Practicing = Training

How much should I practice?

This is an interesting question that really misses the point. If you're asking yourself this question, you probably haven't thought about what you're trying to accomplish, because your goals will supply the answer.

Setting Goals

Where does music fit into your life? Answer this question honestly, after a lot of serious thought. Don't simply repeat what you've heard others say, or what you think is the "correct" response. Do you have the desire to be a performer, or do you just like being around musicians? There's a bizarre thought! Any answer is fine, provided it is an honest one. If you truly believe that you want to be a performer and you are willing to invest a significant portion of your life - at the expense of most of the people around you - then your next step is to develop a plan.

Where do you want to be? What do you want to do? If everything goes perfectly in the next several years, and every conceivable part of your plan falls into place, where will you be? Visualize your ideal career. I'm not even going to list the possibilities here because that will only serve to limit your thoughts.

Each year I teach a class titled, “Developing The Professional Musician” where each student chooses two or three individuals who have the career the student aspires to. The students research and establish a timeline for the education, professional development, personal life for each individual chosen as a career model.

From that research each student sets career goals and develops a career timeline describing their projected education and training, personal and professional development. It is understood that this is speculation and there is no way to truly plan an individual’s personal life, but this exercise can identify potential conflicts, and establish a framework for growth.

Your Training Plan

Athletes set goals and establish training their regimen from them.  Now that you have a clear goal, you can set your plan.

Thoughts for the beginning of a practice session:

What am I trying to accomplish, both in the long term, and this session?

How much time do I have?

Am I maintaining a mindset for calm, considered, objective, accurate practicing?

Am I always playing with my best, most relaxed and efficient sound?

Am I gradually building toward more technical exercises so they can be performed without tension?

Am I using a metronome for all technical exercises?

Am I repeating the successful execution of passages more times than those that were unsuccessful?

Am I budgeting my time well?

Am I thinking about the specific goals for each passage while I'm playing?

Practice as close to sixty seconds out of every minute as possible. In other words, use every minute and think while you’re playing. Stay focused and relaxed, and plan breaks after 50 minutes. There is never a situation where you practice with any type of pain. Sure, your lip may become a little tired, but be sensible and allow your strength and endurance to increase over time.

Objectivity

It is essential to maintain an attitude of objectivity during your practice session, not allowing minor setbacks or just a bad session to discourage you. I encourage my students to become “emotional ratchets,” in that they dismiss any negative thoughts during their practicing, but allow the good moments to shine through. State clearly and without emotion the current level of your performance and the areas in need of further growth. You may want to write down and prioritize the areas needing the most development. But don’t mistake hypercritical self-evaluation and emotional self-flagellation for objectivity. The student who bitterly describes their numerous failures frustrations and inadequacies is doing nothing toward personal growth. All you need is a clear description of where you stand and where you want to go.

Rotation

When people go to the gym, they assign different days to work various muscle groups, so that every area is addressed, and stressed muscles have time to heal and grow. We should do the same thing with our daily exercises, not so much because we are wearing ourselves out, but so we are sure to equally attend to all areas needing development.

In this book, you will find several different exercises for tone matching, vibrato, scales and scale fragments, and several methods of intonation work. Along with these is a chart so you can keep track of each day’s work. Rotate through each set of exercises, while also budgeting your time so that you can work through all areas each day.

Time

We never have enough time, or so we think. We see all those ads on TV that promise “killer abs in just twenty minutes a day.” How can this work? Just twenty minutes? Twenty minutes is 1,200 seconds, quite a long time if all you’re doing is sit ups. We can apply this concept to our practicing by paying careful attention to every second we are working. The first Tone Matching exercise shows a tempo of quarter note equals 72, so it follows four notes per measure comes out to 18 measures in one minute. Therefore, the entire exercise can be completed in just under two minutes – 120 seconds. Allot five minutes for the tone exercise, stopping only to breathe. After playing through the exercise once, you have three minutes to go back and work through problem areas.