breathing, and joyful music-making.

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