PRACTICE TRAPS
Bad Practice Habits That Waste Your Time and Wreck Your Playing
Bethany does plenty of practice each week, but is finding it increasingly difficult to be ready for lessons.
Her teacher is not alarmed though. "I'm just wondering" he says, reaching for a list "if you spend any of your time using some of these practice techniques..."
She reads for a moment, and then looks up, red faced. "How did you know?" she says.
Bethany, you've been found out. Just what was on that list though...?
~ O ~ ~ O ~ ~ O ~
PRACTICE TRAPS: An Introduction
Every activity has associated bad habits that can get one into trouble.
It's no different for practicing musicians. There are a number of classic bad habits that might seem harmless enough, but which unleash all manner of calamities upon one's practicing, one's playing, and one's lessons.
Beginners
The title of this trap has nothing to do with being new to music lessons - instead it's used to describe students who always start their practice from the beginning of their piece.
It's a common trap - *see separate blog under Beginners for the ugly truth* :-)
* Shiny Object Polishers - Shiny Object Polishers spend most of their practice time working on passages and issues that are already in good shape. They'll pick on old pieces, comfortable passages, reliable scales - anything that they know they can already play well.
It's not what one does that is bad. It's what one doesn't do. The tough runs, that scale with the awkward position shift, the technical work that one messes up at their last lesson, the second half of the new piece.
And so, despite the fact that there might be plenty of practice happening, one will not be ready for their lesson. The problems from last lesson will remain unsolved, the new passages will remain unlearned, and the teacher will remain unimpressed.
Passages that are already rated 9 for quality will to up to 9.5 (because of the extra attention they're getting) while zeroes will stay at zero.
But the most telling indicator that you might be suffering from this practice disease is your answer to this question:
Do you sound good most of the time when you practice?
If your answer is "yes," then you've tested positive to Polishing Shiny Objects. The only way to sound good most of the time is to dodge the many, many practice tasks that can have you sounding bad.
So your neighbours might be enjoying all this clean mistake-free playing, but they might not enjoy your next concert so much.
And you're certainly not going to enjoy your next lesson.
* Running Red Lights
Red Light Runners hate stopping when they're playing... which means that even if they notice a problem, they'll just keep going anyway. Straight through the red light.
As they mess up, they tell themselves things like "I must work on that bit," but next thing they know, they're at the end of the piece (again) and they can't remember where "that bit" was, or just what about it needed fixing.
...and that goes for each of the other six "that bits" that they noticed en route.
But even more alarmingly, because their focus is on getting to the end of the piece, they might not even have noticed many of the problems in the first place.
All these problems one is scooting straight past will be waiting for them at their next lesson... and at their performance...
Red Light Runners will often complain "I always mess that bit up." It's true. They do always mess that bit up. But it's no wonder, because they've never tried to fix it - they just trip over it every time, and keep going.
* Speeding
Most students know that practicing too fast is bad, but few realize just how much damage those extra beats-per-minute can cause. *See separate blog on Speed*
* Skimming
Skimmers will practice a problem passage until they experience success for the very first time - then they'll immediately declare the passage "cured," and move on to something else.
In other words, the very first time they fluke a good playthrough, all work on that passage stops.
Skimming might not actually cause any problems, but it certainly doesn't fix any either.
* Overcooking
Overcooking is the opposite of skimming. These students just can't let go of the passage they're working on, and keep on practicing it long after it's already been adequately prepared. It's a variation on Shiny Objects Polishing, except that the student is not trying to sound good all the time, or actively avoiding any other passages - they just don't trust the work they've already done on this passage.
Overcooking not only wastes huge amounts of time, it has one turning up to each lesson unprepared despite having worked hard.
* Sheep counters
Sheep counters only know one way to practice - to play the passage over and over and over and over...
The hope is that if they just make the number of repetitions high enough, they can solve any problem. This means that if they've already played a passage 250 times, and it's still not right, then it's a sign that they should try 300. Or 3,000.
