If you have ever taken music lessons of any kind, you have probably been told by your teacher (or someone else!) that you need to practice.

Great, right? How hard can that be? But after thumping out the same thing over and over for days on end without seemingly any progress, practice generally falls by the wayside.

As a teacher, the one topic that comes up almost weekly is, of course, practicing. “How much should my child be practicing?” “How much should I be practicing?”

And from me, “Um…have you practiced at all this week?” This is a run of the mill question that every teacher has said probably a million times. But what is successful practicing anyway?

You have probably heard the stories of a virtuoso pianist who practiced everyday for 8 hours. Wow! You know you can’t do that. Seriously, who has time for that? And you’re not even getting PAID to practice. So you start off with 2 hours…the first day. But by the time you play through your required material, it’s only been…15 minutes?? Not only have you not practiced efficiently, you are now discouraged because you have no idea how this works.

So how do you practice?

Repetition. Practice is to “to do something again and again in order to become better at it.” This means to do something over and over until you get it right. This is where many not-on-the-virtuoso-level musicians get stuck. We tend to think that playing the WHOLE song over and over will eventually result in perfection. But each time you play it, you stumble over that same spot – again and again. This is where successful practicing comes in. Play the whole song, yes. But play the trouble spots MORE. You only need to practice what you are doing wrong. The parts you are getting right will, of course, get stronger and more confident with repetition, so don’t leave them out; but the point here is to practice your weaknesses so that you can see some improvement.

Simple, right? But I know how many times I have sat down to “practice,” have run through my material, and said “OK, good enough.” Because the piece as a whole was “practiced,” does not make it “perfect.”

Conditioning. Being a vocalist, I tend to put a whole lot of emphasis on technique. This goes the same for any other instrument. Technique is the foundation upon which all creativity is built. This means drilling out warm-ups and scales. This is the boring part. The “eat your veggies so you can grow strong” part. Playing the piece is fun, but it is the end result, not the means to get there. If your fingers are not conditioned to play a difficult trill, practicing the piece again will not help. You need to target the fingers’ weakness. That means playing those warm-ups until your hands are tired. I took an accompanying gig once that featured a piece that required me to play the entire thing in octaves with my left hand. Let me just say, I don’t normally play many pieces like that. By the end of the gig, by arm had shooting pains up it because I was not conditioned to handle that.

Time. It’s not how much time you put in, but what kind of time you put in. I am always amazed at the kinds of schedules my students keep. Being an adult, I get that it’s hard to find time to practice. But these kids! Sometimes they have more activities than a very energetic adult could possibly find time for. Because of this, I tend to be fairly understanding of practice times. But they have to put in the effort. This is the key. I encourage goal setting. If you think you can make a goal of practicing twice a week for 30 minutes, then hurray! You are on the way to improvement. I have to set myself goals. As a private music teacher, growing her performance business, with kids and a hubby at home, I have fifty million things to get done every single day. And because there are fifty million things to do, I get confused at what to start first. So I set goals. Personal practice time, recording time, language study, music writing, blog upkeep… they all go in as goals that I have to meet every week. If all you can do is once a week, then stick with it. If you have more time, try for 3-4 times a week. Even a small amount of quality practice (focusing on your weaknesses!) will be enough for you to see yourself progressing.

Target your trouble spots. Find your weaknesses. Set a time goal… and go practice!