This might seem like a strange question, but do you remember anyone teaching you how to practice? I've had ten teachers in thirty-eight years of music instruction and not one of them taught me how to practice. How are we supposed to know what works in the beginning if no one tells us? Well, no more! Here are the tools you need to help your students practice successfully from the first day! FYI, none of the links in this post are affiliate, I just really like these resources!
Let's start with the science of practice. The goal is to move information and movements from the short term to long term memory banks. You may have heard the term "muscle memory", but this isn't your goal. Muscle memory won't help you when you're under stress, such as in a lesson with your teacher, an exam, or performance. I like to follow the same pattern children use to learn language and that starts with listening. Now, some of you may be recoiling in horror (this was me when I started teaching, too). How will your student learn to read if they're always using their ears?
When I was in college, a friend and I lived in the same apartment building. She was a clarinet major and was blind from birth. She had braille scores for some of the pieces she needed to learn, but for others, braille copies didn't exist. She memorized entire orchestral works by ear for years and she was fabulous! Repertoire learning and music reading are congruent skills, not the same skill. There are lots of resources for teaching your students to sight read well and eventually their eyes will catch up to their ears. My favorites are the Sight Reading and Rhythm cards from Piano Safari. Even if you don't use Piano Safari method books, these cards are fabulous!
Have you ever thought about how much music your students listen to at home? This never crossed my mind until I attended the Teacher Turboboost held by Nicola Cantan in Cincinatti, Ohio last week. Did you know there are homes that are quiet?!!! I have no idea what that's like, so it would never occur to me that my students aren't listening to music regularly. What better pieces to listen to than the ones they are going to learn this week, or even better, in the next few lessons? They'll be more motivated and understand what is happening on the page. I share YouTube links or audio recordings with my students through the Vivid Practice app, but you could do the same through My Music Staff or even via text.
So Step 1 is listening and Step 2 is ... PLAY! Practicing without play is so boring. You're a professional. Music is not only your passion, it's your business and yet I bet you have a hard time making yourself practice sometimes too. Join the club. Sigh.
Repetition is an essential part of practice, but repeating a passage ad nauseam really doesn't work that well. Have you ever tried playing a section three times in a row? The first two times are no problem, but that third time it's like your brain short circuits and you mess up. Talk about annoying. This isn't a problem with your music skills. It's just your brain trying to keep you alive and concentrating takes a lot of energy away from other things like breathing and looking out for the lions that live in your living room. Brains are fascinating.
When we add play to our practice, our brains enjoy it and that makes it easier to pay attention. Putting together a practice play kit is so easy. I include things like an egg timer, dice, stickers, sticky notes and coloured pencils. If you identify a section in your lesson that a student needs to focus on, try putting a sticky note over it and writing down a few emotions or musical styles they can use as they repeat it. At home, the student rolls the dice and chooses that number of repetitions and styles. For example, if I wrote down happy, angry, sad, frustrated, excited and nervous on their sticky note and the student rolled a three, they will practice that section three times for each of the emotions they choose. That means by the time they move on, they've worked on that section nine times with three different emotions in mind. That's good practice!
If a student notices a new spot that is giving them trouble at home, they can use coloured pencils to map it out. Blue for high, green for low, yellow for notes that repeat. You can choose any combination. Practice this in your lesson each week when you're studying a new piece and it will be easy for them to do at home. Better still, keep the parents in the loop by videoing exactly how you want their child to practice. Most parents don't have a clue, so help them out and make their lives easier. Practicing at home shouldn't be as hard as helping a kid with their math homework!
Step 3 is time. So many parents and students think that practicing for an hour one day a week is the same as practicing for 15-minutes four times a week. Cram practicing is not only inefficient; it's boring and stressful. That's not a great environment for learning. If you attach practice to an event that happens every day, your student is much more likely to practice. This is something you should discuss with the student, but more importantly with their parents.
Music practice is a great way to take a break from homework, but not a great thing to do after iPad time. Disconnecting practice from addictive activities like video games, television, or social media, will really help students enjoy the time they spend at the piano and give parents a break from arguing over getting the work done. If the parents aren't up for helping their kids practice or want them to do it on their own, I suggest you switch from a practice lesson model to a music experience lesson model. It will save you all a lot of frustration.
Step 4 is performing. There is a difference between practicing and performing. When we practice, we work on our mistakes. When we perform we ignore them to get all the way through the piece without stopping. Both skills are important and need work. I encourage my students to record their first session with a piece by playing it through without stopping. Even if it's terrible, that's OK! After they practice for a week, I encourage them to record themselves again and then watch both videos. Students often have a hard time recognizing their own progress. They focus on the mistakes so much that they can't see all the things they did well. Recording themselves also imitates the stress they'll feel when they come to their next lesson. If they do this 35 times a year, recitals and exams won't be nearly as scary. That's sneaky, I know, but it works!
The most important part of practice is to set clear expectations for parents and students. Can you imagine how much easier it would have been to learn to play your instrument if someone took the time to do this for you?! This will set your studio up for success, keep your parents happy and your students in lessons for years.
I'd love to hear what you do in your studio. Leave a message below so we can learn from each other.
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