This embeds problems. Repetition was never designed to fix problems. It just takes whatever you're already doing - good or bad - and locks it in.
The sad thing is that all that repetition actually takes plenty of dedication - but you're actually causing massive damage to your pieces in the process.
* Over-eaters
Over-eaters try to fix too much at once - the sections they work on are too big, and the list of issues too long.
So in a single practice session, they might try to improve the fingering, rhythm, phrasing, dynamics, fast runs, projection of melodies, part separation, articulation, balance, rubato, and tone production...
There's a saying that if you chase two rabbits, both will escape.
Despite that over-eaters work incredibly hard, they will have little improvement to show for their efforts.
Worse still, because there are so many notes and issues to monitor, many problems will escape undetected.
* Autopilot
Simply put, it's practicing with your brain either off or elsewhere.
* Ignoring the map
Playing from memory is definitely a useful skill, but practicing from memory is not always a good idea.
Map ignorers are usually hard-core memorizers who only use the music to learn the notes in the first place... and then do the remaining 95% of their practice with no score at all.
Which means that from that point on, they have no way of being able to determine if the version they're playing is different from what's being asked for.
Like a game of Chinese Whispers, little errors will steadily creep in. An accidental here, a missed marking there, a staccato dot, a repeat that seems to have gone missing.
Bit by bit, the piece mutates - but because it's so gradual, you won't notice it.
If your lessons seem to be filled with your teacher re-circling missed score details, then you should be looking hard at how you missed them.
The best prosecution for this is when students leave their book at the lesson...
...and don't notice
"How did you got this week?" I'll ask when I see them next. "Practice was good?"
"Oh yes." They'll reply. "I did lots."
And you know something? I believe them. Which means at that point, I fasten my seat belt and stow my tray table in an upright position. It's going to be a bumpy lesson. :-)
* Clockwatchers
If you know you're supposed to do 30 minutes of practice each day, and your main focus in on how far through that time you are, then you're a clockwatcher.
Practicing this way is ineffective.
* Panic Practicing
Panic practicers leave all their practice until what they think is the last possible second... and then quickly discover that the last possible second was actually some time ago.
Practicing is something to be done later. But in the 48 hours before a lesson or concert, reality hits, and they suddenly go into hyperdrive.
... but it's all too late.
The results will speak for themselves. Panic-practiced pieces are brittle, and fall apart under the pressure of a lesson or concert.
Anything that's been assembled in only 48 hours will sound like it's been assembled in only 48 hours.
* Bad bricklayers
These students practice everything in segments... but they never actually practice the joins between segments. This means that while the theme from your Theme and Variations might sound great - and so does Variation 1 - getting from the Theme to Variation 1 is a different story. There's a bump, like a crack in the pavement.
Apart from being bumpy, the performance itself will sound like lots of sections glued together, rather than a unified whole...
...which is, after all, how you were practicing it.
* Performers
Perhaps the worst practice trap of all. Performers cannot tell the difference between preparing their piece and performing their piece.
And so every practice session resembles a performance. The pieces are always played at full speed. The pieces are always played from beginning to end. The pieces are played with no stops. And as soon as they have finished the performance, they'll usually start it again.
Performers combine several of the worst practice traps into one ghastly practice creature that has bolts in its head, and could only have been brought to life by a lightning strike in a mad scientist's chamber.
Their insistence on full tempo means that they are Speeding. Playing from beginning to end means that they are Red Light Runners. Endlessly looping the performance means that they are Sheep Counters. The fact that they're working on the whole piece at once means that they're the worst of Over-eaters.
And so their piece suffers the symptoms of each of these separate practice disease.
To cure this disease, you have to switch from your performance model to practicing that is based around troubleshooting.
If you really must play from beginning to end, then at least ensure that you are focusing your listening on a different issue each time. This will ensure that each performance has you noticing different types of potential problems.
And then, once you've completed a performance playthrough, work on any problems that affected your issue-of-the-moment before looping back for your next playthrough.
In this way, you use your performances to identify problems and then the rest of your practice to fix them.
