VARYING YOUR DIET
Freeing yourself from dull, repetitive practice
Charlene wouldn't mind practicing so much if it wasn't so boring.
"It's the same thing every day... playing my pieces over and over again... I'd go crazy, except that practicing makes me too sleepy for that."
Her teacher doesn't understand this at all. "Who said that practice had to be playing your pieces over and over and over again? That doesn't sound much like practice to me - no wonder you're bored."
If that's not practice, then what is? What else can she try?
0~0
Practice actually means hundreds of different things. There's no single magic formula that will work in all situations.
Because you have all this choice though, if you're bored when you're practicing, it's your fault. It would be like standing at a buffet with hundreds of different foods...and loading up your plate with just one.
Practicing the same way all the time means either that you simply aren't aware of other practice possibilities or you're actively choosing to ignore them.
Either way, you're not just boring yourself. You're crippling your practice, and your music lessons.
Variety? Such as?
Below are just some of the tasks that qualify as "practice." So if you're sick of the way you're working, you don't have to abandon practice completely - you can change how you work, so that practicing becomes a completely different experience.
Planning
This involves figuring out exactly what you should be practicing, and how it fits in with the bigger picture. Planning is about knowing how today's session will help you be ready for next week, and how next week can help you prepare for the end of the year.
You might not actually be playing your instrument while you're doing this, but planning will save you loads of unnecessary work - and absolutely counts as practice.
Locating trouble spots
You can't fix problems if you don't know they're there. This type of practice doesn't actually fix problems, but instead helps you create a comprehensive list of what those problems are.
Diagnosing and prescribing
It's not enough just to know that a problem exists - you have to understand exactly what's causing it. In fact, being able to name why something is hard is often nine-tenths of the way to making it easy.
These causes are not always obvious though, so you'll end up needing a technique like *Clearing Obstacles* - covered elsewhere on this blog.
Quality control
There will be plenty of passages that don't warrant the status "Trouble Spot," but could use some polishing nonetheless.
Quality control practice is about turning good passages into excellent passages.
Tempo boosting
Getting pieces up to speed has to be handled carefully... and with it's own unique practice methods. For instance, set yourself up with a *Prototype*. (check blog for this topic)
Pressure testing
Ok, so you've got the passage right once. But can you get it right every time? Pressure testing is about ensuring that you can deliver what's needed under a range of difficult circumstances, and under pressure.
Interpretation workshop
Practicing is not just about getting things right. It's also a creative process designed to help you discover the most compelling, credible, exciting and moving ways to perform your pieces. Look for techniques such as *Experiments* (check elsewhere on this blog)
Knowing the score
Most scores are packed with details, and teachers have to waste a lot of lesson time pointing out terms, signs and notes that students missed. You can do this for yourself.
Preparing for performance
A special type of practice that kicks in during the final weeks before a recital/exam.
Listening to recordings
This is practice you can do even when you're not in your practice room. A great way to get to know every last note of your piece. Check *Recordings* covered elsewhere on this blog.
Reflecting
This is quiet time taken between practice cells, analyzing what just happened, and figuring out what the next cell should therefore be. Hugely important, even though it's yet another type of practice that involves no playing whatsoever.
Head games
With so much of performance being a confidence game, getting your head together is a vital preparation task.
Fitness training
(also covered elsewhere on this blog) This is behind-the-scenes skillbuilding - items you'll never show off on concert day, but which will positively affect all your playing. Includes your scales and other technical work, sightreading development and theory, improvisation skills and more.
And much more...
So if there is a reason that your practice is always the same, it's not because you're short of alternatives.
Setting up dedicated days
One easy was to help your practice feel fresh and ever-changing is to have different functions for each day of your practice week.
So Tuesdays might be dedicated to listening to recordings, and then some background musical fitness training.
Wednesday might focus on reliability testing, while Thursday might be all about speeding pieces up.
Friday, as the midpoint of your practice week, might always contain a Lesson Preflight Check. (see Preflight Check on this blog)
Those won't be the only things you cover on those days - you'll still have daily practice tasks to complete.
But the days will be heavily flavored by the Practice Type of The Day, helping prevent the awful feeling that all your days are identical.
Using the random element
Another possibility is for your practice type to be determined randomly from a list of useful possibilities.
Practice rooms are now always very surprising places. It's easy to end up doing the same old thing in the same old order.
Play this 6 times. Learn that passage. Practice these scales. Turn that page.
*yawn*
It doesn't have to be this way. In fact, with a small change, you can arrange things so that you are always being surprised by what's coming up.
A humble pack of cards can do the trick.
What's on your practice cards?
Every time you practice, there are dozens of different useful instructions you could give yourself. Normally you would settle on one of these options, and begin.
When you're using practice cards though, instead of choosing one instruction, you're going to write down all those possible instructions. One for each card.
This means you will end up with a deck of cards that is a comprehensive collection of possible "what's next" instructions. No matter which card you chose, you'd be told to do something worthwhile.
You can randomize just about any practice element - segments in your piece, issues, tasklist items, daily quotas, experiments, technical work, etc.
When variety is missing
When your practice diet is over-looking one of these key techniques, it's not just that you're making things boring. These key techniques... well, they're key techniques. If you ignore any of them, your playing is going to suffer.
It would be like a tennis player spending all their time practicing their serve, but ignoring their groundstrokes, volleying, strength and conditioning, flexibility, mobility, mindset and tactics.
It's not just that they're going to be bored when they practice. They're going to get flogged when they play... :-D
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