Practice Makes Practice

It seems a lot of these blog ideas come up by things currently surrounding me in my life.  Maybe it's something for myself, or something that may be coming up frequently with my students.  On occasion, like this particular blog, it's both.

My last blog covered a lot about practice.  Today I'm going to talk about the two types of practicing approaches I live by.  It's really important that you keep at least one of two philosophies behind your practicing habits.  1) Frequency. 2) Variety.

FREQUENCY:  Students and of course parents of students will ask me how much practicing should be going on.  For an absolute beginner they may not have as much material or even stamina to go for hours on end.  Maybe your a experienced musician who's going through a busy time in your life which doesn't grant you the enjoyment of lots of practice time.  My answer is 15-30 min, five days a week, and seven if you please.  I follow it up by saying.  Not 15 min one day, skip three and then 45 min the next time to make up for it.  It's the frequency that your looking for.  The five days in a row.  With this type of practicing habit, physical goals are going to be a lot more slow going but you will still have some effective mental practice which of course is important as well.  For the more experienced players, it may just be up keep until we can get back into a deeper regimen.  I don't think this approach should be used as a replacement for serious nose to the grind stone practicing.  I think it's good for experienced players who are just a bit busier trying to make sure their bills get paid, their relationships are in tact and are taking a breather from music from time to time for whatever reason.  Possibly other pleasures in life?  For beginners, I feel that after 6 months, you should probably at that point be motivated to play at least 30 min a day or more.  

VARIETY:  If you can squeeze a variety of tasks into a short practice successfully, more power to ya.  Usually if I'm going for such an approach, I'm only running down a few things that needed very little work to begin with.  Maybe I'm just running down two or three songs I need to get up on stage and play that night or the next day.  Think of it this way... Do you get much from jumping in on the middle of a 30min TV show for 7 1/2 min and then flipping to another one for 7 1/2 min?  Usually not.  It's all a bit disjointed and of course if you liked the first show to begin with, you would have stuck with it.  So one of those 7 1/2 min slots was probably a waste.  You might of caught on to the plot, but you probably don't know all the characters and there's still a lot of holes in the story.  Bummer.  Now, the rest of this portion of the blog is about those of us who love those practices that go on forever, or would like to know how those who do practice for hours on end get there.

Let's say you have 60 min or more to get some practicing done.  I'm not going to get into an exact regimen because all players have different needs but I'll give you a few basics I go by.  I spend about 1/4 of my time warming up.  This usually starts with very simple and painfully slow right hand exercises that gets me warmed up and gets my mind and body going with some sort of solid rhythm reference such as a metronome or drum machine.  After that, I'm spending some time on some sort of chromatic exercises.  Gotta make sure my left and right hands are agreeing.  From there I'm probably running down some scales in various keys, chords, etc.  Depending on what your studying it may be other things.  You'll notice how I haven't talked about the creative side yet.  This is because I believe the #1 key to a good long practice is eating your Wheaties and makings sure you get some educational progress going first and foremost.  Once we start vamping on a groove or tune, we probably aren't going to be very motivated to go back to modes and arpeggios after that.  Here's the beauty of this approach though...This is exactly how shorter practices turn into enjoyable marathons.  Time permitting of course.  After you've done all your cerebral stuff, you may have already covered nearly 60 min.  Then when you get into your songwriting, grooving, vamping, hashing out a tune you grew up listening to, they may carry you for quite a bit longer.  The importance and effectiveness is much deeper than how simple it sounds.  Of course you can spend longer on one part of your initial practice if you feel you need it or are especially enjoying/appreciating it.

I'm sure there will be more blogs in the future on practicing.  For now I encourage you to experiment with your practice regimen.  Make sure that when you change something, you sit on it for a while and don't abandon it so quickly.  Really give it a chance to be effective.  That goes for everything!